Announcing Our 537th Meeting
Saturday, April 13

The Battle Never Fought: The Mine Run Campaign 

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. 

The Battle Never Fought: The Mine Run Campaign

 The stakes for George Gordon Meade could not have been higher. After his stunning victory at Gettysburg in July of 1863, the Union commander spent the following months trying to bring the Army of Northern Virginia to battle once more and finish the job. The Confederate army, robbed of much of its offensive strength, nevertheless parried Meade’s moves time after time. Although the armies remained in constant contact during those long months of cavalry clashes, quick maneuvers, and sudden skirmishes, Lee continued to frustrate Meade’s efforts. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Meade’s political enemies launched an all-out assault against his reputation and generalship. Even the very credibility of his victory at Gettysburg came under assault. Pressure mounted for the army commander to score a decisive victory and prove himself once more. Smaller victories, like those at Bristoe Station and Rappahannock Station, did little to quell the growing clamor—particularly because out west, in Chattanooga, another Union general, Ulysses S. Grant, was once again reversing Federal misfortunes. Meade needed a comparable victory in the east. And so, on Thanksgiving Day, 1863, the Army of the Potomac rumbled into motion once more, intent on trying again to bring about the great battle that would end the war.