Armistead and Hancock

presented by Tom McMillan

Heroes aren’t born. They are manufactured, made up, invented.

Heroes are social constructs, embedded in popular folklore and passed down from generation to generation to help us process cataclysmic events.

Case in point: Lewis Armistead and Winfield Scott Hancock. The opposing Civil War generals were acquaintances but hardly BFFs, at least by today’s definition. Yet pop culture embellished and promoted their fractured friendship to symbolize how the Civil War divided our nation and pitted “brother against brother.’’

Author and Civil War buff Tom McMillan deconstructs the Armistead-Hancock myth in his excellent new book, “Armistead and Hancock: Behind the Gettysburg Legend of Two Friends at the Turning Point of the Civil War.’’

About the Author

Tom McMillan, a lifelong student of the Civil War, has served on the board of trustees of Pittsburgh’s Heinz History Center, the board of directors of the Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial, and the marketing committee of the Gettysburg Foundation. His previous books are Flight 93: The Story, The Aftermath and The Legacy of American Courage on 9/11 (2014) and Gettysburg Rebels: Five Native Sons Who Came Home to Fight as Confederate Soldiers (2017), which won the Bachelder-Coddington Literary Award. He retired after a forty-three-year career in sports media and communications. McMillan lives in Pittsburgh. On Tom’s previous visit to us, on March 6, 2018, he spoke regarding his "Gettysburg Rebels" book.