Forum Leadership

President                                     Carmen G. Delgado

Secretary                                     Jean Grenning

Treasurer                                    David Rothfeld

VP Programs                              Howard Rosenthal

VP Operations                            Jim Santagata

Trustees (Class of 2019)             Richard Asaro

                                                     Joan Masterson

Trustees (Class of 2020)             Rita Torres

                                                      David M. Brown

Past Presidents (Trustees

ex officio)                                     David M. Kinard

                                                       Paul Windels III

Committee Chairs

AV                                                   David Mark Brown

                                                               and Jim Santagata

Battlefield Trips                             Howard Rosenthal

Communications                           Nathan Burkan

Counsel                                         Paul Windels III

Dinner RSVP and

   Check-in                                     Dan Morrison

William Henry Seward

    Award                                        James W. Davis

Webmaster                                     Paul Windels III

       

Our Mission

The Civil War Forum of Metropolitan New York is an education corporation, chartered by the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York on September 15, 2009.  Our Certificate of Incorporation lists the purposes for which we were formed as follows:

     a.  To promote and encourage the general learning, understanding, and

          appreciation of the American Civil War, including its origins and

          consequences (collectively referred to as the Civil War Era).

     b.  To improve public access to information about the Civil War Era.

     c.  To educate the public at large about the Civil War Era.

     d.  To visit and assist in the preservation of Civil War Era monuments and

           historical sites.

     e.  To honor those Americans who fought and died in the Civil War and their

          leaders.

     f.  To promote periodic panel discussions and lecture demonstrations on

         various aspects of the Civil War Era.

     g.  To observe anniversaries of the more important events of the Civil War Era.

     h.  To facilitate public access to information and sources of information about

         the Civil War Era.

     i.  To cooperate with other organizations interested (in whole or in part) in the

         Civil War Era on projects of mutual interest relating to the Civil War Era.

 Since our founding in 2009, we have met monthly (except for August) for dinner and a discussion about the Civil War Era.  Our speakers have included university professors and teachers, authors of books about the Civil War Era, and members of the Civil War Forum who have done research and prepared presentations about the Civil War Era.  Our member presentations have included the careers of Generals Henry W. Halleck and Winfield Scott, the dark side of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, the Failure of Confederate Leadership in the West, African-Americans in the Confederate White House who provided intelligence to the Union, the Civil War and Alaska, a new interpretation of the opening of the Battle of Gettysburg, and a reconstructed election debate for the 1864 Presidential election.  One of our speakers, Cooper H. Wingert, is presently an undergraduate student at Dickinson College and published books about the Civil War Era as a high school student.  We have also invited many young students to our meetings.

Each year, our members have taken a four-day tour of Civil War Era sites, including battlefields, forts, historic houses, and memorials.  These tours have enhanced our understanding of different aspects of the Civil War Era, including the military, the political, and the social.   For example, our tour this year of Kentucky covered three battlefields, en explanation of the social and political structure of Kentucky through the medium of the Lexington Cemetery, a visit to the home of emancipationist Cassius Clay (U.S. Ambassador to Russia during the Civil War), Camp Nelson, a major recruiting and training center for African Americans to join the United States Army, and Berea College, whose unique history includes its founding as a college that would include both African-American and Caucasian students in a slave state before the Civil War. 

In addition to our formal proceedings, our members enjoy sharing information, discussion, and friendly debate with each other about the Civil War Era.  It is no mark of disrespect to the greatest expert to say that nobody can possibly know everything  about the Civil War Era or has the last word on any issue.  We all can and do learn from each other and we do so as genuine friends.