Military History Evening

Thursday, June 4th 2026

"East and West, The Best of the Best" Formation Leadership in the American Civil War.

Guest Speaker: MAJ Chris Roe

The American Civil War was a brutal conflict that raged relentlessly for more than four years across a myriad of battlefields and shaped, in many ways, the American society that came after it. In a war where a rapid advancement in the efficacy and range of infantry weapons and artillery unfortunately intersected with battlefield tactics little advanced from Napoleonic times, casualties were dreadful and only by phenomenal leadership at lower levels could armies be kept in the field. In a system where meritocracy in the selection of leaders, and personal example became absolutely fundamental, this talk uses the roughly parallel stories of the Union's Francis Channing Barlow (above left) and the Confederacy's Patrick Ronayne Cleburne (above right) to show how two great infantry leaders progressed through…