The Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meetings

 April 6, 1865 (known as "Black Thursday") was one of the most devastating days of the American Civil War. As Robert E. Lee's Confederate army retreated, Grant's Union forces struck along a stretched and vulnerable line, triggering the Battle of Sailor's Creek. Fighting broke out at multiple locations, including near the Hillsman House and along Sailor's Creek, where Confederate units were overwhelmed, cut off, and forced into intense close-quarters combat. The losses were staggering, with thousands killed, wounded, or captured. This program highlights the key decisions of the day and their significance, showing how the fighting at Sailor's Creek led directly to Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House just three days later. 

Joshua Lindamood is a historian serving at both Sailor's Creek Battlefield Historical State Park and Staunton River Battlefield State Park. Throughout his career, he has also held positions with the American Civil War Museum and Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, where he has helped interpret and preserve the history of the Civil War for visitors from around the world. 2 

Joshua is a founding member and co-director of the Appomattox-Petersburg Preservation Society (A.P.P.S.), a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the historic battlefields and landmarks of Southside Virginia while promoting public education about the region's vital role during the American Civil War. Through his work in public history, preservation, and education, Joshua is committed to ensuring that the stories of those who experienced the conflict continue to inform and inspire future generations. 

 James Marten on “The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War” 

for more info: www.chicagocwrt.org

 As one of the original regiments in the Iron Brigade, the Sixth Wisconsin fought in virtually all of the major campaigns of the Army of the Potomac from Second Bull Run through Appomattox, from the Cornfield at Antietam and the Unfinished Railroad Cut at Gettysburg through the confusing bloodbath of the Wilderness and the frustrating siege at Petersburg. After the war veterans struggled with the aftermaths of wounds and disease, commemorated their contributions, and remembered their fallen comrades. Prof. Marten's talk will sample the war-time and post-war experiences of volunteers like Rufus Dawes, Captain of Company K and future commander of the Sixth, as well as draftees like Gottlieb Torke, one of hundreds of mostly German-immigrants who finished the war. 

James Marten is professor of history emeritus at Marquette University, where he taught for thirty-six years. He is author, editor, or co-editor, of two dozen books, including The Children's Civil War, Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America, and his latest, The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment. He was president of the Society of Civil War Historians from 2013 to 2015. 

 Alex Rossino on "Before September: The Origin of the 1862 Maryland Campaign" 

For more info: www.chicagocwrt.org. History records the September 1862 Confederate operation in Maryland as a military campaign designed and initiated solely by General Robert E. Lee, but what if Lee's crossing of the Potomac River had been planned much further in advance? In addition, what if the motives for the invasion commonly ascribed to Lee are only partially correct? In this talk, Dr. Alex Rossino provides extensive evidence documenting the true origin of Lee's Maryland operation in the summer of 1861 and the role in its evolution played by other key individuals, such as Confederate President Jefferson Davis, General Joe Johnston, and General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, played in its evolution. The result is a re-evaluation of the origin of the 1862 Maryland Campaign that reveals Lee's actual reasons for crossing the Potomac and clarifies the invasion's place in the development of Confederate grand strategy during the first year and a half of the American Civil War. A resident of historic Charles Town, West Virginia, Dr. Alex Rossino is an independent historian and author. He earned Master's and Doctoral degrees in History at Syracuse University before working for nine years as a historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Dr. Rossino turned his attention to the American Civil War in 2011 and, after several years of research, produced Six Days in September: A Novel of Lee's Army in Maryland, September 1862. The book proved to be popular among historians and enthusiasts alike, leading to a sequel titled The Guns of September: A Novel of McClellan's Army in Maryland, September 1862, published in September 2024. Dr. Rossino also returned to writing history, producing Their Maryland: The Army of Northern Virginia from the Potomac Crossing to Sharpsburg in September 1862 and co-authoring with Gene Thorp The Tale Untwisted: General George B. McClellan, The Maryland Campaign, and the Discovery of Lee's Lost Orders, which came out in January 2023. His most recent history, Calamity at Frederick: Robert E. Lee, Special Orders No. 191, and Confederate Misfortune on the Road to Antietam (October 2023), completed his in-depth study of the Lost Orders saga from the Confederate perspective, along with an ebook on the document's handwriting to identify the author, titled, Who Wrote the Lost Copy of Robert E. Lee's Special Orders No. 191: A Handwriting Analysis Companion to Calamity at Frederick in October 2025. 

 Chris Mackowski on “A Tempest of Iron and Lead: The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House” 

for more info: www.chicagocwrt.org

 For twenty-two straight hours, in torrential downpours, up to their knees in mud and blood, Federals and Confederates slugged it out in the most intense sustained hand-to-hand combat of the war. A panoply of horror, one soldier called it. A Saturnalia of blood. Hell’s Half-Acre. The slaughter pen of Spotsylvania. Most remember it simply as the Bloody Angle. 

Chris Mackowski, Ph.D., is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Emerging Civil War and the series editor of the award-winning Emerging Civil War Series, published by Savas Beatie. Chris is a writing professor in the Jandoli School of Communication at St. Bonaventure University in Allegany, NY, where he also serves as associate dean for undergraduate programs. Chris is also historian-in-residence at Stevenson Ridge, a historic property on the Spotsylvania battlefield in central Virginia. He has worked as a historian for the National Park Service at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, where he gives tours at four major Civil War battlefields (Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania), as well as at the building where Stonewall Jackson died. 

Chris has authored or co-authored nearly two dozen books and edited a half-dozen essay collections on the Civil War, and his articles have appeared in all the major Civil War magazines 

Date: February 2, 1995

Speaker: David Donald

Topic: The Reticence of Abraham Lincoln

- Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meeting

 The Nevins-Freeman Address 

Wayne Motts on 

"Illinois Civil War Artifacts in the Collection of the National Civil War Museum" 

For more information, visit www.ChicagoCWRT.org

 Join historian, author, and National Civil War Museum CEO Wayne E. Motts for a dynamic PowerPoint presentation showcasing significant original Civil War artifacts connected to Illinois soldiers and leaders. He highlights items tied to notable Illinois personalities, including Abraham Lincoln, Union General John Buford, and cavalry officer Benjamin H. Grierson to name only a few. These rare historical items and stories illuminate the state's important role during the war. Wayne explores each artifact and brings to life the stories of the individuals behind these remarkable Civil War treasures.

Wayne E. Motts serves as the CEO of the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He has led three non-profit historical organizations, including the Adams County Historical Society in Gettysburg and the Gettysburg Foundation. For 38 years, he has guided visitors as a licensed battlefield guide at the Gettysburg National Military Park. He has also authored two published works on the Civil War. 

The Nevins-Freeman Award 

In 1974, The Civil War Round Table of Chicago established the Nevins-Freeman Award, and bestows it annually on an individual whose advancement of American Civil War scholarship and support for the Round Table movement warrant special recognition. The award itself is designed as a generous financial donation to a historical preservation project chosen by the recipient. 

This award is named for two men whose legacies 

 Keith Bohannon on Wheeler’s Cavalry in the Atlanta Campaign 

For more info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG

 Keith Bohannon will examine General Joe Wheeler's background and the operations of his command from May-September 1864. During much of this time, Wheeler's command guarded the flanks of the army and protected vital railroads from Union cavalry raids. Often his cavalry, dismounted, fought in the lines against Sherman's infantry. Wheeler's decisive defeat of Union cavalry forces during the McCook-Stoneman Raid is arguably the high point of his career.

Dr. Keith Bohannon is Professor of History at the University of West Georgia, where he teaches courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Old South, and Georgia history. He is the co-editor, with Randall Allen, of Campaigning with Old Stonewall in Virginia: The Letters of Ujanirtus Allen, Company F, 21st Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Infantry (LSU Press, 1998), author of The Giles Artillery (Virginia Regimental Series) and is the author of numerous essays, book reviews, and scholarly journal articles. He has appeared on C-Span numerous times. Prior to his appointment to the faculty at West Georgia, Dr. Bohannon worked as a historian, interpreter, and living historian with the National Park Service at multiple Civil War sites. 

January 2026 Meeting of the Chicago Civil War Round Table

Guy Fraker on Lincoln the Lawyer

For More info: WWW. ChicagoCWRT.ORG

Consulting with Lincoln scholars, Guy Frakerrealized that Lincoln's formative years on the Eighth Judicial Circuit hadnever been deeply explored. This led him to the counties of the circuit,examining the nature of his cases, the identity of his clients, opponents,associates, and the towns to which he regularly traveled. From this camehis Lincoln's Ladder to the Presidency, the Eighth Judicial Circuit,which was published in 2012, with a paperback edition reissued in October 2023.The second book, Looking for Lincoln in Illinois - a Guide to Lincoln'sEighth Judicial Circuit, was published in 2017. Fraker has written andspoken extensively about Lincoln on the Circuit, not only in the State ofIllinois, but at various other venues around the country.

Retired Bloomington, Illinois lawyer Guy Fraker was consultant on andparticipant in Abraham Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency, anaward-winning nationally distributed documentary produced by WILL-TV (PBS) Hewas Co-curator of Prologue to the Presidency, a permanent exhibitat the David Davis Mansion, a state historical site in Bloomington, IL.

Date: February 2, 1995

Speaker: David Donald

Topic: The Reticence of Abraham Lincoln

- Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meeting

For More info: www.chicagocwrt.org

 The Civil War visited unprecedented violence on the United States. That violence was also inscribed on the bodies and minds of the nearly two million men who donned Union blue between 1861 and 1865. How did Union veterans make sense of their physical, psychological, and emotional wounds as the nation plunged into the years of Reconstruction? How did the politics of the postwar years complicate their reintegration to civilian life and personal healing? Why were so many veterans so unwilling to let go of the war and its legacy, and what urgent messages do those ex-soldiers have for us today? Brian Matthew Jordan is Associate Professor of U.S. Civil War History, Co-Director of the SHSU Civil War Consortium, and Chairperson of the History Department at Sam Houston State University, where he has taught since 2015. Professor Jordan earned his undergraduate degree in Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College (under the tutelage of Gabor S. Boritt and Allen C. Guelzo), and M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees in History at Yale (under the direction of David W. Blight). His first book, Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War, was a finalist (one of three runners-up) for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in History. In its dissertation form, that book won the George Washington Egleston Prize (for Best U.S. History Dissertation at Yale) and John Addison Porter Prize (one of Yale's highest academic honors). 2 

Presently, he is at work on Written in Blood: A New History of the U.S. Civil War, a one-volume history of the conflict for Liveright/W.W. Norton, as well as More Than An Eagle on the Button: Black Military Experiences in the Civil War Era (with Lorien Foote and Holly Pinheiro, Jr.). A short history of the battle of South Mountain for the Emerging Civil War series is set to appear next year. Dr. Jordan is a native of Akron, Ohio, and lives north of Houston with his wife and four-year old daughter, Elizabeth (who, despite her youth, has already stomped several battlefields).