Sins of the marketers

(1) The author "gives readers both a gripping narrative account of that portentous day and a nuanced historical analysis..." Sounds like some talespinner has a guilty conscience.

(2) "Move through time with the characters and events that shaped Washington,D.C., as we know it today. Visit the National Cemetery in Arlington," where all those characters are buried.

How they loved their dialect humor

One of the least attractive qualities of Lincoln, to many observers and commentators, was his love of dialect humor. One senses that the vast popularity of dialect literature during and after the war was offset by tastes that regarded it as uncouth.

It certainly is (or was) perishable, with the writer relying on readers awarding points for accuracy in accent engineering. Funny nuances in misspeaking get lost over time, so, too does the color fade from all those vibrant regionalisms.

A couple of weeks ago I met with a client who told me where she was from. Me: "I knew right away by your accent." She gave me a hurt look and said, "People tell me I speak the least accented American English they have ever heard." I speak with the same accent as she and could render our exchange in dialect for you, but you would have no idea how to read it: where the stresses go, how to make the sounds, and how to string it together into its local rhythm. I'm convinced that many today cannot hear or distinguish among even the strongest accents.

For instance, actor Richard Briers was in an online chat a few years ago. He had done three seasons as the laird emeritus in TV's Monarch of the Glen (a kind of minstrel show staged by BBC Scotland for export markets). His character and his TV kin spoke perfect Oxbridge English on the set to servants owning rich Scottish brogues, exactly as the Cabots and the Lodges today speak in neutral Mid-Atlantic tones to their servants, who then respond in barbaric Bostonspeak.

One of the online chatterers asked Briers (IIRC) How did you manage to perfect your Scottish accent? Was it hard to do? Did you take lessons? After an online stutter, the actor gently noted that the Scottish nobility is anglicized and so his character lacked a Scottish accent; despite the presence of Scots' English on the show, Briers' questioner could not hear the difference between Upstairs and Downstairs.

It seems, however, some do laugh at dialect humor nowadays, but not on the written page. Think low (Beverly Hillbillys), think high (Fargo). And here comes that problem again of hearing your own voice:

There is a distinctive Minnesota accent that the makers of this film [Drop Dead Gorgeous] nailed absolutely dead to rights, and the proof is that most native Minnesotans, when shown this film, respond by saying, "That's not funny. We don't really talk like that." And they will say it in the accent from the movie!

Fun with accents - we still have a little but it represents risky humor in a tone-deaf oral culture. To release a book of Civil War dialect humor in this time and place therefore seems odd.

Bill Arp's Peace Papers collects the humorous newspaper writings of Charles Henry Smith, which I assume are rendered in a North Georgia accent I shall never hear ... and therefore cannot translate from the written page. Reference is sometimes made to Arp in ACW writings (most recently in War Like The Thunderbolt), so I suppose having the whole collection helps future researchers. But as no one is releasing Artemus Ward nowadays, what commercial chance does Bill Arp stand if the king of dialect is neglected?

Dialect humor, in addition to being fragile and perishable, wears down a reader. Book-length Arp can be too much of a good thing, especially since Smith was an amateur writer building on the accidental success of his first article.

Mr. Linkhorn, sur, privately speakin, I'm afeerd I'll git in a tite place here among these bloods, and will have to slope out of it...

Yikes.

By the turn of the century, the better dialect humor had morphed into standard English, laced with slang, in which patterns and argot conveyed locale and humor. I'm thinking of George Ade. Here's a rare passage where Ade actually lapses into dialect writing per se, but it's handled with restraint:

"Don't you know me?" he asked.

"Rully, it seems to me I have seen you, somewhere," she replied, "but I cahn't place you. Are you the man who tunes the piano? ... I dare say you called to see Pu-pah; he will be here presently."

Then she gave him ... a few other Crisp Ones, hot from the finishing school, after which she asked him how the dear Villagers were coming on.

Well, one could write a lengthy treatise on this, so let's tally up the score for Bill Arp's Peace Papers.

- The introduction by David Parker is fine - biographical information reveals Smith's background as a refugee from Sherman's advance and much more.

- The (uncredited?) illustrations from an earlier edition are delightful Wilhelm Busch pastiches.

- The design perpetuates white space anomalies from the earlier edition. The book could have been typeset anew, adjusting an earlier layout that ill fits modern book dimensions.

- Smith, if you dare take all your medicine, has a few interesting pieces here, including one on the ravages of Confederate cavalry among a Confederate population.

Overall this book is a good thing and worth doing although not necessarily worth having in everyon'e collection. To quote Bill Arp,

But somehow I like the plagy things, and while I last on the top side of this sile, I want 'em a hangin around.

What he said.

MG Lew Wallace

He was an artist/novelist/inventor/violin maker who married a senator's daughter and amnestied Billy the Kid. A nice feature on Lew Wallace and Ben Hur.

Biker Joe

Cut my beard back into a Joe Johnston syle this week. The effect, however, is more biker than beau ideal.

More Keegan reviews

Telegraph: Instead of adding to the pile of chronicles of the American Civil War, he has written a critique of them, from the point of view of a deep-thinking, distinguished military historian.

Washington Times: ... a notably thoughtful, if occasionally controversial, discussion of how the North won.

How are those Grant papers doing?

There's been a lot going on since the Grant Society's papers moved to Mississippi State. We've got a lot of catching up to do on the news.

Fortunately, John Marszalek will be giving us the complete rundown between 8:55 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning at the The 14th Annual Lincoln Forum Symposium (agenda here).

ACW diorama is "corrected"

If a museum is going to display a diorama, it requires that the diorama be "accurate"

... The original diorama was installed at the Texas Military Forces Museum at Camp Mabry in August 2007, but was dismantled in a dispute over alleged inaccuracies.

The updated diorama will be on display at the Texas Capitol through Nov. 29.

And you thought a diorama is a youthful fantasy expressed in toy soldiers and modeled landscape.

Keegan's reviews

Odd that Keegan has earned just a trickle of reviews.

Phila. Inquirer: ... assiduously researched and comprehensive... wonderfully concise, comprehensive and insightful work.

Seattle Times: ... Knopf's editors must have been taking a long lunch when this manuscript passed through their shop.

Episcopalians at war

This book looks like a guide for re-enactors, one that doubles as a prop: The Confederate Soldier's Pocket Manual of Devotions Including Balm for the Weary and Wounded. There are a couple of ahistoric elements here that could spoil the fun for sticklers, though. As the title says, it combines two original publications into one; there's also the matter of a modern foreword and introduction.

As to the content, to the casual reader, it will seem to present more of that generic army chaplaincy untold millions have endured during national service.

This Pocket Manual is interesting, however, for all sorts of reasons.

First of all, this book was printed and presumably carried by many tens thousands of soldiers. (The press release gave an astonishing press run, and I lost it.)

Second, it was compiled by the famous Charles Todd Quintard (pictured), a Connecticut physician who adopted ministry, Georgia, and the Rebel army, in that order. He was ridiculously well connected as an army chaplain, an intimate of Loring's during the so-called Romney campaign; acquaintance of the war's most famous Episcopalians, Lee and Jackson; close to both Joe Johnston and Hood; and need we mention Leonidas Polk? Polk was killed with four copies of Pocket Manual on him, three undelivered inscribed for Hardee, Johnston, and Hood. Quintard's conversion of a weeping Braxton Bragg at Perryville must be one of the most dramatic pieces of psychology witnessed in the Civil War.

(BTW, Quintard's relations with Patrick Cleburne raise an interesting question; in fact, the Irishman was raised in the Episcopal Church and entered the war as such.)

The introduction is superb and the foreword, though written by a Presbyterian (!), informs us that Quintard was a member of the Oxford (Tractarianist) Movement, a fascinating thing. The Oxfordians believed, among other things, that the Anglican Church comprised one branch of a tradition comprised also of the Roman and Orthodox Catholic Churches.* Quintard: "The Catholic Church loses not her members who depart hence in the Lord. This truth we confess in the Creed, and All Saints' Day confirms and preserves it."**

I personally saw the fruit of this movement ripen in London in the late 1970s when an accord was reached between London's (Russian) Orthodox Bishop Anthony Bloom (like Quintard, a man who worked as chaplain and physician, in his case for the French Resistance) and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Communicants could attend each other's masses (though without receiving the Eucharist).The most recent accommodations made from Rome reminds us of the underlying unities Tractarianism celebrated.

All this is said to put the reader on notice that Manual and Balm are to be read for Oxfordian content, which infuses the book with new interest.

The Foreword says Manual borrows heavily from the Book of Common Prayer of that time. It also says Quintard modified the prayers. What else did he modify? We could use some footnotes and elaboration here. Was the motive to move closer to Orthodox and Roman Catholics or to accommodate the sensibility of the many "low church" Protestants in the Confederate armies?

For instance, there is an anomalous version of the Creed in Pocket Manual. It does not match the contemporary Orthodox, Roman, or Anglican recitation. Digging around a little, I discovered it matched the Creed as per the 1789/1790 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer - which varies from the Anglican original.

So I had an Episcopal moment. Have you had an Episcopal moment lately?

You see that this could be a much more interesting book than it is. It is much more than a prop for re-enactors. Publishers should do more Quintard and they should go deep - as deep as the material deserves.

* The mid-19th Century saw the publication in America by the Oxford movement of wonderful translations of Orthodox classics such as the sermons and commentaries of John Chrysostom. Many of these are now accessible online. When you find them, they are still in their original Tractarian translation.

** My characterization may not sit well with some Episcopalians, e.g. "... the American part of the Tractarian controvery should be principally understood as a manifestation of a much deeper and distinctly native catholic development and its struggle to reach catholic clarity in an environment dominated by a dissenting Protestant ethos."

p.s. Shoutout to Episcopal Deacon Betsy Rosen and her Civil War blog.

11/11

For Armistice Day reading on a Civil War theme, Chapter 1 in The Summer the Archduke Died by Louis D. Rubin, Jr., is as good as it gets. It's an essay on how the Rubins, 19th Century Jewish immigrants to Charleston, assimilated into Southern culture and came to identify with the late Confederacy and its exploits. It's an essay on the southernness of the author and his connection to WWI through an upbringing drenched in Civil War memory.

On the face of it, this might be historical nostalgia. Look deeper and it's a virtuoso historiographic meditation based on family and personal material. The chapter might appear out of place to the casual reader but to the deep reader of histories it establishes charmingly and dramatically the author's history sensibility.

And so, for instance, the second chapter, the eponymous title essay, is concerned with the notion of shared responsibility for the start of WWI and it is a wonder to behold: the economy, the clarity, the choice of examples, the gentle contrariness that upends what you think you know and leaves you mildly astonished and grateful for correction. (I say this as a deep reader of modern European history of 40+ years.)

Summer is an essay collection. The hurried and the lazy reader can take bites. These will be enough, for the bites are extremely rich.

There is beach reading; this is fireplace reading with the best historical insights dressed in fine English prose.

Top right: The author in younger days.

Nov. 10, 1862

Excerpts from the letters of 2nd Lt. Henry P. Goddard:

Nov. 5, 1862

Heavy picket firing this morning. Burnside is in advance of our regiment. Blenker and his Dutchmen on our left. Our Army is on the south side of the Blue Ridge, Lee's on the north. We are securing gap after gap to prevent their getting on our flank. Our plan of campaign appears excellent and the "Johnies" will have to fight or fall back on Richmond. Gen. Couch now commands our corps. You can find Upperville on any map of Virginia. If they won't fight us here it would look as if we must catch and fight them at Port Royal on the Manassas RR, but it looks as if there muct be a fight for this gap variously known as Paris, Upperville or Ashby's Gap.

Nov. 7

We are pushing towards the Manassas Gap RR only three-fifths of a mile away.

Nov. 8

… marched through Rectortown, Va., crossing the Manassas Gap RR and through Salem, Va., (looks much like Salem, Conn.).

Nov 9

… marched 10 miles to Warrenton Junction, the most of a town I have seen in Virginia, and a place of great strategic importance as it is the junction of the roads from Washington and Richmond.

Nov. 10

Maj. Gen. G.B. McClellan, having been relieved of the command of the Army of the Potomac, we had a grand review from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., the general riding past us and bowing to the cheering, he was accompanied by his successor, Maj. Gen. Burnside. It was a splendid sight, but a sad day for the army. Curse the politicians who drove the general from his place just as his plans were developing. I never was a McClellanite till this last campaign, which has been managed splendidly. We have seized and held every gap in the Blue Ridge before us and got in the rebels rear here at Warrenton, and now he to whom we owe all this is removed.

Travails of a museum entrepreneur

From today's papers:

Terry Thomann, director of the Civil War Life museum, said yesterday that he plans to close the attraction in the Southpoint I center [Spotsylvania] and in two weeks open a store at 829 Caroline St., in Fredericksburg to sell Civil War-related books, souvenirs, T-shirts and gifts.

Let me break the tale down by excerpts:

The Civil War Life Museum's move comes almost two years after Thomann created a nonprofit foundation in hopes of raising $12 million for a new museum at the W.J. Vakos Courthouse Village development. Thomann said the foundation will continue to raise money for the museum in the city.

The plot thickens:

Supervisor Hap Connors was surprised that Thomann had already made a decision. He said the county for eight years paid the rent for Thomann's museum at the Visitors Center, including $61,995 this fiscal year. "We've invested close to $600,000 in his museum with free rent and we're on track to work with him and the Vakos company to build a museum at Courthouse [Village]," Connors said. "The next thing I know he bails out."

They say the key to starting a successful business is OPM. They say, setbacks do not deter the entrepreneur:

The first phase of his city plan is opening a store there [in town]. The second phase will be finding a location for a full-scale museum that will include exhibits, a Civil War Life 3-D theater and a working tintype studio with wet-plate photographs.

The third phase will be a research center.

Thomann said he will establish a Capital Committee to provide funding for the project, which recently received a $150,000 planning grant from the federal government.

They say you need an "elevator story" for investors.

This story has just two words: "heritage tourism."

McPherson on Keegan

The New York Times, having issued a friendly but critical review of Keegan's new Civil War history returns to the book with an unfriendly review two weeks later. The new reviewer, McPherson, writes:

The analytical value of Keegan’s geostrategic framework is marred by numerous errors that will leave readers confused and misinformed.

The tone is friendly up until that point and the whole piece could still be considered cordial if he gave a couple of examples of error and then signed off. Instead, McPherson compiles error after error after error. This is at the level of a Usenet flaming (coarser than my roastings of McP in this blog).

If you would do me the favor of reading his review of Keegan, that will set you up for my own review of transgressions McPherson commits in a new Gary Gallgher compilation.

Hat tip to Mr. Bonds for noticing this piece.

Biggest-ever allocation for battlefields

From CWPT:

The Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) today applauded members of the U.S. House and Senate for including the largest ever single-year allocation for the federal Civil War Battlefield Preservation Program in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 Interior Appropriations Act Conference Report (H Rept 111-316).

The conference report, scheduled for a final vote in both chambers later this week, includes $9 million for the Civil War Battlefield Preservation Program...

This 111-316 seems to be a fairly generic funding measure for certain departments - perhaps it will be controversy free. The "Civil War Battlefield Preservation Program" in question appears to be the LCWF's which uses income from leases rather than tax money. It buys land outright and it purchases easements.

Lincoln's books - where to get them?

We've all read Lincoln books, but few of us have ever read Lincoln's books. According to the new head of the National Endowment for the Arts, we're missing some good reading:

This [Barack Obama] is the first president that [who] actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln.

Well-written books by Abraham Lincoln: the NEA should make these better known.

p.s. I'm counting up presidential book authors between TR and today and am coming up with Wilson, Hoover, Nixon, Carter, and Reagan (omitting ghost-writing done for Clinton, JFK, and Ike).

If the new head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission showed not the slightest familiarity with his field, it would matter. If the head of the NEA speaks of Lincoln's books and the last presidential author being TR, that should matter too. History may be parked under the NEH, nevertheless...

Critics of historical fiction

An author of history-based fiction responds to criticism:

... the only requirement is for conjecture to be plausible and grounded in the best facts one can get. [...] What really disconcerts commentators, I suspect, is that, when they read historical fiction, they feel their own lack of education may be exposed; they panic, because they don't know which bits are true.

Out and about

Went to Rehoboth Beach a couple of weeks ago and saw the new paperback edition of Betsy Rosen's Hallam's War on display at a shoreside bookshop. Congratulations, Betsy!

(Visit beach = go to bookstore on the beach = vacation)

Drove my bike from Point of Rocks to Harpers Ferry on the canal path yesterday (loose clothing, no helmet, smoking) and noticed HF was jammed compared to the previous nice weekends - more crowded than a summer's day. Must be the John Brown Sesquicentennial pulling them in.

By the same token, and kudos to the NPS here, John Brown branding is at year-round, normal minimal levels. No banners, knick knacks, re-enactors, shouting guides, or other in-your-face anniversary stuff. Just more people.

I fortified myself for the return trip with a stout at The Secret Six tavern, then wondered if I had thoughtlessly commemorated the raid by my careless actions.

Acquitted myself with the argument that I would have done the same any year. A pumpkin ice cream cone quickly erased the sordid memory.

November, 1862

Post election, there were a lot of Lincoln/Obama parallels drawn. If McChrystal is relieved immediately after the November elections, we'll have another one.

NSFW

Dr. Latschar is gone, leaving us this startling quote:

"I never ever, ever searched for group sex or bestiality."

CWPT's Larry Tagg interview

CWPT's Hallowed Ground is a newsstand-worthy glossy mag that you won't find on newsstands. You get it the in the mail if you are a member. (In my case, I recently got two back issues instead of the current issue. Perhaps those are the just desserts for all who join at a discounted member rate.)

The magazine is online and there you will be able to access quite an interesting interview with Larry Tagg. Or not - the link is broken. [Update 10/26: fixed here.] Let me reprise the key Q and A here:

Q: There are hundreds of Lincoln books out there. What makes yours [The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln] different?

A: I continue to be amazed that nobody has written this book before. Every book about Lincoln makes occasional mention of opposition to this or that policy, but there has never been a full treatment of the length and breadth of that opposition, which was so vehement, so relentless and so ubiquitous - coming from all sides, Republican as well as Democrat. My book goes against the grain of mainstream Lincoln literature, which almost invariably takes a reverential tone, and leaves out the rabid ravings of the opinion-makers of the time. This conventional treatment has left the false impression that Lincoln governed from strength, when the more interesting truth is that he accomplished so much in the teeth of violent dissent. To me, this adversity is what makes Lincoln great.

I might have phrased this differently, with a Tolstoyan filter: It is what makes Lincoln (to me) so interesting as an historical figure, this lurching and stumbling through innumerable blunders, this squandering of goodwill in every personal relation, this functioning out of a matrix of systemic personal, physical, and political weakness with monumental results to show for it.

Lincoln offers - in my view - an inescapable historical lesson in counterintuitive results (style, capability, efficiency vs. outcome). I personally credit a lot of the Lincoln criticism, Democratic and Republican, and wish to stress that in a news-driven culture, it is quite natural for a public to seize on every error, compile a bill of particulars, and update this list with each headline, rumor or editorial. The impression of incapacity will be "logical" and justified but the trees obscure the forest for great and transcendent results can emerge from the smoke of daily accidents and bad choices.

Can Lincoln's incapacity coexists with a greatness of legacy? To me, obviously. It did and does. The record is indisputable, but subjected to interpretive rationalizing by simplifiers. His critics were not fools, nor were they delerious. But in the current mainstream Linconology, the record must be rewritten, errors righted, wisdom discovered, and Lincoln's critics silenced or demonized. Modern Linconology cannot extract greatness from weakness.

I am often amazed by deep Civil War readers/authors who cannot articulate the War Democrats' hawkish indictment of the Lincoln Administration circa 1862-1864. The Peace Democrats have constantly been brought in to distract and confuse. Not knowing the War Democrat position, not suspecting hawks savagely critical of Lincoln's softness-on-war, McClellan's candidacy is a mystery to readers because in a grotesque projection of Centennial "history," they subscribe to associations of the McClellan candidacy with peace and (anti)emancipation issues. Tagg's book can start to correct this.

Lincoln was McClellan's employee before the war, McClellan was Lincoln's employee during the war. This reminds one of the sides of a coin; each operated under amazing handicaps, each producing dramatic counterintuitive results. Lincoln and McClellan, historically, were aspects of the same paradox, one beyond any who have not drunk deeply of Lincoln criticism.

We know the McClellan criticism by heart. Learn the Lincoln criticism. Take the Tagg book as a starting point for your own investigation into contemporary views of this very interesting politician. You don't have to give up your warm and fuzzies - but you have to get away from the ahistorical mainstream of Linconology.

p.s. It may be helpful to read Hans Trefousse in conjunction with The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln. Trefousse is at one with Lincoln's critics on the left but he crafts his narratives such that Lincoln is able to escape censure on most Republican controversies, leaving the "traditional" reader with an icon intact and a deepened appreciation of and sympathy for progressive animosity towards this secular saint. On the other hand, to get a full grasp of the War Democracy's frustration with Lincoln, you'll eventually have to read the papers of that era after time spent with The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln.

p.p.s Jim Campi wrote a nice note to say CWPT uses different mailing services which can affect when and how the magazine is received.

The better Abby responds

Abby reaches for some ACW content.

Dear Abby: My husband and I are Civil War re-enactors. (My husband is a cannon soldier and I am a nurse re-enactor.) We would greatly appreciate it if you would remind your readers that if they come to any of the re-enactments to please not talk to the participants while they are firing weapons in "battle" because it could distract them. Something could go wrong and they could be badly injured. Thank you, Abby. -- CIVIL WAR RE-ENACTOR IN ELMIRA, N.Y.

Dear Re-enactor: Some people want to engage with history, others are content to be entertained. Let's encourage engagement. Fire your guns during private moments alone with friends - your mission publicly re-enacting is not about firepower but history power. - Dimitri van Buren

WaPo puts the squeeze on Latschar

Gettysburg Park super John Latschar will feature in a great many blogs this week, so let me facilitate with a roundup.

Sept. 17 - Latschar cleared of 17 allegations by a DoI IG report. ("...we discovered no evidence of criminality or conflict of interest in contracting practices providing construction management services for the museum and visitor's center.")

Oct 16 - Latschar wins National Trust prize (his "contributions to historic preservation cannot be overstated.") He is a no-show.

Oct 19 - WaPo: "Report ignored explicit images found on park official's computer." ("The Inspector General's Office would not comment on why the findings of Latschar's improper use of his office computer were omitted from the report.")

It was a year ago that Eric Wittenberg denounced Latschar's proposed move to the Gettysburg Foundation, a move that would have jumped his salary by $100,000 - a move the WaPo now says was put on ice when the super learned law and policy "would prohibit him from performing many [Foundation] job duties, including 'any communication to or appearance before an employee of the United States.' " Eric is the first to weigh in on the new revelations.

Novus Livy at Gettysblog was happy last month when Latschar was cleared; he views the Gettysburg Times as ginning up fear, uncertainty and doubt about the super. He'll not be happy that WaPo has intervened. He and Eric hold reverse sides of the question.

Myself, I got roughed up on USENET a few years ago discussing Latschar's brainchild, the public-private partnership (hate it).

WaPo reports that as of today, Latschar remains at his post. Russell Bonds sums it up:

Another ill-advised "frontal assault on the breastworks" at Gettysburg.

p.s. BTW, Latschar's retirement and assumption of Foundation duties remains on the NPS website even today. No footnote, no redaction a year after the non-event. Perhaps the webmaster needs a public-private partnership to update some information.

Keegan's Civil War

I never had much use for John Keegan except to enjoy his work as one would op-ed pieces. The views are occasionally enjoyable but the level of generalization (coupled with a lack of historic sensibility) will eventually irritate the careful reader.

I mentioned here some years ago his starting the American Revolution on the wrong year (and then, McPherson-like, defending the factual error on literary grounds). Here are a couple of typical annoyances culled from a NYT book review of his new The American Civil War:

Because the South had few if any large cities to attack, Mr. Keegan notes, its army “presented itself as the only target at which to strike.”

Which ignores other geography, such as fertile valleys, railroads, rivers, and the forts guarding same.

“Southern women are a distinctive breed even today, admired for their femininity and outward-going personality.”

The generalist observes no limits in generalizing.

The linked review is friendly but negative.

The press discovers "cannonball"

Refreshing! Reporter uses the word "cannonball" instead of "bomb," "grenade," "shell," or "explosive." Big city reporters may be trainable.

Meanwhile, what are the chances that alcohol was involved in this accident?

The Lees of Stratford Hall

Quite a long and good article here on the Virginia Lees and their ancestral home, ending with notes on Robert E. Lee. (BTW, there is a contemporary house of similar magnificence erected by the Maryland Lees that sits near Crampton's Gap in a lovely grove.)

Camp Pope liquidation

Clark Kenyon has sent a card to his mailing list announcing the closing of Camp Pope Bookshop as a retail operation and the staging of an inventory liquidation sale starting October 15 at www.camppope.com. On Nov. 15, when the sale ends, the website will present Camp Pope publishing (his marque's own books) while offering publishing services. This after 20 years of direct mail retail ...

Gusher

As I play catch up compiling titles for listing on Civil War Book News, I am overwhelmed by the number of cheaply rushed-to-market reprints with no value added. Publishers are going to print with bicycles and seashores on their insta-covers; most shockingly, they can't be bothered to write a description of the book for Amazon or B and N where the title is listed.

Here's someone who did design a cover and write a description but he pioneers a new shortcut to market. From the description:

This is an OCR edition with typos.

Beautiful.

I have never excluded titles (except juvenile) from listing at that site but have had to make a new policy: If you're a reprint with no description listed, good luck.

May extend this exclusion policy to all paperback editions previously listed in HB as well as simple reprints lacking revision.

Ugh!

A general uses his French

Shades of Halleck! (and Hardee and McClellan, et al).

Lincoln's councils vs. Jomini's councils

Lincoln's persistence in forcing on McClellan councils of war reminds me of a passage in JFC Fuller's The Foundations of the Science of War in which he quotes Jomini at length. Fuller sets up the quote with an observation close to my own heart: during peace, generals "are always talking about command, and the qualifications of the commander, [then] the first thing they do when war is declared is to abrogate it." (Nowadays they are delighted to surrender command either in peace or war.)

Then comes Jomini:

It has been thought, in succession, in almost all armies, that frequent councils of war, by aiding the commander with their advice, give more weight and effect to the direction of military operations. Doubtless if the commander were a Soubise, a Clermont, or a Mack, he might well find in a council of war opinions more valuable than his own; the majority of the opinions given might be preferable to his; but what success could be expected from operations conducted by others than those who have originated and arranged them? What must be the result of an operation which is but partially understood by the commander, since it is not his conception?

I have undergone a pitiable experience as prompter [aide] at headquarters, and no one has a better appreciation of the value of such services than myself, and it is particularly in a council of war that such a part is absurd. The greater the number and the higher the rank of the military officers who compose the council, the more difficult will it be to accomplish the triumph of truth and reason, however small be the amount of dissent.

What would have been the action of a council of war to which Napoleon proposed the movement of Arcola, the crossing of the Saint Bernard, the manoeuvre at Ulm, or that at Gera and Jena? The timid would have regarded them as rash, even to madness; others would have seen a thousand difficulties of execution, and all would have concurred in rejecting them; and if, on the contrary, they had been adopted, and had been executed by anyone but Napoleon, would they not certainly have proved failures?

In my opinion, councils of war are a deplorable resource, and can be useful only when concurring in opinion with the commander, in which case they may give him more confidence in his own judgment, and, in addition, assure him that his lieutenants, being of his opinion, will use every means to ensure the success of the movement. This is the only advantage of a council of war, which, moreover, should be simply consultative and have no further authority; but if, instead of this harmony, there should be difference of opinion, it can only produce unfortunate results.

The careful reader, noting the use Lincoln made of his cabinet's counsel, understands that it was never really about councils of war anyway.

Habitats of the great spotted errata

If you've ever tried to correct an error in Civil War publishing (or pontificating), have a laugh and be glad we aren't reading physics. (Incident is certified true in the first addendum.)

McChrystal and ACW strategy

Civil War readers who want to stretch their strategy legs a bit might enjoy reading Stanley McChrystal's report to the sitting administration. Spoiler alert: don't read further down if you want fresh impressions from the link. Read the linked document first.

***

My view of the current general officer corps is reflected in an earlier post, and it strikes me that this is what you'd expect from that cohort: a policy brief asking for policy commitments rather than a strategic assessment with recommendations. It goes without saying that Civil War authors and readers become positively unhinged when they see policy discussed by generals, especially in certain Harrison Bar letters, so you likely caught this yourselves.

What was required was a paper that says, "If you define victory as this, here's what we can achieve; if you define it as that, here's what we can achieve; if you want status quo, here's what's needed." Also, "Here's what's happening as I see it."

Sometimes, today's bureaucrat in uniform will will excuse himself from reviewing and presenting any options to civilian leaders by saying "There are no good options." That leaps to a policy conclusion (not the job of a soldier) without investing work in option development for civilian review. The current chair of the Joint Chiefs is an absolute master at this as was his predecessor.

This report has its merits and it is interesting to see history unfold, especially when it puts to use our reading and thinking from another sphere.

The antebellum duel

As conceived by Tony Millionaire.

Journalist massacres Centralia story

Curious news: the Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War appears to be dedicating a memorial to the Union victims of the Centralia massacre on Sunday. A memorial honoring the Rebels has been on the site since 2006, says the AP.

Union catch-up after locals honored Bloody Bill Anderson?

More likely, the crack journalists of the Associated Press have confused the Centralia Massacre with the Battle of Centralia days later, and perhaps mixed up the honorees.

"Confederate soldiers who died in the battle have been honored at the site since 2006," says the wire. What site? Is AP referring to this historical marker as a Confederate memorial? It's not on the battle site and it's not a memorial.

Let's disentangle some professional journalism to get nearer the truth:

(1) Union soldiers killed in the battle have been honored since 1957 by this Centralia memorial. It's in a graveyard.

(2) The Daughters are erecting a memorial to Union victims of the train/depot massacre (which triggered the battle days later).

(3) There is a battlefield info station in Centralia Park that explains the clash that followed the massacre. It is not on the battlefield.

(4) There appears to be no collective memorial to Confederate battle dead at Centralia, nor to the butchery of Bill Anderson, unless it is on private property and kept quiet.

The biggest question is where is the new monument? AP began its story: "A Civil War battlefield in central Missouri has a new monument..." Do they mean a public park is getting a new monument?

Perhaps this is misinformation from the Daughters. Why would victims of a massacre at the depot be honored on a battlefield? Especially since that battlefield land is inaccessible, not public. (Again, the battlefield marker is itself in a geographically irrelevant public park.)

Have you ever seen a story in which almost every piece of information is wrong?

Missouri readers, help us out here.

History majors

History majors 1970/71 to 2003/04 ("the last academic year with available figures") declined from 18.5 percent to 10.7 percent of the undergraduate body.

The author lumps history's decline in with that of the "literary humanities."

ACW blogging

Larry Tagg is actively blogging again but the topics are presidential rather than ACW per se. I was worried about Larry but did not label his blogroll link "inactive".

In fact, some inactive listings have come to life (glad I kept them on the blogroll).

Billy Yank is back but the lure of the daily headline keeps him out of Civil War topics.

Brian Dirck, whom I also labeled inactive for awhile, has the latest Lincoln movie news.

Civil War Sources is now quite active.

And I'll round up the newly dormant links in a separate post.

Earl Hess in the Trenches

There is much to like in Earl Hess's In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat -- and I like it very much. This is a book that fills a gap, rounds off a good series, and breaks new ground. It has interesting (and necessary) information on nearly every page. The photos and diagrams add information and pleasure.

Although Trenches may be an author's triumph it is – sadly - an editor's failure.

Hess has drawn his target and placed the shot square in the center. But the target is too narrowly drawn and the important data is off his periphery; his editors needed to counsel him. This is the main problem. The second issue is in editors not forcing the issue of the details not being detailed enough (as a former builder and user of entrenchments there is much more that I want to know). Finally, overlaying it all, seem to be some general publishing decisions that really rankle. Let me start with those.

The titles, main and sub, are misleading. "In the Trenches" implies an Osprey-like approach that puts the reader hard in the material world of dug mud. This is where you live; this is how you eat; here's how supplies are distributed; here's how you repel an attack; your latrine is over there; your parapet is this high. That's not what this book is about.

If the title is misleading, the subtitle is obnoxious: Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat. Hess has an ill-conceived throwaway line in the preface that may have been sourced for the subtitle: "Field fortifications helped to bring about final Confederate defeat in the Civil War." When you make such a statement, you are committing to a line of argument. When you put it in the title, you're doubling down on a promise to show how entrenchments used by all defeated one side but not the other. That promise is never seriously taken up. This has the appearance of cynically greasing the skids to a broader audience by enlarging the scope of the work (virtually, not in fact).

The press release for this book, by contrast, gets it right: "This book covers all aspects of the [Petersburg] campaign…" A title should have been crafted to reflect that. Note the campaign content in earlier titles: Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864; Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign.

What we are looking at here are campaign histories with an emphasis on field fortifications. If you come to this book expecting a monograph on entrenchments, forget it.

And this may explain our next glaring editorial failure. As this is the third title in a series, we would expect an essay that acts as a capstone, telling us where we've been, how and what changed, and what it all means. There is not even a single paragraph summary at the end of Trenches to tie the three works together. If the editors viewed these as stand-alone narrative histories with no analytic connection, only then could we arrive at such a decision.

Moreover, Hess in this work recasts the historiography of Petersburg offensives – an innovation. He rejects the current structure of classifying offensives and creates his own – which undoubtedly is offered here for future use to other historians. The effect is to tilt the emphasis even further away from analyzing field fortifications towards an overall weighting as campaign narrative.

By allowing Hess to draw the topical circle so narrowly, major issues loom to trouble the reader. What did the builders of the trenches intend? How did they fit into the operational plan – if there was an operational plan (or do trenches signify the abandonment of operational planning?). What did Grant and Meade think they were doing? Never mind the lip service of past historians, what were they or their subordinates trying to do?

Opportunities for comparison abound and since Hess wrote books about earlier uses of entrenchments, we would expect comparisons, but these are missing -- another odd editing anomaly.

In Battle Tactics of the Civil War, Paddy Griffith pointed out that the manpower-per-foot of entrenchments faced by the Union at Yorktown was much denser than that faced at Petersburg: he gave his calculations. Why wouldn't more comparative data like that be rendered here and then analyzed?

Another striking thing for the early war historian is the conduct of the siege at Yorktown compared with the entrenching done around Petersburg. The overriding Union purpose at Yorktown was to prepare for an extended, obliterating artillery strike, followed by an advance with an amphibious landing behind the shattered lines. Artillery – and the will to use it – are afterthoughts in Hess's book. Entrenchment seems to be an end in itself rather than any means to an end. The entrenchers are not campaigning at all but seem to be acting out the very parody of siegework as misportrayed by Republican editorialists early in the war. This raises historiographic issues which again are left outside the scope of the work.

Viewed as a campaign narrative we lack here the various commanders' intentions; viewed as a monograph on trench warfare, we lack structure, analysis and depth; viewed historiographically, we have here a new way of counting the battles around Petersburg; viewed as the last part of a trilogy, we have lost our train of thought. I think Earl Hess had in mind a book that interested him and he wrote it for himself, not a bad thing at all. I encourage you to read it.

His editors, however, missed their chance to make the "interesting" important.

Civil War drawings shown

A large stash of vivid, unpublished Civil War drawings is on display in Boston. Unfortunately, they are illegible in this news story. The museum site offers better views and the 650-picture collection has its own site. Best is the browse-by-subject page.

Shown above: detail from McClellan's Laurel Hill pursuit of Garnett. The on-the-scene artist wrote, "Raining in torrents. Mud over ankles. Men worn out. At first cannon shot they waked up and at every shot quickened their steps till the[y] came in leaning forward and going double quick. Military stores of all description scattered on the road."

Sesquicentennial news

From Kentucky, from Alabama, from South Carolina.

A complete guide

The Complete Gettysburg Guide is a new kind of guidebook. It doesn't set up a new paradigm for guidebooks, but rather adjusts each standard component to produce a large overall change. This makes it as different from ordinary guidebooks as an army staff ride is from, say, a battlefield tour.

Consider a basic, conventional guide. There's a map, usually B&W, showing roads but little detail, with numbers that key to explanatory text. The idea behind the numbers drives the organization of the guide. The spots on the ordinary tour map can be there based on popularity; accessibility; efficiency of touring; and, very often, "ownership" (belonging to a park). The sequence of stops can be based on covering-the-most-ground-in-a-day; or "must see" criteria; or places being closest to the road; or richness of historical data for that spot. This builds a high degree of arbitrariness into most tour guides. Here, author J. David Petruzzi and his publisher address arbitrariness as a matter of "completeness." The title, The Complete Gettysburg Guide, could as well have been The Rational Gettysburg Guide, or The Historian's Gettysburg Guide, chronology providing the motive organizing the "spots" in this work.

The work (which has its own website) follows the time sequence of days, beginning with opening cavalry clashes and finishing with follow-on battles. (It includes , at the end of the book, visits to cemeteries and rock carvings, which are obviously off the timeline.) The narrative is keyed, not to your day, or an allotted time you will spend in any one spot, but rather to the event, with events broken up intra-day (you might say into "phases"). Each of these phases gets its own beautiful map by Steven Stanley adorned with a clock. The map shows dispositions as they were on terrain as it was; the clock allows the visitor to align time of day to the tour; and the historic description of events allows visualization of events in place.

I mentioned adjusting components. The maps are spectacular, as anyone who receives Stanley's maps in CWPT mailings could expect. The minimum position for publisher Savas Beatie would have been to provide a route map; here we see many top-notch battle maps as a kind of bonus. The clock aspect is also important in maintaining fidelity to timeline – the organizing principle for the whole tour.

Another adjustment: the battle narrative. These are not here compiled or recapped from same-old-same-old; J.D. Petruzzi has researched and written material that would otherwise stand alone in a splendidly written work based on new accounts and including fresh contemporary (and current) imagery. There is a great deal of good reading here, irrespective of touring.

So we have these vivid, and interesting battle descriptions – good history - graced by fascinating maps and novel imagery inhabiting a guide book done completely in color, the "guide" part of which is also special.

On a mechanical level, the guidance, the driving instructions, is at a level of detail rarely seen, involving tenths of a mile and GPS numbers. GPS is becoming more common in guides, but here the driving instructions are painstaking and perhaps idiot proof. (Let me try them out before certifying them idiot proof.) More important, Petruzzi is moving the reader around a lot, intra-spot. The user is looking at an event from multiple angles - and I do mean multiple!

One charming thing is that the directions are boundary free. You may wind up in someone's field or driveway or parking lot; the points of interest are not organized on the principle of park limits.
The book design and production are another area in which the idea of the guide book is kicked up a couple of notches. This reasonably priced hardback is done entirely in color, as I said, and it follows the best principles behind magazine design - Steve Stanley did the design as well as the maps. It is laid out better than your glossy ACW mags and includes sidebars, breakout quotes, and more and better relevant imagery. It is a completely thought-out book that may remind older readers of the joy once brought to them by the American Heritage History of the Civil War. Kudos to the team: to J.D., Steve Stanley, and their publisher.

A final word that seems never to make it into guidebook reviews. Whether an author intends it or not, the guidebook is a produced and directed artistic experience. I'm not referring to the physical book but to the effects on the user who is being directed. There is little doubt in my mind that J.D. Petruzzi has distilled into his directions and narrative a specific - and beautiful - experience that he wants me to have. Guidebooks like this are rare and ambitious; a Russian mystic once said that great art attempts to produce the same reaction in all experiencers. This looks like an attempt in that class.

This is a tome that can be thoroughly enjoyed without leaving home – perhaps an unintended consequence of its excellence. I intend, however, to use some of these glorious, dry, cool September days to try the book out. If any guidebook deserves to be exercised, this one does.

Russell Bonds

Thinking about what I wrote yesterday: as I go deeper into the immensity of War Like the Thunderbolt, it becomes plainer that there is bigger story.

This is a long book (517 pp in the advance reader's copy) sustained at the highest literary standard in which Russell Bonds maintains - despite the limits of a narrative structure - an honest historic sensibility with justice to evidence for all. There may be quibbles, and the author does like the occasional sly-and-dry dig, but he is all about getting at the facts of the matter rather than slighting evidence to pour formula down the throats of the reader.

Friends, those who read Sears while despising his dogmas, say to me they buy his books out of love for his writing. Here is a better writer with fewer dogmas. They like the vividness, the knitting together of contemporary testimony Sears offers. Here, there is more testimony, and it is fresher. They like the campaign focus in title after title combined with an epic perspective in each. Thunderbolt has this, in greater proportion here, as if matched to the broader geography encompassed in the story.

So, it seems to me possible that Sears, no longer able to deliver new works at reasonable intervals, is to be overtaken in the marketplace by one who writes better English, writes better history, and who satisfies more reader needs than those that made Sears a top-seller. I am not only comparing Bonds to Sears per Sears but more to the point, Sears as the leading popular Civil War author ... the survivor of a once popular genre. To see the (to me, close) interval between Stealing the General and Thunderbolt, and considering the quality of each work, stamina speaks out and the potential seems to be here for the first major new Civil War author in a generation publishing general works at intervals to a standard that generates (and deserves) an enthusiastic following.

This is all market talk and something of an injustice to the author's inherent merits, but I want to finish in the same vein. His many virtues we'll take up another time.

The end of Centennial dominance of ACW publishing has arrived as we knew it would. The authors have died out; among the survivors, results are meager, activity is low. Exciting new studies appear with discoveries and analysis faster than the old guard can assimilate them or discredit their authors. The pot has been heating but has not come to a boil.

My own anti-narrative biases led me to hope that the big change we long for would come not just through new content but through new forms, non-narrative forms. Grandpa would be thrown out with the bathwater. I was naive. Thunderbolt suggests that narrative will replace narrative in the same market and for the same readers, except that it will be better narrative informed by better history dealt out by an honest broker aimed respectfully at a knowing audience.

This may then be how the Centennial ends, and this therefore is no place for any petulance over historiographic form. Whomever frees us and however he gets here, we need to be free.

Thank you Russell and thank you new and future narrative historians. It will be your skill and sensibility in managing narrative that sets you above what went before.

"War Like the Thunderbolt"

The Wall Street Journal has excerpted a chapter from Russell Bonds' new book, "War Like the Thunderbolt." This is accompanied by an book review by Winston Groom - which seems to have been written by one of Groom's characters, Forrest Gump. It's accompanied by a similarly distracting comments section ("I'm no expert but I got this a few years ago from watching BookTV and I forget the author's name...").

But good for Russell - two placements in the Journal, three cheers. Could it be his publisher, Westholme, has some juice?

Graced with an advanced copy, I can say that this is beautifully written narrative history. It is exactly what the Civil War nonfiction buyer is looking for. Bonds is careful in his research, artistic in his assembly of testimony, deliberate in his analysis, cautious in judgement, gentle with reputations, measured in his tempo, and interesting throughout.

Narrative history is not for me. This book is so well done, it takes away all the easy criticisms a typical narrative reading offers and puts me up against the bedrock, generic issues of narrative structure per se. That has nothing to do with Russll Bonds, however, and can be saved for a future meditation.

Meanwhile I continue to read, enjoy, and highly recommend this book.

"Let us have our Walmart and let us stop the battle"

There will be a lot of blogging on the Wilderness Walmart vote, so let me get out of the way as fast as I can.

The title quote, complete from the linked story, is "I know we've been referred to as ignorant shoppers. I feel bad about that but I'll live with it. Let us have our Walmart and let us stop the battle." Let us have peace, as Grant said.

The reporting explains why preservationists lost: "Many residents cited three reasons for supporting the Walmart proposal: jobs, tax revenue and a cheap shopping option..."

The 4-1 vote routed preservationists; humiliated them; cut down their orchards, salted their fields, carried their women and children into slavery. But the preservationists will not learn.

They fail to see similar motives in their allies the heritage tourism boosters; or in the various greens who team up to save ducks and battlefields or open space and battlefields or farmland and battlefields. These multi-purpose alliances can deliver success but confess great weakness.

Heritage tourism, for instance, is a dark alliance that is all about jobs, tax revenue, and cheap shopping. The expedient alliances pursued nationally to save battlefields will turn against preservationists as surely as the council that voted in Walmart and voted out history. If there is no organic preservation scene with political roots and deep local cultural affinity, all is in peril.

The "outsiders" who swooped in here deserve some credit but we need to look at the resources wasted in this battle; the opportunity cost of wasted time, energy and treasure; the polarization of preservation around the Wilderness into us versus them; major message failure; and the fundamental truth that advocates of "jobs, tax revenue and a cheap shopping" are not natural allies of the Civil War preservationist when parading as "heritage tourism" advocates.

We had a Bull Run in the Wilderness. Will we regroup and reorganize on sounder lines? Will certain generals be relieved? Can we retrain before the next battle?