LLI: Lifelong Learning Institute, Manassas
Mr. and Mrs. Citizen General of the Civil War
Hylton Performing Arts Center, Jacquemin Family Foundation Hall
23
Location: Jacquemin Family Foundation Hall
Speaker: Gene Schmiel
Presented by the Lifelong Learning Institute, Manassas
This event is open to the public. For more information about the Lifelong Learning Institute, Manassas, visit lli-manassas.org
Gene Schmiel will introduce the audience to the history of Citizen General Jacob D. Cox, who had no formal military training, yet experienced more facets of the Civil War than most officers: by land and sea, in both Western and Eastern Theaters, and among the inner political circles of Ohio and Washington, D.C. Cox later capitalized on his experiences by penning a two-volume Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, one of the war’s finest memoirs. During the war, he wrote extensively to his wife, Helen, a mother of six and the daughter of Oberlin College president Charles Finney. These intimate and insightful wartime letters were an important basis of much of his memoir, as well as his monograph, The Battle of Franklin, which was the definitive history of that battle for many years. The letters showed both the fondness Cox had for his spouse and his respect for her as an intellectual equal. To Helen, he revealed—as he did to no one else—his inner thoughts and concerns, presenting observant, lucid, and informative reports and analyses of the war, his changing life, and his ambitions as he made the transition from untested soldier to respected general and statesman.
Gene Schmiel is a retired U.S. Department of State foreign service officer, who was also an assistant professor of history at St. Francis University (PA). He holds a Ph.D. in history from The Ohio State University. Gene has written over 30 books about the Civil War and co-authored the first biography of General Irvin McDowell, Searching for Irvin McDowell: The Civil War’s Forgotten General, published by Savas-Beatie in 2023. Gene is a docent at the Manassas battlefield and is currently working on a new book, tentatively to be published by the University of Tennessee Press, entitled, The Civil War in Statuary Hall.
