SEPT 13, 2007 Les Eldridge will discuss researching and writing Civil War naval historical fiction, ranging from Puget Sound and Hampton Roads to the Atlantic blockade, blockade runners, and arming British-built Confederate raiders. His first two books are The Chesapeake Command (2006) and Gray Raiders, Green Seas (2007).
OCT 11, 2007 Round Table veterans Jim Dimond and Andy Hoyal present a double header. Jim Dimond will discuss John W. Sprague, who led the 63rd Ohio at Corinth and a brigade in Sherman's Georgia campaign, where he won the Medal of Honor. After the war Sprague managed the Northern Pacific RR and was a founder of the City of Tacoma. Andy Hoyal will talk about Shelby Foote, who took 20 years to write his three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative, and who later became the unofficial star of the Ken Burns documentary.
NOV 8, 2007 Elizabeth Vandiver will discuss A Southerner in the Peloponnesian War, Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve's look back at his Civil War service. During the war, Gildersleeve wrote editorials for the Richmond Examiner, rode with the 1st Virginia Cavalry, and served as an aide to General John Brown Gordon, until severely wounded in the Shenandoah in 1864. After the war he remained a passionate Southerner. He was also one of America's greatest classical scholars. An Assistant Professor of Classics at Whitman College, Elizabeth Vandiver has received the American Philological Association's Excellence in Teaching Award and other teaching awards, and has taught several courses for The Teaching Company.
DEC 13, 2007 Professor Tracy McKenzie, of the UW Department of History, will discuss: Both Read the Same Bible: Thoughts on the Civil War's Religious Dimension. He will consider why and how the war was fought. Professor Mckenzie has spoken to us twice before, and his latest book is a study of Knoxville, Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town in Civil War America.
JAN 10, 2008 Mark Tackitt will discuss "The Countermarch that Wasn't: Longstreet at Gettysburg," a careful consideration of Longstreet's maneuvers and delayed offensive on July 2, 1863. Mark Tackitt is a veteran reenactor, a former judge pro tem of Seattle Municipal Court, and a public defender.
FEB 14, 2008 Dr. Lorranie McConaghy will talk about the Civil War on Puget Sound, covering fugitive slaves, the Pacific Republic, Copperhead sentiment, and fear of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah. The talk will relate to the ongoing exhibit at the MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND INDUSTRY, where Dr. McConaghy is an Historian, and WHERE THIS MEETING WILL BE HELD.
MARCH 13, 2008 Richard Miller will discuss the National Battlefield Commisssions for Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chattanooga-Chickamauga, and Antietam Battlefields in the 1890s, and their role in reconciliation, remembrance, race, and the martial spirit of 1898.
APRIL 10, 2008 Dr. Thomas E. O'Connell will discuss Joshua Chamberlain: Bowdoin College Professor, Colonel of the 20th Maine, Medal of Honor winner for Little Round Top, and Governor of Maine. A former president of Bellevue Community College, Dr. O'Connell has taught American Literature, Spanish, and other subjects.
MAY 8, 2008 Fred Wilmoth will discuss Illinois in the Civil War. Known as the "soldier's friend" and "War Governor," Richard Yates put 200,000 soldiers into the field and went to Shiloh after the battle to look after the wounded. Wartime Illinois saw military arrests, the Knights of the Golden Circle, a riot in Fulton County, and attempted suppression of the Chicago Times. Republican Governer Yates coped with a State Constitutional Convention that deemed itself above all other authority, a Democratic legislature that he suspended, and a plot to burn Chicago and liberate Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas. A retired officer, Fred Wilmoth consults for U.S. Army exercises.
