Peter Joseph Osterhaus was one of the most accomplished of the wave of "'48ers" -- Germans who participated in the 1848-49 Rebellion, then fled their native land -- to re-settle in the United States. He was a Major General for the Union Army in the Civil War, military governor of Mississippi during the early days of Reconstruction, and later U.S. consul general in Lyon. Now, for the first time, he is subject of a biography, Mary Bobbitt Townsend's Yankee Warhorse: A Biography of Major General Peter J. Osterhaus, published by the University of Missouri Press.

Townsend, who is Osterhaus' great-great-granddaughter, uses fresh scholarship and never-before-published source material to describe Osterhaus' important battlefield roles in Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Atlanta. As the historian Earl J. Hess writes in the forward, Osterhaus' career "was, in many ways the best example of disinterested ethnic patriotism" in the Civil War. Yankee Warhorse, Hess says, is a key contributor to the "new wave of interest in the history of German American involvement in the conflict."

What: Reception and discussion for Mary Bobbitt Townsend's Yankee Warhorse.

Where: German-American Heritage Museum, 719 6th Street NW, Washington, DC, 20001.

When: Friday, May 28, 6-8 p.m.

Why: Learn about an important and undercovered Civil War general, visit a great new museum, and enjoy delicious snacks and drinks!