November 14, 2019 at 6:30 pm
Thursday, November 14, 2019, Michael Acosta will speak on the (first) Battle of New Bern, NC. The purpose of this discussion is to introduce a little known (and not local) battle in the Civil War and bring its background and results into our local discussion. The discussion will center on the strategic importance of the area, the lessons learned by the military and how some of those concepts shaped modern day doctrine regarding combined arms fire, amphibious assault tenets, and using terrain as an effective means of defense. In addition, he will address the interesting topic of just how youthful senior leadership was in both the CSA and the US forces during the war.
The (first) Battle of New Bern in March of 1862 launched General Ambrose Burnside to top of the popularity charts in the North and hastened Lincoln to offer him command of the Army of the Potomac. Why didn’t he take Lincoln’s offer? After taking New Bern, the Union army occupied it for the remainder of the war. Why did the North see this quaint agricultural based town worthy of three years of occupation when it already had a robust logistics system of its own? Why did the South try on two later occasions to re-take the city when it was hardly defended to begin with? Was North Carolina even important to the Confederacy and if so, why?
Michael is a member of the Round Table and a native of Texas. He is a retired US Marine aviator and officer who moved to Huntsville in the summer of 2017. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1998 with a Bachelors in History. He also holds a Masters in Management and an MBA from the University of Maryland. He is a graduate of the USMC Expeditionary Warfare School, Command and Staff College, and the Joint Combined Warfare School. He and his wife, of over 21 years, Janet Murphy, of Salisbury, MD have three children. He is an avid Revolutionary War and Civil War buff and thoroughly enjoys dragging his family to various battlefield and historical sites around the country. Michael is a local Naval Academy Representative and volunteers actively supporting his children’s Scout units.
