PERRY D. JAMIESON 
speaking on
"GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK"

Tuesday, May 9, 2017
before the Civil War Round Table
 of the District of Columbia
at Ft. McNair Officers' Club, Washington, DC

A copy of the PowerPoint to his presentation is available by clicking HERE or at https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tXmSSPae2jWd0-QMzV0GcyL7eYXHpXHS

 About the Topic:  General Winfield Scott Hancock gained his greatest fame for his crucial contributions to the Federal victory at Gettysburg in July of 1863. Union veterans remembered Hancock as a general who led from the front and whose forceful presence could change the course of a battle. In addition to his service in the Civil War, though, the General's military service included experiences during the Mexican-American War, Reconstruction, and the Indian wars. He also pursued a national political career, which ended in an unsuccessful try for the presidency in 1880.
Dr. Jamieson’s talk will introduce the General as an American soldier who put his mark on many of the important military and political events of his lifetime.  It will highlight topics covered n his 2003 book, Winfield Scott Hancock: Gettysburg Hero.

Dr. ”Jamieson handles well the details of Hancock's wartime rise to fame as ‘Hancock the Superb,’ as he does the rest of the general's Civil War service," wrote John E. Deppen on the Civil War News Web site. David Fitzpatrick, writing in the Journal of Military History, noted that the book is for the general public and "will be of value to those who have a casual interest in the Civil War." 

About the Author:   Dr. Perry D. Jamieson, was born in Detroit, Michigan, and spent his boyhood in one of its suburbs, Farmington. He grew up reading Bruce Catton (one of our Round Table’s founder’s), T. Harry Williams, and other historians of the Civil War centennial era. Dr. Jamieson’s parents encouraged his interest in history and they gave him his first look at the Antietam battlefield, on a summer vacation trip. That memorable visit made the battle seem more real to him. The terrain of Sharpsburg’s farms and the words on the War Department tablets reinforced the historical accounts that he had read. The experience confirmed in his young mind that there really had been a Battle of Antietam: it wasn’t a story made up by Bruce Catton and other writers.

Throughout his career, Dr. Jamieson has always has enjoyed meeting people with an interest in the American past and in historic preservation. The Antietam battlefield has been the scene of a number of milestones in his life. For example, he met Stephanie Deats at Michigan State, they married, and spent part of their honeymoon at Antietam. “Ever since then,” Dr. Jamieson reports, “I’ve had people—especially women--tell me that it was an odd thing for me to drag a new wife to a Civil War battlefield. I’ve never understood that.  Antietam is a much better place to visit than Niagara Falls.” 

Dr. Jamieson received his Ph.D in history from Wayne State University, taught at the University of Texas, and served as the historian at the Air Force History Support Office, in Washington, DC.  He has also lectured at the U.S. Defense Department's Joint Military Intelligence College, and he was appointed fellow to the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation.

In fact, Dr. Jamieson studied under Grady McWhiney, a noted Civil War historian, and he  wrote his first book with McWhiney, entitled Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage. The book is considered a significant work on Civil War military tactics.

Dr. Jamieson's other books include Crossing the Deadly Ground: United States Army Tactics, 1865-1899, University of Alabama Press (Tuscaloosa, AL), 1994; Death in September: The Antietam Campaign, Ryan Place Publishers (Forth Worth, TX), 1995; and of course, Winfield Scott Hancock: Gettysburg Hero, McWhiney Foundation Press (Abilene, TX), 2003.

In addition to his books on the Civil War, Dr. Jamieson has written about U.S. Air Force history.  For example, in Lucrative Targets: The U.S. Air Force in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations, he provides a look at the U.S. Air Force's involvement in the U.S. war with Iraq in the early 1990s, particularly focusing on the force's contribution to two operations: Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

After ending his Air Force career, Dr. Jamieson and Stephanie moved to Sharpsburg, where he now spends time hiking his favorite place, the Antietam battlefield. He has always been impressed with the sharp contrast between the area‘s past and present.  On September 17, 1862 the Antietam valley was the terrifying scene of horrific events. Today it’s a reassuring landscape of peaceful fields. “I’ve seen a lot of battlefields,” Dr. Jamieson says, “ones in the United States and elsewhere--Marston Moor, Culloden, Waterloo, and many others. None of them takes hold of me the way that Antietam does.” He is concerned that, as historian Grady McWhiney once put it, “Americans are in danger of losing their history.” He has warned, “If we don’t preserve the Antietam battlefield, a crucial part of our national past will disappear forever. We can’t let that happen. . ..”

Sources:
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