Author: Dennis Keating – The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable

Clara Barton and Clevelander John J. Elwell: A Civil War Romance

By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2025, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in March 2025.

In my book Cleveland and the Civil War, I mention the relationship formed in 1863 between Clara Barton and Clevelander John J. Elwell (pp. 43-44). Born in Massachusetts, Barton moved to Washington City and was employed in the U.S. Patent Office. When the Civil War broke out, she volunteered with the Union Army, first bringing medical supplies after battles beginning with First Bull Run and then also nursing wounded soldiers at Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. She became known as “The Angel of the Battlefield,” but she did not join the official Union nurses corps headed by Dorothea Dix.

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.

Cheney and the 21st OVI

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 January 2023.

At the final hearing of the Congressional Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, Congresswoman Liz Cheney began by invoking the memory of her great-great-grandfather, who joined the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment to save the Union. At the end of the war, Captain Samuel Fletcher Cheney commanded the regiment.

The Battle of Bentonville and Second Surrender of a Confederate Army in the East

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 March 2023.

By the beginning of 1865, the Confederacy’s impending doom was becoming apparent with William Tecumseh Sherman’s forces approaching North Carolina at the beginning of March after its path through Georgia and then South Carolina and Robert E. Lee’s army trapped in the defense of Petersburg and Richmond. On February 22, 1865, Confederate President Davis recalled Joseph Johnston to lead a desperate attempt to stop Sherman before he united with Ulysses Grant’s Army of the Potomac.

A Review of The Spymistress by Jennifer Chiaverini

By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2013, All Rights Reserved

Prolific writer Jennifer Chiaverini has been best known for her Elm Creek Quilts series. It includes two Civil War related books: The Union Quilters and The Runaway Quilt. Chiaverini has also written a Civil War novel, Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, about Elizabeth Keckley, a former slave dressmaker in Washington City who became close to Mary Todd Lincoln (and President Lincoln). This novel focuses on the relationship between these two women.

A Review of Valley of the Shadow by Ralph Peters

By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2016, All Rights Reserved

Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer, journalist, and award-winning Civil War novelist. His Civil War novels include Cain at Gettysburg, Hell or Richmond, and the Owen Parry (pen name) mystery series. His latest novel is Valley of the Shadow. It covers the 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, including Jubal Early’s raid on Washington.

A Review of The Quartermaster: Montgomery C. Meigs by Robert O’Harrow Jr.

By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2017, All Rights Reserved

One of the most amazing figures of the Civil War was Montgomery Meigs, the quartermaster of the Union army and one of the critical architects of its victory. Meigs’ life is recounted by Washington Post investigative reporter Robert O’Harrow Jr. in his book The Quartermaster: Montgomery C. Meigs, Lincoln’s General, Master Builder of the Union Army.

The Confederate Battle Flag, Personal License Plates, and Litigation

By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2015, All Rights Reserved

In Tony Horowitz’s Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (Random House, 1998), he devotes a chapter entitled “Dying for Dixie” to the killing of a neo-Confederate in Kentucky devoted to the Confederate flag by a black teenager and the antipathy of African Americans to Confederate symbols that defended slavery. In contrast, many Southerners regard the flag as a symbol of Southern patriotism and reject attempts to ban it from public places. The definitive history of the Confederate battle flag and the contemporary controversies over its display is The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem (Harvard University Press, 2005) by John Coski, Library Director of the Museum of the Confederacy.

The Campaign Against the Confederate Battle Flag

By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2015, All Rights Reserved

July 9, 2015 saw Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, sign the bill removing the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state capital. This ended a decades long struggle. The flag came down the next day, to be placed in a museum. This was triggered by the massacre of nine African Americans participating in a Bible study group in the historic Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston on June 17 by a white supremacist.

Jefferson Davis Monuments Being Removed?

By Dennis Keating
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2016, All Rights Reserved

Confederate President Jefferson Davis is memorialized in monuments at various locations in the South. They have now come under fire, with demands that some be removed from public grounds.