Our program on October 20, 2022, at 7:00 p.m. features David Mowery on “Cincinnati in the Civil War: Then and Now.” During the American Civil War, Cincinnati played a crucial role in preserving the United States. Not only was the city the North’s most populous in the West, but also it was the nation’s third most productive manufacturing center. The Queen City of the West served as a key provider of the Union’s soldiers, weapons, supplies, medical aid, and political influencers. In this presentation, Cincinnati historian David L. Mowery will reveal some of the Queen City’s key structures, such as military installations, hospitals, churches, businesses, and private homes, in the way they appeared at the time of the Civil War. Simultaneously, he will show how those same buildings look today. Come join David as he gives the highlights of Cincinnati’s impact on the outcome of the Civil War through a visual comparison of the past with the present.

David L. Mowery is a native resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a graduate of the University of Cincinnati. American military history piqued his interest at an early age. Since childhood, he has researched and visited over seven hundred battlefields across fifty states and nine countries. In 2001, David joined the all-volunteer Ohio Civil War Trail Commission as its Hamilton County representative, but over the years his role expanded to include the final design and historical validation of the entire length of the John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail of Ohio. He is the coauthor of Morgan’s Raid Across Ohio: The Civil War Guidebook of the John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail (Ohio Historical Society, 2014) and the author of Morgan’s Great Raid: The Remarkable Expedition from Kentucky to Ohio (History Press, 2013) and Cincinnati in the Civil War: The Union’s Queen City (History Press, 2021). Since 1995, David has been a member of the Cincinnati Civil War Round Table, for which he has written various papers on Civil War subjects and has led many Civil War tours of the Cincinnati region. He has also served with the Buffington Island Battlefield Preservation Foundation, the grass-roots organization working to preserve Ohio’s largest Civil War battlefield.