Wednesday, 12 April, 2023 The Civil Warriors Civil War Round Table of the San Fernando Valley/Los Angeles will hold its next meeting of 2023 at 7:00PM Pacific Daylight Time on Wednesday, April 12, via Zoom. We will be hosting a presentation by Stephen Romaine who will talk about “Elizabeth Van Lew, Mary Bowser and the Richmond Underground.” When the topic of espionage during the Civil War is explored, it generally involves isolated incidents concerning individual spies, scouts and deserters providing intel on specific plans, troop strength or movement. Later in the war, clandestine operations became essential for both sides, sending and receiving messages from military and political leadership across lines. The presentation will look at the Richmond Underground with Elizabeth Van Lew and Mary Bowser playing essential roles, as well as other critical members, and how this group sent and received communications, first with General Benjamin Butler and later Ulysses S. Grant. A case will be presented that the Van Lew network provided some of the most consequential intel on a regular basis to Union Command from 1864 through early 1865. Also, how evidence suggests the Van Lew Spy Ring provided an early leg-up on a series of Confederate secretly funded series of plots to target northern cities, rarely discussed in Civil War discourse. Stephen Romaine has an English degree from Villanova University and a Masters in Financial Management from Fairfield University. He has worked for IBM, Oracle and Hewlett-Packard, as well as several start-ups. He also ran his own consulting firm. Mr. Romaine has read extensively and enjoys researching American history, especially on the subject of the Civil War. While taking graduate classes in American Studies at Fairfield University, he wrote a paper on espionage during the Civil War and was encouraged by his professor to expand the topic and seek publication. Secret Army Behind Enemy Lines was published in 2019 after several years of research. He also wrote a nonfiction paper, The Case for Mary Bowser, the Quintessential Spy, published by the Society for Women of the Civil War, in the October 2022 Issue of At Home and in the Field. We will be meeting via the Zoom meeting app. We will send out the meeting on-line connection information shortly before our meeting day (4/12/23). Please plan on beginning your hookup a few minutes before the 7:00PM Pacific meeting time. If you are a first time visitor to the Civil Warriors, please contact us at cwrtsfv@gmail.com for information regarding the hookup. Guests, new members and returning members are always welcome to join us for this and future meetings! If you can’t make this meeting, please consider one of our exciting upcoming meetings noted in our Future Presentations section. |