June Meeting – Harry Smeltzer

Join us on June 14, as we continue to look at events in the first year of the Civil War (part of our 150th anniversary program).  Our guest Harry Smeltzer introduces an often overlooked personality who played a key role at First Manassas – Peter C. Hains :

Meeting time:  7:30 PM, June 14, 2011.

Location:   Thomas Balch Library, 208 West Market Street, Leesburg, Virginia.

Topic:  A Veteran Looks Back on Bull Run

Peter Conover Hains was a freshly minted graduate of the United States Military Academy when he took the field with Brigadier General Irvin McDowell’s Federal force as it moved on Confederates defending the rail junction at Manassas, Virginia. Hains, who fired the “first Shot” of the battle, would have a very long and distinguished army career, and in 1911 he recalled his first battle in the pages of “Cosmopolitan Magazine.” The program will describe the campaign using Hains’s article as a basis, and will examine possible reasons for inconsistencies between his recollections and the historical record. Our host will examine the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) through the aged eyes of a participant, fifty years later.

About our speaker:
Harry Smeltzer has written numerous articles and book reviews for “America’s Civil War” and “Civil War Times” magazines, and will appear for the first time in the journal “Civil War History” in June, 2011. He has presented or will be presenting Bull Run related programs to groups in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. This summer he will be leading a tour of the battlefield of First Manassas for the Civil War Institute of Gettysburg College. He has hosted the blog Bull Runnings (www.bullrunnings.wordpress.com) since 2006, and is vice-president on the board of the Save Historic Antietam Foundation. He lives in a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA with his wife and son.