PROGRAM INFORMATION:

The waning days of 1862 marked a nadir in the fortunes of the Union. After major defeats at Fredericksburg in Virginia and Chickasaw Bayou in Mississippi, it fell to Major General William S. Rosecrans and his Army of the Cumberland to secure a victory that would give military teeth to the Emancipation Proclamation set to take effect on January 1, 1863. Rosecrans moved his army southeast out of Nashville to Murfreesboro, met General Braxton Bragg's Army of the Tennessee, and fought one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the war. Tonight's presentation will discuss how the author assembled his award-winning book about the campaign. 

A graduate of the University of Toledo, Dan Masters is the descendant of five Union veterans of the Civil War and has been deeply involved in studying that conflict since the late 1990s. He has written 14 books, numerous articles, and more than 1,000 blog posts about the Civil War, much of his work focusing on the soldier experience and the Western theater.

 In addition to regularly writing on his blog Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles, his book Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign was published by Savas Beatie in November 2024 and won the prestigious Richard B. Harwell Award from the Atlanta Civil War Roundtable as best Civil War book of 2024.

A supply chain manager with 30 years’ experience in manufacturing, he currently lives in Perrysburg, Ohio with his wife Amy and four of their six children while his oldest son is currently serving in the U.S. Air Force.