Past Speakers
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January 2023 - Drew Gruber presented “The Siege of
Yorktown”. In the early Spring of 1862, the Union Army of the Potomac was
transported from the Nation’s Capital area down the Chesapeake Bay to the
lower Virginia Peninsula bounded by the James and York Rivers. The Union
manpower of approximately 125,000 troops marched up the Peninsula in early
April until confronting an extensive Confederate defensive line established
behind the Warwick River from Mulberry Island (present day Fort Eustis)
across the Peninsula to Yorktown. The initial Confederate defensive force,
numbering approximately 12,000 troops, brought the Union advance to a halt.
As a consequence of overcoming such a formidable defensive obstacle, the
Union high command chose to implement a siege.
February 2023 - John J. Fox presented “Fort Gregg - The
Confederate Alamo”. The Confederate Alamo is the first book-length study
ever written about the chaotic and bloody Battle of Fort Gregg. By April 2,
1865, General Ulysses S. Grant’s men had tightened their noose around the
vital town of Petersburg, Virginia. Trapped on three sides with a river at
their back, the soldiers from General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern
Virginia had never faced such dire circumstances.
March 2023 - J. Michael Moore presented “John Taylor Wood
and The Rebel Horse Marine”.
Join historian J.
Michael Moore for a lively discussion of John Taylor Wood's career and
exploits as one of the most successful Confederate naval raiders. The
Chesapeake Bay was a vital Union communication and supply link from
Washington, D.C. to Fort Monroe. With great ingenuity and incredible
forethought, Wood developed the “boats on wheels” concept for attacking
Union shipping. Wood earned the sobriquet of the Rebel Horse Marine with a
naval raiding career that was something out of the action-adventure genre of
fiction and foreshadowed the development of commando and special operations
warfare in the twentieth century."
April 2023 - Dr. Lorien Foote resented "Union Soldiers on the Loose in the
Confederancy".During the last winter of the Civil War, nearly 3,000 Union
prisoners escaped from Confederate prisons in the Carolinas and fled toward
Union army lines. Black and white southerners fed, hid, and guided the
fugitives across hundreds of miles of dangerous terrain. Lorien Foote will
share what the journey of escaped prisoners reveals about Union soldier’s
experiences in the final months of the war and the transformation of the
home front to a battle front inside the Confederacy.
May 2023 - Dennis Frye presented: “Stonewall Jackson’s
Greatest Victory: Harper’s Ferry. General Lee had a problem - Harpers
Ferry. He could not continue his proposed invasion into the United States
with this strategic position in the hands of U.S. forces. Something must be
done. Lee devised a complex plan, perhaps his most complex of the war. He
summoned his most aggressive lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson, to lead the
sensitive mission. But soon much went wrong. Despite seemingly
insurmountable challenges, coupled with the enemy's discovery of Lee's
orders, Jackson in his final independent command of the war brought Lee
victory - Stonewall's most brilliant battlefield victory. Dennis E. Frye
recently retired after 20 years as the Chief Historian at Harpers Ferry
National Historical Park.
September 2023 - Hampton Newsome's presentation
covered the little-known Federal offensive against Richmond during the
Gettysburg Campaign – the subject of Mr. Newsome’s book Gettysburg’s
Southern Front. Sometimes referred to as the Blackberry Raid, the operation
was led by John Dix and provided a significant opportunity by U.S. forces to
threaten the Confederate capital and damage Lee’s operation in Pennsylvania.
October 2023 - On October 24th Dr. Jonathan White presented
“Lincoln Destroys the Slave Trade: The Extraordinary Unknown Story of
Appleton Oaksmith” This talk explored the extraordinary lengths the
Lincoln Administration went to destroy the illegal transatlantic slave trade
during the Civil War. Using the unknown story of a nineteenth-century sailor
named Appleton Oaksmith as a lens, Jonathan W. White will show the various
(and heretofore unknown) steps that Abraham Lincoln and his secretary of
state, William H. Seward, took to forever stop illegal slavers—including
using the suspension of habeas corpus, the use of civil courts, and an
international kidnapping scheme.
To view speaker listing prior to current year, click here