The American Civil War from a Global Perspective
Our speaker for the February meeting, David A Smith, will be making a return visit to NY from Baylor University in Waco Texas, which was covered with 1 to 3 inches of "frozen wintry mix" while New York was being hit with over 10 inches of white fluffy snow! From Waco TX to NY and everywhere in between... quite a storm! Congratulations and our thanks to all of you who bravely made it to Monday's CWF meeting!
The meeting will take place on Monday, Feb 16th at Draught 55, 245 East 55 St, NY NY. Our meetings start at 6:00PM sharp with a pay bar and socializing starting at 5:30PM. If you plan to attend please contact Ann Plogsterth at either 212-877-6814 or plogsterth@aol.com. Cost is $ 65 which covers the dinner and expenses to bring our speaker to our city. As usual, your earliest possible reply greatly aids both our planning and the planning by the restaurant to furnish the correct number of meals. As a reminder to everyone, showing up for a meeting without having notified Ann of your attendance in advance will possibly result in us not having enough food for everyone who attends. So please do not let that happen!
Jim Santagata
VP Operations
Mobile: 718-930-0611
As already mentioned, David is a return speaker to the CWF. He was extremely well received during his past visits! I remember him as one of the most engaging speakers we've ever had! David is presently a senior lecturer in American history at Baylor. He has additional appointments as a Fleet Seminar Professor at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and a visiting lecturer at the Center for European Studies at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. His teaching specialties include Military, Maritime, and Global history. He received his undergraduate degree in History from Texas State University in San Marcos, and his PhD in Modern American History from the University of Missouri in the year 2000.
His latest book is Mahan: The Life of Maritime Strategy’s Greatest Revolutionary which will be out from the Naval Institute Press in spring 2026 and will be the first full-length biography of American naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan in almost 50 years.
His other books include A New Force at Sea: George Dewey and the Rise of the American Navy, and The Price of Valor: The Life of Audie Murphy, the Life of America’s Most Decorated Hero of WWII. He has also written about other aspects of American cultural and political history. His weekly show about art, culture, and history, David & Art, has been carried on KWBU, Waco’s NPR station, since 2018 and for 8 years before that he wrote a weekly column for the Waco Tribune-Herald on Art, Culture, and History.
David’s topic in February will be The Civil War in Global Perspective. The larger world, by 1860's standards, was becoming increasingly interconnected. Advances in transportation and communication along with revolutionary weapons and ways of waging war, ensured that other countries would have to follow the war's twists and turns with an eye towards their own self-interests, while also feeling the war's effects at this dawn of globalization. His talk examines the Civil War from this global perspective. From looking at questions about slavery and emancipation, to tracking naval arms races across the Atlantic; from difficult diplomacy that threatened to widen the war, to the growing territorial ambitions of European nations, looking at the Civil War from outside the US weaves a very different story from that with which Americans are familiar.
Fred Grant (the general’s son) at Vicksburg
Our topic for our March meeting will be the Battle of Vicksburg, as seen through a unique perspective (through the memoirs of a young man, the son of US Grant). The meeting will be held on March 23 (location to be announced). The speaker will be the historian and author Albert A. Nofi. Please see the Book Review of the book to be presented by Mr. Nofi, his story on Fred Grant at Vicksburg: Fred Grant at Vicksburg: A Boy’s Memoir at His Father’s Side During the American Civil War. Edited and Annotated by Albert A. Nofi. El Dorado Hills: CA: Savas Beatie, 2025. Softcover, 137 pp. $16. To attend the evening gathering, please contact Ann Plogsterth at plogsterth@aol.com
Here is a Book Review of the book to be presented by Mr. Nofi, his story on Fred Grant at Vicksburg: Fred Grant at Vicksburg: A Boy’s Memoir at His Father’s Side During the American Civil War. Edited and Annotated by Albert A. Nofi. El Dorado Hills: CA: Savas Beatie, 2025. Softcover, 137 pp. $16.95. Reviewed by Brian Swartz
Readers expecting to experience the Vicksburg Campaign through a pre-adolescent’s rough-honed grammar will pleasantly encounter a fast-flowing and well-written historical tale in Fred Grant at Vicksburg—and it’s told by Fred himself.
The oldest child of Ulysses S. and Julia Dent Grant, Fred was 12 years old when his mother took him to Memphis in late winter 1863. Then he sailed on “a tin-clad gunboat” (9) to join his father at his steamboat headquarters at Young’s Point on March 29, 1863. Over the ensuing weeks and months Fred accompanied the Army of the Tennessee and Ulysses Grant down the Mississippi River, across it into Mississippi, and all along the roads to Jackson and Vicksburg.
His paternity gave Fred a freedom of movement and a “hands off” status unavailable to the common soldier. He witnessed army logistics and camp life, met his father’s top generals and Rear Admiral David D. Porter (who favorably impressed the lad), and came under fire at Port Gibson and the Big Black River, Fred suffering a leg wound during the latter battle.(48)
Modern Civil War historiography obscured his story. Then, while reading “a recent book on the Vicksburg campaign,” historian and author Albert A. Nofi checked the reference for “one of Fred’s escapades” and “discovered … five thousand words” written in 1907 by Fred concerning “hanging out with the Army of the Tennessee.” (VIII)
Further research led Nofi to find the approximately 18,000-word serialized memoir that Fred wrote and the National Tribune published in 1887. Editing and annotating this memoir, Nofi utilizes it as the primary content of his new book.
He sets the stage in Section 1: The Memoir, with Fred speaking at the November 1907 meeting of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee in Vicksburg. Fred explained that his address (drawn from the 1887 memoir) blended “the campaign and siege of Vicksburg as taken from official records, as well as incidents seen by me when a boy of twelve.” (1) Then he introduced the main characters and sets the timeline for Ulysses Grant’s preliminary moves against Vicksburg.
Fred’s story unfolds over the next four parts, each presented as originally published in 1887:
Part I: The Mighty Grapple with the Stronghold at Vicksburg;
Part II: Through the Camps;
Part III: Fighting Jack Logan;
Part IV: Grant’s Lieutenants, Corps and Division Leaders.
Parts I through III move chronologically. Pausing to introduce such “Grant’s Lieutenants” as William T. Sherman, John A. McClernand, James B. McPherson, and John A. Logan, Part IV returns to the action as the siege dragged on. Then Confederate Gen. John C. Pemberton sought surrender terms on July 3. “I was with my father when this news reached him, but I noticed no excitement in his manner while receiving it,” Fred reported. “Later in the afternoon” he rode with his father and “several of his staff” to where Ulysses S. Grant and Pemberton “went to one side, talking to each other with interest.” (64)
Fred returned with Ulysses to their tent to wait and was present when “a messenger … handed to Gen. Grant a note, which he opened immediately. In a moment my father gave a sigh of relief and said calmly, ‘Vicksburg has surrendered!’” In this way I happened to be the first to hear that the Gibraltar of America had been forced to fall to the Army of the Tennessee,” Fred noted. (66)
Such behind-the-scenes details are spread across Fred Grant at Vicksburg as Fred describes events and personalities from a remarkably observant viewpoint. Although for him the campaign and siege could be considered one grand adventure, he paid attention to details. I particularly enjoyed his Part I description of watching “six gunboats” and “three fragile transports” run past Vicksburg after dark on April 16, 1863. (14).
“Fred noted that he wrote these memoirs almost entirely from memory, not resorting to any references or documents,” Nofi states. (IX) “Fred at times got a name or a place wrong.” (X) To find such errors, Nofi thoroughly researched the events, locations, people, dates, etc. in the book. Placed per page, the copious footnotes identify and correct the few errors and provide a wealth of background information pertaining to the Vicksburg campaign.
The book concludes with Section II: Fred Grant, in Context; six appendices; and a bibliography. With its two period maps and 40-plus illustrations and photographs, Fred Grant at Vicksburg visually backs up the written memoirs. The book is an excellent addition to private Civil War libraries.
Cotton in the Civil War
Our next meeting will be held at Draught 55 located at 245 East 55th Street
Price is $ 65 payable at the table. To rsvp, please contact Ann Plogsterth at either 212-877-6814 or plogsterth@aol.com
The Confederacy believed European nations, particularly Great Britain and France, were so dependent on Southern cotton for their textile industries that they would be forced to either intervene in the war or to at least grant diplomatic recognition to the South. To coerce Europe, Southern leaders enacted an informal embargo, even burning 2.5 million bales of cotton to create an artificial shortage.
The strategy failed because European mills had stockpiled surpluses from bumper crops in the late 1850s. By the time the "Cotton Famine" hit Europe in late 1862, alternative sources had been established in India, Egypt, and Brazil. Small fast ships slipped through the Union naval blockade to exchange cotton for vital military supplies, including weapons, ammunition, and even British-built warships like the C.S.S. Alabama. The Union's naval blockade aimed to suffocate the Southern economy by stopping cotton exports. As Union armies advanced into the South, they seized "contraband" cotton, sending it to Northern mills or selling it to fund their own war efforts. The high price of cotton—which quickly soared from 10 cents per pound to $1.89 per pound by 1864 (approximately $74 per pound in 2025 dollars!) led to rampant smuggling and illegal partnerships between Union officers and cotton speculators. The profitability of cotton had directly fueled the expansion of slavery into the Deep South, with over a million enslaved people quickly moved to labor on cotton plantations. After the war, restoring cotton production was considered absolutely essential for national recovery, and by 1870 production levels had finally surpassed those of 1860. This left many now "free" former slaves still hopelessly captured in life-long cycles of debt and poverty, with cotton still playing a major role in their lives of misery.
Our speaker for the evening will be Stan Weinstein, pictured on the right in the family photo below, who has spoken to our group several times before. His past topics have included Jews in the Civil War, and the Confederate Cabinet, and he has enjoyed those speaking engagements so much that he is now a member of our CWFMNY!
Stan had been in the advertising business for almost 40 years, working at such well known agencies as Grey Advertising, Marschalk, McCann-Erickson and Lois/EJL. Some of the accounts he has worked on include Coca-Cola; Nabisco (Ritz and Wheat Thins); Black & Decker (Dustbuster); US Airways; Heublein (Smirnoff Vodka); WNET/Channel 13; Minolta Cameras; New York State Lottery. After working in the advertising business, Stan took a teaching position in the business school at Hofstra University. He taught Advertising and Marketing on the graduate level for ten years. He is retired, but has focused his energies on developing and making presentations on a wide variety of subjects, such as the Civil War, Baseball , and various historical aspects of the Jewish Experience, such as Jews of the Wild West. Stan resides in Merrick, Long Island. He is married to his lovely wife Marcia and is a father of two great sons, Scott and Brian… and two fabulous grandsons, Trevor and Spencer.
The Battle of Mobile Bay
The talk will be led by Paul Brueske
Location: Connolly’s 14 East 47th Street NYC.
The meeting will be held on Monday, December 8th, which doesn't leave much time for you to make your reservation with Ann Plogsterth (see contact info below). BUT... this December meeting will be held at a completely new location for the CWFMNY! Draught 55 is not available to us during the pre-Christmas rush of holiday parties in NY, so we'll be heading to a great place, one where we held a recent CWF Board Meeting so we could check the place out, Connolly's Restaurant and Pub, https://www.connollyspubandrestaurant.com/ . We will be meeting at their midtown Branch, which is at 14 East 47th Street, NY NY where we will be in a private dining room located in the rear, past the wonderfully lively bar! Note: Since they have two locations, make sure you go to their East 47th Street Midtown Branch!
And this meeting really has to be a strong showing by the CWF membership! To reserve any night in December, at just about anywhere we looked, we must guarantee a minimum turnout of 25 people, yes, TWENTY-FIVE! That means that the CWFMNY will have to PAY Connally's for an attendance of twenty five people for the meeting and dinner even if fewer than that number show up for the meeting! So please go to work on your Holiday Calendar now, and try to set Monday, Dec 8th, aside to attend our Holiday meeting, or we will be paying Connally's for all the empty seats and leftover food!
Our speaker for this meeting, Paul Brueske, comes to us all the way from the University of South Alabama, where he combines my two favorite pursuits, namely Track and Field (he is the University's T&F Coach!) and Civil War Scholarship! Yes, he is the University's Track and Field Coach, not a History Professor! Hmmmm... I wonder what he would say about Henry Halleck's "blazingly fast" march while leading the Union Army at a "speed" of three miles per day in the Siege of Corinth, from April to May of 1862?!?
He's pictured here with one of his two books on the Civil War in the Mobile Alabama area, an area that General Grant considered to be of great importance in ending the war, since its fall would eliminate a vital Confederate logistical center and put one of the final nails in the coffin of the Confederacy. It is titled "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day": The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign of 1865." His other book on the war-ending activities in the Mobile area is "The Last Siege: The Mobile Campaign, Alabama 1865".
You'll notice the two mentions of the year 1865. While we all know that Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at the Battle of Appomattox ended the civil war in Virginia in April of 1865, the last siege of the war was actually the Mobile (AL) campaign, expertly covered by Paul, which is an often-overlooked battle that was crucial to securing a complete Union victory. In fact the final surrender of Confederate forces actually happened in the state of Alabama, in May of 1865, which was news to me after my 40 year long study of the Civil War! So Paul's presentation will be on a combination of the material contained in both books, an overall presentation covering The 1865 Mobile Campaign. You'll have to admit, it is pretty rare for us to have an entirely new portion of the CW presented to us after 16 years of CWFMNY meetings!
This meeting will be held, as stated above, on Monday, Dec 8th, at Connolly's Restaurant and Pub Midtown Branch, at 14 East 47th Street, NY NY. We will return to our usual 6:00 PM start, and I'm sure Connolly's would be happy to help quench your thirst with a pay bar from 5:30 PM if you arrive early. Please note: Besides the CWF having to guarantee payment for at least 25 people for this meeting, the cost of the meeting plus dinner will be $65 per person instead of our usual $60 cost at D55.
So, if you plan to attend, please contact Ann Plogsterth at plogsterth@aol.com, or at 212-877-6814. And don't be bashful about this one... bring your family and friends and start celebrating the holidays a bit early with them!
Finally, since Draught 55 has left us having to scurry to find a replacement location for our meetings several times now, we are also considering adding a new location for some or all of our future meetings. So please consider providing your comments, to me by email or to any CWFMNY Officer at the meeting, regarding how you feel about Connolly's as a possible "home". I believe the Lincoln Group of NY will also be checking them out for their December meeting, one week before us.
“Grant’s Enforcer” : Taking on the Klan
A 19th Century War on Terror A rising wave of racist violence in the South prompted President Grant to take legal and military action against the Ku Klux Klan. Written by Guy Gugliotta Reviewed by Fergus M. Bordewich Wall Street Journal 8 July 2025 Amos Akerman may be the most consequential attorney general you’ve never heard of. Under President Ulysses S. Grant he gave federal teeth to the new 14th Amendment, personally leading a successful judicial battle against the Ku Klux Klan’s war of terror across the Reconstruction-era South.
Mr. Gugliotta narrates the story of the South Carolina campaign in vivid, anecdote-rich detail. He strangely overlooks the Klan war across the rest of the South, a significant omission which undermines a full understanding of Grant’s policy. However, he is especially deft when steering the reader through the tangled politics of Reconstruction, making good use of diaries and letters, contemporary newspaper accounts and congressional hearings.
Lincoln and Douglass
“Unlikely Collaborators: Federick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Promise of America”
The talk will be led by Jonathan White
Location: Draught 55 (245 East 55th Street, NYC)
For our October meeting, our speaker will be Jonathan White, who I [Jim Santagata] first met many years ago at the Lincoln Forum in Gettysburg, and I also saw him deliver a speech in Bryant Park in the summer of 2014, all before we finally had him speak at our CWFMNY meeting in March of 2015, when he spoke on the subject of Lincoln's Last Dream.
Jonathan is currently the Vice President of that same Lincoln Forum, assisting President Harold Holzer in running the three day annual Gettysburg event that is undoubtedly the premier Lincoln and CW-related event in the US. He is also professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University in Newport News Virginia, an extension school of the very prestigious College of William and Mary. He has won many awards in the areas of teaching excellence, mentoring, excellence in Research, the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Prize, and the Penn State History Department 's Outstanding Alumni Award. He is the author or editor of 21 books that cover a variety of topics related to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. His recent books include A House Built by Slaves: African-American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (2022); Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade Running, and the Slave Trade (2023); A Great and Good Man: Rare First-Hand Accounts and Observations of Abraham Lincoln (2024); New York City in the Civil War (written with Timothy Orr, 2025) and Measuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglas on Abraham Lincoln, also 2025. This is the book that will likely be the main source of his October 20th presentation, titled "Unlikely Collaborators: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Promise of America". We are all plenty familiar with both of these historic giants, with their beginnings and their rapidly growing relationship, so I see no need to try to provide any explanatory background, but will instead leave all that to Jonathan.
And now, on to the details of the evening. The meeting will be held at Draught 55, at 245 East 55th Street, and the cost will be $60 per person.
To accommodate our speaker's travel plans, i.e. to allow him to get back to the airport in time for his return flight to Virginia that evening, this meeting will not begin with dinner, but will begin instead with the start of Jonathan's presentation, at 5:30 PM sharp! Please do not plan on walking in at 5:30, or you will interrupt the presentation and will delay our carefully planned schedule!!! Everyone should already be seated by 5:30! I strongly suggest that you aim for an arrival time no later than 5:15PM, recognizing that this is a full 45 minutes earlier than the usual start time of our meetings.
Dinner will begin after the completion of the presentation and a Q&A period, probably around 6:45PM. If you have any questions regarding these changes, or about any other matters, please don't hesitate to reach out to me for an answer.
And most importantly, if you plan to attend the meeting, please contact Ann Plogsterth at 212-877-6814, or at plogsterth@aol.com so that we can give the restaurant an accurate count of the number of people to be served.
I look forward to seeing everyone there, since this will be my final meeting of the year before heading back down south to Sarasota FL.
Talk on American Slavery and Russian Serfdom
The decrepit Russian system based on serfdom showed its weakness in the country’s humiliation in the Crimean War in the mid-1850s. For pro-slavery and abolitionist observers in America, the new reforms of Tsar Alexander II attracted attention as Russia was the first to move to abolition (in the Emancipation of the serfs in 1861).
The talk will be led by Amanda Bellows
Location: Draught 55 (245 East 55th Street, NYC)
And finally, on to our first meeting of this new season! Pictured here is Dr. Amanda Bellows, a US Historian in Comparative and Transnational Perspective. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently a Lecturer at The New School and Hunter College.
Her book, American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination,
which will be the topic of her presentation, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of Global Slavery, in the academic journal Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Talking Points Memo, Public Seminar, and the books New York Times Disunion: A History of the Civil War and Disunion: Modern Historians Revisit and Reconsider the Civil War from Lincoln's Election to the Emancipation Proclamation.
Her talk covers the abolition of Russian serfdom in 1861 and American slavery in 1865, events which significantly transformed both nations, with Russian peasants and African Americans both gaining new rights as subjects and citizens in their respective nations. It is a reminder that the Civil War provided us with so much more than just generals, strategies and battlefields. For some clarity that I would not have otherwise been able to distill from what I've read, I'll offer you this brief summary from the Library Company of Philadelphia, regarding the material in Dr. Bellows' book as well as further information on her background: https://librarycompany.org/2021/05/10/fireside-chat-american-slavery-and-russian-serfdom/.
Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War.
This month's speaker will be Professor Lesley Gordon of the University of Alabama, who also just completed a year as a visiting professor at West Point! She has a PhD from the University of Georgia, and her main research interests include Civil War history, Southern history, Military and Naval history, History of Race, and Gender and Women's history. Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War.
Location: Draught 55
From Jim Santagata:
I get the sense that this is a complex topic! I've read several book reviews, and I found them difficult to summarize into an interesting paragraph or two as I usually do. So I'm going to do something here that I do not usually do. I'm going to simply copy the description from the University of Cambridge Press webpage, which does a wonderful job of introducing the book, its importance and its uniqueness, and it provides some quite unexpected and fascinating insight into a topic that many of us thought we knew very well... the Zouaves!
“When confronted with the abject fear of going into battle, Civil War soldiers were expected to overcome the dread of the oncoming danger with feats of courage and victory on the battlefield. The Fire Zouaves and the 2nd Texas Infantry went to war with high expectations that they would perform bravely; they had famed commanders and enthusiastic community support. How could they possibly fail? Yet falter they did, facing humiliating charges of cowardice thereafter that cast a lingering shadow on the two regiments, despite their best efforts at redemption. By the end of the war, however, these charges were largely forgotten, replaced with the jingoistic rhetoric of martial heroism, a legacy that led many, including historians, to insist that all Civil War soldiers were heroes. Dread Danger creates a fuller understanding of the soldier experience and the overall costs and sufferings of war. It sheds light on an understudied topic in American Civil War history, and it explores the lasting and often traumatic impacts that accusations of cowardice had on soldiers. “
The meeting will take place on Monday, July 21, at Draught 55, 245 E 55th St, NY NY. The meeting will begin at 6:00PM sharp with socializing at the bar available from 5:30PM. Please help us to help the restaurant staff to prepare the right amount of food and the best seating arrangement by stating your intention to attend as early as you can. The person to contact is once again Richard Asaro. So if you plan to attend, please contact Richard as soon as possible at RichardAsaro1947@verizon.net, or by phone at 718-894-2946.
Looking forward to seeing all of you there!
"You'll Take Dinner in Hell": Leadership in the Far West Campaign of 1862".
“Tough Minded Leadership on the Part of the Union”. Villa Moscone
Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, June 24, at Villa Mosconi. Our speaker will be Hamish Lutris, who last spoke to the Forum in October 2023, on the subject of the New York Civil War Draft Riots. It was a very popular and well received presentation.
Hamish is an Associate Professor of History at Manchester Community. He has a Masters in History and is well known for the many exceptionally engaging classes he has taught over the years, presenting programs on wide-ranging historical topics such as Native American History, the Civil War, Scientific History, Social and Cultural History, the World Wars, and the American West. He also worked as an Interpretive Ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park as well as at other premier American historical sites, and he has even led hiking and historical programs in Alaska and other far flung locales! And as much as he is a student of all these topics, he is just as much a student of how to present them, especially to audiences of different and mixed ages, adding invaluably to his effectiveness and success as a speaker.
The subject for his June 24th presentation carries this interesting title:
"You'll Take Dinner in Hell": Leadership in the Far West Campaign of 1862".
It entails a discussion of the Confederate Army's ill-fated attempt to bring a force to Colorado in 1862, led by Confederate General Henry Sibley,
hoping to take over the extensive and newly discovered mineral deposits in the area, as well as establishing a staging area for the Confederates to eventually take California and its new-found gold. The Union forces opposing him were led by Generals Edward Canby and James Carelton,
General Edward Canby
General James Carleton
who were assisted by the much better known Indian scout Kit Carson in leading a vaillant defense of the American West. During the fighting one of the Texan Confederates is said to have yelled to the attacking Union soldiers that "You'll take dinner in hell!!!", a line reminiscent of one shouted to his outnumbered but courageous Spartan army by King Leonidas in the movie "300" during the Battle of Thermopylae, "Tonight we dine in hell!". But just as at Thermopylae in 480 BC, the Confederate attackers had neither the manpower nor the artillery to make their words stick, and the Union successfully ended their threat. This was clearly one of the lesser-known theatres of the Civil War, but one which Hamish believes deserves more attention, especially from historians interested in leadership in the Civil War.
The meeting will take place on Tuesday, June 24th, in Villa Mosconi, at 69 MacDougal St, NY NY. The meeting will begin at 6:00PM sharp with a pay bar available from 5:30PM. Please help us to help the restaurant staff to prepare the right amount of food and the best seating arrangement by stating your intention to attend as early as you can. The person to contact is once again Richard Asaro. So if you plan to attend, please contact Richard as soon as possible at RichardAsaro1947@verizon.net, or by phone at 718-894-2946.
Time to pay Annual Dues
Here is a remionder to schedule your attendance for the upcoming June 24th meeting (see the paragraph near the end of the original announcement below for Richard Asaro's contact information), with the cost of attending set at $60 per person (members and non-members alike).
Besides that, we also need to remind everyone that dues for the new 2025-26 season are now, well... due! This fee too is $60 per person, payable by check made payable to the CWFMNY. If you will be attending the meeting you can bring a check and give it to our Treasurer, David Rothfeld. If you would like to mail your check, address it to David Rothfeld, 120 Bethpage Rd, Suite 301, Hicksville NY 11801-1515. These dues are the funds we use to pay for the travel expenses for the speakers we bring in, so we really count on everyone promptly paying their dues so we know at the start of each year what we can spend in bringing you the best speakers for our gatherings. Thanks!
The First Commissioner of the IRS: George Boutwell
A talk by Jeffrey Boutwell, who writes:
George Boutwell is a fascinating if under-appreciated figure in American history, having played a central role in US politics for over sixty years. For this talk, historian and family member Jeffrey Boutwell will draw on his new biography that details George Boutwell's service during the Civil War, including: his important rejection of Southern secession at the Virginia Peace Conference held at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, in February 1861; helping coordinate the delivery of Massachusetts troops and supplies in the first critical months of the war; assisting Abraham Lincoln in preparing the country for the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862; becoming the country's first-ever Commissioner of Revenue in 1862-63 to help raise needed resources for the Union war effort; and serving as a Radical Republican member of Congress from 1863-1865, supporting Lincoln's military and emancipation policies. Copies of Jeffrey's book, BOUTWELL: Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy (WW Norton, 2025) will be available for purchase and signing. For more info, www.jeffreyboutwell.com
The meeting will be held at Draught 55
The Battles of Appomattox
“The Final Fury and the Last To Die”. We will be treated to a talk by Patrick A. Schroeder. To be held at Villa Moscone in the West Village
Our April speaker will be making his fourth presentation, or possibly his fifth (I'm sorry to have lost count!) to the CWFMNY. In one presentation in particular, which I was fortunate enough to be in NY to attend, he appeared in the wonderfully colorful military costume of the French Zouaves, and it was one of our most unforgettable meetings ever! I'm referring to Patrick Schroeder, the Chief Historian of the National Park Service at Appomattox.
Patrick Schroeder
Patrick was born in 1968 at Fort Belvoir, VA. He graduated Cum Laude with a B.S. in Historical Park Administration from Shepherd College, Shepherdstown, WV, and has an M.A. in Civil War History from Virginia Tech. In 1993, he wrote Thirty Myths About Lee’s Surrender. From 1994 – 1999 he worked at Red Hill, the Patrick Henry National Memorial and is presently the full-time Historian of Appomattox Court House National Historical Park. During his tenure there he has been one of the most popular speakers in our group's history! Besides his appearance as a Zouave, he has spoken to us about General George Custer's performance at Appomattox and The Myths About Lee's Surrender. At our 4/22 meeting he will be bringing us back once again to Appomattox, but this time with more somber subject matter. The title of his talk will be The Battles of Appomattox: The Final Fury and the Last to Die. It will be an hour-long powerpoint presentation that focuses on the April 8, 1865 Battle of Appomattox Station, and the April 9. 1865 Battle of Appomattox Court House. The program discusses each battle in detail, with nearly 100 photos and maps, and particularly focuses on the tragic final casualties and deaths before Lee's surrender of his army to Grant. Most non-restricted photos of the signing obscure the faces of the two men of the hour, so I will simply close with clear images of both men as they are best remembered...
The meeting will take place on Tuesday evening, April 22, at Villa Mosconi, at 69 MacDougal St, NY NY. The meeting starts at 6:00PM sharp with a pay bar beginning around 5:30PM. The cost for everyone will be $60 per person.
Please note: If you plan to attend, you will have to reply to Ann Plogsterth by email, at plogsterth@aol.com, since her phone service still cannot accept voicemail messages (I know because I just tried to leave her a message), and Phyllis, who accepted your messages for the past two months, will be traveling for most of the remainder of April. So if you are reading this, you should have no problem replying to Ann by email until this issue can be resolved. If for any reason this is an issue for you, please have a friend who will be attending the meeting include your name in their email reply to Ann. Please make sure that your planned attendance is communicated to Ann... or we may end up short of chairs, and more importantly, food! !
Hopefully, we will soon all be responding by use of the keyboard anyway, because Tom Fallows is working on "automating" your replies by use of a reply button that will appear directly on the CWFMNY.COM website. I'll of course keep everyone informed about this coming development.
Meanwhile... I'll soon be back in NY and will see you all in June... Jim
Jews of the Civil War
Our speaker Stan Weinstein has chosen to use another topic which we think will interest our members: the remarkable story of American Jews and their own participation on both sides of the Civil War.
Ben writes:
The American Civil War remains one of the most significant and transformative periods in U.S. history, deeply impacting the nation’s character and continuing to influence modern societal dynamics.
This session delves into the often-overlooked narrative of Jewish participation in the war, showcasing the contributions and roles played by Jewish individuals in both the Union and Confederate forces.
Discover how Jews, spread across North and South, navigated their allegiances and contributions during this tumultuous time. This presentation will illuminate the dual experiences of Jewish soldiers and civilians, offering a deeper understanding of their involvement and the lasting impacts of their actions during the Civil War.
CANCELLED The Election of 1864
NEW TOPIC CHOSEN BY THE SPEAKER, SEE NEXT EVENT OFFERING
Please join us for our second meeting of 2025, a presentation by Mr. Stan Weinstein on the critical election held at a tough time of the war for Abraham Lincoln: the election of 1864 in which he faced the Copperheads and General McClellan. To be held at the restaurant Draught 55, located at 245 East 55th Street.
The speaker for this meeting will be Stan Weinstein, a former New Yorker who has lived in Manhattan, Bensonhurst, Bath Beach, Sheepshead Bay, and now lives on Long Island. He attended Brooklyn College where he earned both a BS and an MS in Communications, and then spent 40 years in the advertising business. He has maintained a lifelong interest in History and Political Science, and is presently a member of two CW groups on Long Island. And just as I have been fortunate enough to have enjoyed doing ever since our beginnings in 2009, Stan has delivered presentations to several other CW groups in the tri-state area.
Stan's topic will be The Presidential Election of 1864, which we all recognize as perhaps the most important election in US history. It was the first US Presidential election held during wartime, which in itself was considered to be a great achievement for democracy! But considering the way the war was going, Lincoln entered the summer of 1864 believing that he would be beaten, and beaten badly! His nemesis? The Union General who contributed greatly to Lincoln's change in appearance from almost young looking in 1860 to aged and battle weary only four years later, George McClellan.
Abraham Lincoln, in 1860, and in 1864...
And George McClellan, youthful, proud and ever boastful.
Things looked so bad that some members of Lincoln's Republican Party, in an effort to gain support from groups of voters who would simply not vote Republican, had renamed themselves the National Union Party, and it was this party that nominated Lincoln for re-election. Still, Lincoln's only hope for victory was some major battlefield miracle to change the tide of the Civil War! And it was General William T Sherman who, at what seemed to be the last possible moment, delivered that miracle to Lincoln, making a gift to Lincoln of the City of Savannah, after having already taken Atlanta and completing a historic March through Georgia to arrive at Savannah in the most consequential Union battle march of the entire war. As a result, Lincoln's 55% of the popular vote was distributed advantageously enough for him to capture 212 of the available 233 electoral votes! This was the first victory by a sitting President in over 30 years, and notwithstanding the temporary renaming of his party, his election victory signaled the start of a 50 year period of Republican Party dominance. What a perfect subject to be presented the month after my deep look into the early, troubled life of Sherman at February's meeting.
The meeting will be held on Monday, March 24th, at Draught 55, 245 East 55th St, NY NY. It will begin at 6:00PM sharp with a cash bar from 5:30PM. The cost to everyone, members and non-members, will be $60 per person. As always, to help with both the seating arrangements and the proper amount of food preparation, PLEASE remember to reserve your seat by contacting Ann Plogsterth, either at 212-877-6814, or plogsterth@aol.com, as soon as your plans are set. And there's no better time than right now!
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Jim Santagata
Mobile: 718-930-0611
“Sherman’s Demons”
Please join us for our first meeting of the year. Our esteemed member Mr. Jim Santagata will present on a special topic of his own interests: the tumultuous career of William Tecumseh Sherman in his difficult path to becoming the General who took Atlanta and announced it as an election-clinching gift to Abraham Lincoln for the 1864 election.
In the Event heading, we show the absolutely majestic gold-gilded-on-bronze monument to Sherman, created by Augustus St. Gaudens, he of the famous and equally beautiful US $20 Gold Coin. The monument has stood in Grand Army Plaza since 1903, just across the street from what was once NYC's famed Plaza Hotel, now an elite and still magnificent NY landmark residence. The Forum speaker for this evening, Jim Santagata, notaes that this has always been his favorite New York monument, actually surpassed only by DC's Lincoln Memorial, and it led him to take a real interest in Sherman as I began my mid-life foray into Civil War history.
Jim writes: I had become friendly with John Marszalek at the time, as a result of my annual attendance at the Lincoln Forum in Gettysburg, and I had just read his 2007 biography of Sherman, which was hailed as the definitive Sherman biography when it was published. (Besides being a Sherman biographer, John is an American historian who served at Mississippi State University as Executive Director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association and The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant project from 2008 to 2022.) Here I am with John on the right, and his friend Tom Horrock, the Director of the John Hay Library (Lincoln's personal Secretary) at Brown University, on the left.
Further from Jim: I expressed my surprise to John at having read that in December of 1861, the nation's newspapers began carrying front page stories that Sherman was insane! Here's a not too flattering photo of Sherman, probably typical of what may have accompanied some of those sensational newspaper stories at that time. Many more impressive and majestic photos will be included in my presentation.
The insanity stories seemed pretty stunning for a man who only 3 years later dispatched a pre-election telegram to Lincoln, whose chances of winning the war and being re-elected president had seemed to be growing slimmer by the day. In the telegram he offered Lincoln the city of Savannah, after his historic and totally victorious March through Georgia, to effectively end the war and seal Lincoln's re-election! So I set out on a personal journey to figure out what had happened to Sherman, from his earlier years to that first tumultuous year of the War, that could possibly have led to such stories. I ended up identifying seven "demons" that had affected Sherman during his early and mid life, leading to a nationally publicized emotional breakdown, but described by a hostile press as Sherman being insane! I offered it to Professor Marszalek to critique before I presented it to the CWFMNY (and subsequently to four other CW and History groups), and his comments on its thoroughness and originality were quite pleasing! I hope that you will find at least one or two complete surprises among the seven demons that I've identified!
The meeting will take place on Monday evening, February 17, at Draught 55, at 245 East 55th Street, NY NY. Please reserve your place at the meeting by contacting Ann Plogsterth at 212-877-6814, or plogsterth@aol.com. Reserving as early as possible will assure that the staff at Draught 55 can plan the best seating and table layout for all attendees. The cost of the meeting is $60 per person for members and non-members alike. Since it will be the only meeting I will attend until I return to NY from Sarasota in June, I hope to see and talk with as many of you as possible at the meeting!
Jim Santagata 🌴
Mobile: 718-930-0611
Henry Seward Award Evening
The monthly meeting, with the special occasion to honor Professor Elizabeth Varon for her remarkable book on the right-hand man of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate military commander General Longstreet. He is unusual in his post-War alliance with General Grant in fighting the Ku Klux Klan.
Upcoming Event, November
On November 19th we will host Alan Shaw Taylor who will present his new book “American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873”. The book highlights the mix between the three North American countries (Canada, USA and Mexico) in their interaction with the European powers who had plans for involvement in the new continent. At Villa Mosconi
Ronald C. White on “On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain”
Ronald C. White’s new biography, On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, was published in October 2023. Ron is also the narrator for the audiobook, and the paperback edition will be published on November 12.
