Civil War Museum
Great Lakes Civil War Forum

The Upper Midwestern states of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio provided the bulk of the soldiers for the Army of the Cumberland, the Federal government’s second largest Civil War army.   Dan Master’s program will highlight several of the ethnic regiments–including the 24th Illinois (German) 32nd Indiana (German), 35th Indiana (Irish), 2nd Missouri (German), 9th Ohio (German), 10th Ohio (Irish), and 15th Wisconsin (Scandinavian)–that served with this potent fighting force.

Dan Masters is an award-winning American Civil War author and historian, known for preserving the stories of ordinary soldiers, particularly in the Western Theater, through books like Hell by the Acre and No Greater Glory, often publishing through his own Columbian Arsenal Press and focusing on detailed accounts from diaries and letters. He founded Columbian Arsenal Press, driven by his own family history in the war, to highlight the common soldier’s experience.

Darryl Smith’s presentation will discuss John H. Morgan’s Indiana-Ohio Raid from a different perspective – one that shows the raid was not the successful effort that some historians claim it to be – and how it adversely impacted operations in Tennessee. The result was not some grand effort, but instead led to the destruction of a Confederate cavalry division.

Darryl R. Smith, a graduate of Miami University, is the owner of Walking With History LLC, a tour guide service for various Civil War and Ohio Indian War sites. He has spoken to various Civil War Round Tables and led dozens of tours at Civil War sites in Kentucky and southwestern Ohio. Smith is co-founder of the Western Theater of Civil War, where he has written numerous blog posts on a variety of topics. He serves on the board of the Buffington Island Battlefield Preservation Foundation and compiled a guide on the War Department Tablets of Fort Donelson National Battlefield. He resides in Cincinnati with his wife Jennifer.

Raw materials from the Great Lakes region fueled the industrialization of America and played a key role in developing the Union’s capacity during the American Civil War.  Hundreds of ships were lost in the years prior to the Civil War due to southern opposition to harbor appropriations for the Great Lakes.  Hundreds more were lost during the Civil War as they sailed east with cargoes of grain, iron ore and copper.   This talk will tell the story of the Great Lakes role in the Civil War through the lens of Great Lakes shipwrecks.

Brendon Baillod works as a Senior Software Engineer for Great Lakes Educational Loan Services in Madison, Wisconsin.  In his spare time, he researches Great Lakes maritime history with an emphasis on the shipwrecks of Lakes Michigan and Superior.  Baillod has been featured on the Discovery Channel, the History Channel’s Deep Sea Detectives series and several regional television programs.  His work has been published in several regional historical journals and I have authored two shipwreck nominations to the National Register of Historic Places.  Baillod is currently the President of the Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association and a Director at Large of the Association for Great Lakes Maritime History who awarded him their 2008 Award for Historic Interpretation.  He is also active with the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society, the Great Lakes Historical Society, the Keweenaw County Historical Society and the Wisconsin Maritime Museum.

The Western Sanitary Commission, though overshadowed by the larger United States Sanitary Commission in the east, performed invaluable work. Union General John C. Fremont, Reverend William Greenleaf Eliot, James E. Yeatman, and Dorothea Dix established the WSC in August 1861. Headquartered in St. Louis, the hard-working doctors, civilians, and nurses of the WSC established hospitals, administered medical services, and improved sanitation in camps.  Additionally, the WSC established a fleet of hospital ships to travel throughout the sprawling Western Theater and provide aid from the Battle of Wilson’s Creek until the end of the war.

Dana B. Shoaf is the director of interpretation for the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. Previously he served as editor-in-chief of HistoryNet, publisher of nine history magazines. He served for nearly two decades as editor of Civil War Times and prior to that, America’s Civil War magazines.