Join Mr. Hampton Newsom as he presents on November 6, 2025 at 7:00 p.m. to the Petersburg Civil War Roundtable. Mr. Newsom will share ”Gettysburg’s Southern Front.”

The three-day Battle of Gettysburg took place between July 1 and July 3, 1863 in and around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was fought between the Union and Confederate and is considered the turning point of the American Civil War. The battle is also recognized as the most costly battle in American military history with over 50,000 combined casualties.

While General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was committed to an invasion of Pennsylvania, US Major General John Adams Dix led 20,000 Union troops on an assault against Richmond, Virginia. Union General-in-Chief Henry Halleck sensed and opportunity and ordered Dix to attack Richmond. On July 1863, Dix would move on both Bottom’s Bridge and Crump’s Crossroads in an effort to disrupt Lee’s lines of communication and threaten the Confederate capital. Newsome will explore these events, which took place on the same day as Confederate General Longstreet’s massive assault at Gettysburg, and ended with a different outcome than the Battle of Gettysburg.

Hampton Newsome is a retired attorney who lives in Arlington, Virginia. He is an editor of Civil War Talks: Further Reminiscences of George S. Bernard and His Fellow Veterans. Hampton Newsome is the author of several books on the Civil War including Richmond Must Fall: The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, October 1864, published by Kent State University Press in 2012 and recognized as a best book of the year by the Civil War Monitor magazine; and The Fight for the Old North State: The Civil War in North Carolina, January-May 1864, which was published in 2019 by the University Press of Kansas and received the Emerging Civil War Book Award and the Richard Barksdale Harwell Award from the Atlanta Civil War Roundtable. His most recent title is Gettysburg’s Southern Front: Opportunity and Failure at Richmond. Also published by University of Kansas Press, this new book has received the Edwin C. Bearss Book Award for Outstanding Scholarship from the Chicago Civil War Roundtable as well as the Emerging Civil War 2023 Book of the Year.

The Petersburg Civil War Roundtable (PCWRT) will meet the first Thursday of each month (except for the months of June, July and August) at Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier from 7:00 pm-8:00 pm. Annual membership is $40.00. Individuals who are already members of Pamplin Historical Park can become members of PCWRT for $20.00. Non-members can attend for $5.00 each meeting. Call (804) 861-2408 for more information. The meeting is held at the park’s Education Center located at 6523 Duncan Road, Dinwiddie, VA 23803.