Maryland Voices

I've reconsidered my opinion of Maryland Voices and posted new thoughts at the bottom of this post.

BTW, manpower - our false ideas of Union manpower especially - has been a theme here. I was therefore interested in this bit from a letter written by an officer of the Second Maryland USV to Ambrose Burnside after Antietam:

General, at reveille his morning, less than 100 men answered the roll call out of 953 men who reported to you in North Carolina in April, not five months ago.

One regiment does not an army make. And obviously 853 were not killed in one battle, but I hope you find this nugget suggestive.

If you are a conventional historian and the payroll muster is your authority to make statements like "Union forces outnumbered Rebel forces by X to Y," and "McClellan's inexcusable failure to pursue," you need desperately to meditate on the Zen of 1/10th of regimental strength. And Meade's letter to his wife in which he tallies Hooker's present for combat numbers. And the entire Lincoln-McClellan dialog on shirking and wastage. (The least part of it is filed in pop history under "Fleas, barnyard shoveling.")

Fortunately, the Union surgeons compiled and published the numbers from morning roll calls just like these. Forgive me for flogging that dead horse yet again. Surgeon's numbers have been available to reseachers forever - and they paint an irrefutable picture of the baseline of Northern strength figures contrary to muster rolls and what "everyone knows." Some day, even Pulitzer-winning Civil War historians will discover the morning roll call tallies and the eternally awful state of the AOP.

"History at its best"

From the pen of a marketing copywriter:

The agony of festering wounds, and the misery of typhoid fever and pneumonia grab the reader as does the loneliness and yearning for contact with loved ones. [...] The stink of black powder, the blast of musketry and cannons flood the senses and keep the pages turning.

This blog is rated PG

It really is, by this bunch, because they found one use of the word "crack" and three uses of the word "dead." Damn.

Civil War cruises

They're here. I'm picturing seven nights of drunken arguments but the brochure is more upbeat:

Guests can relive the drama of the Civil War era aboard the Delta Queen as recognized experts highlight major battle sites along the breathtaking Ohio and Cumberland Rivers cruise route, regaling the courage, struggle and historical significance of the war that united and shaped the country. Guest performers in the evening will delight passengers with Civil War era music or a surprise visit from Abraham Lincoln himself.

Genealogy - the next step

The small 2005 film, "Strike the Tent," has been issued on DVD as "The Last Confederate," and as of this moment is ranked by Amazon an impressive 3,590th in DVD sales. (Note that Amazon sales rank is based on velocity of sales - sales per unit of time - times the number of sold units.)

Concurrent with the DVD release, there were some screenings of the title in movie form.

The interesting thing about this film for me is that it represents the next step in genealogical research, or rather one troubling answer to the question, "So what do you do with that family research you collected?" I don't want to say that it's cheap or easy to make movies, but it's been getting cheaper and easier.

Are most genealogists romanticists? Are they narrative-driven?

It bothers me that discrete historical artifacts (like letters, family stories) which can transport one vicariously into specific and authentic historical moments are strung together with invented transitional material to produce an inauthentic experience. In other words, a novelization of family history would trade the rich and the real for fakery (sprinkled with an occasional truthful nugget). To then film this debased, novelized material adds an additional layer of falsehood. We have actors pretending to be ancestors, we have all those "authenticity" issues (dialog, clothes, furnishings), and we have the reorganization of human experience around literary conventions, in this case, Romantic narrative formulas.

Never trust a genealogist with history. Is that the right lesson to draw here?

Review here * Another review * Website * Rotten Tomatoes

Sounds reasonable

The SCV wants a Confederate soldier statue in front of the courthouse in Appling, near Savannah. The NAACP says put it a block away, in front of the museum/heritage center.

Since the current government has no connection whatever with pre-Reconstruction Georgia, the NAACP is right. This is a statement about personal, not political, heritage.

Never for want of audacity

I am experiencing a book that is the publishing equivalent of Cinerama. It's called Never for Want of Powder: The Confederate Powder Works in Augusta, Georgia.

The New York Times once reported on Cinerama's effect on an audience, saying it was "as though most of them were seeing motion pictures for the first time." And I am looking at what a Civil War book can be.

When Cinerama re-engineered filming and showing technologies, movies had to be written, directed, and produced in a new way to accomodate the heightened potential. This book presents a similar effect - content organized around an extremely demanding technical and presentation ethos. Or perhaps, the content came first and then the technical decisions. Let me explain.

The format of the book, a hardback, is set at 11"x14.5" and the paper is a fine glossy stock.

It contains 14 chapters, each either a scholarly essay or an outright monograph on the subject of the powder works, its principal figures, its production system, or its architecture. Additionally, there are three appendices.

There are 46 figures, 74 color plates, 11 tables, 19 pages of notes and five pages of bibliography on this obscure subject - all told, 344 pages.

The nearest equivalent experience is in an expensive art book. But it would be a slight to call Never an art or coffee-table book. In the case of those types of tomes, (a) the pictures are the thing, (b) the ambition is to have the best collection and/or rendering of the images, and (c) the text tends to be subordinate to picture delivery.

In Never, the plates (architectural and engineering drawings) are done well but subordinated to the text; the sub-mission implied by their inclusion is to save them as a complete record and make them accessible to future researchers, beautiful as they may be.

The coffee table book says to us, "You won't see a compendium like this again for a few years, at least not at this price or with this level of completeness or with this quality of presentation." Never says to us, you will not see another study of the Augusta Powder Works again in your lifetime or your childrens' so we did our duty to the utmost."

This is a labor of love issued as a starting point for future work and an act of pre-emption against anyone considering cobbling together a few gray pages and a grubby illustration or two in a conventional publishing project. The level of effort, the size, the production values, the conceptual completeness, and the content itself transcend any ordinary ink and paper effort that might be mounted here.

Imagine, to take one instance, getting five authors to work in tandem, each on a complimentary topic relating to the works. The best known of these authors is Ted Savas and I have to wonder, with his publishing expertise, if he is not the one who shepherded the final result. The other authors are C.L. Bragg, M.D.; Charles D. Ross; Gordon A. Blaker; and Stephanie A.T. Jacobe.

There are some small coffee-table aspects to this. This is a big book that lays on a big surface. You walk by it on a weekend, in an idle moment and say, "I think I'll learn how gunpowder is made today." And you sit and read the monograph on that topic and in an hour you know; and you know also how Col. Rains preferred to make it. Perhaps, after the reading, you even clear a small spot in your wokshop, then pop over to the computer to seach the web to order small supplies of sulfur, charcoal, and nitre for some harmless experimenting.

That last bit is more of a Popular Mechanics effect and certainly anyone fascinated by machines, inventions, and how-to can get lost in this. I get lost in the drawings for hours. Perhaps it's the failed architect in me.

Before more metaphors sprout accidentally, let me offer one on purpose. It has to do with John Henry, a steel-driving man.

When I say in this blog that certain publishing projects are impossible anymore I envision something like Never. I consign them to the Internet or some sort of collaborative electronic medium where cost, production, and other issues of scale are tamed. Never is the kind of book proposal that, I think, will wind up on the Web in the future.

And yet here comes the University of South Carolina Press, an art director, and five authors to take on the steam drill. Will they succeed?

This book succeeds on its own terms. It is audacious.

Stupid T-shirt jokes

Formerly, "Abraham Lincoln, Great Emancipator."

Touched by the Civil War

Three Pennsylvania charities have just learned they will split $10 million left by a Civil War vet who died eight decades ago.

It's a frustrating story inadequately reported with few details on exactly how this could transpire legally. You can read it here.

Tim Sherman's immortal name

None of us early war snobs would ever confuse General Thomas West ("Tim") Sherman (the General Sherman) with a certain politically-connected, unkempt, USV joker named after an Indian chief. Harry Smeltzer blows the whistle on this all-too-common editorial error while reminding us of Sherman's immortal bequest - an eponymous battery.

Further down the post, he traces errors by Hennessy and Bearss.

Excellent use of the medium.

A new Civil War literature blog

Craig Warren has just this week started a blog devoted to ACW literature. If the first few posts are any indication, this will be must reading: see especially his speculative connection between Red Badge of Courage and re-enactment.

See also his Ambrose Bierce website - quite an eyeful and mindful.

In Wheeling, the blame game begins

The failed effort to get Congressional approval for a "National Civil War Memorial" in Wheeling has entered the blame phase. To read a spicy he said/she said roundup have a look at this article.

The reporter captures the hideous motivation behind the memorial:

In early 2005, public officials and civic leaders in Wheeling, W.Va., embarked on an endeavor they hoped would transform part of the city's downtown and bring millions of tourists and their dollars into town.

At least the city fathers spared us the pain of a hypocritical "We seek to honor the dead." But in dodging spoken hypocrisy, they opted for monumentalizing it by building a structure that would have memorialized nothing except their own greed and moral depravity.

To get a sense of how crazy the victims of the heritage tourism fever can get, consider the attraction that was going to draw "millions of tourists and their dollars" ...

The National Civil War Memorial as planned would be 90 feet in diameter and contain a series of bronze panels mounted on stone that would depict historical tableaus in bas-relief. Also included would be 32 portraits of notable civilians and military leaders of the Civil War and statues of ordinary Union and Confederate soldiers.

At least the sculptor had confidence in its drawing power:

"This was basically a no-brainer approach to bringing in millions of dollars to the state and Wheeling."

A "no-brainer" that was also "no ethics" - this was a small project designed on the cheap that could not attract enough (minimal) funding without Congressional backing - this was a failed memorial that will soon be forgotten. The madness that fueled it will be with us for some time, however.

p.s. The committee's website is still up.

A living cycloramic blogorama

What a delightful morning to tour Antietam Battlefield. Eric Wittenberg and J.D. Petruzzi stopped by en route to Ohio and no less than Manny Gentile gave us our tour in perfect summer weather. It was totally blogadelic. In fact, Eric said Jenny Goellnitz might have been there had it not been for pneumonia (get weller Jenny). My camera batteries died in the heat, so check J.D.'s and Eric's sites for photos.

I dislike tours and have issues with public history and yet Manny did a great job. He gave me a framework for exploring the battlefield on my own - something I have not done in the last few years I've lived here because I find the terrain overwhelming and the park layout baffling. Nor had I known that all the farming going on the battlefield is done at the pleasure of the Park Service (tresspass away, dear visitor).

Eric showed me his favorite monument - McKinley bringing hot coffee to the troops at Antietam (shown right). It's the biggest combat service support monument I've ever seen. Manny said people leave coffee cups there.

Ah, the droll wit of the battlefield tourist...

J.D. and Eric walked me around Burnside Bridge. Fascinating that the Rebel rifle pits are still there and that a contemporary tree next to the bridge during the fight - I make it a sycamore - has now reached maturity.

Given the number of (higher quality) visitors and residents I suggested we have some sort of annual blogger/webmaster ACW get-together hereabouts.

Any takers?

p.s. (6/26) Eric says "yes" in this photo-rich posting.

Appomattox is casting

The Philip Glass opera Appomattox is casting in San Francisco. Grant and Lee are going to sing.

New Civil War blog

Laurie Chambliss at Civil War Interactive has radically expanded her weekly blog roundup making it almost irresistible.

I noticed there a new (to me) Civil War blog called Civil War History. The blog started on May 14 and (under Masters candidate Daniel Sauerwein) has an "Old Northwest" focus. Daniel seems to be positioning this as a multi-poster blog.

New French ACW wargame

European game developers have released a new ACW strategy game, American Civil War: The Blue and the Gray, which is available through the Web. A downloadable demo is available at the linked site.

One feature interests me especially [text edited from Frenglish]:

Units can be organized into brigades, divisions, corps and armies. This will depend on the nation’s military structure, as well as the presence (or absence)of a leader of appropriate rank. Armies [get] combat and march bonus[es] as well as some of the abilities of the overall commander (hence the interest of having a competent general at the head of key armies). Player[s] will have to promote the right leader at the right place, paying a political cost if more senior leaders are [passed over] without command.

This reminds me of Britannica's Civil War game from 25 years ago, No Greater Glory, where every passing over of rank was dealt a political shock. The game notes continue,

With only a few but well integrated and explained constraints, this optional rule will let players experience how generals like McClellan influenced the outcome of the war.

The designers have set McClellan up with the lowest ability rating and woe unto the player who tries to relieve him. See this list for the gory details.

Another interesting feature is the provision for French, British, Indian, and Mexican units in play. There must be triggers or random events at play here.

One aspect of the game Civil War buffs are bound to hate: supply lines.

Players must supply their units either through foraging or by building and maintaining supply lines, depots and wagons. Supply lines and depots are expensive to build and must be defended (or they will be captured or pillaged) and thus players must plan their deployment very judiciously.

That would be my favorite part, actually.

Juneteenth 2007 = disaster

Drudge is carrying three Juneteenth stories today:

Austin: Crowd kills man
Milwaukee: Wild teens pull man from car, beat him
Syracuse: Celebration cut short after youth violence

Unbelievable.

Ferguson vs. the Blob

Author Andrew Ferguson faced the music at a Springfield talk after calling the town "a faceless, politicized bureaucratic blob that engulfs Lincoln activities in the state capital."

Guest appearance in this story by the Cryptic Mysterion.

The news today

Lots of silly news today:

Landon House, a Maryland mansion where Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart held the "Sabers and Roses Ball" in September 1862, is going to have a McDonalds built nearby - a McDonalds that is ACW themed. (How do you theme a McDonalds?)

A model of the CSS Shenandoah has been built with popsicle sticks. It was made "as authentic as possible."

An Alabama town is moving a Civil War graveyard to make way for a recreational site. Pleasure before honor, always.

Third Military History Carnival

Brian Downey is hosting a military history linkfest ("carnival") over at his blog.