February 11
2019
February 12, 2019 Meeting -Cancelled
“Phil Kearney – International Soldier” to be presented by Wally Heimbach will be re-scheduled in the 23rd Campaign. You won’t want to miss it!
January 28
2019
February 12th Program Announcement
The First Defenders Civil War Round Table will meet on Tuesday, February 12th (Lincoln’s Birthday!) at the Inn at Reading beginning at 6:00 PM. First Defender Wally Heimbach will present a program on the flamboyant and world-renowned soldier, Phil Kearny. Had the life of the one-armed general not been cut short at Chantilly in 1862,...
January 28
2019
U.S. Army Medical Department Advances Battlefield Medicine
It is axiomatic that many military advances were born in the cauldron of the American Civil War, and none more so than treatment of battlefield casualties and medical care for huge armies on the march. Many of these advances are still seen today in military settings around the world. Vice President Mark Quattrock has long-studied...
January 02
2019
The Surprising “Second Battle of Franklin” Featured at December Program
The central Tennessee town of Franklin is similar to Gettysburg in many ways… population, rural farming folks, generally spared by war… that is until November 1864 when two armies fought in the fields south of town (also like at Gettysburg) in five hours of conflict during which the ferocity and casualties far-exceeded Pickett’s Charge. Yet,...
December 26
2018
January 8th Program Announcement
2018 is fading into the rear-view mirror, but the 22nd First Defenders Campaign is only halfway complete. As we move into 2019, the next program for the First Defenders Civil War Round Table is scheduled for Tuesday, January 8th, at the Inn at Reading. Vice President Mark Quattrock will present a program on “The U.S....
November 28
2018
December 11th Program Announcement
The next program for the First Defenders Civil War Round Table is scheduled for Tuesday, December 11th, at the Inn at Reading. President Craig Breneiser will present a program on “The Second Battle of Franklin,” an overview of one of the most overlooked and forgotten engagements of the Civil War. However, the “second battle” is...
November 26
2018
The Rest of the Story – Antietam
The late pioneering broadcaster Paul Harvey produced a continuing series in which he would recount events or describe persons in such a way that you were never quite certain where the story was heading. In the end (after a commercial break), he would finally reveal the subject of his narrative, and sign off with his...
November 06
2018
The Hidden History of African-American Burial Sites in the Antebellum South
This article first appeared in Atlas Obscura on October 25th, 2018, and was written by Evan Nicole Brown. In modern-day Altavista, Virginia, a town that covers 5 square miles of what was the first English colony in North America, sits the Avoca Museum. The former residence of Colonel Charles Lynch, a politician and American Revolutionary Patriot, it...
November 04
2018
No answers for family’s questions about Civil War unknowns
The following story was first reported by the Associated Press, and is posted here verbatim and with full attribution. ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — When Paul Davis heard earlier this year that the complete remains of two Civil War soldiers had been uncovered recently at Manassas National Battlefield, mixed among severed limbs in a surgeon’s pit,...
November 01
2018
New Study of Longstreet at Gettysburg Set to Hit Book Stores
A forthcoming reassessment of James Longstreet and his role at Gettysburg is about to roll off the presses and into bookstores, and early reviews suggest author Cory Pfarr has hit a home run. Pfarr, an American history write hailing from Baltimore, argues that Longstreet’s record has been unfairly discredited. Beginning with Jubal Early, William Pendelton...
