thursday road notes

A rainy day in Winchester and environs. At noon, about 20 of us carpooled over to Charles Town, West Virginia for a stop at the Jefferson County Museum -- they've got quite an impressive collection, including some nice Civil War material, and John Brown-related artifacts. Perhaps most impressive is the wagon that carried Brown to the gallows.

Following historian Steve Meserve, we walked past the prosecuting attorney's home to a slightly newer iteration of the old court house where Brown was tried. Then we drove to the gallows site, and finally passed through lovely forlorn Harpers Ferry to the Kennedy Farm, where Brown gathered his weaponry and plotted his holy insurrection.

Back at Winchester it was time to greet old friends and meet some new ones in the Lord Fairfax Room. Guide and speaker Scott Patchan made his appearance, and after all enjoyed a hearty repast, Scott set the stage for the next two days of tours, helping us get our minds around the expansive, overlapping operations of that bloody 1864 Shenandoah summer.

Time to get some zzz's now. The trouble with flying from the West Coast to the East -- for night owls like me -- is that even if you go to bed early, it's still way too late. It was worth it, though. As I was typing this I got to see the Baby Ruth scene from Caddyshack one more time.

John Hope Franklin, R.I.P.

13th Civil War Forum Battlefield Conference

THE 1864 SHENANDOAH VALLEY CAMPAIGN

We have 43 people signed up for what promises to be another deeply informative and memorable series of tours and talks later this month, headquartered in Winchester. There are still several seats available, if you're interested in attended. It's a fun group of people—many who have been to most or all of the past conferences, some who signed on in recent years, and always a handful of welcome first-timers.

It's a great deal: $275 for two full days of bus tours (with box lunches), two half days of tours by carpool, and three evening buffet dinners with after-dinner presentations by our historians Scott Patchan and Stevan Meserve. The Civil War Forum continues to sponsor the best tours, with the best guides, for as low a cost as possible. Anything left over goes to The Civil War Preservation Trust.

Among other sites, we'll spend much of our two days of bus tours with Scott visiting Cool Spring/Snickers Gap—including a walk down to the river and a visit to the Parker House; 2nd Kernstown Battlefield, 3rd Winchester Battlefield, Fisher’s Hill and Tom's Brook. On Sunday morning we'll finish up with four hours at Cedar Creek.

For early arrivals, we have an optional 4-hour outing planned for Thursday afternoon to Charles Town, WV to visit John Brown-related sites, including the Kennedy Farm, where Brown and his men hid out while preparing their raid, the Jefferson County Museum—whose collection includes the Stuart Horse Artillery flag, John Brown pikes and memorabilia, and the wagon that took Brown to the gallows—the courthouse where Brown was tried, and the gallows site, plus a walking tour of the town. Our guide for Thursday will be Stevan Meserve, whose stellar research isn't limited to Loudoun County, the subject of a nice Civil War history he published last year.

For registration information and updates, click here.

finger-lickin' dead

"It's about the torment of a
southern officer who lost everything"
Mel Gibson discusses trailer for his new
Civil War movie on the Jimmy Kimmel show
(sent to me by Nita)

The Onion on the The Kindle

(click on image to enlarge)

Yale without the homework

I bookmarked this site some time ago—maybe after seeing notice on Kevin Levin's blog—and tonight I took a little time to investigate. Yale is offering this free, introductory course from Professor David Blight spanning the entire Civil War era, antebellum through Reconstruction. I am intrigued by how various top-flight historians choose to condense such a monstrous topic into a series of distinct lectures, each with a beginning and an end. In this case I have high hopes for many succinct summaries of Blight's unique analysis, but will settle for an utterly masterful synthesis of the work of others. Short of that, I'll give thanks for a series of refreshing naps. It's a win-win, and the price is right.

Someday I'll check out the 48-part lecture series by Gary Gallagher, on sale at the teaching company for $250 (audio download) or DVD ($519), but if I had a few hundred extra bucks in my pocket today, I'd have bought a Kindle by now.

In the meantime, this series of lectures by Professor Blight is just what the doctor ordered. Back in October of 2007, I posted a blog entry on iTunes U, highlighting the selection of complimentary downloads from various prominent universities giving something back to the community. I'm sure the offerings have grown considerably by now, and the "Open Yale Courses" series is probably listed there. You can also download directly from the Yale site. I love the flexibility they offer with high bandwidth (500 MB), medium bandwidth (200 MB), and simple audio MP3's (60 MB).

Tooling down the freeway with the volume cranked up on lecture 21, "Andrew Johnson and the Radicals," is just about as nerdy as you can get with digital media, but someone's got to do it. If not you, then who? If not now, then when? [click on the image below for a more readable view]


From the Yale site:

About Professor David Blight

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University. He is the author of numerous books, including A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (for which he received the Bancroft, Abraham Lincoln, and Frederick Douglass prizes), and Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, and the American Civil War. He is also the co-author of the bestselling American history textbook, A People and a Nation.

A book-lover's gadget lust

(you always hurt the one you love)

This evening, over at Rene Tyree's fine Wig-Wags blog, I read a little mini-review of Amazon's new Kindle 2 device, which only cemented my intense interest in one. My wife never reads this blog, so I can casually admit that I have been planning to purchase the Kindle 2 (now priced at $359) since the first announcement, but in good conscience have to pay a couple bills first, like the overdue registration on the family vehicle.

The design looks superb, and it sounds like they've really tweaked the features nicely since the first iteration. Like most people reading this blog, I love the feel of a book—in fact, love to line the walls with them—but I love gadgets, too, and this is a gadget with books inside it. If I may quote Liz Lemon on 30 Rock, "I want to go to there."

I am one of those ridiculous people who frequently carries 2 or 3 books to work and back every day, with another little mini library in the back seat—just in case I have 30 minutes over lunch to read, I want to make sure the right book is on hand. Of course I never read books at lunch time. Ever. Instead, I spend those precious minutes reading print-outs of favorite columnists and blogs. But if it were that convenient to carry 3 or 4 books wherever I went (to say nothing of dozens), I would delve into one with even 10 or 15 minutes to spare.

And there's the beauty of the Kindle—you can have a number of current books at hand, and your full complement of blogs and online newspapers and magazines—all packed into one handy device.

Some have criticized it as another dagger in the heart of the publishing industry (just as Amazon itself is a sword to the neck of independent booksellers). I think there's some truth to that, and it saddens me—and alarms me, since I work for a publisher—but, Dylan was right, the times they are a changin'.

The publishing industry, with some exceptions, is in dire straits, and the daily news seems always now to contain one story on the demise of books. Last week, the new issue of Harper's arrived with its cover story on "The Last Book Party, Publishing Drinks to a Life After Death," and a couple days ago the local paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, ran a death knell piece entitled "Book publishers, R.I.P.? In this economy, it's tougher than ever to sell books." Yesterday the Chronicle—the 12th most-read paper in the country—announced that they would cease publication if they could not get major labor concessions, or a buyer. Today, we hear that the Rocky Mountain News is shutting its doors. It's a sad thing to behold.

But the dissemination of information is not dying, it's growing exponentially. The publishing industry is going through a metamorphosis, and nothing is going to stop that. Still, I don't want to read books off an electronic reader at home. I want to read a book. I like the fact that I can conduct searches in the Official Records online, then pull the relevant volume off the shelf to read in a comfortable chair. And though I'm guilty of letting my newspaper subscriptions lapse in favor of free online content on a 20" iMac screen, I still purchase papers on the street, if only to have the sports section while I eat a sandwich.

Books aren't going away anytime soon, but the traditional models for printing and selling them are giving way to something new. The company I work for is among the trailblazers in that brave new world, with innovations like iChapters—the textbook publishers answer to iTunes. I think some Science Fiction visionaries get it just about right. In "Star Trek, the Next Generation" (since I'm already married, it is safe to make a Star Trek analogy), all manner of data is online and instantly accessible on servers with unlimited space and terminals in every room, but when Captain Picard wants to relax in his quarters with a little Victor Hugo, he pulls a leather-bound volume off the shelf. It might be a print-on-demand leather volume, but there will be always be a model to accommodate printed copies of something you want to read.

The Kindle looks to be perfect for day-to-day outings. Since it also can read to you, we have—as far as I know—the first scenario in which you could read a chapter of a book during some daily downtime, then have it read aloud to you while you're driving home—as an audiobook—then pick up your reading where you left off when you head off to bed that night. You can switch between print and audio—maintaining a steady progression through the book in your limited free time. Is it just me, or is that a major breakthrough? We have so little time to read these days as it is.

It's ideal for little outings where I find myself with some time to kill, ideal for the train, ideal for airplane trips—where I could pack books, magazines, and blogs into a single tablet. That will free up space in my carry-on for whatever obscure Civil War book I'm reading, which probably won't be available as a Kindle download.

Funny, I never had the slightest interest in early versions of electronic readers, but this one is cool. Backlighting that gives the appearance of a regular printed page is everything. I see that it already accommodates MP3s, but I hope that it remains a dedicated device for reading (seems inevitable that they'll add email and internet access at some point). Already, Amazon has said they'll have an App for the iPhone—also a neat idea, but I won't read a book off a small screen.

Since "Bibliophiles" is in the title of this blog, I hope you'll forgive this little digression into gadget-lust.


February 27, 2009 addendum to the above posting—Kindle controversy: Civil War Bookshelf made mention of the Author's Guild objections to the Kindle 2, expressed in a Roy Blount, Jr. NYT editorial, and this Business Week rebuttal.

Google Earth Quiz Number Two

A little over a year ago, I posted a series of photos from Google Earth—satellite views of Civil War battlefields—and invited people to try to identify as many as possible. If you missed it, the Quiz can be found here. And the answers to the Quiz are here. It's a very different perspective than you're used to, but many of you are so oriented toward maps in studying Civil War battles, the topographical clues soon lead to recognition. I had planned to do a second quiz long before now, and the good people over at TOCWOC put it back into mind with their posting of coordinates for various battlefields.

For Quiz Number Two, I've given you six photos of battlefields already lost to development. This makes it a little more challenging, since familiar battlefield landmarks are non-existent. To aid your efforts, I've given you additional (easy?) clues in the accompanying captions, including whether it's Eastern or Western Theater, and some modern roadways. If you're a veteran of organized Civil War campaign tours, some of these should jump right out at you. Of course, if you live in one of these areas, that should help too.

Repeating a passage from the last time around: Post your answers as comments to this blog entry, and in a day or two I'll identify each image, and post some maps and other photos to show how the fighting transpired, or how the troops were aligned in these landscapes. I'll also heap plaudits upon the winner, if there is one. Click on each image for a larger view. Good luck.

No. 1: The tiny yellow pushpin in the center shows all that's left of this Northern Virginia battlefield. The large diagonal road above is U.S. 50. The large diagonal road below it is Interstate 66.



No. 2: The pushpin in the center denotes the site where a Union general was killed in a western battle. That big road, Interstate 20, was not there at the time—Sherman could have made good use of it.


No. 3: On this Tennessee hill, the Federals broke through the Confederate left, and it was all downhill for the Rebels after that. The hill was renamed for a Confederate Colonel who died there.


No. 4: The fort on this site was at the center of the Confederate line in a June, 1864 battle. Federal troops under David Hunter failed in their hours-long assault against this position. I've left the road names visible, guessing that most people are not that familiar with this neighborhood. Note some of the street names: Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire. Cruel Reconstruction joke?


No. 5: Federals in the Western Theater captured this Confederate fort, which is now home to the fishes. It was wet at the time of the war, but not this wet.


No. 6: Now a historic ghost town in the Deep South, somewhere near the center of this photo is the site of a POW camp for Union soldiers, whose misery was compounded every time the river left its banks.

Wabash Mashers, 1864

Conan O'Brien called this one his favorite piece from his long-running "Late Night" show, a visit to the Old Bethpage Village Restoration on Long Island where people play "old time base ball," 1864 rules. Watch as Conan talks trash with the players of the day, and makes his move on a Civil War wife whose husband is off at war.

The calendar at Old Bethpage Village lists a number of baseball games this coming June and July, for anyone interested.

Happy Birthday to two towering figures. . .

the following snippet is from "Who was more important, Lincoln or Darwin?" by Malcolm Jones, Newsweek, July 2008.

As soon as you do start comparing this odd couple, you discover there is more to this birthday coincidence than the same astrological chart (as Aquarians, they should both be stubborn, visionary, tolerant, free-spirited, rebellious, genial but remote and detached—hmmm, so far so good). Two recent books give them double billing: historian David R. Contosta's "Rebel Giants" and New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik's "Angels and Ages." Contosta's joint biography doesn't turn up anything new, but the biographical parallels he sets forth are enough to make us see each man afresh. Both lost their mothers in early childhood. Both suffered from depression (Darwin also suffered from a variety of crippling stomach ailments and chronic headaches), and both wrestled with religious doubt. Each had a strained relationship with his father, and each of them lost children to early death. Both spent the better part of their 20s trying to settle on a career, and neither man gave much evidence of his future greatness until well into middle age: Darwin published "The Origin of Species" when he was 50, and Lincoln won the presidency a year later. Both men were private and guarded. Most of Darwin's friendships were conducted through the mail, and after his five-year voyage on HMS Beagle as a young man, he rarely left his home in the English countryside. Lincoln, though a much more public man, carefully cultivated a bumpkin persona that encouraged both friends and enemies to underestimate his considerable, almost Machiavellian skill as a politician.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Early Dylan version

Springsteen version

Tracy Chapman version

Eddie Vetter version

Bryan Ferry version

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

Copyright ©1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

Grant is back in Mississippi

(no word yet from Hollywood Cemetery on whether
a rolling over sound emanated from Jeff Davis's grave)

from the Chronicle of Higher Education
December 12, 2008

U.S. Grant Papers Are Mississippi-Bound
Following Legal Settlement in Illinois

After 44 years, the papers of Ulysses S. Grant are leaving Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. The deal is part of the settlement of a lawsuit between the university and the Ulysses S. Grant Association, according to reports by the campus’s student newspaper, The Daily Egyptian, and by the Associated Press.

The papers will reside at Mississippi State University. The new Executive Director of the U.S. Grant Association is John F. Marszalek, an emeritus professor of history better known for his work on William T. Sherman, and he seems like a fine choice to me. Sad to see the papers leave Illinois, though.

This Just In: McPherson disrespects "Exclusive Civil War Jewelry"

Back in June of 2007, I posted a note about American Heritage magazine's decision to do away with a print edition and publish all of their content on-line. Apparently the magazine is back on the newsstands again, following a traditional advertising revenue model, but not without controversy.

An issue devoted to Lincoln includes a full, back page ad by the Illinois Bureau of Tourism, calling upon we readers to “Walk the same halls and streets that led him to the White House.” Well that seems harmless enough. What's the controversy? Oh, right. On the opposite page of the Illinois tourism ad is one for some unholy jewelry—a gaudy ring sporting the Confederate battleflag—I haven't seen this issue, but I found the item online easily enough.

James McPherson cried foul. According to a brief notice in the New York Times, "Mr. McPherson, a history professor at Princeton and author of Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief, said that many saw the Confederate flag as an incendiary symbol of slavery and that he would have protested the ad had he been aware of it before publication." Is this the first time McPherson contributed something to a magazine that also sold schlocky goods celebrating the short-lived Confederacy? That hardly seems possible, given the kinds of ads that make up the bulk of advertising in Civil War glossies. Maybe he just doesn't like jewelry.

I admire McPherson's work—Battle Cry of Freedom remains, to my mind, the most important single volume on the subject of the Civil War published in my lifetime. And I'm pretty sure that, if given the opportunity, I would likewise recycle my work far beyond the point that pride or good manners made it uncomfortable. But shouldn't anyone who contributes to glossy history magazines expect—going in—that their work will eventually share pages with ads for any number of products that somehow glorify or memorialize the Lost Cause?

Certainly contributing authors have no idea what ads will appear in a given issue, or about the placement of those ads, but when was the last time our most celebrated Civil War historians denounced nostalgic, Confederate-themed advertising in the pages of North & South, or Civil War Times, Illustrated, or America's Civil War? Or is it just the flag itself that crosses the line? Isn't hagiographic artwork featuring Lee, Jackson, and others—paintings, commemorative plates, belt buckles, figurines—part and parcel of our popular periodic literature? Is any of that substantively different—less symbolic or meaningful—than a ring with the CSA battleflag? These are interesting questions.

It occurred to me that this is the third time I can personally recall McPherson expressing after-the-fact regrets about a publication he contributed to or endorsed with an introduction. As mentioned, he can't be held accountable for the advertising in American Heritage. In another instance, he withdrew an enthusiastic endorsement after receiving convincing evidence of copyright violation. But the one that left me stumped was a Civil War atlas for which he wrote the introduction, and which, after publication, was discovered to contain maps riddled with errors.

It happens. Who among us hasn't, at some point, trusted someone who turned out to be untrustworthy? I'm sure that on the next atlas introduction project, Dr. McPherson will insist on scrutinizing the maps first.

Time Travel? or feverish hallucination. . . THE NADIR OF LINCOLN STATUARY

Excerpt: Brian Lamb talks with Andrew Ferguson, author of Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America (2007). Read the full May 20, 2007 transcript here.
 

LAMB: What did you see in Gettysburg itself?

FERGUSON: Gettysburg is a very odd place, you know and I figured that it’s got a kind of—sort of a wasted feel to it. It doesn’t, you know, you’d think that they would have done all kinds of things to capitalize—they have two million visitors a year or more and—but there are no sort of like yuppie restaurants, no high-end gift shops … 

LAMB: Put that into perspective that’s twice as many as visitors as the Supreme Court has a year.

FERGUSON: Yes, sure. Yes. Of course, they don’t have any yuppie restaurants at the Supreme Court either but that’s—they’ll get it sooner or later. But you know and I—it comes from the odd nature of the place. This is a place where several hundred thousand men got together for three days trying to kill each other and 11,000 of them succeeded and to try and turn a place like this into a vacation spot, you’re going to get a kind of a cognitive dissonance there.

LAMB: What’s the Perry Como statue?

FERGUSON: Right underneath the window of the house where Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address or touched up the Gettysburg address, the night before he delivered it, on the Gettysburg Square, is a statue of Lincoln with Perry Como or so it said. Actually, what it is, is it’s Lincoln life-size next to sort of every man tourist.

LAMB: By the way, for those who might not remember who it was.

FERGUSON: People have forgotten Perry Como, this is awful to say the least. He was a crooner, a sort of a Frank Sinatra without the overtones of danger and sexuality but anyway, so he just looks like every man, which was Perry Como’s appeal and he’s in a cable neck sweater and Lincoln is talking to him. One of the things I do, in the book and I’ve tried to, as a theme to weave in, is everywhere I went I found a new Lincoln statue. Lincoln statuary is a fascinating subject in and of itself. It reflects this—our own changing view of Lincoln. The opening chapter’s about the statue that was put in at Richmond, which is a very small, life-size statue. The last chapter is about Lincoln Memorial, which of course, is a huge Lincoln statue and there’s a lot to learn about how we’ve seen Lincoln and what we think of him now by the kind of statues we put up and the one in Gettysburg is incredibly banal and sort of cartoonish and silly and it’s considered by most Lincoln buffs to be the low point of Lincoln iconography.

Slavery and Public History

Apparently, and amazingly, it wasn’t until the 1990s that the National Park Service interpretation of Civil War sites included mention of the principal circumstances which led up to secession, and war. Even today in some Civil War circles there is debate about how much a Park Service visitor center museum should devote to the issue of slavery. I’ve never really understood how putting a battle in the context of the long, sectional rift between North and South would detract from a visitor’s appreciation of the military events that unfolded in a particular place. From the ratification of the constitution to the Kansas Nebraska Act, the issue of slavery literally shaped the nation into free and slave soil sections neatly delineated on the map.

I do know that some people feel very strongly about keeping causes and battlefield interpretation separate. The late Jerry Russell of Civil War Round Table Associates was adamant about that – he was a veritable crusader on the subject.

What’s behind such passion? Why is it soooo important to some people to make sure slavery is treated as incidental to the gathering of these great armies? I think we have to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that those who are bothered by mention of “causes” in the visitor’s center don’t really believe slavery was the principal sticking point between the sections (or may be loathe to admit it), or else they don’t want their reverence for the (Southern) fighting man to be tainted by the stain of slavery in such a holy place. Personal valor is tarnished when overshadowed by the big picture and overriding national objectives. The battlefield itself may be the last refuge for the Confederate soldier – the last place in the study of that era where his motives remain pure.

Personally, I don’t get the controversy. It’s just history. The men who fought and died so bravely don’t need us to protect them from the politics of their day – they were unapologetic about it. And if not them, whom do we think we’re protecting? Confederate re-enactors?

I stumbled upon an interesting interview with the former Chief Historian of the National Park Service, Dr. Dwight Pitcaithley, who succeeded Ed Bearss in that position. I took this snippet from the National Parks Traveler website, but the full interview can be read at Thunderbear, “the oldest alternative newsletter in the federal government.” P.J. Ryan, a former ranger, conducted the interview in issue #277.

It’s especially interesting to read about how he responded to the outraged letters, and the strategies he employed with audiences of the “sons of the Confederacy” objecting to the new initiative to treat the causes of the war in NPS battlefield exhibits. Four words: purple heart lapel pin.

… until nearly the turn of the 21st Century the NPS had pussy-footed about the main cause of the Civil War -- slavery. Would you comment on the 1998 Nashville Conference that changed all this?

When the NPS inherited the Civil War battlefields from the War Department in 1933, the interpretive programs for the parks focused on the battles themselves and contained nothing on the reasons why the battle occurred. The NPS purposefully continued this practice until the 1990s when John Tucker installed a small exhibit at Fort Sumter that linked slavery with secession. By the late 1990s, the Civil War battlefield superintendents decided that with the approach of the 150th anniversary of the war, the NPS was obligated to include in its interpretation something about the causes of the war. The Nashville meeting resulted in a unanimous decision on the part of the managers to include the causes of the war, and specifically the core cause of slavery, in new exhibits and brochures. It was, of course, the right decision.

Certain historians managed to turn the old bromide, "History is written by the victors," on its head portraying the Confederacy as misunderstood, heroic underdogs fighting for their "states rights" against brutal invaders. Did you find this a challenge?

The Lost Cause interpretation of the war which was developed in the decades following Appomattox using the histories of the war written by Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens and other former Confederates, held that protection of states' rights not property rights (slavery) was the principal cause of secession and war. The teaching of Southern history over the years anchored this interpretation of causality not only in the South, but in many places in the North as well. And while this interpretation still carries great weight in the public discussion of the war, scholars for the past 40 years or so have focused on debates over the future of slavery as the central cause of secession. Having said that, I must quickly say that it is equally incorrect to argue that the war was prompted because Northern voters wanted to rid the country of the institution because of moral objections to it. So it gets complicated, and therein was the challenge the NPS faced in inserting information about the coming of the war into its interpretative programs.

The Southern leaders and their soldiery were actually more colorful, romantic, and militarily more creative and competent than their Northern counterparts, so any interpretation based on straight military "facts" put the NPS in the position of subtly endorsing the Southern point of view. Do you agree?

Whether southern leaders were more colorful, romantic, and creative than their northern counterparts is a question you will need to ask Ed Bearss. You would be hard pressed, however, to find a more colorful figure than Dan Sickles before, during, and certainly after the war. But the point is well taken that by focusing strictly on military action one avoids the larger issues at play during the war. Superintendent John Latschar at Gettysburg has written about how the names of various parts of that battle emphasized the southern, more than the northern, point of view. After all, we do call it "Pickett's Charge," rather than "Meade's Defense."

The Sons of the Confederacy, various Civil War round tables, numerous private individuals and members of Congress generated more than 2,500 letters stating that the NPS was hijacking American history by stating that slavery was the main cause of the war and must be so addressed by
each park. These letters ended up on your desk. How did you respond?

Diplomatically, I hope. The letters actually contained two arguments. One was that battlefields were not the place to talk about causality; that introducing the reasons for the war diminished the importance of the combatants. This was an argument I never understood, believing that a complete understanding of any battle must be based on why the war started in the first place. The second was that slavery was not the cause (or at least not a significant cause) of secession and war and the NPS was simply being "politically correct" in suggesting that it was. Even before the letters started pouring in, I did a great deal of homework by speaking and corresponding with the leading Civil War scholars in the country. Once the letters started arriving, I knew two things. First, that every letter must be answered because, as taxpayers, every writer had the right to hear what the NPS was planning and why. Second, I knew that my response had to be historically correct and based on the best of current scholarship. So, we responded with a two and a half page letter explaining the intentions of the NPS. In several cases, we received follow-up letters which we also answered. These were especially interesting as I and the correspondent were able to delve more deeply into the reasons of causality. I wrote about this at length in my chapter in Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American History (2006).

Did your military background and purple heart prove useful?

One of the striking aspects about a large percentage of the letters was that the writer would begin with a paragraph on his military experience and/or the military traditions of his family. The intention, I believe, was to establish the notion that veterans knew how to interpret battlefields and bureaucrats in Washington did not. After a while, I started including a bit about my experience in the Marine Corps and Vietnam to help balance the playing field. I also started wearing my Purple Heart lapel pin when addressing Civil War gatherings. At the end of the day, I don't know how much my military background helped; I am certain it didn't hurt.

What was your most useful tool in the discussion?

Well, I began these conversations quoting the best Civil War historians in the country, historians like Jim McPherson, Gary Gallagher, Eric Foner, Ed Ayers, and others, but they were dismissed as either "Yankee" historians or "Scalawag" historians. So I started using primary sources which are readily available. Charles Dew's book on the secession commissioners was helpful. I also used quotes from the four declarations of secession from South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas, as well as quotes on the problems facing the country from leading elected officials including James Buchanan, Alexander Stephens, and John J. Crittenden.

Saving a Civil War Legacy In Va.'s Shenandoah Valley

from the Washington Post. . .

Deal Protects Land On Which a Decisive Battle Was Fought
By Nick Miroff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 14, 2008; B01

In 1762, the Huntsberry family settled the land along Redbud Run, outside Winchester, with a deed from Lord Fairfax. Eight generations later, Bob Huntsberry spent his summers there as a child, finding rusted Minie balls that had been fired from the muskets of Civil War soldiers. He grew up steeped in elders' stories of the day, late in the summer of 1864, when Union Gen. Philip Sheridan and 39,000 troops came marching in.
Now, Huntsberry, 80, has reached a $3.35 million deal with Civil War preservation groups to protect the land and with it, the little-known legacy of a decisive event in the war.
The sale will preserve 209 acres of woods and hayfields on one of Northern Virginia's most significant battle sites, where Yankee and Rebel forces waged brutal hand-to-hand combat for control of the Shenandoah Valley. Preservation groups will add the land to their holdings to create a 575-acre park with trails, interpretive signs and free public access.

Read the full article and see maps and additional photos here. What exciting news. Thank you, Mr. Huntsberry, for preserving the historical integrity of that plot of ground.

I'm back in the saddle now after the considerable distraction of an infinitely important election, and other things. America is redeemed, and I personally feel revitalized. Sitemeter tells me there are still people visiting this site on a regular basis, and I'm grateful for that. I'll try to translate that feeling of revitalization into some worthwhile content here. Change has come to America, and it has come to this blog.

The Shenandoah Valley, and Winchester in particular, have been much on my mind lately as preparations go forward for the 13th Annual Civil War Forum Battlefield Conference. We'll be covering the 1864 Valley Campaign next March in great detail with guide Scott Patchan, author of Shenandoah Summer: the 1864 Valley Campaign. There's still room on the bus. More on that this weekend.

Rare West Coast Civil War Structures Saved

Approximately 2766 miles west of the spot where General John Reynolds was KIA on July 1, 1863, the Civil War installation named Camp Reynolds in his honor nearly burned to the ground last week. A wildfire on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay came within 100 yards of the Civil War buildings, but firefighters were able to save Camp Reynolds and all 120 historic structures on the island.

Angel Island, inhabited for 1,000s of years, has a recorded history back to the visit of the first Spanish warship, the San Carlos, in August of 1775. It was fortified during the Civil War to guard against Confederate raiders, was a processing point for soldiers in both World Wars, served as the "Ellis Island of the West" for 60 years, and hosted a Nike missile base in the Cold War era.

For the past 46 years it has been a bucolic state park, accessible by ferry from nearby Tiburon. Thanks to the expert work of firefighters, the entire Civil War era installation was preserved intact. From an article in the San Francisco Chronicle,

"The grass will grow back, but the Civil War barracks? They won't grow back," said Todd Lando, spokesman for the Marin County Fire Department, which led the fire response.
"It was just a very good thing that we managed to save them. It's where we focused most of our attention Sunday night." Half of the oaks, pines, manzanita and brush that until Sunday covered most of the island like a green cloak are gone—400 of the area's 740 acres are burned flat, Lando said. Most noticeably, Mount Livermore—the island's highest point at 788 feet—has been stripped of its leafy crown and stands bald and ashy."

The (Frederic Larson) photo at top shows the fire as seen from Marin County. The map, and the (Brant Ward) photo below show the extent of the fire, and how close it came to the Civil War buildings at Camp Reynolds. Close one!

While we're on the subject of islands on San Francisco Bay, I couldn't resist sharing this stunning (Michael Macor) photo from the recent Fleet Week 2008 festivities, showing the Blue Angels against an Alcatraz backdrop (part of Angel Island is visible the background). The Civil War defenses on Alcatraz island, first discussed in this blog entry would not have fared well against today's naval assets.

More Secesh Talk from the disgruntled citizens of Bigfoot country

"We have nothing in common with you people down south. Nothing," said Randy Bashaw, manager of the Jefferson State Forest Products lumber mill in the Trinity County hamlet of Hayfork. "The sooner we're done with all you people, the better."

A movement for the upper tier of counties in California, along with the southernmost part of Oregon, to secede and form the State of Jefferson, first gained steam in 1941 but was pushed out of the news by the attack on Pearl Harbor. It's not an idea that has entirely gone away, however, as the articles at this web site attest.

The people of this sparsely populated region feel ignored by Sacramento and Salem, though surprisingly the people of Yreka (pronounced Why-reeka), the "cradle of secession" in this part of the country, live closer to the state capital of California than do 2/3rds of the rest of the state's citizenry. And this even though Yreka is close to the border of Oregon. Many people do not appreciate the sheer length of the Golden State. At it's most distant points, it is 770 miles long (with 840 miles of coastline). That's farther than the distance from Chicago to Atlanta. Even though San Francisco is 400 miles north of Los Angeles, there is still over 300 miles of country above San Francisco before one hits the Oregon line.

I'm sure the secessionists are right to feel forgotten in the halls of power, but democratic power is (in theory) determined by votes, and the votes are in the population centers. San Diego is 500 miles from Sacramento, but it's also one of the largest cities in America.

Secessionists in the antebellum era could see the writing on the wall. The same principle was at work. For most of the life of the Union up to the Civil War, the political power of the slave states kept pace, even dominated the three branches of the federal government. But the shift was steady and inevitable. In 1860, only one of the nation's ten largest cities, New Orleans (168,675), was in a slave state, and its population was just a fraction of that of New York (813,669) and Philadelphia (565,529). In 1859, on the eve of the war, there were 237 seats in Congress (following the admission of Oregon). If I've done my math right, counting the border states of MO, KY, DE, and MD., slave states were able to muster 90 Congressmen before the admission of Kansas, versus 147 Congressmen from free soil states. With the vast territories of the West lining up for statehood, and northern population expanding exponentially—and spilling out into the West—it's not hard to understand why southern states with a common overriding interest, slavery, decided to start the game over with a new Congress all their own.

Alas, the good people of the State of Jefferson don't have much in the way of armories, mints, or shipyards to seize, nor do they have a Robert E. Lee. So they're going to have to do this the hard way, through legislation. And that brings us back to the problem of votes, something else they don't have enough of.

[at top: the flag of the State of Jefferson. One source says the two X's signify the double-crossing by the state capitals of Oregon and California. Purchase all your stylish State of Jefferson gear here.]

The best Antietam hike you've never taken

(unless you were with Tom Clemens two weeks ago)

Brian Downey over at Behind AotW has put together one of the most interesting campaign-related blog entries I've ever read.

On the Trail of the Corn Exchange Regiment

146 years to the day after the historical events, a lucky group of us tracked the unlucky 118th Pennsylvania Volunteers to the places and views of the Battle of Shepherdstown Ford (20 September 1862). Under the capable guidance of Dr Tom Clemens and members of the Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association (SBPA), we waded the Potomac, scaled the heights, and walked the field.

Most interesting are descriptions of the river bottom (rocky, not muddy, with stretches of smooth, wagon-friendly slabs of stone). Twelve years ago, the Civil War Forum folks at CompuServe held their inaugural annual gathering at Antietam, with Tom Clemens as our guide. He's as good as they get. If Tom can be imposed upon to reprise this river crossing, I'll be on board for that one. In your visit to Behind AotW, be sure to visit the SBPA site (linked to in the paragraph above).

Virtual Hike to the Roulette Farm

Ranger Mannie at Antietam continues to maintain one of the most interesting blogs around—My Year of Living Rangerously—a perfect marriage of unfettered passion, zero politics, rich & unjaded humor, exceptional skill with a camera, and the sensibility to highlight glimpses of beauty and wonder in the ordinary landscapes of our everyday world. All the better that his everyday world is the battlefield at Antietam.

This post is another keeper.

Odds and Sods — recent items that caught my eye

The Fort Morgan Mystery Ship
The last time this mystery ship was visible was after Hurricane Ivan hit the Alabama Gulf Coast on September 16, 2004. At that time a much smaller portion of the ship was visible above the sand. Soon after Ivan revealed this historic treasure, the shifting sand covered the relic again. [many photos]

Lehman Brothers: Cotton Speculators, Confederate Sympathizers
Lehman Brothers, the storied investment firm that filed for bankruptcy protection yesterday, was no stranger to crisis. Early in its 158-year life, the firm was nearly crippled by the Civil War. But back then there was some cotton to cushion the fall. [photo]

Casualties of Valverde?
“We know 27 Confederate soldiers died in the old hospital in 1863 following the Battle of Valverde, and all the evidence as to where they were buried points to the old graveyard where Peralta Drive is now,” he said in 2004. “These human remains and the decayed wood bring us one step closer to identifying who is buried under the street and in the adjacent lot.”

Confessions of a Teenage Civil War Reenactor
I hid my family’s secret hobby from my schoolmates like we were Russian child-bride smugglers.

Battle of Shepherdstown
A preservation group has filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court over a state ruling allowing a housing development on the site of the 1862 Civil War Battle of Shepherdstown.

Kansas Before Massachusetts
About 30 volunteer members of a Kansas regiment were patrolling the land about five miles southwest of Butler, in western Missouri's Bates County that October day in 1863 when they were ambushed by about 130 rebel horsemen near Island Mound, a low hill near the Marais-des-Cynges River. The Kansas soldiers drove off their attackers in a brief skirmish.The significance is that this was the First Kansas COLORED Infantry. This fight was the first time that black soldiers went into combat on behalf of the Union during the Civil War.

Idiot Removes Tag
On September 1, Stover's Auctions reported the theft of a tag that was affixed to an important Civil War lot with multiple items from a captain in the battle of New Bern, N.C. A sword was included, which had an old cloth tag attached to it from the same captain. The tag would add roughly $2,000–$3,000 to the lot. [photo]

The Other Burns? That would be Ric
"The night before 'The Civil War,' we thought it was going to be a failure," confessed Ric Burns, who co-produced and co-wrote the colossal documentary series for his brother, Ken. "Who would watch a program stitched together from old photographs?"

Badges and Courage
Tobruk is loosely based on Stephen Crane’s classic American Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage, and anyone familiar with Crane’s book will appreciate Marhoul’s homage. If there is a flaw to this film it’s that, unlike with Crane’s central character, Henry, audiences can’t always be certain whose story Marhoul wants us to follow.

Good Morning Vicksburg
"Good Morning America" will report from the historic, Civil War riverfront city of Vicksburg on Sept. 26.

The Buffaloes of North Carolina
The Civil War in that part of North Carolina was not the war of waving the Confederate Stars and Bars or the Union Stars and Stripes, of masses of men in butternut or blue charging up slopes toward some “little clump of trees,” or standing toe-to-toe in bloody musket volley fire.

It was more like a backwoods bushwhacking or a shootout in a snake-infested swamp along the Chowan River. It was a nighttime raid on a hog farm to drive off critters meant to supply bacon for the Army of Northern Virginia, or to burn a creekside warehouse where cured bacon was already stored.

Interview with David Williams of Valdosta State University
Q: When they couldn’t feed their families, Southern women started food riots. There was a big one in Richmond. Were there any in Georgia?

A: Every major city in Georgia had food riots. We’ve documented more than 20. In Atlanta, a woman walked into a store on Whitehall Street and drew a revolver and told the rest of the women to take what they wanted. They moved from store to store.

Really cool 35-star flag discovered
At 21-feet-long and 15-feet-wide, the flag surely wasn’t missed when it flew 70 feet above the Civil War monument at Rocky Point in West Boxford. [photo]

From the Diaries of My Father
June 19, 1862: To-day I shot 654 passenger pigeons. That axe I bought from that lousy trapper has a rotten handle. I think the dog has typhoid. I like living in a sod house. Is civil war imminent?

May 11, 1866: D—n! I just found out about the Civil War! That's what you get when you print a news-paper hundreds of miles from civilization, I suppose. To-day I shot 1,297 passenger pigeons.

On this day, August 18, 1862

At Redwood Ferry, Minnesota, nineteen soldiers of forty-six survived a Sioux ambush. Around Ft. Ridgely houses were in flames, victims were mutilated, and the settlers fled to the fort. (The Civil War Day, by Day, E. B. and Barbara Long).

Those Minnesota soldiers were members of Company B, 5th MN Infantry. They still had a lot of war left in them, rejoining the rest of the regiment in Oxford, Mississippi by the end of the year. More on that in the next entry.

Yes, I'm back in the blogging saddle after a brief hiatus. I'd like to say I was relaxing and recreating, taking August off, like the French, but no. I could post a long paragraph right about now explaining why my posts have been infrequent lately, but I am enough of a blog reader to know that no one cares why someone stopped blogging. Sitemeter tells me at least some people continue to visit this site (thanks!), and that's good enough. Fresh, original content to follow.

Map at top appears in The Sioux Uprising of 1862, by Kenneth Carley (St. Paul, 1961).

Below: Redwood Ferry crossing on the Minnesota River (Minnesota Historical Society).