Please join us on Friday, January 24, as Army War College Professor Dr. Douglas G. Douds analyzes the differences between the “commanding machines” of Meade’s Army of the Potomac and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia during the Battle of Gettysburg.

Staff work is one of the least studied aspects of the Civil War.  Army leadership is a collective activity.  At Gettysburg, Meade and Lee employed commanding machines — senior subordinate commanders and staff officers — to lead their armies.  Dr. Douds will compare their commanding machines’ structure and processes, giving insights to the battle’s outcome.  His stimulating talk on this topic was one of the highlights of the 2003 Sacred Trust lectures in Gettysburg.  In the fall of 2023, he defended a doctoral dissertation at Leeds University in England on a comparative case study of field army command at Gettysburg. 

Dr. Douds is a retired Marine Colonel and a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg.   He serves as Director of the Advanced Strategic Arts Program and Expeditionary Warfare in the Army War College’s Department of Military Strategy, Planning and Operations.  He has served as a strategist and senior speechwriter in the Chairman’s Action Group on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  He commanded a Marine fighter attack squadron in Iraq prior to earning his master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College in 2010.  As an F/A-18 pilot, he deployed multiple times, including two carrier deployments to the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf and a western Pacific deployment.  He completed the Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Instructor’s course, the Navy Fighter Weapons School (Top Gun), was the top honor graduate from the Amphibious Warfare School, and received two bachelor of arts degrees, in political science and history, from Wake Forest University.

Those who are unable to attend this engagement in person are invited to tune in to the lecture and Q&A session via Zoom.  Click on the following link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85922691729 .  No password in required.  To dial in by phone, call 1-301-715-8592 or click on the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/k12XfsYCq.  The meeting ID # is 859 2269 1729.  Zoom participants should join the meeting by 7:00 pm.