Adjutant’s Call - March 2023
Link to Original PDF of March 2023 Newsletter
Circular Memorandum #544 -February 2023
“A Season of Slaughter: The Battle at Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle” Presented by Chris Mackowski
Chris Mackowski, Ph.D., is the editor-in-chief of Emerging Civil War and managing editor of the Emerging Civil War Series. He is a professor of journalism and mass communication at St. Bonaventure University in Allegany, NY, and historian-in-residence at Stevenson Ridge, a historic property on the Spotsylvania battlefield in central Virginia. He has also worked as a historian for the National Park Service at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, where he gives tours at four major Civil War battlefields (Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania), as well as at the building where Stonewall Jackson died. Chris has authored or co-authored a dozen books on the Civil War, and his articles have appeared in all the major Civil War magazines. Among the books Chris has authored or co-authored are “The Last Days of Stonewall Jackson: The Mortal Wounding of the Confederacy’s Greatest Icon-and the Birth of Its Greatest Legend”, “Fight Like the Devil: The First Day at Gettysburg July 1, 1863”, and “That Furious Struggle: Chancellorsville and the High Tide of the Confederacy, May 1-5, 1863”. He was a 2014 finalist for the Army Historical Foundations' Distinguished Book Award for “Chancellorsville's Forgotten Front: The Battles of Second Fredericksburg and Salem Church”. Chris has had six of his plays produced and he serves on the national advisory board for the Civil War Chaplains Museum in Lynchburg, Virginia. His latest book is ‘The Battle Never Fought: The Mine Run Campaign’. He frequently partners on projects with the American Battlefield Trust, the nation’s largest battlefield preservation organization. Chris serves as vice president on the board of directors for the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust, he serves on the advisory board of the Civil War Roundtable Congress and the Brunswick (NC) Civil War Roundtable—the largest in the country—and is a supporter of the Antietam Institute.
“A Season of Slaughter: The Battle at Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle”
For twenty-two straight hours, in torrential downpours, up to their knees in mud and blood, Federals and Confederates slugged it out in the most intense sustained hand-to-hand combat of the war. A panoply of horror, one soldier called it. A Saturnalia of blood. Hell’s Half-Acre. The slaughter pen of Spotsylvania. Most remember it simply as the Bloody Angle.
Joseph R. Reinhart
Joe Reinhart is a native of Louisville, graduated from St. Xavier High School; Bellarmine College; and, earned his MBA degree from Indiana University in 1964. He practiced as a Certified Public Accountant for almost 30 years and achieved partnership with the national accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers). He has been an avid reader of American Military History since his teenage years, and in later life immersed himself in genealogical research.
Joe is a former member of the Board of Directors, successfully led the organization’s effort to obtain 501(c) 3 Tax Exempt Status for our Round Table and prepared its annual Tax Exempt Organization’s Returns for a number of years. He also created and maintained our website for over 20 years.
He learned of the existence of our Round Table while researching his family history at the Filson Club (now the Filson Historical Society), in 1994. His search revealed that his great-great-grandfather, Nicolas Reinhart, a native of France, and both of Nicolas’s wife’s brothers who were natives of Germany) had fought for the Union. Nicolas Reinhart, and his brother-in-law, John Hittinger, served in the 28th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment , while Frank Hittinger, served in the 6th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
Noting a lack of books about the histories of Union regiments from Louisville, Joe decided to research and publish a comprehensive regimental history with (i) a solid Louisville connection, (ii) an outstanding battle record and (iii) a sizable number of German immigrants. He chose the 6th Kentucky Infantry, which included four companies of German-born men principally from Louisville. Joe had studied German at Bellarmine College and U of L, and was fortunate enough to locate a surviving diary and many letters written in German, as well as English.
Joe joined our Round Table at his first opportunity and has both greatly enjoyed and benefitted from this association. He has learned much at the monthly meetings, met many leading Civil War scholars, consulted with them and professional battlefield guides with respect to his work, added many friends and acquaintances, and enjoyed many field trips. He has especially enjoyed speaking about his books to the Louisville Round Table, as well as a dozen others in five different states.
Joe has been researching and writing about the Civil War for the last 20 years. He is the author of A HISTORY OF THE 6TH KENTUCKY VOLUNTEER INFANTRY U.S.: THE BOYS WHO FEARED NO NOISE, published in 2000. He subsequently translated and edited an extensive diary and a letter collection of two Germans fighting in the 6th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry. Between 2002 and 2015 he translated and edited diaries and letters in the form of regimental histories of three well-known German regiments: the 32nd Indiana Infantry; the 9th Ohio Infantry, and the 82nd Illinois Infantry. The last four books were published by university presses and can be found in major university, city, and historical libraries.
Joe’s extensive efforts were recognized in 2014 when he was awarded the first ever “The Immigrants’ Civil War Award.” by Patrick Young. Mr. Young blogs daily for Long Island Wins. He is the Downstate Advocacy Director of the New York Immigration Coalition and Special Professor of Immigration Law at Hofstra School of Law. He served as the Director of Legal Services and Program at Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN) for three decades before retiring in 2019. Pat is also a student of immigration history and the author of The Immigrants' Civil War
The Emerging Civil War
Our March speaker, Chris Mackowski, is the managing editor of the Emerging Civil War Series which serves as a public history-oriented platform for sharing original scholarship related to the American Civil War. The primary audience is the general public, so scholarship is defined broadly: historical research, memory studies, travelogues, personal narratives, essays, book reviews, and photography. Journalistic-style coverage of current Civil War-related events and the Civil War in pop culture are also included. Furthermore, ECW encourages respectful discussion about that material. ECW does not publish fiction or poetry.
Our Mission
ECW seeks to encourage a diversity of perspectives in the scholarship it presents. We do that, in part, by identifying and spotlighting the next generation of Civil War historians and the fresh ideas they bring to the historical conversation.
As a collective, the individuals who comprise ECW are encouraged to share their own unique interests and approaches. The combined collection of material—and the respectful discussions that surround it—forward ECW’s overall effort to promote a general awareness of the Civil War as America’s defining event. This is a link to their website emergingcivilwar.com. You can subscribe and receive daily emails that will contain a variety of articles by historians that will be of interest to you.
FEBRUARY 2023 QUIZ
1. What prison had the highest death rate of all Civil War prisons?
Union prison Camp Douglas in Chicago, Illinois had the highest.
2. Why, by 1864, was the Army of the James frequently called the Army of the Games?
According to Bud Robertson it was because of its overwhelming gambling.
3. What building stands on the site in Washington where the commandant of Andersonville was hanged?
The U.S. Supreme Court Building was built on the site.
4. Which Confederate general was present at Ulysses S. Grant’s wedding in 1848?
That was Grant’s friend James Longstreet, who was also a cousin of Grant’s wife Julia.
5. During the war, how many commanders did the Stonewall Brigade have?
It had seven (7) commanders.
MARCH 2023 QUIZ
1. Just weeks after President Lincoln’s assassination, Mrs. Mary Lincoln received a personal letter of condolences from a world leader. Who was this letter from?
2. How old was General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865?
3. What was the Confederacy’s first invasion of the North?
4. On what date did Richmond, Virginia fall to Union troops?
5. The 8th Wisconsin Regiment had a unique mascot. What was it?