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:  Richmond Will Fall. In the fall of 1864, the Civil War’s outcome rested largely on Abraham Lincoln’s success in the upcoming presidential election. As the contest approached, cautious optimism buoyed the President’s supporters in the wake of Union victories at Atlanta and in the Shenandoah Valley. With all eyes on the upcoming election, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant conducted a series of large-scale military operations outside Richmond and Petersburg, which have, until now, received little attention. Hampton Newsome examines these October battles in unprecedented scope and detail. The narrative begins with one of Lee’s last offensive operations of the war at the Darbytown Road on October 7, 1864, and ends with Grant’s major offensive on October 27 to seize the South Side Railroad, the last open rail line into the Confederate stronghold at Petersburg. The October 1864 operations offer important insights into the personalities and command styles of Lee and Grant and also into relationships within the high command of both armies.

SPEAKER:  Hampton Newsome is author of Gettysburg's Southern Front: Opportunity and Failure at Richmond, published in 2022. He is also the author of The Fight for the Old North State: The Civil War in North Carolina, January-May 1864 - a study of military operations in North Carolina in 1864, which was listed as the Book of the Year for 2019 by the Civil War Books and Authors blog.  Mr. Newsome also wrote Richmond Must Fall, which covers the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign in October 1864 and was recognized as a best book of 2013 by Civil War Monitor magazine.