The Second Battle of Winchester - Speaker Scott Mingus

In the summer of 1863, as Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia began pushing north toward Pennsylvania, only one significant force stood in the way -- Union Maj. Gen. Robert H. Milroy’s division of the Eighth Army Corps in the vicinity of Winchester and Berryville. Milroy stubbornly defied repeated instructions to withdraw to safety, believing the enemy action to be merely a cavalry raid or feint. His controversial decision put his outnumbered, largely inexperienced men on a path to disaster. Milroy lost half his force and routed ingloriously from the battlefield. Many Union soldiers who fought at Second Winchester, however, believed their three-day resistance delayed the Rebels from entering Pennsylvania long enough to buy time for the Army of the Potomac to arrive and defeat Lee at Gettysburg.

Speakers Biography

Scott Mingus is a retired research scientist and current consultant to the global pulp & paper industry. He holds U. S. patents in self-adhesive postage stamps and bar code labels. The Ohio native graduated from the Paper Science & Engineering program at Miami University in 1978. While working for Avery Dennison, he was part of the research team that developed the first commercially successful self-adhesive U. S. postage stamps. He has written 22 Civil War and Underground Railroad books. His biography of General William “Extra Billy” Smith won multiple awards, including the Dr. James I. Robertson, Jr. Literary Prize for Confederate History. He has also written several articles for Gettysburg Magazine, as well as for various historical journals. Scott has appeared on C-SPAN, C-SPAN3, PCN, and other TV networks.

Scott and his wife Debi live in Manchester Township north of York. For more than a decade, he was written a popular blog on the Civil War history of York County (www.yorkblog.com/cannonball). He received the 2013 Heritage Profile Award from the York County History Center for his many contributions to local Civil War history. He also has written six scenario books for Civil War miniature wargaming. His great-great-grandfather was a 15-year-old drummer and rifleman in the 51st Ohio Infantry in the Western Theater, and other family members fought at Antietam and Gettysburg in the 7th West Virginia of the Army of the Potomac.