EDWIN C. BEARSS

Now a spry 94-years-old, Edwin C. Bearss grew up near Hardin, Montana. After high school, he joined the Marines. Seeing action in World War II, he was severely wounded on New Britain in January 1944 by machine-gun fire that permanently disabled his left arm, and landed him in the hospital for 26 months. After the war, he received a B.S. degree from Georgetown University and a M.A. in history from Indiana University.
Bearss is a renowned authority on the American Civil War, its battles and personalities. He has written numerous books on various Civil War subjects, and is a sought-after speaker and legendary battlefield tour guide. Hired by the National Park Service, Bearss served as the Park Historian at Vicksburg, Mississippi. In 1981, he became Chief Historian for the NPS until retiring in 1995. He continues to participate in round-table discussions and lead groups on battlefield tours. His three volume history of the siege of Vicksburg is a model campaign study. His most recent book, Fields of Honor, is a Bearss-eye-view of the Civil War. In 2015 legislation was introduced, “To award a Congressional Gold Medal to Edwin Cole ‘Ed’ Bearss, in recognition of his contributions to preservation of American Civil War history and continued efforts to bring our nation’s history alive for new generations through his interpretive story-telling.”

GARY W. GALLAGHER

Gary W. Gallagher is the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War and Director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia. A native of Los Angeles, California, he is the author or editor of more than thirty-five books, including The American War: A History of the Civil War Era (co-authored with Joan Waugh, 2015), Becoming Confederates: Paths to a New National Loyalty (2013), and The Union War (2011). He has served as editor of two book series at the University of North Carolina Press (“Civil War America,” with more than 110 titles to date, and “Military Campaigns of the Civil War,” with 10 titles) and participated in more than four dozen television projects in the field. Active in the field of historic preservation, he was president from 1987 to mid-1994 of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites, twice served as a member of the Board of the Civil War Trust, and has given testimony about preservation before Congressional committees on several occasions.

JUDITH GIESBERG

Judith Giesberg is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History at Villanova University. Giesberg is the author of five books, Civil War Sisterhood: The United States Sanitary Commission and Women’s Politics in Transition (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 2000), “Army at Home:” Women and the Civil War on the Northern Home Front (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), Keystone State in Crisis: Pennsylvania in the Civil War (Pennsylvania Historical Association, 2013), and Emilie Davis’s Civil War: The Diaries of a Free Black Woman in Philadelphia, 1863-1865 (State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014.) Judy’s latest book is Sex and the Civil War: Soldiers, Pornography, and the Making of American Morality (University of North Carolina Press, 2017); it explores pornography and the sexual culture of the U.S. Army camps during the Civil War. Giesberg is Editor of the Journal of the Civil War Era.
Currently, Giesberg is directing a digital project, Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery, that is collecting, digitizing, and transcribing information wanted ads taken out by former slaves looking for family members lost to the domestic slave trade.

JOHN W. MOUNTCASTLE

John W. (Jack) Mountcastle is from Richmond, Virginia. Graduating from the Virginia Military Institute in 1965, he began serving as an Army officer in 1966. He commanded tank units in the USA, Vietnam, and Germany. During the 1970s, Jack earned an MA and PhD from Duke University and taught Military History at West Point. Promoted to Brigadier General in 1994, he assumed the duties of the Army Chief of Military History in Washington, D.C. Jack returned to Richmond upon retiring from the Army in 1998. Currently, he teaches Civil War history courses at the University of Richmond, lectures at the Virginia Historical Society, and leads historical tours of Civil War sites.

RALPH PETERS

Ralph Peters is the author of a cycle of prize-winning Civil War novels (which he prefers to call “dramatized history”) covering the war in the eastern theater from Gettysburg to Appomattox. Under the pen-name “Owen Parry,” he previously wrote six award-winning Civil War mysteries covering the first two years of the war. A retired U.S. Army officer and former enlisted man, Ralph also has written numerous works on strategy and security. A highly regarded journalist, Ralph is currently a Fox News Strategic Analyst and a member of the Hoover Institution’s Military History Working Group at Stanford University.