With secessionist sentiment running high in Los Angeles at the outbreak of the Civil War, the Union army depended on the California volunteers stationed at Camp Latham to keep would-be partisans in check. The camp, located in present-day Culver City, was a fixture in the local community, attracting the attention of prominent businessmen and drawing the ire of Southern sympathizers. This precursor to the building of the Drum Barracks in Wilmington existed for only a short period spanning 1861-1862 and has been all but ignored in western Civil War literature. An examination of Camp Latham yields fascinating insight into the political and military disposition of Los Angeles early in the conflict.

Our speaker, Ben Sieke, is a senior at California State University, Long Beach, where he studies music performance. He works professionally as a drummer and percussionist throughout greater Los Angeles and Orange counties. An avid amateur historian, his research interests include local history and performance practices of American popular and art music.

Ben was attracted to Camp Latham because of his keen interest in both local history and the Civil War. The site generally believed to be the former location of Camp Latham is a only a ten-minute walk from his home. As he continued his research, he further discovered that soldiers at the site were there almost solely to keep a lid on secessionism, even going as far as being accused of ballot-stuffing in the 1862 state assembly elections.

Please join us in enjoying Ben Sieke's very interesting and entertaining "local history" multimedia presentation on the legacy of Camp Latham.

Janet Whaley
Program Chair