The Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meetings

CWRT Dec 2025 meeting:Brian Jordan on Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War

For More info: www.chicagocwrt.org The Civil War visited unprecedented violence on the United States. That violence was also inscribed on the bodies and minds of the nearly two million men who donned Union blue between 1861 and 1865. How did Union veterans make sense of their physical, psychological, and emotional wounds as the nation plunged into the years of Reconstruction? How did the politics of the postwar years complicate their reintegration to civilian life and personal healing? Why were so many veterans so unwilling to let go of the war and its legacy, and what urgent messages do those ex-soldiers have for us today? Brian Matthew Jordan is Associate Professor of U.S. Civil War History, Co-Director of the SHSU Civil War Consortium, and Chairperson of the History Department at Sam Houston State University, where he has taught since 2015. Professor Jordan earned his undergraduate degree in Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College (under the tutelage of Gabor S. Boritt and Allen C. Guelzo), and M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees in History at Yale (under the direction of David W. Blight). His first book, Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War, was a finalist (one of three runners-up) for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in History. In its dissertation form, that book won the George Washington Egleston Prize (for Best U.S. History Dissertation at Yale) and John Addison Porter Prize (one of Yale's highest academic honors). 2 Presently, he is at work on Written in Blood: A New History of the U.S. Civil War, a one-volume history of the conflict for Liveright/W.W. Norton, as well as More Than An Eagle on the Button: Black Military Experiences in the Civil War Era (with Lorien Foote and Holly Pinheiro, Jr.). A short history of the battle of South Mountain for the Emerging Civil War series is set to appear next year. Dr. Jordan is a native of Akron, Ohio, and lives north of Houston with his wife and four-year old daughter, Elizabeth (who, despite her youth, has already stomped several battlefields). 

CWRT Nov 2025 Meeting:Chris Kolakowski on Civil War to World War: Simon Bolivar Buckner Sr. and Jr.

 Chris Kolakowski on Civil War to World War: Simon Bolivar Buckner Sr. and Jr. For More Info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.org Not many Civil War generals can claim to have had a son who was a general during World War 2. But Confederate Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner's son, of the same name, had a distinguished U.S. army career. A Kentuckian, Simon Sr. surrendered Fort Donelson to his close prewar army friend, Ulysses Grant, in 1862, and served as a corps commander in the Army of Tennessee. At war's end he surrendered the largest existing Confederate army, that of the Trans-Mississippi Department. After the war he was elected Governor of Kentucky, and ran for Vice-President in 1896. On Nov. 14th Chris Kolakowski will talk about the two Buckners, and their interesting careers. Christopher L. Kolakowski is Director of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, a position he has held since January 6, 2020. He received his BA in History and Mass Communications from Emory and Henry College, and his MA in Public History from the State University of New York at Albany. Chris has spent his career interpreting and preserving American military history with the National Park Service, New York State government, the Rensselaer County (NY) Historical Society, the Civil War Preservation Trust, Kentucky State Parks, the U.S. Army, and the MacArthur Memorial. He has written and spoken extensively on various aspects of military history and leadership from 1775 to the present, and was the inaugural Director of the General George Patton Museum and Center of Leadership at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Chris has published three books on the Civil War and three on World War II in the Pacific. He is a reviewer and contributor to the Air Force Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs and a Senior Fellow at the Consortium of Indo-Pacific Researchers. His latest book, titled Tenth Army Commander, is about General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., who was killed in battle on Okinawa in 1945. 

Chicago CWRT Meeting June 2025: David Power on "The Atlanta Campaign: Missed Opportunities

Chicago CWRT Meeting June 2025 David Power on "The Atlanta Campaign: Missed OpportunitiesFor more info: www.chicagocwrt.org I've got Joe Johnston Dead!" Or so Sherman is said to have exclaimed upon hearing that James B. McPherson had seized Resaca. Famously, that turned out not to be true, one of the great "lost opportunities" of the entire war. But in fact, there were other such turning points in the first month of the campaign, each perhaps more significant than Resaca. On May 16, Sherman's armies stumbled crossing the Oostenaula River, offering Johnston a chance to damage one or more of the Federal corps; and at Dallas, McPherson hesitated again when facing just a single small Confederate division. What would have happened if either of these moments had gone differently? David A. Powell is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute (1983) with a BA in history. He has published numerous articles in various magazines, and more than fifteen historical simulations of different battles. For many years, David's focus was on the epic battle of Chickamauga, and he is nationally recognized for his tours of that important battlefield. The result of that study are five books, the final volume being The 2 Chickamauga Campaign: Barren Victory (2016). Subsequently, he has turned to the study of the battles for Chattanooga. Battle Above the Clouds, concerning the Battle of Lookout Mountain, was published in June of 2017. Decisions at Chickamauga followed in 2018. Two more books, "All Hell Can't Stop Them" (on Missionary Ridge) and Union Command Failure in the Shenandoah Valley both appeared in 2019. More recently The Tullahoma Campaign (co-authored with Eric Wittenberg) and Grant at Chattanooga, were published in 2020. Decisions at Shiloh appeared in 2023, and he is now hard at work on The Atlanta Campaign, a projected multi-volume study. Volume One of Atlanta appeared in July, 2024, with Volume Two to follow in 2025. David, his wife Anne, and their trio of bloodhounds live and work in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. 

Jan 2025 Meeting of the Chicago Civil War Round Table:Bjorn Skaptason spoke to the group about The Battle of Shiloh

 Bjorn Skaptason on The Battle of Shiloh  For more info : WWW.ChiagoCWRT.ORG  At the outset of the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, the Confederates had high hopes for an important strategic victory. They aimed to block the Union advance into Mississippi, and early in the battle, it seemed that they might succeed.  As night fell on the first day of battle, General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, who took command after General Albert Sidney Johnston was shot and died, believed his army was victorious. In what might have been his fatal error, he called a halt to the attacks as darkness approached.  What he didn’t know was that, during the night, thousands of additional Union troops arrived to reinforce Ulysses S. Grant’s battered army. By daybreak, Federal forces numbered nearly 54,000 men near Pittsburg Landing, an advantage of 24,000 men over Beauregard’s army. The greater numbers, and the tactical advantage they provided, proved to be decisive.  Bjorn Skaptason holds degrees from the University of Kansas and Loyola University Chicago. He worked as a seasonal ranger at the National Park Service's Shiloh National Military Park and Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center for two summers while studying history at Loyola. Bjorn has published essays on Ambrose Bierce at Shiloh for the Ambrose Bierce Project Journal, on the United States Colored Troops in the campaign and battle of Brice's Crossroads for the West Tennessee Historical Society Papers, and 2  in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society on The Chicago Light Artillery. A dealer in antiquarian books, Bjorn produced and guest hosted "A House Divided," a live book discussion program webcast from Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago. 

Chicago Civil War Round Talbe Meeting Dec 2024:Jonathan Sebastian on Loyal to a Man: The Civil War in our Backyards

 Jonathan Sebastian on  Loyal to a Man: The Civil War in our Backyards  For More Info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG  In the minds of many, including those who study history, there exists a divide. That is, while history happens everywhere, the real history happens somewhere else. The Civil War is thought of as having been fought in the South and, to an extent this is true. Most of the battles were fought in that region, however all parts of the country were directly impacted by this war. Illinois and even more specifically, the Chicago metropolitan area was no different. Just two hundred years ago, this area would have been unrecognizable to those familiar with all the Chicagoland area has to offer today. What was once an area of prairie with a handful of small towns was transformed dramatically during the 1860s. The people of the Prairie State played a significant role in the war and were themselves directly impacted by that war. So, how did Illinoisans, and more specifically those of Chicago and the DuPage County area, respond to such momentous issues as emancipation and the draft (among other issues) in the context of a national civil war? This presentation will explore this rich local history (some of it is still here in a tangible way!) and its connection to a most significant moment in the development of the United States. A former president of the Chicago CWRT, Jonathan Sebastian earned his B.A. in history from Judson College (now University) and his M.A. in Public History from Loyola University Chicago. He has been an adjunct professor of history at Judson University teaching World History 1500 to the Present and U.S. history. More recently, he was a social studies teacher at Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart. He was a tour guide at Jubilee College State Historic site outside of Peoria, Illinois, a project-based researcher at the Pritzker Military Library, and was the curator of the Fischer Farm historic site in Bensenville, Illinois. Currently, he is an experience facilitator at the Arlington Heights Historical Museum and the education and programs assistant at the Elmhurst History Museum. He is also the author of Bensenville, a volume of the Arcadia Press Series, Images of America.