The Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meetings

 Keith Bohannon on Wheeler’s Cavalry in the Atlanta Campaign For more info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.ORG Keith Bohannon will examine General Joe Wheeler's background and the operations of his command from May-September 1864. During much of this time, Wheeler's command guarded the flanks of the army and protected vital railroads from Union cavalry raids. Often his cavalry, dismounted, fought in the lines against Sherman's infantry. Wheeler's decisive defeat of Union cavalry forces during the McCook-Stoneman Raid is arguably the high point of his career. Dr. Keith Bohannon is Professor of History at the University of West Georgia, where he teaches courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Old South, and Georgia history. He is the co-editor, with Randall Allen, of Campaigning with Old Stonewall in Virginia: The Letters of Ujanirtus Allen, Company F, 21st Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Infantry (LSU Press, 1998), author of The Giles Artillery (Virginia Regimental Series) and is the author of numerous essays, book reviews, and scholarly journal articles. He has appeared on C-Span numerous times. Prior to his appointment to the faculty at West Georgia, Dr. Bohannon worked as a historian, interpreter, and living historian with the National Park Service at multiple Civil War sites. 

January 2026 Meeting of the Chicago Civil War Round TableGuy Fraker on Lincoln the LawyerFor More info: WWW. ChicagoCWRT.ORGConsulting with Lincoln scholars, Guy Frakerrealized that Lincoln's formative years on the Eighth Judicial Circuit hadnever been deeply explored. This led him to the counties of the circuit,examining the nature of his cases, the identity of his clients, opponents,associates, and the towns to which he regularly traveled. From this camehis Lincoln's Ladder to the Presidency, the Eighth Judicial Circuit,which was published in 2012, with a paperback edition reissued in October 2023.The second book, Looking for Lincoln in Illinois - a Guide to Lincoln'sEighth Judicial Circuit, was published in 2017. Fraker has written andspoken extensively about Lincoln on the Circuit, not only in the State ofIllinois, but at various other venues around the country.Retired Bloomington, Illinois lawyer Guy Fraker was consultant on andparticipant in Abraham Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency, anaward-winning nationally distributed documentary produced by WILL-TV (PBS) Hewas Co-curator of Prologue to the Presidency, a permanent exhibitat the David Davis Mansion, a state historical site in Bloomington, IL.

Date: February 2, 1995Speaker: David DonaldTopic: The Reticence of Abraham Lincoln- Chicago Civil War Round Table Monthly Meeting

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). 

 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.