Speaker

Join us for our 2023 Lessons in History presentation with author Elizabeth R. Varon on December 9, 2023, 1:00 pm -2:00 pm. Ms. Varon will discuss her book, LONGSTREET - The Confederate General Who Defied the South. Elizabeth Varon’s LONGSTREET is a bold new biography that tells the story of the most remarkable political about-face in American history. During the Civil War, General James Longstreet fought tenaciously for the Confederacy. He was alongside Lee at Gettysburg (and counseled him not to order the ill-fated attacks on entrenched Union forces there). He won a major Confederate victory at Chickamauga and was seriously wounded during a later battle. After the war, Longstreet moved to New Orleans, where he dramatically changed course. He supported Black voting and joined the newly elected, integrated postwar government in Louisiana. When white supremacists took up arms to oust that government, Longstreet, leading the interracial state militia, did battle against former Confederates. His defiance ignited a firestorm of controversy, as white Southerners branded him a race traitor and blamed him retroactively for the South’s defeat in the Civil War. Although he was one of the highest-ranking Confederate generals, Longstreet has never been commemorated with statues or other memorials […]

Join us for our Lessons in History Presentation with author Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black, on March 9, 2024, from 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm at the NCWM.  Author Edda L. Fields-Black will talk about the story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman’s most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants. This NCWM Lessons in History presentation will focus on the Combahee River Raid. Most Americans know of Harriet Tubman’s legendary life: escaping enslavement in 1849, she led more than 60 others out of bondage via the Underground Railroad, gave instructions on getting to freedom to scores more, and went on to live a lifetime fighting for change. Yet the many biographies, children’s books, and films about Tubman omit a crucial chapter: during the Civil War, hired by the Union Army, she ventured into the heart of slave territory–Beaufort, South Carolina–to live, work, and gather intelligence for a daring raid up the Combahee River to attack the major plantations of Rice Country, the breadbasket of the Confederacy. Using previous unexamined documents, including Tubman’s US Civil War Pension File, bills of sale, wills, marriage settlements, and estate papers from planters’ […]

We are offering an in-person event via ZOOM, on December 12, 2024 at 7:00 pm - A Civil Conversation with author Nigel Hamilton and NCWM CEO Jeff Nichols discussing LINCOLN VS. DAVIS The War of the Presidents By Nigel Hamilton. Click the link to register- It's Free A Civil Conversation with Dr. Nigel Hamilton - Lincoln Vs. Davis From renowned biographer­­­ Nigel Hamilton, author of the epic FDR at War trilogy and the bestselling JFK: Reckless Youth, comes the greatest untold story of the Civil War: how two American presidents faced off as the fate of the nation hung in the balance — and how Abraham Lincoln came to embrace emancipation as the last, best chance to save the Union. Of all the books written on Abraham Lincoln, there has been one surprising gap: the drama of how the “railsplitter” from Illinois grew into his critical role as U.S. commander-in-chief, and managed to outwit his formidable opponent, Jefferson Davis, in what remains history's only military faceoff between rival American presidents. Davis was a trained soldier and war hero; Lincoln a country lawyer who had only briefly served in the militia. Confronted with the most violent and challenging war ever seen on American soil, Lincoln […]

Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War by Dr. Lesley J. Gordon, via ZOOM. Click here to join: Civil War Book Talk with Dr. Lesley J. Gordon Zoom Link 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. Professor Lesley J. Gordon earned her BA in History from The College of William and Mary, and her MA and PhD in American History from […]

LOS ANGELES TIMES “TOP TEN BOOKS TO READ IN 2025” Join us on May 29, 2025, 7:00 pm -8:00 pm for a ZOOM Civil Conversation with the author, Michael Vorenberg. Click here to register: Civil Conversation with Dr. Michael Vorenberg - Lincoln's Peace About the book: One historian’s journey to find the end of the Civil War—and, along the way, to expand our understanding of the nature of war itself and how societies struggle to draw the line between war and peace. We set out on the James River, March 25, 1865, aboard the paddle steamboat River Queen. President Lincoln is on his way to General Grant’s headquarters at City Point, Virginia, and he’s decided he won’t return to Washington until he’s witnessed, or perhaps even orchestrated, the end of the Civil War. Now, it turns out, more than a century and a half later, historians are still searching for that end. About the author: MICHAEL VORENBERG is a professor of history at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island. He is the author of Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment, which was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize and a key source for Steven Spielberg’s […]

Rebels at the Gates - The Confederacy's Final Gamble and the Battle to Save Washington by Robert P. Watson Join us on Friday, June 13, 2025, 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm for an In-person presentation by author Robert P. Watson, followed by a book-sigining. About the book: Rebels at the Gate chronicles an intriguing series of events that nearly changed American history. In the last full year of the Civil War, Washington, DC came within hours of being invaded and Lincoln within inches of being shot. During the summer of 1864, General Ulysses Grant was laying siege to Petersburg (near Richmond), deploying every available Union soldier in an effort to end the bloody war once and for all. His counterpart, General Robert E. Lee and his famed Army of Northern Virginia, were trapped inside Richmond, and recognized that the Confederate capital would fall. Lee knew Grant, and understood that he would never stop attacking until he had Richmond. It was then that the southern commander hatched a desperate and bold plan to save the Confederacy and perhaps bring the war to an end… but on the Confederacy’s terms. Historian Robert Watson provides the definitive account of this largely forgotten attack on […]