When: September 12th
Where: La Navona, 154 North Hamilton Road. Gahanna Ohio 43230
Time: 7:00pm
Speaker: Harry Smeltzer
Topic: “The Future of Civil War History”
In “The Future of Civil War History,” we will discuss the current Civil War history environment and where it is headed. We’ll discuss trends in academic, public, and “amateur” history delivery systems, the impact of document availability, and what our roles are, may, should, and can be. While there are elements of presentation, this is most importantly a discussion. Come ready to contribute.
Harry Smeltzer maintains the website Bull Runnings, which he founded in November 0f 2006. He lives just outside Pittsburgh, PA and was born and raised in Southwestern PA. He earned an undergraduate degree at The Pennsylvania State University and a graduate degree at the Katz School of the University of Pittsburgh. Neither sheepskin is in history
or any art. He’s been published in the journal Civil War History, The Civil War Monitor, Civil War Times, and America’s Civil War, and has been profiled in the American Battlefield Trust’s Hallowed Ground. He was a Contributing Writer for America’s Civil War and is a Digital History Advisor for The Civil War Monitor. He serves on the board of directors of the Save Historic Antietam Foundation, and has served as its vice-president and newsletter editor. He’s presented programs on First Battle of Bull Run related and other topics to organizations in six states and the District of Columbia, and has orgainized and/or led tours of the battlefield of First Bull Run.
For Hill and the other Culpeper men engaged, this was a personal battle to liberate their homes, friends, and family from the Union occupation. Today, local citizens are coming together to ensure that this battle and the valor displayed by both armies will never be forgotten.
stirring events in Culpeper and Fauquier Counties. Mike also has been collecting photos, drawings and first person accounts of events, both significant and mundane that occurred in the region during the war.
Mike retired from the United States Air Force in 2001; serving in Europe, Asia and the United States. He continues to support the U.S. Government as a Lead Associate for the consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton. Part of his work is as a Gettysburg Staff Ride Instructor for Government Intelligence Analysts, focusing on the geospatial and intelligence aspects of the
and a half, the men of the Eleventh Corps have labored under the stigma of being caught by Stonewall Jackson’s surprise attack, throwing away their weapons and running away. This since event colored the reputation of the corps, and especially its many soldiers of German ancestry, with the label of cowardice. In this illustrated PowerPoint presentation based on his newly published history of the Eleventh Corps, Jim Pula will present a new interpretation that is quite different and, as one reviewer said, “stands conventional wisdom on its head.”
County Historical Society); With Courage and Honor: The Role of Oneida County in the Civil War (Ethnic Heritage Studies Series distributed by Syracuse University Press, 2010); The Memoirs of Ludwik Żychliński (Columbia University Press, East European Monographs, 1993); and The Memoirs of Wladimir Krzyżanowski (R&E Research, 1978). In addition to the Gambrinus Prize, he has been honored three times with the Oskar Halecki Prize for books on ethnic and immigration history, the Rudewicz Medal, and the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.
general Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest’s cavalry was the greatest threat to the long supply line feeding Sherman’s armies as they advanced on Atlanta. Smith marched at the head of his “gorillas,” veteran soldiers who were fresh from the Red River Campaign. Aside from diverting Confederate attention away from Sherman, Smith’s orders were to destroy Southern railroads and confront Forrest in Mississippi. Just weeks earlier, a similar Union expedition had met with disaster at the Battle of Brice’s Crossroads, perhaps the greatest victory of Forrest’s military career.
Civil War battlefield: Shiloh. Tom served on four ships and retired in 1998 as a Chief Petty Officer. Not long after retiring he signed on with the National Park Service and has spent the last nineteen years with Shiloh National Military Park. He spent his first five years with the park maintaining the National Cemetery, the mass Confederate burial trenches and other sites across the battlefield. In 2004 Ranger Parson was assigned to the new Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center in Corinth, Mississippi. His research focuses on military activities in North Mississippi and West Tennessee. Tom lives in Corinth with Nita, his wife of 38 years.
Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Secretary of State Judah Benjamin and Secretary of War James Seddon, to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the attempted decapitation of the Federal Government on April 14, 1865. John Wilkes Booth and his action team are considered in detail, but only in the context of an underground mosaic that included numerous other individuals and action teams who and which were primed to carry out multiple assassinations for the purpose of snatching Southern independence from the jaws of a toothless and chaotic government.
now lives in Fairlawn (an Akron suburb) with his wife, Mary, who is retired after a career in public relations. Between them, they have seven children, all of whom have left the nest. John joined Mary in retirement in 2015 after practicing law for fifty years. He is a student of history, with an emphasis on European and American history and with an even greater emphasis on the most defining event in American history, the Civil War. He is a member of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable and has been its president. He is also a member of the Lincoln Forum, the Surratt Society, the Cleveland Grays and the Western Reserve Historical Society. He teaches Civil War history at Chautauqua Institution, frequently speaks on the war and other subjects before Roundtables and other groups and has written and published numerous articles on the war and other subjects. In addition, he has written Decapitating the Union: Jefferson Davis, Judah Benjamin and the Plot to Assassinate Lincoln, after five years of research and writing. The book was released in January, 2016. Copies are available from Amazon.com, from other on-line book sellers, from some book stores and directly from the publisher (Morris Gilbert Publishing Company, 3422 S. Smith Rd., Akron, OH 44333).
district in northeast Ohio. Previously, Dan was the Education Programs Coordinator for the Gettysburg Foundation, the non-profit partner of Gettysburg National Military Park, and continues to serve as a seasonal Park Ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park. He holds a MA in Military History with a Civil War Era concentration at American Military University and is the coauthor of 