Thursday, June 28 – Morris County
North Jersey Civil War Round Table - Morris County -- 7:14 p.m. at the Haggerty Education Center at the Frelinghuysen Arboretum, 353 E. Hanover Avenue, Morris Twp. (opp. the Morris County Library). Admission - $5. Members & Students – free. NPS Rangers - free
SPEAKER AND PROGRAM: PHILLIP S. GREENWALT, Bloody Autumn: The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864
Sweep the Shenandoah Valley “clean and clear,” Union General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant ordered in the late summer of 1864.His man for the job: Maj. Gen. “Little Phil” Sheridan, the bandy-legged Irishman who’d proven himself just the kind of scrapper Grant loved. Grant turned Sheridan loose across Virginia’s most vital landscape, the breadbasket of the Confederacy.
In the spring of 1862, a string of Confederate victories in the Valley had foiled Union plans in the state and kept Confederate armies fed and supplied. In 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia used the Valley as its avenue of invasion, culminating in the battle of Gettysburg. The Valley continued to offer Confederates an alluring backdoor to Washington D.C.
But when Sheridan returned to the Valley in 1864, the stakes jumped dramatically.
Historians Daniel Davis and Phillip Greenwalt, longtime students of the Civil War, have spent countless hours researching the Valley battles of ’64 and walking the ground where those battles unfolded. Bloody Autumn: The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 shifts attention away from the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia to the campaign that ultimately determined the balance of power across the Eastern Theater.
Greenwalt is the co-author of A Single Blow: The Battles of Lexington and Concord and the Beginning of the American Revolution April 19, 1775. He is the co-founder of Emerging Revolution War and historical editor of the Emerging Revolutionary War book series. A prolific American history author, he graduated from George Mason University with an MA in American History; he also holds a BA in History from Wheeling Jesuit University. He currently is a Supervisory Park Ranger in Interpretation & Visitor Services for the National Park Service, having served at several National Park Service sites including George Washington National Monument, Thomas Stone National Historic Site, and Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.
His books will be for sale and will be signed by the author
