Author: William F.B. Vodrey – Page 5 – The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable

By William F.B. Vodrey
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2008, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from the presentation William Vodrey made to the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable in February 2006.

Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1974 novel The Killer Angels and the movie Gettysburg reintroduced a new generation to a long-obscure hero of the battle, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Chamberlain, then colonel of the 20th Maine infantry regiment, saved the Union left with a desperate bayonet charge down Little Round Top on July 2, 1863. Chamberlain’s reputation was also boosted by Ken Burns’s PBS series The Civil War. He was a genuine hero, much deserving of our study, admiration and respect. Had he not been where he was, when he was, the Confederacy might well have won the Civil War.

By William F.B. Vodrey
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2003, 2010, All Rights Reserved

The New York City Draft Riots of July 13-16, 1863, were by some measures the most bloody and devastating riots in American history. At a time when the Civil War was raging on battlefields, rivers and oceans, violence and terror ruled the streets of our largest city, and battle-weary troops had to be rushed from Gettysburg to help restore order. What began as a protest against the Federal draft quickly degenerated into a racial and social struggle as ugly as any in the Deep South – far more Jim Crow than Big Apple.

Tag: Author: William F.B. Vodrey

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain: Scholar, Citizen, Soldier