CINCINNATI
 CIVIL WAR ROUND TABLE
Serving Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana Since 1956

Next Meeting: Thursday, May 17, 2012

Speaker: Lesley J. Gordon, University of Akron

Topic: "A Broken Regiment:" The 16th Connecticut's Civil War

We are honored to have Dr. Lesley J. Gordon visit the Cincinnati Civil War Round Table for the first time at our May meeting. Dr. Gordon will be speaking about her recently completed book manuscript, A Broken Regiment: The 16th Connecticut’s Civil War.

The 16th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry began its Civil War career by breaking under enfilade fire at the battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862), and ended its service by suffering capture at Plymouth, North Carolina (April 17-20, 1864). Over two hundred members of its ranks became inmates at the Confederacy’s Andersonville Prison. When the remnants of the battered regiment mustered out of service in June 1865, a mere 160 of the original 1,000 men marched the streets of Hartford before a shocked and saddened crowd of onlookers. These Connecticut soldiers returned home, as did all Civil War veterans, to try to begin lives again. Members of the 16th had their bodies scarred and minds haunted by the trails of combat and captivity. Some led successful and productive postwar lives as farmers and businessmen. However, many failed to resume their prewar occupations, and a few spent their remaining years in insane asylums. And some began to contest the “true” story of their wartime experience. Dr. Gordon’s talk will explore the fascinating and forgotten story of this single northern regiment and delve into larger questions about the war’s lasting legacy.

Dr. Gordon received her B.A. from the College of William and Mary, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. She is presently Professor of History at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War and Reconstruction eras, U.S. Military History, and the Early Republic. Dr. Gordon is the author of General George E. Pickett in Life and Legend (1998), co-editor of Intimate Strategies of the Civil War: Military Commanders and their Wives (2001) and Inside the Confederate Nation: Essays in Honor of Emory M. Thomas (2005), author of I Never Was a Coward: Questions of Bravery in a Civil War Regiment (Frank L. Klement Lectures) (2005), and co-author of This Terrible War: The Civil War and its Aftermath (2003). She has also written Civil War articles for The Mississippi Quarterly and the Journal of Southern History.

Lesley became editor of the scholarly journal Civil War History in April 2010.