Welcome to
the Most important Round Table, in the Most important small town,
at the Most important Battlefield,
in the Most important Country
in the World.
Joe Mieczkowski, Past President
Tuesday, Nov. 3rd The Great Partnership Lee and Jackson
Presented by Dr. Christian B. Keller
PLEASE NOTE OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER MEETINGS WILL BE RECORDED AND THE LINK POSTED. THESE TALKS WILL NOT BE LIVE. SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE
The Great Partnership examines the unique friendship between Lee and Jackson, and offers answers, rooted in primary sources, to the following questions: Why was the partnership between Generals Lee and Jackson so important to the South’s bid for independence? What was it about their styles, friendship, even their faith, that cemented them together into a fighting machine that consistently won despite often overwhelming odds against them?
How critical was this duo to Confederate strategic decision-making? What does this tell us about the value of personal relationships among senior leaders responsible for organizational survival?
What, exactly, did Jackson's death mean to the Confederacy and its chances for independence, (including the impact on the Pennsylvania Campaign of 1863)?
It has been over three decades since any author attempted a joint study of the two leaders. This talk will inspire lively debate among students of Civil War history and significantly revise how we evaluate Confederate strategy at the height of the war. Perhaps most importantly, this presentation, based on Dr. Keller's award-winning book, will help us understand why, in the end, the South lost the war.
Since 2011, Dr. Christian B. Keller has been Professor of History in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the United States Army War College, Carlisle, PA, where he teaches courses for senior leaders on the theory of war and strategy, national security policy and strategy, and the American Civil War. In April 2017 he was named the General Dwight D. Eisenhower Chair of National Security, and in 2019 became the Director of the Military History Program. Previously, he served as Professor of Military History for five and a half years at the Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Belvoir, VA, and has also taught at numerous civilian institutions, including Shippensburg University, Gettysburg College, Dickinson College, and Washington and Lee University. He earned a B.A. from Washington and Lee and his Ph.D. from Penn State in 2001, studying under both Gary W. Gallagher and Mark E. Neely. In 2001-2002 he was a Fulbright Professor of American History at the University of Jena, Germany. Along with many scholarly articles focusing on strategic, operational, and ethnic topics in the Civil War, he is author of Chancellorsville and the Germans: Nativism, Ethnicity, and Civil War Memory (Fordham, 2007); co-author of Damn Dutch: Pennsylvania Germans at Gettysburg (Stackpole/Rowman-Littlefield, 2004); co-author of Pennsylvania: A Military History (Westholme, 2016); and author of The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy (Pegasus Books, 2019), which won the 2020 Douglas Southall Freeman History Award and was a finalist for the 2019 Gilder Lehrman Best Book in Military History. His most recent book, Southern Strategies: Why the Confederacy Failed, was published by the University Press of Kansas in 2021. Dr. Keller is currently working on several new books: the first, entitled Take-Aways: The Practical Uses of Civil War History, is squarely in the subfield of applied history and explains the war's pragmatic insights for modern leaders and citizens. The second, tentatively entitled Letters from Lee's Army: A Civil War Historian's Journey Through Confederate History, examines a series of previously unpublished letters from generals and staff officers in the Army of Northern Virginia and will offer a window into the process of researching and writing Confederate history in the postmodern age. And his next book is tentatively entitled The Currency of Command: Applying Civil War Decision-Making to Modern Leadership, is currently in-press at Savas Beatie with a prospective publication date in June, 2027.
Meetings are held between September and May, beginning at 7:00 p.m. at the Adams County Historical Society.
During the Summer we meet on the battlefield.Please check our further meeting page for our summer excursions. These are not live streamed.
You can view September's Meeting at the link below:
Civil War Roundtable Meeting - 9.24.26.mp4 - Google Drive
For questions concerning the Gettysburg Civil War Roundtable please feel free to email GettysburgCWRoundtable@gmail.com, and someone will get back to you as soon as possible.