The Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meetings

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 The Union XII Corps was formed in June 1862. The corps, which joined the Army of the Potomac only a week before Antietam was small, numbering just over 7,600 men. Easily overlooked, Army of the Potomac leadership and historians since have largely glossed over this corps’ contribution at Antietam. Nevertheless, this small corps ended Confederate attacks into the Miller Cornfield and East Woods, successfully defended the Dunker Church Plateau from Confederate assaults, and captured the West Woods, which had been the goal on the Federal right all morning. Chris Bryan will provide a brief overview of the period from the Battle of Cedar Mountain until the corps’ entry into Maryland, including its condition resulting from this period. The talk will then examine the XII Corps’ participation in the Maryland Campaign and its fighting at Antietam, including some new findings discovered through recent archival research. 

M. Chris Bryan’s Cedar Mountain to Antietam: A Civil War Campaign History of the Union XII Corps, July –September 1862 begins with the formation of this often-luckless command as the II Corps in Maj. Gen. John Pope’s Army of Virginia on June 26, 1862. Bryan explains in meticulous detail how the corps endured a bloody and demoralizing loss after coming within a whisker of defeating Maj. Gen. “Stonewall” Jackson at Cedar Mountain on August 9; suffered through the hardships of Pope’s campaign before and after the Battle of Second Manassas; and triumphed after entering Maryland and joining the reorganized Army of the Potomac. The men of this small corps earned a solid reputation in the Army of the Potomac at Antietam that would only grow during the battles of 1863. 

Chris Bryan is a native of Greencastle, Pennsylvania. He earned a B.S. in History from the United States Naval Academy, an M.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Annapolis, and a Masters in Historic Preservation from the University of Maryland, College Park, with a focus on architectural investigations of Chesapeake region antebellum domestic and agricultural outbuildings. The former Naval Aviator works as a project manager in Southern Maryland. Cedar Mountain to Antietam is his first book. 

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 Patrick Brennan, a long-time student of the Civil War and published author, has teamed up with his technology-astute daughter Dylan Brennan to bring the largest Civil War battle to life in the remarkable 2-volume study: Gettysburg in Color. Volume 1 covers Brandy Station to the Peach Orchard, and Volume 2 covers The Wheatfield to Falling Waters. Rather than guess or dabble with the colors, the Brennans used an artificial intelligence-based computerized color identifier to determine the precise color of uniforms, flesh, hair, equipment, terrain, houses, and much more. The result is a monumental full-color study of the important three-day battle that brings the men, the landscape, and the action into the 21st Century. The deep colorization of battle-related woodcuts, for example, reveals a plethora of details that have passed generations of eyes unseen. The photos of the soldiers and their officers look as if they were taken yesterday. 2 

The use of this modern technology shines a light on one Gettysburg photographic mystery in particular. Colorizing some of the battle's "death" images revealed the presence of Union and Confederate dead that may help determine the previously unknown location of the photographs. That may also be a "first" when it comes to Civil War photography. Pat Brennan is the author of Secessionville: Assault on Charleston (1996), To Die Game: General J. E. B. Stuart, CSA (1998), and more than twenty articles for a variety of Civil War magazines and journals. Pat is on the Editorial Advisory Board for The Civil War Monitor and his work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune. He has lectured around the country on the Civil War and Bob Dylan. Dylan Brennan works on the broadcast video production team at Tasty Trade, a real time, online financial network based in Chicago. 

 Scott Mingus on “Texans at Chickamauga” 

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 Although the Civil War’s second-largest battle in terms of casualties, Chickamauga has had far fewer books written about it than the thousands of books penned about the war’s bloodiest battle, Gettysburg. What has been remarkable has been the dearth of books about specific brigades, regiments, or state troops at Chickamauga, unlike Gettysburg which has a plethora of specialty books. Scott Mingus’s and Joe Owen’s Unceasing Fury: Texans at the Battle of Chickamauga, September 18-20, 1863, is the first full-length book to examine in detail the role of troops from the Lone Star State. 

Chickamauga was deemed as “the soldiers’ battle” because of the perception in the ranks of a lack of direct involvement of senior-level leadership. More than 4,400 of these soldiers were from the state of Texas. One out of every four of the Lone Star boys who fought at Chickamauga fell there. The surviving Texans gave us vivid descriptions of battle action, the anguish of losing friends, the pain and loneliness of being so far away from home, and their often-colorful opinions of their generals. 

Texans fought in almost every major sector of the sprawling Chickamauga battlefield, from the first attacks on September 18 on the bridges spanning the creek to the final attack on Snodgrass Hill on the third day of fighting. Ultimately, Union mistakes led to a tactical Confederate victory, one that was marred by the strategic mistake of not aggressively pursuing the retreating Federals and seizing the vital transportation hub at Chattanooga. 

York County, PA resident Scott Mingus is a retired scientist and executive in the global specialty paper industry. The Ohio native graduated from Miami University. He has written more than 30 Civil War and Underground Railroad books and numerous articles for Gettysburg Magazine and other historical journals. The Gettysburg Civil War Round Table recently presented Scott and co-author Eric Wittenberg with the 2023 Bachelder-Coddington Award for the best 

Ernest Dollar on “Hearts Torn Asunder: Trauma in the

 Mark Zimmerman on “The Brutal Retreat from Nashville 1864” 

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 Mark Zimmerman, a member of the Nashville Civil War Round Table, will present an hour-long slideshow, The Brutal Retreat from Nashville 1864, based on his self-published book, Mud, Blood and Cold Steel. The presentation details the 10-day, 100-mile retreat by John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee from Compton's Hill in Nashville to the Tennessee River in northern Alabama. The Confederates were pursued by the infantry and cavalry of George Henry Thomas, including the cavalry of James Harrison Wilson, which was armed with repeating rifles. The harrowing retreat was conducted in the dead of winter through rugged and inhospitable terrain. Mark is a retired newspaperman who belongs to numerous Civil War and historic preservation organizations. He has self-published eight non-fiction books, including four on "the late unpleasantness." His latest book, Fortress Nashville, was named a Top Ten Book of 2022 by Civil War Books & Authors. He is also a Tennessee Squire with modest landholdings in Lynchburg. He was born and raised in Rockford, the gritty city at the top of Illinois, and spent seven years as a Packers fan in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He is also an avid fan of the University of Tennessee Volunteers. He has led tours of historic sites in Nashville and has presented at Shiloh National Military Park, Johnsonville State Historic Park, Fort Defiance Interpretive Center, and Fort Negley Interpretive Center. 

Sean Michael Chick on “General P. G. T. Beauregard”

Dwight Hughes on “Unlike Anything That Ever Floated: The USS Monitor and the Battle of Hampton Roads” 

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The USS Monitor was an ingenious but hurried response to both the imminent threat of the Confederate ironclad, CSS Virginia (ex USS Merrimack), and to the growing prospect of international intervention backed by powerful British or French seagoing ironclads. The United States had no defenses against either menace. This presentation takes Monitor from her inception in the mind of her brilliant inventor through the dramatic first clash of ironclads at Hampton Roads. Dwight Hughes is a public historian, author, and speaker in Civil War naval history. Dwight graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1967 with a major in History and Government. He served twenty years as a Navy surface warfare officer on most of the world's oceans in ships ranging from destroyer to aircraft carrier and with river forces in Vietnam (Bronze Star for Meritorious Service, Purple Heart). Dwight is a contributing author at the Emerging Civil War blog and author of: A Confederate Biography: The Cruise of the CSS Shenandoah (Naval Institute Press, 2015), and Unlike Anything That Ever Floated: The Monitor and Virginia and the Battle Hampton Roads, March 8-9, 1862 (Savas Beatie, 2021) for the award-winning Emerging Civil War series. His new book as editor and contributor, The Civil War on the Water: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War (Savas Beatie), is due out in April 2023.

Charles Knight on “Robert E. Lee” 

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Douglas S. Freeman's Pulitzer Prize-winning three-volume biography of Robert E. Lee is a masterful reconstruction of the man's life. So exhaustive was Freeman's research that he often boasted he could account for every hour of Lee's life from West Point until his death. Freeman's Lee is thorough, but it isn't THAT thorough. Often neglected in Freeman's Lee and other studies of the general or of his various battles and campaigns is what Lee was doing when he wasn't in the spotlight. Charles Knight's new From Arlington to Appomattox: Robert E. Lee's Civil War Day by Day, 1861-1865 recreates those four years of Lee's life--at least as much as is possible at 150+ years distance. It is often forgotten that in addition to his duties as a general, Lee was still a husband, father, and friend. He lost a daughter, sister, two grandchildren, daughter-in-law, and his home during the war. In2 this presentation Knight shares some of the results of years of research into Lee's actions during the war years; previously unknown sources, inconsistencies that confused Freeman and dozens of other historians over the years, memorable anecdotes of Lee's daily life, and other historical "nuggets" that came to light in his research. Charles Knight is native of Richmond, VA, where he developed a love of history at an early age. He has worked at museums and historic sites for more than 20 years in Virginia, Arizona, and North Carolina, and has given historical presentations to audiences across the country. He is the author of Valley Thunder: The Battle of New Market (Savas Beatie, 2010), From Arlington to Appomattox: Robert E. Lee's Civil War Day by Day (Savas Beatie, 2021), as well as numerous magazine and journal articles, and was a historical advisor on the 2014 film Field of Lost Shoes, about the Battle of New Market. Knight is currently working on a biography of Confederate general and railroad magnate William Mahone; a history of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's Honor Guard company; and editing the memoirs and papers of Gen. R.E. Lee's aide Charles Venable. Knight is the curator of military history at the NC Museum of History in Raleigh and resides in Holly Springs, NC, with his wife and children.

Robert Girardi on

“Union Prisoners of War at Camp Douglas”

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 Douglas, located on the south side of Chicago, was Illinois' largest Civil War training camp. More than 40,000 volunteers mustered here. In February 1862, the camp was converted to accommodate Confederate Prisoners of war. About 24,000 Confederates were held there during the war, of which 6,000 died. Their story is well-told. Yet lesser known is the story of the thousands of Union POWs who were held in the camp while awaiting exchange. After the surrender of Harpers Ferry in September 1862, the captured Union soldiers were interred in parole camps. More than 8,000 of these were sent to Camp Douglas. These soldiers occupied barracks recently vacated by Confederate prisoners and were subjected to the same poor sanitary conditions and privations. Their uncertain future and lack of understanding 2

of their status led to a breakdown in discipline. This is an account of their troublesome experiences in Chicago. Robert I. Girardi has a Masters Degree in Public History from Loyola University. He is a lifelong student of the American Civil War and has studied all aspects of the conflict. He is a past president of the Chicago CWRT and is the author or editor of nine books, and numerous articles and book reviews. He was a board member of the Illinois State Historical Society and was guest editor for the 2011-2014 Sesquicentennial of the Civil War issues of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. His most recent article, "Reconsidering Major General Gouverneur K. Warren," appeared in the July 2020 issue of North and South Magazine. He is currently working on a military biography of Warren.

Chicago Civil War Round Table Meeting for December 2022: Garry Adelman on “Midwest Civil War Photo Extravaganza”

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Join American Battlefield Trust Chief Historian Garry Adelman for a lively photography presentation covering all manner of Midwestern events, people, and places. While the Midwest proper hosted a limited number of battles and campaigns, the Midwest states hosted hospitals, supply deports, manufacturing hubs, prisons, camps, railroads, and more! Midwesterners themselves played an outsized role in the conflict ... and where they went, so went photographers capturing images on glass and metal for a public hungry for this relatively new technology! Combining then-and-now photographs, details, maps, and other media, Mr. Adelman will tell the story of the Civil War Midwest mainly through the revolutionary wet-plate photography process, the truly unique individuals involved in the birth of photojournalism and more. From Wilson's Creek to Johnson's Island, from Wood Lake to Cairo, Mine Creek, Milwaukee, Crown Point, Keokuk, Ann Arbor, and the Wigwam, come to understand the 1860s Midwest in a manner available nowhere else! 

A graduate of Michigan State University and Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, Garry Adelman is the award-winning author, co-author, or editor of 20 books and 50 Civil War articles. He is the vice president of the Center for Civil War Photography and has been a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg for 27 years. He has conceived and drafted the text for wayside exhibits at ten battlefields, has given thousands of battlefield tours at more than 70 American Revolution and Civil War sites, and has lectured at hundreds of locations across the country including the National Archives, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian. He has appeared as a speaker on the BBC, C-Span, Pennsylvania Cable Network, American Heroes Channel, and on HISTORY where he was a chief consultant and talking head on the Emmy Award-winning show Gettysburg (2011), Blood and Glory: The Civil War in Color (2015), and Grant (2020). He works full time as Chief Historian at the American Battlefield Trust.