Symposium Spotlight: Dan Welch

August 27, 1862—the day Stonewall resorted to rocks. Jackson had resolved to bring the “miscreant Pope” to battle, and it was with this resolve that Jackson made one of the great defensive stands of the American Civil War. At the Fourth Annual Emerging Civil War Symposium at Stevenson Ridge, Dan Welch will recount that “Great Defense” in his talk “‘Boys, give them rocks’: Jackson’s Stand at Second Manassas.”

Jackson had picked a fight with Gen. John Pope, then hunkered his men down in an unfinished railroad cut to repel Pope’s waves of attack. As one historian of Second Manassas wrote, “It was indeed a position that met all of Jackson’s needs and contingencies.”

Dan says the fight grew desperate. “When his subordinates told him they were running out of ammunition, Jackson basically refused to hear it,” he says. “He told them to hold on, no matter what. By the end, his men were throwing rocks—but they held.”

Dan currently serves as a primary and secondary educator with a public school district in northeast Ohio. Previously, Dan was the education programs coordinator for the Gettysburg Foundation, the non-profit partner of Gettysburg National Military Park, as well as a seasonal Park Ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park for six years. During that time, he led numerous programs on the campaign and battle for school groups, families, and visitors of all ages.

Welch received his BA in Instrumental Music Education from Youngstown State University where he studied under the famed French Hornist William Slocum, and is currently finishing his MA in Military History with a Civil War Era concentration at American Military University. Welch has also studied under the tutelage of Dr. Allen C. Guelzo as part of the Gettysburg Semester at Gettysburg College. He currently resides with his wife, Sarah, in Boardman, Ohio.

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Tickets for this year’s Symposium, Aug. 4-6, 2017, are available for $125 (order here). They include Friday night’s reception, speakers, keynote address, and historians’ roundtable; Saturday’s line-up of talks; coffee service and lunch on Saturday; and Sunday’s tour of the Brandy Station battlefield.