of Battlefields and Bibliophiles

“I must post myself in Canuck airs,” said John Wilkes Booth

2012-01-26T19:34:00.000-08:00

     John Wilkes Booth Lived Here. . .
       How Montreal fell for the Confederacy
       by Matt Herzfeld

       The McGill Daily
       full article is here

Booth’s desire – to seek political refuge in Canada – has been shared by generations of Americans, from British Loyalists after the American Revolution to Iraq War resisters. And as the newest parade of laughable candidates for President takes to the nation’s podiums, town halls, and state fairs, America will ring once again with the rallying cry of, “If so and so is elected, I’m moving to Canada.”

Huntington Library acquires trove of Lincoln, Civil War telegrams, codes

2012-01-25T21:38:00.000-08:00

( Arkasha Stevenson / Los Angeles Times )

Olga Tsapina, a history curator who will be cataloging the logs, points to Abraham Lincoln's code name, "Ida," in a log listing code names for members of government

A long-unknown, 150-year-old trove of handwritten ledgers and calfskin-covered code books that give a potentially revelatory glimpse into both the dawn of electronic battlefield communications and the day-to-day exchanges between Abraham Lincoln and his generals as they fought the Civil War now belongs to the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. . . .

The Eckert collection's code books show that Lincoln had an assortment of aliases: Ida, India, Irving, Ingress, Ingrate and Ingot. His war secretary, Edwin Stanton, was Indigo or Infant. If a message said "shaker" or "sable," it was talking about an attack. The code words for "infantry" were "rapture" and "ramble."

The terminology seems "completely arbitrary," Tsapina said — which may have been why the Confederates were never able to crack the code.

In her initial sifting through the material during the month before the Huntington decided to buy it, Tsapina said, she found some very human moments along with messages that appear to convey historically important facts.

In February 1862, two months before sharing command with Grant at the Battle of Shiloh, an important and extremely bloody Union victory in Tennessee, Gen. Don Carlos Buell sent a telegram from his headquarters in Louisville, Ky., to unknown recipients code-named Andes and Ocean, complaining of "constant intrigue to displace army officers" under his command, "which I beg you to defeat … until I tell you there is just cause. I learn that Col. Hazin is one of the purposed victims. His removal would be gross injustice and a serious loss."

After the concluding signature, "Alvard" — Buell's code name — appear three additional words: "Good for Alvard," a nod of approval by a telegraph operator putting in his own two cents. Tsapina said she also has found instances in which telegraph operators tacked on insider investment tips to one another, based on how the battlefield news they were transmitting might affect the market price of cotton or gold.

Tsapina said there are "masses of telegrams" concerning supplies and railroad operations, which could help scholars studying Civil War logistics.

The full Los Angeles Times article is here.

iTunesU and the National Portrait Gallery

2012-01-25T14:10:00.001-08:00

It's been over four years since I wrote this blog entry on iTunesU, and the free lectures available there from a growing number of institutions, from Stanford to Yale. Professor David Blight's 27 lectures on "The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1845-1877" remains one of the exceptional educational offerings on the site.

Naturally, in the intervening years, there has been a veritable digital explosion of online material presented at no cost. This may explain why pioneers like The Teaching Company are offering some of their packages at greatly reduced discounts [incidentally, I was given the set of Gary Gallagher lectures as a gift, and you can't go wrong with that product].

More recently, I happened upon this nifty collection of 15 video and audio pieces from the National Portrait Gallery, ranging in length from a 4-minute snippet to an 85-minute lecture by James McPherson. It's really nicely done, all in the spirit of commemorating the 150th anniversary.

Two thumbs up. You can access all of this material, and much, much more through the iTunesU page of the iTunes store, or through this handy smartphone app.

Castle Pinkney back in (Sons of) Confederate Hands

2012-01-23T11:27:00.000-08:00

Castle Pinkney, on Charleston Harbor, was the first U.S. fort to fall into Confederate hands, and after passing through federal and then state ownership, now belongs to the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Thanks to fellow blogger Craig Swain for correcting my previous post. Turns out the old fort changed hands again last summer for the price of $10 (which Craig reported on his blog back on June 29).

There's also an article and a video on the sale here.

The State Ports Authority has long wanted to be rid of the Castle Pinckney; selling the crumbling site to theSons of Confederate Veterans for a bargain price of $10. The SPA has owned the site, off and on, since 1958. Twice, they gave the Castle to historic societies, only to have it given back. However, both parties are optimistic about this transfer."We've been looking for a proper home for Castle Pinckney for many years," says SPA spokesman, Byron Miller.

(the erstwhile) Castle Pinckney National Monument

2012-01-22T11:02:00.000-08:00

from National Geographic Daily News:

Pictures: America's "Lost" National Parks

(view the entire slide show here)

Castle Pinckney National Monument
Photograph from Corbis

This Confederate island fortress in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, was used to house Union POWs, like these men from the Civil War's First Battle of Bull Run. During the war, Castle Pinckney was bombarded twice before falling to the Union with the rest of Charleston in 1865.

After the war, Castle Pinckney fell into general disuse and then into the hands of the National Park Service in 1933. After more than two sleepy decades, the Castle Pinckney National Monument was abolished in 1956—and still little has changed since.

Several aborted development schemes later, Castle Pinckney, now owned by the South Carolina State Ports Authority, sits today in a state of gradual decomposition.

Custer's Last Stand on American Experience tonight (January 17, 2012)

2012-01-17T11:21:00.000-08:00

Hunley Unveiled

2012-01-13T18:42:00.000-08:00

The full article can be read here.

Visit the MSNBC Photo Blog on the Hunley here.

Why did so many Civil War battles take place inside of national parks?

2012-01-03T17:13:00.003-08:00

Nice try citizen, but the moon only looks small.

Michael Lynch, in his Past in the Present blog, has a post reflecting on the confusion of American tourists who somehow conflate the Revolution with the Civil War. This prompted Michael to relate a personal anecdote about an encounter he had with a gentleman while Michael was manning the counter in a small museum in Harrogate, Tennessee. You can read that amusing, and depressing, story here.

In the discussion that followed, a reader of Michael's blog invoked one of the most famous of all Civil War tourist stories -- the one in which a visitor to a battlefield allegedly asks the park ranger, something to the effect of, "why did so many of these Civil War battles take place in national parks?"

It's a good question, and the way I first heard the story -- from Jerry Russell, I think -- was that the ranger, without skipping a beat, replied, "because that's where all the cannon were."

Reading this reminded me of a conversation I had with Bobby Krick, historian at Richmond National Battlefields, during the Civil War Forum's visit to Richmond last spring. I knew he had spent many years on battlefields, and that he was the son of a career NPS historian, so figured he must have some good tales to tell. I asked him about the famous story -- the one about why battles were fought on park service grounds -- and whether those kinds of things really happened, or were merely apocryphal. It's easy to imagine that a story like that is made up to accentuate the humor, while still being emblematic of the fact that we are a nation of idiots.

Bobby said that indeed, people do ask questions like that, and he had a pretty good story from his first NPS assignment, one summer years ago at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Anyone who has visited, or seen pictures of that battlefield knows that the landscape is open, with little in the way of trees beyond the edges of meager watercourses. Bobby tells of a tourist on Last Stand Hill who, feverishly working through in his or her head how exposed the troopers were to the storm of Indian bullets and arrows, asked, "why didn't the soldiers take cover behind all these grave markers?"

And that, my friends, was Custer's last and probably most egregious mistake.

Civil War Pre-Enactors

2011-12-28T14:53:00.000-08:00

From The Onion's Historical Archives:

Peanut: A Civil War DOGumentary

2011-12-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

147 Years Ago: A Christmas Gift for the President

2011-12-22T11:35:00.000-08:00

                 Savannah, Ga December 22, 1864
                 Via Ft. Monroe, Va Dec 25.

His Excellency
    Prest. Lincoln.

               I beg to present you as a
Christmas gift the City of Savannah
with 150 heavy guns & plenty
of ammunition & also about
25,000 bales of cotton.

W. T. Sherman
Major Gen'l

LoC exhibit.

Rodgers favors Generals Lee & Jackson, Glad the North Won the War

2011-12-14T09:21:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Terry Arliskas for sending in this link. Starting at second 54 of the video, she is one of the three Soldiers Aid Society ladies to query the Green Bay Packer quarterback—a history major—about his favorite Civil War generals. [Sorry Rebs, his favorite color is blue.] Terry also reminds us that the Packers are the only team in the NFL to boast a Lee, Grant, and Pickett on their roster.

620 WTMJ NewsRadio -- "Ask Aarron"

"Why do so few blacks study the Civil War?"

2011-12-08T08:52:00.000-08:00

More from The Atlantic's new Civil War issue. . . an article by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Members of Company E, Fourth U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment, pictured at Fort Lincoln, in Maryland. The regiment, which was organized in Baltimore after the war broke out, lost nearly 300 men. (Library of Congress)

"How Newt's New Novel Plays Politics With the Past"

2011-12-05T11:30:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Kevin Levin, whose book review of Newt Gingrich's latest novel appears in the new, Civil War-themed issue of The Atlantic.

Newt Gingrich's recent rise in Republican primary polls has occurred in tandem with the release of his historical novel set in the Civil War, which positions him as a champion of the African-American community and at the same time attempts to placate his conservative southern base, whose agenda is interwoven with a traditional narrative of the Civil War that avoids the tough questions surrounding slavery and race. The result is a narrative that grossly distorts our understanding of the war and the important role of black Union soldiers.

Pohanka put his money where his mouth was

2011-12-01T00:58:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Eric Wittenberg over at Rantings of a Civil War Historian for bringing this interview with Civil War historian Brian Pohanka to my attention. I'd never seen it before, and it's reportedly his last—the last of many, many interviews. Brian was one of the most ubiquitous talking heads in the nascent Civil War documentary world, dating back to the Ken Burns series.

I did not know Brian well, but counted him among my friends in the last years of his life, when he regularly participated in Civil War Forum discussions, and attended our annual gatherings for several years. My first contact with him was to solicit an article for the 2nd issue of Civil War Regiments over 20 years ago, and he graciously submitted something he'd previously published but reworked on his beloved 5th New York at 2nd Manassas. I remember the first time we spoke. All of our contact over his article had been done by mail (USPS), and in some letter or another he had said don't phone me, let's just handle this through written correspondence. He was a private person, and the phone was a distraction from his work (and I understood completely -- I only use the phone, or answer it, with a measure of dread and impatience).

But of course, as a fledgling editor working with a "big name" author, something came up in the hours before sending things off to the printer, and I didn't feel I could go forward without consulting him on some editorial change, lest he take me to task for it until the end of time (I had been instructed to change nothing). I don't remember what it was I so urgently had to get his okay on, but I called him. He answered, and I identified myself, and his first sentence was something to the effect of, "oh, you called anyway" [even though I asked you not to].

That experience caused me to think I was off to a bad start in the world of Civil War publishing, and also to think that Brian was prickly. I was wrong on both counts, as I came to learn over time, and I enjoyed getting to know Brian. One year, the annual West Coast Civil War Round Table Conference was hosted (early 90's I think) by the Long Beach Civil War Round Table, and the featured historians were Brian and Joseph Harsh. I sat by Brian in all the bus excursions that weekend, and those casual chats made us friends. Sometimes you just have to sit next to a guy on a bus, through long stretches of dreary freeway, and there it is.

By the way, yes, there are places in Los Angeles to take a busload of Civil War enthusiasts. Not just cemeteries, but mostly.

But I digress. This interview is about the urgency of preserving what's left of America's Civil War battlefields at a time when commercial development is affecting, at last, even places heretofore protected by their remoteness. I love that Brian salutes Jerry Russell and Annie Snyder as ardent preservationists before we had well-run, efficient, and politically savvy national organizations like the Civil War Trust (the best bang for your preservation buck). Russell and Snyder were untiring advocates of Civil War preservation, loud and cantankerous, and that's what it took to get people's attention while battlefields were quietly being bulldozed.

I don't think I'm exaggerating to say that without Jerry Russell (and Bob Younger of Morningside), Civil War Regiments (which begat Savas Woodbury, Savas, and then Savas Beatie) might never have gotten off the ground—at least not as steadily. Jerry promoted us throughout the land by way of Civil War Round Table Associates, and Bob sold our books and let us share a table at the Gettysburg Book Show, the always sold-out, premier event of the year for anyone peddling books to a hardcore, niche crowd. Brian Pohanka helped us too, by lending his name to our 2nd issue, because battlefield preservation was part and parcel of CWR.

Brian's passion for and knowledge of the Battle of the Little Bighorn was also rivaled by few. Several of us in the Civil War Forum (Margaret, Paula, Keith) were planning to enlist him for a tour there, but we tarried too long. If that subject interests you, you need to pick up a copy of Where Custer Fell. His friends in the Friends of the Little Bighorn tell the tale.

I said Brian put his money where his mouth was. After he died, we learned about his devotion to battlefield preservation in pretty concrete terms. This from a Civil War Trust

announcement:

In a statement released today, the Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) announced a major gift from the estate of historian and ardent preservationist Brian C. Pohanka, who passed away in June 2005. In his will, Pohanka left CWPT — with whom he has been associated since its earliest days — a bequest totaling $1 million earmarked for land acquisition.

In acknowledging the gift, CWPT President James Lighthizer said that the donation is telling of the innumerable contributions Pohanka made to the cause of historic preservation over the years.

"From the very beginnings of the Civil War battlefield preservation movement, Brian Pohanka led the charge," remarked Lighthizer. "He not only gave of his time and talents, but frequently and generously reached into his wallet as well. We at the Civil War Preservation Trust are proud to carry on the work he began nearly two decades ago."

Pohanka's generosity to battlefield preservation was unequalled. In addition to the $1 million bequest, he and his wife Cricket quietly donated an equal amount to CWPT in 2004. Over the years, Pohanka gave generously to CWPT and countless other local battlefield preservation groups — in his will, he also set aside money for the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust ($500,000), the Richmond Battlefields Association ($500,000), and the Save Historic Antietam Foundation ($200,000).

Civil War Lives, by The Huntington

2011-11-27T00:52:00.000-08:00

Huntington Botanical Japanese Garden

The Huntington Library in San Marino (think Pasadena), besides being in a spectacular setting, is one of the nation's foremost repositories in the areas of American and English history and literature. Sure, there's a priceless Shakespeare collection and a Gutenberg bible, but for the purposes of this blog, let me note that lesser Civil War historians are often identified right off the bat by their failure to include the Huntington in their bibliography. Many years ago, I spent a lovely few days there collecting after-action reports that didn't make it into the O.R., for inclusion in Broadfoot's Supplement to the Official Records.

For their own 150th commemoration, the Huntington put together a conference of historians whose presentations are slowly being made available online. Brooks Simpson, one of the presenters, wrote about the gathering here, replete with a photo of the presenters. Here's one link to some of the presentations, and I believe they're probably the same ones available on iTunes now as free podcasts. And no one chronicles a Civil War event like Hal Jespersen.

Visit to Antietam Battlefield, 7 April 1963

2011-11-22T22:09:00.000-08:00

Silent motion picture footage of President John F. Kennedy's visit to the Antietam National Battlefield site, Sharpsburg, Maryland. President Kennedy and his party, which includes Senator Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy, Joan Kennedy, Lem (Kirk LeMoyne) Billings, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army Ralph Horton, and Under Secretary of the Treasury James A. Reed, fly from Camp David by helicopter to the battlefield. Also included is footage of the Acting Superintendent of the Antietam National Battlefield site Robert L. Lagemann, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Jr., Maude Shaw, and others who are unidentified. Naval Photo Center #1211-24.

[thanks to Save Historic Antietam Foundation for the link]

2012 Civil War Tours

2011-10-29T12:10:00.000-07:00

Click to Enlarge

Ad coming out in the December issue of The Civil War Monitor (vol. 1, no. 2)

"Army museum's morbid oddities resettled in Maryland" (from the Associated Press)

2011-10-15T13:21:00.000-07:00

read the full article here.

This undated handout photo provided by the National Museum of Health and Medicine shows the bullet that killed President Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865, and is among the items on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Md. The military museum recently moved to its new home in Silver Spring due to the closing of the nearby Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

This undated handout photo provided by the National Museum of Health and Medicine shows the shattered right leg bones of U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Daniel Sickles on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Md., along with a cannonball similar to the one that hit him during the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg. The military museum recently moved to its new home in Silver Spring due to the closing of the nearby Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

The bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln is mounted under glass, like a diamond in a snow globe, in its new home at the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

The lead ball and several skull fragments from the 16th president are in a tall, antique case overlooking a Civil War exhibit in a museum gallery in Silver Spring, just off the Capital Beltway.

The military museum, known for its collection of morbid oddities, moved in September from the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. At Walter Reed, visitors had to pass through a security gate and find the museum on the campus, where parking could be a problem.

The new building stands outside the gates of Fort Detrick's Forest Glen Annex. Visitors can just drive up, walk in and come face-to-face with a perpetually grinning skeleton directing them to an exhibit on the human body. There, one can see a hairball from the stomach of a 12-year-old girl and the amputated leg of a man with elephantiasis — a disease that causes limbs to become bloated. The leg floats upright in a glass jar like an enormous, pickled sausage.

browsing the Civil War blogosphere

2011-10-11T19:29:00.000-07:00

WORST CIVIL WAR BOOKS
Ted Savas, at A Publisher's Perspective has turned the table on the ubiquitous “favorite books” list by asking readers to name the worst Civil War volumes they’ve personally read. I immediately weighed in with John Bowers’s, Chickamauga and Chattanooga, the Battles that Doomed the Confederacy. Bowers, a novelist, is confused about what constitutes non-fiction. In one scene, worthy of a South Park episode, he has Bragg passing gas so forcefully that the tent flaps are fluttering. Seriously.

HERE LIES A PART
If, like me, you won’t be visiting Higginsville, Missouri anytime soon, drop by Nick’s Battlefield Wanderings blog for some photos of the Confederate Memorial Park there. They lay claim to some part of William Quantrill’s remains. Just what part is unclear.

OZARK LIMBO
Things could be worse. You could be a ghost—somehow unable to fully transition to the next level—and doomed to spend eternity in Arkansas.

TRAINMEN

I could read about trains and trainmen all day, even post-Civil War. Robert Moore, of Cenantua’s Blog fame, remembers some of his Union veteran ancestors work on the iron rails in this meaty blog entry. My grandfather was a station agent and telegrapher for the Minneapolis and St. Louis railway, and his father, and uncle—among other family members—worked on the “Peoria Gateway” as well. That road took my grandfather from Minnesota into South Dakota, where he met his wife, a Norwegian farm girl, and it took him down into Iowa as well, where my mother and father put down roots in a sea of corn.

SMALL PRESSES, BIG THEATERS
Hands-down, for my money, the best Civil War book blog out there is Drew Wagenhoffer’s, Civil War Books and Authors. I especially enjoy that he doesn’t give short shrift to Western and Trans-Mississippi titles, and that he recognizes good work being done by small presses, such as the Camp Pope Publishers. Where else are you going to read a detailed and authoritative review of Iowa’s Martyr Regiment: the story of the Thirty-eighth Iowa Infantry, by David Wildman? I’m amazed at how many books—in areas of specific interest to me—I hear of for the first time on Drew’s blog.

HASKELL COUNTY CLOWN
My second stop for book postings is Civil War Librarian, which brings together reviews of new books from myriad sources, as well as news, commentary, and useful preservation updates. I was glad to stumble upon this David Blight opinion piece, reproduced from the Kansas City Star. Blight is telling it like it is. Read it and weep, Governor Perry.

BODY BAGS
United States Patent Number 39,291 was issued for Dr. Thomas Holmes’s “Improvement in Receptacles for Dead Bodies.” Jim Schmidt writes about that at his Civil War Medicine (and Writing) blog, in this case a reprint of his regular Civil War News installment. Pretty damn interesting.

A HERO IS BORN
Once Brooks Simpson moved on to create his own blog (Crossroads), Ethan Rafuse stepped up as the principal contributor over at Civil Warriors, and has seemingly single-handedly managed to keep one of the oldest and most respected Civil War blogs fresh and interesting. I am more than a little interested in reading his new biography of Stonewall Jackson.

HOUSTON AND TEXAS CENTRAL

Andy Hall taught me what a Ferroequinologist is, even though I have been one myself for many years. I rarely surf through my Civil War blogroll without dropping in on Dead Confederates. It’s that consistently enjoyable to read.

SAY THAT FIVE TIMES FAST

Reading about the October, 1861 Chicamacomico Races at Emerging Civil War brought to mind that famous Monty Python war cry from The Search for the Holy Grail: “Run away, run away!”

IF GRAFFITI COULD TALK

As good as blogs get: Mysteries and Connundrums. Would that all major battlefields got the same treatment as this blog does for the Spotsylvania and Fredericksburg area. Check out these multi-part entries on graffiti at Chatham and Falmouth.

PRESERVATION FAIL

What the hell were they thinking? The Brandy Station Foundation utterly failed in its pledge to preserve the “natural and historic resources of the Brandy Station area.” Someone had to say it, and Eric Wittenberg said it with gusto over at Rantings of a Civil War Historian. This and the numerous follow-up posts chronicle the debacle and its aftermath.

BONES IN THE HOLE

Everything’s bigger in my home state of Texas, including atrocities. There was the Great Hanging at Gainesville, of course, a mass murder that neo-Confederates forget to mention to their children. But Victoria Bynum digs deeper at her deliciously substantive blog, Renegade South. This story about Unionist bones in Dead Man’s Hole is so well done, some Texas quarterly should pick it up and send her a check.

DUST IN THE DISTANCE

“High Rock,” in Washington County, Maryland, in the South Mountain range, affords “the most beautiful mountain scenery,” so records a regimental history of the 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry. General Buford himself reportedly stopped there on June 29, 1863, and could see the dust from a Confederate column in Greencastle, Pennsylvania (McLaws’ Division?). One day I’m going to hire John Miller to take me to this spot, which I enjoyed reading about at War Returns to South Mountain, a blog of good, solid essays by a devoted local historian.

RETREATING TO VICTORY

The Confederates held the battlefield at Wilson’s Creek, but they lost Missouri at Pea Ridge. Even as a graduate student, Bob Pollock knew what he was talking about, and he writes about it now at Yesterday and Today.

Remembering some Civil War Forum Battlefield Tours

2011-09-23T03:09:00.000-07:00

Bob Krick at Chancellorsville stylishly sporting
a SF Giants ballcap and a 49ers logo shirt (2003)

Bob Krick at Fredericksburg (2003)

With Krick at the Muleshoe, Spotsylvania (2003)

Gordon Brown, Atlanta History Center (2008)

Some prized kepis in the Atlanta History Center collection (2008)

Logbook of the CSS Shenandoah, Atlanta History Center (2008)

Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery.
Matthew Fontaine Maury in the foreground.
President James Monroe in the background (2011)

State Historian James Wooten, Pickett's Mill (2008)

Bobby Krick at Beaver Dam Creek (2011)

Scene of "The Crime at Pickett's Mill" (2008)

Author Russell Bonds on Pine Mountain
site of the death of General Leonidas Polk (2008)

Russ Bonds at Big Shanty, with The General (2008)

At right, Professor Nystrom, New Orleans (2010)

Atop Malvern Hill (2011)

Johnston's Chattahoochee River Line (2008)

Stuart monument at Yellow Tavern (2011)

Fort Pike, New Orleans (2010)

Atlanta tour guides: Russell Bonds, Charlie Crawford,
Gordon Jones, Stephen Davis, Greg Biggs (2008)

Detail from a Scaife map at the Atlanta Cyclorama (2008)

My youngest son, bored to death, but patient
at the Laura Plantation in Louisiana (2010)

Slave cabin at Laura Plantation (2010)

Oak Alley Plantation (2010)

Historian Jim Ogden, Stones River (1998)

Ewell's grave in Nashville (2006)

Ed Bearss at Appomattox (2007)

Historians Ron Wilson and Patrick Schroeder
at Appomattox (2007)

Bearss and Wilson on Lee's Retreat (2007)

Lee's Retreat Tour (2007)

McClean Parlor (2007)

William Garrett Piston, on right, at Wilson's Creek (2004)

Ed Bearss and the late Brian Pohanka on the
bank of the Mississippi River at Vicksburg (2000)

Horace Porter and John Paul Jones

2011-09-22T01:37:00.000-07:00

John Paul Jones was one of my first heroes. I loved the very sound of his name. I loved the images it evoked—all of the excitement and tension of "Master and Commander" before Hollywood had the technical ability to make those images seem real.

I read a biography of John Paul Jones when I was a child, but can't remember the name of the book or much else about it, other than that it left me with a life-long impression of a virtuous and brave naval giant taking on the all but invincible Royal Navy, and prevailing. Where ordinary men would accept defeat, he had not yet begun to fight!

Living in the land lubber states of Nebraska and Iowa at the time, I had a great love of tales from the Age of Sail, particularly the stories of great explorers, and of desperate battles at sea by great wooden ships. I built crude models of early American warships, and dreamed of one day visiting Old Ironsides in Boston, the flagship of the United States Navy. I was 29- or 30-years-old before I managed to do that, though a visit to her sister ship Constellation in Baltimore, when I was in junior high, helped tide me over as I went on to build models that covered the long lineage of American ships of war and exploration, through WWII iterations, and extending even to vessels with those same names among the fleet of Federation starships. Oh how I wished the Bonhomme Richard had survived the war. But she may turn up yet. At least five major expeditions, most recently in 2005, have failed to locate the wreck, believed to be off the coast of Yorkshire, but the search is not over.

In time I came to learn that there may be a little residual sea salt in my blood. I was gratified to discover that some of my earliest ancestors in this country "went down to the sea in ships," settling the area around Salem, and homesteading at the head of the Bass River (today's Beverly, Massachusetts). They had taken up residence on Cape Ann initially to harvest cod for the Dorchester Company, which founded Gloucester of "Perfect Storm" fame—some of the very first settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Continuing the maritime theme, one of my distant New England ancestors—Levi Woodbury—went on to become the Secretary of the Navy under President Andrew Jackson. [He is, incidentally, reported to be one of a small group of people to have served in all three branches of the Federal government: in addition to Secretary, he was a senator from New Hampshire, and a Supreme Court Justice—and according to an unknown Wikipedia author, one of only three people to complete the Federal trifecta who also served as a state governor]. Sadly, the one bona fide warship named for him, the destroyer USS Woodbury (DD-309) did not fare well, crashing into the rocks off California's Point Honda in 1923 with six other destroyers in a spectacular and tragic accident.

But I digress. I've never lost my interest in tales of the sea, and now, in 2011, I finally got around to reading another biography of John Paul Jones. But this time it was a modern treatment, Evan Thomas's, John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy. This summer, as I read it, I was about six years older than Jones was when he died (an increasingly dismaying fact when studying historic figures is that we today are world-class slackers). He's still a towering figure to me, but oh so human now.

Thomas's portrait of Jones provided one revelation after another. I did not ever consider that Jones might be a petulant, vainglorious egotist, whose incessant whining caused even his closest supporters to scold or avoid him. But there it is, well documented in his letters.

I didn't know his name was really just John Paul, and that the Jones was added later, probably due to his wanting to distance himself from an unfortunate incident resulting in the death of a crewman. I didn't even know, because I don't speak French, that the Bonhomme Richard was a tribute to Ben Franklin's famous publication.

Model on view at the Jones cottage in Scotland.

Nor did I know that Jones was largely forgotten in the United States after his death in Paris in 1792 (even citizenship was bestowed upon him posthumously). The American minister to France, Gouverneur Morris, couldn't be bothered to attend his funeral, or to appropriate funds for a burial befitting the "Father of the United States Navy."

ENTER HORACE PORTER

Horace Porter is well known to most students of the Civil War. A well-heeled West Point graduate, third in the class of 1860, he began his war service on the southeastern seaboard, at Fort Pulaski, and Secessionville, and by the summer of 1862 was on the staff of Maj. Gen. George McClellan with the Army of the Potomac. After Antietam, he went to the West, to General Rosecrans's staff, was at Chickamauga—where he earned a Congressional Medal of Honor—and Chattanooga, where he eventually became attached to the headquarters of Ulysses S. Grant.

Horace Porter

Porter, whose successive brevet promotions took him all the way to brigadier-general by war's end, served on and off with Ulysses S. Grant for the next 11 years, from the summer of 1864 to 1873, and remained close to Grant for the rest of Grant's life. After the war, he was Assistant Secretary of War under interim Secretary Grant (1867-1868), and President Grant's Executive Secretary (1869-1873) during the White House years. His 1897 memoir, Campaigning with Grant, is a mainstay in Civil War studies, being first published serially in "The Century." It is accurate in the main, but, typical of the genre, contains many post-war embellishments. Shortcomings aside, Porter's glimpse's of Grant behind the scenes, and his recollections of the wind down-to Appomattox, should be read by anyone interested in primary accounts of some of the most dramatic moments in the Civil War.

I knew all about Porter's Civil War service, but in one of the strange quirks of the Civil War obsessed, his life for me pretty much began in 1860 and ended at Appomattox. I don't know why that is, but it's often a revelation to learn that someone you thought little about in the Civil War era had a long and interesting life, with achievements wholly unrelated to "the Late Unpleasantness." That reminds me. Back in 2007 I did a blog post about officers who survived the war, but died of something other than natural causes after the war, by surveying entries in Eicher & Eicher's, Civil War High Command. Have a look: "When Luck Runs Out."

Back to the story. Porter's service to his country did not end with the Grant administration. For eight years beginning in 1897, he was the United States Ambassador to France. For the last six of those years, of his own accord, he oversaw an exhaustive search for the long lost grave of the American naval hero John Paul Jones. After an ill-fated stint in the Russian Navy, Jones returned to France in slowly declining health, finally succumbing to multiple health issues in his Paris apartment on July 18, 1792, nearly 13 years after the Bonhomme Richard slipped beneath the waves of the North Sea.

Through the generosity of a French aristocrat, he was buried in an more costly, tightly-sealed lead coffin, and preserved in alcohol, should the Americans ever come looking for their great seaman. But they never came. In time, the cemetery land where Jones was buried was put to other uses in the ever-growing City of Lights, mostly built over, and even the names of the surrounding streets had been changed between Jones's death and Porter's eventual discovery of the site in 1905.

Map of the St. Louis Cemetery showing the 1792 street names and the 1905 names. The cemetery itself is about 120 feet long on Rue de la Grange aux Belles and 130 wide. The oblong mark shows Jones' coffin. The higher courtyard was not used for burials. By 1905 both were built upon. —Sons of the American Revolution site:
http://www.southcoastsar.org/Rcvry_JPJ.htm#vn

Porter, who himself was descended from an officer in the Continental Army, his grandfather, Andrew Porter, launched the search for Jones's remains without any prompting from his government, and at his own expense. By the time he discovered the cemetery and began negotiations with landowners for access, then-president Theodore Roosevelt asked Congress to appropriate funds for the excavation, but that did not come to pass for many years. Porter lamented the treatment Jones had received after death, writing,

After having studied the manner and place of his burial and contemplated the circumstances connected with the strange neglect of his grave, one could not help feeling pained beyond expression and overcome by a sense of profound mortification. Here was presented the spectacle of a hero whose fame once covered two continents and whose name is still an inspiration to a world-famed navy, lying for more than a century in a forgotten grave like an obscure outcast, relegated to oblivion in a squalid corner of a distant foreign city, buried in ground once consecrated, but since desecrated by having been used at times as a garden, with the moldering bodies of the dead fertilizing its market vegetables, by having been covered later by a common dump pile, where dogs and horses had been buried, and the soil was still soaked with polluted waters from undrained laundries; and as a culmination of degradation, by having been occupied by a contractor for removing night-soil.

Amazingly, Jones's lead coffin was located, and his remains were remarkably well preserved. For an interesting account of "The Two Burials of John Paul Jones," see this website with its many worthwhile links.

President Roosevelt, eager to make the United States into a naval power second to none and cognizant of the patriotic fervor that could be built up around the repatriation of Jones, was eager to bring home the remains of the naval icon. After much pomp and circumstance in Paris, Jones's body was shipped to his adopted home on a 13-day voyage ending with a parade of naval vessels up the Chesapeake Bay to Annapolis. Horace Porter, as he had done at the dedication of Grant's tomb, gave a speech in an elaborate ceremony at the United States Naval Academy on April 24, 1906, welcoming the hero home. It would be another seven years before Congress settled on Annapolis as Jones's final resting place, and there, beneath the chapel, his sepulchre was built. Information on visiting Jones's crypt can be found here. At the base of the tomb, his epitaph reads:

JOHN PAUL JONES, 1747-1792 

U.S. NAVY, 1775-1783

HE GAVE OUR NAVY ITS EARLIEST TRADITIONS

OF HEROISM AND VICTORY 

ERECTED BY THE CONGRESS, A.D. 1912

Now, having read a sampling of Jones's own writing, reported in Thomas's biography, I know that Jones was not larger than life, but he was certainly full of life, a fierce, proud warrior, fearless on the open sea. He's still my hero.

Letterman on the Civil War

2011-09-19T18:59:00.000-07:00

Thursday, May 15, 2008
TOP TEN SIGNS YOUR TEACHER IS DRUNK
Number 9: Insists the Civil War was fought between Jack Daniel and Jim Beam

Thursday, April 8, 1999
TOP TEN WAYS TO MAKE GOLF MORE EXCITING
Number 3: New hazard: Civil War re-enactments.

Monday, May 2, 1994
TOP TEN SIGNS YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GRADUATE
Number 9: In essay on Civil War you wrote about Tom and Roseanne break-up

(for complete listings, click on the title of each top ten list)

Was Nicolas Cage a vampire during the Civil War?

2011-09-19T18:27:00.000-07:00

This imaginative eBay listing has since been removed. Perhaps the item was sold. The original auction was entitled, "Nicolas Cage is a Vampire / Photo from 1870 / Tennessee," with an asking price of $1,000,000. Imagine what it would be worth if you could get Cage to sign it. (Thanks to my brother for bringing this supernatural item to my attention.)

Original c.1870 carte de visite showing a man who looks exactly like Nick Cage. Personally, I believe it's him and that he is some sort of walking undead / vampire, et cetera, who quickens / reinvents himself once every 75 years or so. 150 years from now, he might be a politician, the leader of a cult, or a talk show host.

This is not a trick photo of any kind and has not been manipulated in Photoshop or any other graphics program. It's an original photo of a man who lived in Bristol, TN sometime around the Civil War.

I've had a lot of questions asking where I purchased this. As followers of my website know, I collect antique memorial photography - images of dead people - from the 1800s. This photo was found in the very back of album that contained an unusual number of Civil War era death portraits (which is why I purchased it). All of the other people in the album, living and dead, were identified by name - this man was not.

Reviews Forthcoming

2011-09-17T01:04:00.000-07:00

George Crook: From the Redwoods to Appomattox, Paul Magid (University of Oklahoma Press, 2011).

Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography by R.B. Bontecou, Stanley B. Burns, M.D. (Burns Archive Press, 2011)

Dakota Dawn: The Decisive First Week of the Sioux Uprising, August 17-24, 1862, Gregory F. Michno (Savas Beatie, 2011).

In the Cornfield

2011-09-04T03:55:00.000-07:00

Yes Virginia, you can produce regular, lengthy blog entries and still find time to write a book

2011-08-26T00:26:00.000-07:00

There are too many Civil War books to keep up with (or catch up with) these days, so one has to be fairly discerning about how to fill those precious few hours available for reading (it's hard enough to keep up with all the blogs). But even though his Facebook entries evince a startlingly pronounced and deeply disconcerting [New York] Yankee bias, I'm going to take time to read Brooks Simpson's newest work from Praeger's, "Reflections on the Civil War Era" series. Reflections should always be characterized by well-informed and well-considered opinions, and I'm confident Simpson won't disappoint on that score, whether or not you concur with his observations.

P.S. I can see what the dust jacket designer was going for with the Grant image on top, and the Gettysburg map below, the Civil War in the East, of course, but you just know some reviewer is going to count coup by pointing out Grant wasn't at Gettysburg.

Georgia Adds Swastika, Middle Finger To State Flag

2011-08-23T00:33:00.000-07:00

I don't know how I missed this controversial story from the late 1990s. It must have gotten lost in a busy news cycle.

[News in Photos, November 4, 1998, The Onion]

Ed Bearss' favorite Civil War books

2011-08-16T01:30:00.000-07:00

No, Ed did not mention a book on Glorieta Pass in his top five, but I'll bet you he read this one, and thought highly of it. On his tours of Glorieta and Valverde, no doubt he crossed paths with the late historian Don Alberts, who sadly passed away from Parkinson's in November of 2010. I love the New Mexico desert, and I love Don's book on Glorieta (read Don's account of the battle at the Civil War Trust website).

I started thinking about Don's book when I stumbled upon this link over at the fine "Past in the Present" blog, a Billings Gazette article that asked Ed Bearss to list his five favorite Civil War books. I was very curious to see what Ed would list, since these kinds of things are so subjective, and imagining what any one person would say after a lifetime of study is difficult. Battle Cry of Freedom and Grant's memoirs are unassailable choices. I imagine a great many people would list them as a "must" for any top five ranking. I do.

I was interested to see the Sears' book on Gettysburg—which I have not read—make the list for best book on a single battle. Now I feel like I have to read it, though before today my chances of getting around to it were less than 50-50. Still waiting on my metaphorical nightstand is Steven Woodworth's single volume Gettysburg history, Beneath a Northern Sky (about which Jeffrey Hall wrote a fairly penetrating review).

Invariably at some point when reading a book by Sears, I find myself distracted by the author's emotional reaction to one thing or another, one officer or another. Since McClellan was not at Gettysburg, perhaps the distractions of his book on that subject are more fleeting. I should say that Sears' book on Antietam, Landscape Turned Red, was one of the truly seminal books in my own Civil War reading. Powerful stuff. I might have included it in my own top five had I re-read it any time in the last 15 years. I can't really remember it that well now. His Seven Days book is a great contribution.

For personal gratification, I was hoping Bearss would name Mark Bradley's book on Bentonville, Last Stand in the Carolinas, which I assembled in Quark on my Mac in the dining room of our then Santa Clara apartment. Ed did make it known he considers Mark's tome a landmark work. I won't take issue with Ed's choice of Killer Angels, only say that it's a gripping story the first time you read it, but harder to revisit the more you learn about the Civil War. At least that was my experience.

Of course picking five "favorite" books from a list of literally thousands of titles is pretty impossible, like naming your favorite five novels of the 20 century, or favorite five movies of the last 40 years. But like Rob in Nick Hornby's brilliant novel (later movie) High Fidelity, ranking items in lists is something we are inclined to do as a way to get a handle on things.

My five favorite Civil War books (not counting reference works, for which I have an inordinate fondness)? I thought you'd never ask. One has to distinguish between "favorite" and "indispensable." Edward Porter Alexander's, Fighting for the Confederacy is indispensable, and a good read, but I guess I wouldn't rank it among my top five favorites. Likewise, Charles Roland's, The American Illiad is my favorite concise single-volume history, but you can't have two single-volume histories in your top five, can you? Isn't there a rule about that? Anyway, if it's Monday, then the list must read this way:

1. Battle Cry of Freedom, by James McPherson

2. Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

3. Decision in the West, the Atlanta Campaign of 1864, by Albert Castel

4. A Stillness at Appomattox, by Bruce Catton

5. The Battle of Glorieta, Union Victory in the West, by Don E. Alberts

What's your top five, just off the top of your head?

The Civil War Documentary - A Documentary

2011-08-12T22:31:00.000-07:00

"We were about one hour into the Civil War, we all figured things were going pretty well, but naturally we wondered how much longer it would all last. Some of us thought an hour. Some thought two. We little suspected the Civil War would drag on for more than 11 hours"

The Hunley is Upright

2011-08-10T18:14:00.000-07:00

"The first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship is upright for the first time in almost 150 years, revealing a side of its hull not seen since it sank off the South Carolina coast during the Civil War." (AP) Read about it here.

Photo gallery is here (AP Photos: Bruce Smith).

Meanwhile, progress continues on preserving remnants of the U.S.S. Monitor.

Mary's life didn't end when John was hanged

2011-07-29T01:38:00.000-07:00


Mary Brown with daughters Annie (left) and Sarah (right) in 1853, Vernon, New York (Library of Congress)

John Brown's son, Salmon

I was surprised, some years ago, to learn that Mary Brown—the 2nd wife of John Brown of Bloody Kansas and Harpers Ferry fame, and his wife at the time of his execution—was buried in my "back yard," in the South [San Francisco] Bay town of Saratoga, in the hills southwest of San Jose. Surprised, too, to learn that she taught English to Japanese migrant workers in the Santa Clara Valley (today more often referred to as Silicon Valley, where remnants of the once-endless orchards still survive as isolated fruit trees in fenced-off back yards).

I wasn't surprised that she had made her way to the western end of the continent in the years after her husband was hanged in Charles Town, West Virginia. According to a direct descendant, Mary Brown and her children—and a stepson, Salmon, from John's first wife—moved to California to let their families experience a life "out of the shadow of John Brown."

I was surprised because I'd never heard about it before—surprised that in an area so enamored of its history, not many people beyond the local historical society know that the widow and other family members of the man author Tony Horwitz describes as "the most successful terrorist in American history" is resting peacefully in this beautiful and affluent Northern California suburb.

It wasn't always thus, of course. As is the way with history, things are forgotten over time. Her presence in California—first in Red Bluff, then up amongst the giant coastal redwoods in Rohnerville with daughters Annie, Sarah, and Ellen, and next door to Salmon Brown and his family—was well known and widely reported in her day. Daughter Annie reportedly served as her father's secretary during at least part of his anti-slavery campaigns. During the centennial of the Harpers Ferry raid, on October 18, 1959, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Annie "had, when but 16, assisted Martha Brown, wife of John Brown's son, Oliver, with the cooking at the Kennedy farm, where the daring maneuver was prepared" (this from Jessie Faulkner at the Humboldt County Historical Society).

In 1881, about three years before her death, Mary Brown relocated to Saratoga, in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains, and is buried in Madronia Cemetery along with her daughters Sarah and Ellen.

To the end of her days, it seems, she was both harassed by enemies of her late husband (even having to outrun southern vigilantes on the Oregon Trail, by one account) and warmly embraced by his supporters (supported financially to some degree by well-heeled abolitionist literary figures like Thoreau and Emerson), wherever she went. The latter outnumbered the former in this Far West Union state. Check out this blog entry about John Brown's great-great-great-granddaughter, Alice Keesey Mecoy, speaking about her famous ancestor. "'I didn't know I was related to him until I was 16,' Alice Keesey Mecoy said Sunday to a packed room at the Saratoga History Museum. 'I said, What? I'm related to this crazy man?'"

In 2009, dirt from Mary's grave in California and John's in North Elba, New York, were commingled.

I enjoyed a number of hours reading material at this excellent John Brown blog, which includes considerable information on Mary Brown.

This Allies for Freedom website has lots of interesting information on Mary Brown and her family in California.

The 9/11 of 1859

2011-07-13T17:35:00.000-07:00

Vivenne Flesher and Ward Schumaker

Author Tony Horwitz wrote this NYT Op-Ed piece in December of 2009, on the subject of his forthcoming book about John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (Midnight Rising, John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War, coming from Henry Holt in October of 2011).

The "9/11 of 1859" essay can be read in its entirety here. Scroll down at this page of the publisher's site to hear a five-minute audio from Horwitz discussing what he was trying to accomplish in writing the book.

Here's an earlier (October 2010) Horwitz Op-Ed piece on the enduring Civil War, "The 150-Year War."

Charles Town, W. Va.

ONE hundred and fifty years ago today, the most successful terrorist in American history was hanged at the edge of this Shenandoah Valley town. Before climbing atop his coffin for the wagon ride to the gallows, he handed a note to one of his jailers: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”
-- from "The 9/11 of 1959"

Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War

2011-07-07T02:13:00.000-07:00

I extend a hearty thank-you to my history-major neice Susan for bringing this forthcoming Horwitz volume to my attention. First, let me say how gratified I am that there are still history majors, and that I am related to one of them. Second, let me say how excited I am that Horwitz took on the John Brown raid. Like many a Civil War buff, I enjoyed his Confederates in the Attic, and his talent as a writer and a journalist caused me to follow his efforts afterwards—his chronicling of Captain Cook's adventures (Blue Laditudes), and I did download, on the advice of the aforementioned Susan, his most recent book, A Voyage Long and Strange.

Not everyone cares for Horwitz's style, but I like it. I love the conflation of serious journalist, history enthusiast, and travel writer in his narrative voice. I don't even care if he turned to John Brown to capitalize on the sesquicetennial fervor (even if he's behind the date on the John Brown raid). I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt, having never been disappointed thus far. It's also a perfect segue to my forthcoming blog post on John Brown's wife, Mary.

Google Earthing the Civil War

2011-07-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

Look at the neat things Andy Hall has done with Google Earth over at his consistently interesting Dead Confederates blog. Through "image overlay," and careful scaling of the original to align with the Google image (when will someone come up with an App that scales these images for you?), one can get a reasonably accurate look at how a historic image fits into today's satellite view. Pretty damn cool. Have at look at what he did with the location of Henry Wirz's gallows (at the Old Capitol Prison -- see the full essay on the Wirz Execution photos here) in relation to today's U.S. Supreme Court building. Likewise, the overlay of 1865 Galveston with the modern view. The application of Google Earth tools to historic documents is as unlimited as our nearly infinite capacity for avoiding doing any real work (or as Andy put it, the functionality is limited only by the imagination of the user).

Thus far, with respect to Google Earth, my imagination was limited to creating three Civil War quizes in which participants view an overhead view of a part of a battlefield or significant landmark -- just out of context enough to be disorienting for some -- and try to guess the Civil War location. If you haven't given it a shot yet, links to the quizes and answers are given below. Quiz #1 centers on fairly famous battlefield features, without clues, while the subsequent two quizes include more-or-less useful clues.

Google Earth Quiz Number One is here -- Answers to Quiz One are here

Google Earth Quiz Number Two is here -- (the answers for Quiz Two are found in the last of the 3 comments attached to that post).

Google Earth Quiz Number Three is here -- Answers to Quiz Three are here

The largest offensive ever mounted by a Confederate army. . .

2011-06-28T23:50:00.000-07:00

Historian Bobby Krick addresses members of the CompuServe
Civil War Forum at their 15th annual battlefield conference, April 2011

Yesterday was the anniversary of the battle of Gaines's Mill, a major fight that remains obscure even to many self-proclaimed students of the American Civil War. Why Gaines's Mill, the rest of the Seven Days Battles, and the overall 1862 Peninsula Campaign remain in the backwaters of Civil War studies is a mystery to me.

Fortunately for us, organizations on the front lines of the Civil War preservation movement have not given the Seven Days backwater status. Just this year, important portions of the Gaines's Mill battlefield have been saved by the Richmond Battlefields Association and the Civil War Trust.

Speaking of the Civil War Trust, the July 1-8 issue of "The Week" named Civil War Trust as their "Charity of the Week," noting that they have saved 30,000 acres on 110 Civil War battlefields in 20 states. Not a bad track record.

Civil War Trust's web site continues to grow into one of the most useful and fascinating resources on the Civil War. The articles, maps, interviews, photo galleries, and videos make up a treasure trove of some of the most reliable and interesting information to be found in one place. Their Gaines's Mill page, for example, is the perfect starting point for planning a visit to the battlefield. Once there, you would do well to get in on one of NPS historian Bobby Krick's tours of the battlefield.

In the penultimate essay, Krick looks at the climax of the battle of Gaines's Mill, by far the bloodiest of the Seven Days. His topic is Brig. Gen. W. H. C. Whiting's two-brigade division and its late-afternoon assault that breached Union lines near the Watt House. Krick draws on an impressive array of materials to make sense of the attacks, which, among other results, catapulted the soldiers of John Bell Hood's Texas Brigade to fame as the army's finest shock troops. Krick reminds readers that the offensive at Gaines's Mill was the largest ever mounted by any Confederate army, its 50,000 participants far exceeding the number involved in more famous attacks by George E. Pickett and James Johnston Pettigrew at Gettysburg and Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville. He also sees the attack on June 27 as a pivotal event that marked the first offensive tactical victory for Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. The general and his soldiers built on that foundation to create one of the most famous and effective military partnerships in American history.

[The extract above is from the introduction to Gary Gallagher's, The Richmond Campaign of 1862: the Peninsula and the Seven Days, speaking of Bobby Krick's contribution to the volume.]

Remembering Edwin Francis Jemison

2011-06-14T22:44:00.000-07:00

This portrait of Private Edwin Jemison is one of the most iconic images of the war. Though he was descended from two of the founding families of Georgia, his branch of the family moved to Louisiana before the war. When secession came, Jemison enlisted in the 2^nd Louisiana Infantry as a 16-year-old.

The 2^nd Louisiana was sent to Virginia, where it came under the command of John Bankhead Magruder. The regiment saw limited action at Dam Number One in the opening movements of the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, but was not engaged again until the last of the Seven Days battles. There, at Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862, 17-year-old Private Jemison was killed in action.

With family roots in Milledgeville, Georgia, it was presumed that his remains were returned to the family plot there, and indeed, there is a gravestone for him there, as well as a more substantial monument to his memory (Memory Hill Cemetery).

Two researchers, however -- Alexandra Filipowski and Hugh T. Harrington -- have concluded that Private Jemison’s remains are buried elsewhere, namely at Malvern Hill where he was killed. This, based mainly on a contemporary obituary that mentions his burial at Malvern Hill, and the lack of any documentation that Jemison’s body was relocated to Milledgeville. You can read those researchers’ convincing argument in this America’s Civil War article from 2004.

When I think of Milledgeville, I think of Sherman’s troops ransacking the then state courthouse, and I think of Flannery O’Connor, one of my favorite authors. If Jemison is buried at Memory Hill, then he’s in good company.

"Everything you know about the Civil War is wrong. Almost."

2011-06-09T14:07:00.001-07:00

Based on Joan Walsh’s outstanding critique at Salon.com, I purchased the Kindle version of this book today. The prospects of a well researched and thoughtful new “big picture” view of the run up to war and the appalling abandonment of African Americans afterwards – the effects of nativism and religion, religious intolerance, and bigotry – and the drawing of parallels to the political landscape 100 years later, is too intriguing to pass up.

I’ll revisit this subject with my own views once I delve into it, but be sure to read Walsh’s review by clicking HERE.

From the review:

Goldfield's book has been well-reviewed, because if it's sympathetic to Southern whites, it depicts the savagery of slavery and post-war white terrorism with unflinching and gut-wrenching clarity. (Literally. The book's tales of slaves' abuse and Southern white post-war savagery will make you sick.) Still, this Civil War history challenges the absolutism of the "Northerners were heroes, and Southerners were vicious, violent racists" school of history. He exposes and excoriates Southern whites' violence against black people before and after the war. But he also links the war to the pro-business evangelical Protestant crusade to eradicate native American Indians, Mexicans, Irish and German Catholic immigrants, and an emerging class of landless Northern laborers – anyone who stood in the way of their vision of clean, hard-working, business-friendly American progress.

* * * *

Harriet Beecher Stowe moved to former Confederate Florida, became an Episcopalian, wrote a best-selling book about home decorating for women, and never again troubled herself about the (former) slaves. Abolitionist Horace Greeley gave up on Reconstruction and black rights quickly. His New York Tribune, which once crusaded against slavery, began to feature "exposes" of Reconstruction, including tales of black "corruption" and political incompetence. Even the Nation magazine, which we remember as a journal of abolitionism, soured on the experiment with black suffrage.

* * * *

For many reasons, Northern Republicans gave up on the early goals of Reconstruction: to grant free blacks civil and economic rights. Goldfield quotes a Northerner observing a general desire to forget the war, and particular "apathy about the Negro" – shades of the "compassion fatigue" that would be diagnosed by neoconservatives 100 years later, after the Great Society. The parallels between the backlash against Reconstruction, and the backlash against Lyndon Johnson's civil rights reforms, are unmistakable and chilling. . . .After each morally overdue reckoning, the parties suffered, and then they changed sides. Republicans were trounced after Reconstruction, as Democrats became the party of the South; 100 years later, Democrats were trounced, and Republicans became the party of the South. The Civil War is still not over.

Freakonomics: Why Does the South Still Commemorate the Civil War, But Not the North?

2011-06-07T20:24:00.000-07:00

Freakonomics fearlessly explains everything. It's tempting to say that the South commemorates the War more than the North because the South is where the war was fought. But I suspect there's more to the story than that, particularly when you consider that many of those who are most eager to commemorate it are also eager to rewrite the history of the War.

Those consequences are most apparent in the economic inversion that took place following the war. The parts of the South that were generally the richest in 1860 are today its poorest. These were the areas with the highest concentration of plantations: a swath of land stretching from coastal South Carolina down through Georgia, and west into Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Today, this region is home to some of the poorest counties in America, with high rates of unemployment, low-skilled labor, and other social ills like obesity and a lack of education.

From the June 7 blog posting at "Freakonomics: the Hidden Side of Everything."

"Thanks a lot, Ken Burns"

2011-06-07T13:46:00.001-07:00

For all its appeal, however, The Civil War is a deeply misleading and reductive film that often loses historical reality in the mists of Burns' sentimental vision and the romance of Foote's anecdotes. Watching the film, you might easily forget that one side was not fighting for, but against the very things that Burns claims the war so gloriously achieved. Confederates, you might need reminding after seeing it, were fighting not for the unification of the nation, but for its dissolution. Moreover, they were fighting for their independence from the United States in the name of slavery and the racial hierarchy that underlay it. Perhaps most disingenuously, the film's cursory treatment of Reconstruction obscures the fact that the Civil War did not exactly end in April of 1865 with a few handshakes and a mutual appreciation for a war well fought. Instead, the war's most important outcome—emancipation—produced a terrible and violent reckoning with the legacy of slavery that continued well into the 20^th century.

From "Thanks a lot, Ken Burns," by James M. Lundberg, Slate, June 7, 2011

Over 4,000 Civil War graves identified in a Brooklyn cemetery

2011-05-27T08:41:00.000-07:00

Using the cemetery's own burial records, plus government, military and privately owned documents available online, Green-Wood's project has identified the graves of about 4,600 Civil War veterans. Green-Wood historian Jeffrey Richman estimates 3,000 to 4,000 more are scattered among the cemetery's more than 560,000 total interments.

The Civil War dead buried at Green-Wood include unknown privates and famous officers, buglers and Medal of Honor recipients, Yankees from Maine to Iowa, fathers, sons and brothers, and even 75 Confederates, including two generals. None of the original gravestones for the Confederates gave any indication they had fought for the South, an intentional omission being rectified by the installation of new granite markers provided by Veterans Affairs.

Read the full article here.

Solarium: A novella

2011-05-23T02:18:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading a pretty amazing short work of fiction called, "Solarium: A novella," by Josh Weil. It was published in the journal, "American Short Fiction," vol. 13, issue 50 (Winter 2010/11). I had subscribed to the journal because the previous issue featured a short story by a friend of mine (great job, Rob!), and because I was curious what this resurrected literary journal was doing these days.

I was surprised to find a story set during the Civil War—"Solarium" takes place on a Virginia plantation in 1865, beginning some time before Richmond falls and continuing beyond. But I was really surprised that the author boldly told the tale in the first-person vernacular of mid-19th century master and slave. Generally speaking, I'm of the opinion that if your name is not William Faulkner, the practice should be avoided, but author Josh Weil did an admirable job. So I will modify my recommendation to say don't do it unless you're good enough to pull it off. Seriously, who are you trying to kid?

The story is told in six overlapping narratives—each headlined simply by the narrator's name (As I Lay Dying)—mainly giving alternating perspectives from a cotton farmer and certain of his slaves. I so want Civil War historical fiction to be as engaging and powerful as the material itself, and I am so regularly disappointed, that I started reading this novella with trepidation.

But I was soon caught up in the strange story centered on the discovery one day of an errant hot air balloon that lands on the farm. Weil skillfully gives us characters to care about (which is to say believable and compelling), and builds an ever-rising tension about the coming of the end for some, and the promise of a new beginning for others.

It's hard to review a 90-page story without giving away elements that would otherwise contribute to the reader's pleasure of discovery, but suffice it to say I found it impressive in its construction, unpredictable, and exciting. What more do you want from historical fiction, other than a reasonable faithfulness to accuracy? It has that, too.

One of the best things you can say about a work of art is that it causes you to reflect on it long after you've moved on. I've been thinking a lot about "Solarium," puzzling out some things I moved over too quickly, suddenly recognizing a larger image that I was too close to discern while reading, or replaying in my head a powerful scene, as if I had seen it acted out. Damn it, I'm going to have to read it again, and life is already too short to read all the books I own once.

I had never heard of Josh Weil, but his biography in the journal indicates he's off to a good start—many prizes and many prestigious fellowships. His 2010 triptych of novellas, The New Valley, is described in some detail on Amazon.

You can read "Solarium" by buying the current issue of "American Short Fiction" at the publisher's website—"Solarium" and three other short stories—for five bucks. Unless I'm mistaken.

the Wire, to Treme, to Lincoln Assassination?

2011-05-22T22:28:00.001-07:00

Steve Earle, May 20, 2001 at Kepler's in Menlo Park, CA

Friday night I went to see Steve Earle promote his brand new first novel at a local bookstore, I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive. I enjoyed his earlier book of short stories, and very much like his literary "voice." Of course Earle has made his name with his music -- I'll be seeing him again at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this fall. He's written a few Civil War-themed songs that, for me, arrive at a happy intersection of great music and a favorite historical subject. I posted a blog entry on Earle's Ben McCullough earlier this year. Great song.

Earle has also had some roles in David Simon's highly acclaimed HBO series, The Wire, and more recently in Simon's newer series, Treme. During the Q&A Friday night, I got the opportunity to ask Earle if he reads a lot of Civil War history. He said he has in the past, but not lately. The question, however, caused him to relate the story that David Simon told him not to cut his beard, because he had him in mind for a particular cavalry officer who participated in the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. Earle said Simon, who is a crime reporter at heart (was, in fact, a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun) had no interest in Lincoln or Booth so much as the other characters involved. It occurred to me that Robert Redford recently addressed this very subject, but undoubtedly Simon would take it in another direction.

I hope it comes to fruition. Might be a nice counterbalance to all of the other assassination-related dramas we're going to see in the next few years.

"I was wearing the name of Lewis Smith"

2011-05-20T00:35:00.000-07:00

Portrait of Dick Barnett and his wife, date unknown.
(Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, RG 15)

A fascinating article. . .

Winter 2005, Vol. 37, No. 4

Voices of Emancipation:
Union Pension Files Giving Voice to Former Slaves
By Donald R. Shaffer and Elizabeth Regosin
© 2005 by Donald R. Shaffer and Elizabeth Regosin

Civil War pension files have the potential to rival the more famous WPA narratives of ex-slaves in offering evidence on the experiences of 19th-century African Americans from a black point of view. In fact, based on when the information was collected—mainly between the 1880s and 1910s—they are arguably superior. Civil War pension files are much more contemporaneous to the experiences of slavery, the Civil War, and their aftermath than the WPA narratives, which were not gathered until the mid-to-late 1930s. Many pension files include in-depth interviews of former slaves by special examiners for the purpose of clarifying information on such issues as military service, identity, health and disability, marital and family relationships, employment, economic circumstances, and previous ownership. The depositions are often quite effective in giving a voice to former slaves, allowing them the opportunity to talk about their lives and provide important clues about how they saw the world.

Read the full article here.

Five Myths About Why the South Seceded

2011-05-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

ALEXANDER GARDNER/ AP - A photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken
by Alexander Gardner in Washington in August of 1863.

Lies Across America author, James W. Loewen, dispenses with some enduring misconceptions about secession in this piece for the Washington Post.

As the nation begins to commemorate the anniversaries of the war’s various battles — from Fort Sumter to Appomattox — let’s first dispense with some of the more prevalent myths about why it all began.

(1) The South seceded over states’ rights. (2) Secession was about tariffs and taxes. (3) Most white Southerners didn’t own slaves, so they wouldn’t secede for slavery. (4) Abraham Lincoln went to war to end slavery. (5) The South couldn’t have made it long as a slave society.

Loewen's offers up his reasons for each point.

"The Foolishness of Civil War Reenactors," by Glenn W. LaFantasie

2011-05-10T16:56:00.001-07:00

Though I'm a regular reader at Salon.com, I just learned of this article by visiting Andy Hall's excellent Dead Confederates blog.

The Battle of Bentonville, North Carolina

2011-05-09T16:56:00.000-07:00

The people have spoken. Every year a dedicated contingent of long-time members of the Civil War Forum—along with a handful of welcome newcomers to the group—meet at a different battlefield for three days of battlefield tramping, good food, and good company. Next year, the group has voted to visit North Carolina. Mark your calendars.

16th Civil War Forum Battlefield Conference
The Battle of Bentonville
Wilmington & Fort Fisher
March 29 to April 1, 2012
Headquarters: Dunn, NC

Mark Bradley, author of the definitive campaign study, The Battle of Bentonville: Last Stand in the Carolinas, will guide us through Averasboro and Bentonville, and Chris Fonvielle, author of The Wilmington Campaign: Last Rays of Departing Hope, will handle the Forts Fisher and Anderson tours. Additionally, we'll visit the Monroe's Crossroads battlefield on the grounds of Fort Bragg.

Check out the Civil War Trust's Bentonville and Fort Fisher pages for maps, articles, and other resources.

We'll do things a little bit differently next year, in that I'll most likely book the bus for three full days, reserving the last day for the long ride to Wilmington and back (Sunday, April 1st). For that trip, we'll put on a Civil War movie and pull out the refreshments, to include copious amounts of adult beverages.

We'll be headquartered at a hotel in Dunn, North Carolina, which is about an hour from the biggest airport in the region (Raleigh), and close to the battlefields. Stay tuned for hotel info and final itinerary. Let me know if you'd like to receive registration information by email.

End of the line for Lincoln

2011-05-06T17:07:00.000-07:00

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle
Dockworkers prepare to receive the Lincoln
as it arrives at the Mare Island shipyard in Vallejo.
----------
A gray old ship, the Lincoln, that is part of San Francisco's maritime past was towed up the bay Thursday on a final voyage to be scrapped at Mare Island in Vallejo. . . .

The trip was part of an unusual nautical swap in which the government traded the Lincoln for its identical sister ship, the President. Both vessels will be scrapped: one of them in Texas, the other in Vallejo.

The two ships - originally named President Lincoln and President Tyler- were built in San Francisco in 1961 and sailed out of the city on voyages all over the world for years. They were general cargo ships, operated by American President Lines, a company that traces its roots to the Gold Rush of 1849.
----------

Read the full article here.

How the "Lost Cause" poisoned our history books

2011-05-01T22:56:00.001-07:00

[from salon.com. . .]

Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general of the Union Army and the 18th president of the United States, would have been 189 years old last week--not long after the "official" opening of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, which will run through 2015.

Grant -- like George Washington and Dwight D. Eisenhower -- was both a professional warrior of a defining war and a twice-elected president. And like Washington and Eisenhower he dominated his era, which in his case encompassed both the Civil War and its aftermath, called Reconstruction, from 1862 (when he rocketed to fame with his defeat of Confederate forces at Fort Donelson) to 1876.

Read full article here.

Was one of your ancestors lost on the U.S.S. Monitor?

2011-04-28T11:15:00.000-07:00

The skeleton to the left, victim “Monitor 2,” is shown
by digital overlay where it was uncovered after the photo
of the first victim was taken. (Monitor Collection, NOAA)

The United States Navy would like to identify the remains of two men found in the turret of the U.S.S. Monitor -- two of the 16 officers and crew who went down with the ship on New Year's Eve, 1862. If you think you might be a descendant and are willing to produce some DNA, contact Jeff Johnston at (757) 591-7351, Jeff.Johnston@noaa.gov. Thanks to Robert Moore for highlighting this article at Civil War News.

List of Monitor casualties:

OFFICERS:
Attwater, Norman Knox: Acting Ensign
Frederickson, George: Acting Ensign
Hands, Robinson Woollen: 2nd Asst. Engineer
Lewis, Samuel Augee: 3rd Asst. Engineer

ENLISTED AFRICAN-AMERICAN:
Cook, Robert: 1st Class Boy (b. Gloucester County, VA)
Howard, Robert H: Officers’ Cook (b. Howard County, VA)
Moore, Daniel: Landsman (b. Prince William or Loudoun County, VA)

ENLISTED WHITE:
Allen, William: Landsman (b. England) 24 yrs.
Bryan, William: Yeoman (b. New York City) 31 yrs.
Eagan, William H: Landsman (b. Ireland) 21 yrs.
Fenwick, James R: Quarter Gunner (b. Scotland) 23 yrs.
Joyce (Joice), Thomas: 1st Class Fireman (b. Ireland) 23 yrs.
Littlefield, George: Coal Heaver (b. Saco, ME) 25 yrs.
Nicklis (Nickles), Jacob: Seaman (b. Buffalo (?), NY) 21 yrs.
Stocking, John: Boatswain’s Mate (b. Binghampton, NY) 27 yrs.
Williams, Robert: 1st Class Fireman (b. Wales) 30 yrs.

The Civil War: 1861 (Forever)

2011-04-25T14:37:00.002-07:00

Get these nifty Civil War postage stamps (commemorating Ft. Sumter and First Bull Run) while they last. Avoid long lines and surly civil servants by ordering them online.

"The Apostle of Liberty" and The Gipper

2011-04-20T19:24:00.000-07:00

Thomas Starr King

Ronald Reagan
under the rotunda

For most of the 20th century, California was represented in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall by the likenesses of Father Junipero Serra, and the Unitarian preacher Thomas Starr King. King, as much as any one figure and much more than most, helped keep California in the Union (the state's popular vote totals were close among the top three candidates in 1860: Lincoln: 38,733, Douglas: 37,999; Breckinridge: 33,969). Thomas Starr King was a dedicated anti-slavery campaigner who helped put Leland Stanford in the governor's office, and who traveled the state giving fiery orations in defense of the Union. According to one source, "King covered his pulpit with an American flag and ended all his sermons with 'God bless the president of the United States and all who serve with him the cause of a common country.'"

Alas, King's contributions to the state of California, and to the maintenance of the union, are no longer celebrated as they once were (though you can follow the Thomas Starr King Appreciation Society on Facebook, with its 110 members, hike two mountains named for him, and admire his namesake tree at Yosemite). In 2006 the California state legislature voted to recall King's statue from the National Statuary Hall and replace it with one of Ronald Reagan, a former Des Moines radio broadcaster. There was no public discussion about such a monumental change. No debate about whether John Muir, or Joe DiMaggio, or Earl Warren, or Jerry Garcia might have been more appropriate.

The statue of "the orator who saved the nation" eventually found a new home in the Civil War Memorial Grove of Sacramento's Capitol Park. According to the Capitol Museum, the grove was planted beginning in 1896 to the east of the capitol with saplings collected from Manassas, Harpers Ferry, Savannah, Five Forks, Yellow Tavern, and Vicksburg, and ultimately 34 other battlefields. The brainchild of GAR ladies from California and Nevada, the grove was intended to honor soldiers from both sides of the conflict, and was the first monument on the capitol grounds.

Thomas Starr King's tomb, Starr King Way and Franklin, San Francisco

If it were up to me, I would have recalled Serra's statue from Washington (even if he is one miracle away from sainthood), and left King's -- Serra died in 1784, 66 years before California statehood. I was not consulted. Interestingly, the Californians of 1927 who voted to include King as one of the two most notable representatives chose a man who only lived in the state for four years. He arrived in San Francisco on the eve of the war in 1860, and died in March of 1864.

King Statue, Sacramento

1861: The Civil War Awakening

2011-04-18T00:50:00.000-07:00


Unidentified soldier in Union officer's uniform at Point Lookout, Tennessee. (Liljenquist Family Collection, Library of Congress)

Slate published an interesting interview with Adam Goodheart on Friday. He is the author of the brand-new 1861: The Civil War Awakening, and is a main contributor to the New York Times Disunion blog. Go to the Slate article and launch the slide slow for some select images from the Liljenquist collection that was recently donated to the Library of Congress.

Slate: Americans have a sense of the whole scope of the Civil War, but what is it about the year 1861 that we miss when we look back and see the Civil War as a single complete event?

Goodheart: We tend to think of the Civil War in a very fatalistic way, as a sort of vast national martyrdom. It's hard to recover the fact that things could have turned out very, very differently. It's also hard to grasp the idea that Americans at the beginning of the war had no sense of the way that things were going to unfold. When I wrote the book, I really wanted to recover that moment of uncertainty and change – to convey how people, then and now, experience history not as seen from 30,000 feet as the History Channel might, but as a barrage of individual events coming at them, alternately thrilling and terrifying.

Seven Days Travelogue, part two

2011-04-13T01:04:00.000-07:00

History is all explained by geography.
— Robert Penn Warren

Dateline: Princeton-by-the-Sea, California

So this is what a blog post from an iPad looks like in Blogspot. If there's an app out there that allows one to compose with more sophisticated formatting, I've not found it yet. Might have to go back and format this after the fact. For now, I'm just happy to be able to dock the iPad on a full size keyboard.

The last two days of the 15th Civil War Forum Battlefield Conference transpired without a hitch. It was a beautiful thing to walk out into the heart of the Glendale battlefield and listen to Bobby Krick read personal accounts related to the particular plot of protected land we were standing upon.

After a spectacular lunch of fried chicken at the Elko Community Center, done up only as country church ladies can do, the balance of the afternoon was spent at Malvern Hill. Revelations abounded as we walked the Confederate assault route to the "high water" mark near the site of the slave cabins, and ultimately moved into a swale on the Confederate left to experience first-hand how two separate and parallel fights occurred out of sight of each other. Reading a description of that phenomenon is fine, but seeing it is to understand it.

At the close of the day, we stopped at the Jeb Stuart monument at Yellow Tavern, mere yards from our hotel, for a short talk on the 1864 fighting there. Sunday morning was warm and sunny, with great visibility, just perfect for our visit to Drewry's Bluff and Battery Dantzler. For decades I've pictured that stretch of the river below the guns at Drewry's Bluff, images evoked from countless written accounts, but this was the first time I was able to commit the actual view to memory.

Now I'm 3,000 miles away again, in a small fishing village overlooking the old Romeo Pier and planning next year's conference. The votes are in, and we're headed to Bentonville and Fort Fisher in 2012. Invitations are already out to guides Mark Bradley and Chris Fonvielle.

Seven Days Travelogue, part one

2011-04-01T21:57:00.003-07:00

[CONFERENCE] Day One -- twenty or twenty-five of us met up with author and researcher Chris Ferguson at the South Cherry Street entrance to Hollywood Cemetery, and spent the next three hours hiking and driving through the graveyard with numerous stops to hear Chris relate the history of the cemetery, and stories about individuals buried there. Best quotes came from the records of the Old Soldiers Home, regarding the antics of a spritely and heavily-armed 80-year-old.

[CONFERENCE] Day Two -- Mechanicsville through Gaines's Mill with Bobby Krick, the best tour guide we've had in 15 years of conferences, and we've had many of the best that Civil War battlefield touring has to offer, including his father. I don't say that lightly. He's the consummate pro -- aware of his audience, able to distill an exceedingly complex campaign into a comprehendable narrative, with a perfectly engaging delivery and an absolute command of the subject matter. But it's more than that. There's a long list of qualities, some intangible, that I would highlight in recommending him to anyone else.

Highlight of the day: the Civil War Forum, thanks to the brand-new acquisition by the Richmond Battlefield Association, became the first group to traverse the Gaines's Mill battlefield in the tracks of the 4th Texas Infantry, starting on the Confederate side of the creek, descending into the creek bottom and crossing on a rudimentary "Krick bridge," before scaling the slope to the site of the Confederate break-through. The yellow box on this Richmond Battlefields Association map shows the new parcel acquired by RBA, the first preservation success at Gaines's Mill since Douglas Southall Freeman and friends purchased a small part of the battlefield in the 1920s (and the first piece on the CSA side of Boatswain's Creek to be locked off from development).

Friday night Bobby gave a fascinating talk on "Drewry's Bluff, Gibraltar of the Confederacy," making us all realize how little we actually knew about that otherwise commonly known story.

Tomorrow: all the way to Malvern Hill, and beyond.

Kunta Kinte's worst nightmare

2011-03-25T20:35:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Kevin Levin at Civil War Memory for bringing this series of collectibles to our attention. Buy the courthouse and get the R. E. Lee figurine for free. Buy Confederate Station and they'll throw in Stonewall Jackson.

It's not as realistic as this photo of Richmond in ruins, but then I don't suppose the intended audience wants a free figurine of Presdient Lincoln, surrounded by joyous slaves, strolling over to the White House of the Confederacy to rummage through Jeff Davis's desk.

One of last 2 WWI veterans turns 110 in Australia

2011-03-03T01:51:00.000-08:00

By ROHAN SULLIVAN The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 2, 2011; 10:50 PM

SYDNEY -- One of the last two known veterans of World War I celebrated his 110th birthday Thursday with at least three generations of family and a contingent of navy officers in dress uniform. His daughter said he didn't want a fuss. Claude "Chuckles" Choules, who sneaked into the British navy in 1915 aged just 14, has lived quietly in Australia for more than 80 years, though his longevity has brought him closer to history with the passing of each comrade who fought the war that was meant to end all others.

They say the last Civil War veteran died around 1959, the year I was born. Now, a mere half century later, my grandfather's generation of WWI veterans are down to two (that we know of). History is a work in progress. Every day we watch it unfold, and the events of today are profound even if we cannot discern the ramifications. The nightly news is nothing short of astonishing. Not the Charlie Sheen part. The medical and technological advances part. The revolutions in the Middle East part.

Tour of the Seven Days Battlefields

2011-02-10T00:26:00.000-08:00

The Seven Days Battles
with Richmond National Battlefields Historian
Robert E. L. Krick

The 15th Civil War Forum
Battlefield Conference
Richmond, Virginia
March 31-April 3, 2011

There's still room to join us on a spectacular weekend of battlefield tramping with the most authoritative guide on the Seven Days battles, the culmination of the Peninsula Campaign of 1862 and a major turning point in the war. We have 40-some souls signed up so far, and will cut off registration when we fill our coach (either a 44- or a slightly larger coach).

ITINERARY:

Thursday afternoon, March 31st:
WALKING TOUR: 1:00-4:30 p.m.
a guided stroll with narrative interpretation through Hollywood Cemetery with historian Chris Ferguson (see bio below)—we'll carpool from the hotel. Gather in the hotel lobby at 12:30 p.m. prepared to leave by 12:45 p.m.
No evening event scheduled for Thursday night.

Friday: April 1st:
BUS TOUR: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Dabbs House (Lee's HQ); Meadow Bridges; Mechanicsville battlefield; lunch at Cold Harbor County Park; Gaines's Mill battlefield (extensive walking here); to close the day, we'll take the opportunity to stop at Yellow Tavern, since our hotel is on the edge of the battlefield, and the Stuart monument is less than a mile away and hard to find for most folks on their own.
RECEPTION: 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. (Yellow Tavern Bar, in the hotel)
DINNER: 7:15 p.m. (Glen Restaurant -- in our reserved seating area)
AFTER-DINNER SPEAKER: 8:00 p.m. (York Room)
Robert E. L. Krick, on "Drewry's Bluff: Gibraltar on the James"

Saturday: April 2nd:
BUS TOUR: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Savage's Station; White Oak Swamp; lunch at Elko Community Center, Frayser's Farm/Glendale (only recently accessible thanks to CWPT); and Malvern Hill (extensive walking here).
RECEPTION: 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. (Yellow Tavern Bar)
DINNER: 7:15 p.m. (Glen Restaurant -- in our reserved seating area)
AFTER-DINNER SPEAKER: 8:00 p.m. (York Room)
John Coski, "After the Seventh Day They Rested"
John is the Historian and Director of Library & Research,
Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia

Sunday: April 3rd:
OPTIONAL car pool tour: 9:00 a.m. to noon:
Drewry's Bluff and Battery Dantzler (the two best sites between Richmond and Petersburg)
Gather in the hotel lobby at 8:30 a.m. for 8:45 a.m. departure.

REGISTRATION:
$295
—includes Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday tours
—includes box lunches on Friday and Saturday
—includes buffet dinner and after dinner speakers on Friday and Saturday evenings
Breakfast is not included, but you'll receive a discount voucher when you check in. No formal meeting is scheduled for breakfast, but we will still have a reserved seating area from 7:00-8:00 a.m. for anyone who has breakfast in the restaurant]
[Registration does not include lodging]
Pay by check or money order, or credit card via PayPal (request a PayPal invoice)
Mail checks or money orders (made out to David Woodbury)
to: Civil War Forum
P.O. Box 19130
Stanford, CA 94309

HOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS
Wyndham Virginia Crossings hotel and conference center
1000 Virginia Center Parkway
Glen Allen (Richmond), Virginia 23059
http://www.wyndhamvirginiacrossings.com/
Cost: $99 (with tax, it comes to 111.87 per night)

Most attendees will check into the hotel Wednesday evening (3/30/11) and check out Sunday morning (4/3/11).

RESERVATIONS: Individuals will be responsible for their own reservations. Reservations will be accepted over the telephone by calling (804) 727-1400 or (888) 444-6553 and referencing “15th Civil War Forum Battlefield Conference.” Book your rooms!

Our Tour Guides:

Robert E. Lee Krick is a historian at the Richmond National Battlefield, and is recognized as one of the nation’s leading authorities on the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, and the Seven Days battles, as well as many other aspects of the Civil War in the East. He is the author many articles, as well as a regimental history of the 40th Virginia Infantry.

Bobby Krick is also author of a well-regarded reference work, Staff Officers in Gray: A Biographical Register of the Staff Officers in the Army of Northern Virginia, which profiles over 2,000 officers—a fine companion on your bookshelf to his father’s Lee’s Colonels. Check out this interview with Bobby Krick at the Civil War Preservation Trust website. More Malvern Hill videos, maps, and other resources from the same site.

Chris Ferguson is a native of Atlanta, Ga., currently residing in Winchester, Va. with his wife of 30 years and their beloved cat Romeo. He's a graduate of Georgia State University, BS: Criminal Justice, 1977, and is presently Vice President with Zwicker & Assoc., P.C., a national law firm based on Andover, MA. He is the author of two books covering the Confederate dead in Hollywood Cemetery, and co-author, with Robert K. Krick, of the Gettysburg Death Roster. He is also the author of numerous articles covering Confederate dead removed from Virginia battlefields.

This just in (from Civil War Preservation Trust)

2011-01-26T21:04:00.001-08:00

WALMART DROPS WILDERNESS PLAN

In an unexpected development on the day that a trial was scheduled to begin in the case, Walmart announced that it has abandoned plans to pursue a special use permit previously awarded to the retail giant for construction of a supercenter on the Wilderness Battlefield.

“We are pleased with Walmart’s decision to abandon plans to build a supercenter on the Wilderness battlefield,” remarked James Lighthizer, president of the Civil War Trust. “We have long believed that Walmart would ultimately recognize that it is in the best interests of all concerned to move their intended store away from the battlefield. We applaud Walmart officials for putting the interests of historic preservation first. Sam Walton would be proud of this decision.”

Tarnished Reputations

2011-01-24T23:59:00.000-08:00

Five years ago, I posted a blog entry entitled “Eagles, Scalpels, Reputations – all tarnished,” as a clever way to discuss three of Dr. Thomas Lowry’s books, The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell, Tarnished Eagles, and Tarnished Scalpels. These three and other titles are the product of his prodigious research into Civil War-era courts martial records at the National Archives.

Today, Dr. Lowry stands accused of altering a historic document in order to be the one to make a prominent discovery, about which he wrote and gave talks for ten years.

The National Archives offered this press release, complete with embedded video
Lowry maintains his innocence in this Washington Post article.
Historian Brooks Simpson presents some interesting commentary on the subject on his “Crossroads” blog.
The New York Times weighs in as well.

==========

UPDATE: Since originally reporting this strange story, it has been the subject of much commentary in the blogosphere -- nowhere more than at Brooks Simpson's blog -- and Lowry himself has created a blog in which he denied the allegations and vigorously defended himself. This Civil War Times article explains that Lowry passed a polygraph test. He has also submitted a sample for handwriting analysis. It appears this strange story may not be as cut-and-dried as it first appeared.

==========

After reading the 1863 court-martial report of Pvt. Patrick Murphy of California, who had been characterized as “idiotic and insane,” Lincoln pardoned him and released him from the military. The otherwise-obscure pardon became part of a National Archives exhibit in 1998, leading Dr. Lowry to conclude in his book: “Fame comes to men in many strange ways.”

Dr. Lowry with my newborn son Atticus, Presidio National
Cemetery, San Francisco, circa 1994.

Oldest living African-American dies at 113

2011-01-15T01:23:00.000-08:00

Mississippi Winn

. . .Winn was one of two known people left in the United States whose parents both were almost certainly born into slavery because documents show they were born before the end of the Civil War, though her great-niece Mary C. Hollins says Winn never acknowledged that.

"I don't know much about that," Hollins recalled Winn saying when asked about her parents' early years.

[from the Associated Press]

Look what I saw on Facebook

2011-01-14T03:17:00.000-08:00

Ben McCulloch

2011-01-09T03:37:00.000-08:00


Brigadier General Benjamin McCulloch, McCulloch's Division, Army of the West

This song by Steve Earle is my favorite Civil War-themed tune, of which he's written a few. I love that he takes the perspective of a southern soldier in the Trans-Mississippi, not really knowing what he's gotten himself into. And I like the references to Wilson's Creek and the Boston Mountains, a part of the country for which I have a great fondness, and a battlefield—Pea Ridge in particular—that is among my favorites to visit. I also appreciate that Earle chooses not to glorify the war in some cliched manner, or to present a sentimental ditty about the rightness of one side's cause.

As long as the link works, you can hear the original Steve Earle version here. Otherwise, you may need to listen to one of many covers on YouTube. Better yet, you can buy it on iTunes for a buck.

We signed up in San Antone my brother Paul and me

To fight with Ben McCulloch and the Texas infantry

Well the poster said we'd get a uniform and seven bucks a week

The best rations in the army and a rifle we could keep

When I first laid eyes on the general I knew he was a fightin' man

He was every inch a soldier every word was his command

Well his eyes were cold as the lead and steel forged into tools of war

He took the lives of many and the souls of many more

Well they marched us to Missouri and we hardly stopped for rest

Then he made this speech and said we're comin' to the test

Well we've got to take Saint Louie boys before the yankees do

If we control the Mississippi then the Federals are through

Well they told us that our enemy would all be dressed in blue

They forgot about the winter's cold and the cursed fever too

My brother died at Wilson's creek and Lord I seen him fall

We fell back to the Boston Mountains in the North of Arkansas

CHORUS

Goddamn you Ben McCulloch

I hate you more than any other man alive

And when you die you'll be a foot soldier just like me

In the devil's infantry

And on the way to Fayetteville we cursed McCulloch`s name

And mourned the dead that we'd left behind and we was carrying the lame

I killed a boy the other night who'd never even shaved

I don't even know what I'm fightin' for I ain't never owned a slave

So I snuck out of camp and then I heard the news next night

The Yankees won the battle and McCulloch lost his life

Steve Earle

The United States Constitution: Read it and Weep

2011-01-04T22:14:00.000-08:00

The problem with the Tea Party's new Constitution fetish is that it's hopelessly selective. As Robert Parry notes, the folks who will be reading the Constitution aloud this week can't read the parts permitting slavery or prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment using only their inside voices, while shouting their support for the 10th Amendment. They don't get to support Madison and renounce Jefferson, then claim to be restoring the vision of "the Framers." Either the Founders got it right the first time they calibrated the balance of power between the federal government and the states, or they got it so wrong that we need to pass a "Repeal Amendment" to fix it. And unless Tea Party Republicans are willing to stand proud and announce that they adore and revere the whole Constitution as written, except for the First, 14, 16th, and 17th amendments, which totally blow, they should admit right now that they are in the same conundrum as everyone else: This document no more commands the specific policies they espouse than it commands the specific policies their opponents support.

From "Read it and Weep, How the Tea Party's fetish for the Constitution as written may get it into trouble,"by Dahlia Lithwick. Slate. January 4, 2011. Read the entire essay here.

Don't Spin the Civil War

2010-12-28T03:35:00.003-08:00

. . .and another timely essay, for good measure. This one from Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr., well worth a read. Full article here.

My neighborhood friend Jon Udis got a subscription to Civil War Times Illustrated, and our regular discussions of sports heroes Bill Russell, Johnny Unitas and Carl Yastrzemski were briefly interrupted by talk about Grant and Lee, Sherman and "Stonewall" Jackson.

But our conversations, like so many about the war, focused on people and battles, not on why the confrontation happened in the first place. There remains enormous denial over the fact that the central cause of the war was our national disagreement about race and slavery, not states' rights or anything else.

Civil War message opened, decoded: No help coming

2010-12-25T10:26:00.000-08:00

This Jan. 14, 2009 image shows a Civil War bottle with a message that was tucked inside at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va. The message to Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton says reinforcements will not be arriving. The encrypted dispatch was dated July 4, 1863—the date of Pemberton's surrender to Union forces led by Ulysses S. Grant in what historians say was a turning point in the war. (AP Photo/Museum of the Confederacy) (AP)

The bottle, less than 2 inches in length, had sat undisturbed at the museum since 1896. It was a gift from Capt. William A. Smith, of King George County, who served during the Vicksburg siege.

It was Wright who decided to investigate the contents of the strange little bottle containing a tightly wrapped note, a .38-caliber bullet and a white thread.

But the coded message, which appears to be a random collection of letters, did not reveal itself immediately. . . .The code is called the "Vigenere cipher," a centuries-old encryption in which letters of the alphabet are shifted a set number of places so an "a" would become a "d"—essentially, creating words with different letter combinations.

Read full article here.

By STEVE SZKOTAK, Associated Press, Saturday, December 25, 2010

Timely essays on secession and the War of Southern Aggression

2010-12-21T01:06:00.000-08:00

States' Rights, but to What?

BY PAUL FINKELMAN

...for South Carolina, slavery and states’ rights were not mutually exclusive; in fact, they were the same thing. Today too few people understand the intricate legal history that connects slavery to states’ rights—and as a result a needless debate continues, 150 years after secession began.

Gone with the Myths

BY EDWARD BALL

The next five years will include an all-you-can-eat special of national remembrance. Yet even after 150 years full of grief and pride and anger, we greet the sesquicentennial wondering, why did the South secede? I can testify about the South under oath. I was born and raised there, and 12 men in my family fought for the Confederacy; two of them were killed.

How the South Rationalizes Secession

BY GLENN W. LAFANTASIE

In April 2009, Rick Perry, the Republican governor of Texas, suggested that his state might ponder secession if "Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people." In response, the audience began to chant, "Secede, secede," hoping, one assumes, that everyone there would soon begin to party like it was 1860.

A Noun is the Name of a Thing

BY BROOKS SIMPSON

It’s clearly a tough time for those people who are enamored of the Confederacy and who work hard to downplay slavery, one way or another. One of those groups embraces the slogan, “Heritage not Hate,” but frankly I don’t see it that way.

The Happiest Man in the South

BY ADAM GOODHEART

A new phrase was coined to describe Rhett and his political cohorts: “the fire-eaters.” Their constant theme was that white Southerners, rather than black slaves, were America’s true oppressed class. “I am a Traitor,” he said in 1850, “in the great cause of liberty, fighting against tyranny and oppression.”

Paul Revere's Ride Against Slavery

BY JIM LEPORE

On Dec. 2, 1859, the day John Brown was hanged, Longfellow wrote in his diary, “This will be a great day in our history, the date of a new Revolution quite as much needed as the old one.”

The Civil War: 150 Years Later

BY CAROLYN CLICK

On a foggy day near Christmas 1860, a delegation of South’s Carolina wealthiest, most powerful citizens—planters, judges, legislators and clergy, all white men—assembled at Columbia’s stately red brick-columned First Baptist Church to contemplate smashing the Palmetto State’s bond with the United States of America.

Civil War blogging at its best

2010-12-01T21:11:00.002-08:00

I was thinking of doing a year-end roundup of Civil War blogs, mainly as a vehicle for highlighting the five or ten favorites to which I am regularly drawn. I suppose I’ve avoided that in the past, because the Civil War blogosphere is a pretty small place, and I don’t want to have to explain why some blogs pique my personal interests and others do not. It’s all about the content.

For now, however, I want to take a moment to draw your attention to Mysteries and Conundrums, an unofficial blog maintained by NPS staffers at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National MilitaryPark, born of discussions about the string of battlefields in their jurisdiction, to include Chancellorsville and the Wilderness. The blog began just this past March, but the authors have made it chock full of meaty content. It is intended that readers accept the open invitation to join in those discussions, to better understand what happened in those historic venues, and to participate in the ongoing challenges of preservation.

This post by historian John Hennessy is a masterpiece -- The legacy of misplaced assumptions -- and really highlights the value of blogs as a living resource for students of American history. Preservation strategies have necessarily evolved over the years, and this brief history explains a lot about the present state of four major battlefields, including how their close proximity to each other ultimately short-shrifted each of them in terms of total park acreage.

The bulk of the entries come from resource managers Eric Mink and Noel G. Harrison, and chief historian John Hennessy, whose published works are well regarded in the Civil War community. In entry after entry, the contributors to Mysteries and Conundrums draw the reader into an intriguing discussion, and enrich their offerings with period photographs and useful maps. Look at Mr. Harrison's labor-intensive offering in another recent post, Finally Found: the Location of Waud's Fredericksburg Pontoon-Laying Sketch?

Take a gander at their sister blog as well, Fredericksburg Remembered.

Nicely done.

Shouldn't the Culbertson Guidon from the Little Bighorn be in the Smithsonian?

2010-12-01T19:58:00.000-08:00

It's said to be worth $2 to $5 million, but an upcoming Sotheby's auction will tell the tale. Would that this ragged flag could reveal the story that occurred beneath it in June of 1876.

I have been deeply fascinated with the Battle of the Little Bighorn since at least the time I first heard Johnny Horton singing "Commanche" on our old hi-fi in Schuyler, Nebraska, Sometime later, I read the Mari Sandoz books on the battle, and on Crazy Horse, and was hooked (in another nod to Johnny Horton, that same LP had "Sink the Bismarck," and I managed to find a copy of a book on that subject in our school library. I was in fifth grade when Horton turned me on to the Bismark, circa 1969 . The other night I saved the movie of the same name in my Netflix queue – I don’t remember ever seeing it).

The fight at the Little Bighorn has taken on an iconic stature in American memory far out of proportion to the size and scope of the battle itself, and its cultural legacy transcends the initial shockwaves that sped west and east from the remote interior, en route to the population centers of the then 100-year-old nation (Happy Birthday, America!). I have not read everything I could find on the battle, but quite a lot, and have been lucky to come of age at a time when great historians began to systematically clear away the murky cloud of mythology and popular history. Today, it may be the most written about battle in North America after the Battle of Gettysburg.

For over 100 years, the narrative description of the Battle of the Little Bighorn relied principally on the recollections and testimony of surviving members of Reno's command, a hodgepodge of incomplete and often confusing recollections translated in some fashion from Indians long after the fact, and the suppositions offered by burial parties and other early visitors to the battlefield.

Then, in 1983, a massive wildfire cleared the battlefield and presented irresistible opportunities for an exhaustive archaeological investigation of the field. What a stroke of luck, as it turned out. The resulting studies in the intervening years have produced the most compelling, and most complete story to date. It wasn’t exactly a case of "everything you know is wrong," but some traditional interpretations took a beating.

How did they figure all this stuff out? This NPS page sums it up:

The project archeologists chose to view the battlefield as a crime scene and by using a combination of forensic techniques such as studies of firing pin marks on cartridge cases and rifling marks on bullets, and standard archeological field, laboratory, and analytical techniques they have been able to determine the variety of weapons used by the various participants.

By combining crime lab methods with the archeological constructs of spatial patterning and individual artifact analysis, they have been able to discover evidence for the movement of individual firearms over the field of battle, verify cavalry positions, and define previously unknown Indian fighting areas.

Not everybody is happy with the changing story, of course. The traditional stories of a glorious "last stand" do not hold up very well under the new evidence. That is not to say that the soldiers under Custer's command were not brave, or that they did not die in heroic fashion, but the evidence on the ground suggests they were quickly overwhelmed in a rout, and were running for their lives before getting cut down. Whatever you conclude, much mystery remains, and for that reason the Little Bighorn will always excite the imagination. For Native Americans, of course, their greatest victory was also the death knell, making the fight along the Greasy Grass the proverbial beginning of the end.

Archaeology, History, and Custer's Last Battle: The Little Big Horn Re-examined, by Richard Allan Fox, is an essential read about what insights we've gained from the post-fire digs. Fox is of the opinion that it wasn't so much a "last stand" as a last chase, or a series of abortive running stands (as in pausing long enough to get a shot off at the people chasing you). Fox's marriage of archaeology, "combat modeling," and the documentary record sets a new standard for examination of the battle. Future authors may disagree with his analysis, but they cannot ignore it.

Likewise, Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of Little Bighorn, by Douglas D. Scott, Richard A. Fox, Melissa A. Connor, and Dick Harmon.

Where Custer Fell, Photographs of the Little Bighorn Battlefield Then and Now, by James S. Brust, Brian C. Pohanka, and Sandy Barnard, is a beautiful work. Yes, that's the same (late) Brian Pohanka so highly regarded for his work as a Civil War historian. He loved studying this battle, and I believe this was one of the last major projects he saw to completion before his untimely death.

Check out this article by Thomas Powers, "How the Battle of Little Bighorn was Won," adapted from his book, The Killing of Crazy Horse, for a perspective built upon Indian recollections of the battle.

My most recent purchase is The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, by Nathaniel Philbrick. I have high hopes for it, given the reception some of his other books have received (it’s shelved next to another Philbrick book, The Mayflower, also unread as yet. Can't wait to get to these two.

A great resource: Friends of the Little Bighorn Battlefield.

If you have a hankering to own a piece of this history, you need only place your bid with Sotheby's. This video explains the significance of the Culbertson Guidon. Answering my own question at top, I say "yes." Were I independently wealthy, I'm sure I would enjoy owning such amazing pieces of American history, but shouldn't things this delicate be entrusted to the care of museum professionals? Hopefully some rich guy will buy it and donate it to the nation.

As for the Bismarck, I couldn't have been more thrilled when Robert Ballard turned his attention to the German battleship, and actually discovered the wreck in 1989. Too bad Johnny Horton wasn't around to see it.

Bismarck's bow. Photo taken in 2002 (courtesy of the Discovery Channel).

Now that's authentic!

2010-11-13T20:35:00.001-08:00

Arkansas celebrates the Civil War sesquicentenary

by electing an actual Confederate.

League of the South member, Loy Mauch—who said that the Confederate battle flag is "a symbol of Jesus Christ above all else. It's a symbol of Biblical government"—has been elected to the Arkansas statehouse from district 26. My little brother, longtime resident of Arkansas, says Mauch is famous for his letters to the editor bemoaning the war crimes of Abraham Lincoln (I'll bet there was nary a squawk about water-boarding, though). The Arkansas Times reports that Mauch's local Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp "hosted a conference in Hot Springs called 'Seminar on Abraham Lincoln—Truth vs. Myth,' with a keynote address called 'Homage to John Wilkes Booth.'"

Mauch apparently has a sharp eye for important municipal improvements. In a letter to the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, Mr. Mauch promoted a project to enlarge the Confederate monument in Hot Springs, a flag and statute at the fork of Central and Ouachita Avenues (from the same Arkansas Times article).

Biblical government indeed! Slaves and all.

Oh ~~Alabama~~ Arkansas

Can I see you

and shake your hand.

Make friends down in ~~Alabama~~ Arkansas

I'm from a new land

I come to you

and see all this ruin

What are you doing ~~Alabama~~ Arkansas?

You got the rest of the union

to help you along

What's going wrong?
(with apologies to Neil Young)

When DuPont became Grant

2010-11-13T03:15:00.000-08:00

How many times has a street named for one prominent military figure been renamed in favor of another who fought for the same cause? Probably not too many.

Grant Street in San Francisco, the main street through Chinatown, started off in the Spanish period as Calle de la Fundacion ("street of the founding"), back when San Francisco was still called Yerba Buena, or "good herb" (a remarkably apt name for the town even today).

Samuel F. DuPont

Grant Street, circa 1920

In 1846 the street was renamed DuPont, in honor of naval officer Samuel F. DuPont, who commanded Commodore Stockton's flagship, the USS Congress, at the outbreak of the Mexican War. DuPont's exploits in that conflict included the capture of San Diego, and operations to seize or destroy all enemy ships in the Gulf of California.

DuPont's Civil War service started off with great success against Confederate forts on the Eastern Seaboard, gaining him promotion to Rear Admiral, but after a failed attempt to capture Charleston, SC in April of 1863, his fortunes began to wain.

DuPont Street, meanwhile, became the center of the largest community of Chinese in America, many of whom refer to the street as Du Pon Gai even today. San Francisco's Chinatown was largely destroyed in the fire following the 1906 earthquake, but soon rebuilt. Rising from the ashes, the thoroughfare was christened anew as Grant Street in honor of the 18th president. Neither Grant or DuPont lived long enough to enjoy, or rue the changeover.

Grant Street starts at Market and one block later crosses Geary Boulevard, the only time the street intersects with another named for a Civil War general. John Geary was an alcalde before statehood, and San Francisco's first mayor afterwards (at 31, he remains the city's youngest mayor, beating out Gavin Newsom by about five years or so).

From Geary, a block below the high-end shopping at Union Square, Grant Street moves through the Financial District and passes into Chinatown at the Bush Street archway. It traverses Chinatown before crossing into North Beach, finally ending at The Embarcadero at Pier 39. Every block of Grant is steeped in history, from the early Spanish settlement, through the American conquest, the Gold Rush, and beyond.

I've encountered a number of Grant streets throughout the Bay Area (and cross the great triumvirate of Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan nearly every day in Palo Alto), but none of the Grants are so grand as the old Du Pon Gai in San Francisco—a worthy tribute to the great general.

DuPont, robbed of his street in the Wild West, is memorialized today by DuPont Circle in the neighborhood or district of the same name, in Washington DC (formerly Pacific Circle). A statue of the Admiral first graced the traffic circle, but was moved to Wilmington, Delaware by relatives who subsequently hired Daniel French and Henry Bacon—whose portfolio included the Lincoln Memorial—to build a fountain in the statue's place (see a photo of the statue here and more photos at the bottom of this page).

The Dupont Circle fountain is a stunning work, and incorporates three figures representing Sea, Wind, and Sky. See some beautiful close-ups here and here.

Grant street, incidentally, is not the only tribute to Grant in San Francisco. There's this handsome memorial in Golden Gate Park.

Interesting article: The Civil War at 150

2010-11-11T02:54:00.000-08:00

Certainly, Lincoln's election in 1860 precipitated secession, which resulted in war, and the sesquicentennial of that event, on November 6, truly marks the beginning of the forthcoming cycle of commemoration. Douglas R. Egerton's Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War (Bloomsbury Press, out this month) offers a thorough analysis. The contest featured four candidates: John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, nominee of the Southern Democrats; Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, candidate of the Northern Democrats; John Bell, of Tennessee, representing the Constitutional Union Party; and, of course, Abraham Lincoln, of the Republican Party, whose very nomination entices us into playing the counterfactual game: What if the Republican convention had not been held in Lincoln's home state, in Chicago, a site chosen over St. Louis by one vote? Egerton does not speculate about what might have occurred had the convention been held in Missouri, but it certainly would have boosted the chances of Edward Bates, who had lived there since before the territory became a state.

From The Civil War at 150
Louis P. Masur is chair of American studies at Trinity College in Connecticut and author of The Civil War: A Concise History, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

The Washington Post goes whole hog on the sesquicentenary

2010-11-09T09:16:00.000-08:00

World's worst sculptor dies at age 96

2010-11-06T01:28:00.000-07:00

Controversial jack-of-all-trades, slavery apologist and lousy sculptor, Jack Kershaw, passed away on September 7. He was best known as a defense attorney for James Earl Ray, and author of a conspiracy theory regarding the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. According to Jack Kershaw, Ray was working for a shadowy figure name Raul, the mastermind behind the murder. Kershaw's theory pretty much dissipated after he arranged for Ray to do an interview for Playboy magazine, in preparation for which Ray agreed to a lie detector test [Kershaw's unpublished manuscript on the matter reportedly remains in a "secure location"].

The test indicated Ray was lying when he claimed not to have murdered King. It also indicated he was telling the truth when he denied taking part in a conspiracy. Ray dismissed Kershaw as his attorney after he discovered Kershaw was paid for facilitating the interview.

Investigator Gary Revel (from left), James Earl Ray, Jack Kershaw, and Ray’s brother Jerry met in 1977. (Associated Press)

Kershaw, a member of the so-called Fugitive Poets of Vanderbilt in the 1920s, later in life became a co-founder of the ridiculous, neo-Confederate "League of the South," a thinly-veiled white-supremacist group dedicated to achieving that which the original Confederate states failed to do in four years of bloody warfare: create an independent nation from states that made up the old southern slavocracy.

Between James Earl Ray and the League of the South, Mr. Kershaw seems to have had a difficult time choosing a good cause to get behind.

Curiously, everything I could find on-line about Kershaw refers to him as the heir of an Admiral Kershaw, CSA, of South Carolina, but I know of no other high-ranking Kershaw than the famous major general in the Army of Northern Virginia (James). Maybe "Admiral" was a first name, like Senator K. Torvaldson of Lake Wobegon.

Endearing himself to fellow citizens, Kershaw was once quoted by the Times Picayune as saying "Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery. Where in the world are the Negroes better off today than in America?”

Endearing himself to commuters on I-65 south of Nashville, Kershaw is best known for erecting a nightmarish statue of former Confederate general and KKK Grand Wizard, Nathan Bedford Forrest on a private swath of land along the interstate. I made passing reference to the Forrest statue in an early blog entry about Civil War-related roadside attractions. The always entertaining website Roadside America calls the statue "ugly," and "like a cartoon statue." But the best critique I've come across was by one Patrick R. in this Yelp.com entry, May 5, 2008:

"The Nathan Bedford Forrest Memorial, which is beside I-65 South in Brentwood, is probably Nashville's most appalling landmark. And I'm not only saying that because of the historical and racial implications—it's also aesthetically atrocious. . ." Forrest "is depicted in this statue as a ghastly, screaming dwarf. The horse on which Forrest rides makes the general look like a nine-year-old with a radically contorted face wearing a false beard and a skirt."

There's an App for that. . .

2010-11-03T16:22:00.000-07:00

This looks pretty cool. Certainly the price is right (.99 cents). Civil War Preservation Trust has released its first virtual battlefield guide, with ready access to "orders of battle, battle facts, historical photos, troop positions, chronologies," battle maps, and video clips of historians holding forth. Not to mention GPS to tell you exactly where you are on the battlefield.

The potential for this kind of App is really exciting. Imagine pulling up one of CWPT's beautiful maps, locating yourself on that map, and then reading some after-action reports referring to the spot where you're standing. At present, only part of the Gettysburg battlefield is covered, and the App only works on the iPhone and iPad, but it will soon expand to more fields and other platforms.

Nicely done! Read all about it here.

"I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. . ."

2010-10-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

GREAT NEWS:

The Civil War Preservation Trust is proud to announce a new campaign to save 49 acres at the center of the Wilderness Battlefield. Historian Gordon Rhea says that this new tract at the famed Saunders Field is a property that "witnessed some of the Wilderness' most brutal combat."

Read all about it, see maps, and get info on The Wilderness then & now by visiting here.

The insidiousness of misinformation

2010-10-20T02:33:00.000-07:00

At least they didn't put black Confederates on the cover. What an embarrassment. A public school textbook for 4th graders in Virginia published black Confederate mythology as if it were fact, because the author did her research on the internet (Sons of Confederate Veteran websites), and because the review process for Virginia textbooks is apparently fatally flawed.

The passage on black Confederates goes so far as to claim two battalions of southern blacks fought under Stonewall Jackson. In defense, the author of the textbook, Joy Masoff—who describes herself as "a fairly respected writer"—said, "It's just one sentence. I don't want to ruffle any feathers. If the historians had contacted me and asked me to take it out, I would have."

It's bad enough that neo-Confederates and other alternative history types teach their own children that the Civil War wasn't about slavery—they have a right to misinform their own offspring. But for their revisionist nonsense to make it into a public school textbook is a travesty.

Masoff says it's only "one sentence," but it's more than that. One or two sentences like that call the whole book into question. It should be scrutinized cover to cover by competent historians. Up till now, wild-eyed claims about black Confederates were restricted to a relatively small segment of society that is desperate to believe that slavery was not central to the secession crisis, and the war. If blacks fought on behalf of the Confederacy, the thinking goes, then the war must not have been about slavery, and The Cause was glorious after all! Whew, glad we cleared that up.

Debunking fairy tales about black Confederates has become something of a hobby for blogger Kevin Levin, and the rest of us are grateful for the public service he performs (now we can just link to some of his essays on the subject and save a lot of typing). But no one thought that stuff would make it into actual textbooks. This is akin to a new drug-resistant staff infection escaping the hospital and taking root in the community.

Of course this is the state in which the governor, in explaining why his Confederate History Month proclamation made no mention of slavery, explained that "obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia." Meaning, slavery was not among the most significant issues. Ironically, that guy on the cover of the 4th grade textbook, Thomas Jefferson, suggested that slavery—which in this country dates to Jamestown—was the rock upon which the country would be split.

We let down our guard, and now the problem is spreading. The dumbing down has become institutionalized with outright falsehoods. Maybe I'm overreacting, but minutes before I read the Post article about black Confederates, I listened to audio of Delaware senate candidate Christine O'Donnell scornfully challenging her opponent because he claimed the First Amendment spoke of the separation of church and state. I think she was angling to point out that the phrase "separation of church and state" is not literally written there. All of this to support her contention that people have a "constitutional right" to have Intelligent Design taught in their local public schools.

The wheels are coming off.

700 ambrotypes and tintypes donated to the Library of Congress

2010-10-16T02:35:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a Virginia collector, Tom Liljenquist of McLean, we'll all soon have access to a painstakingly gathered collection of 700 Civil War ambrotypes (glass) and tintypes (metal). Nothing I've read about these images so far indicates whether copies of them might already exist in the LoC or in other major collections, such as the one at Carlisle Barracks, but there's a good chance the majority of them are previously unknown outside of private hands. Mr. Liljenquist generously donated them to the Library for the benefit of us all.

Most of the images are of unnamed Union soldiers, including some rare African American portraits. The Library of Congress has already digitized most of them, and made them available online. The news release from the Library of Congress can be read here.

I'm editing this to mention that I just finished reading a much more detailed and interesting blog post by Rea Andrew Redd over at Civil War Librarian. Have a look-see.

The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar. . .

2010-10-14T20:34:00.000-07:00

I love reading dispatches from the road from people eager to learn something new and fresh about our nation's history. Thanks to Ethan Refuse over at Civil Warriors for highlighting this series. I read Slate pretty regularly, but somehow skipped over these travel entries.

The author, John Swansburg, is a non-Civil War buff who offers the disclaimer, "The last time I studied the war was over a bowl of Wheat Chex the day I was to be tested on the material in 11th grade." He and three friends embarked on a 10-day road trip from New Orleans to New York, taking in as many Civil War points of interest as they can fit in. The narrative is breezy, and chock full of hyperlinks for your surfing pleasure.

Entries so far:

A round of golf, followed by simulated horror & carnage, topped off by a catered dinner. See you in Paradise!

2010-10-14T03:36:00.000-07:00

Long-time readers of this blog—both of you—know of my somewhat mixed feelings about the kind of "living history" that endeavors to re-enact terrible scenes of combat, as if dressing up and taking fake "hits" in a field somehow presents the actor or onlookers with a special insight into the unspeakable horror and shock of bodies being torn asunder in a nightmarish hail of shrapnel and lead, destroying lives and wrecking families in the moment and for generations to come.

There is definitely something to be said for seeing authentic uniforms and weaponry, and being able to visualize army-sized masses of men arrayed against each other, but Hollywood, in movies like Glory and Cold Mountain, does a better job—both in scale, and in special effects. I'm not going to (directly) question a re-enactor's stated motivations about honoring the fighting man of the Civil War, but another time-worn rationalization—doing it to teach the children—frequently falls flat when you read a re-enactor's comments in a newspaper article, explaining to rapt second graders that slavery was incidental to the Civil War.

There's the rub. Many re-enactors—including many I have known—are arguably experts on the Civil War era, but there's no quality control. Any nitwit with a wool uniform and a kepi can get invited to address a group of school children. He must know a lot about the Civil War, right? He's got a damn uniform. See my earlier diatribe on this subject, "Claude of the Turbervilles."

In part, I feel like there's something fundamentally disrespectful to all the soldiers who couldn't get up and walk away, or who were maimed and traumatized for life. Ultimately, of course, it's none of my business why people re-enact as a hobby. For me, it's enough to visit the battlefields, and read books. Certainly I have my own peculiar interests and hobbies which others would deem a waste of time and money.

My teenage son often goes "Airsofting" with a bunch of like-minded enthusiasts in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It's a more sophisticated version of paint-balling (at least in terms of the authenticity of the weapons), in which groups of weekend warriors in camouflage square off over a large field in games of Capture the Flag, and whatnot. But they don't try to dress up the experience with talk of living history, or claim to be trying to understand what a soldier endures. They're playing army, getting exercise, testing their stealthiness, and having fun.

My friends and I played our own version of it in the bottoms of the Boyer River in Western Iowa, but we used BB guns, shop goggles, and trench coats to cover as much skin as possible (I can say this publicly now that my mother is no longer alive). We didn't have any grandiose notions about why were were doing it.

Still, as I said, I'm inclined to give many Civil War re-enactors the benefit of the doubt (in a way that I don't extend to Nazi re-enactors in Ohio). And I do admire their dedication, and willingness to go whole hog. I think the folks up in Paradise, California have the right idea. They're funding living history education with the proceeds of some golf tournaments, and staging reenactments on the driving range. Pancakes in the morning, and catered dinner at night. That's my kind of war.

One little quibble, though. Take a closer look at those Zouves in the promotional photo above. I've zoomed in on them here.

They didn't have any 400-pound Zouves in the Union army. I'm sure the hobby, of necessity, is open to all comers, but I have trouble suspending my disbelief when I see soldiers who look like NFL offensive linemen. At what point does the painfully exacting authenticity of uniform buttons and weaponry take a backseat to overall appearance? "You see my button is an exact replica, soaked in urine to get the proper sheen, but please disregard the fact that you could make a weather balloon from the expanse of my pants."

This brings to mind the Turner movie, "Gettysburg" when, in the opening minutes, a spy encounters Confederate pickets and is challenged by one ragged Confederate private who just happens to be morbidly obese. I'm not saying the guy shouldn't be able to enjoy his hobby, it's all make-believe anyway. I myself am dangerously overweight. But what happened to the process of "casting" for a major motion picture?

This last digression brings to mind a compelling bit of commentary on how Civil War reenactments are still not handicap accessible for differently abled soldiers. If not now, when?

My way or the Hihgway. . .

2010-09-25T02:50:00.000-07:00

The informational sign posted last week on U.S. 27 near the Chickamauga Battlefield says: "Army of Tennesse Hihgway."

Both "Tennessee" and "Highway" are misspelled.

Chickamauga City Manager John Culpepper told the Chattanooga Times Free Press "they can't spell down at the Georgia Department of Transportation."

GDOT spokesman Mohamed Arafa said there are sometimes mistakes with names "but Tennessee, there's no excuse for that." He also said the department "used to be the Department of Highway."

-- from the Chattanooga Times Free Press, by way of the AJC

A Tribute to Professor Joseph L. Harsh

2010-09-17T12:47:00.000-07:00

Today's 148th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam comes just days after the passing of Joseph Harsh, whose work on the Maryland Campaign of 1862 will remain required reading for a long time to come.

Tom Clemens, co-founder of Save Historic Antietam Foundation, was a protégé of Dr. Harsh and is an important Antietam historian in his own right. He has written a moving tribute to his mentor, the former chair of the history department at George Mason University.

2010 West Coast Civil War Conference

2010-09-17T02:44:00.000-07:00

If you'll be in the vicinity of America's most beautiful city in November, put some time aside for the 26th West Coast Civil War Conference (Nov. 12, 13, 14). This meeting is hosted by a different Civil War Round Table or other Civil War-related group each year, and this marks only the second time it's been held in San Francisco. The first time was about 20 years ago, hosted by the South Bay CWRT.

This year, the Friends of Civil War Alcatraz have put together what looks to be a spectacular program on the theme of Civil War Coastal Defenses, and have enlisted James McPherson and Craig Symonds as headliners. NPS ranger Rick Hatcher, who's written on Sumter and Moultrie, and the CSS Hunley, will also be on hand. I'm probably most excited about hearing historian John Martini, and not because that's my favorite cocktail. Martini's work on local installations is indispensable—at present I am reading his book on Fortress Alcatraz. He is the guy who discovered the lost Alcatraz photos mentioned in some earlier blog posts.

This is going to be a fun one. The conference is based at the War Memorial building near City Hall, and outings are planned for Fort Point, Alcatraz, Fort Mason, and other sites in the city.

Where Our Nation Reunited

2010-09-12T02:22:00.000-07:00

Slavery was ended. The nation would not again see such a divisive trial until the Ground Zero Mosque War of 2010, when law-abiding American Muslims proposed building a cultural center in an old Burlington Coat Factory building.

"We don't want to kill you all in one day!"

2010-09-07T02:59:00.000-07:00

The partial quote at top is attributed to the Modoc Chief Scarfaced Charley.

Last Monday I asked my faithful reader(s) what three particular Civil War generals had in common. I posted a link on Facebook, where one well-versed individual came up with the answer after I narrowed it down with a comment about Indian Wars.

The answer is that Generals Wright, Howe, and Thomas all had a son killed on April 26, 1873, during the Modoc War (though General Wright preceded his son in death, having drowned in 1865 while en route to his new command).

Man-for-man, the Modoc War was among the costliest ever engaged in by the United States. As many as 600 troops (at highest count) did battle with roughly 50 Modoc warriors for six months. Official tallies put U.S. casualties at 53 soldiers and 17 civilians, while the Modoc lost 15 (five KIA). The resources, human and otherwise, expended on subduing this one band of Modoc was considerable.

There are a couple of good books on the subject, including Hell with the Fire Out, A History of the Modoc War, by Arthur Quinn. And, as pointed out earlier, I enthusiastically recommend this online account at the Park Service web site by Erwin M. Thompson.

Hell with the fire out is an apt description of the weather and the topography—it is high desert, and largely covered with ancient lava flows. Though the First and Second Battle of the Stronghold failed to dislodge the Modoc from Captain Jack's lava fortress, the Indians were eventually compelled to withdraw, which they did unseen. Uncertain of the Modoc positions, and hoping to be able to move howitzers and mortars to a strategic butte four miles from the main army encampment, Colonel Alvan Gillem called upon Captain Evan Thomas of the 4th Artillery to lead a patrol toward Sand Butte (now Hardin Butte).

Like his father, Thomas was a veteran of the Civil War, brevetted for gallantry for actions at both Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, but fighting Indians was not something for which he had must experience. The other generals' sons, likewise veterans of the Civil War, were First Lieutenants Thomas F. Wright and Albion Howe. Three more commissioned officers joined the patrol, 2nd Lieutenant George M. Harris, 1st Lieutenant Arthur Cranston, and Dr. Barnard A. Semig. In addition to a guide and civilian packer, Thomas's patrol comprised 59 enlisted men (Company E, 12th Infantry, and Batteries A and K—the latter serving as infantrymen—of the 4th Artillery).

Capt. Evan Thomas

The patrol was handled carelessly from the start, and little attention was given to guarding the flanks during a march through areas of jumbled rocks, deep cuts, and low ridges that limited lines of sight. This allowed Modoc warriors to trail the soldiers and effectively surround them when they stopped for a midday meal. The Modoc warriors—well-armed, and by all accounts skilled riflemen—attacked seemingly from all directions, and military order among the soldiers quickly dissipated as some men scattered and others sought protection in small groups. The gunfire could be heard back at Gillem's Camp, and in the now-occupied Stronghold, but relief parties started too late and were compelled to wait for dawn before they could locate survivors.

The three generals' sons were dead, Thomas shot four times, and Wright three. The bodies of many soldiers signaled their last tragic hours, lying in "different forms of anguish and distortion, some in the position of desperate defense, others prostrate. . .in utter helplessness." Most had multiple bullet wounds, and many were stripped of their uniforms. Second Lieutenant Harris was mortally wounded, and Cranston was missing. Twenty enlisted men were killed in action, and sixteen were wounded. Out of sixty-seven men in the patrol, at least 43 were casualties.

On the Modoc side, one report by a relief party purported to find the bodies of five warriors, but the Modocs themselves reported after the war that they lost one man in the battle.


The battlefield today, with Hardin Butte (Sand Butte) in the distance.

Thomas-Wright battlefield, Lava Beds National Monument


Looking from the Thomas-Wright battlefield back toward Gillem's Camp,which was at the base of the highest point of the ridge on the left, on the shore of Tule Lake. This was Thomas's line of march.

It has been proposed that the reason the Modoc had, two weeks earlier, murdered General Canby during peace negotiations, was the belief that by striking a devastating blow against the top leadership of the soldiers, the rank & file would abandon the effort to subdue the Indians in the Stronghold. If so, that was a miscalculation. In fact, we know that Canby's assassination, and the stunning defeat of Thomas's command, simply meant that far more troops would come, and would continue to come. Captain Jack and the Modoc leaders who pressured him against his judgment to kill the sympathetic Canby, could never have anticipated the resolve of the warrior then en route to take Canby's place, Jefferson C. Davis.

Here's a legend for the map at left, explaining numbers 1-8.

It's the technology, stupid.

2010-09-03T02:49:00.000-07:00

Hat tip to Civil War Librarian for this update: Museum of the Confederacy Offers Online High Res Digital Images of its Collection. This is another reason why history majors love computers (it's not true that they love computers just because they can't get dates).

Slowly but surely, everything is coming online. Jeb Stuart's saber? Yes, amigo. Zoom in—you can't get that close if you visit it in person, though you should do that too, when you get the opportunity.

What do these three Civil War generals have in common?

2010-08-30T01:49:00.000-07:00

Monday Morning Trivia. . . Obviously we could make all kinds of tenuous connections between various Civil War generals, but I'm looking for something fairly significant shared by these three Union officers. What's significant, you ask? I'll be the judge of that. The first correct answer posted as a comment to this blog entry will receive a rare back issue of Civil War Regiments journal.

George Wright (left) is the other General Wright, the one who spent the entire war on the West Coast. He was an 1822 graduate of West Point, and decorated veteran of the Seminole and Mexican wars. By 1855 he was colonel of the 9th Infantry in the Far West, where he saw combat in various battles with Native Americans (e.g., the Yakima War). When the Civil War came, Wright commanded districts and departments before settling in as commander of the Department of the Pacific, freeing up E. V. Sumner for a return east. Tragically, Wright and his wife drowned at sea on July 30, 1865, in the wreck of the Brother Jonathan, the steamer transporting him to his new command, the freshly-minted Department of the Columbia. He was 63-years-old.

Albion Parris Howe (left) was an 1841 graduate of West Point, served with distinction in Mexico, and was under Robert E. Lee's command during the John Brown episode in Harpers Ferry. After the Civil War began, he commanded a brigade in the Seven Days Battles. For actions at Malvern Hill he was brevetted major, and in time was promoted to brigadier general. He commanded a division at Frederickburg and Chancellorsville, but saw little or no action at Gettysburg. Soon after the Mine Run Campaign, Howe was removed from command of his division, likely due to poor relations with Sedgwick, his corps commander (Howe testified in an unflattering way about Sedgwick to the Committee on the Conduct of the War). After the war he served with the commission that tried the Lincoln conspirators. He died in 1897 at age 78.

Lorenzo Thomas graduated from West Point in 1823, and served in the 4th artillery during the war with Mexico. For the eight years prior to the Civil War, he was chief of staff to General Winfield Scott. He was promoted to brigadier general during the Civil War, and served as adjutant general of the army throughout the war and beyond, until he retired in 1869. He was brevetted a major general in the regular army in early 1865, and after the war may be best remembered as the person President Johnson tried to replace Stanton with as Secretary of War. Thomas died in 1876 at age 70.

State of Denial

2010-08-20T22:25:00.000-07:00

I just became aware of this essay by Professor David Blight in the online version of the Fredericksburg, Virginia Free Lance-Star.

One Rebel state never surrendered: Denial
Confederates' own words condemn their cause
Date published: 6/27/2010

It appears to be from a series entitled, "The Myths of Gray: What Gives the Confederacy its Staying Power?" Blight's installment is in response to Virginia Governor McDonnell's ill-considered decision to resurrect Confederate History Month.

Blight is as good as it gets when it comes to the systematic and thorough shredding of Lost Cause mythology. I like that he gets right to the core of the matter by pointing out that we don't have to take some modern-day liberal academic's word for what the war was about, we need only listen to the words of the secessionists themselves:

"The best way to understand why secession and war came in 1860-61 is to look at what white Southerners themselves said they were doing. How did the leaders of secession explain the origins of the war?"

This is a point I always try to make to people who have settled upon a notion of secession involving mysterious state rights that are somehow unrelated to slavery. The architects of secession, the Confederate leadership itself, made no bones about it. They were unabashed in stating the reasons for secession. It was only after the war that it became uncomfortable to blame unspeakable carnage and suffering on such an ignoble cause. How could any vanquished people heal or reconcile staggering losses in the wake of a rash war to perpetuate slavery? No, it had to be prettied up. Thus, a war for the independence to keep men enslaved was transformed into a war for "liberty" from tyranny.

The essay series title asks how such misguided notions about the war endure for so long. It's no mystery, really. Even in today's Age of Information we hear of sizable percentages of the population who believe—against all evidence—that President Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya. Lost Cause mythology endures because the purveyors of it—here is one blogger's reply to Blight—will not read the widely available primary source material that destroys their fantasy. Nor do they read the best scholarship available on the topic, things like The Apostles of Disunion, which unequivocally spells out the motivations behind secession. They "pass down" family history, sanitized for your protection.

Instead of wasting time trying to rewrite history, and feeding misinformation to their children, the Moonlight & Magnolias crowd should consider constructing an honest rationale for honoring their ancestors. You can honor the man without honoring the cause, and without trying them in the court of modern opinion. Those brave men don't need your feeble excuses for their behavior. They fought for what they believed, or they fought because they were compelled to for other reasons. They don't need you to cover for them. Like Mosby said, "a soldier fights for his country, the South was my country."

Do the descendants of Henry the VIII try to rationalize his bloody record at the wedding altar? Do Andrew Jackson's descendants create elaborate alternate histories about tears of joy on the Trail of Tears? "They weren't crying, son, they were happy to get out of Georgia." A great many Americans, myself included, have ancestors who killed Indians. Probably indiscriminately. Probably with relish. We don't honor them because of the prevailing attitude toward Native Americans in centuries past. We honor them because they are our ancestors, and because they were brave pioneers in a new world—even the scoundrels among them.

It's just history.

[P.S. my wife has just mentioned that Henry VIII may not have any living descendants]