December 28 2017
First Defenders Celebrate the Holidays & Perryville

The First Defenders Civil War Round Table celebrated the coming holiday season during its December program with a festive meal that included a birthday cake for former Preservation Committee chair Cate Kennedy. 54 First Defenders assembled at the Inn at Reading to hear our own Greg Stull talk about “The Battle that Wasn’t Supposed to...

November 27 2017
What Ever Happened to J.D. Cox?

Perhaps one of the best “citizen generals” who served the Union army during the Civil War, Jacob Dolson Cox was seemingly positioned to be the sixth Ohioan who would ascend to the presidency in the post-bellum years.  Yet this man who had done so much for the Northern cause would remain a back-bencher in the...

October 19 2017
The Kidnapping of the Generals – Should It Have Been So Easy?

The Civil War in what is today (and for the last half of the War) West Virginia often takes a back seat to the more glorious events in the eastern part of Virginia, Maryland and even into central Pennsylvania.  But, to the men who spent much of their time on garrison and foraging duties in...

September 23 2017
Dennis Frye Kicks Off Campaign 21!

Harper’s Ferry Chief Historian Dennis Frye made his third trip to the First Defenders Civil War Round Table in fine style by questioning mainstream historians and logic itself by asking whether George McClellan out-thought Robert E. Lee during the first invasion of the North in 1862. Frye outlined four instances in the first two weeks...