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
January 23 - Southern Strategies
Presented by Dr. Christian B. Keller
Why the Confederacy failed in its bid for independence has been a topic of debate since 1865. Generations of historians have argued about lapses in political and military leadership, defeat in key campaigns, the erosion of home front support, and other factors, but few have examined the phenomenon of rebel disaster in its totality at the strategic level of war. Utilizing classical and modern strategic theory as interpretative lenses, Dr. Keller will evaluate the critical diplomatic, military, and economic mistakes that, when coupled with the Union's better strategic acumen and plain old-fashioned luck, resulted in the historical outcome. This presentation is largely based on the conclusions he and his contributors arrived at in his most recent book, Southern Strategies: Why the Confederacy Failed.
About the Speaker
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 two 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 Virgnia and will offer a window into the process of researching and writing Confederate history in the postmodern age. A selection of other recorded public appearances, radio interviews, and podcasts, may be found at www.christianbkeller.com
Meetings begin at 7:00 p.m. at the Adams County Historical Society
You can view January's Meeting at the link below: