Robert Lee Hodge was born to study the American Civil War. Coming into this world on “Stonewall” Jackson’s 143rd birthday and being named for the South’s most famous general surely couldn’t have been coincidence. By age 4 he was a “Civil War addict”.

Johnny Reb bias.  On my second trip to Gettysburg, 1977.

 

He still fondly remembers his Golden Book of the Civil War and how his mother would read him bedtime stories of battles from it as he poured over the maps.

Robert kept the war as a passionate hobby throughout his school years which included studying art and history at Kent State.

 

 

For over 30 years Hodge has turned his passion into a profession. He worked on Civil War productions like  ABC’s North and South, TNT’s Gettysburg and Andersonville.

Robert’s passion for the subject led him into the depths of The National Archives and Library of Congress, working with nationally-recognized experts like Brian Pohanka, Eric Wittenberg, and Bill Styple. Hodge was a principle researcher on Time-Life Books 18-volume series Voices of the Civil War and The Illustrated History of the Civil War.

It was the 1998 book Confederate in the Attic by Tony Horwitz that Robert Lee Hodge became a household name. Robert spent a couple years taking the Pulitzer-prize-winning Horwitz on an eclectic and memorable Civil War tour-de-force of historic sites, and indoctrinating him into the Civil War culture. Hodge became a major subject of the book and a photo of him was even used on the cover. The book rocketed to the New York Times bestseller list.

Since then he has appeared on  numerous television shows on The History Channel, Arts and Entertainment Channel, and the National Geographic Channel. He was featured on National Public Radio’s Kojo Nnamdi Show, Talk of the Nation, Soundscapes NBC’s Late, Late Show, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the PBS program Going Places, and C-SPAN II.

                      

Hodge’s own behind-the-camera filmwork includes Civil War documentaries that have won 5 Telly awards. Robert has the unique ability to combine a surprisingly high level of historical knowledge with an artist’s eye to bringing the war to life.

Both casual students of the war and serious historians have agreed that these films have broken new ground in telling America’s greatest story. In 2007 this work was rewarded as he was honored to receive the prestigious Emmy award for his film The Battle of Franklin: Five Hours in the Valley of Death.

 

Through studying the war by walking the battlefields and understanding the terrain, Hodge’s interest in Battlefield Preservation exploded. This interest had started when he interned with the National Park Service’s Civil War Sites Advisory Commission. It has snowballed since that time.  Robert has organized battlefield preservation fund-raisers that have garnered over $160,000 for the purchase of endangered battlefield land.  He serves on the board of directors of the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust; an organization that has protected over one thousand acres near Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Robert has also written for The Washington Post, The Nashville Tennessean, America’s Civil War magazine,  History.net, and Civil War Times Illustrated.

More recently Hodge was featured on the National Geographic Channel, Time magazine, and writing on the Civil War for The Washington Post. He continues to work on his films, giving tours of battlefields, writing, and speaking across the country.