Presented by A. Wilson Greene, Author and Historian
December 8, 2020 7PM
Presentation will be made via Zoom (You will receive a separate announcement with connection instructions)
The campaign for Petersburg, Virginia lasted 292 days, but had the Union army performed better between June 15-18, 1864 the city might well have fallen nine months earlier. Called the “First Offensive” by historians, these four days of combat will be the subject of Will Greene’s virtual talk in December. In some ways, these battles marked the culmination of Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign that began in early May with the Battle of the Wilderness and marked forty almost continuous days of fighting that brought Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to the Confederate capital at Richmond and its smaller neighbor of Petersburg, 23 miles to the south. Greene will outline the pitched battles that occurred for four consecutive days and offer an explanation for why an overwhelming Union force failed to capture Petersburg. His talk is based on his most recent book, A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg, the first of three volumes that will cover the entire Petersburg Campaign.
A. Wilson (Will) Greene has been an important part of the Civil War history community since the late 1970’s. He was with the National Park Service from 1976 to 1989 when he left to be President of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites (APCWS). In 1995 he was recruited to start and be the Executive Director of the Pamplin Historical Park and Museum – a position he held until retirement in 2017. Since then he has devoted his time to research and writing.