The Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meetings

Chicago CWRT Meeting June 2025

David Power on "The Atlanta Campaign: Missed Opportunities

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 I've got Joe Johnston Dead!" Or so Sherman is said to have exclaimed upon hearing that James B. McPherson had seized Resaca. Famously, that turned out not to be true, one of the great "lost opportunities" of the entire war. But in fact, there were other such turning points in the first month of the campaign, each perhaps more significant than Resaca. On May 16, Sherman's armies stumbled crossing the Oostenaula River, offering Johnston a chance to damage one or more of the Federal corps; and at Dallas, McPherson hesitated again when facing just a single small Confederate division. What would have happened if either of these moments had gone differently? David A. Powell is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute (1983) with a BA in history. He has published numerous articles in various magazines, and more than fifteen historical simulations of different battles. For many years, David's focus was on the epic battle of Chickamauga, and he is nationally recognized for his tours of that important battlefield. The result of that study are five books, the final volume being The 2 

Chickamauga Campaign: Barren Victory (2016). Subsequently, he has turned to the study of the battles for Chattanooga. Battle Above the Clouds, concerning the Battle of Lookout Mountain, was published in June of 2017. Decisions at Chickamauga followed in 2018. Two more books, "All Hell Can't Stop Them" (on Missionary Ridge) and Union Command Failure in the Shenandoah Valley both appeared in 2019. More recently The Tullahoma Campaign (co-authored with Eric Wittenberg) and Grant at Chattanooga, were published in 2020. Decisions at Shiloh appeared in 2023, and he is now hard at work on The Atlanta Campaign, a projected multi-volume study. Volume One of Atlanta appeared in July, 2024, with Volume Two to follow in 2025. David, his wife Anne, and their trio of bloodhounds live and work in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. 

 Bjorn Skaptason on The Battle of Shiloh 

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 At the outset of the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, the Confederates had high hopes for an important strategic victory. They aimed to block the Union advance into Mississippi, and early in the battle, it seemed that they might succeed. 

As night fell on the first day of battle, General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, who took command after General Albert Sidney Johnston was shot and died, believed his army was victorious. In what might have been his fatal error, he called a halt to the attacks as darkness approached. 

What he didn’t know was that, during the night, thousands of additional Union troops arrived to reinforce Ulysses S. Grant’s battered army. By daybreak, Federal forces numbered nearly 54,000 men near Pittsburg Landing, an advantage of 24,000 men over Beauregard’s army. The greater numbers, and the tactical advantage they provided, proved to be decisive. 

Bjorn Skaptason holds degrees from the University of Kansas and Loyola University Chicago. He worked as a seasonal ranger at the National Park Service's Shiloh National Military Park and Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center for two summers while studying history at Loyola. Bjorn has published essays on Ambrose Bierce at Shiloh for the Ambrose Bierce Project Journal, on the United States Colored Troops in the campaign and battle of Brice's Crossroads for the West Tennessee Historical Society Papers, and 2 

in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society on The Chicago Light Artillery. A dealer in antiquarian books, Bjorn produced and guest hosted "A House Divided," a live book discussion program webcast from Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago. 

 Jonathan Sebastian on  Loyal to a Man: The Civil War in our Backyards 

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 In the minds of many, including those who study history, there exists a divide. That is, while history happens everywhere, the real history happens somewhere else. The Civil War is thought of as having been fought in the South and, to an extent this is true. Most of the battles were fought in that region, however all parts of the country were directly impacted by this war. Illinois and even more specifically, the Chicago metropolitan area was no different. Just two hundred years ago, this area would have been unrecognizable to those familiar with all the Chicagoland area has to offer today. What was once an area of prairie with a handful of small towns was transformed dramatically during the 1860s. The people of the Prairie State played a significant role in the war and were themselves directly impacted by that war. So, how did Illinoisans, and more specifically those of Chicago and the DuPage County area, respond to such momentous issues as emancipation and the draft (among other issues) in the context of a national civil war? This presentation will explore this rich local history (some of it is still here in a tangible way!) and its connection to a most significant moment in the development of the United States. A former president of the Chicago CWRT, Jonathan Sebastian earned his B.A. in history from Judson College (now University) and his M.A. in Public History from Loyola University Chicago. He has been an adjunct professor of history at Judson University teaching World History 1500 to the Present and U.S. history. More recently, he was a social studies teacher at Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart. He was a tour guide at Jubilee College State Historic site outside of Peoria, Illinois, a project-based researcher at the Pritzker Military Library, and was the curator of the Fischer Farm historic site in Bensenville, Illinois. Currently, he is an experience facilitator at the Arlington Heights Historical Museum and the education and programs assistant at the Elmhurst History Museum. He is also the author of Bensenville, a volume of the Arcadia Press Series, Images of America. 

 Allen Ottens on  "The Grant-Rawlins Relationship" 

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 Galena lawyer and Ulysses S. Grant neighbor John a. Rawlins rose to assistant adjutant general on Grant’s staff and ultimately Grant's secretary of war. From the earliest days of the Civil War to Grant's years in the White House, John A. Rawlins was ever at Grant's side. Yet Rawlins's role in Grant's career is often overlooked, and he barely received mention in Grant's own two-volume Memoirs. 

Rawlins teamed with Grant, the two complementing each other in their abilities and ambitions. Rawlins submerged his own needs and ambition in the service of Grant. He played a pivotal role in Grant's relatively small staff, acting as administrator, counselor, and defender of Grant's burgeoning popularity. 

Allen J. Ottens is a Professor Emeritus of Counselor Education and Supervision at Northern Illinois University. He worked as a psychologist at several university counseling centers. He is also a past president of the Manuscript Society. With a lifelong interest in the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln, he is the author of the award-winning biography, General John A. Rawlins: No Ordinary Man (2021). 

October 2024 Meeting of the Chicago Civil War Round Table: Larry Hewitt on "Port Hudson and the Birth of Combat Photography" 

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 Larry Hewitt will present the who, what, where, when, why, and how the firm of McPherson & Oliver made photographic history. Between June 14 and July 9, 1863, the final 25 days of the 48- day siege of Port Hudson, McPherson & Oliver moved about the battlefield memorializing soldiers in action--and in combat! In the process of making this visual record of opposing armies actively engaged, an image of Union soldiers sharpshooting opposite the Priest Cap was not these two artists only claim to photographic fame. Other images include one taken at midnight (the first ever taken in the dark), one converted into a composite print (created by combining portions of two negatives), the Confederate army at the surrender ceremony, and examples of time-lapse photography. McPherson & Oliver also produced the most widely circulated cartes-de-visite of the Civil War, three different views of "Whipped Peter." But the duo seldom receives credit for these images of an abused slave. Other studios, including Matthew Brady's, published them as their own work. As with the battlefield they immortalized, McPherson and Oliver deserve better. 2 

A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Lawrence Lee Hewitt received his B.A. (1974) from the University of Kentucky and his M.A. (1977) and Ph.D. (1984) from Louisiana State University. He was the manager of the Port Hudson (1978- 1982) and Camp Moore (1982-1986) Historic Sites in Louisiana and taught at Southeastern Louisiana University (1985-1996). He was a tenured full professor when he resigned to marry a native of Chicago, where he currently resides. The 1991 recipient of SLU's President's Award for Excellence in Research, the 1991 Charles L. Dufour Award, the 2011 Dr. Arthur W. Bergeron, Jr. Award, and the 2013 Nevins-Freeman Award, he is a past president of the Baton Rouge Civil War Round Table. Hewitt's publications include Port Hudson, Confederate Bastion on the Mississippi (1987). Andrew J. Wagenhoffer's blog Civil War Books and Authors named Hewitt's Port Hudson: The Most Significant Battlefield Photographs of the Civil War 2021 Book of the Year. 

On September 13th John Horn talked to the Round TAlbe about "The Wilson-Kautz Raid, June-July 1864" 

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Grant wasted no time after his Petersburg assaults of June 15-18, 1864, failed to capture the city. He launched his second offensive against Petersburg hours later. Among other things, he sent his cavalry on a raid to cut the Confederate railroads south of Petersburg. This would slow any reinforcements sent from the south and west to the enemy at Petersburg and Richmond. Grant also hoped that in case his infantry failed in its mission a lack of provisions would force the foe to abandon those cities. But at Petersburg Grant faced Lee and not Floyd as at Fort Donelson in 1862 or Pemberton as at Vicksburg in 1863. Lee, his cavalry commander Hampton, and Mahone smashed Grant's cavalry raiders at the battles of Sappony Church and First Reams Station. Born and reared in Chicago, John Horn has practiced law there since 1976. He has written three books and co-edited another about Petersburg, Virginia's soldiers, and the siege of that city. His most recent book, The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859- 2 

1861 (Savas Beatie), won the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History. He has published articles in Civil War Times Illustrated, America's Civil War, Gettysburg Magazine, and North and South Magazine. He blogs at johnhorncivilwarauthor.blogspot.com.

Benjamin Grierson's Union cavalry thrust through Mississippi is one of the most well-known operations of the Civil War. There were other simultaneous operations to distract Confederate attention from the real threat to Vicksburg

 The daily rides were long, the rest stops short, and the tension high. Ironically, the man who led the raid was a former music teacher who some say disliked horses.

Throughout, he displayed outstanding leadership and cunning, destroyed railroad tracks, burned trestles and bridges, freed slaves, and created as much damage and chaos as possible. Grierson's Raid broke a vital Confederate rail line at Newton Station that supplied Vicksburg and, perhaps most importantly, consumed the attention

Novelists have attempted to capture the large-than-life cavalry raid in the popular imagination, and Hollywood reproduced the daring cavalry action in The Horse Soldiers, a 1959 major motion picture starring John Wayne and William Holden. Although the film replicates the raid's drama and high-stakes gamble, cinematic license chipped away at its accuracy. Based upon years of research and presented in gripping, fast-paced prose, Timothy B. Smith's The Real Horse Soldiers: Benjamin Grierson's Epic 1863 Civil War Raid through Mississippi captures the high drama and tension of the 1863 horse soldiers in a modern,

Timothy B. Smith (Ph.D. Mississippi State University, 2001) is a veteran of the National Park Service and currently teaches history at the University of Tennessee at Martin.

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

A list of the awardees can be viewed on the Chicago CWRT website, at https://chicagocwrt.org/anfa.html.\

Lynn and Julianne Herman on

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The Allegheny Arsenal, near Pittsburgh, produced

“Opening the Cracker Line and Keeping it Open: The Decisive Battles of the Chattanooga Campaign” 

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 Following the battle of Chickamauga in September 1863, General William S. Rosecrans' Army of the Cumberland retreated into Chattanooga. Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee surrounded the city on three sides and laid a quasi-siege for more than a month. Supplies for the Union forces gradually dwindled, reaching crisis level by the third week of October. Rosecrans, who seemed incapable of lifting the siege, gave way to Ulysses S. Grant, who approved a daring plan to open a new line of supply. That plan succeeded on October 27, opening what the Federal soldiers called the "Cracker Line." The Confederates' effort to redeem the situation resulted in one of the Civil War's rare night battles near a railroad junction called Wauhatchie. Will Greene will argue that these two relatively minor actions decided the outcome of the campaign for Chattanooga and that the famous battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge should have never occurred. A. Wilson "Will" Greene is a native Chicagoan who grew up in Western Springs and Wheaton. Following a sixteen-year career with the National Park Service, Greene became the first executive director of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites, now the American Battlefield Trust. He then became the founding director of Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier. Greene is the author of six books and a dozen published articles and essays dealing with the Civil War. His current project with the University of North Carolina Press is a three-volume history of the Petersburg Campaign. The first volume, A Campaign of Giants, was published in 2018 and Volume 2 is due out early in 2025. Greene was the recipient of the Nevins-Freeman Award in 2012. Greene now lives in Walden, Tennessee, hard by the Anderson Pike, about which he will speak at our meeting. 

CWRT Feb 2024

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 Often small individual encounters in history, experienced by common people like us, caught in the maelstrom of events, hold larger truths. Sometimes these experiences have meaning—not only for those who experience them, but for us in today’s world. This program follows twelve members of the 17th Connecticut Regiment through the three-day Battle of Gettysburg and beyond in July 1863. It focuses on the stories of the wounded, the caregivers, and the honored dead. These men fought for their lives, lost friends, and suffered themselves at Gettysburg. Their sacrifices are still with us today and from them we inherited great social and medical advances. Because of their sacrifices we began to understand the hidden costs of war, and that not all wounds are visible. The stories of these twelve citizen soldiers highlight the meaning that their lives and experiences have for our generation today: socially, medically, and psychologically. These are their stories. 

Carolyn Ivanoff is a retired high school administrator and independent historian. She writes and speaks frequently on American history at local, state, and national venues. In 2003, Carolyn was named Civil War Trust’s Teacher of the Year. We Fought at 2 

Gettysburg is her first book. It follows the 17th Connecticut Regiment through the Gettysburg Campaign and beyond in June and July of 1863.