Everyone is welcome at our monthly meetings.

Attend the dinner and presentation, or just the presentation.

Recordings of many of the meetings are available for a small charge, click here for a printable list of Recorded Meetings

We meet September through June, generally on the second Friday evening of each month. See list of meeting dates and speakers below for our 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 program years.

Our meetings take place at the Mart Plaza Holiday Inn, 350 N. Orleans Street, Chicago, IL 60654. The specal August meeting will be at Rosewood Banquets, 9421 West Higgins Road, Rosemont.
Validated hotel parking is $12. Parking will be free at the Rosewood.
Click here for a map and directions to the Holiday Inn

5:30 pm Cash Bar, 6:30 pm Dinner, 7:30 pm Presentation

Dinner/Presentation is $47 per person ($50 for the August meeting)– There is always a choice of entrée. (Entrée options are listed below.) Make checks payable to "The Civil War Round Table".
Presentation only is $10 per person. Payable at the door, cash or check. Be there by 7:15.
Please make your reservation in advance by contacting us at (630)460-1865 or DinnerReservations@ChicagoCWRT.org.

Note:
Dinner reservations should be received by Wednesday evening prior to the meeting. When you make your dinner reservation, please be sure to indicate your entrée choice.
Presentation only reservations are appreciated but not required to attend.

August 15, 2014

Lance Herdegen on:
“Gettysburg: A Fight for the Colors“

The “Calico Boys” of the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers went to Gettysburg in 1863 and fought in the epic battle of the Civil War. In the very opening of the infantry fighting on July 1, 1863, the regiment—detached from its famous Iron Brigade—ran more than a half mile to charge a Confederate Brigade. In the fighting, the flag of the Second Mississippi regiment was taken in a hand-to-hand exchange in an unfinished railroad cut northwest of town. The successful attack restored the Union position and played a key role in the outcome of the three day battle.

The Wisconsin men always remembered that moment as they stood in an open meadow under a “galling fire.” Frantically, loading and shooting, the Badgers learned into the storm of bullets coming from the railroad cut 175 yards away The Western men pushed slowly out into the field and—at the very instant victory or defeat not yet decided—the “Jayhawkers” of Company C from Prairie du Chien shouted “Charge! Charge!” at the officers.

The air seemed “full of bullets”—one private said—and the men around him were dropping: at a fearful rate.” Pvt. Amos Lefler of Fond du Lac was on his hands and knees spitting blood and teeth from a face wound. Capt. Johnny Ticknor of Mauston was down and dying. Pvt. James P. Sullivan was unable to get his rifle-musket to fire. A Rebel buckshot smashed the canteen and slashed the hip of Sgt. George Fairfield. Behind the ragged line in blue, Lt. Col. Rufus Dawes watched a “fearful” and “destructive “ fire crashing with “an unbroken roar before us. Men were being shot by twenties and thirties…”

The young officer lifted his sword and shouted “Forward! Forward! Charge! Align on the Colors!” And then, said Cpl. Frank A. Wallar, a farmer boy turned soldier who was about to capture a flag, “there was a general rush and yells enough to almost awaken the dead…”

Speaker Lance J. Herdegen will tell the story of how the flag of the Second Mississippi was captured at the railroad cut that July morning and what happened to the banner during the rest of the battle and long after the war. Herdegen is the author of several books on Civil War topics. His latest is The Iron Brigade in Civil War and Memory: The Black Hats from Bull Run to Appomattox and Thereafter, a selection of both the History and Military book clubs. His previous book, Those Damned Black Hats: The Iron Brigade in the Gettysburg Campaign, won the Army Historical Foundation’s Distinguished Writing Award. Recently inducted into the Milwaukee Press Club Hall of Fame, he is the former director of the Institute for Civil War Studies at Carroll University and presently chairs the Wisconsin Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission. He is a historical consultant to the Civil War Museum at Kenosha, Wis. He lives in the Town of Spring Prairie, Walworth County, Wisconsin.

Entrée choices are:
Sliced Sirloin
Tilapia
Chicken Francaise

For our 2014-15 program year, we proudly welcome these outstanding speakers:

Sept. 12th
Frank Varney on General Grant and the Rewriting of History

Oct. 10th
Mark Bradley on Joe Hooker, O. O. Howard, and the Atlanta Campaign of 1864

Nov. 14th
Steve Towne on How Army Intelligence Foiled Confederate Plots in Chicago

Dec. 10th
Jim Ogden Nevins-Freeman Address

Jan. 9th, 2015
John Horn on George Barnard and the 12th Virginia Infantry

Feb. 13th
Leslie Goddard on Gone With the Wind and the Construction of Civil War Memory

Mar. 13th
Tom Huntington on Searching for George Gordon Meade

Apr. 14th
Michael Burlingame on The Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln

May 8th
Eric Leonard on Cartel, Code, and Consequences at Andersonville

June 12th
Gary Adelman 4D Civil War Photography Extravaganza

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