CVBT 2026 Spring Seminar
March 21, 2026 @ 9:30 am – 4:30 pm
No Backward Steps – From North Anna to Petersburg
Join CVBT for another exciting Spring Seminar.
Our 2026 event is all set and will be held March 21, returning to the Tabernacle United Methodist Church in historic Fredericksburg.
Morning coffee as well as a sumptuous lunch is again included in the event package.
This year we have another slate of incredible historians and authors presenting.
Interesting displays, silent auction, special prizes and more!
Our Presenters
Chris Mackowski – Presentation on North Anna
“Strike Them a Blow: Battle Along the North Anna River”
The most overlooked segment of the Overland Campaign also represented some of the best chances both Grant and Lee had for destroying each other’s armies – but the war of attrition had taken a personal toll on the commanders, peppering the North Anna River with lost opportunities.
A. Wilson Greene (independent scholar – Two presentations separated by a break)
Crossing the James River and June 15 actions at Petersburg
June 16-18 actions at Petersburg
“A Fumble at the Five: Grant’s Crossing of the James”
Following his disastrous offensive at Cold Harbor on June 3, 1864, General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant made a bold decision. Rather than continue to maneuver and brawl against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia while targeting the Confederate Capital at Richmond, Grant planned to execute a wide envelopment focusing on Petersburg. That city, Virginia’s second largest, controlled most of the supplies sustaining Lee’s army through a network of rail lines. But capturing Petersburg meant crossing the mighty James River and doing so before Lee could react. Will Greene’s talk will outline the brilliant logistical accomplishment that brought the Army of the Potomac to the banks of the James, only to see a series of blunders rob it of the real opportunity to change the calculus of the war in Virginia.
“The First Offensive at Petersburg: June 15-18, 1864”
In the early summer of 1864, Ulysses S. Grant and George Meade stole a march on Robert E. Lee. Between June 15 and June 18, Union forces, enjoying an overwhelming numerical superiority over their Confederate opponents, launched a series of attacks aimed at capturing Petersburg, the logistical key to Richmond’s survival. Will Greene will explore how General P.G.T. Beauregard and his outnumbered brigades were able to stymie these assaults and save Petersburg until the arrival of Lee and Army of Northern Virginia in a talk based on his book, A Campaign of Giants, the Battle for Petersburg.
Mike Gorman (Richmond National Battlefield) – Totopotomoy Creek and Cold Harbor
“Cold Harbor: Grant’s Greatest Regret?”
In his memoirs, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant famously commented about Cold Harbor: “I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made… No advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained.” This talk moves beyond the mythology to understand the soldier’s perspective about the two week battle at Cold Harbor.
Jennifer Murray (Formerly at Oklahoma St. Univ. but now at Shepherd University)
Meade and Grant’s relationship during the Overland Campaign
“It Would Be Injurious to the Army to Have Two Heads”: Meade, Grant, and the Overland Campaign
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 Major General George Meade, commander of the Army of the Potomac. Grant’s arrival to the Eastern Theater in March 1865 signaled a new command dynamic for Meade and the Army of the Potomac. 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 Overland Campaign. This program explores the relationship between Grant and Meade during the Overland Campaign, May 4, 1864 to June 15, 1864.
Presenters Bios
Chris Mackowski, Ph.D., is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Emerging Civil War and the series editor of the award-winning Emerging Civil War Series, published by Savas Beatie. Chris is a writing professor in the Jandoli School of Communication at St. Bonaventure University in Allegany, NY, where he also serves as associate dean for undergraduate programs. Chris is also historian-in-residence at Stevenson Ridge, a historic property on the Spotsylvania battlefield in central Virginia. He has worked as a historian for the National Park Service at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, where he gives tours at four major Civil War battlefields (Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania), as well as at the building where Stonewall Jackson died.
Chris has authored or co-authored nearly two dozen books and edited a half-dozen essay collections on the Civil War, and his articles have appeared in all the major Civil War magazines. Chris formerly served on the board of directors for the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust and currently serves on the advisory board of the Civil War Roundtable Congress and the Brunswick (NC) Civil War Roundtable—the largest in the country. He is also a member of the Antietam Institute and the U. S. Grant Homestead Association. In 2023, he was honored with the Houston Civil War Round Table’s Frank Vandiver Award and also selected as the Copie Hill Fellow at the American Battlefield Trust.
A. Wilson “Will” Greene retired in 2017 from a 44-year career in public history, much of it spent on the Petersburg battlefields. Greene holds degrees in American History from Florida State University and Louisiana State University, where he did his graduate work under the renowned T. Harry Williams. Following sixteen years in the National Park Service, Greene became the first executive director of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites, now the American Battlefield Trust. In 1995 he became the founding director of Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier. Greene is the author of six books, including the first two volumes of a trilogy focusing on the Petersburg Campaign, A Campaign of Giants, published by the University of North Carolina Press. He resides with his wife, Maggie, in Walden, Tennessee.
Mike Gorman is best known as the creator of “Civil War Richmond” (www.civilwarrichmond.com), a web-based “file cabinet” of primary sources regarding the life and times of the Confederate Capital. In 2011, he served as an historical advisor on the set of Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” and in 2016 on the film “Free State of Jones.” His research on Lincoln’s visit to Richmond was published in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography in 2015, and he continues to work on a book about 19th Century Photography in Richmond. He has been working for the National Park Service for over 25 years and is now the Park Historian at Richmond National Battlefield Park.
Dr. Jennifer M. Murray is an Assistant Professor of History at Shepherd University and the Director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War. Her most recent publication is On A Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1933-2023, published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2014 and printed as a second edition in 2023. Murray is currently working on a full-length biography of General George Meade, tentatively titled Meade at War. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming, “They Are Dead, And Yet They Live”: Civil War Memories in a Polarized America to be published by the University of Nebraska Press in February 2026. Prior to joining the faculty at Shepherd, Murray taught at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. A native of Maryland, Murray worked as a seasonal interpretive park ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park for nine summers.
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