On Sunday, June 8th at 3 P.M., the Franklin Civil War Round Table will present retired diplomat and author Dr. Gene Schmiel, who will speak on “Citizen-General Jacob Cox and the Battle of Franklin.”
Jacob Donson Cox, with a degree in theology from Oberlin College and a practicing lawyer, joined the Federal service at the start of the war, rising through the ranks to become the commanding Union general on the field at Franklin. He is credited with saving the center of the Federal lines at the Battle of Franklin. After the war Cox was a governor of Ohio and a United States Secretary of the Interior. Dr. Schmiel contends Genera Cox is, “the untold story of the Battle of Franklin.”
Dr. Schmiel is a retired U.S. Department of State Foreign Service officer who has served in several embassies across the world including Sweden, South Africa, Kenya, Djibouti and Iceland. Before joining the Foreign Service, he served as a professor of history at Marymount, Shenandoah, and Penn State universities. He holds the Ph.D degree from Ohio State University in 19th century American history and is the author of Citizen-General: Jacob Cox and the Civil War Era (Ohio State University Press, 2014). He has also coauthored, with his wife Kathryn, a book on life in the Foreign Service.