Letters and citations: Sears revisits McPherson

Stephen Sears was not satisfied with the last word (twice) given him here on McPherson's plagiarism and McClellan's so-called letters: see Harry's blog.

Harry asks "Can the [so-called McClellan] letters be found in the LOC as referred to by McPherson? That is, if he says 'see letter dated x from McClellan to wife,' can a person, with no other reference, find that letter in the LOC?"

Sears says "yes, it can be done–and it’s no harder than finding something in any large ms. collection. Dimitri is just blowing smoke here."

Sears says in proof: "McClellan’s letters to his wife are actually the easiest to find of anything in the Papers, contrary to Dimitri’s ranting. In the table of contents, under Series C, you will find “Extracts of Letters to Wife, 1861-62,” Volume C-7 of reel 63."

If I understand this correctly, Sears has been asked about the papers in the LoC which McP cites, but is looking at the microfilm index for an answer. McPherson did not cite the document labeled “Extracts of Letters to Wife, 1861-62,” Volume C-7 of reel 63." Harry gives McPherson's citational form when he says 'see letter dated x from McClellan to wife."

Harry's researcher is still left with the problems (a) where are these letters in the LoC (b) is the book marked "Extracts" the only LoC source for such "letters" and (c) do they show the dates McP gives? The McP citation as given is false.

If one is looking up "McClellan to Ellen, October 11, 1861, McClellan Papers, LC," one's in trouble because "Extracts of Letters to Wife, 1861-62" - should one know this to be what McP is actually citing - does not contain an "extract" dated October 11, 1861. This date was supplied by Sears in his book and its use by McPherson tells us McPherson sat outside the Library of Congress, flipping through Sears' book for this reference. He has to cite Sears. There's no escape from this point. No number of anguished letters can change the false form of a citation, the form Princeton University calls "plagiarism."

Again, some of the notes ("extracts") in the LoC and on microfilm have dates but some do not. Would it be helpful of me to go through McPherson's list and flag all the citations that he gives dates that do not appear in the LoC with dates and therefore cannot be found via the citation given? See below.

In the example I gave, 10/11/61, the date comes from Sears, not the LoC book. This is a "tell" on McPherson since it does not appear in the LoC or microfilm. He could not have seen it during his time among the collection, whether physical or virtual (microfilm).

Sears is invested deeply in the LoC notes being letters and makes his case as forcefully as possible. Of course, I view his case as wildly overstated. He may be missing the point of my McPherson accusation out of concern with tangential matters relating to my criticism of the notes.

Let me make a few irreduceable observations about what we call "McClellan's letters to his wife." Sears' presents these in his collection of GBM's wartime correspondence; each and every one offers variation from the text found in the LoC (or on microfilm).

(1) No scholar has ever seen an original on which these are "extracts" are said to be based.

(2) The notes in the LoC constitute a first level of information; notes supplied by May McClellan provide a second layer; William Prime tampered with May's notes to provide a third set of artifacts for McClellan's Own Story; Sears reworked Prime's material to restore cuts and add bits from May's notes, which offers us a fourth level artifact; Sears then rolled in missing letterlike data (addressee, dates, places, as needed) to produce a fifth level of information. This fifth level artifact is what Sears refers to as McClellan's letters to his wife, which I have asked scholars to stop doing without first revisiting the definition of "letters."

(4) The "letters" Sears presents and that scholars cite are composites with McP's LoC-cited material offering a foundation or starting point.

(5) Sears has made no sleight of hand in rendering these artifacts. His additions are annotated.

Let us return to what Sears first said about the "letters" in Young Napoleon (Da Capo edition). My remarks are in-between.

McClellan's wartime letters to his wife, which constitute an invaluable guide to his thinking, survive in the Papers in the form of extensive excerpts he himself copied, probably in the mid-1870s, when he was working on his memoirs, and in additional copies made by his daughter, May, after his death.

(1) Notes made possibly ten years after the war (date unknown) in McClellan's own hand are what we have in a small book in the LoC. If these be "wartime letters," then we need better provenance. We especially need to know why we see much material of no use to a memoir writer; why some passages are crossed out as if composed on the fly; why data important to memoirs is missing - dates, places, times, and how many are to wife and how many to others.

(2) These cannot be "extensive excerpts" because it was necessary for May to provide additional notes when Prime proposed to publish them in McClellan's Own Story. Nor did the notes May gave necessarily complete any alleged letter.

(3) With McClellan dead, May's material supplements the notes - Prime wanted more meat - and he gave her the notes he wanted her to supplement. We cannot know if May made mistakes or if she made anything up, or if she even ever handled originals that no one else has ever seen.

(4) We do not know if the notes in the book in McClellan's hand represent a complete or accurate transcription of corresponding letter text or if notes contains deviations not corrected by May.

Although the original letters have not been found, I am satisfied that these copies contain their substantive content, complete and uncensored, with only personal matter deleted.

Substantive? A letter is a letter, it's not substantively a letter. Complete and uncensored? How on earth can such a claim be made?

You see the whole foundation of Sears' position here: "I am satisfied." Are you satisfied? If so, at least now you know the situation. My position: I am not satisfied.

**

p.s. A postscript on McPherson's use of the LoC in citations. Stephen Sears assures Harry that

McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom was published in 1988. In it he quotes from
McClellan’s Letters to his wife (from the general’s letterbook in the LC Papers, not Prime’s bastardized versions in McClellan’s Own Story), including the very October 1861 letter Rotov is crowing about. My edition of McClellan’s Civil War correspondence was published in 1989–one year later. So McP’s “plagiarizing” from me is simply nonsense.

Quite a "gotcha" there - Sears is really getting the hang of this Internet thing. Problem is, Internet people look stuff up, so you'll want to give references so people can see the difference between crowing and research.

Since the specific Battle Cry reference that would make me the fool is missing from his message, I'll give it. In my 1988 Ballantine paperback edition of Battle Cry, McP refers to the text of the in question on page 364 in the chapter "Farewell to the Ninety Days' War." See his note 45.

"I can't tell you how disgusted I am becoming with these wretched politicians," the note starts.

Funny thing about that note; there's nothing showing Oct. 11, 1861. There cannot be: it is Sears' date and does not appear in the LoC material. The text of the note is quoted but no citation is given. If he had given 10/11, Sears' point would be made. He doesn't. He can't. It's not in the LoC.

McP's citational style for the "letters" is the same now as it was then -- Sears is right about this. McP cites LoC and date. But that's beside the point.

Look more closely to see McPherson at work. He places the bit ("I can't tell you") in a short paragraph of quotes. Here is his note, complete: "McClellan to Ellen Marcy McClellan, Oct. 2, 7, 10, Nov. 2, 17, 1861, McClellan Papers."

The note for October 2 tracks with McP's use of it; October 7 is fictitious, there is no note so dated in the LoC; October 10 tracks with his use of it; Nov. 2 has nothing to do with the cited passage; Nov. 17 tracks but is out of quoted sequence. There is no citation for the letter containing I can't tell you. He skipped it. It didn't fit his style because it had no date affixed to it. "The very October 1861 letter Rotov is crowing about," is present, yes, but not showing Sears' date or any other date. In 2009, as we have seen, it will appear in a new work and be cited, using Sears' dating but without citing Sears.

Now, to give you an idea of the peril McPherson put himself in by committing to this style of citation (whether he is actually citing the LoC or not), let me run you a tally for citations between McPherson's Oct. 2 and his Nov. 17, 1861 "letters." I don't have microfilm handy, but I have Sears' Wartime Correspondence which shows alterations made to the underlying text. Out of 17 "letters" to Nellie "extracted" and present in the Sears' book, four have complete dates (d/m/y), nine have partial dates (no year), and four have no dates whatsoever, with dates assigned by Sears. (BTW, Sears' reconstruction of Oct. 11, 1861, is based on the original notation "Friday," which I count as undated.)

Lacking the microfilm, let's use Sears' mark-ups as proxies for the LoC text and go through McPherson's citations again. The sources are Sears, McPherson's Battle Cry and Prime's book, McClellan's Own Story.

Oct 2. Shows as incomplete date in Sears; McPherson adds 1861; Sears does likewise; Prime leaves off 1861 and adds (?) after Oct. 2.

Oct 7. No such dated note in Sears. Prime places an undated entry ("No date") after his entry for Oct. 6, "I must ride much every day..." which could be mistaken for Oct 7 if you were taking liberties. It is not what is quoted in McP, however (and "I must ride" is not text I could find in Sears.)

Oct 10. Incomplete date in Sears; McPherson adds 1861; Sears does likewise. Prime shows the date as uncertain, simply as Oct. with a (10)? suggesting the notation "Oct" is all that we have.

Nov 2. Two dates in Sears: one is complete (original to the book), one is revised. The note with the complete date, which is what McPherson would have encountered in the LoC, is not quoted in the text nor does it make sense in his context. McPherson has made a spurious citation. The second date is one that Sears has revised downward. McClellan wrote "Nov 3," and Sears changed it. Prime gives it as in the original, "Nov 3." It also has nothing to do with McPherson's passage.

Nov 17. Shows as incomplete date in Sears; McPherson adds 1861; Sears does likewise; Prime leaves off 1861.

Sears is correct to point out that McPherson began this date/LoC citational style for the "letters" back in the days of Battle Cry. It was bad then. It doesn't work.

Now that you see my methods, let's return to McPherson's new work and flag the material that is uniquely Searsian without having been credited to Sears. We are in the book Wars within a War, in the chapter "My Enemies are Crushed." Where there was no year in the note book, we give McPherson credit for assigning it himself, since he has set the precedent in Battle Cry. McPherson's presumed additions are in blue, Sears' unique additions are in red.

Note 1, Sep 7 1862, Feb 26 1863
Note 4, Aug 8 1861, Oct 11 1861, Nov 17 1861
Note 5, Oct 11, 1861
Note 6, July 13 1862, July 22 1862
Note 10, July 27 1861, July 30 1861, Aug 9 1861, Oct 31 1861
Note 12, Aug 8 1861
Note 14, Aug 8 1861, Aug 9 1861, Aug 14 1861, Aug 16 1861, Aug 19 1861
Note 17, Oct 26 1861
Note 18, Oct 19 1861
Note 22, Oct 31 1861
Note 38, Apr 8 1862
Note 41, Aug 10 1862

The only references that would check out in the LoC need to be all black (assuming the researcher knew McP's citations refer to the book "Extracts"). Black is what you see in "Extracts."

Couple of observations: Notes 10 and 14 count in McPherson's favor where he cites 8/9/61 because 8/9 is a date showing in the LoC book (minus year) but it is a date Sears rejects, giving it as 8/10 instead in his Correspondence. McP here went back to sources and missed Sears' correction.

The wind changes for Note 5 and any other references to 10/11/61; Sears had to build this out of scratch using the entry "Friday" as a starting point. Here, McPherson has copped Sears' work to the LoC.

A strange date is 10/31/61 (see notes 10 and 22 above). Sears puts brackets around it showing it to be absent in the original. Looking at Prime, however, we see Prime found a note dated 10/31 in the LoC book. The text in Prime's 10/31 is not repeated in Sears' 10/31.

Additionally, Sears inserted a separate LoC note at the bottom of his 10/31 "letter" as if it were a p.s. and added the date [Nov. 1] to introduce the merger. Most confusing! The Sears letter provides the quotes McP uses in the cited passage, but we might need to see the microfilm before deciding the issue.

Let us close with McPherson's comments on his McClellan "letters" as rendered in Battle Cry. Heed these words:

These letters to his wife consist of extracts from the originals, copied by McClellan himself some time after the war. There is no way of knowing whether he edited these copies in any substantive way, for the originals no longer exist.

There's no way of knowing a damn thing about any of this, truth be told.

Civil War armies lacked...

Civil War armies were rife with newly appointed generals who did not know their jobs. What Civil War armies needed was a mentor program for new generals. But then, Civil War armies probably didn't have up to $282,000 per year to pay each such mentor.

Civil War armies were rife with rank disputes among generals. What Civil War armies needed was more and higher general rank to break out of the two-star pack. For instance, the Air Force has created a three-star billet for Assistant Surgeon General for Nursing Services and Force Development.

Civil War armies were rife with personality disputes. These could have been better managed with today's psychological and personality testing. Need more Stonewalls?

The military should incorporate personality test results into military personnel
files, and promotion boards should be required to select higher percentages of
those who fall into the intuitive-thinking group

Kirkus is kaput

They were valued because their opinions were real, "unlike the bedlam of ... customer opinions." No kidding.

ALPLM - Harry reports

Don't miss Harry's report on his visit to the ALPLM.

The McClellan element is interesting: I wonder if anyone visiting the museum would get the idea that GBM and Lincoln had the most extensive personal relationship of any president and general during that period (perhaps during any period) and that to Lincoln this man was "our George" (other generals staying on a last name basis).

Harry says the rubber dummies looked like rubber dummies; from the photos supplied, they do not appear good likenesses (I thought the golden-haired Grant was Custer - and what is educational about displaying a fictional meeting between Grant and McClellan at the White House?).

p.s. Perhaps ALPLM's are bargain dummies. The premium dummies are here.

Lee as fox, fox as Lee

From my favorite local paper, In and Around Horse Country (Dec/Jan 2010), we get respite from the meme Lee-as-fox to see the fox-as-Lee (with a guest appearance by Traveller).

The fox was heading west now. He crossed Sam Fred Road toward historic Sunnybank, past the barn where General Lee's Traveller stayed briefly during the early part of The War. In typical wily fashion, he then doubled back and recrossed the road, taking hounds to a spot in the fence line where only one could pass at a time.

The fox has set up a Burnside's Bridge scenario. Huntsman Todd Kern takes up the role of McClellan's ADC Hammerstein at Burnside's bridge:

Todd came on to safeguard the road and encourage the pack to get through and stay with the quarry.

Burnside's eventual afternoon level-of-effort is called for:

With the pack now strung out but still hard on the line, Todd brought on the tail hounds while whipper-in John Anderson ran with the leaders. Whipper-in Linden Ryan was briefly delayed by a lost shoe but another whipper-in who was riding with the field that day ... traded horses with her.

The anti-fox leaders are taking casualties!

Heading west they crossed the road again, running full hard at full cry in plain view of the first field.

Rally round the flag, hounds!

Suddenly, hounds went silent, as if the quarry had gone to ground.

The fox has gone to Shepherdstown, as it were.

(We like to keep tabs on the actual, non-metaphorical fox in these parts; to subscribe to this paper, click the link.)

The proper use of prize money

Reading this Bryan Appleyard essay in the Times, it occurred to me how confining history prizes are. Where science researchers are rewarded for finding, discovering, or making specific things, history prizes come after the fact of a book ... with a selection committee patting its grantee on the back for thinking and saying all the right things about a well-known subject.

For a starter, why not identify all the known gaps and offer prizes to those who fill them, e.g. first-ever biography of Irvin McDowell (you may have heard of him; they say he fought in the Civil War at some point).

The now vigorous, ongoing revision of Centennial verities can continue prizeless, in parallel, while great gaping holes in Civil War history are plugged with cash offers.

History boffins - they are needed...

Abbeville scholars

Fascinating: "Scholars Nostalgic for the Old South Study the Virtues of Secession, Quietly."

The Harrison's Bar Letter of Stanley McChrystal

This letter under the circumstances is one of the most extraordinary productions on record. When McClellan wrote it he was not General in Chief. His only functions were those of the commander of the Army of the Potomac... [H]e addressed a carefully prepared letter to the President, laying down a civil and military policy for the United States... Engaged in actual war, with the cause he was fighting for at stake upon the use of his sword, he proceeded to "save the country" with his pen." - MG James B. Fry, "McClellan and His Mission," Century Illustrated, Vol. 48, 1894

General Fry's view carries on in the Centennial doctrines of today which are still taught to all cadets and which I also imbibed through both military and civil sources in the heyday of the Centennial itself.

There is no doubt in my mind the Afghanistan commander learned Fry's lessons that (1) Below the top of the military hierarchy, political questions may not be raised (2) A field commander's job is to fight regardless of the political circustances his government has imposed on him. Reading a lot of ACW, one suspects nothing could be more heinous than for a field commander to address political questions germane to his success.

And yet, this is what McChrystal did in spades - with impunity - in his now famous Initial Assessment. The reader, searching for a military plan that justifies a troop increase, will not find it. I have worked at battalion, brigade, division and army headquarters and know what a military plan looks like. I also know what an assessment looks like: it tends to address predictable topics like state of supply, state of maintenance, force levels, absenteeism, the enemy situation, etc., and none of that is here in conventional reporting shape.

Instead, what we have is about sixty pages explaining what must change politically in order for the field force to be able to win. Read it yourself. McClellan covered he same ground in two pages, but then he was a genius.

Some of this reads like Stanton's house metaphysician, MG E. A. Hitchcock, wrote it: "The key to changing perceptions lies in changing the underlying truths" and "the system must be understood holistically."

The reader cannot be expected to share my shock at McChrystal's assessment unless he has served in the old Army himself; however, the reading of garden variety Civil War history offers some preparation. What was McChrystal thinking? "We must assist at improving governance at all levels," "the objective is the will of the people," "we require more civilian and military resources," "economic opportunity, especially job creation, is a critical part of reinegrating the foot-solier into normal life."

He was taught of the great wickedness of McClellan at Harrison's Bar and yet here he is Harrison Barring it to the nth power.

Part of the answer, I see, lies in the new strategic thinking being taught in the advanced service schools. This too was drilled into McChrystal, albeit more recently.

Let us skim the texts of the prolific strategy author Colin S. Gray (right), who is published by the Army War College and its Air Force counterpart. I'm not being arch when I warn that the following material is going to upset a great many Civil War readers.

From The Airpower Advantage in Future Warfare:

Since war is always about politics, the political context must always be the source for all future warfare of every character.

From Schools for Strategy:

... strategists should not shrink from their professional duty to study the politically purposeful use of force.

...the awesome challenges of the strategist's role in the no man's land where politics/policy and military power meet ...

... the strategist has to attempt to orchestrate military and other behavior for desired political consequences.

From Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy:

While all warfare is political, irregular warfare is the most political of all...

I cannot state often enough or clearly enough that victory or defeat in irregular warfare is all about the beliefs, attitudes, and consequent behavior of the public.

The traditional separation of the political and the conduct of war is a lethal weakness...

The United States often has difficulty with strategy because, unsurprisingly, the "normal" theory of American civil-military relations does its best to close down the strategy bridge that should unite politicians and soldiers in an unequal but never-ending dialog over means and ends.

When Americans wage war as a largely autonomous activity ... the strategy bridge has broken down ...

You might reread McChrystal's Assessment in light of Colin Gray's writings (which are also accessible free in PDF). There is quite a correlation at work.

If there is enough of this taught at the colonel and general level, Centennialism may lose its grip on cadets ... at which point, at the academies at least, Harrison's Bar will take on a new look indeed.

From the archives: McClellan letters links

Those recalling previous exchanges on the McClellan letters may have a hard time locating them with the internal search function of this blog, which is breaking down under the weight of posts.

Stephen Sears' comment posted yesterday pertains to these recent posts (see here and here). A 2006 posting on the subject is also relevant, and comes with a 2007 response by Stephen Sears here. This is followed by brief remarks here.

Putting a war on PowerPoint slides

Could you put the Civil War on a single PowerPoint slide? I'll bet some of you lecturing authors have come close. Come to think of it, I did so myself using a national railways map in a lecture I used to give on McClellan's phased plan for winning the war.

Now, here's the Pentagon putting the Afghanistan war into a single graphic. It's all interconnected, you see.

I love the node "Relative message quality." Hey, Jeff Davis, you've got message quality issues!

Read it and weep. (HT to John Robb)

A note from Stephen Sears

To: Dimitri Rotov

From: Stephen Sears

Re: General McClellan’s letters to his wife

Mention of the McClellan Papers, Library of Congress, and of my book The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, and, generally, of McClellan’s letters to his wife in your posts of 12/5/09 and 12/7/09 require certain corrections and clarifications.

Your statement “There is no body of work in the Library of Congress’s McClellan Papers corresponding to McClellan’s letters to his wife so marked and labeled” is incorrect. The LC’s Photoduplication Service microfilm edition of the McClellan Papers includes a table of contents for the Papers at the beginning of each reel. Under the heading: Series C Letterbooks and Telegram Books, 1861-62, is the entry for Volume C-7, reel 63, reading: “Extracts of Letters to Wife, 1861-62.” From that reference the letters are easily found. Volume C-7, reel 63, is a bound letterbook bearing the heading, in General McClellan’s handwriting, “Extracts from letters written to my wife during the War of the Rebellion, [signed] Geo B. McClellan.”

You state, “Again, no one has ever seen an actual letter from McClellan to his wife during this period of his command. No one has ever seen an authenticated copy.” This too is incorrect. McClellan’s letterbook (Vol. C-7) contains the general’s own extracts (not notes, as you call them) of his letters to Ellen, made in the mid-1870’s as an aid to his memoir-writing. Nothing could be more authentic. After McClellan’s death, his daughter did additional copying of the general’s letters at the request of McClellan’s literary executor William C. Prime. May McClellan’s copies are in Vol. D-10, reel 72 of the McClellan Papers; these too are authentic. After the publication of McClellan’s Own Story, which included Prime’s expurgated and wholly unreliable versions of the general’s letters to Ellen, the original letters drop from sight. In my considered opinion, Mrs. McClellan, appalled by Prime’s work, destroyed them.

The particular letter you challenge, printed on pages 106-7 of my Civil War Papers of McClellan and sourced C-7, reel 63, McClellan Papers, is dated by me, c. October 11, 1861. It appears on page 20 of the McClellan letterbook with a headnote in McClellan’s hand, “October 1861 (Friday, but no other date).” From its contents and other sources, I selected Friday the 11th as the likeliest date, and inserted its place of writing as Washington.

To sum up: This is an authentic copy by McClellan himself of a letter he states in his own hand was written to his wife in October 1861. The “Searsian imbeds” (as you put it) are nothing more than standard procedure in any printing of documents, and hold true for all the McClellan letters included in Civil War Papers. The general’s own copies of his letters to Ellen are right there in the McClellan letterbook, easily found, in the McClellan Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, and in the LC-supplied microfilm.

I hope this clears up an misunderstandings about my work with McClellan’s papers.

Let's not pretend...

Speaking of citation, another historian, Brooks Simpson, shared with me this principle of practice.

... historians should cite the text they are using, and not invent virtual archives that lead one to believe that they are using the manuscript text in an archives, and not the text presented in a documentary edition.

So, if a historian is citing a letter of William T. Sherman to someone that appears in Sherman's Civil War, and that's the text they are using (and not, say, the Sherman Library of Congress collection, whether it be the microfilm edition or the actual document), they should cite my text, and make it clear that such is the text they are using.

If I was citing a letter that appeared in John Y. Simon's documentary edition of Grant's papers, and it was that text (and not something I found elsewhere) I was citing, I'd cite Simon. When I don't cite Simon, you can rest assured I've dealt with the original document. (You can also rest assured that I have dealt with it, because I don't use research assistants.)

Acknowledging Sears' work

Stephen Sears responds to this recent post.

I would simply like your acknowledgment that 1) the LC letterbook copies, in the handwriting of General McClellan or his daughter, of the general's now-missing letters to his wife, are legitimate; and 2) that my volume of McClellan correspondence, as complete and accurate as I could make it, is worthy of acceptance in the scholarly community.

As to my "unique intellectual property," it is merely inserting a date and place of writing or an informed surmise when they are lacking. That's standard procedure in any compilation of documents. No one is ripping me off, any more than I am ripping off Nevin's Chase Papers or Basler's Lincoln Papers or Beale's Welles diary when I cite them.

Thus when you say, in your 12/5/09 post, "The very notion that this is a letter and that it was sent to someone belongs to Sears and is not supported by material in the LC," you are wrong on every count. In McClellan's hand, we know it is a letter, that it was written to his wife, and that it was written in October 1861. Accept that the McClellan Correspondence book is legit; I ask nothing more.

Regards, Stephen Sears

I accept points 1) and 2) and have from the outset. I honor the research and value added but disagree with the way the book is viewed and cited by others. You are very clear on what these documents are and how they came to be but those citing you seem confused.

I have to disagree with the unique intellectual property view here stated; if I assign a date, it is my assigned date and McPherson needs to cite me, not the LC.

I say "is not supported by material in the LC" because although the book itself is in the LC, non-LC inputs have transformed these from mere notes in a book in the LC's holdings.

The "McClellan Correspondence book" is an ambiguous, incomplete document that has been enhanced by hard editorial work. I accept that the notes are real, in Mac's hand, and in the LC. What the notes in the book represent and how they relate to a potential superset of documents, under the tight control of the late Mrs. McClellan, has to remain an open question, despite the best editorial and research effort that can be applied.

Please, you deserve much more credit in this than you are willing to take.

Thank you for sending your response,
Dimitri Rotov

Meditation upon a peach orchard

If nowadays it takes 11 levels of authority and about 96 hours for review and approval to attack the Taliban, Sickles might have bothered to ask permission to move his line, eh?

Would the Civil War generation even recognize this as an Army?

Whitelaw Reid and Ohio in the Civil War

Deep readers will recognize the citation Ohio in the Civil War by Whitelaw Reid. One comes across it in so many books; so many authors will resort to it for an anecdote or unique piece of information.

Some people cite Reid out of laziness where there are better sources (see for instance note 14 in this Wiki entry). Forget that: I'm referring here to what appears in Ohio and nowhere else.

The desire to read and have this volume after years of hearing about it led me to order a facsimile edition in summer. What arrived was sad. Ohio in the Civil War is at core a voluminous newspaper feature with only the occasional datapoint sourced. You can take Reid's word for something or you can try to corroborate it yourself, but the information that is unique here and that gets cited in better studies generally stands or falls entirley as his say-so.

When you see Ohio among the end notes of your next read, remember this.

p.s. Ohio in the Civil War is also a web site.

After 3,551 posts...

... Blogger is breaking down. The internal search function no longer renders complete results and the compose mode goes haywire, adding extra spaces and other artifacts.

Maybe the TypePad people have an advantage. Let me hear from the TypePad users.

McPherson's newest plagiarism

[Amended 12/6/09 to neutralize any implied aspersions on Sears' editing of the GBM papers]

America's Greatest Living Civil War Historian has contributed an essay to the Waugh/Gallagher collection Wars within a War: Controversy and Conflict over the American Civil War. He claims there may have been contention between Lincoln and McClellan. If true, this will overturn decades of consensus.

Well done, McPherson.

Actually, what makes this essay interesting ("My Enemies are Crushed") is that yet again McPherson meanders over the edge of Princeton University's plagiarism guidelines. Princeton was his employer and its policies applied to his students.

A brief recap. In Tried by War (as well as subsequent works to date), McPherson passed himself off as the inventor of Clausewitz's concept "concentration in time." He also lifted text from work by Archer Jones and presented Jones's work as his own writing. (See here and follow the links for more.)

In Lincoln, McPherson played a game with sources. His text presented analysis, summation, and interpretation cited exclusively to primary sources. In other words, after decades of Linconology by various prizewinners, he presented the conclusions and judgements of giants as if they were his own - as if his own reading of primary material (overwhelmingly, Lincoln's correspondence) produced these already well-known, even shopworn judgements. By omitting secondary source references or appropriate bibliographical notes, Lincoln represented a claim to have depended on no one to resolve historical conflicts, problems, and controversies and further that such resolution was reached by the author through reference to Lincoln's correspondence.

BTW, Princeton:

... you may footnote a paper diligently only to discover that you can hardly find an original idea or sentence of your own. Then you’ll know you have more work to do in order to develop a substantial original idea or thesis...

Or you could take the hit for unoriginality and just synthesize with proper attribution.

Now, in "My Enemies are Crushed," McPherson makes what appears to be a false claim of personal research.

Wars within a War captures proceedings from a conference at which McPherson spoke. One of the editors says, "We are most indebted to our ten colleagues, who took time from hectic schedules to prepare excellent lectures and then cheerfully turn them into essays..." This "turning into" process is visible at the head of McPherson's end notes where he writes

All citations of McClellan's letters and reports will be to the original sources. These documents are also published in a superbly edited collection, George B. McClellan, The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, ed. Stephen W. Sears (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1989) and can be found there by the appropriate date.

Why cite to the original source if one did not consult the original source? A claim is implied: here are my sources, and for you, to make it easy to check up, I recommend this book...

Now, a typical McPherson citation in this essay is "McClellan to Ellen, October 11, 1861, McClellan Papers, LC." I chose this at random. The reader can use October 11, 1861 (or any McP-cited date) to try to find a corresponding document in Sears' compilation but he cannot use this citation to find a message from McClellan to Ellen in the McClellan Papers, LC. It's not a date-specific problem, either.

There is no body of work in the Library of Congress's McClellan Papers corresponding to McClellan's letters to his wife so marked and labeled. Not in the index, not in boxes, nowhere among the papers. Not dated, not named, not filed.

Here's how Sears locates this item: B-8;47. Allow me to translate.

From microfilm reel number 47 - made by a commercial corporation photographing material found in the LC's McClellan bin B-8 - among the hundreds of documents located there and on the reel, you will find the undated, unaddressed source, which is a book of notes. This ambiguity is as much specificity as the microfilm allows, for the book has no title. When you do find it among thousands of pages, you will not locate it by the date McPherson gives: the only way you will be able to find it is by matching texts against Sears' work because the notes in the book for this item are undated. Sears has added a date that represents his best judgement of when it might have been written - carefully bracketing it to show readers interpolation. This is an editorial bonus, not an intrinsic part of the underlying document.

The document contains another editorial addition. At the head of it, in his book, Sears has inserted "To Mary Ellen McClellan." He added this himself and italicizes it, so that the reader will not think it part of the original document.

Sears, as editor, added a further piece of deduction: he inserts in brackets, "Washington," thus giving us his best thinking on where the "letter" he believes was sent to "Mary Ellen McClellan" was written from on the possible or likely date of October 11, 1861 (which date represents his judgement).

To recap: Sears' editing work began with (worst case) many notes undated in a book that may or may not contain drafts of letters that were sent or not sent, revised or left as-is, at a time occasionally specified in the text, from places intermittently identified in the header, to persons rarely specified. Sears may have been spot on - he certainly undertook the reconstruction such a project called for. The point is, however excellent you rate Sears' editing and judgement, what is presented as a letter in his book cannot be found in the LC as such as cited by McPherson. James McPherson's "McClellan to Ellen, October 11, 1861, McClellan Papers, LC" makes no sense unless rendered with credit to Sears' volume.

Sears' editing of the LC material is not at issue. He will vigorously defend his calls. Assume he did a brilliant job. Sears' research and deductions produced a class of artifacts called "McClellan's letters to his wife" that contain embedded Searsian material. You cannot cite LC material by reference to Searsian embeds. Better to cite Sears.

Searsian artifacts vary from the artifacts W.C. Prime presented as "McClellan's letters to his wife" in McClellan's Own Story, and both of those vary from the material found in a book in the LC cited by McPherson. Additionally, Prime's claimed interactions with May McClellan point to the possibility of a fourth set of artifacts, a letter collection held by Mary Ellen that no researcher has ever seen. Each of these unique instances require separate citation; none are one-to-one correlations.

Let me put this in stark, even exaggerated terms: the McPherson citation McClellan to Ellen, October 11, 1861, cannot exist outside of the pages of The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan. Sears assigned the dating. It's his best judgement. The addressee (Mary Ellen or Ellen) also belongs to Sears, who had to read the note and decide if it was a letter and to whom it might have been sent. McPherson cannot slight Sears' research and decisions by pretending these additions are present in the LC document. They are the intellectual property of Stephen Sears, not the world at large, not the LC, and they cannot be found in the LC in raw data. They represent an editorial correlation of multiple sources with judgement applied to ambiguity.

And so, if you are the Greatest Living Civil War Historian, you cannot pretend that "by the way, Sears has got this stuff too," when in fact, Sears is the source of all missing dates, all missing locations, and all the addressing to Mary Ellen, none of which are present at source; and when the source does not index this as a letter.

Again, no one has ever seen an actual letter from McClellan to his wife during this period of his command. No one has even seen an authenticated copy. Letters existed only on the word of GBM's literary executor, W.C. Prime, who after years of collaboration with GBM never saw one, believed any that existed destroyed, and only gives us after-GBM-death hearsay about their existence from daughter May McClellan, who would not allow him to look at one. No Library of Congress collection holds letters falsely cited as such by McPherson as from McClellan to his wife.

Princeton says you cite "to permit your reader to check on your use of source material." McPherson clearly understood this when he wrote citations will be made to sources - he seems to set himself up as a researcher among the Papers with a friendly tip for those who cannot get to that still-warm McPherson bench in the Library of Congress.

It is impossible that McPherson is not sourcing Sears' collection -because if he was not, his citation would make no sense. Look, also, at McPherson's several citations to the Barlow Papers. These too are taken from Sears's Civil War Papers but cited to the Barlow collection. The McClellan Papers, LC, could have been cited by McP, but he would have had to either develop a citational scheme of his own (to the book in question) or at least used microfilm citation. By truncating Sears's citations, a trail of dissimulation results.

A few words from Princeton University (emphasis in the original):

The most important thing to know is this: if you fail to cite your sources, whether deliberately or inadvertently, you will still be found responsible for the act of plagiarism.

More:

Failing to acknowledge one’s sources isn’t the only form of academic dishonesty. Citing a source when the material wasn’t obtained from that source also constitutes a violation of University regulations. Students commit false citation when they cite sources they didn’t directly consult; such a violation is subject to the same penalties as plagiarism.

Did McPherson properly cite Sears as his original source with his also/BTW clause? If not (and I think the answer obvious) he is a plagiarist under Princeton's rules.

This is his third strike. Let him be out.

UPDATE: Stephen Sears comments.

Proceedings within proceedings

Wars within a War is subtitled Controversy and Conflict over the American Civil War. Here at this blog we love historiography and the back and forth of revisionism, so it was a downer to find the title holds a typo: OVER should read IN or WITHIN.

Maybe two pieces in this anthology are in any sense remotely concerned with conflict OVER the ACW, i.e. history and schools of thought. I don't find a whiff of controversy here, either.

On the other hand, anything you want to say or write about the Civil War contains conflict. The North and South are fighting. People are competing for resources. There are all kinds of stress affecting everything. Even if you were to describe Civil War antique collecting, the story arc would show conflict:

Desire for antiques > lack of antiques > urgent search > mixed success > competition for antiques > outcome

I gave this example the Demetri Martin treatment, but the serious point is that conflict is easy. Its not a bona fide unifying theme and the pieces collected here are as topically scattered as can be. The insulting thing is a tortured introduction by Gary Gallagher selling us so hard on the idea that the pieces fall into exactly four categories and everything ties together and that we'll experience a wonderful thematic unity. We're looking at a random collection of standard, readymade speeches big shots felt like giving and Gallagher channels Richard Pryor for us: "Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"

After being given as speeches at a conference, the pieces were reworked as essays. They express exactly those viewpoints you would expect from each author with no reference to competing views. At best, this is a chocolate sampler; if you like the coated caramels, you can buy a whole box of it in its own wrapper at the same store.

Scratch that - candy implies fun. These are the proceedings of a conference. Logs are indeed being rolled and backs scratched. This has nothing to do with us, and we'll be on our way.

p.s. We will briefly return to this title to consider McPherson's contribution.

John C. Waugh

Amazon shows a new John Waugh book coming out in May: Lincoln and McClellan: The Troubled Partnership between a President and His General. Marketing copy tells us, "Lincoln and McClellan is a tale of the hubris, paranoia, and eventual failure of George McClellan, and the benign but troubled patience of Abraham Lincoln..."

Should I take the time to read Lincoln and McClellan?

The book has to tell me more than I know. I could take the "paranoia" and other cliches if Waugh tallies and describes the Illinois railroad cases that brought Lincoln (hireling) and GBM (employer) into the same courthouses across the state. I want to know more about Lincoln's role in securing the properties that helped McClellan create the nation's first (north-to-south) transcontinental railroad system (its first RO-RO system, in fact). I want to know the names of the inns in which, per Mac, they shared a bed. I want to know Lincoln's role in McClellan's Ohio commissioning, only a little of which is out there now. I want to understand more of how McClellan functioned as a Dennison protege and why Lincoln could still view him as such as late as spring, 1862. (A discussion of the whole political protege system for generals is in order, for there is no understanding GBM's ACW service outside of this system). As tallies go, I would like to see an attempt made to total personal visits between Lincoln and GBM while in Washington in 1861 - surely a record for all presidents and generals for all time.

The list goes on. I expect very little new, however.

Despite books authored pre-2001, John Waugh could fairly be described as a working journalist up to the point that Re-electing Lincoln came out. Rather than the old school reporter "with a nose for news," Waugh represents the new style, fed on a diet of press releases and eager to tell you "what everyone already knows" in a bright and interesting way.

Waugh's Re-electing Lincoln had potential. He abstained from cheap swipes at GBM. He paid just enough attention to Republican fraud to whet the reader's appetite. He made a reasonable case for the election being important by being close. On the other hand, he nowhere risked another new insight or conclusion and much colorful, relevant, and interesting material was omitted.

Since then, everything Waugh has done that has come to my attention has smacked of exploitation. I marked Re-electing as his high point while shunning Class of 1846, 20 Good Reasons for Studying the Civil War, and One Man Great Enough (hello, Bicentennial). The cake is taken by Edwin Cole Bearss: History's Pied Piper, a Concise Illustrated Biography of the Life and Times of America's Impresario of Public History.

The journalist who goes freelance, and I have employed many, becomes a slightly crazed writing machine whose job one is to get the next check rolling in. My feeling is that Waugh, who has talent and some discernment, is in that space now in the role of full-time history author. His mode is to reprise commercially successful topics on the same lines they were originally presented. He's taking other authors' encores.

For the advanced reader, what good can come of this?

Hat tip for the heads up to Andrew Wagenhoffer.

A newspaper and some magazines

A hot Internet topic today is the decision at the Dallas Morning News to have editors report directly to sales managers. This is roughly analagous to the long-standing situation in Civil War magazine publishing, with a circulation twist.

The ACW glossies see circulation boosts when certain marquee value pop history writers pen pieces for them. Those "names" set the editorial policies by their treatments of certain topics and issues. Keith Poulter, for instance, editor of North & South, once returned a friend's manuscript with a letter that began, "I will never..." (contradict a certain best-selling author).

This sets up a captive relationship, even if publishers never advertise in the glossies. Publishers in fact advertise sparingly in the glossies - much publicity can be had for free - though the "blockbusters" will get full page ads.

Those mags that do stir up a little controversy are playing short-term circulation games. Pay attention to these ripples - they tend to flow away from major reputations and large investments to eddy around rocks of specificity: facts, dates, minutia.

Can we imagine ACW magazine publishing as intrepid, investigative, fresh? No, it will remain conformist, networked, and pandering following in the wake of book sales for a few crumbs of commerce.

The twin paradoxes of ACW magazine publishing are advertiser control, sans advertising, and a circulation sustained by deep readers imbibing what is intended for more general audiences.

The NYT top 10 for '09

The New York Times has released its top 10 books of 2009 ("The Ten Best Books of 2009") and we can excuse the larger publishing world for hanging on the results – millions of $$ are at stake – but here in our little nook, it's an annual opportunity to laugh. Spy used to bust the NYT every month for its trademark corruption and incompetence but alas, Spy is no more. Please accept this poor substitute.

The Times roster is divided into five fiction and five nonfiction selections. (Book Ninja says these restrictive categories are used because they are the most advertiser friendly.) No independently published titles made the list (none) and the ten titles fall out among these corporations: Simon & Schuster, three; Random House, three; Penguin (Pearson), two; HarperCollins (NewsCorp), one; and Farrar, Straus & Giroux (MacMillan), one.

Fiction is given pride of place topside and consists of one short-story collection and four novels.

The single short story collection is given top (number one) position and I don't have to tell you how crazy readers are for short story collections. Booksellers can't keep them in stock. This one is written by "a frequent contributor to the New York Times," Maile Meloy. She's just lucky that her colleagues at the paper appreciate her as much as they do. Last year we had to reach way down to the number two position on the list to find a book by a staffer or "frequent contributor."

In second place, we have Brooklyn's Jonathan Lethem. Like many a man of letters, he is a "cartoonish" painter who dabbles in animated movies and saw Star Wars 21 times during its original run. My unkind feeling is that he is the book editor's boyfriend. On the other hand, his novel is entirely about Manhattan, always a pleasing subject with this selection committee.

A certain Lorrie Moore occupies third place. She is a Manhattanite (Hooray for the home team!), now teaching English in exile as a professor in Wisconsin. She was educated in creative writing at Cornell shortly after my own time at Syracuse (please note that the two universities shared a "sister" relationship at that time, affecting credits, courses, and various exchanges; more on that in a moment).

In fourth place, we have Ms Jeanette Walls whose novel takes her out of her usual domain as guest on TV's Colbert Report and her career as MSNBC's gossip columnist (MSNBC = Time Warner). This is his first work of fiction, so it is not surprising it should make the NYT top 10 list. Many first novels do. You probably know her for her book, Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip.

In fifth place, we have Kate Walbert and her tale of an English suffragette. She teaches English at Yale. Another English professor – I like my fiction heavily credentialed! "The theme is feminism," the reviewer says, which sounds less like fiction, more like polemic. Ms. Walbert lives in New York where she occasionally publishes pieces in the New York Times, so she is no stranger to this selection committee. With nice symmetry, the judges have bracketed the fiction list with two NYT contributors.

On to the nonfiction. Here we have a best-selling pop science tome, an Iraq documentary, a best-selling financial history, and two literary biographies. Two, because (I suppose) there really were not enough non-lit biographies issued in 2009.

Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life is 10th on the NYT list and provides us with a little insight into the minds and mores of these compilers. Mr. Carver was a short story writer who ran the Syracuse University creative writing program when Lorrie Moore (third place, fiction) was learning writing nearby at Cornell. (I believe he started teaching after I graduated from SU.) His biographer is a lady professor of English in Michigan. BTW, eighth on the list is the memoir Lit: A Life, by Mary Karr, an English professor at Syracuse University. I suspect there are even more Syracuse/Cornell nodes but don't have time to find them all.

BTW, speaking of Karr, a professor's memoir - as you will readily agree - is always a sure-fire hit and likely to land on anybody's top 10 list, so no surprises here.

David Finkel has written a book about a unit in Iraq. He is a long-time Washington Post employee and prolific reporter. You can't just have just NY Times contributors as winners on a list like this. A broadening of the field is needed.

The last two items to discuss on the list are outliers. Liaquat Ahamed's well publicized profile of four interwar central bankers resonated with the times, the Times and with Ahamed's financial background. In terms of publishing incest, this New Yorker merely sits on Forbes' magazine's board. Author Richard Holmes, meanwhile, a self-styled "Romantic biographer," is also editor of Harper Perennial series Classic Biographies, a bit of incest that goes down well in New York. A publisher's editor makes the list? Well, look at previous years!

Let's compile one of those numerical lists Harpers used to delight in.

Zero – number of independent publishers on the list
Two – number of known NYT contributors making the list (update - six!)
Three – number of Syracuse/Cornell writing connections among winners
Four – number of selectees employed by publishers other than NYT
Four – number of female English professors on the list
Five – number of New Yorkers on the list

You can do your own further digging. I leave to you the NYT 100 Notable Books of 2009.

** UPDATE **
A reader of the above kindly corrected some errors of omission:

Mary Karr is also a NYT contributor.

E.g.: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/opinion/15karr.html?_r=1

(p.s. Apparently this is her third memoir. Who writes three memoirs? Overheard at Thanksgiving: "So, Mary dear, what's your new book about." "Me." "Again?")

As is Lorrie Moore;

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/opinion/29moore.html

And Jonathan Lethem:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21lethem.html

And Liaquat Ahamed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08Ahamed.html

BTW, I was thinking about Mary Karr this afternoon. Asked myself, "When is the last time you read a good autobiography by an English professor?" Usually, English professors write novels about English professors. Well, she gives us three memoirs to choose from. One of them has got to be good. And as top ten listings go, for Mary (pardon the cliche) "third time's a charm."

The ALPLM goes marching on

As the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial winds down, the ALPLM drives on with its groundbreaking (sorry) project collecting oral histories of farming in Illinois.

“No subject is more central to Illinois’ history or identity,” said Mark DePue, director of oral history for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

Someone tell the governor that once he finally appoints an overall museum director, that damps down all of the out-of-control mini-directors and he gets to keep focused on Lincoln.

Assuming that this patronage sink is about focus.

List Like the Thunderbolt

Amazon compiled a top 10 history book list for the year and placed Russell S. Bonds' War Like Thunderbolt at number 5. Congratulations are in order!

p.s. Looking for patterns in the data, I notice Thunderbolt is one of two burning books; there are also two lost jungle city books, two majesty-of-science books; and two pop-classical histories. What to make of it?

Bloggers with books out in 2009

The number of ACW bloggers with books out this year is impressive. Setting aside authors who may have started blogs this year and last, we have a surprisingly robust list.

Michael Aubrecht - The Civil War in Spotsylvania County (VA): Confederate Campfires at the Crossroads

John Hoptak - Antietam Trivia and Our Boys Did Nobly

J. David Petruzzi and The Complete Gettysburg Guide we have spoken of earlier in the season

Scott Mingus - The Louisiana Tigers in the Gettysburg Campaign, June-July 1863

Ethan Rafuse - Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederancy, 1863-1865

Jim Schmidt - Lincoln's Labels: America's Best Known Brands and the Civil War

Jim Schmidt (coeditor) - Years of Change and Suffering: Modern Perspectives on Civil War Medicine

Brooks Simpson - The Reconstruction Presidents and the forthcoming Civil War In The East 1861-1865: A Strategic Assessment

Eric Wittenberg - Like a Meteor Burning Brightly: The Short but Controversial Life of Colonel Ulric Dahlgren

Steven Woodworth - The Shiloh Campaign ... Note that Woodworth went nuts last year, squandering hours of potential blogging time preparing this, this, this, and this

Previous posts talked about the books of JD Petruzzi, Betsy Rosen, and Larry Tagg. Most of the books above have not yet been discussed.

I am likely to have missed a few entries, for which apologies in advance.

History done right?

Have taken away on vacation Peter Wilson's new The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy, all 997 pages of it. The first two pages are narrative, the next 145 are analysis. There will be lost more analysis, I've only gotten that far.

Now let me tell you something special: "Amazon.com Sales Rank: #905 in Books."

Compare and contrast with ACW histories.

ALPLM nostalgia

This piece is about art museums but may help explain why the Mysterioso's position has not/will not be filled. And yet, ALPLM has a director of oral history.

Speaking of ALPLM, I found a Lincoln blog that reminds me fondly of all the Richard Norton Smith bashing we used to do here. Oh, those were great times. This blogger refers (incessantly) to the gentleman in question as Richard Snortin' Myth.

Sins of the marketers

(1) The author "gives readers both a gripping narrative account of that portentous day and a nuanced historical analysis..." Sounds like some talespinner has a guilty conscience.

(2) "Move through time with the characters and events that shaped Washington,D.C., as we know it today. Visit the National Cemetery in Arlington," where all those characters are buried.

How they loved their dialect humor

One of the least attractive qualities of Lincoln, to many observers and commentators, was his love of dialect humor. One senses that the vast popularity of dialect literature during and after the war was offset by tastes that regarded it as uncouth.

It certainly is (or was) perishable, with the writer relying on readers awarding points for accuracy in accent engineering. Funny nuances in misspeaking get lost over time, so, too does the color fade from all those vibrant regionalisms.

A couple of weeks ago I met with a client who told me where she was from. Me: "I knew right away by your accent." She gave me a hurt look and said, "People tell me I speak the least accented American English they have ever heard." I speak with the same accent as she and could render our exchange in dialect for you, but you would have no idea how to read it: where the stresses go, how to make the sounds, and how to string it together into its local rhythm. I'm convinced that many today cannot hear or distinguish among even the strongest accents.

For instance, actor Richard Briers was in an online chat a few years ago. He had done three seasons as the laird emeritus in TV's Monarch of the Glen (a kind of minstrel show staged by BBC Scotland for export markets). His character and his TV kin spoke perfect Oxbridge English on the set to servants owning rich Scottish brogues, exactly as the Cabots and the Lodges today speak in neutral Mid-Atlantic tones to their servants, who then respond in barbaric Bostonspeak.

One of the online chatterers asked Briers (IIRC) How did you manage to perfect your Scottish accent? Was it hard to do? Did you take lessons? After an online stutter, the actor gently noted that the Scottish nobility is anglicized and so his character lacked a Scottish accent; despite the presence of Scots' English on the show, Briers' questioner could not hear the difference between Upstairs and Downstairs.

It seems, however, some do laugh at dialect humor nowadays, but not on the written page. Think low (Beverly Hillbillys), think high (Fargo). And here comes that problem again of hearing your own voice:

There is a distinctive Minnesota accent that the makers of this film [Drop Dead Gorgeous] nailed absolutely dead to rights, and the proof is that most native Minnesotans, when shown this film, respond by saying, "That's not funny. We don't really talk like that." And they will say it in the accent from the movie!

Fun with accents - we still have a little but it represents risky humor in a tone-deaf oral culture. To release a book of Civil War dialect humor in this time and place therefore seems odd.

Bill Arp's Peace Papers collects the humorous newspaper writings of Charles Henry Smith, which I assume are rendered in a North Georgia accent I shall never hear ... and therefore cannot translate from the written page. Reference is sometimes made to Arp in ACW writings (most recently in War Like The Thunderbolt), so I suppose having the whole collection helps future researchers. But as no one is releasing Artemus Ward nowadays, what commercial chance does Bill Arp stand if the king of dialect is neglected?

Dialect humor, in addition to being fragile and perishable, wears down a reader. Book-length Arp can be too much of a good thing, especially since Smith was an amateur writer building on the accidental success of his first article.

Mr. Linkhorn, sur, privately speakin, I'm afeerd I'll git in a tite place here among these bloods, and will have to slope out of it...

Yikes.

By the turn of the century, the better dialect humor had morphed into standard English, laced with slang, in which patterns and argot conveyed locale and humor. I'm thinking of George Ade. Here's a rare passage where Ade actually lapses into dialect writing per se, but it's handled with restraint:

"Don't you know me?" he asked.

"Rully, it seems to me I have seen you, somewhere," she replied, "but I cahn't place you. Are you the man who tunes the piano? ... I dare say you called to see Pu-pah; he will be here presently."

Then she gave him ... a few other Crisp Ones, hot from the finishing school, after which she asked him how the dear Villagers were coming on.

Well, one could write a lengthy treatise on this, so let's tally up the score for Bill Arp's Peace Papers.

- The introduction by David Parker is fine - biographical information reveals Smith's background as a refugee from Sherman's advance and much more.

- The (uncredited?) illustrations from an earlier edition are delightful Wilhelm Busch pastiches.

- The design perpetuates white space anomalies from the earlier edition. The book could have been typeset anew, adjusting an earlier layout that ill fits modern book dimensions.

- Smith, if you dare take all your medicine, has a few interesting pieces here, including one on the ravages of Confederate cavalry among a Confederate population.

Overall this book is a good thing and worth doing although not necessarily worth having in everyon'e collection. To quote Bill Arp,

But somehow I like the plagy things, and while I last on the top side of this sile, I want 'em a hangin around.

What he said.

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."