Please join us for a Chambersburg Civil War Seminars & Tours Lecture Series! Our next lecture will be:  “It was a hard fought battle”: Lord Cornwallis, Horatio Gates, and the Battle of Camden, 1780 by John Maass. Cost is $6 per person. Zoom Login details will be sent with your email registration confirmation.

Synopsis: 

On August 16, 1780, British and American forces clashed in the piney woods of upcountry South Carolina in what was one of the patriots’ worst military disasters of the revolutionary war. How did the American commander, Major General Horatio Gates, manage to have his army routed by a smaller enemy led by Lieutenant General Charles, Lord Cornwallis? What were the keys to British success?

Biography:

John R. Maass is an education staff member of the new National Museum of the U.S. Army at Fort Belvoir. Dr. Maass received a B.A. from Washington and Lee University and a Ph.D. in early American history at The Ohio State University. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on early U.S. military history, including “North Carolina and the French and Indian War: The Spreading Flames of War” (2013); “Defending a New Nation, 1783-1811” (2013); “The Road to Yorktown: Jefferson, Lafayette and the British Invasion of Virginia” (2015); and “George Washington's Virginia” (2017). His newest book is “The Battle of Guilford Courthouse: A Most Desperate Engagement” (2020). He also was the founder of the Rockbridge Civil War round table, a historian at the U.S. Army Center of military history in Washington DC, and served as a transportation officer in the US Army’s 80th Division.