Loudoun County Civil War Roundtable

10/04/2026

About the Friends of Balls Bluff.

09/09/2026

Thanks to Richard Condon for his excellent presentation tonight—The Year of Jubilee!

09/06/2026

September Meeting: The Year of Jubilee!

The September meeting of the Loudoun County Civil War Roundtable will be held this upcoming Tues (Sept. 8th) at the Thomas Balch Library. Start time is 6:30PM.

The speaker for the evening is Richard P. Condon and his talk is titled "The Year of Jubilee - Military Encampment in the Department of the South.”

As usual, bring a friend who may be interested in attending.

I"The Year of Jubilee - Military Emancipation in the Department of the South”

On January 1, 1863 nearly 5,000 formerly enslaved people met at Camp Saxton, along South Carolina’s Beaufort River, for a public reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. Among those in attendance were soldiers of the First South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, who were recruited from the freed population of the Sea Islands and trained at the camp during the Fall and Winter of 1862-1863. These men laid the foundation for Black enlistment while preparing to strike a blow against the institution of slavery; a mission which was subsequently undertaken by 180,000 other Black Americans in the US Army. As the Union foothold expanded in the Lowcountry, so did widespread acts of military emancipation. Learn more about the role these men played on the Southern coast in the “Year of Jubilee."

Richard P. Condon is a public historian whose research is focused on the military and cultural history of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. For over a decade he has held positions with a multitude of sites and organizations including The Battle of Franklin Trust, Flight 93 National Memorial, Catoctin Mountain Park, and the newly established Reconstruction Era National Historical Park. He graduated from Shepherd University with a B.A. in Public History and is currently pursuing an M.A. in American History through Gettysburg College.

08/14/2026

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/08/manassas-announces-unanticipated.html?m=1

A very interesting announcement from our friends at Manassas National Battlefield Park!

The National Park Service on Thursday said like the other two, this soldier found in March 2024 at the site in Northern Virginia will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The agency has not released details on the man -- who apparently died from a neck wound -- until now.

08/13/2026

Many thanks to Gene Schmiel for his excellent talk on Irvin McDowell last night at the August meeting of the LCCWRT! Special bonus was Steve bringing in his original 1816 converted musket for some show and tell!

08/07/2026

August Meeting: Searching for Irvin McDowell with Gene Schmiel

Hello! Our August meeting is approaching fast--we'll meet on August 11th at 6:30 pm at the Balch Library. Our topic this month is entitled 'Searching for Irvin McDowell and our guest speaker is Gene Schmiel.

Union General Irvin McDowell was a major actor in the Civil War for a short, but critical time. At the First Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861, this Ohio-born general commanded the largest army in American history to that time. He was a dutiful, dependable, and diligent military officer. But in hindsight he may have been called upon to perform duties which were beyond his capacity and which served to enhance his peculiarities, including impulsiveness. His defeat at First Bull Run and his lack of battlefield success thereafter, especially at Second Bull Run, led to his obscurity and to his being forgotten in the history of the Civil War. This book, the first and only full-length biography of McDowell, published in 2023 by Savas-Beatie, makes the journey of trying to understand him and his role in the Civil War era. The talk will focus on McDowell’s life, why he did not succeed on the battlefield, and why he was “forgotten” for so long. Signed copies of the book will be available for purchase at the meeting or via this web-site:

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00HV4SSWK

Gene Schmiel is a retired U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Officer who also was an Assistant Professor of History at St. Francis University (PA). Born and raised in Cleveland, Gene holds a Ph.D. degree in History from The Ohio State University. Gene has written over 30 books about the Civil War. His first, Citizen-General: Jacob Dolson Cox and the Civil War Era, was published in 2014 by Ohio University Press. A companion book, My Dearest Lilla: Civil War Letters Home by General Jacob D. Cox, was published in late 2023 by the University of Tennessee Press. As noted, his book about McDowell was published in 2023 by Savas-Beatie. Gene lives with his wife Kathryn in Gainesville, Virginia, on the border of the Bull Run/Manassas battlefields, where he is a volunteer and docent.

07/07/2026

July Meeting: Crossroads of Conflict: Civil War Culpeper and the Culpeper National Cemetery.

On July 14th, the Loudoun County Civil War Roundtable will have its July meeting from 6:30-8PM at the Thomas Balch Library in Leesburg.

Please plan to attend and, as always, bring a friend who may want to join us. If you have not paid your dues, please do so. If you want to send a check, email Jim Cromer ([email protected]) for the Treasurer's address.

Our speaker for the evening will be Jeff Joyce, and his talk is titled 'Crossroads of Conflict: Civil War Culpeper and the Culpeper National Cemetery'.

Jeff Joyce is an Air Force veteran and retired Defense contractor who lives in Manassas. He is a volunteer at Culpeper National Cemetery, supporting the Wreaths Across America program. Additionally, Jeff is a Docent at the National Air and Space Museum, a volunteer with the Honor Flight program, a member of the Manassas National Battlefield living history team, and a battlefield guide at Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park in Prince William County.

Crossroads of Conflict: Civil War Culpeper and Culpeper National Cemetery. This presentation provides an overview of the impact of the Civil War in Culpeper County, including battles such as Cedar Mountain and Brandy Station, the Army of the Potomac's 1863-64 winter encampment, and the post-war establishment of Culpeper National Cemetery with profiles of Civil War soldiers buried there.

06/10/2026

Great discussion by Jared Peatman tonight covering his work on the 20th Maine! Go get his book, A Hell of a Regiment!

06/03/2026

June Meeting! The 20th Maine!

Hello everyone! We’re very excited for this months meeting—Jared Peatman will be discussing the 20th Maine.

As usual, we will meet at the Balch Library on Tuesday, 9 June at 630pm.

This talk is an overview of Jared’s brand-new book, A Hell of Regiment: To Gettysburg and Beyond with the Twentieth Maine, which was published by Stackpole Books in June of 2026. The Twentieth Maine is one of the Civil War’s best-known regiments, famous for their miraculous bayonet charge at the Battle of Gettysburg which came to broad public acclaim via the 1975 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels and the 1993 movie Gettysburg. You will learn not only what happened that afternoon, but the factors that enabled the unit to perform so well that day: what they experienced in their first ten months of service, how college professor Joshua Chamberlain gained his military prowess, and the real story behind the reintegration of 120 mutineers who ultimately turned the tide at Gettysburg. Shifting to the unit’s postwar history, you will learn what life was like once the war ended for these men, and finally how they became master storytellers as they documented and created the narrative of their wartime service.

About our speaker:

Jared Peatman is a graduate of Gettysburg College with a master’s degree from Virginia Tech and Ph.D. from Texas A&M. Jared’s first book was The Long Shadow of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (2013). For that project he was named the Organization of American Historians and Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission Doctoral Fellow and received the Hay-Nicolay Dissertation Prize for the best work on Abraham Lincoln or the Civil War. His second book, A Hell of a Regiment: To Gettysburg and Beyond with the Twentieth Maine, was published by Stackpole Books in 2026.

In his day job Jared provides training events that use history as a metaphor to examine current leadership and performance challenges. He is the founder and president of Four Score Consulting and a Senior Fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Excellence in Public Leadership. He has delivered over 1,000 leadership seminars at sites including Gettysburg, Mount Vernon, President Lincoln’s Cottage, Jamestown, Valley Forge, the Alamo, Waterloo, and many more.

Jared will bring copies of his books for purchase to the meeting!

05/08/2026

May Assembly—The Battle of Front Royal!

As a reminder the Loudoun County Civil War Roundtable will be meeting on Tuesday, May 12th at the Thomas Balch Library. Meeting starts at 6:30

Our speaker for the evening is Jerry Holsworth and he will be talking on the Battle of Front Royal.

He has several books (VA Regimental series by H. E. Howard) he would like to sell ($50 each) so get email Jim ([email protected]) if you are interested in any of them. The books he has for sale are
8, 11, 14, 18, 25, 35, 36/37,43 Cavalry Units
2 and 58th Infantry
Purcell, Crenshaw and Letcher Artillery

Hope to see you on Tuesday!!