Palmer et al on the Second Militia Act of 1792

If you follow pop culture, today's hot topic in the conservative mass media has been the Second Militia Act of 1792. This act is said to form the basis of a precedent for the compulsory purchase of health insurance by virtue of having compelled all males of a certain age to purchase firearms for their involuntary militia duty. This has something to do with what is derided as "Romneycare."

We'll stay out of those political weeds except to quote Maj. James Groark's Politics and the Evolution of the Army Reserve. He notes that

The Militia Act required all able-bodied men ages 18-45 to serve in the state militia. Each man enrolling in the state militia had the responsibility maintain his own weapon and equipment. Congress authorized no federal dollars for this purpose. The Militia Act did not include how states were going to enforce the enrollment. Thus, many states failed to ensure these “able-bodied men” met their service obligation. In addition, “the Militia Act offered no means of assuring that citizens would comply with the requirement that they furnish their own arms and accoutrements at personal expense."

Groark is quoting (at the end) Russell Weigley's Towards an American Army.

This is a snapshot of the act and we turn now to matters military.

What is interesting is that it was sponsored by Col. Jeremiah Wadsworth of Connecticut, ancestor to Civil War General James Wadsworth and to 20th Century military reformer Senator James Wolcott Wadsworth, who used some of the principles in the Second Militia Act to craft the National Defense Act of 1920. His collaborator in this was Col. John McAuley Palmer, organizational theorist extraordinaire, and grandson of the Civil War's Gen. John McAuley Palmer.

And so we come to Palmer-the-younger's writing on the Second Militia Act in his book America in Arms.

For the sake of the reader, let me compress Palmer's views up to this point. Pardon my violence done to details.

1) Washington had distinct views on national defense and despite the view that he despised the militia, as president he placed the militia at the very center of his national system. Washington wanted to reform the milita as it was.

2) Washington's constructive views on the militia were embodied in legislation sponsored by Henry Knox. The public in Palemer's time and today do not understand Washington's views. Knox's bill was rejected by Congress at the end of Washington's second term.

3) Col. Wadsworth's militia bill attempted to revive the best parts of the Knox-Washington vision. Congress adjourned before his bill reached the floor.

4) In March, 1792, the bill was reintroduced and acted upon by the House and (per Palmer) "every constructive feature was amended out of it." "As amended, the bill no longer contained even the slightest germ of Washington's well-organized militia." Palmer is blunt: "Its passage actually made our military system worse than it was before the bill was introduced. The old militia organization, with its phony regiments and divisions now had Federal sanction and was made uniformly bad throughout the nation."

5) Jefferson and his supporters were unwilling to have a federally controlled militia, a more effective militia, in the hands of a Hamiltonian administration.

Palmer's views on the militia, the ACW, and military reform, will be reviewed in a future post. Meanwhile, perhaps we can agree on the shock value of encountering the Second Militia Act in a modern news cycle. And yet the Revolutionary War, and its aftermath, will persist just as the Civil War persists.

The madness of Edwin M. Stanton (cont.)

No reasonable person expects a madman to be a highly effective/ highly functional worker unless the work is some form or repetitive manual labor. The quality of work exposes derangements. Maybe sociopaths are an exception to this, but they give themselves away in other things.

Stanton's personal interactions during the war seem those of a sociopath. People were useful to him or not. He was cruel and domineering toward the helpless and he was obsequious to the influential.

I would like to share vignettes of Stanton at work. Donn Piatt was a childhood friend of Stanton's:

A subordinate, to deal comfortably with the War Secretary, had to be a mere cipher, so despotic was he. I remember when summoned before him as Judge Advocate of the commission called to investigate the conduct of General Don Carlos Buell, in Tennessee, I ventured to say "This is all very well Mr. Secretary but I'd like to know where you find a law to sanction such a court as this."

"My noble captain," replied the Secretary, his short upper lip curling, and with the gleam of his white teeth and dark eyes making an expression anything but comfortable, "you are commissioned to obey orders and not to study law, for it is rather late in life for you to begin that. When I need a legal adviser it is not likely that I will call upon Judge Piatt. If I am to be met here with the quibble of a county-court lawyer I will find some other officer."

The sarcasm stung, for I had been placed upon the bench at the age of 25 ... However I hid the hurt and said, "All right; but I would suggest this is no ordinary inquiry and should be made up of the ablest officers."

"That is true," responded the Secretary, "You go to the list of officers not on duty and I will appoint from them."

The next day, list in hand, Piatt encounters Stanton on the street.

I turned and walked with him telling him what I had done. He was in a terrible mood and neither looked at nor spoke to me. At the door of his office, the messenger threw it open and the Secretary stalking in banged it to in my face. This wooden insult sent a flush to my face. Turning, I saw General Fremont who had witnessed the affront, and while talking to this remarkable man the messenger came ... "The Secretary wants you." I went in. Stanton was seated alone at the end of his table. Looking up, he exclaimed, "Don, what in the ___ do you want?"

"Nothing sir, not even civil treatment. You directed me to make out a list of officers to compose the Buell court. I have done so and only came to report the names."

"Take them to Halleck, that is his business," roared the Secretary. "I can't run the War Department let alone trying to run Halleck. Go to him.

"Mr. Secretary," I said quietly, "I don't mind being jumped on by you any more than if it was my elder brother, but I won't be insulted by General Halleck, as you know I will be if I go as you direct."

"Insulted?" he exclaimed angrily, "I'll see to that. Here, take him this" and he hastily wrote a note.

I did as ordered. I appeared before the great Art of War ... He read the note I handed him and then, tearing it in two, dropped it in the waste-basket saying, with all the sarcasm his dull face was capable of -

"What is your address captain?"

I gave it to him and then, rising from his chair, he bowed mockingly and added, "When I need your assistance, I shall certainly send for you, captain."

The sarcasm of this was so well done that it raised the dull, epauleted creature in my estimation far above what his stupid book had done. I retired as gracefully as I could and reported the affair to Stanton.

"Damn his insolence! Why didn't you pull his nose?"

"Because the insult was directed at you," I answered. "I was only the poor devil of a captain assigned to the duty of carrying it. I wish to God I was out of this."

My perplexity amused the Secretary. He burst into a laugh and said, "Oh, never mind Halleck, he can't insult anyone. Take the court he gives you and do the best you can," and seeing that I was deeply hurt he put his arm around my shoulders, in his old caressing way, and added, "and don't mind me, we are both hasty. This is an important business I give you and I know I can trust you."

Of course he is saying, I can trust you to hang Buell. And that is the payoff for Piatt in this brutal little psychodrama, a psychodrama that is the Union war effort in miniature.

Consider a story about Lorenzo Thomas (pictured). When, as a consulting War Department lawyer, Stanton gained Cameron's place, he told Piatt he wanted to do four things. The fourth was, "I will pick Lorenzo Thomas up with a pair of tongs and drop him from the nearest window."

In his Anecdotes of the Civil War in the United States, E. D. Townsend relates how Stanton busied Thomas with various special assignments to keep him out of the office. He succeeded in practically vacating Thomas's office from 1862-1868. In attempting to supersede him without relieving him in 1863, Townsend confronts Stanton with the law at which point Stanton rationalizes the presence of Thomas's replacement into a special assignment for a particular task. Not a replacement.

Townsend also relates events around Lorenzo Thomas's appointment to ad interim Secretary of War:

On Friday, the 21st [1868], the general came to the room where I was sitting with another officer, and, calling him, they went out together. In a short time they returned, and the general threw a letter on my table, which was the one from the President, appointing him Secretary of War ad interim. He told me he had delivered the letter to Mr. Stanton, removing him, and had taken the other officer to be a witness to the interview ; that, on reading the letter to Mr. Stanton, the latter remarked, "I suppose you will give me time to remove my private papers!" and that he then asked for a copy of the President s letter of appointment. I made this copy, and the general certified it officially as "Secretary of War ad interim." When Mr. Stanton received the copy, he said he would consider whether he would recognize it or not. General Thomas seemed to think Mr. Stanton would retire without making any opposition. He said emphatically that he should most certainly, at all hazards, take possession of the war-office on the following Monday, which would give Mr. Stanton ample time to vacate, Saturday (February 22d) being a holiday, and Sunday coming right after. He then sent his letter to the President, accepting the appointment.

On Saturday, February 22d, I went to the War Department, as usual on holidays, merely for my private letters. The rooms were all locked, and the keys were in
Mr. Stanton s possession. He had remained in his own office all night. I went to General Schriver's room, which was directly opposite the Secretary's. At about
noon General Thomas entered the building unaccompanied. He had been all the night at a masked ball with his family, had just sat down to breakfast without taking off his uniform, when he was arrested and summoned before Chief-Justice Cartter, of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. The arrest was made on a warrant issued upon Mr. Stanton's affidavit that, on a pretended appointment of Secretary of War ad interim, he had endeavored to exercise the authority of the Secretary of War, contrary to the act "regulating the tenure of certain civil offices," passed March, 1867. He gave bail in five thousand dollars to appear on the following Wednesday. From the court he proceeded directly to the President s office, and, after consultation with the President, went to the Secretary's room in the War Department. His arrest had changed his intention of waiting till Monday to demand possession of the office. There were several members of Congress with Mr. Stanton. The general courteously saluted those present, and the following colloquy ensued:

General Thomas (addressing Mr. Stanton). I am Secretary of War ad interim, and am ordered by the President of the United States to take charge of this office.

Mr. Stanton. I order you to repair to your room, and exercise your office as adjutant-general.

General T. I am Secretary of War ad interim, and I shall not obey your orders; but I shall obey the order of the President to take charge of this office.

Mr. S. As Secretary of War, I order you to repair to your office as adjutant-general.

General T. I shall not do so.

Mr. S. Then you may stand there, if you please; but you will attempt to act as Secretary of War at your peril.

General T. I shall act as Secretary of War.

There the official interview ended. There was no excitement in language or manner, but each spoke with quiet determination. There was a short-hand writer present who took down every word. Presently, General Thomas crossed the hall to General Schriver's room - both doors had been all the time open. Mr. Stanton, followed
only by the stenographer, came in after him. The door of General Schriver's room was then closed. Mr. Stanton, resuming the colloquy, said in a laughing tone to General Thomas, "So you claim to be here as Secretary of War, and refuse to obey my orders, do you?" General Thomas replied, seriously: "I do so claim. I shall require the mails of the War Department to be delivered to me, and shall transact all the business of the department." Seeing that the general looked as if he had had no rest the night before, Mr. Stanton then, playfully running his fingers up through the general's hair, as he wearily leaned back in his chair, said, "Well, old fellow,
have you had any breakfast this morning? " "No," said Thomas, good-naturedly. "Nor anything to drink?" "No." " Then you are as badly off as I am, for I have had neither." Mr. Stanton ten sent out for some refreshment; General Thomas related how he had been arrested just after returning with his children from a ball, before he had time to eat his breakfast, and they had a very pleasant conversation for half an hour. Presently, Mr. Stanton asked General Thomas when he was going to give him the report of an inspection of the national cemeteries which he had lately made. Mr. Stanton said if it was not soon rendered it would be too late to have it printed, and he was anxious to have it go forth as a creditable work of the department. There was apparently no special point to this question, and General Thomas evidently saw none, for he answered pleasantly that he would work at it that night and give it to him. It struck me as a lawyer's ruse to make Thomas acknowledge Stanton's authority as Secretary of War, and that Thomas was caught by it. I, some time after, asked Mr. Stanton if that was his design. He made no reply, but looked at me with a mock expression of surprise at my conceiving such a thing.

Before General Thomas left the department, Mr. Stanton handed him a letter forbidding him to give any orders as Secretary of War. The general read and indorsed it as received on that date, signing the indorsement as Secretary ad interim; which Mr. Stanton seeing, he remarked, laughing, "Here you have committed another offense!" To this the general assented. He soon after went away for the day.

[...] There were some persistent reports that it was fully intended that possession of the War Department should be gained by force, if Mr. Stanton would not voluntarily retire. [...] As for Mr. Stanton, who had heard some of the reports of intended violence, he gave orders, the evening of the 22d, that, if General Thomas should come to take the department by force, no resistance should be made, but that he should be immediately notified of his approach. This order was kept secret, because, if known, it might lead to the attempt being made. Mr. Stanton, however, declared he would not have blood shed on his account, and, if an assault on the building were attempted, he would not try to repel it.

Stanton's reason and mercy are here on display: he will not kill U.S. soldiers in the course of defying his president's orders.

Spielberg's Lincoln takes shape

Hat tip to Ireland's Independent newspaper which tallies the years in which Lincoln has been in development - seven. Movies are ephemeral, but this has been ridiculous. It seems to be shooting now (January), so a few more lines may be in order.

Search this blog and I'm sure there are posts for every one of those years. Let's review some memes.

Recall first that Spielberg bought the rights to Lincoln, Master of Men, sight unseen. This was a book still being written by the notorious Doris Kearns Goodwin. After the book was released as Team of Rivals (Ireland's Independent has a comical misnomer for it, "Team of Equals"), Spielberg seemed to back away from his commitment to Goodwin by hiring the gay celebrity / Broadway scriptwriter Tony Kushner to pen the screenplay. Stories about Kushner's work on Lincoln focused on the massive amount of original research he was doing without mentioning Goodwin or his use of her book.

The current issue of Variety gives us more information than we had before. It says the "script versions [of Goodwin's book] written by John Logan and Paul Webb" were written into a "final script version" by Kushner who used "Goodwin's book as a key though not exclusive basis for the film." You probably speak enough Hollywoodese to be able to translate that.

Back in September, Spielberg issued a useless, spurious, and misleading statement that "The movie will be purposely coming out after next year's election. I didn't want it to become political fodder." In other words, a film that had not started shooting yet, that had no domestic or foreign distribution deals, would not be released in less than 12 months out of concern for political ramifications.

Yea, verily, to quote the Bible, or Lincoln, or both.

Heritage tourism, meanwhile, has gotten another shot of the heroin it craves. Virginia projects untold masses of visitors inspired somehow to visit the state neighboring the actual setting of the movie. Quoth the state: "We will have the power of Disney’s marketing behind us." The power = hidden Spielberg reference! The article reporting this says "The premiere of a legendary director’s movie on one of the era’s key figures is more than icing on the cake; it’s every tourism director’s dream." If true, wouldn't it be the DC tourism director's dream? How do we work in reference to the dark side here?

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter will precede Spielberg's Lincoln at the box office. Won't that generate Virginia tourism? It takes care of the dark side reference, anyway.

Flippancy aside, Tommy Lee Jones is set to play Sen. Thad Stevens who appears to be a bete noir to Lincoln. (I don't think Stevens figured much in Goodwin's book, but that's what script doctors get paid the big bucks for.) We can extrapolate Hollywood's logic in making Stevens central to Lincoln's story as the script's need for a character arc. We will see Lincoln's initial antagonism to Stevens, then his acceptance of Stevens, then his growth and transformation into a better Stevens. That will be the big payoff of the movie. Chase, Stanton, Seward, et al will be a team of extras.

I'd like to close with a favorite Thaddeus Stevens quote. If this comes out of a movie theatre speaker, I'll be surprised.

Though the President is Commander-in-Chief, Congress is his commander; and, God willing, he shall obey. He and his minions shall learn that this is not a Government of kings and satraps, but a Government of the people, and that Congress is the people.

Oddly enough, there is a Stevens Society. Perhaps it will get the boost intended for Virginia tourism.

(Photo: Actor Daniel Day Lewis impersonates a Russian muzhik.)

Pop quiz

Stanton returns this week in a thrilling conclusion to our thread.

Meanwhile, pop quiz. Which Civil War head of state is this describing?

"He was also very inclined to avoid overt responsibility for difficult decisions, operating from behind the backs of his generals to get his way, and distancing himself from them if failures occurred."

Answer: You thought, "Of course, this could only be Abraham Lincoln." But the quote is from Dominic Lieven, Russia Against Napoleon. It refers to Alexander I.

Which just goes to show that the ACW is always with us, everywhere, and at all times.

The madness of Edwin M. Stanton (cont.)

Some snippets from Edwin McMasters Stanton: the Autocrat of Rebellion, Emancipation, and Reconstruction.

A Thomas McCrary remembered:

I lived with Ed Stanton from August, 1837, until March 1838. He was one of the kindest and most affectionate of men. I had many talks with him after his wife died and he could never speak of her without weeping. [...] Ed never hunted an hour in his life. He worked all the time, worked terribly. He invariably carried, in a beautiful sheath on the inside of his vest, a fine dagger, seven inches in length. As he gave no time, not a moment, to personal controversies, and was never abroad except on business, I never decided why he carried such a dreadful weapon.

Was this an implement for suicide? from a Judge A.C. Turner, a Cadiz lawyer during this period:

When Mr. Stanton was employed to defend a man who had administered to a person poison that finally caused death, he swallowed some of the drug in order to test the effect on himself. The consequences were severe, but the whites of eggs and other antidotes brought him out whole, and he saved the man's neck.

H.S. McFadden, a bank employee in Cadiz:

... having tried poison on himself [Stanton] appeared to know more than all the doctors.

In the winter of 1847, Stanton, a successful attorney, began giving regular public shows of hypnotism. Mrs. David Filsom of Steubenville:

Calling for volunteer subjects, he put many 'to sleep,' as it was called, and controlled them, bringing them out at will. One night, however, in Stier's Hall, he went to far in mesmerizing a man named Taylor, an employee of the paper mill. After controlling the subject for a time he failed to bring the usual return to consciousness. Repeated efforts resulted similarly, and the audience became frightened. However, after great exertion, Mr. Stanton succeeded in bringing the subject back to life, and that ended public exhibitions of mesmerism in Steubenville.

The madness of Edwin M. Stanton (cont.)

Edwin Stanton's friend Donn Piatt gives us this: Stanton was a poet, ruled by his imagination. At the same time, he was a man of action and his actions, being driven by a powerful imagination, were incomprehensible to those around him.

In the case of Ann Howard, we move past imagination to delusionally obsessive behavior. Stanton could not quench the fantasy that Ann Howard had been buried alive until he personally dug up her corpse and personally handled her cholera-ridden remains.

Then again, in choosing to clothe the corpse of his dead first wife in her wedding gown, Stanton obsessed that it should fit the corpse closely (flatteringly?) and had the dress modified repeatedly.

Lincoln comments famously on Stanton's mania (the needing-bricks-in-his-pockets remark) where Piatt finds Stanton the depressive weeping uncontrollably after what should have been a pleasant reunion.

The Stanton breakdown best known to Civil War readers occurred March 9, 1862.

Sound-bite-sized snippets of this incident have been doled out by talespinners in a hurry, depriving readers of the full flavor of the utter insanity that ruled that day - insanity emanating from a vortex inside Stanton.

The entire episode is passed off as no more than a collective panic attack, with Stanton more affected than the other Cabinet members.

(I ask readers to go to their favorite histories and read how the incident is treated before proceeding with what follows.)

The source is the Diary of Gideon Welles - a long entry. I have edited out his remarks about the panic of Lincoln, Seward, and others because the way he describes these, they are nothing more than anxiety attacks. Lincoln et al are upset and frightened but they make no claims, assertions, extrapolations, etc. In their panic they merely seek more and more information under the influence of emotionally impaired judgement.

The behavior of one person in this anecdote, however, could reasonably called mad. Welles:

When intelligence reached Washington on Sunday morning, the 9th of March, that the Merrimac had come down from Norfolk and attacked and destroyed the Cumberland and Congress, I called at once on the President, who had sent for me. Several members of the Cabinet soon gathered. Stanton was already there, and there was general excitement and alarm. The President himself was so excited that he could not deliberate or be satisfied with the opinions of non-professional men... But the most frightened man on that gloomy day, the most so I think of any during the Rebellion, was the Secretary of War. He was at times almost frantic, and as
he walked the room with his eyes fixed on me, I saw well the estimation in which he held me with my unmoved and unexcited manner and conversation.

Welles next lays out the claims Stanton makes for the Virginia, a single ship about which Stanton knows almost nothing:

The Merrimac, he said, would destroy every vessel in the service, could lay every city on the coast under contribution, could take Fortress Monroe; McClellan's mistaken purpose to advance by the Peninsula must be abandoned, and Burnside [in NC] would inevitably be captured.

If the Virginia were some kind of Jules Verne supership of the future, all but one of these claims would still be beyond reason. But Stanton has more:

Likely the first movement of the Merrimac would be to come up the Potomac and disperse Congress, destroy the Capitol arid public buildings; or she might go to New York and Boston and destroy those cities, or levy from them contributions sufficient to carry on the War.

What one ship on earth could do that? Would it carry infinite fuel, infinite shot, infinite crew, infinite storage? Would its guns have unlimited elevation and unlimited traverse? Would its draught be adjustable? Welles describes an attempt to refute Stanton point by point, plunging the reader into that pathos. Welles:

... to me there was throughout the whole day something inexpressibly ludicrous in the wild, frantic talk, action, and rage of Stanton as he ran from room to room, sat down and jumped up after writing a few words, swung his arms, scolded, and raved. He could not fail to see and feel my opinion of him and his bluster, that I was calm and unmoved by his rant, spoke deliberately, and was not excited by his violence.

Welles writes how Lincoln and the others fed off of Stanton's emotions and how he was alone. As with Piatt, Welles is struck by changes in Stanton's visage. Welles describes his hopes for the Monitor:

... when I mentioned she had two guns, his mingled look of incredulity and contempt cannot be described; and the tone of his voice, as he asked if my reliance was on that craft with her two guns, is equally indescribable. Others mingled in the conversation with anxiety and concern, but on the part of Stanton there was censure, bitterness, and a breaking-out of pent-up malevolence that I could not misunderstand.

Please read the following carefully and think carefully about what Welles is saying:

My composure and the suggestions and views I presented were evidently a relief to him [Lincoln], but Stanton's wailings and woeful predictions disturbed him. Both he and Stanton went repeatedly to the window and looked down the Potomac the view being uninterrupted for miles to see if the Merrimac was not coming to Washington. It was asked what we could do if she were now in sight.

Both he and Stanton went repeatedly to the window - I would suggest that Stanton was again in the grip of an obsessional delusion. Here, he could not exhume a corpse to find inner peace, he had to take different actions. Welles:

... Stanton in his terror telegraphed to the governors of the Northern States and the mayors of some of the cities, warning them of the danger, and advising, as I was told, that rafts of timber and other obstructions should be placed at the mouths of the harbors.

The man of action responds to the man of imagination.

In connection with this flurry of orders to coastal cities, Welles discovered that Stanton secretly ordered a naval officer (Dahlgren) to prepare to sink ships in the Potomac as well. On Lincoln's advice, the order is shelved until such time as the Virginia should be spotted in the Potomac.

The Virginia did not come and Stanton's obsession passed.

(Image by the late, great Virgil Finlay.)

The madness of Edwin M. Stanton (cont.)

The episodes of "morbid instability" in Stanton's earlier life and his irrational public displays during and after the Civil War come to mind when reading a postwar reminiscence by Stanton's friend, Donn Piatt (shown right). From an article in the North American Review:

The truth is, Stanton's imagination was through life the larger and most potent quality of his mind, and from first to last he lived in a world so tinctured by it, that his thoughts and acts were mysteries to the commonplace, matter of fact minds about him. [...] With all his poetic temperament and high imaginative quality he was a man of action more than of thought [...] The strangest part ... is to look back and contrast the Stanton of my earlier knowledge with the Stanton of later days. I cannot divest myself of the feeling that I am considering two widely dissimilar men. I can see, as if an hour since, the youthful advocate ... his profusion of dark hair, ever disheveled, as he stood Bible in hand ... telling us of the "Poetry of God," and the road to heaven through culture and goodness.

Piatt recounts touchingly a reunion in adulthood. It culminates in another classic Stanton breakdown:

It was at Washington we met, upon the streets, and I seized the old Stanton by the hand with a cry of delight. For a second the old, well loved gleam of pleasure lit his face, and then it faded out, and a gloomy sad expression took its place, and the Stanton I once knew was gone forever. His manner, so cold, reserved and formal, embarassed me. It was not precisely hostile, it was more an indifference, that annoyed. [...] I accompanied Stanton to his room at the National Hotel, and all the while I saw he was striving to be pleasant and familiar, and that the effort was in vain. Terminating the interview as soon as I conveniently could, I left him. At the entrance of the hotel, on the avenue below, I remembered a message I wished to give him, and had forgotten. Hastily ascending I knocked at his door, and getting no answer, entered. He was seated at the table, with his face hid in his arm, and as I touched his shoulder he looked up. To my amazement, his face was distorted with extreme grief, while tears seemed to blind him. Shocked and astonished, I stammered out my message. "Yes, yes," he said, wiping his eyes. "it is very kind of you Donn, but not now, please not now."

The madness of Edwin M. Stanton

There is a quintet of stories about Stanton's displays of insanity, each triggered by grief except the last, which culminates in (rumored) suicide. I encountered these on the Internet and went to one of my Stanton biographies for a "sanity check."

Harold Hyman posthumously finished a biography started by Benjamin Thomas (Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln's Secretary of War). The evidence handling is better than nowadays and I like the way they (admirers of Stanton) manage his many villainous acts without insulting their readers' intelligence. Quite a different treatment than the patronization you get today.

I. Digging up his fiancee's grave

Online, there is a report of Stanton personally exhuming his fiancee's corpse to confirm her death.

This seems to refer to Ann Howard, a woman Stanton had taken interest in (but who is not described as a fiancee). Our biographers report that she served Stanton lunch at noon on 8/9/33 and then died before 4 pm. The killer was cholera, hence the family interred her remains immediately.

"When Stanton learned of the horrible event, he experienced a morbid conviction that she had been buried alive. Persuading a young medical student and another boarder to help, he hurried to the burial ground and by lamplight exhumed and opened the casket. At the risk of contamination he made sure that the girl's body gave no sign of life..."

II. His daughter exhumed

Online we learn that Stanton had his dead daughter Lucy disinterred and her remains placed in a box which he kept at his bedside for "more than a year."

In Thomas/Hyman it says that a student clerking in Stanton's law office is the source of the story that Lucy was exhumed a year after death and her remains placed in a metal box, specially designed and "kept ... in his [Stanton's] own room." The student was named W.S. Buchanan. Lucy died in 8/41. Exhumation a year later would be around 8/42. Our authors dispute Buchanan's account on the basis of a March 1844 letter written by Stanton saying his wife wanted a memorial placed on the daughter's grave. They view this as proof her remains were still buried. However, the two pieces of evidence are not contradictory. In characterizing Buchanan's account, Thomas/Hyman say Stanton is here depicted as "once again gave way to the morbid instability he had displayed" in the Ann Howard affair. "Morbid instability" is the meme here.

III. Sleeping with his wife's remains

Online we are told that Stanton had his deceased first wife Mary clothed in her wedding dress and her remains kept in his bed, sleeping with the corpse for a time until having her buried along with Lucy's remains.

Thomas/Hyman note that this 3/44 death put Stanton into grief "that verged on insanity." They do not mention him sleeping with her corpse but mention him altering and re-altering her wedding dress for the burial. He "stealthily" brought mementoes to her grave including jewelry and letters. He "spent hours rereading her letters..."

IV. Unhinged at his brother's suicide

The story online is that Stanton became "unhinged" at his brother's suicied and had to be sought in the woods where searchers feared he woudl take his own life.

On 9/23/46, Stanton's physician brother cut his own throat with a razor, one witness of the death scene noting the blood even spurted to the ceiling. Thomas/Hyman note that the distraught Stanton fled into the woods (at seeing the site of the suicide?) and that searchers found him and led him out of the forest before he could harm himself. The biographers say Stanton was "oppressed grievously."

V. Death by his own hand

Online you will find accounts that make Stanton's death a suicide.

Thomas/Hyman have Stanton dying after losing consciousness in the evening of a day in which he was wracked by coughing. They do not enter into the suicide question.

After his death, one of his doctors felt it necessary to issue a suicide rebuttal. This may be worth a look.

The oddest thing was Grant's comment on Stanton's death, that he "was as much a martyr to the Union as Sedgwick or McPherson." Sedgwick and McPherson were killed by fatal wounds. What was Stanton's fatal wound if he died of natural causes in his own bed after the war?

(Photo: Son Edwin L. Stanton shown with father. The boy lost one eye in a childhood accident.)

"A well regulated militia" (cont.)

With March's "Uptonian" plan off the table, Wadsworth and Palmer began designing their own army. This (after political give and take) became the National Defense Act of 1920. There is a handy summary of what follows in The Second World War: Asia and the Pacific. I excerpt here at length:

Palmer's ideas were not those of the majority of the Army's general staff officers, who were disciples of the pensive Emory Upton, the Army's most influential 19th Century theorist. [...] The staff had updated the "expansible army" of John Calhoun and modernized Upton; but while it had convinced a reluctant chief of staff, Peyton March, to support the plan, it could not sell the program to Congress.

Palmer recommended a citizen-based army, which he felt was far more appropriate for a democracy. In his plan, while the Regular Army would be the vanguard of the ground forces, the National Guard and the Organized Reserves would provide the bulk of the wartime army. Citizen officers would command most of the citizen soldiers. In peacetime, the Regulars would train their associates in the Guard and Reserves. While Palmer also hoped for universal military service [in Swiss-type reserves - DR], this unpalatable position was not acceptable in peacetime.

The old Hamilton-Jefferson controversy between a purely professional and a militia-based defense force had been resolved in favor, once again, of the militia. Palmer had proposed an army in the American tradition. Politically feasible, the proposal was favored and accepted by the Wadsworth Committee. The Army's official [March] program was discarded because it was too un-American, was so much of the philosophy of the Germanophile, Emory Upton. [...]

All of this looked good on paper, but unfortunately Congress did not provide sufficient funds to implement the National Defense Act [of 1920] fully until 1940.

In other words, the infamously puny and underfunded interwar Regular Army was "half a loaf" - just a slice of the Wadsworth-Palmer plan.

There is a profound lesson in this for military theorists and planners. There is also an odd twist. Palmer lived to see the Act of 1920 funded. He also lived to serve as the oldest American in uniform by the end of WWII (the picture, top, is from 1945).

p.s. To read more about the March-Palmer contest, you have to dig into out-of-print works like Toward a Post World War I Military Policy: Peyton C. March vs. John McAuley Palmer.

"A well regulated militia" (cont.)

Peyton March and John J. Pershing were the dueling prodigies of WWI.

In June, 1917, March was a brigadier general with the artillery. By May 20, 1918 he was chief of staff of the Army. Our friends at Wiki write

As Chief of Staff he reorganized the Army structure, and abolished the distinctions between the Regular Army, the Army Reserves, and the Army National Guard during war time. He created new technical branches in the service including the United States Army Air Corps, Chemical Warfare Corps, Transportation Corps, and Tank Corps.

March was an opinionated infighter with strong views on how the postwar army should be organized. He developed a plan that is nowadays called Uptonian, but it went far beyond anything Upton envisioned by many magnitudes.

March's plan represented a prevalent view in the Army - it exists to this day - that equates readiness with having a large enough standing army to fight one or more wars from the starting gun. In this view, the militia or any federal reserve play a role in the force structure but they are not determinant in warfighting.

Peyton March envisioned a postwar standing (regular) army of 500,000 men. He drafted these views into a congressional bill that also included 11 months of universal (federally controlled and managed) military service followed by a long stint in the reserves. Groark explains more of March's idea:

Like Upton and Calhoun, March wanted the organization of the Army to include additional professional officers to man skeleton units, filled by enlisted soldiers during a national emergency. March’s plan received the approval of Secretary of War Newton D. Baker who introduced the bill on 16 January 1919 to the House Military Affairs Committee. Thus, March’s plan became the Baker-March bill.

March's bill arrived for review before the Senate's military affairs subcommittee. A leader of this committee was James Wolcott Wadsworth, grandson of the general, a National Guardsman and a believer in the Guard.

Wadsworth had recently discovered and been conferring with John Macauley Palmer, grandson of the Civil war general of the same name, and Palmer was the nemesis of all thinking Uptonian.

The new biography Beetle sums up what happened during Palmer's testimony on the bill: "Palmer's one-hour defense of the American citizen-soldier '[tore] Peyton C. March's bill into scraps,' according to James Wadsworth..."

Palmer had submitted his own, alternative plan directly to March earlier in the process to have it summarily rejected. That rejection was natural - this was an unbridgeable battle of military ideologies. Palmer's revenge was to help the March bill die on the vine.

Wadsworth after the testimony (via Groark):

Colonel Palmer, a very remarkable thing has happened. Night before last, the subcommittee met at my house where we finally disposed of the War Department bill by throwing it in the waste paper basket. We then decided to write a bill of our own. We wrote down a few paragraphs outlining what we considered to be the basis of a sound military organization for the United States. And there we stopped. We didn’t know how to expand those principles into a complete bill, and we didn’t think we were likely to get much help from the War Department. And now, to our amazement, you have been before us two afternoons and have given us all the details of our won plan. The Committee has therefore instructed me unanimously, to write to the Secretary of War to ask for your assignment as our military advisor. We are going to write our own bill, and we want you to help us.

Wadsworth and Palmer would craft the answer to Upton.

Ahem

Now where were we?

"A well regulated militia" (cont.)

Actually, Emory Upton got a down payment on what would be his due during his own lifetime in 1878 when Representative MG James Garfield introduced a military bill with Upton’s “expansible army” at the core. It stalled or was defeated – I’d like to know more about it (but don’t).
James Garfield had thus launched a kind of children’s crusade, a preliminary fizzle followed by decades of intense struggle over this core idea. The fight would involve all sorts of military royalty right through the First World War.

On the way, the expansible army became a Holy Land that Upton could not have recognized except in part. Maj. James Groark, USAR, wrote an interesting summation of Upton’s position (Politics and the Evolution of the Army Reserve: 1790-1920):

Upton’s policy proposed a Regular Army of around 25,000 men. Congress would mobilize a “National Volunteer Army” of “reserve” forces led and controlled by the Regular Army. In essence, the “National Volunteer Army” would be a federally controlled militia.

The proposed 25,000 men is not a large standing army even by early 19th century standards. It represents a kernel, skeleton, cadre. Somehow, later, Upton’s ideas are attached to very large standing armies that have federal reserves associated with them.

I would go so far as to say that Upton’s federalized reserves idea served as a stamp by which all sorts of notions could be certified as Upton-approved. We see Upton later invoked in proposals for large standing armies and notice that these proposals generally have some reserve element – the true Uptonian ingredient – associated with them, almost as a talisman.

But just as the Upton element (tainted or pure) gained strength over time in the service, its antithesis also gathered strength. The Army’s leading living theorist was BG John McAuley Palmer, grandson of the Civil War general. Palmer was an extreme critic of Upton – the pure Upton doctrine – and he proposed a counter view in complete detail.

When Palmer combined his advocacy with the political capital of the grandson of MG James Wadsworth, Uptonites were sent into a wilderness for two generations.

"A well regulated militia" (cont.)

You can read Emory Upton's magnum opus, The Military Policy of the United States, thanks to Google. Likewise his Armies of Asia and Europe.

By the turn of the century, Maj. Gen. (Brevet) Emory Upton was a very big deal.

"A well regulated militia" (cont.)

Emory Upton went through the Civil War as a McClellan hater; after the war, with study and reflection, he became an admirer. Being brother-in-law to Frank Blair might have softened him up.

Upton was a prodigy, entering the Civil War as a second lieutenant of artillery. By the end of the war, at 25, he was a general who had led all three branches well. He finished as a division commander. Sixteen years later, he committed suicide.

After the war, Sherman sent Upton to Europe as a one-man Delafield Commission. He returned with recommendations, famous among which was that the U.S. should model the Prussian general staff. He is viewed now as the father of the American general staff.

McClellan and the Delafield Commission had missed that recommendation. McClellan had friends on the Prussian General Staff before the war. After the war, McClellan knew von Moltke the elder - himself! - (who complimented him on his first Richmond campaign) and GBM knew the pre-Franco-Prussian War Prussian General Staff; likewise the Prussian General Staff knew McClellan and read reports from one of their own that Grant's campaign of 1864 had been but the restart of McClellan's early 1862 strategy.

But McClellan and the rest of the Commission had missed an opportunity to advise Jefferson Davis to start a Prussian General Staff in America and Sears is very hard on McClellan in particular for that failure. Sears has many followers in this.

The foundation of an Army War College is another of Upton's ideas and he is justly credited for it today. (The son of the political Civil War Gen. John M. Palmer would attend the Army War College founded on Upton's recommendation.)

We could list many realized ideas advocated by Upton but the biggest of them all is the eternal notion of the expansible army. This originates with Calhoun but Upton made it his own, modernizing it in the form implemented in the 20th Century. The expansible army consists of a large regular standing army, men and officers, with a capability of expanding further in crisis. Upton rejected the idea of a small standing army bolstered in war by militias and volunteers. Upton proposed to learn from America's wars, especiall the ACW.

The Army as we knew it in recent times, through the first Gulf War, was Emory Upton's child. Upton's ideas are doctrine - even gospel - today.

At the time of his suicide (1881), Upton the theorist, was a failure. His reputation grew after his death and the first major effort to legally establish an expansible army came after WWI.

"A well regulated militia" (cont.)

And so, James Wadsworth had an unusual career as political general.

He began as a military celebrity, his reputation earned within the powerhouse New York state high command during the crisis of Lincoln's inaction. His federal career was launched under Stanton's (not Lincoln's) patronage, however, and where a Banks or Butler would occasionally have some role demanding political skill, Wadsworth was in field commands until his death. He was this odd duck of a purely military poltical general.

As mentioned yesterday, his removal from New York via U.S. commission solved a political problem and thereby marked the end of Lincoln's interest in him. Had Wadsworth won the governorship vacated by Edwin Morgan, had he persecuted and then crushed his Weed-Seward Republican enemies, Radical James Wadsworth might have become interesting to Lincoln as a threat ... the way Andrew Curtin was interesting to Lincoln after Curtin routed and then persecuted Cameron's forces in Pennsylvania, and after Curtin combined with Dennison of Ohio to formulate war policy with McClellan. But Wadsworth was a political casualty after his loss to Seymour, albeit one with strong friends in Congress. And he took refuge in an alternative reality called war.

The career of John McAuley Palmer follows a more conventional path for political generals. I don't want to make light of his patrotism and achievements but the pattern looks like this:

- Founds the Republican Party in Illinois (1856)

- Champions Lincoln to be Fremont's running mate at convention (1856)

- Strongly backs Lincoln against Douglas (1858)

- Is Republican national elector for Lincoln (1860)

- Lincoln appoints to peace commission (1861)

- Is named commander of 14th Ill Volunteers and serves under Fremont (1861)

- Lincoln promotes him to BG USV December 20, 1861

- Promoted to MG USV (1862)

- Governs Kentucky (1865)

- Continues his political career postwar.

If we leave it at that, this picture is unfair to Palmer. He had a distinguished military career and one that was very interesting, serving under Pope, Buell, Thomas, Rosecrans, and Sherman. Again and again, Palmer is saving somebody's bacon on the battlefield, with a glorious culmination at Chickamauga.

Take a look at these quick-n-easy web links: this one; here's another; here's another. Note how totally positive these career retrospectives are. If your heart has a military corner in there somewhere, it senses pangs of envy.

And yet, based on private statements made after the war, attributed anonymously to him, the military image Palmer had of himself is depressing.

Like Wadsworth, Palmer had a grandson and his grandson recorded these private thoughts.

We'll get to the thoughts, the sons and the militia shortly.

"A well regulated militia"

Just as we might view George McClellan's 1861 orders to D.C. as Lincoln's intended breakup of the powerhouse Dennison-McClellan team, so to the federalization of Generals Wool, Dix and Wadsworth appears to be the decapitation of Governor Edwin Morgan's amazing New York military high command, one that caused the president so much embarrassment at the war's start.

Obviously James Wadsworth was the junior member of this troika and where Wool was a Whig-cum-Republican and Dix a war Democrat, Wadsworth was a Radical who would come to lead the anti-Seward Republican opposition in New York State.

Upon Wadsworth's arrival in D.C., he immediately began caucusing with Radical legislators as if he were himself a legislator. He appears to have been used by Edwin Stanton against McClellan in the Spring of 1862 in the "defense of Washington" fiasco, but this is to underestimate the political power of Wadsworth at that time.

Wadsworth squandered his political capital in the fall of 1862 when he overturned the Weed-Seward plot to run Democrat John Dix for governor on the fusion "Union Party" line in New York. Running as a full-blooded radical Republican, General Wadsworth lost the election to Democrat Horatio Seymour. By mid-war, Wadsworth reverted to being just another political general. Later in the war, Charles Wainwright could look at the errors Wadsworth was making and regard him as a bungler. In his Diary of Battle, he did admire Wadsworth's personal qualities.

Killed in 1864, Wadsworth died the richest general in the Army (by legend). He was a patroon, like the Delanos, and oddly enough the Wadsworths and Delanos were McClellan's next door neighbors in what is now E. Orange, New Jersey.

I'm not sure which Wadsworths lived so amicably next door to GBM, but General James did leave behind a son, and a grandson more on whom later.

A sad sesquicentennial

It's the greenback's birthday, says the Financial Times. Actually, August is the birthday of Chase's Demand Note, with the greenback's birthday happening in February. But you wouldn't expect the Financial Times to know arcana like that.

You would expect them to know July from August.

"Today, the greenback is the primary reserve currency, largely due to tradition and lack of alternatives," says the Financial Times. Actually, it's the reserve currency because all oil trades must be settled in dollars, and everyone buiys oil, and when oil is no longer traded in dollars, it will not be the world reserve currency for even one more day.

Of course, you wouldn't expect the Financial Times to know arcana like that.

Oddly enough, the U.S. silver dollar coexisted with the paper dollar in 1862 but was scarce due to hoarding and a limited run.

Louisiana and the CSA struck many more silver half dollars (pictured) using silver expropriated from the U.S. New Orleans mint. Note the liberty cap!

These half dollars, struck in their many thousands, would have gone into hiding as Jeff Davis cranked up the mint's printing presses.

Gresham's Law is, after all, a law and it applied to both sides of the political divide.

McPherson's NYRB omnibus review

James McPherson has long been the ACW go-to guy for his genre in the New York Review of Books. Currently, he has a long omnibus review of titles in that paper.

Rather than do a long essay on McPherson's review, I want to show you how I read McPherson and why he is so objectionable to me. You get no continuity here, just a series of McP's statements in the order they occur and my comments.

McPherson: Born in England, raised in Los Angeles, and residing in London and New York, Foreman is well qualified to write about “Britain’s crucial role in the American Civil War.”

Comment: This is a non-sequiter. Born and raised are not scholarship qualifiers.

McPherson: ... her main title (“A World on Fire”) might strike some as an exercise in hyperbole.

Comment: It is Seward's hyperbole, not hers. She has made a play on his famous public "world wrapped in fire" threat against British intervention. Any Civil War reader would know that.

McPherson: ... the British government and armed forces did not intervene in the Civil War.

Comment: What audience needs to be reassured of this?

McPherson: But the Lincoln administration had already in effect recognized the Confederacy’s belligerent status by proclaiming a blockade of Southern ports...

Comment: No, not at all and this is to miss the whole point of the international law controversy behind the blockade.

McPherson: Meanwhile a “cotton famine” caused by the war and the blockade had reduced the amount of cotton coming to British and French mills to a pittance and thrown hundreds of thousands of workers and their families onto the dole.

Comment: There was no "dole" then. And the famine was temporary; new cotton sources were developed during the war which permanently margianlized future US cotton production.

McPherson: As Southern armies invaded Maryland and Kentucky in September, the British and French governments planned to offer mediation ...

Comment: There is no linkage between these events and the mediation statement is false. The British government kept intending to discuss mediation among its ministers but could never muster the political confidence to have that discussion. The impetus for the discussion was a provisional, contingent request by Napoleon III who never had any intention to mediate or intervene on his own. This whole matter was a potential brainstorming session that never took off.

McPherson: If the Lincoln government refused such an offer [mediation] (as surely it would have), the British and French intended to recognize the Confederacy.

Comment: This is nonsense. Neither France nor Britain ever reached a point in internal discussions where diplomatic contingencies could be agreed upon. This is projection, a discussion point that was to be raised in discussions that never happened.

McPherson: The contribution of A World on Fire lies in its richness of description, vivid writing, and focus on individual personalities...

Comment: After decades of serious diplomatic ACW histories, in what sense is this a contribution? Isn't this an insult to the hard work pillaged to construct a pop history? Wouldn't the next real contribution be a deep analysis of the neglected French diplomatic sources?

Rather than go on nitpicking, let me draw your attention to two general points.

First, notice that in his review, McPherson recapitulates Civil War history rather than analyze books. In each review he eventually comes around to some "value judgement," but these are superficial and always, always outside of the context of Civil War historiography.

Second, the headers on this piece promise us that McPherson is going to review four books. He reviews exactly two, if you call recapitulation of content a "review."

I understand that McPherson is old and that he may not have all his faculties at full strength. But these faults have been with us from the beginning. And my time to stop disagreeing with him is when he withdraws from publishing.

p.s. If you read the review, you'll notice he picks an absurd quarrel with Gary "Stop-the-Madness" Gallagher. Regular readers of this blog will remember that Gallagher, an editor at UNC Press, promised to let McPherson write a history of Civil War navies. That promise was broken, the book being written by Craig Symonds. Bad feelings?

Bull Run battle looks like a rout

The organizers of the Bull Run re-enactment have not been paying attention to heritage tourism trends; instead, they appear to have been buying into the endless hype. Not only are tickets about a third of what they need to be, only 44% of the re-enactors needed have signed on.

Publishing's race to the bottom

Ted Savas commented on a story about the bestest selling digital author of all time, Michael Connelly.

I have a different take on this than the mainstream press.

Mr. Connelly's output is what we called in college "mindrot." Nothing wrong with that; I mention it because one can write formulaic genre fiction at a fast clip, thus making one quite a productive writer.

Connelly's sale of a million is an aggregate total spread across 10 e-books. He sells his books at 99 cents each, an aggressive pricing model that nets him a 35 cent royalty per.

This author, then, has garnered $35,000 from the sale of one million editions. If the minimum length for a book of genre fiction is 50,000 words, how long would it take you to write 10 books? Connelly has a day job, so consider that, too.

Bottom line: is $3,500 per book worth (say) 60 days per book?

Or is this a race to the bottom?

Consider what you did with your last 99 cent bargain book purchase. It's probably sitting on your shelf, unread.

I bet Kindlers are accumulating unread books and 99 cent books - priced like an MP3 download - may give misleading indications about an author's popularity.

There's another aspect to this that is unknown to people at large.

Amazon and other venues, through their "marketplace" functions, deal in a great many black and gray market books. If you troll through the discussion boards on self-publishing POD websites, you will find threads where the digital copy of an edition was used by a downloader to make a pirate POD hardcopy run which was then sold at a discount on Amazon (or wherever) to compete with the legal and authorized edition.

The nature of these threads is to complain to the POD about the piracy, not to boast about pirating. In my own limited experiments with e-books, I have been taken twice by pirates.

Moreover, the digital reader machines have steadily been moving from propritary text markup schemes, which inhibit POD pirating due to the display of garbage code when not on their native platforms, to open source mark-up, like Adobe Acrobat, which any POD shop can run books from.

This week, I am buying a certain Kindle book (for a class) which does not need to be read on Kindle. It will display on my computer, even without a Kindle emulator. This is a book any fool can pirate, print, and sell on ebay, B&N, Amazon, etc.

Connelly has this much wisdom in his busines model: pirates cannot compete with 99 cent pricing. However, piracy will drive this kind of pricing and the publisher will feel the pressure from pirates as much as antipirates.

If you are a publisher with a good-selling hardcopy title, it would behove you to occasionally buy a copy from online marketplaces to see what's happening out there. An unpleasant surprise may await.

Faust ponders

Drew Gilpin faust ponders the Centennial, the sesquicentennial, re-enactment, and the meaning of the Civil War.

Crikey indeed

Australian tourists encounter Gettysburg and make a striking point:

And yet what I found myself reflecting on repeatedly was notions of ‘authenticity’ and a living present in Gettysburg. As countless individuals are drawn to this beautiful historic town to feel the pulse of its part in America’s Civil War, where is its heart beat today, and why do all the visitors not really seem to care? ... Visiting places purely to understand their past all too often seems to elide, and perhaps inhibit, their present, and indeed their participation in the project of modernity. While we all travel to learn and experience the history of places, it seems important to really take note of their contemporary everyday cultures as well.

The Leech-Vidal connection

Who knew?

Lincoln and Lee letters at Southeby's

AL flames the wife of a prisoner:

You protest, nonetheless, that you and he are loyal, and you may really think so, but this is a view of loyalty which is difficult to conceive that any sane person could take, and one which the government can not tolerate and hope to live.

Prince Polecat

The last surviving CSA MG was a French prince. I had no idea.

Lead balloons

I had written a few days ago that I would have enjoyed re-enacting with the balloon corps on the mall.

Spoke too soon. Didn't really think this through. Phony baloney event? Check. Run by public historians? Check. Staged in a geographic vortex of political psychosis? Check. All these factors came into play "big time" in re-enacting Thaddeus Lowe's 1861 balloon flight for President Lincoln. Or failing to.

While flipping the radio dial yesterday, I encountered a report that said DHS prohibited any balloon flights, so the attendees got to see not a tethered balloon, but a prostrate (cross-bound) bag (see photo). Think Gulliver in Lilliput. USA Today named a different villain, one we know very well indeed:

At the Mall celebration, the recreated 1861 balloon will stay on the ground to comply with U.S. Park Service regulations designed to keep the airspace safe over the capital.

Except that it's not a recreated 1861 balloon.

I read this account in which an additional layer of security was injected. The strapped down, partially inflated "recreated 1861" balloon was being "inflated" with cold air via a cold air blower. The same story mentions the balloon in question dates from 1941. It's a 20th Century government service balloon. To ensure you don't confuse it with anything dated 1861, it's also a silvery color.

The editor who wrote the NBC headline could not be troubled to read the story itself and the headline says, "Gas-Filled Balloon To Loom Over Mall." Figuratively speaking, perhaps.

So there it lies, staked down like Gulliver, a fan blowing cold air into its silvery aperture, tourists ambling by wondering "What the..." As they walked by, the radio news reporter caught a few of their comments. The adult: "Interesting." The kid: "I hope they fly it!"

No chance, junior, whatever "it" may be.

Those who ventured too close to the display were accosted by an impersonator shouting, "I am Thaddeus Lowe." In other words, "I am a liar or insane." I think little kids would better appreciate, "I am dressed up like Thaddeus Lowe" or "I am pretending to be Thaddeus Lowe." That might be truthful, sensible, and in a kid way, fun.

But you know, if even a single child is led to appreciate history through these lies, stunts and tricks, it will have been worth it.

After awhile, another actor walked up telling people, "I am Abraham Lincoln." This would be Dishonest Abe from Bizarro World. Dishonest Abe then struck up a phony, I would even say imbecilic, conversation with Pretend Lowe. The reporter caught some of it. It sounded like a bad sixth grade play, so maybe the younger tourists could relate.

The newspaper accounts in the run up to this make no mention of the caveats I've just run through.

WaPo got it half right: "On Saturday, the museum will inflate a balloon similar to Lowe’s Enterprise [eh?] and host re-enactors portraying Lowe and Lincoln, with presentations on Civil War ballooning. The National Park Service won’t allow the balloon to fly, though."

This is like the 12-oz "pound" of coffee. I think public history is on a trend in which less and less history content is delivered at these events.

Prediction

Halloween, 2012: Children dress as Lincoln for trick or treat - masks, blood spattered clothing, axes. I dunno, maybe crossbows too.

"America Aflame"

A problematic book gets a problematic review.

Lowe on the Mall

This is a re-enactment I would enjoy doing.

June 22, 2012

Mark the date. The movie Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter will premier 6/22/12. Says the screenwriter,

It's hacking people's heads off and killing vampires left and right. The main character [Abraham Lincoln] has an axe, with which he kills countless amounts of vampires. It's a dark, cool, edgy, twisted movie. I don't know what the rating will be, but I suspect that the rating would be an R. I suspect it will be an R just because there's a lot of murder and decapitation.

Prediction: If you can get the rating below R, public historians will bus countless school children to the film because, if just one child comes away with an increased interest in history, it will have been worth it.

You laugh, but the ALPLM's big show right now is a display of plastic movie props.

The backlash against Ken Burns begins

No, not here: I'm always backlashing against Burns.

Here:

James Lundberg: "Because of you, my Civil War lecture is always packed—with students raised on your sentimental, romantic, deeply misleading portrait of the conflict."

Ta-Nehisi Coates: "I think the biggest failing of the movie, is that, as Cynic once said, it never comes across a cute quote that it doesn't like."

Actually, both seem annoyed at Burns' use of Shelby Foote. But what was Foote? A novelist and ranconteur! What is Burns? a documentary maker.

Meanwhile, the Burns machine rolls on and on and on.

When you become a brand, dear reader, drop me a postcard.

Germany's re-enactors

Nobody wants to play General Schimmelpfennig.

Ken Burns, tour guide

Cheesy.

Lincoln, the movie (cont.)

Started posting on this topic in 2008. Looks like we will finish in 2012. Egads.

Question: would you trust a jackass like this with an historical script on the complexity of Lincoln? (Brush past the intrusive ad.)

Tommy Lee Jones - as Thaddeus Stevens? Stevens was a big part of the Lincoln presidency, don't you know?

Daniel Day Lewis is apparently set to play Lincoln against Sally Field, who is maybe 50 years older than he. Director Spielberg cited Fields' ability to convey "fragility and complexity."

This has the makings of a made-for-TV movie. I don't mean that in a good way.

We're getting somewhere, we're happy, really

Optimism deserves its day and given the gloom and doom on this blog, I should take a moment to put things in perspective.

In 1997, when I started the website Civil War Book News, we faced a river of sewage with each new publishing season producing at most one or two noteworthy titles. Publishers were in the backwash of a post-Ken Burns and Killer Angels influx of ignorant, transient bookbuyers who were looking to relive the narrative highlights of whatever audiovisual garbage they had recently ingested.

For the deep reader, bracketed on one side by the Centennial hacks and their tired insights and on the other side by completely naive and ignorant readers revving the market for light entertainment, it was a miserable time indeed.

Today, a good proportion of each season's titles is interesting and worth notice, so much so, that I cannot keep up. My useful function in this blog may be to point out the nonsense that still gets published, which task is a bit more doable.

Furthermore, my contempt for the foibles of Civil War authors has been tempered in the last few years by some broader considerations. On Monday, I read about 200 pages of peer-reviewed, well-regarded social science papers for a course I am taking. I have read many such but never 200 pages in one sitting.

It seems to me, from my readings, that social science generally is in much worse condition than Civil War history in particular. Put another way, we suffer a condition in this country where people self-select for careers in which they are not in any way suited. We are told you can be anything and that your ticket to "anything" is hard work and "education." This is a recipe for lifelong dilettantism; on some level we know this for we are forever searching for that doctor / lawyer / contractor / plumber / mechanic who transcends his/her credentials.

Blind striving for jobs in fields of ill choice can combine with our rabid credentialism to feed a more general culture of authority-seeking. This is a terrible affliction: witness the cult around James McPherson. It's also a broad cultural tendency that transcends Civil War history everywhere and at all times. I notice it more and more.

The leading newspapers have but one purpose: to deliver authority to authority seekers. This is a sensible market transaction but its repercussions are awful. The deep reader in and out of Civil War history wants to see for himself, but the authority-seeker wants guidance. This is why we have bestseller lists, top 10 lists, restaurant guides, and highly credentialed talking heads laying down what's hot and what's not. Again, I refer you to the greatest literary hoax of all time. It failed to embarass the New York Times (its target) or the authority-seeking readers of said paper. Inevitably!

The new executive editrix of the New York Times today painted the perfect picture of a New York Times reader in describing her own family: "In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion ... If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.”

The Times et al may be losing circulation but they are absolutely faithful to their readers in delivering exactly what those readers seek - certitude, authority, expertise.

By the way, today marked another kind of milestone for the paper. In column one, page one of the print edition, it ran the following headline: "Data on jobs may hold key to President's." It didn't say president's what, just "president's." A gaffe on this scale does not make the Times any less of a religion, nor does it make the Times less right. The Times, like all that bad Civil War history, is market driven. And it delivers.

There is and always will be a segment of the Civil War readership that craves authority, finality, certitude. These folks lay down their Times top 10 lists and turn to their Battle Cry of Freedom (or whatever). The call of the wild archive is not for their ears. Debate is troubling. Analysis without a master narrative to frame it represents a nightmare of confusion. Answers must be simple. Personalities must be black and white. Issues must be simple.

These poor devils we will have with us always and the day will come again when their wishes dominate the publishing industry to crowd out good books. Let us make merry while we have this blessed interval of good books in between bad times.