“Beyond the Battlefield”: An Ohio History Connection Symposium

By William F.B. Vodrey
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2014, All Rights Reserved

The Ohio History Connection (the newly rebranded Ohio Historical Society) on November 8 hosted a symposium on Ohio’s home front during the Civil War. Nine historians, professional and amateur, explored various topics in three panel discussions.

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U.S. Grant Boyhood Home Rededicated

By William F.B. Vodrey
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2013, All Rights Reserved

On April 6, Mel Maurer, Chris Fortunato, and I went to Georgetown, Ohio to attend the ceremonial rededication of U.S. Grant’s boyhood home. Georgetown is just east of Cincinnati, about four and a half hours’ drive from Cleveland.

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Ulysses S. Grant in Georgetown, Ohio – The Indispensable Man’s Boyhood Home

By Daniel J. Ursu
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2017, All Rights Reserved

If you believe, as I and many others do, that the Civil War would not have been won by the North but for U.S. Grant, then a visit to his boyhood home in our own State of Ohio at Georgetown, about ten miles north of the Ohio River and 40 miles east of Cincinnati, will be inspiring, informative and worthwhile.

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Hickenlooper’s Ohio Artillery Anchors the Hornet’s Nest at Shiloh

By Daniel J. Ursu
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2017, All Rights Reserved

Not only did the abolitionist John Brown, the “Meteor of the Civil War” as proffered by poet Walt Whitman, live part of his life in the northeastern Ohio Village of Hudson, but did another military leader of the Civil War actually hail from Hudson – that being Andrew Hickenlooper, Captain of the 5th Independent Battery Ohio Light Artillery.

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Andrew Johnson: A Tough Man for Tough Times

By Dick Crews
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2008, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in the winter of 2001.


“The History of mankind,” said the old Scotsman Thomas Carlyle, “is a history of its great men; to find out these, clean the dirt from them, and place them on their proper pedestal is the true function of a historian.”

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Conscripts in the Civil War

By Dick Crews
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2011, All Rights Reserved

Conscript is not a word frequently used in discussing soldiers in the Civil War. In his book They Went into the Fight Cheering: Confederate Conscription in North Carolina, Walter Hilderman III, a man of the South, said the following: “Naturally, I assumed that my great, great Grandfather had eagerly volunteered for the Confederate army when the first shots were fired. Such was not the case. Through his letters, I found that he and most of his army companions were known as con-scripts. When I first came across the word, I had to look it up in the dictionary. The words eager and volunteer were not part of the definition.”

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How the South Could Have Won the War

By David Thomas
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2008, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in the spring of 1999.


In the beginning of the Civil War, the Confederacy won many decisive victories. As the war continued, however, the Confederacy weakened and in the end, the Union was the victor. But, could the South have won? There are five events that, had they turned out differently, might have allowed the South to win:

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The Case for Union

By John C. Fazio
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2014, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: Following is a Sept. 12, 1864 letter written by General William Tecumseh Sherman, Commander of the Western Theater of the War, to James M. Calhoun, Mayor, and E. E. Rawson and S. C. Wells, representing the City Council, of Atlanta, in reply to their petition to revoke his orders for the civilian population to evacuate the city. Italics are mine. Commentary is also mine. – John C. Fazio


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The Vigilantes of Montana Revisited

By John C. Fazio & Carol Buchanan
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2011, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: In February 2005 CCWRT past president John Fazio published his article The Vigilantes of Montana in The Charger, the CCWRT newsletter. The article was later republished here on the CCWRT Website and in November 2010 a revision of the article was published in The Montana Pioneer, where it caught the attention of Montana writer Carol Buchanan. Ms. Buchanan is the author of God’s Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana, an historical novel set in Montana during the vigilante period. Ms. Buchanan wrote to us taking exception to several points made by Mr. Fazio in his article and even graciously submitted her own overview of the period, Gold, Greed and a Vacuum of Law, for publication on the CCWRT website.

The article below is a dialog between our two authors, John Fazio and Carol Buchanan discussing their differences on the history of the vigilante period in Montana.


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Gold, Greed, and a Vacuum of Law

By Carol Buchanan
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2011 Carol Buchanan, All Rights Reserved

As he helps to bury a murdered friend, attorney Daniel Stark (the protagonist in my historical novel God’s Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana) wonders how to find the killer and bring him to justice:

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