MG Lew Wallace

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

Biker Joe

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

More Keegan reviews

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

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

How are those Grant papers doing?

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

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

ACW diorama is "corrected"

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

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

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

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

Keegan's reviews

Odd that Keegan has earned just a trickle of reviews.

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

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

Episcopalians at war

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11/11

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

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

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

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

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

Top right: The author in younger days.

Nov. 10, 1862

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

Nov. 5, 1862

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

Nov. 7

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

Nov. 8

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

Nov 9

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

Nov. 10

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

Travails of a museum entrepreneur

From today's papers:

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

Let me break the tale down by excerpts:

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

The plot thickens:

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

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

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

The third phase will be a research center.

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

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

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

McPherson on Keegan

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

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

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

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

Hat tip to Mr. Bonds for noticing this piece.

Biggest-ever allocation for battlefields

From CWPT:

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

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

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

Lincoln's books - where to get them?

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

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

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

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

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

Critics of historical fiction

An author of history-based fiction responds to criticism:

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

Out and about

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

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

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

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

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

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

November, 1862

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

NSFW

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

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

CWPT's Larry Tagg interview

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The better Abby responds

Abby reaches for some ACW content.

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

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

WaPo puts the squeeze on Latschar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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