Our July 2022 meeting is at Balch Library.
Speaker: Gene Schmiel
Location: Thomas Balch Library, 208 West Market Street, Leesburg, Virginia
Meeting time: 6:30 p.m., July 12, 2022
Topic: Civil War Women: Underestimated and Indispensable
Women’s role in American Society underwent titanic changes because of the Civil War. Women who had the intellectual ability, guile, strength, and, figuratively speaking, “sharp elbows,” emerged from the restrictions society had placed on them to become leaders in many fields. Women became doctors, nurses, spies, soldiers, and even presidential advisers, and took on new roles which would not have been possible without the impact of the Civil War. Gene’s books include the biographies of 100 of these women, and he will discuss some of the best known like Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman, and those who are less known, but deserve more attention, like Mary Bickerdyke and Eizabeth Van Lew.
Gene Schmiel is a retired U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Officer who also was an Assistant Professor of History at St. Francis University (PA). He holds a Ph.D. degree from The Ohio State University. Gene has written 18 books about the Civil War. His first, Citizen-General: Jacob Dolson Cox and the Civil War Era, was published in 2014 by Ohio University Press. His most recent books are “bookends” of the war: Baptism of Fire at First Bull Run and Civil War Last Rites at Appomattox and Bennett Place. He is co-author of the first biography of Union General Irvin McDowell, Searching for Irvin McDowell, The Civil War’s Forgotten General, to be published in July by Savas-Beatie. He has lectured at over 30 Civil War Round Tables, including Loudoun County. He and his wife Kathryn live in Gainesville, Virginia, which abuts the Manassas Battlefields.
Loudoun County Civil War Roundtable 