2008
September 18, 2008 Our first meeting features Dick Simpson of Orleans, VT, with a slide show entitled "Gettysburg: America's Greatest Art Park." You'll see some of the well known and some of the lesser known monuments that dominare the battlefield park, and learn about the history of these memorials in bronze and granite.
October 16, 2008 CWRT member Marius Peladeau will speak on "Oliver Otis Howard: Hero or Scapegoat?" O.O. Howard was Maine's senior Major General, a West Point graduate, and praised by Sherman during the Georgia campaign. What really happened at Chancellorsville?
November 20, 2008 CWRT member Curt Mildner presents "What Were They Thinking?" Using extracts from Maine soldiers' letters and diaries, we'll learn what soldiers wrote about their opions of McClellan, Lincoln, slavery. camp life, etc.
December 18, 2008 Mike Nugent, co-author with Eric Wittenberg, of "One Continuous Fight: The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863," will speak on the Union Army's failure to capture or destroy Lee's Army after the Battle of Gettysburg.
2009
January 15, 2009 Author Jean Mary Flahive of Falmouth will speak about the research involved with writing her book, "Billy Boy: The Sunday Soldier of the 17th Maine." Her book is historical fiction, but based on the real story of 20 year-old Billy Laird of Berwick, Maine who enlists in the 17th Maine. Billy can't read or write, and deserts the regiment in a panic.
February 19, 2009 No meeting due to a storm.
March 19, 2009 Peter Dalton returns to our Round Table for a presentation on his book, "Hard Times, Hard Bread and Harder Coffee," the Civil War correspondence of Hezekiah Long of the 20th Maine. Kate Clifford Larson of Winchester MA will speak on her most recent book, "The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln." Larson is an Adjunct Professor of History at Simmons College.
May 21, 2009 We are thrilled that Craig Symonds, retired Professor of History at Annapolis Naval Academy, will return to speak on his most recent book, "Lincoln and his Admirals."
NOTE: Meetings will be in the Morrell Room of the Curtis
Memorial (Brunswick) Library on Pleasant Street, at 7 p.m.
We open our season with Mike Nugent, co-author of "One Continuous Fight: The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863." Mike will speak on Robert E. Lee’s hardships as he moves wagon trains of wounded soldiers and supplies away from the Gettysburg battlefield, while under constant attack by Union cavalry.
Richard Rupp of RI is co-author of the book, "For Cause and For Country: A Study of the Affair at Spring Hill and the Battle of Franklin." His presentation will focus on the 183rd Ohio Infantry at the Battle of Franklin, assigned to fend off John Bell Hood’s attack from the grounds of the Carter house, the center of the Union line.
Union General Benjamin "the Beast" Butler is the general we all love to hate... are we too harsh? UMass/Lowell professor Michael Pierson will tell the story of Ben Butler in New Orleans in the spring of 1862. Michael is the author of "The Mutiny of Fort Jackson: The Untold Story of the Fall of New Orleans."
CWRT member Steve Bunker will tell the story of the cavalry battle at Aldie in June, 1863. Jeb Stuart’s Confederate cavalry are screening the passes as Lee moves his army toward Pennsylvania in the Shenandoah Valley. Union cavalry under Hugh Judson "Kill-Cavalry" Kilpatrick collide with Stuart’s troops in a vicious battle at Aldie, VA.
Kerck Kelsey, CWRT member from Freeport, will present "Plunder in High Places: The Seamy Side of the Civil War." Kerck tells the story of Union officers (and one Cabinet member) who got caught up in the lucrative, but illegal, trade of cotton smuggling.
Ashley Towle of Gorham, graduate of Gettysburg College, was a presenter at the prestigious Civil War Institute in Gettysburg this past Spring. Ashley’s topic is "Damned Black Alligator: Marshall H. Twitchell in Red River Parish," the saga of a Vermont soldier stationed in Louisiana at the end of the war.
March 18, 2010
Historic Site Specialist for the State of Maine, Tom Desjardin will speak on Maine’s Forts in the Civil War. Maine’s coast was open to attack by Confederate commerce raiders, and the Canadian border was subject to guerilla raids. Manned forts were critical to defending Maine’s capital and shipyards from attacks.
April 15, 2010
"Who Would Not be a Soldier"
May 20, 2010
CWRT member, Charleen Lambert, of No. Eastham, MA, will present the story of Alden Murch, 3rd Maine Volunteer, in "Backing Into History." Murch’s 200 Civil War letters were found stuffed in the beams of a barn decades after the war ended.
June 17, 2010 - Annual Awards Dinner
We will be announcing the speaker for our annual awards dinner meeting in the near future…watch the newsletter or website for the announcement of the finalist!!
To celebrate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth, Jerry Wiles of Chebeague Island returns to our Round Table to present the story of Abraham Lincoln's life.
June 11, 2009 - Annual Awards Dinner
Location TBD
Valery Josephson