Battlefield. He has his own battlefield where he oversees the brison bristo station battlefield. Kevin is the coauthor of the book to hazard all, a guide to the 1862 antietam campaign. Today he will talk to us a little bit about the aftermath the antietam campaign, the tail and that is often overlooked. He will tie into an earlier talk from today. Set in the larger context, he will talk about the loudoun campaign Loudoun Valley campaign of 1862. Ladies and gentlemen kevin pawlak. Thank you, chris, for that introduction and thank you to all of you for tuning into our virtual symposium. We hope you will be able to join us next year in 2021 we will be reprising our topic of what was supposed to be this years topic a foreign leaders. Today, im going to speak with you about the Loudoun Valley campaign which is a campaign that does not get a lot of study at all unfortunately in the larger scale of the civil war. I would probably wager there are more people in this room that i can count on on
Again. And some more impetus to make sure the fortifications defending washington were doing their job. Over the four years, many of the forts were made larger. Guns were change to get the best guns were changed to get the best function out of each fort an out of the system itself. The defenses were tested in july 1864. Before i say that, there were raids on the forts where they would come in and steal horses or supplies. But the only real attack a reconnaissance took place on july 11, 12 of 1864 when jubal early fought at in august the at monocacy then march towards washington and eventually came up and faced these forts up there, the main one fort stevens where Abraham Lincoln actually came out to watch what was going on. He was not successful. He realized he really could not do what he wanted to do and eventually turned around and went back down into the valley. And after that, basically, nothing really tested the fortifications after that. Besides the forts themselves, you had the
Who writes his memoir 40 years after the fact, writes it in a flowery 19th century flowery style. When wallace says they arrived here in the morning and lit their camp fires, hell Say Something like, you know, the ste ste steely ska gave way to the orange sun and which was great. You have to balance what wallace says in his memoir with his telegrams from the battlefield. His after reaction report two weeks later because wallace had a way of making himself sound really good. And, you know, he did a very brave thing here. Cant get away from that. And as i say in the book, i believe and i think the judgment of history is that what wallace did here did safe washington, d. C. So this battle took place on july 9th, 1864 and right now its november 2nd, 2007. Its a beautiful day. But one thing to keep in mind about this battle is it was very, very hot. They didnt have thermometers, at least no one referred to a thermometer in their memoirs, but it had to have been in the upper 90s and very, ve
There. Units from washington came out to do some skirmishing. The next morning, july 11th, early, whos one of those generals out on the horse leading the men, made it right out here, right to the outskirts of fort stevens. If you can picture washington, d. C. As shaped like a diamond, we are right at the very top of the diamond, in the northwest portion of washington, d. C. Early about noontime was out of the gates of fort stevens right out here. He had the capitol dome in his sight at noontime, and what did he see . He saw this very impressive series of forts. He saw this fort and it was connected to several other forts around here. It looks impregnable and he saw troops here. Early did not know these were 100 days men and the call went out for civilians to come out and help man the barricades, so you had clerks from the state department, men from the Quarter Master corps, people who have never fired a weapon in their life. The word motley comes up more than once, but early did not kn
President will say, mary would not make a very good soldier, as she swooned. So while the president has been under fire, a man has been shot near him, and by 4 00, the 6th corps is ready to take the offensive. And they will move out from in front of fort stevens, moving across the ground that slopes down to where walter reid is now, beyond battleground cemetery, where 40odd men of the Union Soldiers who were killed here are buried and the union troops and the confederates pulled back. Lincoln will not take his eye off the big picture. Tuesday is the 12th. On the 14th, he is back out at the taking care of business. So he is going to do, and i want you to play another little tune there, because hes going to sign a bill calling for 500,000 more men. And theres one of the tunes in that, we are coming father abraham, 500,000 more. So hes showing his commitment to continuing the war. Hes also curtailed negotiations carried out through on the same day with mr. Blair, through frank blair, and