of Battlefields and Bibliophiles

2009-07-07T10:21:00.000-07:00

introducing
Woodbury
Historical
Tours

Lee's Retreat, and the Surrender at Appomattox
August 7 and 8,
with Ron Wilson and Patrick Schroeder
2 days of tours, includes lunch, and Saturday dinner with speaker $250 : 20 seat limit : HQ: Farmville, VA
See more info and itinerary HERE:

Unseen Appomattox
August 22, with Patrick Schroeder
includes lunch $125 : 20 seat limit :
HQ Appomattox, VA
See more info and itinerary HERE:

[photo above: former and current Appomattox National Historic Park chief historians Ron Wilson, left, and Patrick Schroeder]

2009-07-05T21:35:00.001-07:00

Hoodistas go off the deep end

I noticed in the last issue of Civil War News that a group of John Bell Hood worshipers, the John Bell Hood Historical Society, actually took an ad out to denounce historian and author Wiley Sword. Why? The reason given in the attack ad is because Sword called Hood's memoirs inaccurate and unreliable.

Hmmm. As the kids say, "duh!" Where have these people been? One of the first things any earnest student of the war discovers is that Hood's autobiography is a self-serving, wildly distorted rewriting of history meant to exonerate himself at the expense of others, mainly at the expense of General Joe Johnston. It is one of those primary sources so compromised by inaccuracy, misrepresentation, and tortured rationalizations, that competent historians would never consider citing it to substantiate any assertion that wasn't already thoroughly corroborated elsewhere.

To the members of the John Bell Hood Historical Society, those aren't just fighting words, they are part of an "unholy Jihad." To wit, quoting from the web site devoted to attacking Mr. Sword, "As Sword did in his acclaimed 1991 book, Embrace an Angry Wind: The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, in his latest effort he engages in an unholy Jihad against Gen. Hood, filtering from historical records any and all documented evidence that does not support his biased, agenda-based premise."

I'm no expert on radical Islam, but wouldn't an "unholy jihad" translate to an "unholy holy war"? Is it fair for me to refer to the members of a "historical society" as "worshippers"? Yes, when they respond to perceived criticism of their hero with words like "desecration" and "unholy."

But there are any number of things the Hoodites object to in at the two Sword titles mentioned above. They don't like Sword's comment that Hood was ambitious. Aren't all officers ambitious, they ask disingenuously, seemingly oblivious to Hood's shameless power grab before Atlanta, seeking to discredit Johnston and to get Hardee passed over for promotion.

Likewise, they take Sword to task for such egregious assertions as, “. . .young Hood struggled with the academic curriculum [at West Point], winding up forty-fourth in his class of fifty-two upon graduation in 1853.” Now what, you may ask, is the objection? The Hoodites think it unfair of Sword not to have mentioned that Hood's class originally had 93 cadets, and that 41 of them dropped out. Some representative of the historical society writes, "It would be more fair and accurate to view Hood as ranked 44th out of 93 original cadets in his class." Nevermind that the 41 drop-outs are not part of Hood's graduating class. They don't rank non-graduating cadets. What would be the point of that? How ridiculous that the Hoodites feel they must add 41 to the rolls in order to mitigate Hood's pedestrian academic record.

The "Sword Exposed" website is a long exercise in nit-picking, rationalization, and selective highlighting of comments from contemporaries that compliment Hood. For example, the site challenges Sword's assertion that Hood's "decision to sacrifice the lives of so many in an unlikely military gambit was condemned as ‘murder’ by some of his men.” To counter that, the site admits that some men did feel that way, and then quotes Sam Watkins from Co Aytch: ". . .We all loved Hood, he was such a clever fellow, and a good man. . . Poor fellow, I loved him, not as a general, but as a good man. . ." So where's the contradiction? If anything, Watkins is validating the notion that the men did not consider Hood a great general.

It's one thing to take issue with a historian's work. By all means, put up a web page and point out your problems with it. There's nothing wrong with hard-hitting book reviews, as long as they are honest, substantiated critiques, but acting as apologist destroys credibility. For a self-described historical society to take out an ad in response to "desecration"—disagreements with an author—is just embarrassing. Sort of in the same way that Hood's book, Advance and Retreat, is an embarrassing entry in the realm of Civil War memoirs. At least Hood's book generated proceeds which helped care for his 11 orphans, and that is a positive good. Conversely, what's the value of a historical society that engages in character assassination against Civil War historians?

2009-07-02T23:28:00.000-07:00

A brief follow-up to the query posted here last Saturday -- whether our 18th president, Ulysses S. Grant, visited California suffragette Sarah Wallis's (Mayfield, now Palo Alto) farm in 1877: Mary Lyon, author of this article on Sarah Wallis for "California Historian," pointed me to several of her sources, including Unsettling the West: Eliza Farnham and Georgiana Bruce Kirby in Frontier California (Santa Clara University, 2004), page 314.

Next, we'll see what Dorothy Regnery's article in The Californian offers by way of substantiation. Separately, I'll query Grant authority Brooks Simpson on the chance that he can resolve the question in one fell swoop.

2009-06-30T20:40:00.000-07:00

"worry-ye-not, fans of ponchos, big hats and spitting, 2009 just might be your year"

At last, a FPS game featuring Confederate deserters who head off to defend their home in Georgia and end up being chased through the greatest cliches of the Wild West. With Gatlin guns to boot.

How to summarize? This review captures the essential script: "Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood tells the story of how Ray McCall -- the bible-wielding, gun-toting psychopathic Reverend from the first game- goes from Confederate soldier to man of the cloth by way of outlaw. Beginning in the fire and brimstone of the American Civil War trenches, Ray and his younger brother Thomas desert the Southern army in order to return home and protect their family. This leaves their psychotic commander, Barnsby, desperate for blood, pursuing Thomas and Ray -- along with youngest brother, Priest William -- across the country."

It's not your father's video game. That would probably be Pong. Read all about it here.

2009-06-27T16:18:00.000-07:00

Did President Grant really visit Palo Alto in 1877?
or is it similar to claims that "Washington slept here"?

I went for a walk in the neighborhood the other night, specifically to get a picture of a historical marker about 1/4 mile from my apartment. In 12 years here, oddly enough, I never got around to visiting this marker until this week—odd, because I am a little bit obsessive about seeing every marker I pass by, or am in proximity to. In fact, I thought it was on another block of La Selva, probably hidden from easy view, and never took the time to investigate further.

California Registered Historical Landmark marker number 969 reads:

Sarah Armstrong Wallis (1825–1905) was a pioneer in the campaign for women’s voting rights. In 1870 she was elected president of California’s first statewide suffrage organization which in 1873 incorporated as the California State Woman Suffrage Education Association. The home she built on this site, Mayfield Farm, was a center of suffrage activities attracting state and national leaders such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Ulysses S. Grant

Some articles, like this one in "California Historian," state that Wallis "entertained President U.S. Grant there in 1877." Grant would have left office in March of 1877 (inauguration in those days did not occur until around March 20), so I assumed a visit would have occurred in the early months of the year. It did not dawn on me right away that, of course, even after he left office people would still refer to him as "President" Grant. There is also the fact that Grant left for a European tour soon after leaving office, which narrows the window for a West Coast visit still more.

I spent a good deal of time last night searching digital archives of early California papers, in particular the Daily Alta California, and the Daily Call, which, it seems, almost certainly would have recorded a visit by Grant to the Bay Area in 1877 (given the amount of reporting on Grant in general). I also searched my limited personal library of Grant-related material for any mention of a Mayfield visit. My cursory searches yielded nothing.

By chance, yesterday I commented on Kevin Levin's blog entry about his reading of a new work on Grant, Joan Waugh's, U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth. Specifically, I asked Kevin if Waugh's work spends "any time on women’s support for Grant in 1872 (Susan B. Anthony was arrested after voting for him him that year)? I’m looking for references to President Grant’s visit to the West Coast at the tail end of his 2nd term, when he apparently met with California suffragette Sarah Wallis."

Intriguingly, this prompted a response from one Bob Pollock, a ranger at the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site: "David, Your question has sparked interest among the park rangers here at Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site. We are not aware of a trip by Grant to California in 1877 and it seems unlikely. He left office in March, and boarded a steamship at Philadelphia in May to go on his around the world trip. It seems more likely that if he met Sarah Wallis it would have been in 1879 when he and Julia conclude their travels by arriving in San Francisco. We are going to look into this some more."

I'll address that here in the hopes that Bob will weigh in and help shed more light on the matter. My neighborhood historical marker just got a lot more interesting on this steamy June Saturday.

Bob, my source for it is simply the marker itself (and one article), though I will now email the long-time historian for the neighborhood association in the hopes of uncovering something substantive. One encounters passing reference to Grant's visit in any number of articles, but I suspect they're all relying on the same source—probably the marker, or a database of marker text. One contributor from the Palo Alto Historical Association avoided reference to Grant in his essay on Sarah Wallis. The aforementioned "California Historian" article specified the 1877 visit. Maybe that was just a typo.

I hope we can establish Grant's visit to Sarah Wallis, a spectacular historic figure in her own right (more on her in a subsequent blog entry). The mansion Wallis built burned to the ground in 1936, and the area is now the quiet residential area of Barron Park. Few old growth redwoods remain, but a few of those magnificent trees in the neighborhood appear to be old enough to have witnessed a visit by the old general.

(image at top is entitled "Res of Mrs. Sarah Wallis, Mayfield, Santa Clara, Co., Cal., from the David Rumsey Map Collection. Mayfield is part of what makes up Palo Alto).

Just for fun, visit this 2006 blog entry on a California tree named for General Grant (along with the Lincoln and Sherman trees).

2009-06-27T01:23:00.000-07:00

Dead on
June 25th

NEWSPAPERS RACE TO REPORT THE SHOCKING STORY

Before Wolf Blitzer was interviewing holograms, before news apps for the iPhone, before Twitter, there were just newspapers.

George Custer, "the boy general" of the Civil War, was 36-years-old when he overreached on June 25, 1876, on the eve of the nation's centennial celebrations. Two newspapers broke the story, the Bismark (Dakota Territory) Tribune, and the Helena (Montana Territory) Herald.

Marcus Kellogg, a correspondent with the Tribune, was "embedded" with the Seventh Cavalry, and killed along with Custer's men. The last dispatch he sent, dated June 21, included this update, "We leave the Rosebud tomorrow. . .and by the time this reaches you we will have met and fought the red devils, with what result remains to be seen."

The famous headline in the special edition of the Tribune on July 6 reported: "Massacred: Gen. Custer and 261 Men the Victims." According to the paper, "The body of Kellogg alone remained unstripped of its clothing, and was not mutilated" (other sources describe his corpse as scalped, and missing an ear). This 2,500-word account, incorporating Kellogg's notes, was the first fully-detailed reportage.

Consider that. Ten days passed before the premier newspapers in the East were reporting the story. By contrast, events during the Civil War, from far-flung battlefields, could be telegraphed nearly instantly. The first trans-continental telegram was sent from Sacramento to Washington in 1861, 15 years before Custer's last stand. But reporting from Montana was another "story" altogether. It was a journalistic black hole.

[at left: intrepid reporter and casualty of war, Marcus Kellogg]

Five days after the battle, the steamboat Far West, loaded up with wounded, Kellogg's notes, and Myles Keogh's horse "Commanche" -- sole survivor from Custer's contingent -- began the 700-mile river journey to Fort Lincoln at Bismark, North Dakota. The Far West arrived with news of the battle on July 5th, and Tribune editor Clement Lounsberry went to work on the story. According to the State Historical Society of North Dakota, "there was only a single telegraph line between Bismark and St. Paul at that time, and the only way to keep the line open was to keep transmitting. So, whenever Lounsberry fell behind, he had the telegraph operator transmit lines of scripture from his pocket Bible. It reportedly took Lounsberry and the operators 24 hours to finish, and the total bill for the transmission came to more than $3,000. The following day, the New York Herald ran a 14-column story about Custer's demise."

2009-06-23T01:30:00.000-07:00

"Seven Civil War Stories You Didn't Learn in High School"

Seeing the headline of this Wall Street Journal article piqued my interest. I was hoping to find some new tidbit, some edgy new interpretation, or at least some really intriguing twists on commonly-known stories. Instead, the Seven Civil War Stories presented in the Journal are rather pedestrian. Go to the article itself to see a couple paragraphs of detail on each of these entries, but here's the actual list:

1. Lincoln's First Solution to Slavery Was a Fiasco
2. Hungry Ladies Effectively Mugged Jefferson Davis
3. The Union Used Hot Air Balloons and Submarines
4. "Dixie" Was Only a Northern Song
5. Paul Revere Was at Gettysburg
6. Mark Twain Fired One Shot And Left
7. The Armies Weren't All-Male

I went to high school in Iowa, and I have to confess, I can't recall studying the Civil War at all. I'm sure we must have somewhere along the line, but most of what I learned about that era came from my own reading of books lying around the house. Specifically, some American Heritage volume or another, various Bruce Catton books, and probably something by Henry Steele Commager. I’m virtually certain, however, that we read Mark Twain’s, “A Private History of a Campaign that Failed” in the classroom [a few years ago I posted a blog entry on that brilliant piece here, with a link to one online version of the story].

High school history covers a lot of ground in short order, but trivia has it's place. If my teachers had employed a few more attention-grabbers, I might actually have some memory of those classes. These days, anyone who reads a good single-volume history like McPherson’s, Battle Cry of Freedom, will come across pretty much everything on the list above: ill-fated colonization efforts, the bread riots, Lowe’s balloons and early submarines, the roots of Dixie, or that some females passed themselves off as males and melded into the ranks. These aren’t secrets, just things that require more reading.

I’d wager that most of the people reading this blog could come up with a more interesting list of Seven Stories about the Civil War off the top of their heads. WSJ, how about these stories:

1. The fledgling Confederacy engaged in a number of overtly hostile acts of war against the United States (seizing shipyards, arsenals, and installations, along with some U.S. soldiers) long before Lincoln sent ships to re-supply the garrison at Fort Sumter, leading to the "first shot" of the Civil War.

2. The extent of the damage and depredations wrought by Sherman’s bummers on the March to the Sea was greatly exaggerated in post-war tradition. During the same period, Confederate authorities in Richmond received angry complaints from citizens of Georgia over depredations by Confederate cavalry operating in the same areas.

3. On the day after Christmas, 1862, U.S. authorities engaged in the largest mass-execution in the nation’s history when 38 Sioux Indians were hanged (this after President Lincoln commuted the sentences of over 250 others). Texans may hold the record, however. In October of that year, 40 suspected Unionists were hanged, and two were shot. See blog entry on an ugly 10-week stretch of 1862 here.

4. The Confederate Constitution was nearly a verbatim copy of the U.S. Constitution, though it restricted the president to a single, six-year term, and gave him a line item veto. The C.S. Constitution also prohibited states from interfering with slavery even within their own sovereign borders. Curiously, abolition was an exception to state rights.

5. When in 1866, momentum was gathering in Washington to indict former Confederate General George Pickett for war crimes (the mass execution of deserters in North Carolina who had joined Union ranks), Pickett appealed to Ulysses S. Grant. Grant personally interceded with President Johnson on Pickett’s behalf, forestalling any charges or an arrest.

6. For the Five Civilized Tribes in the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) – the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole – divided loyalties led to a war-within-a-war pitting mainly mixed-blood, slave-owning factions against mainly full-blooded tribal members, devastating the nations for generations.

7. The deadliest maritime disaster in American history remains largely unknown and obscure. Something over 1,700 recently-released Union prisoners of war, en route to their homes on the steamship Sultana, died in the fiery explosion of that ship’s stressed boilers, or drowned in the Mississippi near Memphis, Tennessee in the middle of the night.

What Seven Stories come to mind for you?

2009-06-15T21:49:00.000-07:00

Putting one's money where one's mouth is. . .

On this day, four years ago, we lost one of the best and most devoted historians of the American Civil War, Brian Pohanka (seen at right, above, with legendary Civil War historian and guide, Edwin C. Bearss). Brian was merely 50-years-old, and at the height of his powers, with myriad projects in the works and untold numbers of them yet to begin. His storied career is recounted in this Washington Post obituary. For all of Brian's work on Civil War subjects, I was most fascinated and excited by his research, and his comprehensive grasp of events along the Greasy Grass in 1876. I love the book, Where Custer Fell, and selfishly regret that I never got to visit the Little Bighorn in company with Brian. Several people and I—good friends of Brian's like Paula Gidjunis and Keith Young—had spoken of hiring Brian for a private trip to Montana.

I was fortunate to get to know Brian first through his writing for Civil War Regiments quarterly, when we published one of his pieces on the 5th New York, and later through his participation in the Civil War Forum, when he attended some of our annual get-togethers. The photo at top was the 4th CWF gathering, 2000, with Ed and Brian on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg (photo by Rudy Perini). Brian was also a mover and a shaker in the area of battlefield preservation. A 2006 press release from the Civil War Preservation Trust—the preeminent preservation organization for Civil War sites (see the previous blog entry discussing CWPT's new website)—details Pohanka's all-but-anonymous, and stunning generosity:

From the very beginnings of the Civil War battlefield preservation movement, Brian Pohanka led the charge. He not only gave of his time and talents, but frequently and generously reached into his wallet as well. We at Civil War Preservation Trust are proud to carry on the work he began nearly two decades ago.’
Pohanka’s generosity to battlefield preservation was unequalled. In addition to the $1 million bequest, he and his wife Cricket quietly donated an equal amount to CWPT in 2004. Over the years, Pohanka gave generously to both CWPT and countless other local battlefield preservation groups—in his will, he also set aside money for the Central Virginia Battlegrounds Trust ($500,000), the Richmond Battlefields Association ($500,000), and the Save Historic Antietam Foundation ($200,000).

2009-06-02T01:01:00.000-07:00

Map Lovers Rejoice

The newly revamped website for The Civil War Preservation Trust has a beautiful, all-in-one map page, featuring their outstanding topo maps, numerous historic maps, and some really spectacular animated maps that allow you to toggle between modern aerial and topo maps (the animated Chantilly map offers a 1937 aerial view as well). Additionally, there are links to some of the best sites to find Civil War maps online, like the Virginia Historical Society.

Be sure to have a look at the animated Cedar Creek and Belle Grove map. If you thought the damage done by the Middletown Quarry had been mitigated by earlier agreements, think again. The proposed expansion of operations there (given the green light by local government) will increase the loss of prime battlefield land exponentially.

2009-05-29T00:43:00.000-07:00

Way down in Mississippi
where the pine trees grow
deep in Jones County
where the leaf river flows

In May of 2008 I posted the transcript of a Q&A I conducted with Victoria Bynum, regarding her fascinating book, The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2001). The exchange took place on-line, in the Civil War Forum, October 25, 2001.

It's an amazing story, and well told. Recently, I was pleased to learn from Kevin Levin at Civil War Memory that Professor Bynum has a blog dedicated to the subject— or more accurately, to "southern dissenters of the nineteenth century," to include the Knights of Jones County, and other renegades. What a perfect venue for bringing out more information and tantalizing tidbits. Kevin also made mention of a new book on the subject, by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer, which had escaped my notice until now.

Check out Bynum's blog, but be sure to also visit the affiliated website, www.renegadesouth.com, if only to hear Doctor G sing "Jones County Jubilee." That will put you in the mood for some reading on Newt (pictured above) & Rachel Knight.

Dr. Bynum is also the author of Unruly Women: the Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South (UNC Press, 1992), and Southern Communities at War.

2009-05-28T23:54:00.000-07:00

The Making of the Revised Edition of Gettysburg: A Battlefield Guide

Civil War blogging doesn't get any better than the recent serial entries by Mark Grimsley (at Civil Warriors) on the intriguing process of updating his (and Brooks Simpson's) Gettysburg battlefield guide. See part 1 of "Letting the Ground Argue" here. Part two here. It's a real treat to read a working historian's musings from the field. The exercise imbues an inherently casual medium with a unique and powerful value. Bison Books should consider publishing links to these the making of entries.

2009-05-19T03:00:00.000-07:00

David Herbert Donald, 1920–2009

"Professor Donald taught that truth comes before showmanship. Without theorizing or bloviating, and simply by example, he taught that a meticulous commitment to accuracy is the historian's primary obligation."
— Gil Troy (full essay)
— NYT obituary

2009-04-27T23:48:00.001-07:00

On this day, 144 years ago. . .

I swam about four miles and came to an island covered with timber. I climbed a tree, and the water surrounding it was about ten feet deep. Now, when I hear persons talking about being hard up, I think of my condition at that time—up in a tree in the middle of the Mississippi River, a thousand miles from home, not one cent to my name, nor a pocket to put it in...

—A. C. Brown, 2nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, describing how he survived the Sultana disaster

2009-04-21T14:31:00.004-07:00

In honor of John Muir's birthday today, I am reaching back three years into the archives to pull out one of my favorite, early posts in this blog. In 1867, Muir took a 1,000-mile walk to the Gulf, through the heart of the former Confederacy, and here are some passages from his notes of that trip, which were eventually published.

The Walk to the Sea

I was slow to come to appreciate the magnitude of John Muir's contribution to conservation, his role in the early establishment of the national park system, his stature as naturalist par excellence. Until I moved to San Francisco in my early 20s, Muir had not even been on my radar. Later, as I came to be captivated by the history and geography of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Muir became such a towering figure, he was unavoidable. Reading of his adventures as a mountain man — tales of solitary sojourns in the high country expressing unabashed, poetic reverence for sacred wilderness — always makes me itch to break out the tent, gather the Coleman products, and head for the woods.

I was also slow to get around to Muir's early writings. Imagine my delight, then, when I finally came across the unpolished notes of his 1867 walk across the South, from Louisville, Kentucky to Savannah, Georgia, and on into Florida — A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916). Muir embarked on his journey to look at the plants — "grass, weeds, flowers, trees, mosses, ferns," and he comments on them passionately, and at length. But he also gives a sense of the ravaged, post-war South. Muir speaks to many freedmen along the way, enjoys the hospitality of residents in the heart of the old Confederacy, and encounters highwaymen in a largely lawless landscape where every person met on the road is a potential threat.

Happily, the entire book can be read at the Sierra Club site, here (follow links to "Books by John Muir"). I've excerpted a number of interesting passages that present observations of the Civil War South, two and a half years after the end of hostilities.

September 6. Started at the earliest bird song in hopes of seeing the great Mammoth Cave before evening. Overtook an old negro driving an ox team. Rode with him a few miles and had some interesting chat concerning war, wild fruits of the woods, et cetera. "Right heah," said he, "is where the Rebs was a-tearin' up the track, and they all a sudden thought they seed the Yankees a-comin', obah dem big hills dar, and Lo'd, how dey run." I asked him if he would like a renewal of these sad war times, when his flexible face suddenly calmed, and he said with intense earnestness, "Oh, Lo'd, want no mo wa, Lo'd no." Many of these Kentucky negroes are shrewd and intelligent, and when warmed upon a subject that interests them, are eloquent in no mean degree.

September 7. Left the hospitable Kentuckians with their sincere good wishes and bore away southward again through the deep green woods. In noble forests all day. Saw mistletoe for the first time. Part of the day I traveled with a Kentuckian from near Burkesville. He spoke to all the negroes he met with familiar kindly greetings, addressing them always as "Uncles" and "Aunts." All travelers one meets on these roads, white and black, male and female, travel on horseback. Glasgow is one of the few Southern towns that shows ordinary American life. At night with a well-to-do farmer.

As I turned to leave, after bidding her good-bye, she, evidently pitying me for my tired looks, called me back and asked me if I would like a drink of milk. This I gladly accepted, thinking that perhaps I might not be successful in getting any other nourishment for a day or two. Then I inquired whether there were any more houses on the road, nearer than North Carolina, forty or fifty miles away. "Yes," she said, "it's only two miles to the next house, but beyond that there are no houses that I know of except empty ones whose owners have been killed or driven away during the war."

Met a young African with whom I had a long talk. was amused with his eloquent narrative of coon hunting, alligators, and many superstitions. He showed me a place where a railroad train had run off the track, and assured me that the ghosts of the killed may be seen every dark night.

Had a long walk after sundown. At last was received at the house of Dr. Perkins. Saw Cape Jasmine [ Gardenia florida ] in the garden. Heard long recitals of war happenings, discussion of the slave question, and Northern politics; a thoroughly characteristic Southern family, refined in manners and kind, but immovably prejudiced on everything connected with slavery.

The family table was unlike any I ever saw before. It was circular, and the central part of it revolved. When any one wished to be helped, he placed his plate on the revolving part, which was whirled around to the host, and then whirled back with its new load. Thus every plate was revolved into place, without the assistance of any of the family.

Toward evening I arrived at the home of Mr. Cameron, a wealthy planter, who had large bands of slaves at work in his cotton fields. They still call him "Massa." He tells me that labor costs him less now than it did before the emancipation of the negroes. When I arrived I found him busily engaged in scouring the rust off some cotton-gin saws which had been lying for months at the bottom of his mill-pond to prevent Sherman's "bummers" from destroying them. The most valuable parts of the grist-mill and cotton-press were hidden in the same way. "If Bill Sherman," he said, "should come down now without his army, he would never go back."

On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. Instead of the sympathy, the friendly union, of life and death so apparent in Nature, we are taught that death is an accident, a deplorable punishment for the oldest sin, the arch-enemy of life, etc. Town children, especially, are steeped in this death orthodoxy, for the natural beauties of death are seldom seen or taught in towns.

Of the people of the States that I have now passed, I best like the Georgians. They have charming manners, and their dwellings are mostly larger and better than those of adjacent States. However costly or ornamental their homes or their manners, they do not, like those of the New Englander, appear as the fruits of intense and painful sacrifice and training, but are entirely divested of artificial weights and measures, and seem to pervade and twine about their characters as spontaneous growths with the durability and charm of living nature. In particular, Georgians, even the commonest, have a most charmingly cordial way of saying to strangers, as they proceed on their journey, "I wish you well, sir." The negroes of Georgia, too, are extremely mannerly and polite, and appear always to be delighted to find opportunity for obliging anybody.

The traces of war are not only apparent on the broken fields, burnt fences, mills, and woods ruthlessly slaughtered, but also on the countenances of the people. A few years after a forest has been burned another generation of bright and happy trees arises, in purest, freshest vigor; only the old trees, wholly or half dead, bear marks of the calamity. So with the people of this war-field. Happy, unscarred, and unclouded youth is growing up around the aged, half-consumed, and fallen parents, who bear in sad measure the ineffaceable marks of the farthest-reaching and most infernal of all civilized calamities.

2009-04-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

[from an article today at Salon.com]

Groom adds voice on famous siege,
'Vicksburg 1863'

By WALTER PUTNAM Associated Press Writer

Apr 10th, 2009 "Vicksburg 1863" (Alfred A. Knopf, 496 pages, $30), by Winston Groom: Many books have examined the Union siege of Vicksburg, Miss., over the years, but that's no reason Winston Groom should not lend his unique voice to the subject -- one of the most critical campaigns of the Civil War.

The Alabama author best known for his novel "Forrest Gump," brought to life by Tom Hanks in the 1994 movie, has considerable experience and expertise in both fiction and nonfiction.

With "Vicksburg 1863," Groom brings the novelist's touch to history, personalizing characters such as Union Gens. Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman, as well as Jefferson Davis and Gen. Joseph E. Johnston of the Confederacy, in an easily relatable way for the average reader.

=======================

You can read the full article here. Historical fiction set in the American Civil War has long been an interest of mine -- if only more of it were readable or interesting. For every Cold Mountain or Killer Angels, there are twenty Gods and Generals'.

I was struck by Mr. Bloom's McMurry-esque comments on the relative importance of Gettysburg versus Vicksburg in the fortunes of the war. He goes so far as to say the war was over when Vicksburg fell.

The author noted that Vicksburg fell into Grant's hands the same day that the North prevailed in the battle of Gettysburg, ending Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's lone invasion of Union territory. He said Gettysburg, though, pales in comparison to Vicksburg.
"In Vicksburg, not only did you lose your whole Army, you also lost the entire Mississippi River valley and half of your territory," Groom said.

"The South was almost mad to continue the war after that," he said, adding that President Abraham Lincoln would have provided much more favorable terms had the Confederates ended it then rather then almost two years later.

2009-04-04T23:25:00.000-07:00

[above: historic Pritchard House on the Kernstown Battlefield]

With Scott Patchan's Cedar Creek issue of Blue & Gray in hand, a number of us set out last Sunday morning, on a spectacular Shenandoah Valley day, to visit the parking lots, ditches, and medians where interpretation of that battle is most easily conveyed. Best of all, however, was the stop at Belle Grove, where rolling pastures and lines of sight made it somewhat easier to envision the events of 1864, the quarry notwithstanding. Our guide eschewed a visit to the visitor center as part of one of the preservation world's ongoing feuds. All in all, it was another memorable gathering for the intrepid members of The Civil War Forum. All of this week, we've been voting on next year's (Western) venue, and early returns point to New Orleans. Here are a few photos from last week (click to enlarge):

Above, site of John Brown's scaffold, Charles Town, West Virginia; below, Kennedy Farm where Brown plotted, near Harpers Ferry

left: Steve Meserve,
inveterate tour guide,
historian par excellence,
misguided football fan

Scott Patchan, and Steve

Above: The Pritchard House

2009-03-28T22:59:00.000-07:00

saturday road notes.

Lucked out on the rain again today, making for some fine touring. It's a powerful thing to see for the first time the results of preservation efforts you participated in from afar, years ago. The Third Winchester tracts are impressive. Likewise Fisher's Hill. This second, chock-full day wrapped up at Toms Brook. If I'm not mistaken, we walked through part of a dedicated frisbee-golf course to get to the marker. Scott Patchan regaled the attendees this evening with a detailed examination of the life of Phil Sheridan. Many folks are heading home in the morning, but about 20 of us will spend four hours at Cedar Creek with Scott. Shoot -- I forgot to go to bed again.

2009-03-28T22:55:00.000-07:00

friday road notes.

Two experiences in Virginia Civil War history on the same day illustrate two ends of a spectrum. We got out our box lunches near some markers at the heart of the Rutherford's Farm/Stephenson's Depot battlefield. These markers are on an island between the highway and the new Lowe's parking lot. It is a sea of striped blacktop now. By contrast, the visit to the Cool Spring battlefield was a bucolic walk through a pristine pasture, to the banks of the Shenandoah. Favorite stop of the day: the 1854 Pritchard House on the Kernstown battlefield. All praise due to the Kernstown Battlefield Association. Photos to follow. The evening was capped off nicely with a very entertaining and informative talk by Stevan Meserve on Tom Rosser.

2009-03-26T22:02:00.000-07:00

thursday road notes.

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

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

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

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

2009-03-26T20:05:00.000-07:00

John Hope Franklin

R.I.P.

2009-03-07T23:50:00.000-08:00

13th
Civil War Forum Battlefield Conference
THE 1864 SHENANDOAH VALLEY CAMPAIGN

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

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

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

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

For registration information and updates, click here.

2009-03-05T17:23:00.000-08:00

finger-lickin' dead

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

2009-03-02T03:25:00.000-08:00

The Onion on the The Kindle

(click on image to enlarge)

2009-03-02T00:16:00.000-08:00

Yale without the homework

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

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

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

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

From the Yale site:

About Professor David Blight

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

2009-02-27T01:56:00.000-08:00

A book-lover's gadget lust
(you always hurt the one you love)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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