Hello fellow CWRT members and interested parties,

To begin, the people receiving this email represent the following Civil War Roundtables and historic groups:

Clarksville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Battle of Nashville, Middle Tennessee (Murfreesboro) CWRT's; the Birmingham and Tennessee Valley CWRT's (Huntsville), AL; National Parks for Ft. Donelson, Chickamauga/Chattanooga and Stones River; and the Carter House Civil War Site. In addition I have copied people from the Tennessee Wars Commission adn the Tennessee Historical Society. Lastly, I am also copying Tom Murray of the Southern Indiana CWRT up in Evansville as they are not that far out of our territory loop (less than 2 hours from Clarksville).

The genesis of this email is a suggestion from Brian Hogan of the Tennessee Valley CWRT in Huntsville, AL that the CWRT's of Alabama join with those of Tennessee and form a loose association for the purpose of holding an annual conference coupled with tours of area CW sites.

I want to heartily second this idea! Please bear with me - this will be a bit long.

Let me give some background as to my own experience along these lines as an argument for doing this here.

I started in the Civil War Roundtable movement in the mid-1980's while living in California when I joined the Long Beach CWRT and the Los Angeles CWRT. While there, I was part of the Long Beach CWRT when it was its turn to host the annual West Coast Civil War Conference. I was part of the planning committee for the theme "Hollywood And The Civil War," which drew nearly 300 people in 1991 and still ranks as the best attended of these conferences to date. This annual event, which had the overt support of the late Jerry Russell (the Godfather of the Civil War conference), still continues with fine programs.

In 1992 I moved to Ohio, and my wife and I helped start the Western Ohio CWRT in Celina. We also helped start another CWRT close to Dayton. Both continue today. While there, and seeing that Ohio had more CWRT's than any other state (close to 30 now!), we formed a loose association called the Ohio Civil War Association which had as its members many of the Ohio CWRT's and a couple from Indiana as well. We started an annual conference that was in addition to the already existing Midwest Civil War Conference. Two of our conferences were hosted by the Ohio Historical Society and one by the Toledo CWRT. The Midwest CW Conference rotates the host each year for that event, just like the West Coast conference. The host CWRT's for the latter conference stretch from Cincinnati to Chicago.

Brian's proposal, which was published in a recent issue of Civil War News, is along these lines: form a loose federation of CWRT's in the area and create an annual conference that can be rotated around between them. The additional allure of this type of event, based where we are all living, is that we can also go tour battlefields large and small. That was not possible much in California and only slightly more so in Ohio (general's homes, burial sites and the one battlefield at Buffington Island/Morgan's Raid).

I have already been talking to the folks at the Carter House about starting an annual Civil War conference that focuses entirely on the Western Theater, which, if you look at other similar events out there, is woefully left out! To feel out ideas for this, I talked to esteemed Civil War historians Larry Daniel, Wiley Sword, Richard McMurry, Brian Wills, Steve Davis as well as National Park people like Jim Ogden, Jim Lewis and Jim Jobe and the Carter House historians David Fraley and Thomas Cartwright.

All of them think the time is right for such a conference! With the pendulum swinging, books wise, to the Western Theater, there is no shortage of conference themes nor is there a shortage of speakers.

So with the wheels already starting to turn comes Brian's suggestion that dovetails perfectly with the idea I was already playing with.

1) Here's how we did programs for the Ohio Civil War Association conferences. I was program chair for all three of these events and used a specific formula for speakers. I wanted to use this regional conference as a larger forum for the better speakers that can be found as members of the many CWRT's of the area. Any of us that have been CWRT members for any length of time know that each group often has one to several members who not only develop good programs, but are also good presenters. The Midwest has quite a few of them to choose from and I wanted to help get them more exposure to other CWRT's of the area. The upside of this was also helping those CWRT's, who are constantly looking for good programs, connect with these speakers and other CWRT's. It was win-win for everyone.

Besides these speakers, we had two bigger name speakers as "headliners" per conference. One year in Ohio we had Larry Daniel and Richard McMurry. Another year we had Michael Hughes and Eric Wittenberg, Wiley Sword (when he was still living in Detroit), Alan Nolan, etc. Jim Ogden and Jim Jobe from Chickamauga and Ft. Donelson parks were also brought up for conferences. Gettysburg guide Wayne Motts (an Ohio native) did "Ohio At Gettysburg" and Ed Bearss did "Ohio At Vicksburg." All are known Civil War historians and their part of the program was fleshed out by the regional speakers that had come to be known in the Ohio/Indiana area.

For example, Martin Brosnan from one of the Detroit CWRT's who does several fine programs, did one on Gen. Alpheus Williams that was excellent. Marshall Brinkman of the Ft. Wayne CWRT did a talk on the movement of the 11th and 12th Corps by rail to the West - a very overlooked topic. Tom Breiner of the Cincy CWRT did one of his fine programs as did Dave Smith from the same group. My wife gave a program on the 71st Ohio at Shiloh (her ancestor's regiment - the theme for that conference was "Ohio In The Civil War."). We had others - and for the most part I would stack their programs up against anything the more well known speakers gave! I babbled at the first conference and did "Ohio's Six Confederate Generals."

I propose a similar plan for these conferences - get a couple "headliners" and then flesh out the event with regional names that can be suggested by the various CWRT's of the area.

For example - get Wiley Sword and Richard McMurry and then get Jim Lewis from Stones River, Thomas Cartwright from Carter House and then a copuple of the good speakers from the various CWRT's of our group. That makes for a fine program and helps the up and coming speakers get more notice to other CWRT's in the area. I know we have a wealth of talent to draw from, from Knoxville to Evansville and all points in between! So why not utilize them?

2) Next, we follow the successful Jerry Russell conference format. He had his talks on a Friday, concluding with a Friday night speaker after dinner. Then Saturday was spent on a battlefield. There was another post-dinner speaker that night. Sunday was more battlefields for those that wanted to stay (he set these up as the opitonal tours and you paid more for them). Esentially, it was two days with part of a third.

Depending on who hosts what and where they are, that could be cut to two days . If we do it in Chattanooga, however, it will take three - one day of talks, then one for Chattanooga and one for Chickamauga. If we do one in Clarksville we could do one longer day and include Ft. Donelson plus the sites in Montgomery County.

In this manner, you hear the programs based on the conference theme and then spend a day or two walking about. You learn and don't get too cooped up over the weekend.

I have been privileged to speak at three of Jerry's conferences (one at Chattanooga and two at Memphis) and they all followed this format. We can have 2 morning speakers and three afternoon for Friday, with one more after dinner. Saturday night has one speaker for a total of seven. Tour guides will depend on where we are but we should not ever lack in that area.

Morris Penny of the TN Valley CWRT in Huntsville knows the Forrest-Streight Raid and can guide us for that. We have the Carter House, Battle of Nashville and National Parks people for tours. I have lead tours and Dorothy Kelly can take us around Knoxville (who I am told might have just saved another CW fort - way to go!), etc. Michael Bradley knows the Tullahoma Campaign. I also know people that can handle places in KY for us - Perryville, Munfordville, Richmond, Columbus, etc.

We have a lot to see and learn from where we are and a lot of speaker talent to draw from.

3) Possible conference themes. Prety much whatever we want but could include:

Union leadership in the West; Confederate Leadership in the West; smaller battles (Parker's Crossroads/Morgan at Hartsville scale and the like); were certain battles decisive?; Alabama in the war of the West; Tennessee in the war of the West; Bad Generals of the West, to name a few ideas.

A debate is also fun and we could have one of those At the West Coast CW Conference in San Jose, CA, in the late 1980's, I was in a debate with a pal from the Long Beach CWRT (we had already been doing this debate for several CWRT's in the state) and Jerry Russell added William C. Davis and himself to the panel and we had it out over Eastern Theater versus Western Theater and had a blast! The crowd loved it - and they got to interact as well!

4) The Carter House and I met a week ago or so and they would like to host the first conference with a tentative date for March, 2006. We visited a couple sites for the event and they have some nice places there. We have to crunch some numbers to see the costs involved but I want to keep it under the $100 level for the weekend (with some meals) at all costs. The cheaper it is the more folks can come! This pays for speaker expenses, meals and the place where we have the event.

After that, if this idea is good for all of you, we then can pick the next CWRT to host it. I do want this in Clarksville at some point although the honor for the second one should go to Huntsville as Brian had the idea for our area.

I volunteer to be program chair for the conferences as I really love doing that and would, of course, lean heavily on the input from everyone, especially as to CWRT speakers that do good programs that I do not know. Maybe a committee......

So - let my long windedness end and let's get a dialogue going via email for this. I value everyone's input and think it will be a great thing for our area and the theater of war we live in or near. It will be great to get some tours of places with great guides to compliment the conference.

These are not as hard to put together as you might think, and with the talent we have here, should be easy to do.

What say you all?

Sincerely,

Greg Biggs
Clarksville CWRT