September 21, 2021

Early on the morning of June 7, 1863 a brigade of Texans under Gen. Henry McCulloch assaulted a Union outpost at Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana, just a few miles upstream from Vicksburg, Mississippi. Defending the post was a brigade of newly-emancipated slaves who had joined the Union army, many of them with less than a month of freedom, and even less training. The onslaught they faced would result in some of the greatest losses, proportionally, during the entire war – by some measures even exceeding that of the notably famous 1^st Minnesota at Gettysburg. And yet few have heard of Milliken’s Bend. What happened there, why has it been so forgotten, and why is it worth remembering?

Linda Barnickel is an archivist and freelance writer, with master’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and The Ohio State University. She is the author of Milliken’s Bend: A Civil War Battle in History and Memory (LSU Press, 2013) which received the Jules and Frances Landry Award from LSU Press for “outstanding contribution to Southern studies,” and the A.M. Pate Jr. Award from the Fort Worth Civil War Round Table for “outstanding original research” on the Trans-Mississippi. In addition, her articles have appeared in North and South Magazine; Civil War News; Tennessee Historical Quarterly; and elsewhere, and she compiled the records of Battery G, 2nd Illinois Light Artillery in the book: We Enlisted as Patriots (Heritage Books, 1998). Learn more about her work at: lindabarnickel.com or millikensbend.com.

October 19, 2021

Americans began killing each other in Kansas Territory five years before the Civil War began. “Bleeding Kansas” explores the origins of the violence in the sectional dispute over slavery and the hardening of political differences between free-staters and proslavery advocates. Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed settlers to choose whether to have slavery. Missourians led by Senator David Atchison crossed the Missouri River to plant slavery in neighboring Kansas. New Englanders led by Dr. Charles Robinson migrated to the territory to save it for freedom. Midwesterners led by former Congressman James H. Lane overcame their distaste for eastern abolitionists to unite with the New Englanders to make Kansas a home for white men. Violence and political turbulence arose from this volatile mix, creating both a prelude and a further cause for the Civil War.

Nicole Etcheson is Alexander M. Bracken Professor of History at Ball State University. She is the author of A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community (which won the 2012 Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians for the most original book on the coming of the Civil War, the Civil War era, or Reconstruction, excepting works of purely military history); Bleeding Kansas (2004); and The Emerging Midwest (1996). She is currently working on a project about suffrage in the post-Civil War era.

November 16, 2021

Following the Battle of Gettysburg, James Longstreet’s First Corps of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was sent to support Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee. As the Army of the Cumberland and William Rosecrans withdrew to Chattanooga after their defeat at Chickamauga (September 1863), Bragg’s army setup a partial siege of Chattanooga. A tumultuous command climate soon arose within Bragg’s army. Upon the arrival of General Grant and the Confederates losing its stranglehold on Union supply efforts, Bragg sent Longstreet to handle Ambrose Burnside and the Union forces in and around Knoxville, TN to the north. A stifled attack on Fort Sanders in Knoxville and the threat of Union reinforcements obliged Longstreet to withdraw deeper into East Tennessee. During this period, Longstreet had to handle his own command issues with some of his more senior commanders. Eventually, Longstreet’s First Corps reunited with Lee just in time for the Battle of the Wilderness in early May, 1863. 

COL (ret) Ed Lowe served 26 years on Active Duty with deployments to Operation Desert Shield/Storm, Haiti, Afghanistan (2002 & 2011), and Iraq (2008). He attended North Georgia College and has graduate degrees from California State University, U.S. Army War College, U.S. Command & General Staff College, and Webster’s University. He is currently an adjunct professor for the University of Maryland/Global Campus where he teaches humanities and government. He is awaiting publication of his first book with Savas Beatie that covers Longstreet’s First Corps from Gettysburg to East Tennessee. He currently serves as President of the Chickamauga & Chattanooga Civil War Round Table, reconstituted in September of 2020.

December 21, 2021

The Civil War had a profound effect on American culture and one of those effects was how the Civil War changed the Christmas holiday in America. Christmas was part of that war and waged four “campaigns” during the course of the war. The country would never be the same, and the Christmas holiday too would be changed forever.  Come hear the story of the four “campaigns” of Christmas and how the war changed the celebration of Christmas and how, in the end, Christmas does indeed win the Civil War. 

George Romano has had an interest in the Civil War since growing up 20 minutes away from the Chickamauga Battlefield site in NW Georgia. He is past President of the Rochester Civil War Round Table and the past President of the Board of the Wood Lake Battlefield Preservation Association. The WLBPA is dedicated to preserving and commemorating the 1862 Dakota War Wood Lake Battlefield site (near Granite Falls) for future generations.  An annual speaker at the Rochester Civil War Roundtable, George has also been a guest presenter at other Roundtables in the Twin Cities, Winona, Wasioja, Mankato, New Ulm, St Cloud, Lichfield, Hastings, and Stillwater. George is a member of Toastmasters and is a Distinguished Toastmaster. He lives in Rochester and is now retired from IBM as a Consultant.

May 17, 2022

Join author, historian, and guide, Wayne Motts as he explores the life of Confederate General Lewis A. Armistead of Pickett’s Charge fame. The son of a regular army general, Armistead had a long and distinguished career as soldier in the United States Army. A veteran of three wars, he joined the Confederacy in 1861 as colonel of the 57^th Virginia Infantry Regiment and later as a brigade commander under Robert E. Lee. Motts will trace the life and death of this remarkable soldier.  

Wayne E. Motts is the chief executive officer of The National Civil War Museum located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He has been a licensed battlefield guide at the Gettysburg National Military Park for over 30 years. He is the author of the only published biography of Brigadier General Lewis A. Armistead of the Confederate Army who was mortally wounded on July 3 at Gettysburg and is the co-author (with James Hessler) of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg: A Guide to the Most Famous Attack in American History.

February 15, 2022

Ulysses Grant began his military career in 1843 at Jefferson Barracks just south of St. Louis, Missouri. After service in the Mexican-American War and at posts in New York and California, he returned to Missouri in 1854 and settled down to work on his father-in-law’s farm at White Haven. As his fortunes suffered, he moved his family to Galena to work in his father’s leather store. The Civil War saved him from obscurity, and he gained his first command experience during campaigns in Missouri. He visited the state for the last time in 1854, meaning that Missouri played a central role in Grant’s life and career for over twenty years. 

Dave Page is the 2020 winner of the Council on America’s Military Past’s Herbert M. Hart military history writing award for his article on the Civil War battle at Fort Pemberton, Mississippi. Through the years, he has given talks on the Civil War throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin. In 2001, he appeared on History Channel’s This Week in History program devoted to the Civil War vessel Star of the West. His articles on the Civil War have appeared in Military History, America’s Civil War, Civil War Times Illustrated, Artilleryman, and Historic Traveler. He served as president of the St. Croix Valley Civil War Round Table for several years. 

March 15 2022

Appomattox has long served to mark the end of the American Civil War.  Yet closely examining the spring and summer of 1865 reveals a far more contentious, uncertain, ambiguous, and lengthy ending to the American Civil War than previously understood.  It underscores the complexity of decisions made by the US army, civilian authorities, and soldiers from Lee’s army as well as the unintended consequences of those decisions.  Rather than serving as a clear ending to the conflict, the surrender of Confederate forces brought into stark relief many of the legal, social, and political questions that had plagued the war from the beginning.  Most importantly, what followed the surrender would offer the first real test of how a democracy might end a civil war. 

 Caroline E. Janney is the John L. Nau III Professor of the American Civil War and Director of the John L. Nau Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia.  A graduate of the University of Virginia, she worked as a  historian for the National Park Service and taught at Purdue University before returning to Virginia in 2018.  An active public lecturer, she has given presentations at locations across the globe.  She is a speaker with the Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lectureship program and a recipient of the Kenneth T. Kofmehl Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award from Purdue’s College of Liberal Arts. She serves as a co-editor of the University of North Carolina Press’s Civil War America Series and is the past present of the Society of Civil War Historians.  She has published seven books, including Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (2013) and Ends of War: the Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox (available summer 2021).

January 18, 2022