The newsletter of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
The Charger newsletter is published each month during the Roundtable season from September through May. The Charger includes original articles written by Roundtable members on many topics – personalities, battles, politics, social conditions, etc. Some of the content on this website originated in The Charger.
This web page contains links to a library of digital copies of past issues of The Charger. The links on this web page are for issues from September 2021 to present. Other issues can be found on other web pages (November 1956 to May 1981, September 1981 to May 2001, and September 2001 to May 2021). To make it easier to find a particular issue, each entry lists the featured articles from that month’s Charger. Files are in PDF format, so Adobe Acrobat Reader must be installed on a device in order to read them.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect any official policy, belief, or position of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.
2024-2025 Season
President: Gene Claridge III
Charger Editor: D. Kent Fonner
September: The Blacksmith’s Tale: Henry Jacobs and Morgan’s Ohio Raid; Lincoln and History; The American Bastille; Death and Glory book review; Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War book review; Gettysburg: A Journey in Time book review
October: President’s Message – Recap of the Gettysburg Field Trip; Election Irregularities in 1864 in Pennsylvania’s 24th District; Lincoln, Taney, and Emancipation; Several Civil War Roundtables Come Together for a Gettysburg Weekend; Brave Buckeye Women in Blue: Ohio Women Soldiers in the Civil War
November: Emanuel Patterson and the 6th USCT; Cleveland Medal of Honor Awardees from the Vicksburg Assault, May 22, 1863; More on the Great Debate of 2007; Franz Sigel and August von Willich: Two German-American Civil War Generals; A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg, the Aftermath of a Battle book review
December: Touring the Battlefield near Buffington Island, Ohio; An Angel from Richmond, the 2nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and the Long Path of Discovery; Gutzon Borglum vs. UDC and the State of Georgia; Surrender? A Better Word Would Be Quit: Eastern Cherokee and the Confederacy; Three Significant Civil War December Battles; The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War book review; Generals in Blue and Generals in Gray book reviews; The Civil War Yesterday and Today in Poetry book review; A Civil War Poem: “Nobody Knew How Long It Would Last”
January: A Brief History of Civil War Roundtables and of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable; Come Retribution Revisited; Gutzon Borglum: Part Deux; Are You Related?
February: Questions I Would Ask My Great-Great-Grandfather about His Decision to Enlist in the Union Army; Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment; Civil War Roundtable Congress Conference on Sustainability: CCWRT Coming out of the Pandemic – August 2023 (January 2024 Update); A Musical Historical First; Mortimer Leggett and the 78th OVI; The Nancy Harts; A Hair-Breathed Escape; John Wilkes Booth and the Women Who Loved Him book review; The Citizen-Soldier or, Memoirs of a Volunteer book review
March: Cleveland Civil War Roundtable Testimonials for the 600th Meeting; The Roundtable at National History Day; Clara Barton and Clevelander John J. Elwell: A Civil War Romance; More on Major General Mortimer Legget and the 78th OVI; Hubert Dilger and Battery I, 1st Ohio Light Artillery; The U.S. Navy Cowed at Island No. 10; The Perfect Lion: The Life and Death of Confederate Artillerist John Pelham book review
April: A Youthful Introduction to the Civil War through a 1960 Episode of a TV Series; Shooters Before Tooters; Booth in the Confederate Secret Service; Confederates from Canada: Confederates from Canada: John Yates Beall and the Rebel Raids on the Great Lakes book review; The South as It Is: 1865-1866 book review
2023-2024 Season
President: Bob Pence
Charger Editor: D. Kent Fonner
August: The Roundtable’s Publication Guidelines; John (Klem) Clem; The Irish at the Battle of First Bull Run; A Man of Gargantuan Appetites; The Lion and the Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a Confederate Navy book review; The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation book review
September: Civil War Reflections; Ohioans Defend Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg; A Ribbiting Order: “Squat My Bullfrogs”; The Barber of Natchez book review; Gettysburg Solitaire: An Original Bookgame book review; CCWRT Display
October: Reflections on the Way Ulysses Grant Has Been Evaluated by Historians; Ohio and the 14th Amendment: CSS Shenandoah and a Treaty Offensive and Defensive with the Whales; Lancaster and Fairfield County, Ohio: Shermans and Ewings; No Caps, No Guns: The Struggle for Confederate Copper; Ulysses S. Grant, the Artist
November: Assassination; Union Irish Heroes at the Battle of Gettysburg; Civil War Submarines: An Overview; Abraham Lincoln’s Post-Gettysburg Address Illness: How ‘Small’ Was It?; Horseshoes Win the Civil War; The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln: Four Smoking Guns book review; John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General book review
December: William Silveus, Company I, 8th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Reserves Corps; Meade, Gettysburg, and the Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War; The Sweetheart of a Sigma Chi; No Fans of Kilpatrick’s Band; Jacksonville’s Ordeal by Fire: A Civil War History book review; The Political Transformation of David Tod: Governing Ohio during the Height of the Civil War book review
January: Maps; The Beck Brothers in the Civil War; When 1 Is Greater Than 620,000; Maryland Whip Maryland, or Is There More?; Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South book review; Yank and Rebel Rangers: Special Operations in the American Civil War book review
February: Institutional Memory; John Simpson, Co. A, 140th Penna Infantry; Civil War Roundtable Congress Conference on Sustainability: Coming out of the Pandemic; The Tale of William Stacy; The Perils of Picket Duty in Alexandria, Virginia; Generals at Rest: The Grave Sites of the 425 Official Confederate Generals book review; The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln: Four Smoking Guns book review; Ohio Soldiers in the USCT: A Review Essay – For Their Own Cause: The 27th United States Colored Troops book review, Eagles on Their Buttons: A Black Infantry Regiment in the Civil War book review; Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta – and Then Got Written Out of History book review
March: The Demise of Two Venerable Civil War Magazines; Ohio at Stones River; A Civil War Actress’ Most Daring Role; In Search of Jacob Parrott; The Rehabilitation of General Joseph Hooker; Hugh Boyle Ewing
April: Apple TV+’s Manhunt; George Crook; Observation Balloons; Why Is This Man Not Smiling? Grant’s Choppers; History Repeating Itself, without the “Condemned”; Spotsylvania; The Last Lincolns: The Rise and Fall of a Great American Family book review
May: Park Day at Johnson’s Island Civil War Prison; The Man Who Gave Birth to the Gettysburg Cupola; A Valorous but Fruitless Service: Native Americans of Co. K, 1st Michigan Sharpshooters; Custer’s First Stand; Artillery Hell: The Useless Sacrifice of the Troup (Georgia) Artillery at Antietam; Grant’s Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant’s Heroic Last Year book review
2022-2023 Season
President: Lily Korte
Charger Editor: D. Kent Fonner
September: A Summer Sojourn to Johnson’s Island; Ohio in the Shenandoah Valley: At the Beginning and at the End; The Most Powerful Ironclad on the Mississippi River; He’s Got Legs and He Knows How to Use Them
October: Meade’s Assault on Jackson’s Line at Fredericksburg; Brian Kowell Honored by American Battlefield Trust; 127th OVI (5th U.S.C.T.); I’ll Trade You a Fredericksburg for a Winchester and Pea Ridge; St. Albans Raid; A Tour of the Seven Days Battlefields; “An Arch Rebel Like Myself”: Dan Showalter and the Civil War in California and Texas book review
November: Greene County (Pennsylvania) Historical Society Museum; Drummer Boy Avery Brown; Thanksgiving in Camp; The Case of Lucy Bagby: The Last Fugitive Slave; Another General Buford; Eyewitness to Antietam Aftermath; Stand Watie: Cherokee Confederate General; Daniel Stearns and the Barking Dog Regiment; From Arlington to Appomattox: Robert E. Lee’s Civil War Day by Day, 1861-1865 book review
December: Christmas in the Field – 1861 and 1862; A Bit of Robert E. Lee in That State Up North, Part 1; A Visit to the Boyhood Home of Jefferson Davis; “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”; Captured during Meade’s Assault at Fredericksburg; A Zouave Summer in Cleveland; U.S. Federal Coinage during the Civil War; A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation book review
January: Cheney and the 21st OVI; The Colt Revolving Rifle; A Bit of Robert E. Lee in That State Up North, Part 2; Three Ohio Political Generals; Ohio Confederate Describes Lee’s Army in Winter Camp; Some Vanished Villages of Cuyahoga County and Their Civil War; Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War book review
February: Dennis Keating Speaks at Westlake Porter Public Library; Pig-ett’s Charge: George Pickett’s Pre-Civil War Service in a Porcine-Provoked Conflict, Part 1; Of Prussians, Pants, and a Piano; Civil War Tokens; Johnson’s Island: A Prison for Confederate Officers book review
March: Missionary Ridge: “On Wisconsin” and Two Modern Songs; Pig-ett’s Charge: George Pickett’s Pre-Civil War Service in a Porcine-Provoked Conflict, Part 2; The Battle of Bentonville and Second Surrender of a Confederate Army in the East; Governor John Brough, Ohio Governor and Friend of Lincoln; Plebe Release Me, Let Me Go: Brief Military Portraits of Artists as Young Men; Jeff Davis’s Own: Cavalry, Comanches, and the Battle for the Texas Frontier book review; Mary Surratt: An American Tragedy book review; Some Suggested Reading for St. Patrick’s Day
April: The Editor’s Desk: Civil War Images in Popular Culture; Doubleday’s Revenge; The Postwar James Longstreet; Civil War Spy Balloons; Some More Civil War Coinage; Defend the Valley: A Shenandoah Family in the Civil War book review; A Union Woman in Civil War Kentucky: The Diary of Frances Peter book review
May: The Editor’s Desk: A Civil War Board Game; Who Won the Battle of Franklin?; Snakes Alive; The Most Osseous War in U.S. History; Singing the Blues; A Sojourn into the Second Battle of Winchester and Celebrating the New Ohio Monument; The Reverend Thomas S. Major: From the Army to the Altar
2021-2022 Season
President: Mark Porter
Charger Editors: Dennis Keating, Mike Wells
September: Last Train from Atlanta book review; Diary of a Dead Man book review; Andersonville book review; William A. Fletcher: the Sam Watkins of the Army of Northern Virginia
October/November: Civil War Cannons at Cleveland’s Woodland Cemetery; David vs. Goliath at Hampton Roads: The Squib vs. the Minnesota; Was “Prince John” Only Acting?; A Parody of “Just Before the Battle, Mother”; Saving Monticello book review; Pursuit: The Chase, Capture, Persecution, and Surprising Release of Confederate President Jefferson Davis book review
December: William Faulkner’s Great-Grandfather; Ulysses S. Grant’s Musings about Edwin M. Stanton; Second Ohio Volunteer Cavalry; The Greatest Escape book review
January: The Last Battle of the Civil War book review; To the Victor Goes the Spurs (and Sword); We Ride a Whirlwind book review; The Near Capture of Ulysses Grant by Confederate General Jackson; Emancipation Highway
February: Cleveland and the Civil War; The Sibley Tent; Ulric Dahlgren’s Amputated Leg’s Final Resting Place; The 2nd Ohio Volunteer Cavalry
March: The 2021 Cleveland Civil War Roundtable Field Trip, Part 1; From Cork, Ireland to Franklin, Tennessee: Patrick Cleburne; The Contentious Colonels of the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry
April: The 2021 Cleveland Civil War Roundtable Field Trip, Part 2; Robert E. Lee, A Life book review; No Shortage of Generals; Dana’s Denials; The Confederacy’s Ferrous Stonewall in a Far East Civil War
May: Generals in Bronze book review; Mark Twain Supports the Ladies; Arlington National Cemetery; Ohio in Texas; The highest Ranking Black Officer in the Civil War
Go to The Charger Archives: September 2001-May 2021 >>
Go to The Charger Archives: September 1981-May 2001 >>
Go to The Charger Archives: November 1956-May 1981 >>
