We are heading into the sixty-sixth year of the Kentucky Civil War Roundtable. It remains the largest such organization in the United States and, for speakers, the most sought after venue. That shows in our extraordinary lineup of speakers this year. We start with Ron Maxwell, the writer and director of the blockbuster films Gettysburg, Gods and Generals, and Copperhead, all classic Civil War productions. In November, our great friend, Bud Robertson, returns for the fifty-first time to regale us with a talk on Robert E. Lee as Superintendent of West Point.
In January 2020, our own Amy Taylor will present a program on slave refugee camps, a lecture from her award-winning book on that subject. In March, Professor Steve Davis of Atlanta will present a program on Atlanta during General William T. Sherman’s occupation, a program that uses all the great photographs taken by George Barnard during the occupation of Atlanta, an absolutely stunning photographic record. Keeping Atlanta in focus, our sixty-sixth year will end in May with the Curator of the Atlanta History Center, Gordon Jones, providing a program about the transfer, re-hanging, and restoration of the great Cyclorama of the July 22, 1864 Battle of Atlanta, a program that will be given using photographs of the steps taken during the process of moving and restoring that great work of art, now housed at the Atlanta History Center.
I want to take this time to let you know that the most recent film produced by the Witnessing History Education Foundation, Inc., “In the Declaration all men are created equal:” Abraham Lincoln in Illinois, 1830 to 1860, will be aired on KETKY on Sunday, September 1, 2019, at 9:00 P.M. It has already been broadcast by three PBS affiliates in Peoria, Champaign-Urbana, and Charleston, Illinois, before large television audiences, receiving wonderful reviews. It will soon be broadcast by WTTW, the PBS affiliate in Chicago.
Finally, we talked in May about a possible tour of the Perryville Battlefield for the Roundtable. Because of the UK football schedule and my own, I plan to provide that tour in April of 2020. An announcement will be made in November about a date. We want to attract a large crowd of members.
This will be a fabulous year for the Roundtable. ■
