“The Centennial is worth celebratingbut there is a ghost at the feast.”

—Walker Percy on the Civil War centennial

As promised, a few more comments and quotes from Walker Percy. The two essays of his that I’ve recently re-read are interesting, to me, for the fact that they are written by a philosophical novelist—raised in the Deep South—on the eve of the Civil War centennial. A thoughtful commentator on life in the South, his observations about the region one hundred years after The War are of particular interest to those who spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about such things.

I was about two years old when the centennial years began, so have no personal memory of that period, but I imagine it must have been a strange time. There was a veritable explosion of Civil War books published around then, and the pace has hardly subsided since. Concurrently, the Civil Rights movement and racial discord were picking up steam, dating back to Brown vs. the Board of Education Topeka in 1954, and peaking with violent clashes and assassinations throughout the 1960s. The stark disconnect between the centennial celebration of noble combat and North/South (Caucasian) reconciliation on the one hand, and the decidedly unreconciled advent of groups like the Black Panthers on the other, tells a tale about how different parts of segregated America viewed the evolution of society in the decades since the surrender at Appomattox.

Percy’s essay “Red, White, and Blue-Gray” was first published in Commonweal in 1961, one year before his first novel, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award for fiction. The essay was published some six years after Emmit Till was murdered, and Rosa Parks was arrested. It was published two years before Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, the March on Washington, and the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, the city where Percy was born.

It always feels remarkable to me how recently in our history the Civil War was fought. People I’ve known who had little interest in history are surprised to learn that there are people alive today who had a grandparent that fought in the Civil War, or a grandparent born into slavery. It must have seemed all the closer in 1961, which was not too many years after the last veterans of the war reportedly died.

Percy noted that:

“there is a paradox about current Civil War Centennial literature. It commemorates mainly the fighting, the actual frontline killing—which was among the bloodiest and bitterest in modern history. Yet it is all good-natured. Illinois historians say nice things about Forrest; Mississippians, if not Georgians, speak well of Sherman. In the popular media the War is so friendly that the fighting is made to appear as a kind of sacrament of fire by which one side expresses its affection for the other.”

Percy dispensed with the oft-heard notion that history is written by the victors. Serious students of the Civil War learn very quickly that in the written history of the Civil War period, the vanquished held their own quite nicely. Percy wrote:

The South has certain tactical advantages in the present “war” (like the North’s industry and population in the first) and has accordingly won a species of literary revenge. The two great figures of the Civil War were Lincoln and Lee, and since most of the literature is about the fighting, Lee is bound to get the better of it. And what with the American preference for good guys and underdogs, and especially underdog good guys, and Lee’s very great personal qualities and the undistinguished character of his opponents, and finally the Army of Northern Virginia which was always outnumbered and nearly always won—it looks as if the next hundred years will see the South not only running the Senate but taking over the national myth along with it.

He goes on to mention the “unease” liberals felt about the centennial literature, on the basis that commemoration of the war as a problem solved would diminish the current and ongoing struggle for civil rights. Percy also bemoans the fact that certain phrases and concepts were co-opted by white supremacists, though he does not use that phrasing. The concept of “states’ rights" once held a certain political legitimacy, but in 1961, Percy writes, “when a politician mentions states’ rights, it’s a better than even bet that in the next sentence it will become clear what kind of states’ rights he is talking about. It usually comes down to the right to keep the Negro in his place.”

Likewise with the phrase, “A Southern Way of Life,” which Percy imbues with all manner of pleasant and respectable connotations. “But I don’t like to hear the phrase now,” he says, “it usually means segregation and very little else. In New Orleans, which has a delightful way of life, the ‘Southern Way of Life’ usually means ‘Let’s Keep McDonough No. 6 Segregated.’”

Some more passages from “Red, White, and Blue-Gray”:

Still and all, there is no need to worry about the Reconciliation. It was very largely an Anglo-Saxon war, and Anglo-Saxon has been reconciled to Anglo-Saxon. But to whom is the Negro reconciled?

The North did win and did put the South in Arrow collars. The sections are homogenized. Everybody watches the same television programs. In another hundred years, everybody will talk like Art Linkletter. The South as gotten rich and the North has gotten Negroes, and the Negro is treated badly in both places. The Northerners won and freed the slaves and now are fleeing to the suburbs to get away from them… .The South, on the other hand, has always managed to comfort itself by pointing to the hypocrisy of the North—not realizing that it is a sorry game in which the highest score is a tie: “Look, they’re as bad as we are!

I think it's safe to say that things continue to change for the better with respect to the reconciliation Percy was talking about 40-some years ago, though that is a matter of perspective, of course. Jim Crow is dead, or if not dead, driven deep into the sticks. Racism is alive and well, but no longer so overtly institutionalized. The next president of the United States may very well be a black man. Maybe the "ghost at the feast" will soon be sitting at the head table.

Walking away from a mountain. . .

"The truth of it is, I think, that the whole country, South included, is just beginning to see the Civil War whole and entire for the first time. The thing was too big and too bloody, too full of suffering and hatred, too closely knit into the fabric of our meaning as a people, to be held off and looked at—until now. It is like a man walking away from a mountain. The bigger it is, the farther he's got to go before he can see it. Then one day he looks back and there it is, this colossal thing lying across his past."

—from "The American War," Commonweal 65 (March 29, 1957): 655-57; republished in Signposts in a Strange Land, by Walker Percy, edited by Patrick Samway (New York, 1991).

Percy, an increasingly obscure southern novelist and friend of Shelby Foote, wrote this essay in anticipation of the Civil War centennial. He makes a number of interesting observations in this essay, and another—"Red, White, and Blue-Gray"—that are deeply compelling and insightful, and, I think, surprising or unexpected to people whose roots and experience lie outside the mysterious South.

The other day my friend Steve, historian emeritus of Loudoun County, reminded me of the quote above, which I was once in the habit of including in Civil War Round Table newsletters, the Civil War Forum's start page, and the like. I was prompted to go back and read the two Civil War-related essays in the Signposts collection, after a long time since last looking them over. An often fascinating thing about rereading something after many years is that you are not the same person who read it the first time around. I'll try to explain the "surprising" or "unexpected" part in my next entry, and include some more passages from those essays.

Who needs a boat, if skillets float?

I only drop in occasionally on the U.S.S. Monitor Center Blog, to see what’s new, and it’s usually rewarding. The August 8th entry shows Jeanne, “curator of scientific instruments and dairy products,” making breakfast topside. For the full flavor of the event, check out this 3-1/2 minute Eggsperiment at Youtube, on the deck of the hottest replica in town.

At one point in mid-June, 1862, sailors recorded temperatures as high as 165 degrees in the galley of the Monitor (and not much cooler where the sailors slept). There's no telling how hot the surface of the ironclad could get under the summer sun, but on August 8, 2007, the deck of the replica reached 165. By my calculations, that comes out to "hot as hell."

As an aside, on the video they note that on June 23 1862, according to the ship’s log, what wood there was in the galley of the iron vessel caught fire, forcing the men to cook up on the deck. The photo, top left, is dated July 9, 1862, and a cookstove is clearly discernible in the left of the image.

One more post on my new Jesse James fixation

—a long-dormant interest brought to the fore again by a recent road trip through Missouri. The fact that there is some fairly recent scholarship on the James Gang gave me a hankering to upgrade the subject to the top of the bedside book stack.

It was easy work to determine which modern biographies are being taken seriously by dedicated outlaw and guerilla aficionados: Ted P. Yeatman's, Frank and Jesse James, the Story Behind the Legend (2000), and T. J. Stiles's, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War (2002).

By way of a clarification, let me say that this blog entry is not intended as a review of the two books in question. I haven't read either one. I'm just shopping. I purchased the Yeatman book in Liberty, and have ordered the other. My sense, based on reviews, is that both are different enough, and substantial enough, to warrant reading. I'll try to get through both of them and report back, or at the very least, report why I might have finished one and come up short on the other. However it shakes out, I feel confident that the combination of the two will serve to make me obnoxiously fluent in Jesse James trivia.

I'll begin with Yeatman's, because it's already on my kitchen table. I like the look and feel of this book, sporting as it does the fat back matter of a deeply-researched study. As I looked for information on both titles, it became immediately apparent that Stiles' book quickly eclipsed whatever fanfare Yeatman's book might have enjoyed. At first blush, I would attribute that to the fact that Yeatman's work was released by a small publisher, while Stiles' biography was published and marketed by Knopf, a major house. But maybe there's more to the picture. The website Stiles has devoted to Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War is impressively loaded with interesting content. There are numerous reviews of Last Rebel available online, and many of them—including critiques by such notable Civil War historians as Michael Fellman, Albert Castel, and Eric Foner, are found at the Stiles site. Interestingly, one of the minor problems Castel identifies is "an over-reliance on the not-always-reliable Eric Foner's propagandistic Reconstruction, 1863-1877: America's Unfinished Revolution." Ouch.

As an aside, Drew Wagenhoffer, in his Civil War Books and Authors blog, has mentioned the Civil War St. Louis website, which is chock full of intriguing links. They have done a nice job with Jesse James material.

Laura [James-in-law] James, over at the endlessly engaging CLEWS: the Historic True Crime Blog, offers a nice, meaty blog entry on the dueling James biographies, including mention of a Yeatman/Stiles "shootout" on the History News Network. Laura establishes her James bona fides by correcting a number of details from Stiles' book. She calls it nitpicking, but every detail, and every error, counts (and for you Civil War types, the more obscure the correction, the better).

I'm a big, big fan of Booknotes transcripts from the old C-SPAN show (did that show go away in 2004?). Mr. Yeatman managed an appearance there, which is no small thing. You can read that here. Unfortunately, he doesn't really answer the question, "Now how does your book fit into all the books that have been written? What's so special about this that you couldn't get in any other book?"

Finally, my commentary on Ron Hansen's novel, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, will have to wait for another entry. It's just as well, as it deserves to be discussed apart from nonfiction bios.

Late on the afternoon of July 11, after two weeks revisiting some familiar and familial locales in Northern Arkansas and Southern Missiouri . . .

I was transporting my brood northward in a rented Pontiac Torrent en route to Kansas City, there to catch a flight to San Jose. We had a little time to spare, and I had already done what every red-blooded reader of this blog would have done – scanned the map for little red boxes – historical sites – within striking distance of the airport. The closest and most interesting to me was in Liberty, Missouri – the Jesse James Bank Museum. Regrettably, the James farm was a few too many miles out of reach.

It’s an odd aspect of American society that we often tend to romanticize outlaws and cold-blooded murderers. Almost as far back as I can remember, the James Gang held a particular fascination for my friends and me. We all gladly bought into the sympathetic (and wholly inaccurate) image of an American Robin Hood. Same with Bonnie & Clyde. These are not people you want your kids to emulate, but robbing banks and going out in a blaze of glory will cause the son of a C.P.A. to sit up and take notice. Certainly Hollywood plays a key role in perpetuating the sympathy – Warren Beattie’s wide, easy smile said it all. And even as an adult, fully cognizant of the murderous ways of Jesse James and the Younger brothers, a beautiful movie like "The Long Riders," with its Carradines, Keachs and Quaids, full-length dusters, slow motion ricochets, and haunting Ry Cooder soundtrack, makes one wistful about a life that ends in (famous) tragedy.

But I digress. The Bank Museum in Liberty had a nice little gift shop, and you know that if you cannot come away with some kind of reading material, you may as well not even have stopped. I picked up Ted P. Yeatman’s, Frank and Jesse James, the Story Behind the Legend, which pleases the hand with its heft and 1-1/2 inch spine bulk. I’ve since seen some complimentary reviews, and am encouraged by the nearly 100 pages of lengthy, narrative endnotes.

The Yeatman book came out in 2000 (Cumberland House, Nashville). Here is a modern, and by some accounts, definitive biography of the James Brothers, released over a century after Jesse’s death. And two years later comes another “definitive” account, T. J. Stiles,’ Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War [for those of you keeping score at home, there is your first official Civil War reference in this blog entry]. By the looks of things, despite being beat to the punch, Stiles’ book got the most attention, including a review by James McPherson in the New York Review of Books.

It’s too late to continue tonight, even on the Left Coast. So we’ll pick up tomorrow night (Thursday) with Jesse James, Part Two: more mention of the dueling biographies, high praise for a cool blog I just discovered, and commentary on perhaps the best Jesse James book of all, a piece of fiction I was surprised to learn is already a “major motion picture,” replete with pretty boy superstar in the lead role.

[photo at top: Jesse James, 1864. Library of Congress]

Ghost Writers Keep it all in the Family

I don't mean ghost writer in the sense of someone hired to write a celebrity's memoirs. I mean the supernatural kind of ghost, the kind that have trouble holding a pen, or using a keyboard, and who resort to channeling, or making their presence felt in other disconcerting ways.

A comment by Jim Schmidt to my recent blog entry on Jeff Shaara got me thinking more about so-called "FamFic," or Family Fiction, when a famous author's relative endeavors to pick up the slack following the death of the writer. Bookstores today feature many examples of this, from Christopher Tolkein's work in finishing The Silmarillion, to the multiple, pre-Dune novels written by Frank Herbert's son after his death.

Chris Suellentrop at Slate.com wrote an interesting summary of the phenomenon back in 2003, an essay that's still accessible here. In it, he quotes Frank Herbert's son Brian commenting on his mother "intervening from another world." But the Herberts were writing science fiction—in that genre, at least, otherworldly intervention can be accounted for as something outside the bounds of our limited, terrestrial understanding of the universe.

In the same article, Suellentrop gathers some Jeff Shaara quotes as well, and one hopes—if the quotes are accurate—that they're not to be taken as literally as they sound. On the other hand, if they're merely calculated for effect as part of a book tour, it's hard to say which is worse, the marketing ploy, or the sentimental superstition. Suellentrop wrote:

Jeff Shaara takes the [ghostly] conceit to new heights—or at least he did during the promotion of Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure, the Killer Angels sequel he authored. Shaara frequently asserted that Michael Shaara was writing through him—that the son was merely a conduit for the completion of his father's literary effort. A sampling of quotes: "While writing Gods and Generals, I have often felt my father's presence, as though he were there helping me write and giving me his blessing"; "When my sister Lila read it, she said, 'This is being written by the ghost of Michael Shaara.' "; "Very often I would feel as though my father was in the room." He also attributed the "ghost of Michael Shaara" phrase to Ronald F. Maxwell, the director of Gettysburg and Gods and Generals, saying that Maxwell told him of his manuscript, "I am awe-struck. The ghost of Michael Shaara."

Now, Jeff Shaara may genuinely believe that his father was writing through him, and for all we know, it could even be true. But as a practical matter, how far does the right of a descendant to continue his ancestor's literary work extend?

I'm not sure what to make of this other than that, apparently, ghosts make lousy collaborators. Once more, the whole article ("Dead Man Writing: How to keep writing your late father's books") can be found here.

"a wicked scramble that could have passed for a goal line stand or the attack on Little Round Top."

So said reporters at SFGate.com tonight, the online venue for the San Francisco Chronicle, describing people in the centerfield bleachers at AT&T Park scrambling for Barry Bonds' 756th home run ball. I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've seen a Little Round Top reference in local Giants coverage.

But is it the right analogy?

One man related that "he watched in horror as a woman got knocked over and her husband disappear[ed] into the scrum, leaving their four-year-old son to cower with his teddy bear. . . .he never found out who they were but. . .it did not appear to be the pinnacle of responsible parenting. . . . [editorial note: I have to believe the boy with the bear would one day have come to appreciate it if the old man had resurfaced with that million dollar ball].

The rest of section 144 was aghast at the spectacle of the ball scuffle. 'Fists were flying, elbows were flying, people were digging, swinging, pulling on stuff, nobody cared about anything,' said Chris Goelkel. 'It was madness.' Alan Azem of San Mateo, 'It got to the point where people pushed other people just to get on him.' 'They were pushing grandmothers to the floor,' said Susan Kitchens of Campbell."

Sounds more like a scene from the Mule Shoe at Spotsylvania.

Not your father's Civil War. . .

A columnist I enjoy reading in the San Francisco Chronicle, Jon Carroll, had a piece published on July 31st talking about culling his burgeoning library, but instead of discussing the books that were being jettisoned, he gave a little synopsis of some of those books that survived the cut. I was pleased to see a Civil War-related title among the survivors. He wrote:

"The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara. This is just a stunning book, a historical novel that reads like a work of history. It's about the battle of Gettysburg, not exactly unmined territory, but the deft and compassionate prose makes this a must-read anyway.


Michael Shaara's son, Jeff Shaara, tried to duplicate his father's techniques in a string of historical books. Alas, like father not like son. Stick with the original; accept no substitutes.

Sure, anyone can talk up a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and remain on safe ground, but it’s the warning at the end that will save you some grief, and possibly money. Carroll’s summary is spot on. Ironically (sadly?), Jeff Shaara’s sequels and prequels, not to mention the movie rights, made a lot more money than Killer Angels, without ever replicating the gripping narrative or approximating the literary merit of the old man’s work. I was interested to learn that Killer Angels enjoyed no commercial success during the author’s lifetime, and that he was shocked when it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1975.

There is a very interesting biography of Michael Shaara, penned by his son, here. Did you know he had more than 70 short stories published in the 1950s, and that two of them were produced as television dramas? Me either.

As a disclaimer, I should mention that I’ve never read a single one of Jeff Shaara’s books from start to finish. I have sat in the bookstore and read passages, and I read lots of reviews. And I queried people I knew had read them. I do not begrudge him his success. If anyone should be able to cash in on the name of an author and his work, it should be that author’s offspring. I give Jeff Shaara credit for actually writing the books, and fully acknowledge that people read his novels and enjoy them.

Am I qualifed to criticize? Well, I just recently put up posts on the baseball Giants, and the 49ers, and drew Civil War connections in both cases. That's no mean feat.

Bill Walsh, 1931-2007 : "The Genius"

“Here’s my game plan.” This is what Bill Walsh reportedly told a friend of his upon giving him a copy of Carl von Clausewitz’s, On War. According to Daniel Brown of the San Jose Mercury News, Bill Walsh read anything that might help him win more football games. Brown continued, “Walsh read extensively about the Civil War. Though the details of the carnage depressed him, he found the military strategy fascinating. 'The goal is to attack the other side with clean, sharp blows while you're moving faster than the opposition. That was Wellington. That was von Clausewitz,' he once said. 'I don't relate football to warfare other than in those dynamics, but the military axioms of von Clausewitz about people under stress, about the individual soldier, make it the best book on football.'"

I had heard and read that Walsh was a Civil War buff, and that he incorporated anecdotes about generals from various wars in his talks (big on Patton, for example). I wrote letters to try to get him to attend a local Civil War Round Table, to no avail. I had to satisfy myself with watching his teams rack up victory after victory every Sunday. And man oh man, it was satisfying, and remains satisfying in memory.

The passing of Bill Walsh on Monday morning was an emotional blow for 49ers fans, the Stanford community, and serious fans of the NFL everywhere, to say nothing of his family, associates, and friends in the wider spectrum of his rich life. Thanks for all the memories, Mr. Walsh. I will take pleasure in them for the rest of my days.

For anyone interested, there are dozens of fascinating articles in today's (July 31) SF Chronicle and SJ Mercury News by the beat writers who covered the 49ers, and who knew and followed Walsh closely throughout his remarkable career. There are some great stories and lots of personal insights into this intriguing man.

People from all over the country left condolences on the Chronicle’s web site the last couple days. I like this one, from Philip Poulos of Dallas, and I know my misguided Cowboys friends will appreciate it too:

Now you can out-coach Landry once again. Rest in Peace.

North versus South

I went to the ballgame on Friday the 13th. The Dodgers were in town to, unfortunately, sweep the Giants again (the woman in this photo was sitting a couple rows ahead of me). The Giants-Dodgers games are among the few all season where, without fail, fights break out in the stands. I’m always impressed by the courage, or poor judgement, of certain Dodgers fans who wear their full regalia in the Giants ballpark, then stand up and taunt the crowd. It invites a lot of abuse, and the police presence at L. A. games is much higher in order to respond to the inevitable fisticuffs. But it's better now than it used to be.

There’s a North/South tension in California that dates, to some degree, back to the Civil War or earlier (even if Southern Californians are unaware of it). San Francisco’s Union Square, reportedly the scene of pro-Union speeches, took its name during that period, but there were no such squares way down in the City of Angels. Edwin Vose Sumner, sent west to relieve Albert Sydney Johnston, was on the job following the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and he knew where to find the trouble-makers. Forget the Indians – all of a sudden there were other hostiles to worry about! To wit:

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE PACIFIC,
SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., April 30,
1861.


Lieut.-Col. E.D. TOWNSEND, Assistant Adjutant-General, Headquarters Army:


SIR: I have the honor to report that I have found it necessary to withdraw the troops from Fort Mojave and place them at Los Angeles. There is more danger of disaffection at this place than any other in the State. There are a number of influential men there who are decided Secessionists, and if we should have any difficulty it will commence there. Fort Mojave is represented as an entirely useless post. There are no hostile Indians near it, and there is no traveling whatever on the road it is intended to protect.


Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
E.V. SUMNER,
Brigadier-General, U.S. Army, Commanding.

Sumner, who would receive wounds in the Seven Days Campaign, and at Antietam, and die of a heart attack at about the half-way point of the war, never gets credit for saving Los Angeles for the Union, though it's possible that eventually he will be blamed for it. . . For more on California and the lead-up to the war, head on over to Drew Wagenhoffer's excellent blog, Civil War Books & Authors, where the latest entry -- I just noticed -- is a very useful review of The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War, by Leonard L. Richards. Drew writes that, "Although clearly futile, effort was also made by pro-Southern politicians (with the support of influential Mexican landowners in Southern California) to divide the state in half." I've seen this book around, and am definitely going to pick up a copy.

Stay tuned: in the coming days, more on my recent sojourn in Arkansas, where you can buy accessories like these for your car.

Location momentarily disclosed, and closed to the public

Emerging from an undisclosed location, last month Vice President Cheney descended upon the battlefield at Kennesaw Mountain. American taxpayers all pitched in to transport the vice president to a gathering of descendants of the 21st Ohio Infantry and people pretending to be members of that historic regiment. No word yet on how many taxpayers' visits were precluded, or cut short, when the National Battlefield Park was rendered off limits to John Q. Public while Mr. Cheney and grown men dressed up like Union soldiers mingled in the park's main building.

The vice president's ancestor, Captain Samuel Fletcher Cheney of the storied 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry, participated in W. T. Sherman's tragically ill-considered efforts to dislodge the Army of Tennessee from positions astride the mountain [stories here, and here]. Presumably, Captain Cheney did not have "other priorities" when his country called (assuming he wasn't conscripted). It's safe to say, given the beating Sherman received at Kennesaw on June 27, 1864, none among the Federal rank and file considered the years-long insurgency to be in its last throes quite yet.

Photo: "They Who Fought Here":

Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield Park Visitor Center

All Roads Lead To Fifty-Six

I'm on the road for a few more days, deep in the tick-infested woods of North-Central Arkansas, not far from where J. O. Shelby spent the bitter winter of 1862-1863. Look for a full report report from the Trans-Mississippi upon our return. Two things I learned on this Independence Day: 1) Blanchard Springs and associated Caverns were named for a Civil War Veteran of Shiloh, Stones River, and Chickamauga (more on that next week); and 2) the Battle Flag is 100 times more visible today then it was the last time I visited Arkansas, ten years ago.

American Heritage is History

at least on paper

Somehow I missed this notice when it came out in May. I grew up in one of those households that had stacks of hardcover issues of American Heritage all over the place, on bookshelves here and there, in the basement, the garage, on the top shelf of the hall closet. I don't remember how old I was before I took an interest in them, but eventually I began to flip through the issues at random. Later, on trips home from college, I flipped through them again, this time looking for articles of interest on certain subjects. At some point I purchased the big, hardcover index, but it was of little use in the chaotic shuffling of serial publications in a home overrun by reading material. But the randomness, of course, was part of the appeal -- just grab a couple issues on your way to the bed, and there was bound to be one article, one essay, one "brush with history" that would be worth staying up for.

I tried to salvage a lot of those old casebound volumes, but they were just so damn heavy, and not conducive to apartment living and multiple moves. Invariably, they would end up in some dank, moist place, and have to be tossed in the dumpster on the next move.

I subscribed, on and off, to the modern glossy magazine, but that tailed off. Sometimes, I picked it up off the newstand. Editorially, it had its ups and downs, but I don't mind saying it was always among my favorite magazines. As I typed this blog entry, it occurred to me why AH is suspending print publication. Even loyal readers who were weaned on it have stopped buying it. That's a little sad, but "so it goes," if I may quote another American icon we lost this year.

AH, at least, will continue online with a top-flight website [image at top: cover, October 1959, vol. 10, no. 6].

American Heritage Suspends Print Edition
By Frederick E. Allen

American Heritage, the nation’s preeminent magazine of history . . . has stopped publication, at least temporarily, with the April/May 2007 issue, now on newsstands. The website will continue to publish.

American Heritage, a bimonthly, was founded in 1954. It was bought by Forbes Inc. in 1986 and has suffered financially in recent years amid hard times for magazines in general. Forbes put it up for sale earlier this year and has not yet found a buyer.

We have confirmation that Halleck could accurately transcribe a note. . .

The National Archives held a press conference today to announce they'd located an original, handwritten note from Abraham Lincoln to Henry Halleck. . . a note that Henry Halleck reproduced verbatim in a telegram to General Meade (a telegram that was published in the Official Records, vol. 27, pt. 1, p. 83).

It's nice to know the original has been found. But a press conference? I haven't been this let down since Geraldo opened up Capone's vault.

Amateur Makes Good

Some fellow bloggers weighed in recently on the distinctions between amateur and professional historians in the world of Civil War historiography (for example here, and here, and here). I could venture a few opinions on that myself, but probably not without insulting someone I know on both sides of that definition. As a personal aside, I do not claim the mantle of “historian” for myself, because I don’t fit the bill. I don’t have the advanced training, and I don’t spend a lot of time doing original research. I read a lot, and I distill and I synthesize, and sometimes that leads to observations that seem more fresh than stale, at least to people who have read less. Rather than professional versus amateur, it might be more useful to distinguish between good, and lousy. The good ones contribute something lasting.

James Hall, who died in February of this year at age 95, was something more than an amateur historian (see his Washington Post obit here). He was an amateur historian who was also recognized as a leading authority on his chosen subject -- in this case, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. A recent Wall Street Journal essay quotes an unnamed associate as saying that “James O. Hall knew more about Lincoln's murder than anyone who ever lived, including John Wilkes Booth.” That may be stretching things a bit, but probably not by much. In the same vein, we could make the point that Licensed Battlefield Guides at Gettysburg, perhaps even faithful readers of the Gettysburg Discussion Group, know more about what transpired in that three-day battle than did Robert E. Lee on his deathbed.

But Hall did more than become well versed. He helped to definitively debunk a widely accepted text, Otto Eisenschiml’s, Why Was Lincoln Murdered? And as a researcher, he uncovered a document that must have made dedicated Lincoln scholars tremble and weep: John Wilkes Booth’s handwritten rationalization for the murder he would commit later that day. Score one for the amateurs.

Mr. Hall apparently had the added quality of not being pompous, an affliction that may be more common among the over-educated, but which has been known to spill over into amateur ranks as well. He could have gone for a high-profile glossy magazine exclusive to celebrate his find, but no. And he could have donated his private archives to a university in exchange for a plaque announcing the James Hall Reading Room, but no.

This excerpt from a WSJ essay sums it up.

Typically, in 1977, Mr. Hall chose to publish this astonishing find in the Lincoln Log, a newsletter for buffs. Its circulation was minuscule compared with the slick magazines--National Geographic or American Heritage--that would have loved to showcase such a find and maybe make its discoverer famous. But Mr. Hall was without professional vanity; that's what it means to be an amateur, after all.

At the end of his life, Mr. Hall treated his vast archives with the same modesty and discretion. At least two well-endowed universities made a play for the contents of his file cabinets. Instead, he gave them to the small, homespun Surratt House museum, once the country home of the Lincoln conspirator Mary Surratt and a favorite gathering place for buffs. With a single stroke, he transformed the museum into the Alexandrian library of assassination studies. It was a gesture of confidence and fellow feeling, made to all amateur historians from the best of their kind.

__________________

In other news: today we’ll learn about the discovery of another Lincoln document. I first saw mention of this at Dimitri’s blog, and then looked up this National Archives press alert

Media Alert: June 4, 2007
National Archives Press Conference to Announce New Lincoln Document Discovery
What: A press conference to announce and unveil a newly-discovered Lincoln document. Archivist Allen Weinstein has hailed this discovery as a “significant find.” The press will have the opportunity to film/photograph the discovery after the remarks and unveiling.
Who: Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein Archivist Trevor Plante, a specialist in Civil War materials
Where: The Archivist’s Reception Room, National Archives Building, Washington, DC.Media should use the 700 Pennsylvania Avenue entrance.
When: 10:00 AM, Thursday, June 7, 2007
Please Note: No Artificial Light may be used on the document.
__________________


Cover at top: William A. Tidwell, David Winfred Gaddy, and James Hall, Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln (reprinted, University Press of Mississippi, November 2001)

Getting off to a good start. . .

I know people who managed to get all the way through college without reading a play by Shakespeare, or attending a course in American history. And as near as I can tell, for every literature and history course that I took, and that they avoided, their future net worth doubled. Not that I’m bitter – we history and literature majors will always find gainful employment as “good communicators” (some of the best memo writers in the workforce today).

Now obviously, many very bright people have little interest in literature or history. They may be dull as bars of soap, but it’s no crime. There’s good news for some of their bright children, however. It is pleasing to see that UC Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science is making incoming freshmen read a book on the roots and legacy of a Civil War era speech before they even arrive for classes.

Quoting from one of the university’s web pages:

Over the summer, all newly-admitted L&S students will receive a copy of Lincoln at Gettysburg in the mail, along with a message from the deans asking them to read the book and come prepared to discuss it. When they arrive during Welcome Week they will find opportunities to talk about the book with professors and fellow students in a variety of contexts, ranging from one-time discussions through semester-long Freshman Seminars. On the Same Page activities will culminate in a three-day campus visit by Garry Wills, who will talk with groups of students and faculty and give a public presentation on September 26 in Zellerbach Hall.

What a neat program – a book club in which every participant is nearly guaranteed to read and comment on the selected text. Will it cause some new student to rethink his or her preprogrammed career studies? Will there be one less chemist or petroleum engineer? Nah, but there will be some better educated ones.

Atlanta, 1864

Just a quick note to announce that registration is open for the 12th annual Civil War Forum Battlefield Conference, to be held March 27-30, 2008.

This year we’ll cover Sherman’s 1864 campaign for Atlanta, from Rocky Face Ridge to the Battle of Jonesboro and surrender of Atlanta. As always, we’ll cut off registration after we’ve filled one bus.

I'm not trying to sell stuff on this blog (and as I said in the very first post, I'll never tell you what I had for breakfast, I respect you that much), so you won't read much more about the Atlanta conference here, but faithful readers can benefit from this tip-off (up-to-date details can be had here).

I’ve been looking forward to putting together an Atlanta conference ever since the Forum began these yearly outings. It’s a particular interest of mine, dating back to before Ted Savas and I published The Campaign for Atlanta & Sherman’s March to the Sea: Essays on the 1864 Georgia Campaign, Vols 1 & 2, 1994 (used copies of which are still floating around). Truly a collector's item, what with the 3-color pocket maps by Bill Scaife on the inside front cover (not surprisingly, some folks removed those maps before passing on the book. Who could blame them?).

Photo above: oft-seen photo of Sherman leaning on the barrel of a cannon—one of the Barnard photos easily found at the Library of Congress Civil War photos site.

Photo below: a picture I took of Ed Bearss at the 11th Civil War Forum Conference, several weeks ago. After he had given a rundown of events to that point, as we meandered back to the bus on the high ridge of Hillsman's Farm above Sailor's Creek, I noticed Ed had gotten off by himself and snapped this shot of a reflective moment in the bucolic Virginia countryside.

This just in: medical science has advanced during the last 142 years

(notwithstanding the calculated efforts of HMOs to restrict your access to it)

Last week word came from the 13th Historical Clinicopathological Conference (I would have attended, but misplaced my parking voucher) that the 16th president’s head wound was not necessarily fatal by today’s standards. Then, today, came news (from the May issue of the Journal of Medical Biography), that Abraham Lincoln may have been suffering from the effects of Small Pox when he delivered the Gettysburg Address. What will next week bring?

On the head wound, from The Washington Post:

Today, paramedics would "scoop and run" with Lincoln. Studies have shown that almost nothing done in the field, other than driving fast, increases survival of victims of head trauma. Doctors would put a breathing tube down his trachea as soon as he arrived at the hospital. He would be given intravenous fluid that is far saltier than blood, which would slightly shrink his brain, relieving pressure. He would get a quick physical exam and a CAT scan of his head -- all in 10 minutes.

In Lincoln's case, the images would have revealed large pools of blood that surgeons could have taken out. They would probably remove much of one side of the skull and leave it open but covered. The piece of bone would be "banked" for replacement if he survived.

Not only would Lincoln have fared better with the medical technology of 2007, it bears pointing out that he would have fared better with the security that surrounds presidents in 2007 as well, preventing the wound in the first place. No word yet on whether the Washington Post will follow up with an article explaining that the majority of Civil War deaths, attributable to disease, would also have benefited from modern medicine.

Regarding the smallpox prognosis, from the Associated Press:

Heart illness, eye problems and depression are among other ailments modern-day doctors have investigated in the 16th president. But smallpox is the one that might come as the biggest surprise to the general public, especially if Lincoln had it when he spoke at Gettysburg. According to Goldman and co-author Dr. Frank chmalstieg, Lincoln fell ill Nov. 18, the day before giving the speech in Pennsylvania. When Lincoln arrived at the battlefield to dedicate a cemetery for the fallen soldiers, he was weak, dizzy, and his face "had a ghastly color," according to the report.

On the train back to Washington that evening, Lincoln was feverish and had severe headaches. Then he developed back pains, exhaustion and a widespread scarlet rash that turned blister-like. A servant who tended to Lincoln during the three-week llness later developed smallpox and died in January 1864.

The photo at top is a detail of the photo at bottom, and purports to be The Only Known Photograph of President Lincoln at the dedication of the Civil War cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863, taken from this Library of Congess web site. The accompanying text reads:

"These modern prints showing the crowd around the platform at Gettysburg and a detail from that picture of President Lincoln on the platform were made from the original glass plate negative at the National Archives. The plate lay unidentified in the Archives for some fifty-five years until in 1952, Josephine Cobb, Chief of the Still Pictures Branch, recognized Lincoln in the center of the detail, head bared and probably seated. To the immediate left (Lincoln's right) is Lincoln's bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, and to the far right (beyond the limits of the detail) is Governor Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania. Cobb estimated that the photograph was taken about noontime, just after Lincoln arrived at the site and before Edward Everett's arrival, and some three hours before Lincoln gave his now famous address."

Before Henry Hill, there was Vesuvius

— Old Blue Light visits Old Europe

If you think "Stonewall" Jackson covered a lot of ground in his celebrated 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, check out the itinerary of his 1856 European tour. The letter below is one of many Jackson missives that the Virginia Military Institute has made available online. Most of them are addressed to his sister Laura, for whom he had such great affection [Laura will be the subject of the next blog entry here, later today].

TJJ to his sister, Laura Arnold
Date: 1856 September 9
Place: Naples, Italy Naples

Sept 9th 1856

My Dear Sister,

You must excuse my long silence as I have been much pressed for time, and now barely hasten to drop you a line.

Since landing at Liverpool I have been at Glasgow, Sterling Castle & Edinburgh Scotland, York, London & other places in England; Antwerp, Brussels, Waterloo & other places in Belgium. Since then I have passed through Aix La Chapellr, Bonn, Frankfort on the Main,[? going] ascended the Rhine. From Frankfort I proceeded to Heidelberg and thence on to Baden Baden in Germany, Strasbourg in France, Basle, Lakes Lucerne, Brienze, Thun, Geneva & the city of Geneva in Switzerland, and so on to the great ice berg called Mer de Glas that is sea of ice. I continued in Switzerland for about a week and crossed the Alps by the Simplon Pass as it is called through which Napoleon entered Italy. The scenery of Switzerland is very grand.

Upon entering Italy I passed on through the cities of Milan, Venice, Mantua, Modena, Florence, Pisa, Leghorn and finally to this place. With Venice, Florence and Naples I have been very much gratified. I was at the volcano of Vesuvius last Friday and went about half way down one of the active craters. The scene was truly grand this evening. I leave for Rome. Much love to all.

Your much attached brother
Thomas

The VMI Archives has done a nice job with their website, featuring much more than their Civil War holdings, of course. While you're there, check out the Jackson photo exhibit. See, also, the Civil War Resources, including Professor Jackson's detailed reporting ("His face, upon the scaffold, was turned a little east of south") on the execution of John Brown. And as you would expect, there is tons of great material on the participation of VMI cadets at the Battle of New Market.

[photo at top: Mt. Vesuvius, near Naples, from Google Earth]

Virginia is for lovers

Blood-drenched landscapes of unspeakable slaughter don't have to be a buzz-kill. If you think Virginia's Civil War battlefields are somber, joyless places, perhaps you didn't get the memo. Virginia is for lovers.


It's right there at Virginia.org. If you pay some outfit to devise a slogan, get your money's worth, and make sure the message is rammed home after every single search result. What's more romantic than the Mule Shoe at Spotsylvania?

It really does take a rocket scientist

References to signal rockets in the Civil War era are not uncommon, and I know the British really did employ rockets (perhaps even causing a red glare) ineffectively at Fort McHenry, but I confess I did not know until recently that the state of rocketry in 1860 was such that both sides in the Civil War formed (relatively short-lived) rocket batteries. They were organized like light artillery, but with new-fangled ordnance, and in the case of a N.Y. battalion at least, with tubes on their gun carriages.

These units renewed service with British-designed rockets first deployed in the Mexican War, mainly the Hale Rocket, or modified variations. Though tail fins caused the weapon to spin in flight, Hale rockets were far too unreliable and inaccurate to supplant more useful projectiles from rifled artillery pieces. I stumbled upon a fascinating article in Military Affairs journal, by Ralph W. Donnelly: "Rocket Batteries of the Civil War" (vol. 25, No. 2, Civil War Issue. (Summer, 1961), pp. 69-93, available on J-STOR). Donnelly credits men (Pelham's Horse Artillery) under J.E.B. Stuart with the first known case of using rockets in the war. He writes,

The story of the first actual use of war rockets by the Confederate Army has almost been lost in obscurity, the report of Captain John C. Tidball, then lieutenant of Battery A. 2nd U.S. Artillery, of operations between June 27 and July 7 in the Peninsula Campaign contains this revealing statement:

On the morning of July 3 the enemy, taking position with artillery on the high ground (now our front), commenced shelling the low ground which was occupied by our troops. They also threw with great precision a score or so of war rockets. [O.R. 11, part 2, page 246]

This description is obviously of "Jeb" Stuart's shelling of the Federal encampment on the bank of the James River from Evelington Heights, but only one further reference could be found in either the Union or Confederate reports in confirmation of the use of rockets. Colonel James T. Kirk [he's dead, Jim] 10th Pennsylvania Reserves, also reported that "On Thursday, the 3d instant, while standing in line of battle, I had one man wounded by a missile from a rocket from a rebel battery." [Ibid, 425] One might question the opinion of a volunteer officer this early in the war, but Tidball, a Regular Army officer and a West Point graduate, was too good an officer to summarily dismiss his observations as mere intellectual fulminations. So the search for confirmation went on, and it was found in the remarks of a Confederate eye-witness, Lieut.-Colonel William W. Blackford, then a captain of engineers on the staff of General J.E. B. Stuart, that after shelling the Federal camp for a while with his horse artillery guns. Stuart opened fire with a Congrieve [sic.] rocket battery for the first and last time he ever used this type of field piece. He says it was managed and operated by "some foreign chap" The rockets were described as "huge" with an explosive shell at the end loaded with a liquid combustible nicknamed by the men "liquid damnation."

But what would the story of Civil War rocketry be without an old-fashioned myth. Tonight on the Discovery Channel I saw an old episode of the endlessly entertaining program, Myth Busters:

Episode 40: Confederate Rocket The American Civil War was fought with bayonets, muskets and cannons. But was that all? Not according to the MythBusters. So Adam, Jamie and the build team join forces to find out if the Confederate Army had a secret deadly weapon — the world's first long-range missile, which according to rumor, was launched from Richmond, Va., and aimed at the White House over 100 miles away. Premiere: Oct. 26, 2005

Though Adam and Jamie were able to get a Hale rocket to fly several hundred yards, and a Boxer rocket twice that far (detailed results here), they didn't have much luck reproducing the Great Rebel Missile Attack on Washington. When I first heard the premise for this episode, I thought to myself, busting a myth would be a whole lot more dramatic if it were a myth you'd ever heard of. This missile attack was a new one on me. Surfing the web, I came across this NASA site, which tells the incredible tale, quoting one of Burke Davis' lesser offerings (in the vein of Ripley's Believe it or Not). Make of it what you will.

According to the author, Jefferson Davis witnessed the event at which a 12-foot-long, solid-fueled rocket, carrying a 10-pound gunpowder warhead in a brass case engraved with the letters C.S.A., was ignited and seen to roar rapidly up and out of sight. No one ever saw the rocket land. It's interesting to speculate whether, almost 100 years before Sputnik, a satellite marked with the initials of the Confederate States of America might have been launched into orbit.

A Digital Feast

If you're like me, when the O.R. Atlas—after a long stretch out of print—became readily available again about fifteen years ago, you bought two copies: one to thumb through with abandon, and one to keep pristine. After spending $2,500 or so for the 128-volume Official Records, a back-up atlas hardly seemed extravagant.

I've noticed that Barnes & Noble, under its own imprint, still offers a cheap edition of the atlas. I haven't looked to see if the bargain rate is a factor of a massive print run, or subpar reproduction. It may be a little of both.

I can't recall how long it was after I sent my last payment of a years-long subscription to Broadfoot for the printed O.R. set before the whole thing appeared on a single CD-ROM for about $100, but it wasn't long. In rapid succession, of course, many more essential reference works had been digitized, from Fox's Regimental Losses to Dyer's Compendium (my wife bought me the $125 Morningside edition of the latter for Christmas one year, bless her heart). And while there's nothing finer than kicking back in a comfy chair with a little black volume of the O.R., I have to admit that the convenience of searching and pulling something up online, or off a disk, is irresistible. It's not as if you even have to verify the accuracy of a transcription, since most of the digital versions are straight scans of the original. For years now, I have relied almost exclusively on Cornell's Making of America site to look up citations in the Official Records. But I'll never give up the books. I need to live in a library, and that bookcase full of gold-stamped spines is a member of the family, albeit more dusty than my children.

The Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, best known simply as the O.R. Atlas, has long been available on disk, but has also made its way online, thanks to the University of Alabama—see here—(there are some other online venues featuring it as well, such as this one by Simmons Games. It is somewhat harder to use—absent thumbnails—but perfectly usable if you know what plates you're looking for). Kudos to the University of Alabama for making these color plates easily accessible (and thanks to Brian Downey for mentioning it in the comments to another blog). As an added bonus, the site includes links to their Historical Map Archive, Contemporary Maps archives, and even a handy tutorial on the difference between Raster and Vector Imagery.

Either With it or Upon it

A long-time link at the Soldiers and Sailor's site bears mentioning. If you haven't seen it already, take a moment to view the flags at this online exhibit: Symbols of Battle: Civil War Flags in NPS Collections. It features photos of some of the banners in the collections of nine different National Park Service sites (Appomattox, Ford's Theater, Ft. Pulaski, Ft. Sumter, Gettysburg, Kennesaw, Manassas, Richmond, Stone's River).

The flag above is at Kennesaw, and interestingly, it is the flip side of a Confederate First National flag. The motto of these Cherokee Dragoons is "Either With it or Upon it," not a phrase in common use today, and not one that lends itself to easy explication.

The United States Treasury Guard's flag at bottom is at Ford's Theater. The caption reads: "Dramatically associated with the close of the war, this flag decorated the front of the Presidential box at Ford Theater, in Washington, D.C. on the night of April 14th, 1865. Booth, President Abraham Lincoln's assassin, caught his spur and tore this flag as he jumped from the Presidential Box to the stage below."

Brogans in Baghdad

It was only a matter of time, I suppose. Once the reserves are exhausted, where does the Commander in Chief drum up fresh recruits for overseas deployment? In the brief video above (following a very short ad for Jamaican beer), four pundits discuss the wisdom of calling up America's beefy, wool-clad warriors for duty in Mesopotamia.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

--Wendell Berry

Does this blog entry have anything to do with the Civil War? Of course it does. Everything has to do with the Civil War. Be patient. I have long been attuned to the sentiments expressed in much of Wendell Berry’s poetry, essays, and novels. His relentlessly green approach to living, his devotion to conservation and sustainable farming, his eloquent disdain for consumerism – all of this appeals to the part of me that wants to live a rural or remote existence. But he’s effectively a Luddite, and that would never do for me. I love technology too much, even the frivolous kind. Not so with Berry.

But that’s not what I wanted to comment on tonight. If I had been anywhere near Chattnooga last weekend, I would have dropped in for some of the AEC 2007 Conference on Southern Literature. “Southern” literature has had a powerful hold on my imagination from early on. People like Faulkner, of course, and Walker Percy, evoke an atmosphere or feeling that you remember for a long time -– and like so many, I’m a big fan of Harper Lee’s book -- but Flannery O’Connor made me want to drop what I was doing and start writing short stories of my own, right now. More recently, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, authors like T. R. Pearson have refreshed my love of fiction set in the separate world that is the American South. So what do they talk about at the Conference on Southern Literature?

Newsweek managing editor Jon Meacham who had once been a reporter for a local Chattanooga paper, started off the conference with a talk on, “Living History: What the Past Tells Us About the Present.” Got some good quips in, too, or so it was reported: “Madison calling Jefferson a ‘French atheist’ seems sort of redundant,” and “Mississippi—that’s like Tennessee without hardback books.”

But it was the agrarian rebel poet Wendell Berry who wrapped up the presentations portion of the event with the keynote address, “American Imagination and the Civil War.” One can’t help but be struck by the fact that the opening and closing feature presentations at this literature conference sound like maybe they belonged at a history conference. Apparently, it speaks to the fact that Southern Literature and Southern History are inseparable. As Faulkner said, “the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.”

Berry, as expected, had some provocative opinions to share. Thanks to Kevin Trumpeter of The Pulse, Chattanooga’s Weekly Alternative, for some summary reporting on the subject.

Wendell Berry’s keynote address on Friday evening, “American Imagination and the Civil War,” also considered historical issues that have a particular resonance with today’s political concerns. As you’d expect from a reputed iconoclast, the poet-farmer’s take on the War Between the States would be classified as “revisionist.” Berry acceded that slavery was certainly one of the important aspects of the conflict, but pointed out a cause that frequently gets overlooked by the textbooks—“People generally don’t like to get invaded.”

Like a latter-day Faulkner, he lamented the lingering “curse” of the Civil War that continues to afflict Southern society and called the supposedly self-evident benefits of the Union victory into question. He referred to the emancipation effort as “botched,” noting that our society still has yet to come to terms with the “money power of the North that replaced the slave power of the South” and that Americans still rely on an subservient group of people (he cited Latino immigrants as the latter-day “Stepin Fetchits” of our society) to perform the menial labor which upper-and middle-class Americans are “too good, too well-educated, and too ignorant to do ourselves.” He suggested that the Northern victory not only imposed the vagaries of industrialization on the bucolic agrarian culture of the antebellum South, it also set the tone of overconfidence and privilege that is the hallmark of a contemporary American attitude that “conflates the American way of life with the will of God.”

He goes on.