JAMES B. CONROY
speaks about
Presentation to the
Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia
Questions and answers follow the presentation.
James Conroy will explore how the failure of the Hamptons Roads Conference shaped the course of American history and the future of America’s wars to come. He will discuss the peace conference’s origins, its failure, and its aftermath, including Lincoln’s alliance with Stephens in the old House; Seward’s friendship with Davis in the old Senate; Blair’s wartime maneuverings in Richmond with the leaders of the Southern peace movement; Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s attempts to sabotage the peace talks; the outrage they provoked in Congress and in Lincoln’s own cabinet; the Northern leaders’ moving conversations with their old Southern friends on the River Queen; Grant’s surreptitious efforts to negotiate peace with Lee and evade Stanton’s efforts to derail them; and Lincoln’s poignant search for a path to reconciliation in the smoking ruins of Richmond after the peace conference failed.
About the Author:
James B. Conroy has practiced law as a trial lawyer in Boston for 32 years and is a co-founder of Donnelly, Conroy & Gelhaar, LLP, one of the city’s leading litigation firms. While working on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC as a speechwriter and a press secretary in the 1970’s and early 1980’s, he earned a master’s degree in international relations at George Washington University and a law degree, magna cum laude, at the Georgetown University Law Center. Mr. Conroy also served for six years as a photographer and a journalist in anti-submarine aviation units in the United States Navy Reserve.
For information about the Round Table and to apply for membership, see the Tab above marked "About Us/ Membership Information" or click HERE
speaks about
Presentation to the
Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia
at the Fort McNair Officers' Club in Washington D.C.
on October 10, 2017
on October 10, 2017
Questions and answers follow the presentation.
About the Topic:
After nearly four years of war, over 600,000 young Americans were dead, the battered Rebel armies were cornered, and the rebellion was nearly broken, but no one knew when it would end. A Federal push to victory would kill tens of thousands more, humiliate the South, and delay for generations what Lincoln wanted most: a reunited nation healed of its painful wounds.
Reasonable men on both sides would meet in Hampton Roads on February 3, 1865, in search of a way out.
Reasonable men on both sides would meet in Hampton Roads on February 3, 1865, in search of a way out.
On the paddle-wheeler River Queen, the Air Force One of its day, Lincoln and his charming Secretary of State, William Seward, sat down with Davis’s emissaries: Alexander Hamilton Stephens, Senator Robert M. T. Hunter and John A. Campbell. It was a gathering of old friends. Stephens, Davis’s eccentric Vice President, led the Southern delegation. Weighing less than 100 pounds, “Little Alec” had been Lincoln’s ally in the Congress of 1848 in a movement to end the Mexican War. The aristocratic Senator Hunter of Virginia had been Seward’s friend and colleague in the old Senate. The brilliant Alabamian Campbell, a former Justice of the United States Supreme Court, now the Confederacy’s Assistant Secretary of War, had worked hard with Seward to stop the fighting before it started.
Their reunion at Hampton Roads began in a glow of nostalgia, descended into threats, and ended with a glimpse of Lincoln’s startling compromise, which was sure to enrage his own party. In the end, the war dragged on for two more bloody, destructive months.
James Conroy will explore how the failure of the Hamptons Roads Conference shaped the course of American history and the future of America’s wars to come. He will discuss the peace conference’s origins, its failure, and its aftermath, including Lincoln’s alliance with Stephens in the old House; Seward’s friendship with Davis in the old Senate; Blair’s wartime maneuverings in Richmond with the leaders of the Southern peace movement; Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s attempts to sabotage the peace talks; the outrage they provoked in Congress and in Lincoln’s own cabinet; the Northern leaders’ moving conversations with their old Southern friends on the River Queen; Grant’s surreptitious efforts to negotiate peace with Lee and evade Stanton’s efforts to derail them; and Lincoln’s poignant search for a path to reconciliation in the smoking ruins of Richmond after the peace conference failed.
James B. Conroy has practiced law as a trial lawyer in Boston for 32 years and is a co-founder of Donnelly, Conroy & Gelhaar, LLP, one of the city’s leading litigation firms. While working on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC as a speechwriter and a press secretary in the 1970’s and early 1980’s, he earned a master’s degree in international relations at George Washington University and a law degree, magna cum laude, at the Georgetown University Law Center. Mr. Conroy also served for six years as a photographer and a journalist in anti-submarine aviation units in the United States Navy Reserve.
In 2014, Mr. Conroy was elected a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society in recognition of his first book, Our One Common Country: Abraham Lincoln and the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 1865, the only book ever devoted to Lincoln’s peace negotiations. The book was a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, awarded to the author of the best book of the year on Lincoln, a Civil War soldier, or the Civil War era. Mr. Conroy’s second book, Lincoln’s White House: The People’s House in Wartime, was released in October, 2016, and is the co-winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize for 2017, and the winner of the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award for 2017.
Mr. Conroy has lived in Hingham, Massachusetts with his wife, Lynn since 1982. Their daughter, Erin, is a lawyer and the mother of two young boys. Their son, Scott, is a political journalist. Mr. Conroy is a member of Hingham’s Historical Commission and its Community Preservation Committee and has chaired its Government Study Committee, its Task Force on Affordability, and its Advisory Committee, which counsels the Hingham Town Meeting, an exercise in direct democracy through which the town has governed itself since 1635, well before Conroy’s time.
For more information about Mt. Conroy and his publications, visit www.jamesbconroy.com
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For information about the Round Table and to apply for membership, see the Tab above marked "About Us/ Membership Information" or click HERE
