Please join us on Friday, December 6, as Dr. Jennifer Murray sheds new light on the relationship between Major General George Gordon Meade and Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant during the Overland Campaign, May 4, to June 15, 1864.
Civil War history has consistently framed the final two years of the war as an epic contest between Grant and Lee and has too frequently overshadowed the role of Meade, commander of the Army of the Potomac. Grant’s arrival to the Eastern Theater in March 1864 signaled a new command dynamic for Meade and his army. An examination of the relationship between Grant and Meade reveals nuance to the army’s 1864 and 1865 campaigns in Virginia and highlights Meade’s role in these operations. Rather than being relegated to a secondary, supporting role in the army’s command structure, Meade exercised incredible influence on operations during the campaign.
Dr. Murray is a military historian, with a specialization in the American Civil War, in the Department of History at Oklahoma State University. Her most recent publication is On A Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1933-2013, published in 2014, with an updated version that includes a new preface released in the summer of 2023. She is currently working on a full-length biography of Meade, tentatively titled Meade at War, a comprehensive treatment of Meade’s life with a focus on his career in the Army of the Potomac. She is a veteran faculty member at Gettysburg College’s Civil War Institute and a coveted speaker at Civil War symposiums and round tables across the nation.
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/81262528556. 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/klYaHotmA. The meeting ID # is 812 6252 8556.Zoom participants should join the meeting by 7:00 pm.
