Sherman by Uhl

Went to the Army and Navy Club last week to buy the redesigned club tie, eat a good lunch, and take some decent digital pictures of Civil War generals' portraits. Collected a bunch of trash instead, by virtue of having used a camera phone and shaky hand. Will return with a proper digital camera for a redo. The image above is one of the "better" ones (but I must retake it).

My sense is that these celebs were members who sat for portraits, which is why they are hanging on the Club's walls. That would explain their ages as the Club was founded in 1885.

The portrait you're viewing, in all its awful reporduction is listed by the National Gallery as an Uhl sitting. I have never seen this image in any other context than the painting itself, which I hope makes it special for you too.

Break's over

Odd to get 509 hits in one day after no new post in weeks. Well, here we are again.

Another plagiarism scandal ...

Another research assistant is blamed. Suggestion: write your own stuff or hire a better quality of research assistant.

(A reader tip: thanks!)

Alternative paradigm

Speaking of 1862 in the East, Eric T. Dean writes:

...there was not yet an alternative paradigm such as Grant's method of fighting a series of inconclusive battles... - "We live under a government of men and morning newspapers," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 103.1 (Jan 1995)

Neither is there any sense among historians of the cost paid to get a largely Republican newspaper readership to accept the "alternative paradigm" as sufficient and acceptable.

Unconscious paradigm substitution (as an enabler of harsh moral judgements) is another signal failing of Civil War history. We might think of it as a late war/early war double standard, but double standards are simpler things than paradigm substitutions.

OT: Back soon

Last week of school, then comprehensive exam; can return to posting in about eight days.

p.s. Try wrapping your head around reverse synthetic aperture radar followed by some ACW blogging. Doesn't work.

The blight on nonfiction

Had lunch with a fellow whose intense interest is outside of Civil War history. In his own field of interest, he's writing a book to bring a whole new perspective on a famous episode in U.S. history. In the meantime, he's publishing reviews of other people's books on his favored subject. These other books are making him crazy.

As I shared with him the typical sins of the Civil War writer, he matched me story for story, sin for sin. I was a little surprised but not a lot.

He had an author's work in hand that almost reached ACW levels of malpractice. I said, call her out.

(1) She belongs to a specific school of history and interpretation and she failed to disclose that to the reader.

(2) Her citations are selectively derived from that school of thought's truncated bibliography.

(3) That makes her own bibliography woefully incomplete.

(4) Her work is entirely derivative but she fails to acknowledge her inspirations.

(5) I bet money she has phrases, sentences, maybe paragraphs lifted from her readings.

(6) Publish tables showing her "borrowings."

(7) Point out all the new research, evidence, and analysis that has been excluded from her work.

(8) Point out all the arguments that counter hers that she fails to address or acknowledge.

(9) Suggest that she has entered a field of controversy while pretending controversy does not exist and contested issues are "settled science."

(10) Suggest that a fresh approach, such as in your forthcoming book, is the approach that is needed.

If you set number 10 aside, how many of these points apply to any of your recent ACW readings? Too many, probably.

And now a word from our sponsor

The historian who speaks of cause, and not of causes, should be fired immediately.

To write honestly for the rest, one must write fundamentally for oneself.

Every strict classification of an historical event distorts it.

Educating the individual consists in teaching him to distrust the ideas that occur to him.

It is not to increasing our knowledge to which we may aspire, but to documenting our ignorance.

When the dust raised by the great events of modern history settles, the mediocrity of the protagonists leaves the historian dumbfounded.

History clearly demonstrates that governing is a task that exceeds man’s ability.

Reason, truth, justice, tend not to be man’s goals, but the names he gives to his goals.

History shows that man’s good ideas are accidental and his mistakes methodical.

Contemporary man admires only hysterical texts.

The peddlers of cultural objects would not be annoying if they did not sell them with the rhetoric of an apostle.

The fragments of the past that survive embarrass the modern landscape in which they stand out.

Only the defeated come to possess sound ideas about the nature of things.

Museums are the tourist’s punishment.

No writer has ever been born who did not write too much.

- Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Digitizing medieval books

All 25,000 of them.

Amateur medievalists may someday enjoy the kind of source-rich world the ACW reader currently inhabits.

OT: You can buy an historic German church on eBay

No kidding. More than one, actually.

That's entertainment (OT)

Seen this evening on "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?" A fascinating show if you can hack it.

Host: For $25,000, Budapest is the capital of which European country?

Contestant: This may sound stupid but I thought Europe was a country.

Host: No, (repeats question).

Contestant: Wait a minute, I know they speak French there. But isn't France a country?

Host: (Tries to be helpful)

(Lots of back and forth)

Host: And the answer is, HUNGARY!

Contestant: Hungry? I never heard of Hungry! I've heard of Turkey.

Note: Private Eye used to round up game show contestant answers in a column called "Dumb Britain." Would be worth doing that stateside. Here are some choice selections from the column read in a revue of six minutes.

And from issue 1333:

Perfection, BBC1
Nick Knowles: Tennessee Williams wrote Death of a Salesman. True or false?
Contestant: False. I have a lot of his records, but I can’t remember him singing that one.

The Chase, ITV
Bradley Walsh: In the Bible, Noah’s three sons are called Japheth, Shem and… what? Ham, Lamb or Spam?
Contestant: Lamb.
Walsh: The correct answer is Ham.
Contestant: Who’d call their son Ham?

BBC Radio Merseyside
Presenter: Name an instrument which can be found hanging on the wall in many households.
Caller: A piano.

Revoking McPherson's Pulitzer - not so easy

Yes, we do take questions here and... revoking McPherson's 1989 Pulitzer would appear to be a long shot.

Philip Nobile raised this revocation matter in connection with three other of the most egregious history plagiarists in 2002 and came up with answers from the Committee that amounted to "We don't look back."

The Committee's decision on the Duranty reporting case is also instructive.

Whatever you may hear, bureaucratic inertia provides a measure of safety to even the worst of the winners. McPherson is likely safe.

Proclamation porter

Brewer's Alley in Frederick has issued its Proclamation Porter, available in stores hereabouts. An interesting collaboration with the Museum of Civil War Medicine, to be sure.

Wainwright says porter (along with ale, cider and wine) was always available at Burnside's headquarters during Grant's Richmond campaign.

This one is balanced, a little sweet but nicely offset by the right measure of hops. I can imagine drinking it in the heat of early summer, in the shade of Burnside's tent, as my heavy woolens soak up sweat and the dull itch of a thousand insect bites gives way to the pleasure of the moment.

"So Burn, tell me, where do you get stuff this good?"

Shiloh battlefield, also a baseball field

An interesting survivor of the battle...

"The Curse of History"

Hey, if it weren't for "distorted and monolithic" interpretations, the ACW would have very few interpretations at all.

Black's paradigm has been out there for four years but I see little of it in ACW "memory" writing.

The Harrisons as hipsters

President William Henry Harrison had a grandson whom we know as President Benjamin Harrison. He was the last Civil War general elected president and he was, of course, a Republican. His attempt at a second term was frustrated by the great (I am tempted to say very great or all time greatest Democrat) Grover Cleveland.

It was my pleasure to work in an exotic locale with a friend named Benjamin Harrison III. His father had been an army general of the same name (but II) and it intrigued me that this distinguished presidential family did not harken back to their more ancient and eminent predecessor William Henry in naming conventions.

Ben and I had a friendship based on hard laughter. Our employer provided the material and it was up to us to come up with the punchlines. We were pretty good at crafting the required boffo.

Somehow, the Harrisons had become Texans and Ben II, before he became a MG acted as the first ever manager for Mose Allison. I would list that above major general on my resume.

After Ben III married a beautiful Irish stewardess, he visited me stateside. We were on our way from Philly to New York on some roads located under overpasses in the city of brotherly love. Remember the French Connection chase scene and you'll have the idea. This was the early 1980s.

Our one-way street was blocked off with primitive barricades manned by children. The children were armed with toy guns. They challenged us and wanted baksheesh to allow passage.

Ben's comment was "Druze militia." Indeed. We knew what to do - we went into action mode, high speed backup, squealing tires, escaping turnoff, lots of laughs. Take that Walid Jumblatt. Through negligence or incompetence the children failed to kill us.

I hate when that happens.

Ran into some videos on YouTube of the band Benjamin Harrison III and I were on our way to see way back when. This appears to be the show we saw. Perk up if they pan the audience. If it's not to your taste, I would just say that the memories of old age can become a nuisance.

And you never know where presidential progeny may end up.

The answer is yes - but it's not a good answer

Our friends at the Washington Examiner ask if Lincoln would have droned Robert E. Lee. If they read their Eric Wittenberg, they would know that yes, of course, because Lincoln droned Davis. He droned the bejeezus out of Davis!

Lincoln was not a boundaries sort of guy. He was not afraid of the odd precedent. His trailblazing made him a victim of some sic semper tyrranis. In other words, he got droned himself and Davis successfully disavowed any knowledge.

Perhaps you've heard the phrase "disavowed any knowledge?" It seems to have entered popular jargon in 1966.

Kushner lays out the meaning of "artistic license"

If you missed it, this is worth reading.

The movie "Lincoln" changed the 13th Amendment votes of Connecticut congressmen. Screenwriter Tony Kushner says no big deal and lays out the rules for artistic license over historical material.

Hugh Trevor-Roper, Whig historian

Also, forensic historian in a field full of storytellers.

But man do I loathe Whig historians.

In my dream, I was ruined

This is true: I dreamt that my pen name was Chester Hearn and that I wrote these terrible Civil War books for a fast buck.

I dreamt that the readers of this blog discovered my secret identity and exposed me as being Chester Hearn. It was a scandal on the Web. The ridicule was painful.

Fortunately, it was just a dream.

How to start over

We need to start over in Civil War history.

What does that mean?

Take all the new research and analysis since the Centennial together with the complete record of source material and build anew.

Some authors are doing that; it's happening topic by topic. But it's not happening broadly enough. And the old guard is shouting "stop the madness." The old guard is bypassing new research and new analysis to reconstruct history from selected old source material to reach conclusions our granparents would be familiar with.

In doing so, they can present old, incomplete source material as representing the best thinking of today when it was the best thinking of 60-80 years ago.

As readers, it's our job stop this. It's job one for us.

When an author cites no secondary sources but goes back to the OR to write an account of this or that, when the OR cited is selective and dishonest, when the author claims no influence from major recent books (or if that influence is not visible in the work), put that author's book down, ignore it, and mark the author as unworthy of further reading.

Mark the author no matter how big the name, how impressive the prizes.

You may not want to shame them but you can certainly ignore them.

Study the losers

Under the right strategy, losers might be gainers.

The uninformed reader

The uninformed reader is as much a menace as the uninformed voter. His bad choices drive a market to endlessly satisfy a low information state.

Analysis is doing

Without analysis, history can do nothing. The storyteller borrows his analysis in order to pretend to do something.

"New writing" from James McPherson (cont.)

From the current issue of the New York Review of Books. (This is from the print edition, which is behind the website paywall.) Some authors can really turn a phrase. The same phrase.

Henry Clay, a three-time loser as a presidential candidate...
- James McPherson, New York Review of Books, February 7, 2013

Henry Clay a 3 time loser for the Presidency...
- 2012 comment posted on David S. Heidler's Henry Clay, the Essential American

As a three-time loser in presidential contests, however, Clay ...
- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 2003

Asserting that three-time loser Clay could not win...
- David S. Heidler, Jeanne T. Heidler, Favid Coles, 2002, Encyclopedia of the American Civil War

... his [Clay's] record as a three-time loser ...
- Michael Holt, 2003, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party

... another three-time loser for the presidency, Henry Clay.
- Aubrey Sher, 2008, Presidential Hopefuls (1788-2008)

... Henry Clay, a three-time presidential candidate (if a three-time loser)...
- Stephen Berry, 2009, House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, a Family Divided by War

... Henry Clay, three-time presidential candidate (if a three-time loser).
- Frank J. Williams, Michael Burkhimer, 2012, The Mary Lincoln Enigma

Political generals

What if every single Civil War general was a political general?

"New writing" from James McPherson (cont.)

Again, from his latest writing in the New York Review of Books. The man is psychic!

Although the Mexican Congress repudiated this treaty, the Texans managed to maintain their independence for almost a decade … - James M. McPherson, New York Review of Books, Feb. 7, 2013

Although the Mexican Congress repudiated the treaty, the Republic of Texas maintained its independence. – "A Concise History of the U.S. – Mexican War" (website), August 7, 2004

Silas Jerome Uhl

I had posted a lousy digital snap of a George Thomas painting taken in the Army & Navy Club, artist unknown. The Club has recently moved blocking objects away from the frame and I can now see the artist's mini-plaque. He was Silas Jerome Uhl (1842-1916).

Uhl is collected at a decent valuation. An indifferent still life (vase and flowers) recently sold for $2,000. His obit in the NYT says he was popular in the salons of Paris in the 1880s.

The A&N Club has a number of portraits of ACW personalities done in his style, probably by him. As with Thomas, they all appear late in their lives, which suggests to me a sitting. The portraits of interest I have seen on the walls at the Club include Thomas, Sherman, Meade, DD Porter, and perhaps another swabbie. (Assume they were ANC members.) They are very well done in terms of character and detail and I have never seen any in print.

The imagery available from Uhl on the Web is far inferior to the quality of these portraits. Thomas, Sherman and Porter are superb: Meade looks a little vacant and is for that reason a notch below. Will try snapping better cameraphone images and posting them here as opportunity permits.

College professors

Could it be that college professors are merely support systems for college administrators?

"New writing" from James McPherson (cont.)

The man has chops, you have to admit it.

... the new government offered American settlers large land grants to move into its sparsely populated northern province of Tejas. - James McPherson, New York Review of Books, February 7, 2013

"Mexico welcomed foreign settlers to sparsely populated Texas" - Source

"Tejas was sparsely populated" - Source

"Since the province of Texas was very sparsely populated..." - Source

"[Texas] was a sparsely populated area in northern Mexico..." - Source

"... note that the province of Tejas—Texas ... was a sparsely populated area in northern Mexico." - Source

"Mexico welcomed foreign settlers to sparsely populated Texas." - Source

"American settlers who had made their homes in this sparsely populated land..." - Source

And on it goes.

The inevitability of the war

The inevitability of the war portends the inevitability of select anecdotes, the inevitability of sophistry, and the inevitability of awards bestowed by your inevitable friends.

"New writing" from James McPherson

In the very latest New York Review of Books, James McPherson reviews A Wicked War by Amy Greenberg. As with all of his reviews, he spends 95% of his ink recounting events, in this case the Mexican War.

His historical insights and literary techniques seem as sharp as ever:

... the issue of slavery in this new American territory [Texas] set in motion a series of events ...

- James McPherson, NYRB, February 7, 2013

... but the annexation of Texas set in motion of series of events ...

- Michael Kazin, Rebecca Edwards, Adam Rothman, 2011, The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History- Page 490

... it resulted in the greatest land acquisitions in American history and set in motion the chain of events leading directly to the Civil War.

- Historian magazine, blurbed review of The Presidency of James K. Polk, 1987

... the process leading to the annexation of Texas and the state joining the Union set in motion a train of events causing the Civil War.

- Joseph G. Dawson in The Journal of Military History, 2007

Civil War movies

The appeal of movies like Lincoln to Civil War authors lies in that they are storytellers first and regard film as a higher form of storytelling than history books.

Battlefield monuments

Battlefields dense with monuments alter the tour into something entirely different.

Idea for a battlefield tour

Let every battlefield visitor load and fire a period weapon. Let them move under heavy loads and a hot sun. Let them stand opposite opposing tourists for long spells wearing woolen clothing. Let them elect their guides. Let them wait interminable periods for directions from their guides.

Walter Mitty fought the Civil War

Everyone is (at best) George Thomas in their daily lives while everyone imagines himself to be a mythical version of Stonewall Jackson.

Literary ideals

Because his book cites some scholarship, the storyteller claims scholarly validation for his literary ideals.

The Jackson alternative

Where is the historian who presents Jackson as slow, unresponsive, unpopular, harsh, double-dealing, generally confused, and usually unprepared?

What if ...

What if the Civil War was not a modern war?

Battlefield guides

Battlefield guides ask us to visualize too much.

What if ...

The ACW was not inevitable?

I was a teenaged Civil War soldier

Ran into a fraternity brother last week - hadn't seen him in 39 years. I went Infantry and he went Armor. He told me some things about the Army I left that blew my mind. The key thing - and this is current doctrine that I read up on afterward - is that everything must go through the network and reside on the network.

Thou shalt have no knowledge except that it reside on network.

When he and I were young, we moved companies, battalions and brigades using innacurate maps, compasses, ridiculously crappy radios, code books, and verbose orders. I was proud of my map reading and marksmanship. I was lousy at radio and encryption/decryption. I could give a good order. I enjoyed entrenching and laying down fields of fire. Looking back, I recall we avoided radio communication as inherently insecure. Take away the radios and we infantry were a Civil War army in terms of skills. We had to know stuff. Couldn't outsource that to machines.

In Korea, the mortar section of my weapons platoon resorted to an archaic artifact printed in a thick book - firing tables. Firing tables told us how much charge (gunpowder) we needed to put the round a certain distance downrange. Robust and yet delightfully primitive, I'm sure our ACW predecessors had the same for direct fire cannons.

My predecessor in C-1/17 did not read his firing tables correctly and put rounds on Republic of Korea troops at one point. But his boss, an accomplished schmoozer (and another fraternity brother of mine) got himself awarded a Korean medal after the fact anyway. No network could have produced that outcome.

The point is all that info needed for warfighting now resides on the blessed network. If the network is down, then...

- No maneuver. Online maps not available; GPS kaput
- No coordinated fires on enemy targets
- No lateral communication - lost the IM and email
- No upward communication - lost PowerPoint
- No downward commo - email and IM out
- No resupply - online forms not accessible.

I have a sense that the radio persists in some form or other. So let me be wrong about the network, spectacularly wrong. Write me and cuss me out. But if this is true, then my fraternity brother and I are in a continuum with the armies of the ACW. The modern soldier is something else altogether.

My fraternity brother says that today's junior officer is helpless in calling on indirect fires without a GPS or a laser. That would be amazing except for the story from Benghazi, where an ex-Seal was killed painting a mortar crew with laser (at immense risk to himself) instead of radioing in their coordinates (at no risk to himself).

Whoever gave primacy to the network, lasers, GPS, databased firing tables and other shortcuts has and will have an immense amount of blood on his hands. One wonders how today's army could survive in a non-networked war.

Finishing a degree

Regular posting to resume soon. Meanwhile, don't burn your books.

Costumes and storylines

Too many writers see the Civil War as a costume drama.

History hoax on Wikipedia

Some of the ACW material on Wikipedia is not much better than this.

Historical truth

Historical truth is the best substitute for absolute truth that we can manage.

New book blogs

Our friends at Savas Beatie advised us of three new book blogs:

James A. Morgan III offers A Little Short of Boats. Morgan wrote this very good book of the same name about Balls Bluff for Eric Wittenberg's press way back. This is a revised edition which suggests new and improved. Not sure what could have been improved other than the author's attitude towards GBM. Oh wait - maybe the author's attitude toward "Cap" Beatie! (But that's not in the book.) A good author meets up with a good publisher - what's not to like? Morgan has opinions and I hope he airs them. that's what blogs are for.

Bill Morgan blogs on ACW sites in NYC. The random stroller with Gotham experience will attest that the number of NYC ACW sites and monuments are such that it is inevitable that the low-information walker will eventually be confronted by a monument that evokes a loud "huh"?

Lance Herdegen has cranked up an Iron Brigade blog, which topic has the makings of "forever."

I think the risk in author blogs is that by the time they take up their HTML toolkits, they are exhausted (topic-wise) and in poor condition to pursue the book's subject.

That's not a fact, just a concern.