Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War

Professor Scott Ellsworth of the University of Michigan will deliver our annual Crozer Lecture on Thursday, March 12, 2026, at 5pm in the UVA Special Collections Library auditorium. He will discuss his new book, Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America (Dutton, 2025). The lecture is free and open to the public. Paid parking is available nearby at the Central Grounds Parking Garage located near the UVA bookstore.

From the publisher's website: "Focusing on the last, desperate months of the war, when the outcome was far from certain, Midnight on the Potomac is a story of titanic battles, political upheaval, and the long-forgotten Confederate terror war against the loyal citizens of the North. Taking us behind the scenes in the White House, along the battlefronts in Virginia, and into the conspiracies of spies and secret agents, Lincoln walks these pages, as do Grant and Sherman. But so do common soldiers, runaway slaves, and an unknown but intrepid female war correspondent named Lois Adams. Rarely, if ever, has a book about the Civil War featured such a rich and diverse cast of characters."