464th Regular Meeting, Tuesday, Jan 27, 2015

Dr. Ethan S. Rafuse delivered a presentation entitled “The Petersburg Campaign and Siege.”

Ethan S. Rafuse received his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and is professor of military history at the US Army Command and General Staff College. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of eleven books, including Guide to the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, the latest volume in the US Army War College’s distinguished battlefield guide series.

This talk will look at the grueling series of operations that took place around Richmond and Petersburg that began in June 1864 and ended April 1865 with only a week of life left in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. It will illustrate how the campaign, often dismissed as a dull siege with little—aside from the curiosity of the Crater battle of July 1864—of interest to the student of the Civil War, not only played a decisive role in the outcome of the war, but was characterized by a remarkable diversity of operations that make it one of the most interesting as well as important campaigns of the entire nineteenth century.