“A Most UnCivil War: The Last Year, 1864-65” presented by Michael McNaught

We offer this free talk in collaboration with the Falmouth Chorale. The lecture ties into their early May concert “Glory, Hallelujah!” to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the End of the Civil War. The event is Wednesday, April 22 at 4PM. Please call the library at 508-548-4709 to reserve your seat as this promises to be popular and seating is limited.

The final year of the Civil War saw two huge Union armies pressing the exhausted Confederacy into an increasingly confined space, as Grant’s Army of the Potomac pursued General Robert E. Lee through Virginia to the outskirts of Richmond, and William T. Sherman’s western armies slashed through Georgia and the Carolinas. Lincoln’s assassination five days after Lee’s surrender dashed hopes of an amicable settlement of the thorny political issues facing the antagonists; “Reconstruction” in the south, and its collapse in 1877, led to a new era of exclusionary racist politics in the South.

Michael McNaught earned BA and MA degrees from Oxford University (where he specialized in Military History and the Theory of War), and an MA from Columbia. An independent school teacher and administrator for 44 years, he retired to Falmouth in 2004. He has lectured extensively in the Joy of Learning program at the Falmouth Public Library, the Falmouth Historical Society, the Eldredge Library in Chatham, Falmouth Academy, and as a guest lecturer in the Academy of Lifelong Learning program at Cape Cod Community College.