Monthly Archives: June 2019

Meeting of July 30, 2019

Robert Burch on “Military Operations Out of State″

A post war period photo of Fort Bowie, Arizona Territory, named after the commander of the 5th California Infantry and initially built by soldiers from that unit

Bob’s presentation will focus on operations conducted by the California Volunteers during the Civil War in rough chronological order. Two battalions were first deployed to the Pacific Northwest to replace outbound Regular Army units joining the Army of the Potomac in late 1861. In early 1862 three regiments composed the famous California Column in its epic march across present-day Arizona and New Mexico into Western Texas during the heat of summer to assist repelling a Confederate invasion. This remains one of the classic marches in U.S. Army history in terms of organization and logical preparation. Later that same year another two regiments marched overland to Utah to defend the primary line of communications between California and the East. Finally, two regiments were concentrated in Southeast Arizona Territory to deter possible war with France as French forces occupied the Mexican state of Sonora in late 1864. Collectively these Volunteer units protected all U.S. territory west of the Rocky Mountains for nearly five years from outlaws, hostile Indians, and Confederate threats.

Bob Burch is a native Californian from Santa Clara County, a retired U.S. Army colonel and studied U.S. history with a concentration in U.S. military history at San Jose State University. He is also a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and War College. He is also a lifetime student of the American Civil War. He read his first Civil War book while in the fifth grade. He had the opportunity to visit all of the principle and most secondary Civil War sites from Florida to Pennsylvania to New Mexico during his 30-year military career, including multiple week-long visits to Gettysburg, his favorite battlefield site. Like most CWRT members, he desires to understand his home state’s role in the war. He collected material for this presentation for over ten years followed by several years of analysis. This series documents his research in great detail. Time allows only a key points to be presented. Numerous period photographs and magazine drawings are included for visual effect with the intent of comprehending California’s role in the Civil War.

Meeting Minutes July 2019Download

Quiz for July 30, 2019

Civil War Quiz: What Do You Know About the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy?

Q#1 – When and where did the term “Lost Cause” first appear?

Q#2 – What was the objective of the “Lost Cause”?

Q#3 – Why were so many white Southerners devastated economically, emotionally, and psychologically by the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865?

Q#4 – How did believers in the “Lost Cause” explain the Confederate defeat?

Q#5 – How did many who advocated the virtues of the “Lost Cause” portray the slavery system?

Q#6 – What purpose did these Southern memorial associations such as the United Confederate Veterans, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and Ladies Memorial Associations have in advancing the concepts of the “Lost Cause”?

Q#7 – How did proponents of the “Lost Cause” movement view the Reconstruction that followed the Civil War?

Q#8 – The 1881 publication of “The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government” by Jefferson Davis, a two-volume defense of the Southern cause, provided what important justification in the history of the Lost Cause?

Q#9 – How did Robert E. Lee indirectly help in advancing the beliefs central to the “Lost Cause”?

Q#10 – Confederate Memorial Literary Society (CMLS), founded by elite white women in Richmond, Virginia, in the 1890s, established the Confederate Museum. What was the main purpose of the Museum?

Q#11 – What was the primary role of The United Daughters of the Confederacy as it related to the “Lost Cause”?

Q#12 – What was one method employed by The United Daughters of the Confederacy that helped promulgate the Lost Cause’s ideology?

Q#13 – What financial and economic action did proponents of the “Lost Cause” initiate to help reduce the severe poverty prevalent in the South after the Civil War?

Q#14 – In October 1875, the second son of General Robert E. Lee made the following statement at the Annual Meeting of the Virginia Division: “I object to the phrase too often used—South as well as North—that the Confederates fought for what they thought was right. They fought for what they knew was right. They, like the Greeks, fought for home, the graves of their sires, and their native land”. What was this person’s name?

Q#15 – “Lost Cause” advocates viewed Confederate generals such as Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson as representing the virtues of Southern nobility and fought bravely and fairly. How did these same people view Northern generals?