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. 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.
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 2024: 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
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
2020-2021 Season
President: Steve Pettyjohn
Charger Editors: Dennis Keating, Mike Wells
September: 2020-21 Program Year; “Baldy” Smith; The Barlow-Gordon Incident At Gettysburg; Lincoln On The Verge book review; The Assassination Redux
October: Frederick Douglass and Cleveland; Lee’s Legacy Under Attack; The 1862 Plot To Kidnap Jefferson Davis; Compassionate Confederate: Another Barlow-Gordon Incident
November: The Gatehouse At Woodland Cemetery; Grant’s Presidency; Grant’s Combined Arms Generalship At Vicksburg; What do the Masters Golf Tournament and Confederate Gunpowder Have In Common?
December: Abraham Lincoln In His Times book review; The 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry; What are the “Saltpeter Poems”?; Christmas Memories Of The Civil War; Advocating for the Villain to Avoid Oblivion: A Response to the Presentation at the October 2020 Cleveland Civil War Roundtable Meeting
January: Capturing Enemy Cannons; History Brief: Grant’s Troops Cross The Mississippi and Movement Toward Jackson; Civil War Pleasures; Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War book review
February: An Entry From The Diary Of John Hay; Indiana In The Civil War; A Civil War Musical Historical First
March: Whatever Happened to Lincoln’s Body?; Paroles and Exchanges: Who Got the Best of the Deal?
April: The Levi Scofield Mansion; Internationally Speaking (two Roundtable members give remote presentations to students in the U.K.); Dominique Simon: A Confederate Soldier Buried in Olmsted Falls, Ohio; Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause book review; Conversations with Lincoln book review
May: Petersburg Field Trip Recap; The Reverse Underground Railroad; The Union Offensives at Petersburg; Last Train from Atlanta book review; The Pemberton Who Succeeded
2019 – 2020 Season
President: C. Ellen Connally
Charger Editors: Dennis Keating, Mike Wells
September: Darkness at Chancellorsville book review; Honoring Their Memory: Levi T. Scofield-Cleveland’s Monumental Architect and Sculptor book review; The Amazing Story of Chang and Eng: An Aside to the Civil War
October/November: Summit County and the Sultana Disaster – Akron’s Connection to One of the Worst Disasters in U.S. Naval History; The Sultana Tragedy; The Mystery of the Andersonville Dove; Recruiting in the Vanished Village of Newburg; John Pope; “The Civil War Was Won in the West” – Or So They Say
December: Robert Smalls and the Theft of the Planter; The Second Battle of Corinth and the Start of the Vicksburg Campaign; Medical Care During the Civil War: Women and Cleveland; Clara Barton’s Papers
January: The Great Debate: Who was the Most Important Ohioan of the Civil War?; The Assassin’s Skull and Whatever Happened to the Remains of Lewis Thorton Powell?; The Battle of Chickasaw Bayou: Grant’s First Attempt to Vanquish Vicksburg
February: The Escape and Terrible Ordeal of General John C. Breckinridge; Reconstruction: What Went Wrong?
March: U.S. Colored Troops; The Battle of Chaffin’s Farm and Powhatan Beaty; Parkchester: A Bronx Tale of Race and Ethnicity book review; Some Little Known Civil War Sites in Our Own Backyard; More on Changing, Dismantling, and Removing Confederate Symbols; What Was Happening during the Civil War on or about Lincoln’s February 12th Birthday?
April: Notes on the H.L. Hunley; The Underground Railroad in Ohio; Civil War Home Postal Delivery in Cleveland; Daniel Gurley Shirer’s Civil War Experiences
May: In Search of “Brierfield”: the Lost Plantation of Jefferson Davis; The First Memorial Day; Book Reviews by Roundtable Members
2018 – 2019 Season
President: Dan Ursu
Charger Editors: Dennis Keating, Mike Wells
September/October: A Visit to the Infamous Andersonville Prison; Civil War Artists: Present and Past; Going Home: The Short Life and Sudden Death of the U.S. Army Transport Steamer “General Lyon” (a book by Peter Holman)
November: Perryville: Battle for Kentucky; The Witness Tree of Prospect Avenue; What I Did On My Summer Vacation
December: Nathan Bedford Forrest Vanquishes Union Cavalry While Allowing Sherman to Capture Atlanta; Christmas Memories of The Civil War; Nathan Bedford Forrest: Civil War Controversies – Then and Now; Profile: Ed Bearss; It’s a Wonderful Connection
January: The Great Debate: Robert E. Lee Captures Washington?; The Battle of Nashville and a Visit to “Travelers Rest”
February: A Last Roll of the Dice: The Third Confederate Invasion-1864; Doan’s Corners and The Underground Railroad; Lew Wallace; Two Wars at a Time: the War within the Civil War
March: How Did They Get Here?: The Gettysburg Campaign; Confederates to the Susquehanna; A Visit to Hollywood Cemetery; Butler Triggers the Road to Emancipation; A Life Flavored with Sweet Vanilla and Bitter Injustice
April: Trust in God and Fear Nothing: Confederate General Lewis A. Armistead; Discovery of Civil War Graves in France; Brigade Commanders Killed at Gettysburg; Winfield Scott Hancock – Gettysburg and Beyond; Marching Home to the Beat of a Purloined Melody; Taking the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable into the 21st Century
May: Confederate Pirates: The Capture of the St. Nicholas; The Story of Washington’s Mt. Vernon and the Women Who Saved It; Abraham Lincoln’s Little-Known Important Legacy
2017 – 2018 Season
President: Hans Kuenzi
Charger Editors: Dennis Keating, Mike Wells
September/October: The Myth of the Lost Cause—False Remembrance of the Civil War; Jubal Early: Lee’s Bad Old Man; The Southbound Underground Railroad; On the Route of The General; Some Thoughts on the Removal of Southern Civil War-Related Symbols; Pickett’s Charge: A New Look at Gettysburg’s Final Attack book review
November: Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Civil War; The Man Whose Torpedoes Farragut Damned; A Visit to Fort Jackson; Lee’s Daughters-Part 1
December: Morality or War Experience? – Treatment of Mental Trauma in the Union Army; Like Father, Like Son-or Not; John Gibbon; A Night at the Chesnut Cottage; Lee’s Daughters-Part 2
January: The Most Fulfilling Kind of Immortality; A Civil War Buffs Visit to the South Carolina State House; Lee’s Daughters-Part 3
February: Better and Better; Ohio Civil War Letters and Diaries: Collections; Confederate Graves at Flat Rock; Lee’s Daughters-Part 4
March: To the Bitter End – The Surrenders of the Confederacy; Confederate No-Surrender in the Trans-Mississippi West; A Stroll Through Spring Grove Cemetery; SWAK; More on the Complicity of the Confederate Government in the Assassination and Attempted Assassinations of April 1865; Lee’s Daughters-Part 5
April: North Carolina in the Civil War; The History that the Victors Chose Not to Write; Removal of Confederate Statues; Lee’s Daughters-Part 6
May: America-Love it or Leave it; Handicapping the Civil War; A Visit to “Crawfish Springs”; Allan J. Peskin: In Memoriam
2016 – 2017 Season
President: Jean Rhodes
Charger Editors: Dennis Keating, Mike Wells
September: Stand Fast to the Union and the Old Flag: Re-electing Lincoln in 1864; Remembering “the Rock”; Cleveland’s 1864 Presidential Convention
October: Autumn 1862 – The True High Tide of the Confederacy; Peter Diemer & Curtis Phillips: The Last Civil War Veterans From Cuyahoga County; Bushrod Johnson’s Final Resting Places; The Battle of Roanoke Island
November: Work for Giants: The Campaign and Battle for Tupelo; Ex Parte Milligan Anniversary; Fort Ward – Bastion Against the South
December: The Case of the Murder of Bull Nelson; Jefferson C. Davis and the Ebenezer Creek Controversy; A Visit to the H.L. Hunley, OR A Dose of Southern Culture; The Lincoln Legacy: The Man and His Presidency
January: Faces of the Civil War; Civil War Photography; Days of Defiance; Sheridan’s Butterfly; A Surprising Find; A Hanukkah Gift for All Americans
February: Cleveland in the Civil War; Whatever Happened to Camp Cleveland?; Monticello’s Tortuous and Tortured Odyssey to Preservation
March: A Visit to Camp Moore-Louisiana’s Primary Confederate Training Camp; Rosa Parks’ Historical Rhyme; Wilson’s 1865 Raid
April: Destiny Personified; Civil War Cavalry Raids; The Quartermaster: Montgomery C. Meigs-Lincoln’s General, Master Builder of the Union Army book review, Ulysses S. Grant in Georgetown, Ohio – The Indispensable Man’s Boyhood Home; William H. Seward and Civil War Diplomacy
May: Railroads in the Civil War; A Visit to Alabama’s Arlington Plantation and the Lost Village of Elyton; Hickenlooper’s Ohio Artillery Anchors the Hornet’s Nest at Shiloh; A Stroll Through Metairie Cemetery; The Rest of the Story
2015 – 2016 Season
President: Chris Fortunato
Charger Editors: Dennis Keating, Mike Wells
September: Major General John Alexander McClernand: Politician in Uniform; The Campaign Against the Confederate Battle Flag; From the field: The Civil War Institute at Gettysburg
October: The Memorial Art & Architecture of Vicksburg National Military Park; No Horse of Mine
November: Reconstruction: An Overview & a Different Interpretation; The Contested Centennial Presidential Election of 1876
December: Reconstruction: Jefferson Davis-A Changing Historical Perspective; On Trees and Forests: A Review Essay; The Union’s Jefferson Davis
January: The Great Debate: What Would a Second Lincoln Administration Have Been Like?; Jefferson Davis Monuments Being Removed?; Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Civil War book review; The West Point History of the Civil War book review
February: The 2nd Annual Trivia Game: Pictures, Paintings and Images; Valley of the Shadow book review; The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been book review
March: Salmon P. Chase and Reconstruction; On Inconvenient Truth and Convenient Fiction
April: Lincoln’s Two Vice Presidents; Ohio Vice Presidents; Modern Civil War Music
May: Cleveland Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument; In Search of John Bell Hood; Jefferson Davis’ Battle for Brierfield; John Brown House in Summit County, Ohio
2014 – 2015 Season
President: Patrick Bray
Charger Editors: Dennis Keating, Mike Wells
September: Jacob Dolson Cox; William T. Sherman Makes His Case for the Uniton; Base Ball on Johnson’s Island
October: CCWRT Team Trivia Challenge; Shelby Foote was Wrong!; The Battle of Cedar Creek
November: The Most Important Battle of the Civil War: Vicksburg; A Rebuttal to “Shelby Foote Was Wrong”
December: Lincoln’s Boys: John Nicolay and John Hay; John Hay’s Tenuous Relationship to Cleveland; John Hay Burial Site in Lake View Cemetery; Lincoln’s Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay, and the War for Lincoln’s Image book review
January: The Great Debate: Who was the Greatest Corps Commander of the Civil War; The Confederate Battle Flag, Personal License Plates, and Litigation; Beyond the Battlefield; A Monument to Service: The Cuyahoga County Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument
February: How the U.S. Navy Won the Civil War; Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee book review; Barlow-Gordon Revisited
March: John Wilkes Booth and His Conspirators; The Assassinated President Lincoln in Cleveland; John Wilkes Booth’s Diary; The Case of Dr. Mudd
April: Lincoln’s Father Neptune: Navy Secretary Gideon Welles; American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague – Civil War “Belle of the North”; The War that Never Was: Britain, the U.S., and the Trent Affair
May: Fighting for Freedom: The Story of United States Colored Troops; A Young General and the Fall of Richmond: The Life and Career of Godfrey Weitzel book review; Ohio USCT Medal of Honor Recipients; USCT in the Civil War: Five Battles
2013 – 2014 Season
President: Jim Heflich
Charger Editor: Dan Zeiser
September: A Species of Legal Fiction: The Wheeling Conventions and the Creation of West Virginia; Ohio’s Civil War Generals: Some Lesser Known; Gettysburg 2013
October: Slaves to Contradictions: Patrick Cleburne’s Emancipation Proposal; Patrick Cleburne’s Proposal to Arm Slaves-January 2, 1864; Zouave Uniforms
November: Zouaves: America’s Forgotten Soldiers; Zouaves in the American Civil War; Photographs of Zouave Soldiers and Units
December: “It was a terribly grand scene…” The Slaughter Pen and Prospect Hill at Fredericksburg
January: The Great Debate: What Was the Most Important Battle of the Civil War?; Justice in Blue and Gray; The Spymistress
February: The U.S. Navy and the Naval Battles for Charleston 1863; Charleston, South Carolina and Its Defenses during The Civil War; The Battles for Charleston; The Confederate Navy
March: The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain; A Perfect Pandemonium: The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain
April: Materials and Processes in the Manufacture of Civil War Small Arms; Civil War Weapons
May: Soldiers and the Homefront: A Northern Community Confronts the Civil War; The Civil War in Photos; Farewell Dan
2012 – 2013 Season
President: Mike Wells
Charger Editor: Dan Zeiser
September: The Battle for South Mountain; 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry (OVI)
October: Morgan’s Raid; Booth in the Confederate Secret Service-Part 1
November: Fort Pillow; A Return to Johnson’s Island; Booth in the Confederate Secret Service-Part 2
December: The Irish and the Civil War; Fort Pillow and Ball’s Bluff-A Response
January: The Great Debate: President Lincoln’s Biggest Mistake; Simon Cameron; Andrew Johnson
February: Edwin M. Stanton: Buckeye Warlord; A Brief History of Steubenville, Ohio; Steubenville During the Civil War
March: Not as it Seems: John Wilkes Booth and the Forging of a Conspiracy; The Lincoln Family-Part 1; Exhuming the Body of John Wilkes Booth-1995
April: An Evening with President Lincoln; The Lincoln Family-Part 2; The Lincoln Home and Neighborhood
May: Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation; U.S. Grant Boyhood Home Rededicated; U.S. Grant: A Brief Biography
June: Grant and Lee at the White House; Justice in Blue and Gray: A Legal History of the Civil War book review
2011 – 2012 Season
President: Paul Burkholder
Charger Editor: Dan Zeiser
September: Experiencing the Civil War; Historically Deficient; Visitor Center for Oklahoma’s Largest Civil War Battle; The Civil War in Central Missouri
October: The Battle of Monocacy; The Red River Campaign of 1864
November: The Battle of Nashville; CCWRT Field Trip Report; The Riddles of Francis P. Burke
December: How Sibling Rivalry Helped Spawn an Assassin; How Did the Presidential Party Get to the Theater?; The Sherman House; Ohio’s Links to the Civil War
January: The Barlows and the Gordons; Edwin Booth; Lewis Armistead; Civil War Revolvers
February: A.P. Hill at Gettysburg; Gettysburg Maps
March: The Great Debate: The Last Lincoln-Douglas Debate; Lincoln’s Suspension of Habeas Corpus
April: How Robert E. Lee Lost the Civil War; William Henry Fitzhugh “Rooney” Lee; Mary Anna Randolph Custis; The Children of Robert E. Lee and Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee
May: The U.S. Navy at Vicksburg; Vicksburg Maps; Book Sale
2010 – 2011 Season
President: Lisa Kempfer
Charger Editor: Dan Zeiser
September: Abraham Lincoln’s Effect on Constitutional Interpretation; Grierson’s Raid
October: An Evening with William T. Sherman; The Essential Lincoln Bookshelf; The Battle of Wilson’s Creek; Franz Sigel
November: Civil War Female Spies: Belle Boyd and Mary Elizabeth Bowser; A Lesson in Artillery
December: Letters from the Front: General James A. and Lucretia Garfield Read Their Civil War Letters; James A. Garfield: A Biographical Sketch
January: Conscripts in the Civil War; Who Was Better: Grant or Lee?
February: Lincoln’s Commando: William Cushing; Ulysses Grant: Dual Personality?
March: The Great Debate: Would Foreign Intervention Have Won the War for the South?; CSS Virginia vs USS Cumberland and USS Congress Civil War Naval Battle; John Hunt Morgan
April: The Fight for Money: The Income Tax Laws of the Civil War; Ohio Regimental Flags
May: Ulysses S. Grant; Civil War Events
2009 – 2010 Season
President: Dennis Keating
Charger Editor: Dan Zeiser
September: Plenty of Blame to Go Around: JEB Stuart’s Controversial Ride to Gettysburg; Strong Vincent; Balloons in the Civil War
October: Behind the Scenes at a Civil War Movie; Gettysburg: Warren Saves Little Round Top; The Crater
November: Copperheads: Lincoln’s Opponents in the North; The Copperheads; Ohio Copperhead History
December: Three Soldiers and the Negro; The Decisive Battle of the Civil War: Another Nomination-Part 1
January: The Great Debate: After Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, Was William Tecumseh Sherman the Greatest General of the Civil War?; The Decisive Battle of the Civil War: Another Nomination-Part 2
February: The 26th Ohio Voluntary Infantry: The Groundhog Regiment; Lovejoy of Illinois-Part 1
March: Steps Toward War: Two Dramatic Rescues That Led to It; Lovejoy of Illinois-Part 2; March Civil War Events in Ohio
April: Rutherford B. Hayes and the 23rd OVI; A Report from the Field: The 18th Annual Sarasota Civil War Symposium; Blue and Gray on the Silver Screen
May: John Wilkes Booth: Escape and Capture; Kentucky in the Civil War-Mill Springs: No Longer a Footnote
2008 – 2009 Season
President: Jon Thompson
Charger Editor: Dan Zeiser
September: Varina Davis: First Lady of the Confederacy; Lincoln Memorial University
October: The Supreme Court During the Civil War; The Irish In the Civil War-Part 1
November: Blood, Tears, and Glory: How Ohioans Won the Civil War; The Irish in the Civil War-Part 2
December: Restoring the USS Monitor; The Irish in the Civil War-Part 3
January: The Great Debate: The Hitherto Unknown Meeting Of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis at Hampton Roads, Virginia; The Battles of Nashville
February: The Great Emancipator as Lawyer; Taking “The Gettysburg Test”; Mr. Lincoln at 200
March: Meet Me at the Fair: The Northern Ohio Sanitary Fair of the Cleveland Chapter of the United States Sanitary Commission; Letters from the Front-Part 1; The U.S. Navy in the Civil War; John Pemberton
April: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and the Battle of Olustee, Florida; Letters from the Front-Part 2; Andersonville’s “Clerk of the Dead”; The USS Cairo
May: The Fighting McCooks; Scenes from The Fighting McCooks
2007 – 2008 Season
President: Terry Koozer
Charger Editor: Dan Zeiser
September: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates; The Proclamation That Saved a Nation-Part 1
October: General James Barnett: A Man of Many ‘Firsts’; The Proclamation That Saved a Nation-Part 2
November: George H. Thomas at the Battle of Chickamauga; The Proclamation That Saved a Nation-Part 3
December: Nathan Bedford Forrest: Napoleonic Cavalryman; George Crook; Civil War-Era Ship Found in Watery Grave
January: The Great Debate-Resolved: “That the C.S.A. Was a Viable State”; Three Ohio Civil War Veterans Who Became President
February: Civil War Quiz; Decisive Battles of the Civil War: None; Don Carlos Buell
March: Raid! – The Confederacy Comes to St. Albans, Vermont; The Search for the Lost Confederate Gold
April: The USS Kearsarge vs. the CSS Alabama; Ohio Peace Democrats
May: Jesse James: The Last Rebel; The Fox and the Hedgehog: The Hampton Roads Conference; Lost Triumph: Lee’s Real Plan at Gettysburg ― and Why It Failed book review
2006 – 2007 Season
President: John Fazio
Charger Editor: Dan Zeiser
September: The 13th Tennessee; Visiting the New Lincoln Library & Museum
October: Mary Ann Bickerdyke; The Barlow-Gordon Controversy: Rest In Peace-Part 1
November: Lincoln at Gettysburg; The Barlow-Gordon Controversy: Rest In Peace-Part 2; Civil War Monuments in Ohio book review
December: The Confederacy’s New Mexico Campaign; The Most Effective General; The Civil War on December 13
January: The Great Debate-Resolved: “That the Institution of Slavery Was the Cause of the Civil War”; Civil War Revolvers; Behind Bayonets: The Civil War in Northern Ohio book review
February: Ohio’s Civil War Governors; More on the Great Debate; The Civil War on February 14
March: Custer’s Last Stand; More on Barlow-Gordon; Irwin McDowell Profile; The Civil War on March 14
April: Ohio’s Civil War Governors; Civil War Artillery; History Day Awards
May: The Civil War Letters of Private Alfred Weedon, 26th OVI; The Last Casualty of the Battle of Gettysburg; Lincoln and History; Battle of Narcoossee Mill
2005 – 2006 Season
President: Dave Carrino
Charger Editor: Dan Zeiser
September: They Had Navies Too???; New Civil War Database Goes Online; Battle of South Mountain
October: How the Civil War Still Lives; The Constitution Caused the Civil War; The Battle of Fredericksburg; The Battle of Chancellorsville
November: The Transformation of Abolitionism in War and Peace: Oberlin, Ohio as a Case Study; The Changes at Gettysburg; Spencer Rifle; John Thomas Wilder
December: The Supply for Tomorrow Must Not Fail: The Civil War of Captain Simon J. Perkins Jr., a Civil War Quartermaster; Silent Witness to the Civil War; Belle Boyd, Confederate Spy
January: The Great Debate: The Most Overrated Leader (Military or Political) of the Civil War; Francis & Arabella-Part 1
February: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain: Scholar, Citizen, Soldier; Francis & Arabella-Part 2
March: The Trial of Henry Wirz; John & Fanny-Part 1
April: A New Framework for Civil War Military History; John & Fanny-Part 2; Colt-Root Model 1855 Percussion Repeating Rifle
May: Union Jacks: Yankee Sailors in the Civil War; “Wounded Lion”: U.S. Grant’s Last Campaign; Poetry Prize Winner
2004 – 2005 Season
President: Mel Maurer
Charger Editor: Dan Zeiser
September: Voices of the Civil War: Douglas, Lincoln, and Echoes on the Prairie; Lincoln and the Black Hawk War; September 8 in the Civil War
October: Henry Wager Halleck; April 1865: The Month That Saved America book review; Ten Most Threatened Battlefield Sites
November: Winfield Scott Hancock; Brotherhood Forever; Significant November Civil War Dates; Biography of Turner Ashby
December: Ghosts of Gettysburg; “The Prince of Rails”: Robert Todd Lincoln; Significant December Civil War Dates; Henry Alexander Wise
January: The Great Debate: Which Is the Best Book, Fiction or Non-Fiction, on the Civil War?; Silent Witnesses to the Civil War-Part 1; Weapons of the War; January Civil War Dates
February: Stonewall In the Valley; The Vigilantes of Montana; Forts Henry and Donelson; Henry Wirz
March: Myths of Shiloh; Silent Witnesses to the Civil War-Part 2; Slavery in the U.S. 1790-1860
April: Jim Getty as Abraham Lincoln; Balthasar Best and the American Dream
May: Patrick Schroeder as George T. Peers; Giuseppe Garibaldi-General in Chief of the U.S. Army?; Poetry Prize Winner; May Civil War Dates
2003 – 2004 Season
President: Warren McClelland
Charger Editor: Dick Crews
September: Fredericksburg: Lee vs. Burnside; Charleston 1861: The Other Star-Spangled Banner; The Real Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo book review
October: The Cleveland Grays; Camp Cleveland; Cleveland Civil War Roundtable Survey-Spring 2003
November: New York Draft Riots; The Medal of Honor: A Brief History
December: Clara Barton; Behind the Lines: My Life as a Yankee in Franklin, Tennessee-Part IV
January: The Great Debate: What Equipment or Innovation Had the Most Effect on the Civil War?; Spotsylvania: The True Turning Point of the War; Jews in the Civil War
February: Johnson’s Island Prison; Was Jefferson Davis the Reason the Confederacy Lost the War?
March: Irish in the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln and the Case of the Altered Almanac; Thus Always with Miscreants
April: General George Brinton McClellan; Today’s Navy and the Civil War; A Visit to Johnson’s Island
May: Lincoln & His Generals; The Peter Principle and George B. McClellan; Poetry Prize Winner
2002-2003 Season
President: Maynard Bauer
Charger Editor: Dick Crews
September: The Trial of General William T. Sherman; Mapmakers of the Civil War; Fort Hill Cemetery; Churchill and the Civil War
October: The Battle of Wilson’s Creek; Vicksburg: Did It Matter?; Vicksburg: The Turning Point in the American Civil War
November: James Madison Cutts: “Hero of the Republic”; “Taps” Celebrates its 140th Birthday; Visiting the National Civil War Museum
December: Phil Sheridan; Grant vs. Lee; The Sword Was Mightier Than the Pen
January: Mary Surratt: Was She Guilty?, Should She Have Been Tried by Military Court?, Should She Have Been Executed?; His Name Is Still Mudd; Cleveland’s Farewell to Lincoln; “Hurrah! Old Abe Lincoln Has Been Assassinated!”
February: John Pelham; Sailing Aboard the Monitor
March: Lee at Chancellorsville; Lincoln’s Assassination: The Confederate Conspiracy; Northeast Ohio Civil War Monuments
April: The Long-Lost Journal of Confederate General James Johnston Pettigrew; Abraham Lincoln: There’s Nothing Trivial about Him; Hysteria, Democracy, and Terrorism; History That Never Was: Andrew Johnson’s Pardon of Mary Surratt
May: Canada in the Civil War; Louis J. Weichmann: The Mystery Man of the Lincoln Conspiracy
2001-2002 Season
President: Bill McGrath
Charger Editor: Dick Crews
September: Revival of Their Memory: the Sultana; H.L. Hunley; Behind the Lines: My Life as a Yankee in Franklin, Tennessee-Part III; Papers of John Sherman; The Best 25 Books About the Civil War
October: Abraham Lincoln: Did He Dream of a Lily White America?; The Sharpshooter and His Weapon; Why Couldn’t a Civil War Soldier Hit Anything?; Florence Prison Stockade
November: The Army’s Navy; The Warrior Generals: Combat Leadership in the Civil War; Tactics
December: U.S. Marine Corps in the Civil War; Cold Steel: Technology in the Civil War; Governors Island; Humorous Questions at National Parks
January: George H. Thomas; Cleveland Fights the Civil War: The First Union Cannon Shot; Behind the Lines: My Life as a Yankee in Franklin, Tennessee-Part IV; Matthew Slattery: In Memoriam
February: The Hunley: Slowly Giving Up Its Secrets; My Experience on the Set of Gods and Generals
March: Mary Todd Lincoln; God and General Longstreet: The Lost Cause and the Southern Mind book review; Johnson’s Island; The Confederacy and George Washington; Ed Bearss: A Legend in His Own Time; West Point in the Civil War
April: “Unvexed to the Sea”: The Vicksburg Campaign; Eye of the Storm: A Civil War Odyssey-The Memoirs of Private Robert Knox Sneden book review
May: Capital Navy: The James River Squadron; Lincoln Visits Cleveland; Poetry Prize Winner
2000-2001 Season
President: William Vodrey
Charger Editor: Dick Crews
September: Shelby Foote; John C. Breckinridge: He Should Have Been Hanged; The War That Never Was: Britain, the U.S., and the Trent Affair
October: Civil War Flag Controversy Breaks Out Again; The Most Overrated General; The Civil War’s #1 Pain in the Butt: The Life of Parson Brownlow
November: James McPherson Speaks on Lincoln; Lincoln vs. Kennedy; The Rock of Chickamauga
December: An Ancestor at Shiloh; 50th Illinois Infantry, Sweeny’s (3d) Brig., W.H.L. Wallace’s (2d) Div., Army of the Tennessee at 4:30 P.M., April 6, 1862; Bedford Forrest Losing in Selma Again
January: The Great Debate: The Absolutely Worst General of the Civil War; Mule-Drawn Wagon Trains
February: John B. Gordon; Three Generations of MacArthur; The Hero of Missionary Ridge; Cleaning Out the Hunley; Family Reminiscences of the Confederacy; The Angry Abolitionist: William Lloyd Garrison
March: The 51st Ohio Volunteer Infantry; The Zouaves; Roads of the Civil War; Bragg vs. Rosecrans at Stones River; Civil War Pay
April: USS Cairo; The Deadliest Enemy; Behind the Lines: My Life as a Yankee in Franklin, Tennessee-Part I; Breaks in the Storm
May: William T. Sherman; Behind the Lines: My Life as a Yankee in Franklin, Tennessee-Part II; Andrew Johnson: A Tough Man for Tough Times; Abraham Lincoln: The Great Emancipator?; Lincoln Defended; Important Events in the Life of Jefferson Davis; Poetry Prize Winner
1999-2000 Season
President: Bob Boyda
Charger Editor: Dick Crews
September: John Bell Hood; The Carter House; Rifle Musket in the Civil War
October: The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable Invades Richmond-1999 Field Trip; Tarnished Eagles: The Courts-Martial of Fifty Union Colonels and Lieutenant Colonels book review
November: William Quantrill; Unsung Hero – Henry W. Halleck
December: Christmas Traditions; Sherman’s Final Challenge: North Carolina, Part 1
January: What Is a Victory?; “Battle Hymn of the Republic”
February: Ulysses S. Grant; Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site
March: Braxton Bragg; Mutiny in the 54th; Sherman’s Final Challenge: North Carolina, Part 2
April: Lincoln and His Generals; Gods and Generals book review; Brass Pounders: The Young Telegraphers of the Civil War book review; A Union Private’s Thoughts after Antietam
May: Sherman’s Little Known Failure: The 36th State; Interview with Dr. Craig Symonds
