Every Civil War buff knows there are never enough maps (enough GOOD maps) to illustrate a battle or campaign. Our April speaker, Dr. Brad Gottfried, has addressed this concern by embarking on a journey to map every campaign in the Eastern Theater of the Civil War. His most recent effort, The Maps of the Fredericksburg Campaign, will be the subject his talk to our group. While most know of the futile attempts to capture Marye's Heights, fewer know about the other major action at Prospect Hill that almost cost Lee his decisive victory. He will also illustrate the challenges Robert E. Lee and Ambrose Burnside experienced in getting their armies to Fredericksburg and the dreadful January Mud March. Gottfried will have books on hand that he will sell and sign at a discount.  Brad Gottfried retired after a 40 year career in higher education. After receiving his Ph.D. in Zoology, he taught for eleven years at three colleges and then became an administrator. He ultimately served as president of two colleges for seventeen years. Gottfried has received a number of national and regional awards and recognitions for his leadership including: the National Council of Marketing Professionals' National Pacesetter of the Year and Leadership Maryland's Gold Leadership Award.  As a historian, Brad has authored thirteen books and two additional works are moving through the editorial process. After writing five Gettysburg books, Brad has devoted his time to researching and writing a series of map studies of the Eastern Theater Campaigns, including the: Maps of First Bull Run, Maps of Antietam, Maps of Gettysburg, Maps of Bristoe Station & Mine Run, Maps of the Wilderness, and his newest volume, the Maps of Fredericksburg. He has completed two other books in the series, which should be published in the next few years: The Maps of the Cavalry in the Gettysburg Campaign and the Maps of the Spotsylvania/Overland Campaign. His Maps of the Petersburg Campaign is well under way. He has also completed a small book on the Point Lookout Prisoner of War Camp for Confederates, which he wrote with his wife and is self-published.

Micheal Larson and John David Smith's Dear Delia chronicles life in the famed Iron Brigade as told through 155 letters home. Young's insights, often poignant and powerful, enable readers seemingly to witness the Civil War as he did. Few topics avoided Henry's careful eye. Bluntly honest with his emotions and opinions, he left little doubt as to where he stood on the questions of the day. His correspondence--candid, contemplative, thorough, and occasionally humorous--provides a clear window into everyday events, as well as into war, society, and politics. Young's letters reveal the perspective of a young officer from America's western heartland, giving a regional perspective generally omitted from Civil War-era documentary editing projects.  Young's correspondence is uncommonly interesting, readable, and revealing, replete with astute insights. It covers many topics during the first three years of the Civil War, including innumerable details of military service: the brutality of internecine "hard war," camp life, camaraderie, pettiness, and thievery among the troops, equipage, and food shortages. Henry also addresses military leadership, maneuvers and tactics, rumored troop movements, and what he considered the strengths and weaknesses of African American soldiers. The letters provide invaluable glimpses into the fine points of building earthworks, ducking incoming artillery barrages, maintaining camp sanitation, and obtaining medical care. Henry's correspondence additionally documents his business affairs on the home front and wartime inflation. From newspapers he retained a firm grasp of Wisconsin and national politics, often noting incidents of graft and corruption and his pointed opinions regarding the 1864 presidential election.   Dear Delia further contains gossip and information about other enlistees from Young's rural Wisconsin community who served in his unit, Company F. Above all, Henry's communication highlights his unflagging patriotism and his fierce determination to preserve the Union no matter the cost.  Micheal J. Larson first unearthed Young's correspondence at the Wisconsin Historical Society as an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in 1985. Today he teaches history at an Eau Claire high school. John David Smith is the Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. He has published twenty-nine books, many on the topic of the Civil War, and has edited collections of letters, diaries, and other primary works on the war, race relations, and southern history.

Gouverneur K. Warren is remembered as the Savior of Little Round Top. He was highly regarded for his education and competence, but also accused of being too cautious by the generals who removed him from command. His record belies this, however. But Warren has suffered in the history book because of the long reach of his enemies. Here, the facts are reevaluated with some unpleasant revelations.   Robert I. Girardi has had a lifelong fascination with the Civil War. He has studied all aspects of the war, and has tramped over many of the battlefields and related sites. He has collected artifacts and memorabilia and has read through thousands of documents, letters, and diaries written by participants, thereby developing an understanding of the important issues of the war and a sense of what the soldiers experienced.   Robert Girardi earned his M.A. in Public History at Loyola University of Chicago in 1991. He is a past president of the Civil War Round Table of Chicago and a past vice president and newsletter editor of the Salt Creek Civil War Round Table. He belongs to two other Civil War round tables in the Chicago area. He is a fellow of the Company of Military Historians and is an associate member of the Sons of Union Veterans. He is on the editorial review board of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society and was the guest editor of the 2011-2014 Civil War Sesquicentennial issues. He was the winner of the 2010 Chicago Civil War Round Table's prestigious Nevins-Freeman Award. In 2012 he was named to the board of directors of the Illinois State Historical Society, and sat on the board of directors of the Camp Douglas Restoration Society 2013-2018. In 2014 he was awarded the Milwaukee Civil War Round Table's Iron Brigade Association Award for Civil War scholarship. He was an extra in the movie, Andersonville.

Before the famed journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley journeyed into Africa to find Dr. David Livingstone, he fought at the Battle of Shiloh as a private in the 6th Arkansas Infantry, CSA. Taken prisoner there, he became a "Galvanized Yankee," serving in the Union army and navy. He recorded his war experiences in a chapter of his Autobiography, which was prepared before his death in 1904, and then published by his wife in 1909.   This program traces a trek across the Shiloh battlefield in the footsteps of Private Stanley as nearly as can be determined by available evidence, and uses his own words to illustrate his experience. The program aims to give people an appreciation of the terror of combat as viewed by the common soldier, and will help them better understand the context in which Stanley's experiences occurred.   Bjorn Skaptason holds a M.A. in history from 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 at Loyola. He still returns to Shiloh yearly on the anniversary of the battle to help lead special interpretive hikes of the battlefield. He has previously published essays on Ambrose Bierce at Shiloh, on the United States Colored Troops in the campaign and battle of Brice's Crossroads for the West Tennessee Historical Society Papers, and in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society on The Chicago Light Artillery. A dealer in antiquarian books, Bjorn produces and guest hosts "A House Divided" on the Author's Voice network, a Civil War book discussion program live streamed from Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago.

Paul Kahan: The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant: Preserving the Civil War's Legacy  In his most recent book, The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, Kahan tackles a presidency vilified as one of the all-time worst, and shows its circumstances, accomplishments, and failures equally and fairly. Unlike most (all?) political leaders, Grant was less than obsessed with becoming president, announcing to his wife the day after the election, he was afraid he’d won. He did it because of all the suffering of the Civil War. He did not want to let the wartime accomplishments slide away.   The Grant Administration was buffeted by three storms: Reconstruction, Economic Depression, and internal corruption. Grant seemed not to be up to dealing with all three at once.   For the time, President Grant was considered quite active in enforcing civil rights laws. Until recently, the thought was Reconstruction of the south was a mistake altogether, that America should have left things alone to evolve for themselves. Nowadays, the thinking is Grant didn’t go far enough with strong laws and harsh enforcement that would have dealt racial discrimination a harder blow. Either way, Grant “failed.”   President Grant seemed to have had no vision beyond saving his accomplishments in the Civil War. He personally was honest, straightforward, plain spoken and untainted. But the events of his era swept him into the dustbin of history, unjustifiably according to historian Paul Kahan. He says the critics were unfair, and the many accomplishments minimized. (h/t review at medium.com)   Paul Kahan is a lecturer at Ohlone College in Fremont, California. Dr. Kahan earned a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Temple University, an M.A. in Modern American History & Literature from Drew University and B.A.s in history and English (with minors in medieval/ Renaissance studies and music) from Alfred University. His 2016 book, Amiable Scoundrel: Simon Cameron, Lincoln’s Scandalous Secretary of War, was praised as “Essential for any Civil War historian’s library. Kahan talked to our Round Table in March 2017 on Cameron. His most recent book, on U.S. Grant’s presidency, is the subject of this presentation.

It is well known that Indians fought in the Civil War and that several Indian wars occurred at the same time as crisis of the union, but that is not the focus of this talk. “The Civil War as an Indian War” will be an illustrated lecture exploring how the experience of American Settler Colonialism shaped the American way of war in general and the Civil War in particular. Understanding the tactics of settler-Indian conflicts helps explain the origins of the “hard war” program instituted to defeat the Confederacy.   Theodore Karamanski (Loyola University Chicago, Ph.D., 1979; B.A., 1975) is a Professor of History and Public History Director at Loyola University Chicago where he teaches courses in American Indian history, the Civil War, and public history. Karamanski has been a leading and national voice in the promotion of American and public history for more than three decades. He was the founder and later director of Loyola’s Public History Program (1981-1990, 2006-current), the first such program in the Midwest and later the first to offer the Ph.D. in public history. A founding director of the National Council on Public History (NCPH), Karamanski was later elected president of the body for the 1989-1990 term, and named Graduate Faculty Member of the Year at Loyola (1993-94) and Faculty Member of the Year at Loyola (2001-2002).   Karamanski has been a prolific author in the fields of American Indian, Great Lakes, Civil War, and nineteenth-century American history. He has written and edited numerous books, including: Civil War Chicago: Eyewitness to History with Eileen M. McMahon (Ohio University Press, 2014), which was chosen as the best book on Illinois history for 2015 by the Illinois State Historical Society; Blackbird's Song: Andrew J. Blackbird and the Odawa People (2012); Fur Trade and Exploration: The Opening of the Far Northwest, 1821-1852 (1983); Rally ‘Round the Flag: Chicago and the Civil War (Nelson Hall, 1991), which was winner the Illinois State Historical Society's “Special Achievement Award" (1992). He has written more than 30 articles in a variety of journals.

Tim Smith: U. S. Grant and the Vicksburg Campaign: For nearly nine months, Ulysses S. Grant tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate river city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. He maneuvered and adapted numerous times, reacting to events and enemy movements with great skill and finesse as the lengthy campaign played out on a huge chessboard, dwarfing operations in the east. This reexamination of the familiar story is organized around Grant’s eight key decisions during the campaign. Grant’s nontraditional choices went against the accepted theories of war, supply, and operations as well as against the chief thinkers of the day, such as Henry Halleck, Grant’s superior. Yet Grant pulled off the victory in compelling fashion. Smith shows how Grant’s decisions created and won the Civil War’s most brilliant, complex, decisive, and lengthy campaign.   Dr. Timothy Smith, Civil War author and historian, is a native of Mississippi but now resides in Tennessee, where he teaches history at the University of Tennessee at Martin. Smith received both BA and MA degrees in history from the University of Mississippi and a PhD from Mississippi State University in 2001. Pursuing his love of history, Smith worked for the National Park Service at the Shiloh National Military Park for seven years, where his interest in the Civil War was intensified. Dr. Smith is the author of numerous books, including Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg (2004), Mississippi in the Civil War (2010), and Shiloh: Conquer or Perish (2014). His most recent book is The Decision Was Always My Own: Ulysses S. Grant and the Vicksburg Campaign. Dr. Smith is currently finishing a book on Grierson's Raid.

The recent publication of Ron Chernow’s massive biography of U.S. Grant culminates the modern historical trend to laud Grant as a general and as a president. The latter proposition has attracted critics. Not so Grant’s reputation as a general, which authors such as Ed Bonekemper have praised.   On May 11th, author Joseph Rose will contend that General U.S. Grant’s vaunted military reputation is, in large part, undeserved. As opposed to his Personal Memoirs and the writings of his staff and other supporters, contemporary first person accounts and correspondence (often from Grant himself) convincingly show how he often blundered on the battlefield and then covered it up later. His extreme bias for or against various Union commander also damaged the country's war effort.   Declarations that Grant was not tactically surprised at Shiloh or that he ordered the Army of the Cumberland to ascend Missionary Ridge at Chattanooga sent the author to the New York Public Library in search of primary source materials on these and other battles. The talk will contend that Grant, and the numerous defenders of his generalship and character, have distorted the historical record.   Joseph A. Rose grew up reading his father's collection of military works (especially the West Point Atlas of American Wars), and other non-fiction. This began a life-long love of history and geography. During a career in healthcare management, he took a cross-country trip and visited battlefields of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Nothing was out of the ordinary, until internet discussions and debates on the Civil War Western Theater Discussion Board, demonstrated how history, especially in Ulysses S. Grant's case, could be terribly miswritten. Twelve years of research and writing have culminated in a groundbreaking book, Grant Under Fire, that comprehensively analyzes the controversies of the General's military career and after. Rigorously based on primary sources (and letting Grant convict himself by his own writing), the book is a necessary antidote to the ahistorical perspectives assumed by many past and current historians, both popular and academic.   Living in New York City, Mr. Rose holds a Bachelor of Arts in Geography from the State University of New York at Albany (now the University at Albany) and a Master of Science in Industrial and Labor Relations from a joint program of Cornell University and Baruch College.

John F. Marszalek:

The Nevins-Freeman Award Address: The History of the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

Named after famed historians Allen Nevins and Douglas Southall Freeman, the Nevins-Freeman Award is the highest honor the Civil War Round Table of Chicago can bestow. It is awarded for an individual’s contributions to Civil War scholarship, and their dedication to the Round Table movement. Past award winners include Bruce Catton, James M McPherson and Wiley Sword. This year we are proud to give this award to a distinguished author and historian, John Marszalek. 

John F. Marszalek retired in 2002 as a Giles Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Mississippi State University. He taught courses in the Civil War, Jacksonian America, and Race Relations. He is the author or editor of thirteen books and over two hundred fifty articles and book reviews. Sherman, A Soldier's Passion for Order was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize, and his first book Court Martial, A Black Man in America was made into a Showtime motion picture. He continues to lecture widely throughout the nation and has appeared on the major television networks. He serves on the board of advisors of the Lincoln Forum, the Lincoln Prize, the National Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, and the Monitor Museum (Newport News, Virginia). After John Y. Simon's death in July 2008, Marsazalek was asked to serve as the Executive Director and Managing Editor of the Ulysses S. Grant Association and The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant project. These papers are now located at Mississippi State University. 

On April 13th Professor Marszalek will talk about how Grant's memoirs came to be written, and its history up to and including the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press publication of (eds) John F. Marszalek with David S. Nolen and Louis P. Gallo: The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, the Complete Annotated Edition. The edition was published in October 2017.

The morning of Wednesday, July 20th, 1864, broke warm, promising another sultry summer day. It would spawn the first offensive action for the new Southern Commander, John Bell Hood and his gray forces as he took over the defense of Atlanta for the Confederate States of America in the fourth summer of the war. What began as a golden opportunity to repel Northern General William Tecumseh Sherman and his blue legions from the gates of the Gate City, as Atlanta has been called, became a day of missed chances, broken dreams, and for a number of the Rebel leaders’ soldiers, a grave.   The Battle of Peach Tree Creek marked the beginning of the end for the Confederacy, for it turned the page from the patient defense displayed by General Joseph E. Johnston to the bold offense called upon by his replacement, General John Bell Hood. Until this point in The Georgia Campaign, the Southern Army had fought primarily in the defensive, from behind earthworks, forcing Sherman to either assault fortified lines, or go around them in flanking moves. At Peach Tree Creek, the roles would be reversed for the first time, as Confederates charged Union lines.   On March 9th, author Bob Jenkins was note that Peach Tree Creek marked the beginning of the end for the Deep South and the Confederacy. Peach Tree Creek would be the first in a series of defeats and set-backs from which the South would not recover. Before Peach Tree Creek, there remained some semblance of hope for victory and Southern Independence. After Peach Tree Creek and the defeats at Decatur and Ezra Church which quickly followed, there could be no more hope of a military win by the Confederacy. After Peach Tree Creek, and its companion battles for Atlanta, the clear-hearing Southerner could hear the death throws of the Confederacy.   Robert D. (Bob) Jenkins is an attorney, practicing in Dalton, Georgia. A life-long Civil War enthusiast, Bob has given numerous battlefield tours and lectures on the Atlanta Campaign. His first book, The Battle of Peach Tree Creek, Hood’s First Sortie, was published in 2013 by Mercer University Press. His second book, To the Gates of Atlanta, covered the 1864 Atlanta Campaign from Kennesaw Mountain to Peach Tree Creek.