Over 1,400 monuments stand silent and unmoving on the Gettysburg battlefield, yet they speak volumes. They dominate the battlefield landscape providing mute testimony to the three terrible days in July, 1863, that left 51,000 American soldiers dead, wounded, or captured. Gettysburg became the greatest battle this continent has even seen.
The monuments were erected by the survivors and were designed by the finest sculptors and produced by the finest companies America had to offer in the late 19th century. Included in the famous group of sculptors is Gutzon Borglum, whose work includes the carving of the Presidents on Mount Rushmore.
Dick Simpson will present a slide-show of the monuments on the Gettysburg battlefield. You will view massive equestrian statues and many life-size individual works. You will see monuments depicting the Cavalry, Artillery, Infantry, animals, and some of the unusual and "off the beaten path." Dick’s program ends with a grand tribute to those who fought at Gettysburg" Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address set to slides of the battle’s aftermath, and music from the movie, "Gettysburg."
Dick Simpson travels to our Round Table from his summer home in Orleans, Vermont. He retired after 30 years as Vice-President of Graphic Design for Inter-Continental Hotels. Dick is the historian for the town of Westmore, Vermont, and is also a trustee and tour guide at the 1836 Old Stone House Museum in Brownington, VT. From November to April, he and his wife, Deborah, reside in Lancaster, PA, where he is an exhibit designer and volunteer for the Lancaster County Historical Society.
Dick has visited most Civil War Round Tables from New England to Tennessee, and we are pleased to welcome him to our Round Table.
Dick will be donating books to our raffle table, and raffle proceeds will go to the "Save the Franklin (TN) Battlefield" organization.
O.O. Howard was born in Leeds, Maine, on November 8, 1830. After graduating from Bowdoin in 1850, he attended West Point, graduating in 1854 and finishing 4th in his class.
When the Civil War started, Howard accepted a commission as Colonel of the 3rd Maine Regiment. He lost his right arm at the Battle of Fair Oaks in June, 1862. (Phil Kearney, who lost his left arm in the Mexican War, joked with Howard that they should go shopping for a pair of gloves together. Gen Kearney was killed several months later at the battle of Chantilly in September, 1862). Howard was one of the few generals that were truly dedicated to the cause, and served with distinction... until Chancellorsville, when his 11th Corps "skedaddled" as Stonewall Jackson’s troops overran Howard’s unanchored flank position. Eight weeks later, the 11th Corps suffered the same plight on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, when they were chased through the fields and downtown streets onto Cemetery Hill by Confederate troops.
What happened??? Was Howard the victim of circumstances? Did he receive clear, concise order from his commanders, or was he the scapegoat for poor command decisions that precipitated the inglorious retreats at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg? After effective service during the siege of Vicksburg, O.O. Howard was one of Sherman’s two corps commanders on the march through Georgia and the Carolinas, and he was highly praised by Sherman as an effective commander. Howard’s troops nicknamed him "Old Prayer Book" as Howard was a pious Protestant who did not tolerate foul language. Howard’s post-war career was equally as distinguished; he was placed in charge of the Freedmen’s Bureau, founded three colleges, and sought peace with the warring Indian tribes.
Marius Peladeau is the author of several Civil War books, and Vice-President of the Readfield Historical Society. Mr. Peladeau is a member of our Round Table, and is a former Director of the Farnsworth Art Museum, a former exhibition curator at the L.C. Bates Museum, and former Director of the Maine League of Historical Societies and Museums.
The meeting was Thursday, October 16th, at 7 pm, at the Curtis Memorial (Brunswick) Library on Pleasant St. The meeting was open to the public. FMI, or driving directions, call 721-0235.
Curt Mildner of Kennebunk last presented to us in November, 2005, on George Berry of the 5th Maine Regiment. Curt became obsessed with this soldier after buying a Civil War cartridge box on e-Bay, which was inscribed "GL Berry D 5 Me." Curt discovered George Berry’s letters in the Miami University archives.
Curt has expanded his interest to include first-hand accounts of the experiences of soldiers like George Berry. He has traveled to many small town museums and libraries in Maine, and also explored the National Archives and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, in quest of letters, diaries, memoirs, and official reports written by Maine soldiers about their experiences serving in the Army. Curt has also traveled to many of the battlefields to study the ground the soldiers fought over, and walked the routes taken by the soldiers to the battlefields. Curt also became a re-enactor to understand the marching and maneuvering the soldiers had to master.
Curt’s presentation will focus on the letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, and official reports that are the primary sources for each soldier’s war experiences. These provide a picture into the mind of the Maine soldier; what was on their minds, and what issues of the day concerned them. They expressed their opinions about Lincoln, their commanders, camp life, bad food, tentmates, slavery, and other issues important to them. Curt has found that some of his preconceptions have been shattered when the documents are studied in relation to the times in which they were written.
Curt is a member of our Round Table. He owns Market Decisions, a research business in Portland, and lives in Kennebunk. He’s a member of the 3rd Maine re-enactors.
Due to the power failures in the southern parts of Maine our speaker could not make this meeting. A Civil War video was shown to the people who were there.
2008/2009 programs.
Private William Laird’s story is unique in Maine’s Civil War history. Author Jean Mary Flahive’s historical novel, "Billy Boy: The Sunday Soldier of the 17th Maine" is based on Private Laird’s life and the Civil War events he experienced as a soldier in the Union Army.
20-year-old Billy Laird of Berwick, Maine, can’t read or write, but when the war starts he enlists with his friends in the Union Army to fight for his country. Billy is ill-prepared for the rigors of war, and he is traumatized when he is sent to a different unit, and thus, separated from his friends.
Billy is now alone, and, overwhelmed with fear, he deserts the Army. He meets up with Elijah, a runaway slave, and the two start their journey North. Billy is caught, and his court martial occurs at Camp Keyes in 1863. Billy Laird’s story is compelling, and the subject of Jean Flahive’s presentation.
Jean Flahive’s career includes positions in higher education as a college dean and adjunct instructor, and is a member of the University of Maine System Board of Trustees. Currently, Jean works as a grant writer for the Maine Public Broadcasting Network. She resides in Falmouth.
Hezekiah Long was one of many who responded to the call by Abraham Lincoln in July, 1862, for 300,000 more troops for the war. Long was a prison guard in Thomaston, Maine, 37 years old and married. He enlisted in the 20th Maine, and was assigned to Company F. He was well-regarded by his fellow soldiers, and served as a Sergeant in his company, ending the war as a 2nd Lieutenant.
Peter Dalton has published Hezekiah Long’s Civil War correspondence, and did present the story of Long at the March meeting.
Peter Dalton graduated in 1974 from the University of Southern Maine, majoring in Social Science. He is a member of Richardson’s Civil War Round Table, which meets in the American Legion Hall in Sandy Point, Maine (outside Belfast) He lives in Northport, Maine, and owns Union Publishing Company. He and his wife Cyndi, have published several books on Maine soldiers and regiments.
The meeting was on Thursday, March 19, 2009, at 7 pm, at the Curtis Memorial (Brunswick) Library, Morrell Room, on Pleasant St. The meeting was open to the public. FMI, or driving directions, call 721-0235.
2008/2009 programs.
Mary Elizabeth Jenkins Surratt, a 43 year-old widow, devout Catholic, boarding house owner, and Confederate sympathizer, was executed for her role in the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln. She was the first woman executed by the United States government.
Our speaker, and author Kate Clifford Larson utilized long-lost interviews, confessions, and court testimony to create her new book, "The Assassin’s Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln." The book documents Mary Surratt’s central role in cultivating and nurturing the nefarious plan to kill Abraham Lincoln, and to avenge her beloved Confederacy. Larson details the enormous risks Mary Surratt undertook in assisting the handsome young actor John Wilkes Booth, her own son, John Surratt, and other young men in their plot to kill Lincoln. Larson also reveals how, by remaining at large in Canada, and choosing not to return to the US to aid his mother’s defense of the charges, John Surratt helped to condemn his own mother to the gallows.
Kate Clifford Larson is Adjunct Professor of History at Simmons College in Boston. She received her BA and MA degrees from Simmons College, an MBA from Northeastern University, and a doctorate from the University of New Hampshire.
Larson is author of the book, "Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero," and she is a consultant for both the Harriett Tubman Special Resource Study of the National Park Service and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Discovery Center. Kate Larson lives in Winchester, MA.
We were pleased that Jerry Wiles was able to tell us about Abraham Lincoln’s life, after snow forced the cancellation of the February meeting. Not much is known about Lincoln’s childhood, born into backwoods poverty to a father who believed in hard, physically-demanding work; Thomas Lincoln saw reading and writing as useless and of no value. Young Abe watched his mother die at the age of 9; his was not a happy childhood.
Fortunately, Lincoln’s stepmother, Nancy Hanks, supported her stepson’s desire to learn to read and write. We presume the early stories of Lincoln reading by the light of the fireplace are true. Lincoln valued the role of education as a way to escape the life of a hardscrabble farmer, and he succeeded in early career as a circuit-riding lawyer, which propelled him into the world of politics.
Jerry Wiles last visited our Round Table in April, 2004, to speak about Harriet Beecher Stowe. Jerry was born in Gardiner, served in the US Air Force, and attended Eastern Kentucky University, earning BA and MA degrees in history. For thirty-three years, Mr. Wiles taught US and Maine history at Greely Jr. High School in Cumberland, retiring in 2001. Jerry Wiles is a popular, dynamic speaker in demand throughout the state for his informative lectures on interesting American personalities.
We were pleased to have Craig Symonds back as the featured speaker at the June 11th Annual Awards Dinner. In fact, Craig and Mary Lou enjoyed their last visit to our Round Table in June, 2005, so much that he let us know a year ago that he wanted to be the speaker at our June 11th dinner!!
Craig’s new book was named co-winner of the prestigious Lincoln Prize in April, 2009, for excellence in scholarship. Abraham Lincoln, a mid-westerner with no knowledge of the seven seas and its vessels, selects a former newspaper editor from Hartford, CT, now Naval Department bureaucrat, to be his Secretary of the Navy. Gideon Welles is "cranky," but an able administrator.
Harold Holzer, in his review of the book states, "This is an epic story - the quintessen-tial...landlubber morphing into the admiral-in-chief of the mightiest armada on the planet. Spinning the yarn with resourceful scholarship and narrative verve, peerless naval historian Craig Symonds succeeds in creating an entirely new portrait of Lincoln: not only as healer of the land, but conqueror of the sea."
Craig L. Symonds is Professor Emeritus at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, and he has authored 10 previous books, including biographies of Confederate Generals Patrick Cleburne and Joseph E. Johnston, Confederate Admiral Franklin Buchanan, a battlefield atlas of Gettysburg, and he co-edited "The Civil War Recollections of General Ellis Spear."
The meeting was on Thursday, June 11, 2009, at 7 pm, at the Kennebec Tavern on Commercial St in Bath.
2008/2009 programs.
Mike Nugent kicked off the new season with a presentation on the book he co-authored with Eric Wittenberg and J. Edward Petruzzi, "One Continuous Fight: The Retreat From Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863."
The battle of Gettysburg ended July 3rd, and Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia left the field in defeat. Lee now had the onerous task of moving a bruised and battered army, with wagonloads of wounded soldiers and diminished supplies back to, and across, the Potomac River. Lee’s battle wasn’t over yet... he and his wagon trains were harassed and attacked by Union cavalry as he made his trek through mountain passes on muddy roads in the rain.
Confederate General John Imboden was in charge of the wagon train of wounded soldiers. Those unable to walk were loaded into freight wagons with no springs for the bumpy, agonizing ride back to Virginia. The wounded soldiers who were ambulatory walked alongside the wagons or dodged the mud by walking through fields. This wagon train was under constant attack by Union cavalry as it moved at a snail’s pace through the narrow mountain passes.
Mike Nugent is a Sergeant on the Westbrook Police force, a tour guide at the Joshua Chamberlain Museum, and portrays a Civil War Cavalry officer in living history presentations in Gettysburg. He is a descendent of a Union Cavalry officer.
Franklin, Tennessee, was the site of a vicious battle on November 30, 1864, between the armies of Confederate General John Bell Hood and Union General John Schofield. Franklin is often referred to as the "Gettysburg of the West" as the Confederate army made 13 separate charges against the Union earthworks. It was one of the few battles that continued past sundown until midnight, with the fight still raging in the dark until midnight.
The center of the Union line was in the yard of the Carter house on the Colombia Turnpike at the southern edge of the town. Assigned to hold that key position was the 183rd Ohio. The Carter family and friends were forced into the basement, and were trapped there in the chaos of the ensuing battle, with hand-to-hand fighting in the Carter yard.
Richard Rupp, co-author of "for Cause and for Country: A Study of the Affair at Spring Hill and the Battle of Franklin," and resident of Wickford, RI, did present the story of the 183rd Ohio at Franklin.
In 1970, Mr. Rupp inherited his great-grandfather’s discharge papers from the 183rd Ohio, along with an ambrotype of Peter Rupp in his Civil War uniform. Richard Rupp continued his interest in Rhode Island regiments in the Army of the Potomac until 1993, when he visited Franklin, TN. His focus then turned to his great-grandfather’s regiment, and he devoted many hours doing original research into the battle, discovering many inaccuracies in popular books about the battle. Eric Jacobsen was also researching the battle of Franklin, and Richard and Eric met via the Internet. Eric’s research was focused on the Confederate campaign, so they teamed up! The result is a 519-page book filled with photos and maps, and a fresh look at the battle.
Benjamin Franklin Butler was born into an impoverished family in Deerfield, NH, in 1818. His widowed mother relocated to Lowell, Mass, in 1830, where she ran a boarding house for the multitude of young girls working in the mills along the Merrimack River.
Ben was ambitious, but he also was filled with empathy for the working class, watching the mill girls work 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week, for meager wages. He became a powerful attorney, always ready to fight for the underprivileged, specializing in workers’ rights, and tax-relief for the poor. Ben was the epitome of the American dream: he came from poverty, studied hard, worked hard, fought hard for what he believed in, and died a wealthy man. His wife was from the "well-heeled" Hildreth family of Lowell, and Butler is buried in the Hildreth Cemetery in Lowell.
Ben Butler was an outspoken member of the House of Representatives when the war started. Lincoln needed the support of powerful Democrats in the war effort, and Butler was appointed as a General in early 1861. Butler was one of many "political" generals with no military experience, and is remembered favorably for his opinion that runaway slaves were "contraband of war" and thus, not to be returned to slavery in the South. Butler used the runaway slaves to provide support for the Union Army as laborers.
Speaker Michael Pierson did present the history of Ben Butler’s administration of New Orleans in 1862. Pierson did speak on the character of the residents of New Orleans as an important factor in Butler’s administration policies...perhaps it wasn’t such a "Confederate" city after all!! Michael Pierson is a history professor at UMASS/Lowell, and teaches classes on Jacksonian America, American Women’s History, and American Democracy and Historical Methods. His interest in the Civil War started at the age of 17, when he attended a Civil War Round Table meeting in Hamden, CT. His presentation is drawn from chapters in his recent book, "The Mutiny at Fort Jackson: The Untold Story of the Fall of New Orleans." The book was available for sale and signing at the reduced price of $20. for meeting attendees.
Everyone knows about the epic battle at Gettysburg, yet the famous four days at the beginning of July were only a part of the entire Gettysburg campaign, which began a month earlier in June as Lee moved his army north into Union territory after the dust had settled at Chancellorsville. Lee used his cavalry strategically to screen his move north by posting his army’s horsemen in the many notches and gaps on the east side of the Shenandoah Valley.
The largest cavalry battle in the entire war occurred on June 9, 1863, at Brandy Station. Union cavalry under James Pleasanton caught Jeb Stuart’s encamped horse-soldiers off guard, and the vicious battle was the first time Union cavalry actually bested their Southern counterparts.
On June 16th, Army commander Joe Hooker complained to Lincoln, "...we can never discover the whereabouts of the enemy, or divine his intentions, so long as he fills the country with a cloud of cavalry. We must break through to find him." Hooker ordered Alfred Pleasanton to find Lee’s army, and Pleasanton went in search of a fight. He got his wish the next day, outside the village of Aldie, in Aldie Gap, a break in the Bull Run Mountains.
Jeb Stuart had posted Fitz Lee’s cavalry under Col. Thomas Munford to guard the gap. Brash, erratic Union General Judson "Kill-Cavalry" Kilpatrick ordered 4 regiments in a wild, galloping charge against Munford’s men.
CWRT member and past speaker Steve Bunker will tell the story of the cavalry clash at Aldie. Steve needs no introduction; he’s a dedicated member of the Round Table, and has been both a presenter and moderator of round table discussions over the past few years. He’s a cavalry re-enactor, and is the owner of China Sea Trading Company in Gray.
The meeting will be Thursday, December 17th, 2009, at 7 pm, at the Curtis Memorial (Brunswick) Library, Morrell Room, on Pleasant St. The meeting is open to the public. FMI, or driving directions, call Jay Stencil 721-0235.
2009/2010 programs.
Preview of a paper by Kerck Kelsey for delivery to the Chamberlain Civil War Round Table on January 21, 2010.
"Worse than traitors in arms are the men, pretending loyalty to the flag, who feast and fatten on the misfortunes of the nation, while patriot blood is crimsoning the plains of the south, and bodies of their countrymen are moldering in the dust" - from the conclusion to the final report of the House Select Committee on Contracts, March 3, 1863.
To the victor belong the spoils. So in war, it ever was. For most of the participants in the civil war, however, the object was not spoils. The war they joined was nothing less than a crusade - a heady mix of high ideals and urgent excitement. For the north, it was a crusade to put down rebellion and save the union. For the south, it was a crusade to protect their right to independence from that same union.
Where the north conquered, however, there was a seamier side to their crusade. First in Missouri, then in Tennessee and Louisiana, and finally in Virginia, some of the victors took advantage of a blatant lack of supervision to prosper mightily - either from a distant government’s effort to build an army from scratch, or from a defeated and hostile population over which they held absolute power.
Resources for this seamy story are surprisingly scarce. Besides the volumes of congressional testimony available in the Bowdoin College Library, few books and articles have been written. Our speaker stumbled onto this story in connection with his research into the work of Elihu Washburne as Chairman of the Congressional Committee on Contracts. It will provide an interesting follow-up to November’s program about Ben Butler.
The "bad guys" to be discussed, besides the Butler brothers, will include 1858 presidential candidate Maj. General John Charles Frémont ("The Pathfinder"), Brig. General Justus McKinstry (the only general officer court-martialed in the war), and Brig. General Stephen A. Hurlbut (later ambassador to Columbia) - among many others.
Kerck Kelsey’s third book on the Washburns, Prairie Lightning, The Rise and Fall of William Drew Washburn, will be published next summer. This will be his third appearance as a speaker at the Round Table.
The meeting was held Thursday, January 21, 2010, at 7 pm, at the Curtis Memorial (Brunswick) Library, Morrell Room, on Pleasant St.
Born in Townshend, Vermont in 1840, Marshall Harvey Twitchell was
educated in the town’s common schools and at the Leland Seminary.
Like many young men of Vermont, he taught school in winters and worked on
the farm during other times of the year.
In 1861 he enlisted with Co. I,
4th Regt. Vt. Vols. and fought in most of the major battles in the Virginia
theater. In the winter of 1863-1864 he made application and was appointed
captain of a black regiment of mainly ex-slaves. He was severely injured at
the Battle of the Wilderness, being at the time in the command of his
company. Twitchell was in the column which broke Lee’s line at Petersburg
and finally surrounded Lee’s army at Appomattox Court House.
Following Appomattox, he
became an agent of the Freedmen’s
Bureau, with headquarters at Sparta,
North Louisiana. While serving in this
capacity, Twitchell met and married a
southern woman, Adele Coleman,
whom he hoped to someday bring
home with him to Vermont. But Adele
refused to move to Vermont, so her
husband made the best of the
situation, purchasing a modest cotton
plantation, moving some of his
relatives down from the Green
Mountain state, and establishing a
small "Yankee Colony" in the town of
Coushatta.
With no experience in civil
government, in 1868 Twitchell entered
local politics. He was legislator, judge,
jury and sheriff. His government was
so satisfactory that he was elected
almost without opposition to represent
the parish of Bienville in the
constitutional convention of 1868.
Supported by African American voters,
he was elected as a Republican to the
State Senate in 1870 and was re-
elected in 1874. During his years in
the Senate he successfully fought for
funding to build black public schools,
and became one of the most
successful Republican politicians in the
state.
Ted Tunnel states in his biography of
Marshall Twitchell, "....in the lexicon of the day,
Twitchell was a ‘carpetbagger.’ According to the
mythology of Reconstruction, the carpetbaggers
were villains, low-bred northern adventurers who
descended like vultures on the conquered South.
When Twitchell first settled in north Louisiana, he
had no thought about going into politics. But by
1868 his white neighbors began denouncing him
as a carpetbagger, before he had done much of
anything, good or bad." The complex context of
local and national politics in the post Civil War
South created what was, at times, a vicious and
violent place.
Our February 18th speaker, Ashley
Towle, will address Marshall Harvey Twitchell’s
role in the Civil War, his experience as a
Freedmen’s Bureau agent, and his experiences
as a politician in northwestern Louisiana in the 1870s. She will address the cultural differences
between the North’s and the South’s attitudes
toward race, and how Twitchell’s attempts to
institute racial equality in northwestern Louisiana
led to a number of the bloodiest conflicts of the
Reconstruction era. Ms. Towle is a 2009 summa
cum laude graduate of Gettysburg College with a
B.A. in History, and a minor in Civil War Era
Studies and Latin American Studies. She is a
member of Phi Alpha Theta, the national history
honors society, and Phi Beta Kappa. Ms. Towle
plans to attend graduate school to continue her
studies of nineteenth century American history
within the next year.
A native of Warren, Maine a graduate of Bowdoin College, Class of 1858, General Spear commanded the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment longer
than any other officer.
In 1862, he was mustered in as captain of Co. G, commanding more than
two dozen of his own recruits, and served at the head of that company until promoted after
the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. Gen’l Spear served in all of the engagemets of that
regiment from Antietam to Appomattox and mustered out of service in 1865 with the rank of Brevet Brigadier General.
Now the Solicitor of Patents for the government in Washington, D.C., the
general has consented to discuss incidents and anecdotes of his distinguished military career during the Great Rebellion of 1861-1865, now 25 years past.
Following General Spear’s
appearance, historian Tom Desjardin
will answer questions regarding the 20th
Maine Regiment and the Civil War in our country.
Tom Desjardin is a historian
whose work focuses on the history of
Maine and on the Civil War. He is an
11th generation Maine native and
holds a Ph.D. from U Maine. He is a
leading expert on the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment and its famous
commander Joshua Chamberlain. Tom
has been particularly fascinated with
Spear’s story since meeting his
grandson Abbott Spear in the early
1990s and learning about General
Spear’s dry wit and dark, tragic
perspective on the Civil War. By
appearing as Spear around 1890, Tom
will give a first-person perspective on the Civil War
and actions of the 20th Maine, including the postwar relationships of the veterans and their
differing ways of trying to explain their
experiences in combat as well as life in camp
during the lulls between battles.
Tom has written four books, appeared
in a number of television documentaries, and
served as the historical advisor to actor Jeff
Daniels in his role as Chamberlain in the movie
Gettysburg. He has taught history at Bowdoin
College and the University of Maine at Augusta
and lived and worked for six years at
Gettysburg. He is currently the historian for the
Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands.
2009/2010 programs.
Our speaker for the April
15th Joshua Chamberlain Civil War
Round Table, Valerie Josephson,
will introduce the audience to her
great-grandfather, Mansfield Ham.
Ham was a private in the 20
th
Maine, and initially all Valerie
Josephson knew about him were a
few family stories. After reading
Alex Haley's book, Roots, in the
1980s, Ms. Josephson began
researching the Ham family and
had a pretty complete family tree
constructed by 1990. She wrote it
up for the family and then put it on
the shelf until she read The Killer
Angels by Michael Shaara and saw
the movie Gettysburg -- then she
"got the bug." Great Gramps was
in the famed 20th Maine!
When Ms. Josephson
retired in 2006, her cousin, Terry,
urged her to write a book about
Marshall Ham for young adult
readers. And she did!
The book is
a fictional account of a real person.
Ms. Josephson’s "goal for the book
was to weave a lot of historical
material into the storyline, creating
characters, projecting their feelings
about the war, making the
hardships they endured seem real."
When the Civil War began,
Mansfield was a 19 year old farmer
in Hodgdon, ME. Looking
at census data and local history,
Ms. Josephson realized her
grandfather "could have had
‘issues’ about going off to war." That assumption and a few
family stories helped her shape a
persona for Mansfield Ham. In July
1862 he and a friend, Gus Walker,
enlisted in the 20th
Maine. Mansfield and Gus were
tent mates during the war. Valerie
Josephson was able to flesh out a
persona for Gus through
information provided by his great
grandson, Scott Walker, and
learned that once a writer creates a
fictional image of the story’s
characters, they take over the
storyline.
Our April speaker does not
plan to discuss the actions and
battles of the 20th Maine - she
explains that "it would be like
preaching to the choir". However,
she hopes to show how
historical data helped create
believable characters with the
conviction that they had a duty to
preserve their country.
Valerie Josephson is a retired
medical editor who lives on a lake in northwest New Jersey and has two kayaks, two
canoes and one sailboat. Her greatgrandfather, a private in the 20th Maine
was seriously wounded at the Battle of
Little Round Top. How did he survive? That question led her to a two year
study of Civil War medicine. "Who Would
Not Be a Soldier! The Boys of the 20th
Maine" is her first book and she is working
on a second, New Jersey's First Surgeons.
Charleen Bearce Lambert, our
May Joshua L. Chamberlain CWRT
speaker, will introduce the letters of
Alden F. Murch, a collection with over
250 documents. Alden served from
Lincoln’s call to arms in the summer of
1862 through May, 1865, when he was
mustered out at Annapolis Junction from
the U.S. General Hospital, No.1. Ms.
Lambert has followed his trail from Dover-
Foxcroft where he was born to Malone NY
where he is buried. She has traveled to and
studied the battles of Fredericksburg,
Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg where
Alden was wounded at the Peach Orchard
on Day 2 of the battle.
Roger M. Bearce, the
cousin of Ms.
Lambert, entrusted
her with the
collection of his
Uncle Alden’s letters
to sort out...leading
to a 16-year journey
of learning and
exploration for our
May speaker.
Frank J. Williams is the retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island and is one of the country's most renowned experts on Abraham Lincoln. He is the author or editor of over thirteen books, he has contributed chapters to several others, and has lectured on the subject throughout the country. At the same time, he has amassed an unsurpassed private library and archive that ranks among the nation's largest and finest Lincoln collections. In 2000, the Chief Justice was appointed to the United States Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission created by Congress to plan events to commemorate the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln in 2009. Since 1996, Chief Justice Williams has served as founding Chairman of The Lincoln Forum, a national assembly of Lincoln and Civil War devotees. For 9 years, he served as President of the Abraham Lincoln Association and, for 14 years, as President of The Lincoln Group of Boston. He is currently at work on an annotated bibliography of all the Lincoln titles published since 1865. His book of essays, Judging Lincoln, was published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2002. He, with Harold Holzer and Edna Greene Medford, has written The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views, Social, Legal and Pictorial just published by Louisiana State University Press. He also serves as Literary Editor of the Lincoln Herald where his Lincolniana appears. 2009/2010 programs.