I was revelling in my semiannual John C. Ropes analytic high last night and thinking.
When the talespinners who write today's ACW history get me down, way down, I like to perk up with a few passages from The Army Under Pope. The analytic parts tend to induce an almost hallucinogenic level of enjoyment.
Here's what I was thinking: how can this journalist-cum-historian be so much better than his transitioned colleagues (Freeman, Dowdey, Waugh, Swinton, Catton, Sears)?
Looking to see if anyone has kept this 1901 tome in print, I discovered that that Ropes was a lawyer, not a journalist.
Well that explains the spare storylines (just enough to hang the analysis on), the lucid presentation of timelines and evidence, and the tight, multilevel reasonings. It explains why his data comes first, arguments second, and story third.
A couple years ago, a thoroughly versed and widely read ACW author was going on about McClellan's betrayal of Pope before Second Manassas. I asked him how he could possibly hold that position after reading Ropes' superb deconstruction of Pope's claim. He made an incoherent comment that suggested to me he read Ropes but did not digest the analytic parts.
This came home to me with a bang in the book Return to Bull Run by John Hennessey. First of all, we don't need Hennessy if we have Ropes on the same subject, unless Hennessy is presenting and interpreting new data (which he was not). Second, Hennessy is/was obliged to overturn Ropes' earlier work in areas where he disputes Ropes's conclusions. He didn't. Hennesy read Ropes but just didn't get it. Didn't get the clear reasoning, the extensively documented arguments, the open-and-shut quality of the case against Pope and the problem with charges against McClellan and Porter. Hennessy would have had to give up major literary elements in his story. He was like the Amazon reviewer who summarized Ropes' book thus:
The reluctance of Fitz-John Porter to commit his corps to the fray, and of his mentor McClellan's refusal to send troops already promised to Pope only contributed to an inevitable, though not necessary defeat.
Which is the exact opposite of Ropes' beautifully reasoned conclusion. Off by just 180 degrees. (Thanks for the review, though!)
The readers and writers of ACW history today are so overwhelmingly story-driven that all the details underlying a storyline can change, every element can be shown to be something other than what they thought; they can even accept that; and yet the story must remain the same.
Our ACW readers and writers are Ropes-proof, which means history-proof.
6/30/2004
Identifying the Gwalia
If you like Sea Hunt stories, here's quite a nice article on the identification of a wrecked 1859 tug off Florida.
Inclusive Confederate memorials
Here's a plan for memorializing some black Confederate military servants/slaves as a step towards inclusiveness.
JUNE BOOKS | Scheduled for release this month: Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant * The Passing of the Armies * Both of the preceding are Barnes and Noble reprints. Additionally, there is a June listing of Grant Comes East by Gingrich, but this must be a second or third run of the hardback, which was released earlier.
6/29/2004
Park Service in new Gettysburg outrage
Read it and weep:
Neutra spends much of his time trying to protect the legacy of his father, who died in 1970 and was declared by the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York to be second only to architect Frank Lloyd Wright in terms of international reputation...
Yet his biggest preservation battle is being fought far from California, in Gettysburg, Pa., against an unlikely foe: the National Park Service. The Cyclorama Center at the Gettysburg National Military Park, the shrine-like battlefield visited by nearly 2 million tourists a year, is perhaps Richard Neutra's greatest public commission and the finest example of his work east of the Mississippi. Yet it's slated for demolition in early 2007.
Neutra spends much of his time trying to protect the legacy of his father, who died in 1970 and was declared by the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York to be second only to architect Frank Lloyd Wright in terms of international reputation...
Yet his biggest preservation battle is being fought far from California, in Gettysburg, Pa., against an unlikely foe: the National Park Service. The Cyclorama Center at the Gettysburg National Military Park, the shrine-like battlefield visited by nearly 2 million tourists a year, is perhaps Richard Neutra's greatest public commission and the finest example of his work east of the Mississippi. Yet it's slated for demolition in early 2007.
JUNE BOOKS | Scheduled for release this month: James Buchanan * American Heritage History of the Battle of Gettysburg * Why Lincoln Matters: Today More Than Ever
6/28/2004
The Civil War and Pershing's war
In reading Thomas Fleming's WWI tome Illusion of Victory, the ACW appears as an actor who repeatedly enters the stage on miscue and is then directed off.
First, there is the matter of the "Committee on the Conduct of the War." Republicans repeatedly tried to revive it under its precise ACW name and each time Woodrow Wilson succeeded in showing it off.
Same story in the matter of the U.S. Volunteers. Teddy Roosevelt and Leonard Wood stage multiple attempts to bring them back and Wilson keeps pushing them out of his way.
All the issues of preparedness, training, civil/military relations will strike the ACW reader as familiar.
A most interesting thing is this passage that author Fleming mined from an order issued by Pershing that explains maneuver warfare. The current Allied practice, Pershing says, is "marked by uniform formations, the regulation of space and time by higher commands down to the smallest details, and little intitiative."
Wow, shades of Col. John Boyd and his critique of second generation warfare. Nor does it get any more Boydian than this:
Open warfare had irregular formations, comparatively little regulation of space and time, and the greatest possible use of the infantry's own firepower to enable it to "get forward ... [with] brief orders" and "the greatest possible use of individual initiative."
Say hello to Boyd's third generation.
Boyd viewed the Civil War as first or second generation stuff, and my quibbles with that are here. Certainly, the horrific dedication to alignment, synchronicity, spatial management, and the micromanagement of undertrained subordinates all marked the ACW - and its failures were replicated in WWI. These vices govern much of our "best" military thinking today, especially in the Army.
Boyd viewed the Ludendorff tactics of 1918 as the beginning of maneuver warfare. Pershing called it open warfare. Small groups led by trusted, responsible, like-minded officers, acting irrespective of flanks or rear, losing communication with headquarters, bypassing strong points, moving ever deeper out of communication, and out of control, until the paralyzed and confused enemy collapses, flees, and surrenders. Lundendorff made it happen. Pershing got it "in real time." Boyd distilled it into a doctrine.
Pershing broke with the Civil War.
A tip of the hat to Fleming, who can recognize the good stuff among a general's many orders.
First, there is the matter of the "Committee on the Conduct of the War." Republicans repeatedly tried to revive it under its precise ACW name and each time Woodrow Wilson succeeded in showing it off.
Same story in the matter of the U.S. Volunteers. Teddy Roosevelt and Leonard Wood stage multiple attempts to bring them back and Wilson keeps pushing them out of his way.
All the issues of preparedness, training, civil/military relations will strike the ACW reader as familiar.
A most interesting thing is this passage that author Fleming mined from an order issued by Pershing that explains maneuver warfare. The current Allied practice, Pershing says, is "marked by uniform formations, the regulation of space and time by higher commands down to the smallest details, and little intitiative."
Wow, shades of Col. John Boyd and his critique of second generation warfare. Nor does it get any more Boydian than this:
Open warfare had irregular formations, comparatively little regulation of space and time, and the greatest possible use of the infantry's own firepower to enable it to "get forward ... [with] brief orders" and "the greatest possible use of individual initiative."
Say hello to Boyd's third generation.
Boyd viewed the Civil War as first or second generation stuff, and my quibbles with that are here. Certainly, the horrific dedication to alignment, synchronicity, spatial management, and the micromanagement of undertrained subordinates all marked the ACW - and its failures were replicated in WWI. These vices govern much of our "best" military thinking today, especially in the Army.
Boyd viewed the Ludendorff tactics of 1918 as the beginning of maneuver warfare. Pershing called it open warfare. Small groups led by trusted, responsible, like-minded officers, acting irrespective of flanks or rear, losing communication with headquarters, bypassing strong points, moving ever deeper out of communication, and out of control, until the paralyzed and confused enemy collapses, flees, and surrenders. Lundendorff made it happen. Pershing got it "in real time." Boyd distilled it into a doctrine.
Pershing broke with the Civil War.
A tip of the hat to Fleming, who can recognize the good stuff among a general's many orders.
JUNE BOOKS | Scheduled for release this month: Women of the Civil War * Mathew Brady and the Image of History * Slavery, Emancipation, and the Civil War * Historical Dictionary of the Civil War and Reconstruction
6/26/2004
McClellanist Minstrels, 2 of 2
SATURDAY | In our modern world, we have music remixes (same recording tracks, different emphasis), new arrangements (same tune in different variations), sampling (snippets of music put to new purpose), and covers (same music, different players). That's the way we recycle songs.
In the Civil War a hit tune might be reissued a year later with no other change than different lyrics. So it was with "Whack, Row De Dow! The 1861 version "Sung with immense success by Bryant's Minstrels" was linked here last week.
Where the original was written by NYC actress Fanny Herring for Bryant's company, sheet music or song lyrics turn up in other cities with the names of other minstrel troupes attached to them. This Philadelphia specimen refers to Carncross & Dixey's Minstrels. The music was popular enough to endure into the late 19th Century serving as a labor organizing song.
By 1862, the Herring/Bryant team is back with updated lyrics.
To hear the music, scroll down one third of the way on *this page* and click.
Here are the upbeat lyrics to Herring's 1862 piece, McClellan and Lincoln again bathing in good will.
Whack! Row de Dow. No. 2.
As sung by Dan Bryant.
The Rebels they are getting scared,
They are, upon my word!
They've evacuated Yorktown,
And got whipped at Williamsburgh;
They'll not come back: for little Mac
Will then be sure to pop 'em;
And now they've got to running:
Horace Greeley couldn't stop 'em.
Whack! row de dow!
The Stars and Stripes must wave forever!
Whack! row de dow!
For, our Flag we're bound to save!
Good news from Gen. Halleck:
It fills us with delight;
He's ten thousand pris'ners taken;
Beauregard he's put to flight.
They've lost all hope: for Gen. Pope
Has put them all to rout...
Secession's dead ... knocked in the head;
Old Beauregard played out.
Whack! row de dow! &c.
Wool, he captured Norfolk,
Along with Portsmouth, too;
But when they heard of our advance,
Away the Rebels flew.
Old Abe was there to take a share:
I tell you he's a stormer.
Look out! Old Jeff, you better run,
Or else you are a goner...
Whack! row de dow! &c.
Now, Johnny Bull may put on airs,
But what care we for that!
He's been waiting now some time,
For to have a little spat;
But if he will but just keep cool,
Until we settle up our family quarrel,
We will take them altogether:
For, it makes no odds to Abe Lincoln.
Whack! row de dow!
Puty boy is Abe Lincoln!
Whack! row de dow!
How are you rail splitter?
In the Civil War a hit tune might be reissued a year later with no other change than different lyrics. So it was with "Whack, Row De Dow! The 1861 version "Sung with immense success by Bryant's Minstrels" was linked here last week.
Where the original was written by NYC actress Fanny Herring for Bryant's company, sheet music or song lyrics turn up in other cities with the names of other minstrel troupes attached to them. This Philadelphia specimen refers to Carncross & Dixey's Minstrels. The music was popular enough to endure into the late 19th Century serving as a labor organizing song.
By 1862, the Herring/Bryant team is back with updated lyrics.
To hear the music, scroll down one third of the way on *this page* and click.
Here are the upbeat lyrics to Herring's 1862 piece, McClellan and Lincoln again bathing in good will.
Whack! Row de Dow. No. 2.
As sung by Dan Bryant.
The Rebels they are getting scared,
They are, upon my word!
They've evacuated Yorktown,
And got whipped at Williamsburgh;
They'll not come back: for little Mac
Will then be sure to pop 'em;
And now they've got to running:
Horace Greeley couldn't stop 'em.
Whack! row de dow!
The Stars and Stripes must wave forever!
Whack! row de dow!
For, our Flag we're bound to save!
Good news from Gen. Halleck:
It fills us with delight;
He's ten thousand pris'ners taken;
Beauregard he's put to flight.
They've lost all hope: for Gen. Pope
Has put them all to rout...
Secession's dead ... knocked in the head;
Old Beauregard played out.
Whack! row de dow! &c.
Wool, he captured Norfolk,
Along with Portsmouth, too;
But when they heard of our advance,
Away the Rebels flew.
Old Abe was there to take a share:
I tell you he's a stormer.
Look out! Old Jeff, you better run,
Or else you are a goner...
Whack! row de dow! &c.
Now, Johnny Bull may put on airs,
But what care we for that!
He's been waiting now some time,
For to have a little spat;
But if he will but just keep cool,
Until we settle up our family quarrel,
We will take them altogether:
For, it makes no odds to Abe Lincoln.
Whack! row de dow!
Puty boy is Abe Lincoln!
Whack! row de dow!
How are you rail splitter?
6/25/2004
Ford's Theatre charts new course
Ford's has a marketing edge on other Washington theatres:
Because it's the theater where Lincoln was shot, Ford’s is able to fill seats with people happy to sit through a show simply to gaze upon the eerily festooned box from which the assassin John Wilkes Booth leapt after shooting the president.
But now, with a new (gay) producing director the bill of fare is about to change:
“Our gay audience is not particularly strong here,” Tetreault says. “The quality level hasn’t been as it should or can be. Gay people will not go to see bad theater unless the actors are naked. It’s true. And since we won’t have that here, we have no option but to produce high-quality, clothed theater."
The new director is not promising a gay schedule as such, but he says the place is not going to be entirely family friendly in the future.
What is interesting about this, to me, is that Ford's struggles, year after year, to be an ordinary working theatre. Ford's could rake in the tourist dollars on autopilot. It is anomalous (and perhaps noble) that Our American Cousin is not staged endlessly; that Lincoln and Booth actors do not re-enact the assasination; that the animatronics that conquered the Lincoln Library and Museum have not been deployed here.
All that is inevitable. Commercial logic could not be denied at the Lincoln Library, it cannot be denied here for very long. So enjoy your "high-quality, clothed theater" for now.
Because it's the theater where Lincoln was shot, Ford’s is able to fill seats with people happy to sit through a show simply to gaze upon the eerily festooned box from which the assassin John Wilkes Booth leapt after shooting the president.
But now, with a new (gay) producing director the bill of fare is about to change:
“Our gay audience is not particularly strong here,” Tetreault says. “The quality level hasn’t been as it should or can be. Gay people will not go to see bad theater unless the actors are naked. It’s true. And since we won’t have that here, we have no option but to produce high-quality, clothed theater."
The new director is not promising a gay schedule as such, but he says the place is not going to be entirely family friendly in the future.
What is interesting about this, to me, is that Ford's struggles, year after year, to be an ordinary working theatre. Ford's could rake in the tourist dollars on autopilot. It is anomalous (and perhaps noble) that Our American Cousin is not staged endlessly; that Lincoln and Booth actors do not re-enact the assasination; that the animatronics that conquered the Lincoln Library and Museum have not been deployed here.
All that is inevitable. Commercial logic could not be denied at the Lincoln Library, it cannot be denied here for very long. So enjoy your "high-quality, clothed theater" for now.
JUNE BOOKS | Scheduled for release this month: Lee the American * Seven Days Battles: Lee's Defence of Richmond (Campaign Series #133) * Sisters of the Confederacy * Union Jacks: Yankee Sailors in the Civil War
6/24/2004
AWOL Lincoln Library advisors prepare to surrender
It will take a book the size of a pop history blockbuster to tell the story of the Lincoln Library and Museum.
Currently, the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum has a director, Richard Norton Smith. It has a foundation, headed by ex-governor Jim Edgar. It has an advisory board of 11, one member of which has quit.
From 1,500 miles away, it seems that the parts fit together this way:
The advisory board sets goals and directions for projects ** with the foundation (Edgar) raising money for the approved goals and projects ** with the facilities director (Smith) supervising projects and facilities.
The fly in the ointment is that the advisory board was appointed entirely by the previous (Republican) governor; his (Democrat) replacement has never communicated with the board and they are unsure of their charter. They have not met. They understand that they are not wanted.
Richard Norton Smith, no doubt speaking for the governor of Illinois, says:
The advisory board was an attempt by [ex-gov] Ryan to put in place a group of people who would have some degree of oversight," Smith said. "But events have superceded the Ryan plan.
I like the confidence, the brashness even. Mr. Smith and foundation chief Edgar will not be accepting oversight at this time, thank you. Events (the hirings of Smith and Edgar) have superseded the need for oversight. Oversight is for other people.
Now, a lawsuit could settle this question with more finality than Smith's say-so, but a committee that won't meet surely won't sue either.
Advantage Smith.
Currently, the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum has a director, Richard Norton Smith. It has a foundation, headed by ex-governor Jim Edgar. It has an advisory board of 11, one member of which has quit.
From 1,500 miles away, it seems that the parts fit together this way:
The advisory board sets goals and directions for projects ** with the foundation (Edgar) raising money for the approved goals and projects ** with the facilities director (Smith) supervising projects and facilities.
The fly in the ointment is that the advisory board was appointed entirely by the previous (Republican) governor; his (Democrat) replacement has never communicated with the board and they are unsure of their charter. They have not met. They understand that they are not wanted.
Richard Norton Smith, no doubt speaking for the governor of Illinois, says:
The advisory board was an attempt by [ex-gov] Ryan to put in place a group of people who would have some degree of oversight," Smith said. "But events have superceded the Ryan plan.
I like the confidence, the brashness even. Mr. Smith and foundation chief Edgar will not be accepting oversight at this time, thank you. Events (the hirings of Smith and Edgar) have superseded the need for oversight. Oversight is for other people.
Now, a lawsuit could settle this question with more finality than Smith's say-so, but a committee that won't meet surely won't sue either.
Advantage Smith.
Cheap publishing technologies and history
Hats off to columnist Robert Landauer for a piece on how cheap publishing technology is changing received history.
What it means for us is that it is much harder to build Soviet styles of consensus on Civil War controversies when surrounded by "talk-back" devices - technology that did not exist 40 years ago when Civil War inquiry became severely constrained by the American Heritage magazine's editorial decisions.
As recently as four years ago, the consensus-driven editor of a popular Civil War slick wrote, in rejecting a friend's article, that no one arguing a certain general's military competence would ever be published in his magazine. Nor was this a furtive message. The exponent of this policy felt not the slightest twinge of shame in the matter.
Of course, more than technology is needed to fill the holes and level the ground; skilled argument, judicious handling of evidence, exhaustive research are more important than fresh perspectives and new opinions. Ignorant waves of Civil War bookbuyers will continue to stream into the nonfiction field from the film and fiction side, polluting publishers' standards by offering easy bucks for bad books.
Nevertheless, this is certainly the dawn of a golden age for enthusiasts who have the will and the knowledge to correct errors and contribute to the sum of ACW knowledge. The Official Records are online. So are Lincoln's papers. When we in ACW history get to the equivalent of music file swapping on shared networks, Civil War research will have reached a point where our 20th Century standard works will look half quaint and half foolish.
What it means for us is that it is much harder to build Soviet styles of consensus on Civil War controversies when surrounded by "talk-back" devices - technology that did not exist 40 years ago when Civil War inquiry became severely constrained by the American Heritage magazine's editorial decisions.
As recently as four years ago, the consensus-driven editor of a popular Civil War slick wrote, in rejecting a friend's article, that no one arguing a certain general's military competence would ever be published in his magazine. Nor was this a furtive message. The exponent of this policy felt not the slightest twinge of shame in the matter.
Of course, more than technology is needed to fill the holes and level the ground; skilled argument, judicious handling of evidence, exhaustive research are more important than fresh perspectives and new opinions. Ignorant waves of Civil War bookbuyers will continue to stream into the nonfiction field from the film and fiction side, polluting publishers' standards by offering easy bucks for bad books.
Nevertheless, this is certainly the dawn of a golden age for enthusiasts who have the will and the knowledge to correct errors and contribute to the sum of ACW knowledge. The Official Records are online. So are Lincoln's papers. When we in ACW history get to the equivalent of music file swapping on shared networks, Civil War research will have reached a point where our 20th Century standard works will look half quaint and half foolish.
June book releases
This is a running list and a new feature that will appear over the news section. In only a few cases can I find the exact day of the month on which the publisher releases a title, so I will generally be linking a few titles at random each day to keep these entries short. By the end of each month, I'll have run through all books slated for release in that period that I know of. Also at the end of the month I'll specifically list books that have been released but for which I have no information. "FYI" as they say. * The Anti-Slavery Crusade: A Chronicle of the Gathering Storm * Bloody Path to the Shenandoah: Fighting with the Union VI Corps in the American Civil War * Dear Eagle: The Civil War Correspondence of Stephen H. Bogardus, JR. to the Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle * Field Artillery Weapons of the Civil War, Revised Edition * Flags of Civil War Arkansas and Missouri
6/23/2004
For Gingrich, it's a quiet little book tour
The lack of news and reviews for Grant Comes East has been striking. Here's the most I could scare up while Googling.
In giving what she thought was an endorsement, gossipy Liz Smith put her finger on the central problem of this counterfactual novel:
This is a very readable story of how President Abraham Lincoln finally put Grant in charge and changed the course of history.
Let me rephrase her sentence: in the novel, Lincoln put Grant in charge to get the same historical outcome.
That's not going to excite alternative history readers, as I pointed out here.
In giving what she thought was an endorsement, gossipy Liz Smith put her finger on the central problem of this counterfactual novel:
This is a very readable story of how President Abraham Lincoln finally put Grant in charge and changed the course of history.
Let me rephrase her sentence: in the novel, Lincoln put Grant in charge to get the same historical outcome.
That's not going to excite alternative history readers, as I pointed out here.
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