Antietam Tour with Tom Clemens, May 2019

Maryland monument with Dunker Church in background. Photo: NPS

The Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg)
Tour dates: May 2-5, 2019
HQ hotel: Hagerstown, Maryland

In the time that I am writing every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife, and the slain lay in rows precisely as they had stood in their ranks a few moments before. It was never my fortune to witness a more bloody, dismal battlefield.
​
—Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, USA, Commander,
​I Corps, Army of the Potomac

Walk the battlefield next spring with renowned Maryland Campaign historian Thomas Clemens. Professor Clemens will conduct a comprehensive examination of the sites and scenes of the bloodiest day of battle in American history. 

We'll gather on Thursday evening for a pizza reception at our hotel, and to hear an orientation talk by our guide. Friday and Saturday will be all-day bus and walking tours of Harpers Ferry, Sharpsburg and the Antietam battlefield proper, and the Battle of Shepherdstown (aka, Battle of Boteler's Ford).

Click Here for more information,
and to reserve your seat on the bus.

General Itinerary
THURSDAY (May 2): check into our headquarters hotel (Hampton Inn, Hagerstown: details below).
6:30 p.m. Pizza Reception in the hotel meeting room: pick up your registration packets, and meet your host and guide. 
7:30 p.m. Tom Clemens will present an overview of the Maryland Campaign, and Battle of Antietam, and set the stage of the next day's tour with a talk entitled:
"Intentions; the Good, the Bad and the Unforeseen."
​
FRIDAY (May 3): Board Bus at 7:45 a.m.
Bus departs hotel at: 8:00 a.m.
8:30 am Arrive at Best Farm, Monocacy National Battlefield Visitor’s Center; we'll cover the arrival in Maryland and campaign through Lee’s departure and McClellan’s arrival; discussion of the fateful Special Orders 191.
Approx. 9:30 a.m. — Depart for Harpers Ferry. We'll cover the siege and capture, Bolivar Heights, Schoolhouse Ridge, the cavalry escape, and Maryland Heights. 
11:00 a.m. — Depart for Crampton’s Gap, cover Franklin’s march and approach, drive by Brownsville Pass.  Burkitsville, Gathland.
Stop for lunch [provided]
Approx. 1:00 p.m. — Depart for Turner’s Gap, stop at Mountain House.  First Corps attack.
Approx. 1:45 p.m. — Walk to Fox’s Gap — Ninth Corps attack
4:00 p.m. — Bus picks up the group at Fox’s Gap; Drive through Keedysville to Pry House overlook
5:00 p.m. — Day One tour concludes, return to hotel.
Dinner on your own. 
 
SATURDAY (May 4): Board Bus at 7:45 a.m.
Bus departs hotel at: 8:00 a.m.
8:30 a.m. — Overview from Visitor Center at Antietam National Battlefield. 
Poffenberger Woods fight (September 16)
North Woods
Cornfield and East Woods
West Woods
Lunch on the field [provided]
Mumma and Roulette farms
Sunken Road
Middle Bridge
Burnside Bridge and Ninth Corps Attack
Shepherdstown Ford (if time allows)
No evening event scheduled. 

SUNDAY (May 5): optional outing (via carpool)
The Battle of Shepherdstown (or Boteler's Ford)
10:00 a.m. for one-to-two hours. Adjourn by noon.

About our guide:

Tom Clemens is a founder and current president of the Save Historic Antietam Foundation and has played a central role in helping preserve the field and associated sites. His essential contributions to the literature on Antietam include the monumental work as editor and annotator of the Maryland Campaign study by Ezra Carmen, published in three volumes by Savas Beatie Publishers. Tom is recognized as one of the foremost authorities on Antietam, as well as one of the most engaging and entertaining tour guides available.

The Call of the Bugle

Call of the Bugle, painted by J.K. Ralston. This oil painting shows Custer rallying the troops for the final defense of Last Stand Hill. The Custer Battlefield Historical & Museum Association (CBHMA) commissioned it in 1964, donating to the park shortly after. Credit: Courtesy of the National Park Service, Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.  LIBI_00138_06378

The Rock, and the Big Stick

U.S.S. Iowa, 1951, with Alcatraz in the distance. [LIFE magazine archives]

Battlefield Tours: the Rosebud and the Little Bighorn

​"On a hot June Sunday in 1876, hordes of painted Indian warriors—perhaps as many as 4,000—swarmed over a treeless Montana ridge rising from the Little Bighorn River Valley. Five companies of U.S. Cavalry, about 215 blue-shirted troopers, contended briefly and hopelessly against overwhelming odds. When the guns fell silent and the smoke and dust of battle lifted, every soldier lay dead.

This was "Custer's Last Stand" the most spectacular triumph of the American Indian in his four-century struggle against the relentlessly advancing European civilization that finally crushed him. It forms a chapter of American history that has inspired intense study and provoked intense controversy, that has been chronicled endlessly in prose and verse and enacted time and again on motion picture and television screens, and that has earned a lasting place in the Nation's historical annals and popular folklore. In total defeat and death, Custer and his men achieved an immortality that even the most dramatic victory could not have won them." ​

— Robert M. Utley, NPS Handbook, Little Bighorn National Monument.

We'll be heading out to the battlefields with Neil Mangum in mid-October. If you are interested, and can get away for a few days, follow the link below, or go to whtours.org for registration information, and details on other upcoming tours. 

After hiking part of the Rosebud battlefield on the first day, the next morning we'll follow Gibbon's route down the Yellowstone and ascend the Rosebud. We'll pause at Custer and Indian campsites (and other sites), visit Deer Medicine Rocks, and devote a day each to the Reno and Custer fighting. For good measure, we'll also take in the Baker Battlefield (August 1872), and Canyon Creek (Flight of the Nez Perce).

Upcoming Tours . . . Little Bighorn, Antietam, Civil War to Cold War in New Mexico, the Apache Wars . . .

our new website is up and running

whtours.org

Upcoming Tours:

The Battles of the Rosebud and Little Bighorn

October 16-20, 2018

The Battle of Antietam

May 2-4, 2019

The Civil War to Cold War (New Mexico

October 1-7, 2019

The Apache Wars

March 28 - April 4, 20120

summer ad for Rosebud and Little Bighorn excursion

Look for this ad in an upcoming issue of Wild West magazine, and in various digital venues. See also the new website for WHT. 

Bruce Catton

Photos from University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center, Bruce Catton Papers. Text from New York Times obituary, August 29, 1978

Catton was a reporter with the Cleveland News, the Boston American and later with the Cleveland Plain-Dealer and a correspondent with the Newspaper Enterprise Association in Washington before he took several government posts. Among them was director of information for the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1945-46, and special assistant to the Secretary of Commerce in 1948. 

Catton won the Pulitzer Prize for historical writing and the National Book Award in 1954. Among his works on the Civil War was Two Roads to Sumter, co-authored in 1968 with his only son, William Bruce Catton. He received the Presidential Freedom Medal in 1955 and then-New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller named him chairman of the state Civil War Commission in 1960. 

Among Catton's other books were The War Lords of Washington, published in 1949; Mr. Lincoln's Army, 1951; Glory Road, 1952; [A Stillness a Appomattox, 1953 won the Pulitzer Prize] U.S. Grant and the American Military Tradition, 1954; Banners at Shenandoah, 1955; This Hallowed Ground, 1956; The Coming Fury, 1961; Terrible Swift Sword, 1962; Gettysburg: The Final Fury, and Michigan: A Bicentennial History, 1976. 

Catton was editor of American Heritage Magazine from 1954 through 1959. He was named senior editor of the magazine in 1959 and held that position until his death.

Charles P. Roland turns 100

Happy Birthday to Charles P. Roland, who wrote—in my opinion—the best short, single-volume history of the Civil War: An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War (University Press of Kentucky). 

I had the pleasure of sitting with Dr. Roland at dinner one evening, during a Jerry Russell-sponsored battlefield conference. When he learned I had attended college in Evansville, Indiana, it reminded him of his best buddy in WWII, who hailed from Evansville, and Roland related some stories from their adventures at the Battle of the Bulge. 

Roland is a great historian, a fascinating man, and a pleasant dinner companion. I'm glad to hear he's still going strong. Roland also wrote what used to me, and what may still be, the only scholarly biography of General Albert Sydney Johnston (Albert Sydney Johnston: Soldier of Three Republics). While visiting the Shiloh battlefield last weekend, where Johnston was killed, I noticed that this (now revised) book is still in print (also from the University Press of Kentucky). 

Those are two great books from a great university press. Here's hoping Governor Matt Bevin's "petty and barbaric" (quoting eminent Kentuckian Wendell Berry) efforts to close the press are thwarted.

The Power of History (Bay Area Book Festival)

There's an interesting American History presence at this April's Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley. Wish I could be there for this discussion, but alas, I'll be traipsing around Old Cahawba Archaeological Park that weekend. 

The Power of History: Turning Groundbreaking Scholarship into Page-Turning Prose

Edward L. Ayers, Peter Cozzens, Joel Richard Paul, T. J. Stiles, moderated by Steve Wasserman

Saturday, April 28

11:15 AM - 12:45 PM 

Is best-selling history bad history? Does good history have to be dull reading? Four award-winning historians and biographers talk about the big questions of American history and reveal how they explore them through captivating narratives that win esteem in the academy yet appeal to wide audiences. Bancroft and Lincoln prize winner Edward Ayers (whose many works focus on the Civil War and Reconstruction), Gilder Lehrman Military History Prize winner Peter Cozzens (most recently “The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West”), Pulitzer and National Book Award laureate T.J. Stiles (most recently “Custer’s Trials: A Life on a Frontier of New America” and “The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt”), and Hastings Law Professor Joel Richard Paul (most recently “Without Precedent: Chief Justice John Marshall and His Times”) talk with Steve Wasserman, executive director of Heyday Books, former editor at Yale University Press, and former book review editor of the Los Angeles Times.

BAMPFA - Osher Theater

Sponsored by Reed Schmidt, with partial support from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria

Rosebud and Little Bighorn battlefield tours (October 2018)

I'm very happy to announce a new tour happening in October, covering the Battles of the Rosebud, and Little Bighorn, with some essential side trips. Neil Mangum, former historian at LBH, and author of the definitive work on the Rosebud, helped customize a unique 4-day outing that will comprehensively cover both battlefields, and take in many other important sites associated with those events, including Deer Medicine Rocks (where Sitting Bull described his sun dance vision of soldiers falling into camp like grasshoppers falling from the sky). See the flyer here for more details.

Shiloh battlefield tour, April 4-6, 2018

two new GRANT books hot off the presses

It was a big summer and fall for the nation's 18th president. . . Click on the image to go to the publisher's site:

• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• Hardcover: 1104 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press; First Edition edition
  (October 10, 2017)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159420487X
• ISBN-13: 978-1594204876

• 
  
• 
  
• Series: American Presidency Series
• Hardcover: 720 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
  (August 28, 2017)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0700624848
• ISBN-13: 978-0700624843

US Army 29th Infantry Division shoulder sleeve patch with a blue and gray monad

==========

Shoulder sleeve insignia of the United States Army 29th Infantry Division, nicknamed the Blue and Gray Division, based on their circular blue and gray badge with a yin-yang design, or monad, a Korean symbol of eternal life. The colors symbolize the Division tradition of being formed by men whose forefathers fought in the Civil War, for both Union blue and Confederate gray. The 116th infantry regiment of the 29th Division was part of the first wave assault to land at Omaha Beach on D Day, June 6, 1944. They suffered heavy losses, but pushed on to relieve and reinforce combat units inland. At the end of September they were fighting on the German border and, in March 1945, were ordered to attack in the heavily defended Ruhr industrial region. 

On April 3rd, the Division liberated Dinslaken civilian labor camp. They had pushed on to the Elbe River when Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945. The 29th Infantry served in the Army of Occupation in Frankfurt and Bremen until returning to the US on January 4, 1946, where they were inactivated on January 17.

==========

source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection

General Grant at his new City Point headquarters

From a recent post on one of my favorite Facebook pages: 

"Wow, I have long liked this detail with General Grant at right at his new City Point headquarters, early summer 1864, but did not until just now did I notice the captured Confederate flag leaning against the tree at left! You can never scour the details of these photos too often."

The Battle of the U.S.S. "Kearsarge" and the C.S.S. "Alabama"

The Battle of the U.S.S. "Kearsarge" and the C.S.S. "Alabama"

Édouard Manet, 1864

Manet's first known seascape is an imaginative depiction of an American Civil War naval battle fought off the coast of France, near Cherbourg, on June 19, 1864. In the distance, the C.S.S. Alabama, a scourge of Union shipping, sinks by her stern, clouds of smoke arising from a direct hit to her engines by the U.S.S. Kearsarge, which is mostly obscured from view. This picture was first displayed in the window of Alfred Cadart's print shop in Paris in July 1864, demonstrating Manet's quick response to a sensational and recent news event. [text: Google Arts and Culture]

Details

• Title: The Battle of the U.S.S. "Kearsarge" and the C.S.S. "Alabama"

• Date: 1864

• Location: France

• Physical Dimensions: w50.75 x h54.25 in (Overall)

• Artist/Maker: Édouard Manet, French, 1832 - 1883

• Provenance: John G. Johnson Collection, 1917

• Type: Paintings

• Rights: © 2014 Philadelphia Museum of Art. All rights reserved.

• External Link: Philadelphia Museum of Art

• Medium: Oil on canvas

it was Georgia's house, not Jennie Wade's

Georgia Wade McClellan

In my last post, I shined a light on my Iowa hometown's Abraham Lincoln connection -- the land grant he received for service in the Black Hawk War. Today I'm highlighting a Gettysburg connection, one that I was entirely unaware of in my junior high and high school years in Denison, Iowa, even as I made a family visit to Gettysburg, and poured through my first Bruce Catton volume. 

Civil War enthusiasts will know that one of Gettysburg’s well-known tourist attractions is the Jennie Wade House, at 548 Baltimore Street. It was there that Mary Virginia Wade was killed while kneading dough in the kitchen, the only known civilian to die in the Battle of Gettysburg. [Exploitation of that family is presumably lucrative, and knows no bounds.]

It bears noting that it wasn’t actually Jennie Wade’s house – it was the home of her older sister, Georgia Wade McClellan (one might also note that Mary Virginia was called “Gin,” or “Ginnie,” or "Jinnie” by her family, but Jennie is how she is remembered today, and is the name that appears on her tombstone in Gettysburg’s Evergreen Cemetery). Mary Virginia Wade and her mother had taken refuge in Georgia’s house, where Georgia had just given  birth to her first child. On the third day of the battle, a wayward bullet entered the house and struck Jennie. 

It wasn’t until the sesquicentennial commemorations that I learned -- through a Civil War-related news item -- that Georgia Wade McClellan is buried in Denison. Georgia — who turned 22-years-old the day after her sister was killed — served as a nurse for wounded soldiers after the battle. Not long after the war, Georgia and her husband, John L. McClellan, moved west, eventually settling in Denison, where three of their children were born. Her husband reportedly became Denison’s first marshal. 

Georgia ran a home for women in Fort Dodge, Iowa for awhile. After her husband died, she lived with a grandchild in Carroll, Iowa, down the road from Denison, where she died in 1927. She was buried beside her husband in Denison's Oakland Cemetery on September 7 of that year. 

I have read in at least one source that Georgia was in attendance when Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in the national cemetery, and I'm endeavoring to substantiate that (the FindAGrave entry for Georgia goes so far as to say she was on the platform with Lincoln, and was one of the speakers that day, but no source is given). Check out FindAGrave for some additional information on Georgia, and a number of other photos. 

Abe Lincoln (Never) Slept Here . . .

. . . but he did own the land. Last month I journeyed to Iowa for a high school reunion, and I had a checklist of items I wanted to see—things I was oblivious to in my youth, and only subsequently learned about. One of the things I was curious to lay eyes on was a land grant to Abraham Lincoln. Quoting Abraham Lincoln Online: "Lincoln's second [Iowa] parcel was 120 acres in Goodrich Township, Crawford County. It is seven miles north of Denison and one mile east of Schleswig, identified by a marker erected in 1923 by the Denison Chapter of the D.A.R. Warrant #68645 was issued on April 22, 1856, and Lincoln located the land while living in Springfield, Illinois, on December 27, 1859.

The patent for the Crawford County tract was issued to Lincoln on September 10, 1860, during his first presidential campaign, and sent to the Registrar of the Land Office at Springfield on October 30, one week before the election. The property eventually passed to Lincoln's only surviving son Robert, who sold the property to Henry Edwards for $1,300 on March 22, 1892."

Another source, (on very handy site called Iowa Civil War Monuments) asserts that "When he visited Council Bluffs in 1859 to consult with Grenville Dodge about a future transcontinental railroad, he referred to his land here but said he couldn't take the time to see it."

I made the time, however, 40 years after I lived there. Thankfully, it's well marked. On Google Maps, you can find it here: 42°05'40.7"N 95°25'12.0"W

Charlie, the horse who carried the dispatch from General Slocum to General Sherman

• Title: [Charlie, the horse who carried the dispatch from General Slocum to General Sherman announcing the surrender of Atlanta, Georgia]
• Date Created/Published: [1885]
• Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs (Library of Congress).

First fully annotated version of Grant's memoirs

Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library historians, from left to right, Louie P. Gallo, John F. Marszalek and David S. Nolen, this month will release “The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition,” published by Harvard University Press. (Photo by Megan Bean)

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: James Carskadon

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Although Ulysses S. Grant’s personal memoirs have remained in print for more than 130 years, the American nonfiction classic is being fully annotated for the first time in a new book by historians at the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library at Mississippi State University.

“The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition” will provide modern context for the historical memoirs when it is released Oct. 16 by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. John F. Marszalek, MSU Giles Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and Ulysses S. Grant Association Executive Director and Managing Editor, edited the book, along with Grant Association assistant editors David S. Nolen and Louie P. Gallo. The annotated version of Grant’s memoirs contains over 2,000 footnotes that provide additional information and place the former president’s thoughts in the context of when he was writing.

“The great thing about this book is it lets Grant speak for himself, but it lets a modern reader get more insight,” Marszalek said. “If we can make this piece of literature clearer to the modern audience, then we’ve accomplished something significant.”

Grant completed his memoirs at the Mt. McGregor retreat in New York, days before his death in 1885 and at a time when he had lost all of his money in a Ponzi scheme. The memoirs, sold door-to-door by former Civil War soldiers, would go on to be hailed as one of the most important works of American nonfiction in the 19th century. Grant’s writing style, which was concise and written in approachable language, has helped his memoirs remain accessible to audiences for generations after his death.

The Mt. McGregor retreat, later named the Ulysses S. Grant Cottage State Historic Site, was recently named New York’s 24th Literary Landmark. Nolen was the keynote speaker for a ceremony at the cottage commemorating the designation.

“It was an incredible honor to go and be a part of that ceremony and that event,” Nolen said. “I thought it was very fitting that the site should have that designation. When you think of the memoirs being completed there, Grant really made some difficult and painful decisions along the way right there in that spot, for what became a classic in American literature.”

The annotated version of Grant’s memoirs has been in the making for over 50 years. Former Ulysses S. Grant Association President John Y. Simon wrote in 1967 that the project would begin once the association had completed its compilation of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. With the 32nd volume of Grant’s papers completed earlier this decade, the Grant Library team at Mississippi State began working on a modern version of Grant’s memoirs. The annotated version contains a preface by Grant Association President and former Rhode Island Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank J. Williams.

“Grant’s writing style is very unpretentious and plain, but in a good way,” Gallo said. “I think that translates over the years, because anybody can pick it up and read it. It’s just an easy read and the story is so intriguing. It’s interesting to see his perspective on these huge events in American history. We identify every person Grant mentions in the book, which helps preserve some additional memories. I hope this is the edition to end all editions of Grant’s memoirs.”

MSU Libraries will host a book signing on Oct. 20 at 3 p.m. The authors will hold book signings and discussions this month at Starkville Public Library and Square Books in Oxford. An additional book signing will take place when the new Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library at Mississippi State University officially opens with a celebration on Nov. 30.

For more on “The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition,” visit http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674976290.

Mississippi State is one of five universities housing a presidential library. For more, visit www.usgrantlibrary.org.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.

Adolph Metzner Civil War Drawings (LoC)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS BLOG

From a guest post by Julie Stoner, a reference librarian in the Geography and Map Division. It was first published on “Picture This,” the Prints and Photographs Division’s blog.

As an admirer of Civil War drawings, I found my interest piqued by a recently digitized collection of drawings by Adolph G. Metzner. The difference in style from many other drawings of the time, along with the richness of color, drew me in to learn more about this man and his artwork. 

Born on August 13, 1834, in southwestern Germany, Adolph Metzner immigrated to the United States in 1856. Shortly after the start of the Civil War, Metzner joined the 32nd Regiment Indiana Volunteer Infantry, also called the First German, fighting for three years on the western front of the war. 

See the full blog post, with links to Metzner's work, here. 

Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, fall 1863

Beginning of the Atlanta Campaign, May 10, 1864

Battle of Peach Tree Creek, Georgia, July 20, 1864