The next meeting of the Nashville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on Monday, June 20th, 2011, in the visitor’s center of Ft. Negley Park, a unit of Metro Parks, Nashville, TN. This is located off I-65 just south of downtown between 4th Avenue South and 8th Avenue South on Edgehill Avenue/Chestnut Avenue. Take Exit 81, Wedgewood Avenue, off I-65 and follow
the signs to the Science Museum and Greer Stadium. The meeting begins at 7:00 pm and is always open to the public. There is no charge to attend.
OUR SPEAKER AND TOPIC
“The Mexican War: A Civil War Training Ground”
Lee, Grant, McClellan, Beauregard, Jackson, and over 200 more Civil War generals fought together in Mexico in 1846 and 1847. They developed friendships in Mexico that would be shattered a decade and a half later. At places like Monterrey, Cerro Gordo, and Chapultepec, these officers learned that aggressive offensive tactics win battles and they remembered those lessons well in the Civil War even though technology was already bringing about an evolution in warfare that elevated defensive fighting. This talk will highlight the Mexican War experiences of a few of the well-known Civil War names and provide a glimpse of their first lessons in combat. If you study military history it is linear in nature and what is used in one war likely came from something learned and developed in a previous war. The Mexican War was not an exception where a U.S. Army, supported by volunteer regiments, fought a very good Mexican Army trained and equipped along the lines of Napoleon’s famous Grande Armee and led by the “Napoleon of the West,” General Santa Anna.
Our speaker, Dr. Tim Johnson, received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Alabama and joined the History Department at Lipscomb University in Nashville in 1991. He has written over twenty articles for scholarly journals, magazines, and encyclopedias, and he has authored or edited six books. His biography of General Winfield Scott and his book about the 1847 Mexico City Campaign were both nominated for national prizes and were History Book Club selections. His most recent book, Liberty VS Power: The Founding Fathers’ Vision for America, is a short and easy-to-read reminder of our nation’s founding principle of limited government.
Professor Johnson has been a research fellow at Yale University as well as the Virginia Historical Society. He has spoken at the National Archives in Washington, and appeared on The History Channel, C-SPAN, and Public Television. He has received “Outstanding Teacher” recognition at Lipscomb University, and recently Lipscomb designated him as University Research Professor. He has been married to his wife Jayne for 32 years, and they have three sons.
Please join us for what will prove to be an informative program.