Category: History Briefs

History briefs written by the Roundtable historian

John Rawlins, U.S. Grant’s Chief of Staff

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 March 2025 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

Ulysses S. Grant was the best-known Civil War-era resident of Galena, Illinois. In a recent history brief I highlighted another prominent Galena, Illinois, resident: Congressman Elihu Washburne. However, there was at least one other important Galena resident who played a major role in the Civil War, that being the mostly unsung hero, John Rawlins. Rawlins was a longtime confidant of Grant, became a Grant staff officer for most of the war, and rose to be the trusted and dependable Chief of Staff to Grant. Rawlins was the defender of Grant’s realm, his alter ego and insistent supporter of Grant’s sobriety and apologist for his insobriety, the latter portion being a somewhat complex and disputed role.

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Lincoln’s Boyhood Education

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 February 2025 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

Happy Abraham Lincoln’s birthday! Because the February 2025 Roundtable meeting happened to fall on Abe’s birthday, it is altogether fitting and proper that that month’s history brief focused on Lincoln’s boyhood. But due to the history brief format, the focus was more narrowly on President Lincoln’s education and learning, or perhaps better stated, Lincoln’s self-education.

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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.

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Elihu Washburne – The Indispensable Civil War Congressman

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 November 2024 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

The new Republican party had just elected its first president, Abraham Lincoln from Illinois. Soon thereafter, Honest Abe boarded a train and headed for the capital, where he would be inaugurated. Excited northern crowds greeted him at every stop. But in D.C., among those enthusiastically waiting for his incognito arrival was a longtime and huge supporter from Galena, Illinois, Congressman Elihu Washburne. Washburne had not only given his unwavering support to Lincoln during his presidential bid, but had ardently supported him in nearly all of his political campaigns, including Lincoln’s 1854 and 1868 unsuccessful runs for the U.S. Senate. In the mid-1850’s, Washburne helped found the new anti-slavery Republican Party. But for now, so connected with Lincoln was Washburne that he rented a private home for Lincoln a few blocks from the White House. However, it was deemed a better political choice for a newly elected president to stay in the more public Willard Hotel.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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General Lee’s Standing in the South after Gettysburg

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 February 2024 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

General George Gordon Meade (one of my favorite Union generals and the nautical surveyor of the Great Lakes) was the tactical and strategic victor of the Battle of Gettysburg, arguably the most important battle of the war. In spite of this, Meade conversely faced harsh criticism at the January 2024 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable. At that meeting, the Roundtable held its annual Dick Crews Memorial Debate, which in 2024 involved opposing opinions regarding Meade’s post-Gettysburg pursuit of the defeated Confederate army. As affirmed by vote of the attendees at that meeting, the unfavorable opinion of Meade’s actions was considered the appropriate point of view. So be it.

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Fort Stevens

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 December 2023 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

The Union’s panicked and disorganized retreat from the First Battle of Bull Run laid bare an obvious danger to the North. The Union capital of Washington, D.C. was vulnerable to attack from a Confederate army. But for the Confederate’s own disorganization after their victory, the very first major battle in the Eastern Theater of the war could have resulted in the capture of the Union’s government. Accordingly, it was soon determined that substantial fortifications around the capital needed to be deliberately, quickly, and diligently constructed.

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Lincoln’s Cottage

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 October 2023 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

Many Americans think of Abraham Lincoln as our greatest president, including me and I’m sure a lot of others in the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable. There are numerous reasons that can be given for this. For example, Lincoln steered the country through an unprecedented civil war that in many ways defines our country to this day. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation. He set the tone for a peaceful end to the war. He listened to his advisors, he made wartime decisions based on learned experience and the self-study of military strategy, and he understood the need not to vanquish the southern enemy because those who rebelled were still Americans. The list could go on and on. Lincoln did the things that made him great under extreme pressure from many and varied directions. Sensing this pressure, Lincoln, for his personal well-being and to unknowingly help cultivate that greatness, sought and found a way to relieve some of the wartime pressure, escape the capital, and clear his mind; he gathered his family at a summer retreat at what became known as the “Lincoln Cottage.” After our excellent annual field trip to Manassas, that was planned by Roundtable President Bob Pence, I had the pleasure of taking the opportunity to visit the cottage.

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