Twenty-fourth Annual Appomattox Court House National Historical Park and Longwood University Free Civil War Seminar 

Old Battlefields, New Parks

SCHEDULE

8:30 a.m.          Doors open

9:00 a.m.          Introduction by Dr. David Coles 

9:10 a.m.          John Quarstein - The First Battle: Big Bethel

10:15 a.m.       Greg Mertz - “Jackson Is With You!” Confederates Turn the Tide at Cedar Mountain

11:30 a.m.      Daniel Davis - “The Hottest Fire I Was Ever In: The Battle of Brandy Station”

12:30 p.m.        Lunch

1:45 p.m.        Caroline Janney - An End or Beginning: Lee’s Army after Appomattox

2:45 p.m.        Patrick A. Schroeder - Forgotten Friday: April 7, 1865, Actions in Cumberland County, VA

*Subject to change

No reservations necessary.  Signs will be posted on the Longwood University Campus.  For directions to the campus go to www.longwood.edu.  For more information contact Dr. David Coles at 434-395-2220 or Patrick Schroeder at 434-352-8987, Ext. 232.  

SPEAKERS

DANIEL T. DAVIS

Davis is a graduate of Longwood University with a B.A. in Public History. He has worked as a seasonal living history interpreter and ranger at Appomattox Court House National Historical Park and Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. He is the author or co-author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War. Dan is the Senior Education Manager with the American Battlefield Trust.

CAROLINE E. JANNEY

Janney is the John L. Nau III Professor of the American Civil War and Director of the John L. Nau Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia. A graduate of the University of Virginia, she worked as a historian for the National Park Service and taught at Purdue University before returning to Virginia in 2018.  An active public lecturer, she has given presentations at locations across the globe. She is a speaker with the Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lectureship program and has appeared in numerous television programs including the History Channel’s Grant and Lincoln. She serves as a co-editor of the University of North Carolina Press’s Civil War America Series and is the past president of the Society of Civil War Historians. She has published seven books, including Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (2013) and Ends of War: The Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox, winner of the 2022 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.

GREG MERTZ

Mertz’s fascination with the American Civil War and National Parks grew out of annual visits to his St. Louis area Boy Scout troop to Shiloh National Military Park. After earning a bachelor’s degree in Recreation and Park Administration at the University of Missouri, he worked at Gettysburg National Military Park and the Eisenhower National Historic Site. While at Gettysburg, he also earned a master’s in Public Administration from Shippensburg University. Mertz then transferred to Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park where he worked for 36 years—27 of them as the Supervisory Historian, managing the park’s visitor services and training hundreds of seasonal employees, interns and volunteers on interpretive techniques. Mertz is the founding president and a current board member of the Rappahannock Valley Civil War Round Table. He is currently the vice president of the Brandy Station Foundation, He authored the book Attack at Daylight and Whip Them: The Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862, as well as articles covering aspects of the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House. Mertz has retired and lives on the Peyton Farm portion of the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield with his wife, Diane.

PATRICK A. SCHROEDER

Schroeder graduated Cum Laude with a B.S. in Historical Park Administration from Shepherd College, Shepherdstown, WV.  He has an M.A. in Civil War History from Virginia Tech.  From 1986-1993, and 1998-2001, Patrick worked as a seasonal living history interpreter at Appomattox Court House National Historical Park. In 1993, he wrote Thirty Myths About Lee’s Surrender.   From 1994–1999, he worked at Red Hill, the Patrick Henry National Memorial.  He has been the Historian at Appomattox since 2002.  Schroeder has written, edited and/or contributed to more than 25 Civil War titles and articles, including More Myths About Lee’s Surrender; The Confederate Cemetery at Appomattox; Images of America: Appomattox County. He is currently working on a book about hospitals in the Appomattox Campaign with co-author Chris Calkins.  

JOHN V. QUARSTEIN

Quarstein is an award-winning historian, preservationist, and author. He is the director emeritus of the USS Monitor Center at The Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News, Virginia, and the author of 19 books, his titles including: A History of Ironclads: The Power of Iron Over Wood; CSS Virginia: Sink Before Surrender; and The Monitor Boys: The Crew of the Union’s First Ironclad, winner of the 2012 Henry Adams Prize for excellence in historical literature. Quarstein has also produced, narrated and written several PBS documentaries including the film series, Civil War in Hampton Roads, a Silver Telly Award winner. He is the recipient of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s President’s Award for Historic Preservation; the Civil War Society Preservation Award; and the Daughters of the American Revolution Gold Historians Medal. Quarstein lives in the National Register of Historic Places property, the Herbert House, near Blackbeard’s Point on the Hampton River in Hampton.

This annual seminar is sponsored by:

Appomattox Court House National Historical Park; The Department of History, Political Science, & Philosophy, and the Center for Southside Virginia History at Longwood University.

This seminar is FREE and open to the public.  No reservations needed.

Parking available on Longwood University campus except in 24 hour reserved spaces, handicapped, or tow-away zones.  

Lunch is available at the Longwood University Dining Hall

**Longwood University requires masks to be worn in all public spaces on campus.  This includes Jarman Auditorium and the dining hall.**

The First Battle: Big Bethel: The engagement at Virginia's Big Bethel Church, known as the Civil War’s first land battle, was a baptism of fire for a nation newly torn apart by sectional differences. Northern and Southern soldiers alike could not imagine how fiery passions and technological advances would collide into America's bloodiest conflict, all beginning that hot, cloudless day at Bethel, as the shells burst among the smartly clad Zouaves. Bethel is where the war saw its first friendly fire incident, the day of the first West Point graduate, the mortal wounding of the first Confederate infantryman, the first POW, and the first Confederate victory. The story of the June 10, 1861, battle, tells when soldiers first realized that the war would not be filled with glorious parades, but rather desperate struggles to decide the fate of the nation.

“Jackson Is With You!” Confederates Turn the Tide at Cedar Mountain: The success of Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley during the spring of 1862 was due in part to the Federal forces he confronted belonging to three separate departments that did not cooperate with one another. That would change in the summer of 1862, as those former departments became corps in a new Federal army under General John Pope. On August 9, 1862, Jackson decided to strike Union General Nathaniel P. Banks’ isolated corps before Pope’s army consolidated. During a brutally hot day which likely hit the century mark, Jackson first engaged Banks in an artillery duel as his infantry formed for an assault. Jackson enjoyed a sizeable advantage in numbers over Banks, which may have given him a level of confidence that contributed to both Jackson and division commander General Charles Winder being distracted by the artillery contest rather than attending to the proper alignment of Winder’s infantry. While Jackson was preparing to attack the Federal forces, it was Banks who first attacked the Confederates, wreaking havoc on the poorly positioned Confederate left. With Jackson rallying his troops and the timely arrival of Confederate reinforcements, a counterattack brought gray-clad superior numbers to bear and turned a near-defeat into a Confederate victory.

“The Hottest Fire I Was Ever In: The Battle of Brandy Station”:  With the initiative firmly in hand following his twin victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, Robert E. Lee decided to launch a second northern invasion. Lee ordered his cavalry under J.E.B. Stuart to Culpeper and assigned him the critical task of screening the main infantry movement. Stuart's presence was soon detected by Alfred Pleasonton’s Union cavalry. On June 9, 1863, Pleasonton’s horsemen crossed the Rappahannock River, intent on destroying Stuart. The resulting fourteen-hour engagement that swirled across the surrounding hills and farms opened the Gettysburg Campaign and became the largest cavalry battle ever fought in North America.

An End or Beginning: Lee’s Army after Appomattox: Appomattox has long served to mark the end of the American Civil War. Yet closely examining the spring and summer of 1865 reveals a far more contentious, uncertain, ambiguous and lengthy ending to the American Civil War than previously understood. It underscores the complexity of decisions made by the US army, civilian authorities and soldiers from Lee’s army, as well as the unintended consequences of those decisions.

Forgotten Friday: the April 7, 1865, Actions in Cumberland County, VA: Largely overlooked owing to the events at Sailor’s Creek on April 6 and at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, multiple engagements and events occurred in Cumberland County largely overlooked by historians and the public. There are four separate battles resulting in the death, wounding and capture of three generals and the final engagement on the fringe of forcing Lee’s surrender in Cumberland County. The Gen, Barlow vs. Gen. Gordon fight along the South Side Rail Road, the repulse of Gen. Crook’s cavalry near the Coal Pits, and the 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. battles near Cumberland Church, are all fascinating and horrific in their own right, resulting in hundreds of casualties. Also, the first correspondence delivered between Grant and Lee occurred in Cumberland County.