Please note: Optional Dinner will start at 6:00 PM. The Lecture will start at 7:00 PM. To make dinner reservations, email CvilleCWRT@gmail.com and indicate your entree choice: prime rib, salmon or chicken. Dinner includes salad and dessert. Cost is $24 for members and $30 for non-members.

LECTURE TOPIC:  The Court Martial of Fitz John Porter: Fair or Fixed? A military hero one day, the next he was on trial for his life. Before his abrupt removal from the stage of the conflict early in the war, Porter was one of the most important combat commanders whom the Union relied upon to crush the rebellion. Maj. Gen. Porter had twice defeated the vaunted Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. He was the most trusted confidante of the Union Army’s top commander, George McClellan. But therein lay the problem, according to Porter’s friends. Gen. John Pope, a bitter rival of McClellan, egged on by Porter’s enemies in the Lincoln Administration – whose policies on emancipation and “hard war” (war on disloyal civilians) both McClellan and Porter opposed – charged Porter with misconduct in the face of the enemy amounting to treason. The result was court martial, conviction and disgrace. Porter fought desperately to redeem his reputation. Twenty-three years later, after a new investigation into his battlefield conduct that relied heavily on the testimony of former Confederates, Congress passed a special act reinstating Porter to the Army. But doubts about Porter’s 1862 conduct and where his loyalty truly lay persisted for the rest of his life, and beyond. Was he in fact fairly convicted after all?

SPEAKER: Kevin C. Donovan, Esq., is the former head of the New Jersey Employment & Labor Law practice of a national law firm. Kevin graduated with a B.A. in History from St. Joseph’s University (Philadelphia) and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. Since assuming the status of a “recovering lawyer,” Kevin has focused on his passion for the Civil War, but with an eye to topics reflecting the intersection of the War and the Law. He is the author of: "Forget Treason: Could Robert E. Lee Have Been Court-Martialed for Desertion?," (North & South, Series II, Vol. 4, No. 3 - May 2024); “A Better General Than Witness: Sherman’s Bennett Farm Surrender Testimony Before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War,” (North & South, Series II, Vol. 4, No. 2 - Mar. 2024); “The ‘Butterfly Effect’: How the Eighteenth-Century Kidnapping of A Free Black Man Led to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act & the Civil War,” (North & South, Series II, Vol. 4, No. 1 - Dec., 2023) and “The Last Casualty of Second Manassas: The Court Martial of Fitz John Porter,” (Emerging Civil War Blog - Jan. 21, 2023).