Sam Craghead, President         Art & Carol Bergeron, Editors
4361F Lakefield Mews            3901 Paces Ferry Road      
Richmond, VA 23231              Chester, VA 23831-1239   

May 2001 PROGRAM

Gary W. Gallagher

"Coming to Terms with Defeat:
Confederates in the Early Postwar Period"

8:00 p.m., Tuesday, May 8, 2001, at the
Boulevard United Methodist Church, 321 N. Boulevard,
Richmond, VA (corner of Boulevard and Stuart Ave.)

Gary W.  Gallagher is the John L.  Nau III Professor in  the
History  of  the  American  Civil  War  at the University of
Virginia.  A native of Los Angeles, California, he  received
his  B.  A.  from Adams State College of Colorado and his M.
A.  and Ph.D.  from the University of Texas at  Austin.   He
taught  for  twelve  years  at  Penn State University before
joining the faculty at the University of Virginia.  Gallagher
is  the  author and editor of dozens of books, including The
Confederate War (1997), Lee and  His  Generals  in  War  and
Memory  (1998),  Fighting  for the Confederacy: The Personal
Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander (1989), and
Stephen  Dodson  Ramseur:  Lee's Gallant General (1985).  He
has won numerous awards, including the 1990 Douglas Southall
Freeman History Award for the best work in Southern history.

Scholars   over   the   past   twenty   years  have  devoted
considerable  attention  to  the   question   of   why   the
Confederacy   lost.   Much  of  their  work  has  emphasized
fissures in  Confederate  society  and  concluded  that  the
society  crumbled  from  within  before  its armies had been
decisively  defeated.   Gallagher  will  argue  that   those
tensions  were not the principal factor in bringing Southern
defeat.  He believes that the Confederacy capitulated in the
Spring  of  1865 because Union armies had demonstrated their
ability   to   crush   organized   Confederate   resistance.
Confederates  in and out of uniform did not reconcile easily
to the harsh reality that the end had come  and  would  have
preferred a peace with Southern independence.  Nevertheless,
they accepted what seemed to them the unequivocal verdict of
the  battlefield.   Later they would fashion a public memory
of the war that gave meaning to their unimaginable loss  and
bitter defeat, but in April and May 1865, they realistically
suppressed all thoughts of large-scale resort to arms.      


How They Surrendered

Professor Gary Gallagher and other scholars have argued that
the  Civil  War  ended  because Confederate generals decided
that their armies could no longer continue the conflict  and
not   because   of   declining  morale  among  the  civilian
population or decisions made by Confederate politicians.  It
seems  appropriate  to review when and where the Confederate
forces capitulated.                                         

o General Robert E.  Lee surrendered his  Army  of
Northern Virginia to Lieutenant General Ulysses S.
Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. 

o General Joseph E.  Johnston surrendered the Army
of the Tennessee and other forces in the Carolinas
and Georgia to Major General William  T.   Sherman
at Durham, North Carolina, on April 26, 1865.     

o  Lieutenant  General  Richard Taylor surrendered
the   army   of   the   Department   of   Alabama,
Mississippi,  and  East Louisiana to Major General
Edward R.  S.  Canby at  Citronelle,  Alabama,  on
May 4, 1865.                                      

o  General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the army
of  the  Trans-Mississippi  Department  to   Major
General  Edward  R.   S.   Canby  at  New Orleans,
Louisiana, on May 26, 1865.                       

o Brigadier General Stand  Watie  surrendered  his
command of Indian troops to Lieutenant Colonel Asa
C.  Matthews at Fort Towson, Indiana Territory, on
June  23,  1865.   This  was  the  last  organized
Confederate land force to lay down its arms.      

o Captain James I.  Waddell surrendered the C.  S.
S.  Shenandoah to British authorities at Liverpool
on November 6, 1865.                              


Review of the April Program



Ernest B.  Furgurson presented  an  informative  talk  based
upon  his  recent book Not War But Murder: Cold Harbor 1864.
He described the battle as Ulysses S.  Grant's worst  defeat
and  Robert  E.  Lee's last great victory.  The carnage left
by the fighting was the worst Virginia had seen  during  the
war.   Never  before  were  so  many  wounded  soldiers left
suffering on the field while generals  worried  about  their
own reputations.                                            

When    Abraham    Lincoln    brought    Grant    east    as
commander-in-chief, he decided to let him run the war.  Grant
chose  to  get out of the political morass in Washington and
to operate with Major General George G.  Meade and the  Army
of  the Potomac.  Grant and Meade were not at all alike, and
this led to tensions between the two generals.  Meade became
very  resentful of Grant and, in letters to his wife, called
him the "rising son." He felt that Grant was  getting  undue
credit for victories that the army had won.                 

Furgurson argued that Cold Harbor was a campaign, not just a
single battle.  It began with the  cavalry  clash  at  Haw's
Shop  on  May  28  and  ended  on June 12, when Meade's army
slipped  away  from  its   trenches   and   marched   toward
Petersburg.   Following  the Battle of the North Anna River,
Grant had hoped to  move  his  army  southward  and  get  to
Richmond   before   Lee   could  intervene.   Lee  used  his
intelligence gathering forces well and was able to block the
Federals near the road crossing at Cold Harbor.             

Grant  drew  reinforcements  from  Major General Benjamin F.
Butler's Army of the James at Bermuda Hundred.  At the  same
time,  Lee  brought  troops  from  southern Virginia and the
Shenandoah Valley  to  bolster  his  army.   The  two  sides
skirmished  for several days before heavy fighting broke out
on June 1.  All this time, the Confederates were digging in.
Grant's  best  opportunity  occurred on June 2, but he could
not get all of his attack elements in place  on  time.   The
main assault would not be launched until the following day. 

By the morning of June 3, the Confederate army was ready. It
had improved its  entrenchments  so  that  they  bent  in  a
shallow  crescent that would be able to pour a flanking fire
into any attacking force.  The assault came  about  4:30  in
the  morning and stretched along a front of about six miles.
Thousands of Federals were  cut  down  without  even  coming
close  to  the  Confederate  trenches.   In  one  place, the
attackers broke through Lee's line but were pushed back by a
counterattack.  The battle was over in about thirty minutes.
Union losses are not know precisely but  may  have  numbered
close to 7,000 men killed, wounded, and missing.            

Not wishing to admit such a disastrous defeat, Grant refused
to grant Lee's requests for a truce to bring in the  wounded
and  bury  the  dead.  Days passed, and hundreds of Federals
died needlessly.  According to  Furgurson,  both  Grant  and
Meade  shared blame for the debacle.  Grant left the details
of the assault to Meade, but the latter did  not  conduct  a
proper reconnaissance or organize the attack properly.  Only
after the battle did Meade learn that  Grant  had  not  been
responsible  for the reports in Northern newspapers and that
he had not tried to slight the army commander.              

The effects of Cold Harbor were felt long afterwards.   What
has  been  called  the "Cold Harbor syndrome" descended upon
the Union army.   When  the  troops  reached  Petersburg  in
mid-June,  they  refused to assault the prepared Confederate
earthworks and let an easy victory slip out of their hands. 


Announcements


New Round Table Raffle

Our raffle has gotten better!  Rather than simply  taking  a
chance on some cash, members now have the opportunity to win
a book.  For those of you who missed the April gathering, we
gave  away  a  copy  of  Ernest Furgurson's new book on Cold
Harbor.  The prize at our May  meeting  will  be  Battle  of
Ball's  Bluff:  The  Fateful  Clash  of  North  and South at
Leesburg, Virginia, October 21, 1861, by Kim Bernard Holien.
It  is  signed  by  the author.  Proceeds from the raffle go
toward battlefield preservation, so be ready to  purchase  a
number of chances.                                          


Fredericksburg National Cemetery Program

On May 26, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania  County  National
Military Park will sponsor a luminaria at the Fredericksburg
National Cemetery.  Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts will place  a
luminaria at each of the 15,300 graves.  The candles are lit
at sunset, and a military bugler plays "Taps"  every  thirty
minutes throughout the program, which runs from 8 p.  m.  to
11 p. m.                                                    

Throughout the night, visitors are encouraged to stop at six
different points of interest in the cemetery.  At each stop,
volunteers give a short,  two-minute  presentation  about  a
certain  aspect  of  the cemetery's history.                


Summer History Courses

Penn State  University's  Fayette  Campus  is  offering  two
summer undergraduate history courses in conjunction with the
Blue & Gray Education Society.  Participants can earn  three
college credits.  The first is History 297, Section 100, and
will be held June 4-9 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.   Presented
by  Dr.   Stephen  Woodworth,  assistant  professor at Texas
Christian University, the class is "Studies in the  American
Civil  War:  The  Struggle  for Tennessee, from Tullahoma to
Chickamauga." It  will  include  classroom  instruction  and
tours of historic sites.                                    

The  second  class  is History 297, Section 101, and will be
held July 16-21 at Gettysburg,  Pennsylvania.   Dr.   Brooks
Simpson,  professor  at  Arizona State University, will lead
"Decision at Gettysburg." This class also includes tours  of
the  Gettysburg  battlefield.   For  more  information, call
(724) 430-4215 or write to:                                 

Office of Continuing Education
Penn State Fayette Campus     
P. O. Box 519                 
Uniontown, PA 15401-9962      


Richmond Civil War Round Table Newsletter
Art & Carol Bergeron, Editors
3901 Paces Ferry Road
Chester, VA 23831-1239