Our Patron Saints OUR MOTTO: Don’t use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice MINIE John Ford Shelby Foote MARCH 2014. NU M BER 464 Official Newsletter of theNEWS American Civil War Round Table of Australia Inc. Your attention please! Sign up for the Conference In this MN From the Editors 2 today! Come and listen to Manifest Destinies 3 Conference Proceedings 4 our international guest... Conference Extracts 5 Red River Campaign 7 Registrtation Form 8 Conference Saturday 29th March. Register Now! Steven E. Woodworth Our Next Meeting WEdNESdAy 26Th MARCh Meeting to be held at the Retreat Hotel 226 Nicholson Street Abbotsford. Drinks and congenial talk at the bar with meals 6.30 to 8.00. Formal proceedings kick off CSS Shenandoah CSS at around 7.30pm sharp (approx) thereabouts! Upstairs in the still magnificent Carringbush Room. Our meetings are scheduled for the 4th Wednesday of each month except December. THE CLUB NOW PROVIDES FREE Lecture: – CO ff EE AND T EA T O MEMBERS A T T HE IN T ERVAL EACH MEE T ING . The Red River Campaign- Steven E. Woodworth QuotablE QuOTES “I think I understand what military fame is; to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspapers.” William Tecumseh Sherman http://acwrta.tripod.com As Frank would sing…One for my baby The and one more for the road… American Civil War Round Table of Australia from the editors President: Dale Blair Warren & Ross P.O. box 59, Emerald, Vic, 3782 Ph 5968 4547 Email: [email protected] Vice-President: Chris Hookey 2 burnside Avenue, Canterbury, Vic, 3126 Ph 9888 5744 Email: [email protected] Secretary: Ian Caldwell 47 Pavo Street belmont, Vic, 3216 [email protected] Welcome to the March 2014 edition of MN. Send ACWRTA Subs/fees to our The “1864” Conference to be held at the Celtic Club is almost upon us.; in fact it will take Temporary Treasurer: place on Saturday 29th March following or March monthly meeting. Our international Byard Sheppard guest, Steven E. Woodworth will be addressing both occasions. He will hold the floor at the 44 diamond Creek Road Retreat Hotel on the Wednesday meeting night and will be the keynote speaker at the Saturday Greensborough, Vic, 3088 Conference. He comes with impeccable credentials. Public Officer & Correspondence Secretary: As is generally the case with ACWRTA occasions the members always seem to drag their heels barry Crompton and will only commit at the last minute. We are sending out this MN earlier than usual in the PO box 4017, hope that members and friends can make up their minds to attend the conference and our Patterson, Vic, 3204 Ph 9557 7872 organisational committee can sleep easily leading into the conference. Bums on seats is the Email: [email protected] name of the game. So commit early; register now! Thanking you. Newsletter Editors: Warren Davey The American Civil War Roundtable of Australia 85 yarra St, Williamstown, 3016 Ph 9391 6146 Saturday, 29th March, 2014 Conference [email protected] 9.30 am – 5 pm Ross Schnioffsky The Celtic Club, 316/320 Queen Street, 104 River St, Newport, 3015 Ph 9391 0106 Melbourne Vic. 3000 [email protected] 1864 $50 members. $60 non-members. Secretary/Treasurer (Sydney Organisation) Brendan O’Connell (Avoid the rush!!) P O box 200 St. Ives, Sydney Register Now NSW 2075 Tel: 2 9449 3720 Fax: 2 9988 4067 Steven Woodworth should have his packing and luggage all under control by the time you Email: [email protected] receive this MN. He is only in town for less than a week and he will be speaking at the March DUES $AUS 25.00 FOR D IGIT A L NEWS - meeting on the Red River Campaign, which took place at least partially in the month of LETTER OR $AUS 30.00 FOR A SN A IL March 1864, although its culminating battle (Mansfield) and subsequent retreat lapped over M A IL NEWSLETTER P A Y A BLE TO into April. ACWRTA, C/O TRE A SURER , JEFF YUILLE Hoping to see a generous attendance at the monthly meeting and an equally, if not better attendance, at the Saturday Conference. The speakers are top shelf and it should be a good day out. Cheers. henry Fonda as young Steven E. Woodworth at the “1864” Conference. Mr lincoln Saturday 29th May 2014. All Welcome (1938) MARCh MINIE NEWS 2014 2 Book review: ‘Manifest Destinies’ by Steven E. Woodworth. The greatest challenge for historians writing about an extended period rather than a specific incident is to not overwhelm readers with detail. Among current chroniclers, it’s hard to imagine anyone is better than Texas Christian university history professor Steven E. Woodworth at picking out just the right highlights and fully explaining them without sacrificing too much momentum in terms of storytelling. Manifest destinies, Woodworth’s new, magnificent account of how America’s fulfillment of its so-called manifest destiny in the 1840s led inexorably to the carnage of the Civil War in the 1860s, is full of wonder even for seasoned students of u.S. history. We’ve read about henry Clay and John Calhoun and John Tyler and James Polk before - but never like this. Woodworth begins with a fascinating description of how America developed its two-party political system (devised in great part by Martin Van buren) to encourage debating great issues without resorting to bloodshed. From there we discover how henry Clay’s thwarted political ambitions resulted in Whig Party presidential candidates refusing to take stands on anything at all, thus postponing any final decisions regarding slavery. As North-South tensions increased accordingly, William henry harrison died in office and, for the first time, it had to be decided whether a vice president would become president in his own right or simply a caretaker with limited authority. John Tyler’s assumption of full power alienated both political parties. determined to make his By JEFF GUINN / Special mark, Tyler turned his attention to expansion, with annexation of Texas Contributor to The Dallas Morning and maneuvering britain out of Oregon as his prime objectives. News War ensued with Mexico, and generals who would become prominent The Last Gunfight, Jeff Guinn’s in the Civil War made their first military impact. Afterward, Stephen latest book about the American A. douglas masterfully worked a series of compromise bills West, will be published by Simon through Congress and the Senate to further delay the inevitable Schuster in May 2011. bloody determination of the slavery issue. The final line in Manifest destinies captures it all perfectly: “America had reached its territorial Published: 05 December 2010 02:31 AM culmination, but it was about to reap the fruits of its own internal Updated: 27 December 2010 02:07 PM contradiction.” but it is one thing to tell readers what happened, and very much another to enable them to enjoy learning why. Woodworth accomplishes this by deftly sprinkling his narrative with sparkling anecdotes. Manifest destinies isn’t for everyone. It contains a tremendous amount of information, and Woodworth isn’t shy about making his personal opinions clear - in particular about the founding of the Mormon faith, the selfishness of Southern slaveholders and the gullibility of American voters, who demonstrated in the 1840s that they were willing to flock to the polls in large numbers “so long as they [were] not asked to do any thinking about their votes or to consider issues and policies.” In many other cases, his narrative is best described as tenuously objective. historians are entitled to their opinions, too, and Woodworth makes such effective cases for his that readers who profoundly disagree shouldn’t be too deeply offended. [email protected] Steven E. Woodworth at the “1864” Conference. Saturday 29th May 2014. All Welcome 3 MARCh MINIE NEWS 2014 The American Civil War Roundtable of Australia Conference 1864 Saturday 29th March, 2014 Order of proceedings 9.30am Registration 10am President’s welcome 10.15am Mrs Margaret Lee -Metropolitan Sanitary Fair, 4 April, 1864 11.00am MORNING TEA 11.15am Dr Dale Blair -Grant v Lee: A Battle of Wills 12.00pm Dr Ross Brooks, B. Ed, Ph D -Resist Them Another Year 1pm LUNCH 1.40pm Professor Steven Woodworth -Sherman’s March to the Sea in History, Memory and Legend. 2.40pm Mr Chris Hookey -The Battle of Nashville 3.20pm AFTERNOON TEA 4pm Mr Byard Sheppard -Naval Strategy in 1864 4.45pm President’s closing address 6pm Conference dinner (at attendees cost) Steven E. Woodworth at the “1864” Conference. Saturday 29th May 2014. All Welcome MARCh MINIE NEWS 2014 4 The American Civil War Roundtable of Australia Conference 1864 Saturday 29th March, 2014 Conference speakers’ biographies and extracts Steven E. Woodworth ‘Sherman’s March to the Sea in History, Memory, and Legend’ The late Civil War historian Thomas l. Connelly once humorously quipped that in order to be considered a real neo- Confederate, you had to have had a grandmother who buried silverware under the smokehouse to hide it from Sherman’s men. historian and Sherman biographer John F. Marszalek tells of southerners regaling him with tales of Sherman’s depredations to their ancestor’s property, even though their ancestors lived hundreds of miles from any place where Sherman campaigned. during the 1990s, when the suggestion was made of erecting a monument to Sherman’s troops at the site of their last battle of the war near bentonville, North Carolina, some local residents raged that Sherman’s men were murderers and rapists. The myth of Sherman’s destructiveness has grown over the years.