A Pleasant Evening at the Sarasota, Florida Civil War Round Table

Last Wednesday night, February 9, 2022, a pleasant time was had by all at the Sarasota, Florida Civil War Round Table.  We discussed Grant's fourth offensive at Petersburg described in my book, The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 (Savas Beatie, 2015), which is the second edition of The Destruction of the Weldon Railroad: Deep Bottom, Globe Tavern and Reams Station, August 14-25, 1864 (H. E. Howard, 1991).  

Some of us gathered after the meeting in front of the flags of the VFW post where we met.

The August battle at Globe Tavern, about six miles south of Petersburg (Globe Tavern was also called "Six Mile House") is also known as The Second Battle of the Weldon Railroad.  The late June fighting called the battle of Jerusalem Plank Road, which I'm writing about and mapping now, is also known as The First Battle of the Weldon Railroad.

What I remember most vividly about last night's talk was the relation between the late June and August fighting.  Brig. Gen. Francis Barlow and Maj. Gen. David Bell Birney never really got over the ambush sprung on the on June 22, 1864 by then Brig. Gen. William Mahone, whose Confederates employed a ravine and thick woods to outflank Barlow precipitating "Barlow's Skedaddle." Birney was Barlow's corps commander that day, and the Southerners rolled up the other two divisions of Birney's corps like a scroll.  As a result, on August 14 at Deep Bottom, when Barlow was ordered to leave uncovered the flank he exposed to the Confederates, he disobeyed orders and posted half his men on that flank and as a result had insufficient force to capture his objective; on August 15, Birney, then commanding X Corps, worried so much about fire off to his unprotected right that he failed to seize incomplete Confederate trenches guarding the Southern left.

Map by Hampton Newsome in The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1864 (Savas Beatie, 2019), Winner of the 2019 Distinguished Writing Award in Unit History from the Army Historical Foundation

Sarasota is where I went to college from 1969 to 1973, but because of so much new construction I scarcely recognized the school when I took a spin up to it prior to the round table's meeting.