The Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meetings

  Alex Rossino on "Before September: The Origin of the 1862 Maryland Campaign "  For more info: www.chicagocwrt.org.  History records the September 1862 Confederate operation in Maryland as a military campaign designed and initiated solely by General Robert E. Lee, but what if Lee's crossing of the Potomac River had been planned much further in advance? In addition, what if the motiv...

  Chris Mackowski on “A Tempest of Iron and Lead: The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House”  for more info: www.chicagocwrt.org  For twenty-two straight hours, in torrential downpours, up to their knees in mud and blood, Federals and Confederates slugged it out in the most intense sustained hand-to-hand combat of the war. A panoply of horror, one soldier called it. A Saturnalia of blood. Hell’s Half...

Date: February 2, 1995 Speaker: David Donald Topic: The Reticence of Abraham Lincoln - Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meeting

  The Nevins-Freeman Address  Wayne Motts on  "Illinois Civil War Artifacts in the Collection of the National Civil War Museum"  For more information, visit www. ChicagoCWRT.org  Join historian, author, and National Civil War Museum CEO Wayne E. Motts for a dynamic PowerPoint presentation showcasing significant original Civil War artifacts connected to Illinois soldiers and leaders. He h...

  Keith Bohannon on Wheeler’s Cavalry in the Atlanta Campaign  For more info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG  Keith Bohannon will examine General Joe Wheeler's background and the operations of his command from May-September 1864. During much of this time, Wheeler's command guarded the flanks of the army and protected vital railroads from Union cavalry raids. Often his cavalry, dismounted, fought in t...

January 2026 Meeting of the Chicago Civil War Round Table Guy Fraker on  Lincoln the Lawyer For More info: WWW. ChicagoCWRT.ORG Consulting with Lincoln scholars, Guy Frakerrealized that Lincoln's formative years on the Eighth Judicial Circuit hadnever been deeply explored. This led him to the counties of the circuit,examining the nature of his cases, the identity of his clients, opponents,asso...

Date: February 2, 1995 Speaker: David Donald Topic: The Reticence of Abraham Lincoln - Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meeting

For More info: www.chicagocwrt.org  The Civil War visited unprecedented violence on the United States. That violence was also inscribed on the bodies and minds of the nearly two million men who donned Union blue between 1861 and 1865. How did Union veterans make sense of their physical, psychological, and emotional wounds as the nation plunged into the years of Reconstruction? How did the politics...

  Chris Kolakowski on Civil War to World War: Simon Bolivar Buckner Sr. and Jr.  For More Info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.org  Not many Civil War generals can claim to have had a son who was a general during World War 2. But Confederate Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner's son, of the same name, had a distinguished U.S. army career. A Kentuckian, Simon Sr. surrendered Fort Donelson to his close prewar army...

Chicago CWRT Meeting June 2025 David Power on "The Atlanta Campaign: Missed Opportunities For more info: www.chicagocwrt.org  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 ot...

  Bjorn Skaptason on  The Battle of Shiloh  For more info : WWW.ChiagoCWRT.ORG  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 too...

  Jonathan Sebastian on  Loyal to a Man: The Civil War in our Backyards  For More Info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG  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...

  Allen Ottens on  "The Grant-Rawlins Relationship"  For More Info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG  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...

October 2024 Meeting of the Chicago Civil War Round Table: Larry Hewitt on "Port Hudson and the Birth of Combat Photography"  For more info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG  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 & Oliv...

On September 13th John Horn talked to the Round TAlbe about "The Wilson-Kautz Raid, June-July 1864"  For for Info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG 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 o...

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 posed by U. S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee, but Grierson's operation, mainly conducted with two Illinois cavalry regiments, has become the most famous, and f...

Lynn and Julianne Herman on "The Allegheny Arsenal Explosion" For more inf: www.chicagocwrt.org The Allegheny Arsenal, near Pittsburgh, produced ammunition for the Union army. By 1862 the workers turned out some 128,000 cartridges daily by working six days a week, twelve hours a day. The arsenal employed one hundred fifty-six ladies and girls. In the summer of 1861, the arsenal had dismi...

Wilson Greene on  “Opening the Cracker Line and Keeping it Open: The Decisive Battles of the Chattanooga Campaign”  For More Info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.Org  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 tha...

CWRT Feb 2024 For more info : WWW.ChicagoCWRT.Org  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...

For more Info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.Org  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...

For more info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.Org  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 gues...

  Scott Mingus on  “Texans at Chickamauga”  For More Info visit WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG  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 C...

Ernest Dollar on “Hearts Torn Asunder: Trauma in the Civil War” For More Info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG In the popular memory of the Civil War, its end came with handshakes between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia. But the war was not over. There was a larger, and arguably, more important surrender yet to take place in North Carolina. Yet this story occupies little space in the vast annal...

 Mark Zimmerman on “The Brutal Retreat from Nashville 1864”  For More Info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.org  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...

Sean Michael Chick on “General P. G. T. Beauregard” For more information: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.Org In April, 1861, Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard shot into fame as the Confederate commander who commanded the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Often given high-level commands thereafter, a combination of ill-health, and disagreements with President Davis, limited his service thereafter, though he played a key...