Battles and Military History – The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable

General Meade at Fredericksburg

By Daniel J. Ursu, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2024-2025, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the December 2024 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

In late 1862, President Abraham Lincoln appointed General Ambrose Burnside as commander of the Union Army of the Potomac in the wake of Burnside’s conquest of the famous bridge on the Union left flank at the Battle of Antietam. General Burnside formulated a plan for a rare winter offensive to build on the momentum of the Union strategic victory at Antietam. Relatively simple, Burnside would march his 140,000 troops, organized into three “Grand Divisions” of two corps each, south across the Rappahannock River and overwhelm what he had hoped to be a modest defense near Fredericksburg, Virgina. The march southward went surprisingly well, but the all-important pontoon bridges needed to cross the Rappahannock were tragically delayed. Consequently, the skeletal defenses on the Confederate side, which was south of the river and near the town, were adroitly reinforced by General Robert E. Lee in command of the 80,000-man Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. That said, Burnside’s army was nearly twice the size of Lee’s. On the very day of the December 2024 Roundtable meeting, that is, December 11, Union batteries on the commanding high ground on the north side of the river began a bombardment of the town.

General Meade’s Proposed Pipe Creek Line

By Daniel J. Ursu, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2024-2025, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the October 2024 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

At the Roundtable’s 2024 field trip to Gettysburg, the participants climbed to the top of the Lutheran Seminary cupola to view Chambersburg Pike as it rises off to the west. While standing in the cupola, they imagined the scene witnessed by General John Buford and others as these Union observers gazed at the Confederate troops raising a cloud of dust while they were marching toward the defensive positions of Buford’s troopers. The field trip participants heard about and saw the ground that the Union I Corps crossed to meet the Confederates head on as the cavalry defense yielded to the infantry of the Union’s First Division and especially the elite Union “Iron Brigade,” which was also featured in my April 2024 history brief. The battlefield guide described how the commander of the First Corps, General John Reynolds, led his troops from the front at the edge of Herbst Woods. But Reynolds was too close to the fighting, and he met an instant and untimely death from a Confederate bullet to his neck.

Ulysses S. Grant’s Grandson and the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable

One of the noteworthy events in the Roundtable’s history was the appearance of Ulysses S. Grant’s grandson at a meeting. This meeting, which occurred on December 3, 1958, was a joint meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable and the Western Reserve Historical Society. At this meeting, Ulysses S. Grant III was the speaker, and he gave a presentation titled “The Strategy of the Civil War.” Who better to discuss this topic than the grandson of the person who was the author of the military strategy that won the Civil War and thereby preserved the Union? Of note, this presentation occurred during the third year of the Roundtable’s existence. The text of this presentation can be accessed by clicking on this link.

Union Irish Heroes at the Battle of Gettysburg

By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2023, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in November 2023.

Many Irish Americans in the Army of the Potomac fought Robert E. Lee’s invading Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg July 1-3, 1863. While the Irish Brigade is best known, there were others who are also worthy of recognition for their heroism. Three of these men died on the field. This article is a day-by-day account both of individuals and of units.

History Repeating Itself, without the “Condemned”

By David A. Carrino
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2024, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in April 2024.

George Santayana famously wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Santayana’s use of the word “condemned” makes it seem like a repetition of the past is undesirable and is something to be avoided. But some things in the past are worth repeating, and one such thing happened in a small, little-known Civil War battle. Something which happened in that battle was, in a sense, repeated in a much more widely known incident that occurred in World War II.

A Valorous but Fruitless Service: Native Americans of Co. K, 1st Michigan Sharpshooters

By Al Fonner
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2024, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in May 2024.

When civil war broke out in the United States, a bloody struggle began that stretched on for four years. The causes, stated and unstated, were many: preeminence of states’ rights, preservation of the Union, abolition of slavery, even freedom itself. Native Americans warily viewed hostilities amongst the whites with mixed responses. Some, like the Chiricahua Apache, preferred to remain neutral. Others, such as the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw who had been forced from their ancestral lands by the U.S. Federal Government to live on reservations in the Oklahoma Territory, would throw their lot in with the Confederacy. Northern tribes, such as the Ottawa, sided with the Union in hopes that their loyalty would help preserve their shrinking land and way of life. Chippewa Chief Nock-ke-chick-faw-me, in Detroit, motivated the young men of his tribe to join the colors by warning, “If the South conquers you will be slave dogs…. There will be no protection for us; we shall be driven from our homes, our lands, and the graves of our friends” (Gordon Berg, 2016).

Horseshoes Win the Civil War

By Brian D. Kowell
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2023, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in November 2023 and was subsequently published on the Emerging Civil War website.

“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost.
For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
For want of a rider, the battle was lost.
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

Benjamin Franklin quoting an old proverb in Poor Richard’s Almanac

Before 1835 all horseshoes were made by hand by blacksmiths. It was a labor-intensive process. A blacksmith could make four horseshoes in about an hour. That all changed because of one man, Scotsman Henry Burden. “It was astonishing. [Henry] Burden was one of the most inventive men of the 19th century…Now, no one knows who he is,” said one historian. The fact is Henry Burden greatly aided the North in winning the American Civil War with his invention of a machine that mass-produced horseshoes.

No Caps, No Guns: The Struggle for Confederate Copper

By Brian D. Kowell
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2023, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in October 2023.

In the dark, the Yankee colonel heard the popping sounds from along his picket line and ordered his troopers to their support. As dawn broke, he was surprised by the booming of rebel cannon followed by a Confederate charge to test his lines. As the Confederates withdrew, the colonel inspected his lines, noticing a large copper rolling mill that anchored his right flank. As the colonel clenched his pipe, he needed to make some decisions before the Confederates tried again.

General Henry J. Hunt, Union Chief of Artillery

By Daniel J. Ursu, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2023-2024, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the May 2024 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

For most of the Civil War the Union had an artillery advantage over the South for numerous reasons. Paramount among those many reasons, and especially for the Union Army of the Potomac, was the Chief of Artillery, General Henry J. Hunt. He made a big difference in organizational philosophy for the entirety of the North’s artillery arm, but most decisively in his battlefield exploits for the Army of the Potomac, especially at the Battles of Malvern Hill, Antietam, and Gettysburg and also the siege of Petersburg. None other than the incomparable Mr. Ed Bearss, Historian Emeritus, U.S. National Park Service, in his book Fields of Honor called General Henry J. Hunt “one of the Civil War’s premier artillerists.”

Top Four Elite Brigades of the American Civil War

By Daniel J. Ursu, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2023-2024, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the April 2024 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

During the Roundtable’s 2023 field trip to Manassas, the participants heard a lot about General Thomas Jackson’s “Stonewall Brigade.” Accordingly, it occurred to me to do a history brief about my top four most elite brigades of the Civil War. I will highlight my top two Confederate and top two Union brigades starting with the “Stonewall Brigade.” I’m sure that many of our members have a similar list in mind for comparison.