Symposium Spotlight: James Ogden

Emerging Civil War is excited to bring to you the Third Annual Emerging Civil War Symposium at Stevenson Ridge. As many of you are already aware, this year’s theme is “Great Attacks of the Civil War.”

All of us at ECW are pleased to welcome noted historian James “Jim” Ogden to this year’s symposium. Jim will deliver the event keynote address, discussing James Longstreet’s Assault at Chickamauga. Jim writes and lectures extensively on the subject of Chickamauga, and we are very happy that he has agreed to travel east and share his passion and knowledge on the subject.

Jim, a native of St. Mary’s County, Maryland, has been interested in the Civil War since childhood. Jim obtained a degree in American History through the Civil War period and American Military History from Frostburg State College. During college, he worked summers for the Maryland Park Service at Point Lookout State Park, Maryland, site of the largest Civil War prison. As part of a college internship, he worked for four months at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, West Virginia, doing research and writing on an aspect of that site’s Civil War history that had not previously been addressed.

Since beginning work with the National Park Service in 1982, Jim has been stationed at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, Russell Cave National Monument, and Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. He has been at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park as the Staff Historian since 1988.

Widely regarded as an expert in the Western Theater of the war, Jim speaks regularly on aspects of the Civil War to historical organization across the eastern half of the United States.

Jim has taught a number of Civil War history courses for the Continuing Education Department of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

He has authored a number of short articles in several local publications and has appeared on Greystone Communications/Arts and Entertainment Network’s “Civil War Journal,” the History Channel’s “Civil War Combat,” PBS’s “History Detectives,” and C-SPAN.

Since 1986, he has been an instructor for more than four hundred groups of officers of the U. S. Army conducting Staff Rides (an in-depth analysis of a historical military event) at Chickamauga and Chattanooga.  For a decade, his Staff Ride clients even included two to six hundred officers annually from the British Army’s Joint Services Command and Staff College.

The recognition of his contributions to Civil War History and Preservation include the Friends of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park’s Drew Haskins, Jr., Memorial Service Award (1998); the Civil War Trust Chairman’s Award for Excellence in Preservation (2011); the Chattanooga Area Historical Association’s Dr. James W. Livingood Historian of the Year Award (2014); and the Civil War Round Table of Chicago’s Allan Nevins-Douglas Southall Freeman Award (2014).

Jim, his wife Lora, and their son Jamie (born on the 133rd anniversary of the Battle of Fredericksburg) live in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia.

Please click here for more information on this year’s symposium.