Monday, December 25, 2006

Memorable Christmas gifts and "thank you" notes of the American Civil War

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General Sherman to President Lincoln (Telegram offering Savannah, Georgia as a Christmas present) —transcription of above— December 22...
4 comments:
Thursday, December 21, 2006

Writing less than a year after the Civil War ended, Mark Twain had occasion to see a demonstration of the considerable skills of officers of the Signal Corps—the unsung masters of battlefield communication

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It’s more or less a lost art in this age of satellite communications, but the two in this account would make for some unbeatable charades p...
Thursday, December 14, 2006

"You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war."

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— Sherman to the mayor of Atlanta In July of 1864, W. T. Sherman's blue columns, after flanking Joe Johnston out of one position, th...
2 comments:
Thursday, December 07, 2006

Reenacting and Me

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Over at the blog, My Year of Living Rangerously , Manny writes that he has "always been ambivalent about the hobby of reenacting....
6 comments:
Wednesday, November 22, 2006

I can see for miles and miles and miles

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— Pete Townshend Take the Greek "pan," for "all," and stick it on "horama," meaning view, and you get panor...
Monday, November 13, 2006

Letters Home

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One often reads that Civil War soldiers were the most literate in our history, a fact attested to by the voluminous letters, diaries, and re...
Thursday, November 09, 2006

The Art and Obligations of Criticism

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Some book reviews are so harsh, so thoroughly biting and dripping with such disdain, you figure either the reviewer has peeled away all of a...
5 comments:
Monday, November 06, 2006

The year 1862 was a remarkably bloody time for the American experiment.

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[Photo: "People escaping from the Indian massacre, at dinner on a prairie," Library of Congress, details below] It's well ...
6 comments:
Monday, October 30, 2006

Potatoes in the Wheatfield?

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Two potatoes, one in Union blue, one in Confederate gray, pause from the fighting long enough to endorse the culinary standards at Gettysb...
2 comments:
Monday, October 23, 2006

"People don't ask you questions like that about your wife"

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—John Y. Simon's response to my first question. . . Lately I have been mining the transcripts of various author Q&A sessions h...
Sunday, October 22, 2006

Behind every great caricature, there's a great caricature

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"Many say, they would almost worship you, if you would put a fighting General, in the place of McClellan — This would be splendid we...