Zoom

Mark Grimsley, Ph.D., associate professor of history at The Ohio State University, presents the 2021 Richard W. Smith Lecture in Civil War History, “General William S. Rosecrans and the Pitfalls of Command.”

Grimsley’s presentation will be online only via Zoom.

An equestrian statue of Rosecrans, a native of Delaware County, stands in Sunbury, Ohio, a testament to his success as a businessman, soldier, and very nearly one of the Civil War’s finest army commanders.

"Arguably," Grimsley says, "a single mistake in a single moment destroyed a great reputation, made more complete, according to some, by a ruthless effort at character assassination by another native Ohioan, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who minimized Rosecrans’ successes and let no one forget his failures."

Gimsley also is the author of “The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865,” which won the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, awarded annually for “the finest scholarly work in English on Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War soldier, or the American Civil War era.”

Ohio Wesleyan’s annual Smith Lecture is named in honor of Richard W. Smith, Ph.D., a retired history professor who taught at the university between 1950 and 1986.

The online event is free. Learn more at www.owu.edu/history.