Richard Forrester, President           Rob Monroe, Editor       
8008 Spottswood Road                   2416 Edenbrook Dr.       
Richmond, VA 23229                     Richmond, VA 23228-3040  
dforrester@verizon.net                 RMonroe500@comcast.net   
February 2006 PROGRAM

A. Wilson Greene
"Petersburg: Confederate City in the Crucible of War"

8:00 p.m., Tuesday, February 14, 2006, at the
Boulevard United Methodist Church, 321 N. Boulevard,
Richmond, VA (corner of Boulevard and Stuart Ave.) Enter
the basement door on the right side under the front steps.

A.  Wilson Greene  is  the  Executive  Director  of  Pamplin
Historical  Park  &  the  National  Museum  of the Civil War
Soldier.  He served for 17  years  with  the  National  Park
Service  as  a historian and manager at a number of historic
sites including the Fredericksburg and  Petersburg  National
Battlefields.  He was the founder and first president of the
Association for the Preservation of  Civil  War  Sites,  the
predecessor of the Civil War Preservation Trust.  Mr. Greene
holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees  in  American  History
from   Florida   State   University   and   Louisiana  State
University, respectively.  Mr.  Greene  has  addressed  more
than  80  Civil War Round Tables nationwide and has directed
or participated in  dozens  of  Civil  War  symposiums.   He
serves  on  the  National  Advisory  Board  of the Civil War
Preservation  Trust  and   has   authored   more   than   25
publications  on  the Civil War and Southern History.  Among
his recent books are Breaking the Backbone of the Rebellion:
The Final Battles of the Petersburg Campaign and the updated
Whatever You Resolve To Be: Essays on Stonewall Jackson.    

Mr.  Greene will be  speaking  about  his  forthcoming  book
(2006 release), Petersburg: Confederate City in the Crucible
of War.  Petersburg was Virginia's  second-largest  city  in
1860 and a major transportation hub connecting Richmond with
North Carolina, south-central Virginia, and  Tidewater.   It
was also the locus of the longest military siege in American
history from June 1864 through April 1865.  Mr.  Greene will
chronicle  the  experiences  of  the city's 18,000 residents
during this time as they transitioned from  a  predominately
Union  community  to  a stronghold of Confederate support by
war's end.                                                  



Summary of January Meeting


Roger Mudd

"If our speaker did not show tonight my name would be Mudd,"
quipped  Dick  Forrester as he opened the Richmond Civil War
Round Table's first meeting of 2006.  Fortunately  for  Dick
and  the  rest of the RCWRT, our speaker, former CBS and NBC
newsman Roger Mudd, was indeed in attendance.   Mudd  stated
that  he  would  be speaking to the Round Table as a history
buff rather than a historian.  That certainly  didn't  deter
the   overflow  crowd  that  packed  into  the  basement  of
Boulevard United Methodist Church.                          

"I'm astonished so many people showed up to see if I'd  give
away  this gavel," joked outgoing president Forrester to his
mass audience.  He did indeed  turn  over  the  Round  Table
reigns  to  new  president Shep Parsons whose quick work had
lured Mudd to visit the RCWRT on short notice.              

"It's always a delight to come back  to  the  town  where  I
started,"  Mudd  remarked.  The veteran reporter landed what
he described as his "first serious job"  with  the  Richmond
News  Leader  in 1953.  On Mudd's first day at work the city
was abuzz with the news of the death of famed writer Douglas
Southall  Freeman  the  previous  day.   Like  Freeman, Mudd
possessed a love of history  and  immersed  himself  in  the
Capital City's past.                                        

"I  tried  to  learn  the  seven hills of Richmond but never
found them all," he confessed.                              

In the 1950s the News Leader owned WRNL and  made  Mudd  the
radio station's first news director.  Just before one of his
updates an announcer introduced him, "Here's Roger News  and
the  Mudd." The young newsman began to chuckle and only made
it through his  update  after  turning  off  his  microphone
several times to laugh out loud.                            

Mudd  married  E. J. Spears in Richmond.  His wife is a true
child of the South he acknowledged.  Mudd  drew  a  roar  of
laughter  from  the  crowd  as  he  recalled  how E.J.  told
acquaintances she was moving "up north" to Fairfax County.  

Not all of Mudd's talk centered on his news career.  He also
spoke on his distant relative, Dr.  Samuel Mudd, the man who
set  John  Wilkes  Booth's  broken   leg   after   Lincoln's
assassination.   The Maryland physician owned slaves and was
probably a Confederate sympathizer, Mudd explained.  After a
speedy trial, Dr.  Mudd was found guilty and escaped hanging
by a mere one vote.  Sent to a prison in the remote  Florida
Keys,  he  was  pardoned by President Andrew Johnson in 1868
for his work in controlling a yellow fever outbreak.        

Following his  talk,  Mudd  took  many  questions  from  the
audience,  most pertaining to his long, distinguished career
as a  journalist.   He  surprised  Round  Table  members  by
stating  that  the  1954  prison  break  at  Oregon Hill was
possibly the most gratifying story  he  ever  covered.   The
most  traumatic  event  he reported was the assassination of
Robert F.  Kennedy.                                         

Mudd admitted that he "fell in  love  with  the  legislative
process"  while  covering  the  filibuster that preceded the
Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The passage of  that  legislation
was  the  most historically significant event of his career,
Mudd said.                                                  

He reminisced about Walter Cronkite and Charles Kuralt,  two
of  his  former  colleagues at CBS.  Mudd drew another great
burst of laughter from the room when he professed  having  a
"minimum  high  regard"  for Dan Rather.  Television network
ownership has changed and news coverage has  suffered,  Mudd
lamented.  News departments are now viewed as profit centers
that must pay their way, he said.                           

After leaving the news business Mudd worked for The  History
Channel  until  his  retirement  in 2004.  He was questioned
about the abundance of World War II programming on the cable
outlet  (some  viewers  refer  to it as The Hitler Channel).
Mudd stated that with the downfall of Communism,  WWII  film
footage  from  former  Eastern Bloc countries has now become
available to film  and  video  producers  from  the  Western
World.  The result: more World War II documentaries.        

In  other  news  from  the  January  meeting,  the  Richmond
Battlefields Association sent a kind  letter  to  the  RCWRT
thanking the Round Table for its recent donation to the RBA.
Alex Wise announced that the American Civil  War  Center  At
Historic  Tredegar is due to open in September.  Waite Rawls
introduced the Museum  of  the  Confederacy's  newest  staff
member, our own Sam Craghead.                               



Controversial Confederates to Take Center Stage

Nearly 150 years after  the  Civil  War,  controversy  still
swirls  around  the  lives  and  careers of some Confederate
military leaders.  Saturday, February 25, the Museum of  the
Confederacy  and  the  Library  of  Virginia  will sponsor a
symposium on "Controversial Confederates."                  

The museum's 2006  symposium  includes  lectures  on  Nathan
Bedford  Forrest  by  biographer  Brian  Steele Wills; James
Longstreet and Col.  John S.  Mosby, by  biographer  Jeffrey
D.  Wert; Jubal A.  Early, by Gary W.  Gallagher; and George
Pickett by biographer Lesley J.  Gordon.  The symposium will
close   with   a   panel   discussion   about  controversial
Confederate leaders and how they illuminate the larger study
of Confederate and Civil War history.                       

The  symposium is being held 10am to 4pm in the Lecture Hall
of the Library of Virginia, 800 E.  Broad St.   in  downtown
Richmond.  Free parking is available in the garage under the
library.  The cost of the event is $20  for  museum  members
and Library of Virginia donors, $25 for others, and includes
a  box  lunch.   Pre-registration  is  required   at   (804)
649-1861, ext.  28.                                         



March Events

Next month Harold Holzer, Senior Vice President for External
Affairs  at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, will
present a lecture on Art in the Civil War South.  The  event
will  be  held at noon on Thursday, March 16 at the Virginia
Historical Society, 428 N.   Boulevard  in  Richmond.   This
lecture is free to Museum of the Confederacy members showing
their  membership  cards  but  seating  is  offered   on   a
first-come,  first-served  basis.  Admission for non-members
is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors, and $3  for  children  and
students.                                                   

On Saturday, March 18, the  Museum  of  the  Confederacy  is
offering   a   bus  tour  of  Stuart's  famous  ride  around
McClellan's lines.  Tickets for the tour (being lead by  JEB
Stuart  IV,  JEB  Stuart V, and JEB Stuart VI, accomanied by
well-known cavalry historian Scott Mauger and Ed Sanders  of
the National Park Service) are $150 per person and include a
$100 donation to the museum.                                



RBA and CWPT Acquire Land at Frayser's Farm

The Richmond Battlefields Association (RBA)  and  the  Civil
War Preservation Trust (CWPT) have collaborated to acquire a
crucial 40-acre  parcel  in  the  heart  of  Frayser's  Farm
Battlefield.   The  tract includes land where George Meade's
Pennsylvanians clashed with Alabamians under  Cadmus  Wilcox
on June 30, 1862 during the Seven Days Battles.             

The  land  is  not  yet paid for and the RBA must contribute
$175,000 this year to conclude the deal.  The association is
calling  on  its  members  and others to help them raise the
funds necessary to make the sale final.   The  RBA  welcomes
contributions to:                                           

Richmond Battlefields Association
P.O. Box 13945                   
Richmond, VA 23225               

More information on the RBA and its preservation efforts can
be found on the association's website:                      

www.SaveRichmondBattlefields.org



Round Table Dues

It's that time again.  Time to  pull  out  our  wallets  and
check  books  to  pay our Round Table dues for the new year.
Once again, the  Ides  of  March  (March  15)  will  be  the
deadline.  Dues are $30 for residents, $40 for couples.  For
those  living  at  least  75  miles  outside  of   Richmond,
non-resident  dues are $15 for individuals, $20 for couples.
For seniors  65  and  older  with  at  least  ten  years  of
membership,  dues  are  $15  for  individuals  and  $20  for
couples.  Dues are $30 for international members and $15 for
students age 13 to 17.                                      

You may pay your dues at the Round Table's February or March
meetings or by mailing your check to:                       

Sandy Parker, RCWRT Secretary
P.O. Box 37052               
Richmond, VA  23234          

Thanks for your help in making 2006
another great year for the Round Table!


RCWRT Monthly Speakers for 2006

Richmond Civil War Round Table Newsletter
Rob Monroe, Editor     
2416 Edenbrook Dr.     
Richmond, VA 23228-3040