May 20, 2025 

Once prominently defined as the “Hero of Gettysburg,” General George G. Meade is now commonly obscured by generals deeply embedded into the Civil War narrative–Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan or Lee and Jackson.  Indeed, Meade commanded the Army of the Potomac, the North’s principal instrument of war, longer than any other commander and assumed a prominent role in the course of the Civil War.  Together, we will explore George Meade’s role and influence in the Civil War from his command of a brigade in the Pennsylvania Reserves to the commanding general of the Army of the Potomac. 

Dr. Jennifer M. Murray is a military historian, with a specialization in the American Civil War, in the Department of History at Oklahoma State University.  Murray’s most recent publication is On A Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1933-2013, published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2014, with an updated version that includes a new preface released in the summer of 2023.  Murray is also the author of The Civil War Begins, published by the U.S. Army’s Center of Military History in 2012.  She is currently working on a full-length biography of George Gordon Meade, tentatively titled Meade at War.  This is a comprehensive treatment of Meade’s life, with a focus on his military career in the Army of the Potomac.  She is the co-editor of the forthcoming, “They Are Dead, And Yet They Live”: Civil War Memories in a Polarized America, published with University of Nebraska Press.  In addition to delivering hundreds of Civil War battlefield tours, Murray has led World War I and World War II study abroad trips to Europe.  Murray is a veteran faculty member at Gettysburg College’s Civil War Institute and a coveted speaker at Civil War symposiums and roundtables across the nation.  A Maryland native, Murray worked as a seasonal interpretive park ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park for nine summers.