Rob Monroe, President               Gary Cowardin, Editor    
9733 Fireside Drive                 1404 Lorraine Ave.       
Glen Allen, VA 23060                Richmond, VA 23227-3735  
rmonroe500@comcast.net              cowardin@juno.com        

Annual Members Dinner - THURSDAY November 14th 6pm
Location:
River Dining Room at
Willow Oaks Country Club
6228 Forest Hill Avenue
Richmond, VA 23225

Menu:
Chicken Night Buffet featuring Fried or Baked Chicken
Choice of two salads
One vegetable
Spaghetti
Choice of two desserts

Cost:
$32.00 per person
A Cash Bar will be available

Dinner Speaker:      (speaker/program info below)

Mail your checks for the dinner payable to the Richmond Civil War Roundtable
and send to my attention: YOUR MONEY HAS TO BE IN TO ART BY TUESDAY 11/12   
Art Wingo            
1414 Patriot Circle  
Glen Allen, VA. 23059

"Stonewall Jackson's Wake Up Call at Malvern Hill"
by
Frank A. O'Reilly

Stonewall Jackson followed up one of his  most  brilliant  campaigns-the
Valley  Campaign-with  one  of  his most dismal: the Seven Days.  No one
understood that better than Jackson.  Faced with  illness  and  physical
exhaustion, Jackson collapsed at White Oak Swamp, but then commanded his
subordinates to rest, "and see if tomorrow we  can  do  something."  The
"something"  was  Malvern  Hill, a tragic battle that saw Jackson try to
exert himself and brave near  death,  but  all  for  nothing.   We  will
examine  what  Jackson did on July 1, 1862-and see if there was anything
he could have done differently to change the outcome of the Seven  Days'
most one-sided affair.                                                  

Frank's  book,  The  Fredericksburg  Campaign:   Winter   War   on   the
Rappahannock,  received  a  2003  nomination  for  the Pulitzer Prize in
Letters.  Released by LSU Press in  December,  2002,  it  won  the  2002
Capital  District (Albany, NY) Book Award; the 2003 James I.  Robertson,
Jr.  Book Award; the 2004 Daniel Laney Book Award; and the 2004  Richard
Barksdale Harwell Book Award.                                           

Frank   received  both  his  BA  and  MA  in  American  History  with  a
concentration on Early American Military History and Civil War  Studies.
He  did  his  undergraduate  work  at Washington & Lee University before
joining the National Park Service at the Fredericksburg  &  Spotsylvania
National  Military  Park.   Frank worked briefly at Independence Hall in
Philadelphia, and then returned to Fredericksburg  as  an  historian  in
1990.  He is currently the Lead Historian for the battlefields.         

Frank has written numerous articles on the Civil War and Mexican War for
national and international journals; and introductions to  quite  a  few
books.   He  released  his  first  book  on  the Fredericksburg Campaign
titled,  Stonewall  Jackson  at  Fredericksburg,  in  1993.   Frank  has
appeared  in  quite  a  few  documentaries,  on  CSPAN, and has lectured
extensively on military history to audiences around the world, from  the
Pentagon to numerous conferences in the United Kingdom at Oxford.       

Frank is currently writing a book on the 1862 Battle of Malvern Hill and
the Seven Days' Battles around Richmond.                                

Meeting Attendance for October: 69
Message from Our President
By the time you read this, Election Day will have  come  and  gone.   In
past  national elections, Virginia has been identified as a battleground
state.  By the amount of advertising we've seen in  the  Richmond  area,
certainly  our  community  is  being  hotly  contested  by Democrats and
Republicans.  However, in all the ads I've seen this election season,  I
haven't seen any mentioning a candidate's military experience.          

In  the  19 th century, the lines between politics and the military were
frequently blurred.  There's not enough  space  in  this  newsletter  to
mention  all  the  men  who  dabbled in both arenas before and after the
Civil War.  Certainly success in one field didn't assure similar results
in the other.  But that didn't stop them from trying.                   

It's  always  interesting  to  see  the  reaction  of people with little
interest in history  when  they  are  told  the  victorious  Confederate
commander  at the Battle of New Market, John Breckinridge, had served as
the Vice President of the United States just four years earlier.  At the
same  time  Breckinridge  served  as V.P., Virginia's governor was Henry
Wise.  Commissioned  a  general  by  Jeff  Davis  in  1861,  Wise  isn't
remembered  for his war exploits as much as he is for his bitter battles
with another former governor turned Confederate general, John Floyd.    

On the Union side, Joshua Chamberlain parlayed the fame he  achieved  at
Gettysburg  into  four consecutive successful runs for Governor of Maine
beginning in 1866.  When U.S.  Grant was elected President in  1868,  he
became  the  first  of  five Union veterans who would serve as America's
commander-in-chief into the 20 th century.  Grant,  Hayes  and  Garfield
served successively if not always successfully.                         

As  I  reflect  on  how  divided  our  country  is  now,  it gives me an
understanding of what America in general, and  Virginia  in  particular,
must have been going through in 1860 and 1861.  Longtime friends who had
so much in common found themselves in heated arguments with one  another
over a bitter political feud.                                           

But  I'm  comforted  in  knowing  that  if  Virginia is referred to as a
battleground state next year, the term will be used figuratively  rather
than literally.                                                         
                                     			Rob
A Message from our Secretary Andy Keller
A vote was held at the regular October  meeting  on  amendments  to  the
RCWRT Constitution which had been published in the September newsletter.
The suggestion of the President that they we voted on  as  a  whole  was
moved  by  Jack  Mountcastle  and  seconded.   The  motion  was approved
unanimously without discussion.  Full details will be  in  the  December
newsletter.     We received one new member  in  the  month  of  October.
Welcome, Charles Bays.

					Andy   secretary.rcwrt@gmail.com
Upcoming Events/Links

Capital of the Confederacy Civil War Show
Will be held at the Richmond Raceway Complex on the weekend of
November 16-17.  Hours are 9-5 on Saturday and 9-3 on Sunday.
Admission is $10.00.


National Park Service Richmond

Richmond Battlefields Association News & Events
www.saverichmondbattlefields.org/events.htm

 
Visit the American Civil War Museum at Tredegar
and the
White House of the Confederacy
www.acwm.org

Pamplin Historical Park and
The National Museum of the Civil War Soldier
www.pamplinpark.org

Chambersburg Civil War Seminars & Tours
civilwarseminars.org

RCWRT Monthly Speakers for 2019

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