This Thursday at 10:30 AM, at the Hylton Center, Prince William campus of George Mason University, I will be speaking about “The Forgotten Union Commander Who Almost Won the First Battle of Bull Run, Irvin McDowell.” This event is part of the Manassas Lifelong Learning Institute’s spring program, and is open to the public.
Union General Irvin McDowell was a major actor in the Civil War for a short, but critical time. At the First Battle of Bull Run, this Ohio-born general commanded the largest army in American history to that time. He was a dutiful, dependable, and diligent military officer. But in hindsight he may have been called upon to perform duties which were beyond his capacity and which served to enhance his peculiarities, including impulsiveness.
My talk will be based on the book, “Searching for Irvin McDowell, The Civil War’s Forgotten General,” which Frank Simione and I wrote. This is the first full-length biography of McDowell, and it is going to be published this spring by Savas-Beatie publishers:
https://www.savasbeatie.com/searching-for-irvin-mcdowell-the-civil-wars-forgotten-general/
Bio: Gene Schmiel is a retired U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Officer who also was an Assistant Professor of History at St. Francis University (PA). He holds a Ph.D. degree in History from The Ohio State University. Gene has written 20 books about the Civil War. His first, “Citizen-General: Jacob Dolson Cox and the Civil War Era,” was published in 2014 by Ohio University Press. Gene is a native Ohioan who lives in Gainesville, Virginia, on the border of the Manassas battlefields.
GENE SCHMIEL, CIVIL WAR HISTORIAN, AUTHOR, AND LECTURER 