The Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meetings

Dwight Hughes on “Unlike Anything That Ever Floated: The USS Monitor and the Battle of Hampton Roads”  For more info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG   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 ir...

Charles Knight on “Robert E. Lee”  For More info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG   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 th...

Robert Girardi on “Union Prisoners of War at Camp Douglas” For More info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG  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...

Chicago Civil War Round Table Meeting for December 2022: Garry Adelman on “Midwest Civil War Photo Extravaganza” For more info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG 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 sta...

Civil War Round table of Chicago November 2022 Meeting. The Nevins-Freeman Address: Mary Abroe on “Historic Preservation and Civil War Battlefields: An American Story”   For More info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG   Founded by Congress in August 1890, Chickamauga and  Chattanooga National Military Park is our first federal  battlefield park. Later that same month, passage of  legis...

Bruce Allardice on "Myths and Mysteries of the CSS Hunley" For more info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG The Confederate submarine Hunley, the first submarine to ever sink an enemy warship, has fascinated us ever since its mysterious disappearance in 1864. Movies have been made dramatizing its almost suicidal nature and its tragic end. Myths and legends have grown up about it. The Hunley was re-discovered in...

CWRT June 2022 Meeting: Lauren Szady on "Politicians in Petticoats: The Women of the Abolitionist Movement" For More Info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG While not originally admitted to the earliest abolitionist societies, women were always an important part of the movement. Some names, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Sojourner Truth have been remembered by history as influential ladies in the anti-slaver...

James Pula on "The Eleventh Corps at Gettysburg: a Reappraisal" For More Info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.Org The twin disasters that befell the XI Corps at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg have cast a long shadow over the memory of the brave men who served and suffered in that unit. James Pula focuses on commanders' decisions and on the experience of common soldiers in telling a more balanced tale. Pula will...

CWRT April 2022 Meeting: Jeffrey Hunt on Meade and Lee at Rappahannock Station and Mine Run"   For more info visit: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG   The Civil War in the Eastern Theater during the late summer and fall of 1863 was anything but inconsequential. Generals Meade and Lee continued where they had left off, executing daring marches while boldly maneuvering the chess pieces of war in an eff...

Mark Laubacher on "The U.S.S. Red Rover: Hospital of Firsts"  For More information visit WWW.ChicagoCWRT.org To adequately treat illness and trauma afflicted upon military personnel during the US Civil War, a true military hospital ship for use on internal waterways was built. Originally, USS Red Rover was a hospital ship for the Union Army's Western Gunboat Flotilla operating on the Mississi...

Ann Durkin Keating talked to the Chicago Civil War Round Table on February 11th on Juliette Kinzie, the Civil War, and the Making of Chicago  For more information: WWW. ChicagoCWRT.Org   After spending the 1832 Black Hawk War at Portage, Wisconsin, Juliette settled with her husband, John H. Kinzie at Chicago, where they were central figures in the city's early political, social and relig...

CWRT Meeting Jan 2022: Rob Girardi on "General John E. Smith, Galena’s Forgotten General"   For more info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.org  Galena Illinois boasts that it sent nine generals to the Civil War, the most famous of whom is Ulysses S. Grant. Many cannot name the other eight generals, but in addition to Ely S. Parker, Jasper Maltby and John Duer, there were two John Smith's. John Corson Sm...

Dennis Doyle on "Illinois Regiments at Gettysburg" December 12th, 2021 During the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863), there were three Illinois Regiments that served in the Army of Potomac. Those regiments were the 8th and 12th Illinois Cavalry and the 82nd Infantry Regiment, and a total of 1,027 men served during the Battle of Gettysburg. The three Illinois regiments suffered nine men killed d...

Nevins-Freeman Address: Tom Clemens on General Joseph K. F. Mansfield  For More Info: www. ChicagoCWRT.org   The Chicago Civil War Round Table's Nevins-Freeman Award is intended to honor those who advance Civil War scholarship and the Round Table movement. Past winners have included Bruce Catton, Gary Gallagher, Bud Robertson and James McPherson. This year we honor Tom Clemens, a man who...

David Dixon on "The American Civil War: A Radical, International Revolution" For more info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.org On October 8th historian David Dixon will talk about an aspect of the Civil War not often discussed--”the role of foreign, German transplants”--based on the life of one of those immigrants, August Willich. Dixon's latest book, Radical Warrior: August Willich's Journey from German Revolut...

Eric Wittenberg on "Seceding from Secession: The Creation of West Virginia" for more info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.org “West Virginia was the child of the storm," concluded early Mountaineer historian and Civil War veteran, Maj. Theodore F. Lang. The northwestern third of the Commonwealth of Virginia finally broke away in 1863 to form the Union's 35th state. In his new book, Seceding from Secession: The C...

A Wilson Green on"We Have Done all that is Possible and Must be Resigned: The First Petersburg Offensive" For more information: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.org The epic contest between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee wound its way from the Rapidan River to Cold Harbor in May and early June 1864. Stymied in his effort to either destroy Lee's army or capture Richmond, Grant decided on a bold move. He would s...

Michael Hardy on "General Lee's Immortals: The Lane-Branch Brigade" For more information: WWW.CWRTChicago.com Over the course of four years of exemplary service, the North Carolina brigade commanded first by Lawrence O'Bryan Branch, and then by James H. Lane, fought on the most storied fields of the war. Some of the most well-known Civil War engagements, like Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, Frederick...

Date: April 9 , 2021 Speaker: Ron Kirkwood Topic: Too Much for Human Endurance:" The Spangler Farm Hospitals at Gettysburg - Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meeting For More Info: WWW.CWRTChicago.com The bloodstains are gone, but the worn floorboards remain. The doctors, nurses, and patients who toiled and suffered and ached for home at the Army of the Potomac's XI Corps hospital at the Geor...

Date: March 12, 2021 Speaker: Greg Biggs Topic: The Logistics of William T. Sherman's Atlanta Campaign - Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meeting The Nevins Freeman Address Greg Biggs on The Question Was One of Supplies: The Logistics of William T. Sherman's Atlanta Campaign.  For More Info: WWW.CWRTChicago.com  The French military master Napoleon is said to have observed, "An Army...

Date: February 12, 2021 Speaker: Leslie Goddard Topic: Leslie Goddard Portrays Clara Barton - Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meeting History will come alive in the talented hands of historian Leslie Goddard, who will introduce Barton, the first woman to serve as a nurse on the front lines of a battlefield, as a tireless worker who faced remarkable challenges in her quest to care for wounded...

Date: April 12, 2005 Speaker: Terry Winschel Topic: Union Victory at Vicksburg: Crucial to the outcome of the war - Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meeting

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 book 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. Murray is also the author of "The Civ...

David Powell on Union Command Failure in the Shenandoah Valley  David Powell's latest book, Union Command Failure in the Shenandoah, provides a fresh perspective on the May 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign. By shifting attention away from the VMI cadets to the Union military's strategic goals and command structure, Powell adds nuance and depth to a well-studied campaign. (h/t CivilWarMonitor)...

Stuart Sanders on Perryville Under Fire. For more info go to WWW.CWRTChicago.org The 1862 Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, laid waste to more than just soldiers and their supplies. The commonwealth's largest combat engagement also took an immense toll on the community of Perryville, and citizens in surrounding towns. After Confederates achieved a tactical victory, they were nonetheless forced to le...