Generals who faint (cont.)

The general who faints is now going to lose his scalp, along with the AFRICOM commander, both of them having watched a seven-hour attack on security cam feeds, drone television, cell phone and radio audio and who knows what else. The public will not understand their deep political motivations for non-action and judge them simply as soldiers who failed to do the right thing.

Over a week ago, I heard Col. David Hunt tick off which feeds were going to which operational headquarters and which commanders and politicos were watching the carnage in real-time. Today he was on New England radio again and he said (paraphrasing):

If the State Department tells you, a general, no go, you call the New York Times immediately. But we don't have that kind of officer anymore.

A young USAF intel analyst called a morning talk show in D.C. to explain the FLASH messaging system triggers and the protocols that would move message traffic up to the president in cases where an ambassador was missing or under attack. The host wanted to argue with him on the subject of Why didn't the generals act and the young analyst took great pains to explain to him what a U.S. general is, in fact, and that it would be very foolish to expect such action. The host could not absorb the information.

The difference between a Civil War general and a 2012 general is that a Civil War general needed significant political sponsorship to gain his rank (even at one star) and he needed sustained sponsorship to remain in command. A modern general needs political approval to serve at the three and four star level - the one and two star guys are selected by other generals, including the political powerhouse three and four star men.

We confuse ourselves as a culture by perpetuating the nonsense that the Civil War sidelined political generals in favor of technocrats who could perform. Generals are highly political, highly sensitive to politics, and could not achieve rank or function bureaucratically without all of the dark arts associated with politics.

Wesley Clark, to take an example, is not a "Clinton general" because he speaks out in favor of Clinton causes. He is a "Clinton general" because Clinton made him. Every four star combatant commander is a man made by the White House and/or Congress. Every modern general praises Robert E. Lee and Ulysses Grant (both were highly political generals, BTW) with his mouth while acting the Benjamin Butler with his other parts.

If we could fix Civil War history on this score, it would advance the general understanding of what a general is and does.

p.s. See this report on a CIA press release as well. The headline and analysis have reversed the meaning of the release.

Update, 10/27: Scalp number one.

Unknown portrait of George Thomas

Have not seen this portrait of George Thomas in the literature before. It seems based on a photograph. The picture hangs in the Army & Navy Club in DC and no date is given, no artist is credited. Have seen it often but decided to snap it at lunch yesterday using my crappy phonecam.

If you are planning on writing a George Thomas bio (possible theme: America's unknown hero), go get a better photo for your cover art.

The Mysterioso returns

Rick Beard is back in the public eye, his background totally erased by the New York Times. (They're really good at removing and revising information, I think.)

Scroll down to the bottom to read his spiffy new legend.

(H/T to RC)

"To Antietam Creek" with Scott Hartwig

How odd this is: D. Scott Hartwig, the supervisory park historian at Gettysburg writes a book, and it is The Maryland Campaign of September 1862. The Maryland Campaign! (The first volume, To Antietam Creek, is out now.)

And, if you were the supervisory park historian at Gettysburg with an itch to write about Maryland, of all topics, what one major qualification would you bring to the table? What is the main thing you have learned at Gettysburg? That thing that defines your job? That thing that the public pounds into your skull every day of your waking life and again at night, in your dreams?

You would know controversy. You would know it as well as any man can know anything. And for you to know controversy through Gettysburg and then march your readers through 794 pages of the Maryland Campaign as if it were a controversy-free zone, that is very odd. I can’t even say how strange that is.

If you tasked me to write about Gettysburg, I would research and write outwards from the points of scholarly contention to the general account. I cannot imagine another way. And yet here ...

Perhaps “controversy-free zone” is overstatement for this new book. There are whiffs of controversy in the end notes but these are shrunk smaller than pick six tickets and then resolved with speed and certitude or sidestepped entirely.

For instance, the command crisis of early September would easily make a 794 page book of its own, but Hartwig spares much ink by deciding that Halleck’s unsubstantiated testimony to the CCW is the whole story: Lincoln ordered McClellan to the field. Lincoln contradicts this, McClellan contradicts this but in Hartwig’s lottery system, he picks one answer out of hat and declares it the winner.

In related strangeness, Hartwig gives kudos to Ethan Rafuse’s McClellan War which reports the command crisis correctly and in some detail. Could he trouble himself with a comment to say why he rejects Rafuse's account?

Sometimes, these bizarre resolutions work in the reader’s favor. Hartwig has no use for the ridiculous claim that McClellan issued no directives after finding SO 191; he discusses a couple of afternoon orders in particular. Again, he does so without bringing on a general engagement with the authors who he says influenced him. Let’s refresh our memories on this point:

Every writer agrees that Little Mac erred egregiously when he failed to order an immediate march toward the west on the afternoon of September 13. [...] Instead, McClellan squandered the afternoon and evening of the 13th, sending orders after dark for a two-pronged advance the next morning... A. Wilson Greene, "I Fought the Battle Splendidly," Antietam: Essays on the 1862 Maryland Campaign, Gary Gallagher, ed.

A full 18 hours would pass before the first Yankee soldiers marched in response to the discovery of 'all the plans of the rebels.' Stephen Sears, A Landscape Turned Red

Instead of setting his troops in motion immediately, McClellan made careful plans and did not order the men forward until daybreak on September 14, 18 hours after he had learned Lee's dispositions. As things turned out, this delay enabled Lee to concentrate and save his army. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom

The LOL foolishness above is quoted en bloc because these very authors and these same books are named explicitly by Hartwig as having influenced his own work.

In fact, these three plus Harsh, Carman, and Rafuse are almost the only secondary sources named in the context of influencing our author’s work. Praise for them is fulsome. But why if their views are put to curb like broken furniture? Can’t we then call Hartwig's praise insincere or meaningless?

The impression given by the end notes is that Hartwig built this book out of the OR, some diaries, Landscape Turned Red, Sears' bio of GBM, and what Hartwig imagines to be McClellan’s "letters to his wife." That is a simplification but that's what the notes convey. The severe shortage of secondary source analysis is unforgivable. The absence of Harsh and Rafuse here is especially striking.

So, bad controversy and evidence handling prevail over good. Hartwig first narrows the field of contestants in a controversy, then picks a lottery winner without resorting to argument.

Let me give a severe but representative example.

McClellan had ridden out of the city limits to meet Pope’s returning command. Hartwig recaps Jacob Cox’s account of the encounter of McClellan, Pope, and McDowell and he notes the account with an aside: “For McClellan’s fanciful and largely innacurate account of this meeting, see McClellan, McClellan’s Own Story, 537.”

So there are two versions of the event, one by a principal (GBM) and one by an observer (JC) and we are to take the observer’s version as real and the principal’s as “fanciful” and “innacurate.”

Why? No answer is given.

The distinctions in the two stories are simplicity and complexity. Cox tells a simple story: Pope’s party, looking tired, approached, received orders where to position units, saluted, and moved on. McClellan’s version recounts the substance of the conversation with Pope aside from the matter of positioning units in the defenses. The content of this conversation had to do with status of units and firing in the distance. This is what Hartwig says is “fanciful” and “largely innacurate.”

Hartwig continues in his note to say, “Also see Sears, George B. McClellan, 262, for Cox’s comments on McClellan’s account.” We turn to that work with high expectations and on said page we read: “In preparing a review of McClellan’s Own Story, Cox, a witness to the encounter, jotted in the margin of his copy, ‘Certainly not true.’”

And there you have it. Cox is the winner through the magic of simple assertion. We now know what happened when McClellan met Pope. All we had to do was debit GBM's account 100% and credit Cox's the same amount.

I could go through the end notes compiling a list of these, where a variant account is acknowledged in the back of the book and then disposed of by coin toss or lottery.

If history were only that easy. Gettysburg teaches us that it isn’t.

I have a couple of suspicions about this book.

- Hartwig started the book one way, many years ago, and resolved not to be influenced by the many new works or their implications before he finished his study.

- He believes the determinative outcome on all controversies lies with the author; the author must make the call.

- He believes that once the author makes the call, the qualities of the narrative and the reading experience, not the evidence, will determine for the reader if the calls were right.

- He believes he has written an authoritative account of the campaign.

And this takes me to another assumption. In my 794-page first volume, I see an introduction of two and one-tenth pages length. I see a bibliographical essay of three and one quarter pages length. Astonishing. My surmise is that Scott was compelled to add these by his publisher and did so with the greatest haste (if not reluctance).

We have in this large volume nowhere that the the author states his case for this book, why he wrote it, what it’s supposed to do for us, how it relates to the field in which it appears.

And that is the oddest thing of all.
--

p.s. It is with great reluctance that I criticize at length someone’s labor of love, especially someone with the good-guy reputation of D. Scott Hartwig. This book is readable and on levels enjoyable. I found things I did not know and Mr. Hartwig, to my great fun, rolls over some conventional wisdom like a steamroller when his sources lead him to do so. The extended criticism in this post is a recommendation with caveats - I don’t link to authors I can’t recommend.

The problem is his is no broad view of the evidence; there is narrative driving analysis; there is a haste to close open questions and to avoid engaging in controversy in a deep or meaningful way.

Epistemology is at the root of history - why do we believe that we know this or that as “fact”? Evidence handling flows from that. If we don’t ask the right questions we are left with a story that obeys the inner logic of fiction plotting.

I am going to post on some individual topics out of this book and dissect them in detail in the weeks ahead. This is not an all-out assault on Scott Hartwig but an opportunity to review failings across the spectrum of Civil War history.

This is a criticism blog and critics will be critics.

p.p.s. Harry has an interview with the author here.

A UFO sighting called "Lincoln"

It's not out yet but IMDb has 916 users who rated the Spielberg film "Lincoln" an aggregate 7.9 stars out of 10.

How do they do that?

An unfinished version of the film was shown in NY recently. Here's the report, here's a review.

Lincoln isn't as sentimental as you might expect from Spielberg ... Lincoln veers too often toward becoming a somnolent period piece ... Though it might have worked better as a tighter, purely political thriller...

I'm hearing OSCAR, baby!

Meanwhile, here's a compendium of twitter reviews from the watchers. Do we like on twitter? Or is that facebook? Because I like:

Not as bad as the trailers suggested but not interesting enough to watch again...

... [watch] only for hilarious overacting ...

Maybe this is a template, Shakespeare for the Americans. Lots of shouting, arm waving, "scenery chewing." Why should a lot of out-of-control stage actors own all that excess?

(Lon Chaney Sr. would have made a great Spielberg Lincoln.)

Gardening advice

The host of a gardening show this morning observed (paraphrase follows):

I've been at this for 50 years and I still struggle to understand things. But if you go into the big box store and the clerk reads you something off a product label, that's now expert opinion.

Do you go to the big box stores in Civil War history (McPherson, Davis, Gallagher, etc.)? They have tiny labels on their products that solve all sorts of Civil War problems. Is that where your "expert opinion" is coming from?

Gardening is harder than that.

The London bookshop map

Give it time to load.

Sludge alert - Lincoln edition

A correspondent kindly sent me a little item.

Get ready for a lot more of this with the Spielberg movie coming out.

“Sidney Blumenthal, journalist, author, historian, and former senior adviser to President Clinton, is completing a book titled The Man Who Became Abraham Lincoln: How He Won the Civil War and Was Assassinated.”

Indeed, the more of a hit this Lincoln film is, the more bad Lincoln books will clog the bookstores.

Don't expect Lincoln scholars to put up a fight, though. They rolled over for Cuomo, Goodwin, O'Reilly and McPherson.* They will welcome their new sludge overlords.

It's become a habit with them.

*Small Caveats for Guelzo and Foner however, for remarks against Goodwin's book made in reviews.

Update, 10/19:
Our correspondent writes,

And what’s with that awful book title? You could envision a series:

The Man Who Became John Kennedy: How He Wooed Marilyn and Was Assassinated

The Man Who Became James Garfield: How He Pissed off Charles Guiteau and Was Assassinated

The Man Who Became Elvis: How He Became a Star and Was Found Dead on the Toilet

The Woman Who Became Margaret Mitchell: How She Wrote Gone With the Wind and Was Run Over by a Taxi

Maybe we should go easy on him - is it his first book? Isn't everyone's first book about Lincoln?

The greatest thing about Civil War history

This blog was founded oh so many years ago in violent reaction to the low standards in Civil War history. Over the last decade it has stayed "on topic" - in other words, it has remained dour, pessimistic, bitter, and critical.

The next post will be number 4,000 and so I wanted to log a kudo to a field that may be unique in this one very important respect. Civil War history is powered by self-taught aficionados who do original research, publish books and articles, and search for the truth on a path by which they learn good historical practice, ethical evidence handling, and judicious evaluation. I am continuously impressed by the vibrant subculture. I am continuously impressed by amateurs who discover and maintain the highest professional standards.

You might even say that the ACW subculture is actually the dominant culture. That is very, very cool and what other scene can touch that?

I came to this field from from 20 years reading in modern European history. They don't have this. Their professional standards are infinitely higher than a McPherson's, but they don't have a vibrant subculture of independent researchers concerned with truth over narrative.

As the Internet and its manifestations enable one to break down "authority" with deeply researched challenges, the ACW buff is/was already there before the Web with pamphlets, tour guide spiels, roundtable talks, USENET posts, and the dark private mutterings issued over every primary source discovery that overturns conventional wisdom.

The ACW scene had all the potential of a self-policing discipline. My involvement with USENET and FTP in the mid-90s showed me the promise of a search for "new knowledge."

Today, we ACW readers have our professors, we have our Pulitzers, and God help us. So does every other corner of the historical publishing trade. Believe me when I say that absolutely everyone else has better of such than we - much, much better.

Nevertheless, we do love our few good professors (Harsh, Clemens, Simpson, Rafuse, Rowland, Reed, some others). And yet our real ACW juice is coming from self-taught scholars who are concerned with the ethical treatment of sources, contradictions in the master narrative handed down from the Centennial, and concerned with new research. They are enabled by small publishing houses, self publishing technology, and the Internet with all its publishing ramifications.

The headlock we as ACW readers have been held in from the nightmarish 1960s until the founding of this blog has been broken through the efforts of the self-taught researchers following moral rather than narrative compasses. They have been aided and abetted by the Savas-Beaties of the world and by other independent and adventurous publishers, often university presses.

Unless the day comes when we readers get swamped again by another tidal wave of ignoramus readers inspired by some future Ken Burns' "Civil War" schlock or by a pulp novel bestseller like Michael Shaara's "Killer Angels," we should do well. We deserve to do well.

This new century looks very promising indeed.

Foner and Hobsbawm

Blogger Ron Radosh uses the matter of fawning obituaries for Eric Hobsbawm to apply a few lashes to Eric Foner's hide:

Naturally, writing in The Nation, the left-wing’s most prominent historian and Pulitzer Prize winner, Eric Foner, lauded Hobsbawm in very different terms. Playing the old Popular Front game, Foner ignored even commenting on his defense of the old Soviet Union and of Stalin’s terror. Rather, Foner simply called him a “life-long advocate of social justice.” Obviously, in Foner’s eyes, anyone supporting Stalin and the old Soviet cause was simply revealing his concern for the peoples of the world and their persistent struggles for equality. Hobsbawm never gave up his beliefs, Foner writes- although Foner never tells readers what these were- saying only that Hobsbawm stayed firm because “out of respect for the memory of comrades who had suffered persecution or death for their political beliefs.”

Not a word from Foner about the many who were persecuted or went to death in the Soviet system that Hobsbawm (and Foner) so revere. This is not surprising. In 1994, Foner attacked Eugene D. Genovese’s Dissent essay “The Question,” writing that Genovese was prone to “right-wing ideology” because he dared to acknowledge what Foner and Hobsbawm never could — that in supporting the Soviet Union, the Left was as guilty as Stalin, and that “social movements that have espoused radical egalitarianism and participatory democracy have begun with mass murder and ended in despotism.” To Foner, the great sin is anti-Communism, and he believes that supporting left-wing tyranny is excusable and understandable.

Foner concludes that “Hobsbawm’s historical writings brought to bear a sophisticated Marxist analysis that saw class conflict as a driving force of historical change but rejected narrow economic determinism and teleological frameworks. Like Marx himself, Hobsbawm saw capitalism as a total social system, which had to be analyzed in its entirety, and rejected notions of historical inevitability. He insisted that people must strive to envision a more humane social order, but that history had no predetermined trajectory.”

So we are not surprised that Eric Foner thinks Hobsbawm to be a great historian. How could he not, since he shares with the late scholar a fond remembrance for the old Soviet Union and a nostalgia for the good work engaged in by the old Communists, like Foner’s own parents and uncles.

A commenter chips in with this note:

You mention Eric Foner. He’s best known as the author of the standard (don’t ask me why) history of Reconstruction in the United States, but the book of his that I read was an essay collection titled “The Battle for History” or some such. In it, he recounted some of his early life and background. His father taught (if I remember right) history at Columbia, and lost his job during the height of the McCarthy Red “Scare” for what Foner thought were completely bogus reasons. Anyway, after telling you of this, the author recounts that he was at an awards dinner with Gabor Borritt, a reasonably well-known Civil War historian who was born in Czechoslovakia, participated in the “Prague Spring” as a teenager, and fled in the aftermath, winding up in the United States. Borritt tells Foner that he grew up in a totalitarian state where freedom of expression was brutally suppressed, and Foner responds that he was brought up in such a country, too… ‘Nuff said…

I think I could have put this whole case more simply. Anyone who applies dialectical materialism to the study of history is building paradigms, not doing history. Whether Foner is in that group, I don't know.

Cats of the Civil War

Not that I visit cat sites, but is this true? The cartoonist says Abe kept four kitties in the White House. As for Lee, his cats would have to inhabit various field HQ, which seems unlikely.

Cats of the Civil War - a coffee table book concept that will eventually have its day.

Sesquicentennial beers

The full story is here with a derivative report here.

I drank a glass of Antietam Ale with my oysters last week.It was way too hoppy - left me thinking the brewers did not understand the bitter style of ales. On the other hand, they could be following demand and right now, in the beer world, hopheads are ruining it for absolutely everyone else.

IIRC, Col. Wainwright, in Diary of Battle, remarks that visitors to Burnside's tent/HQ were offered a choice of hard cider, wine, beer, or porter (the darker, fuller bodied beer whose heaviest incarnation is known as "stout porter"). Quite an incentive to coordinate.

Frederick radio, meanwhile, had a news report last weekend from a beer festival, that mentioned the porter style and explained it to the general public as being dark because it is brewed with malt.

Sorry to go all Michael Jackson on you. (Chris Wehner got to this first.)

Civil War tours of Connecticut

"Civil War sesquicentennial fever is gripping Connecticut."

Who am I to gainsay?

Celebrate Columbus Day

Here's a 572-page book that argues Columbus was Portuguese, Jewish, and an agent planted on Spain. For one cent per copy is the risk worth the expenditure?

Authors who stop writing

Very interesting topic. H/T Instapundit.

I have an ACW list: you do too.

Mine starts with Edward Steere. Yours?

Faust pities the cheaters

Drew G. Faust, the Civil War historian at the head of Harvard,

blames the current cheating scandal raging on campus, which involves as many as 125 Harvard students, on societal “pressures” and a lack of intellectual “excitement.”

This is another way of saying that her customers are determined to get the credentials they are paying for. (Link)

The Crimson reports,

Harvard first launched an investigation of 125 students in Matthew Platt’s government course “Introduction to Congress” in May after teaching fellows suspected that students may have plagiarized answers or inappropriately collaborated on the class’ final take-home exam.

The tenured professors are cheating by having "teaching fellows" handle the grading, if not the teaching. But that's not the scandal we're talking about here. And just think. An introduction to Congress - that's got to be an unbelievably hard subject. It's a tribute to our educational system that young people would even enroll in a course so daunting.

If I were Faust, I might say, "Why in Civil War history, we don't even know what plagiarism is." But that again is a different scandal and I don't know if it would help the cheaters.

Speaking of history, in the middle of the last century, Harvard ceased being a finishing school for the regional gentry. Today, it is a diploma mill for manic strivers nationally, kids who at age four are already signed up for the very best pre-kindergartens. Now the funny thing about manic strivers is that they tend to strive maniacally.

This cheating therefore opens an interesting question. If you cheat, does than make you more of a striver or more of a slacker? Because if it makes you more of a slacker, Harvard is right to be outraged to its very core and no punishment will be harsh enough. But if cheating makes the striver even more of a striver, well then, yeah societal pressures, blah blah blah, we understand, etc.

In her comments, Faust may be signalling that cheaters are the more intense flavor of what Harvard is really all about.

Update, 10/09: Meanwhile there's money to be made off of strivers:

Gerald and Lily Chow say in their suit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston that they gave Mark Zimny more than $2 million to get their sons into an elite American university, preferably Harvard.

Thanks for visiting!

If you see an idea you like here, take it, claim it as your own and run with it. You'll be helping me drain the noxious swamp that is "Civil War history."

Civil War history and the larger problem

Just when you think the social sciences have reached an acme of corruption and incompetence, Nature rides to the rescue. Scientific papers: Fraud, fraud, fraud, and fraud.

I'll give this to the natural sciences, however. I have NEVER heard of an ACW paper or book being retracted due to to errors.

Either we do a much better job than the scientists or uh ...

Charles Wilkes, in thoughtful retrospect

Wilkes was something of a loose cannon in the American navy. James McPherson, War on the Waters, 2012, p. 44

"This was the last straw for Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, who now considered Wilkes a dangerous loose cannon." Item description, Raab Collection, 2011.

"CHARLES WILTS [sic] IS A LOOSE CANNON ON A ROLLING DECK." - comments section, C-Span "Person of the Year, 1861" program, 2011.

"Captain Wilkes was what one might call a bit of a 'loose cannon,' so to speak." Paul Culliton, "What Might Have Been," 2010.

"Wilkes was a loose cannon..." Kirkus Reviews on Sea of Glory, 2004

"It wasn't until years later, finally promoted first to captain then rear-admiral, that [Wilkes] this 'loose cannon' finally became too much of a liability ..." Discussion board, 2004

"Wilkes was an egotist, a little bit of a loose cannon..." James McPherson, interview, World Socialist Website, 1999

Death of an historian

The fawning obits over historian Eric Hobsbawm's passing triggered this little thought experiment.

p.s.,Thought for the day from this obit compendium:

Most historians are by nature either short-story writers or novelists...

More the pity.

p.s. I last blogged about Hobsbawm in 2006. Kevin Levin complemented the posting. If you ride the "Lost Cause" hobbyhorse (if you believe there is such a thing as a "Lost Cause" tradition), you have to read Hobsbawm and the concept of "invented traditions," no excuses. Then you have to read Popper on what a conspiracy theory is and ask yourself if you belong to one.

Self-plagiarism webinar

This was addressed to me but I see no reason why you couldn't enroll. I'm not shilling, I'm interested in a little-discussed ethical area where our ACW friends love to romp:

Hello Dimitri,

What exactly is wrong with re-using one’s own work? Why do publications care? Join iThenticate and three expert panelists for a free, 1-hour webcast to address this widely debated and misunderstood area of misconduct.

Date/Time: Thursday, November 1, 2012 at 11:30am PST

Highlights:

Hear why self-plagiarism is a significant concern in scholarly publishing
Explore the reasons for the rise of self-plagiarism
Get insights into journalism ethics, publication ethics and how to best avoid self-plagiarism
Panelists:

Kelly McBride, Poynter
Rachael Lammey, CrossRef
Jonathan Bailey, Plagiarism Today

Register now

Spots are limited, register early! We look forward to seeing you online in a few weeks.

Best regards,

iThenticate Team

Eight volumes of stories

Last month, Drew Wagenhoffer noticed Scott Bowden's eight-volume military biography of Lee.

The publisher's key statement is: "Military History Press has committed to a lavish graphic presentation, sure to set a new standard in campaign and combat studies." The publisher is going to outdo the old American Heritage Press, if it can, and has a sample chapter online that you can peruse as I did.

The graphics claim holds up.

A claim made about the author does not:

Never before addressed topics include a complete analysis of Lee's art of war. Also, and for the first time, Bowden explains in great detail Lee's ongoing efforts to craft and reorganize the army he inherited from Joe Johnston-a force unevenly led and inefficiently organized-into a modern and fierce fighting machine known as the Army of Northern Virginia.

These may be addressed in another chapter, however.

As you will see in the sample chapter, Mr. Bowden is a very good writer; facile, interesting, and in control of his material. The problem is the kind of control he exerts over all that material.

Our sample Chapter 3 covers the period immediately after the Lee-Pemberton team was broken up in South Carolina and it carries through Seven Pines and Lee's accession to Smith's command.

There are so many historical problems and controversies here that you couldn't address them all in one chapter. Our author doesn't try - he takes a single outcome or interpretation in each case and runs with it.

Take for example the business of Lee, as Davis's advisor, secretly giving orders to Johnston's units in the Valley. Dowdey, in his classic treatment of this period gives a whole chapter to Lee's "machiavellian" behavior. But Bowden says, "Lee's proximity required he supervise" Jackson and Ewell. Required. Further, "the baffling chain-of-command left Lee in a nebulous and needlessly complicated position." What nebulous is not: issuing orders to other people's troops.

Point of delicacy: Bowden notes Lee had to "acquire [Davis's] permission for such movements" and "while having done so, try with great tact to avoid offending the touchy Johnston."

He gets touchy when you move his units ... when you fail to inform him of your orders ... when you seek higher authority to command his men.

What a grouch!

"Having backed his army into the environs of the Confederate capital, Johnston waited there incommunicado." "Thus Johnston had carried out his original insubordinate intention with seeming malice."

And so you see how it goes here. Seven Pines was "phenomenally mismanaged." Lee suffered the "personality flaws of Davis."

I could take it controversy by controversy but it would exceed comfortable blogging length, for these historical problems require careful handling and attention. Here, they are given the storyteller's short shrift.

Take a look. Don't mind "capitol" for "capital" or "throws" for "throes" for this is a draft.

If the publisher commissioned a coffee table picture book, his author gave him more quality than is required. If he commissioned a military biography of Lee, the reader is sold short.

Brands reviewed in WSJ

Russell Bonds reviews Brands' Grant bio in the Wall Street Journal with reference to Brooks Simpson and a decent amount of historiography for a piece in a generic venue like WSJ.

It has become exceedingly rare for a major newspaper to review a Civil War book. When a review is published, the editors seek out a kind of content recap leavened with a little oatmeal punditry, so we are lucky Bonds was able to do as much historiography as he did.

In the 1960s the influence of the New York Review of Books began to be felt in the big Sunday papers' book sections. This peaked in the 1970s and died out as papers shrunk in size and the book sections were abandoned.

The better editors tried to follow NYRB's methodology.

If the NYRB was going to review a book on Hottentot cooking, it would first try to get a reviewer who was expert in cooking or in books about cooking. He or she would be obliged to explain why the book was worth reviewing generally and where it fit into the history of cook book publishing. The reader would learn the why of Hottentot cooking, who were its critics, what were their positions, and the future held for this subject. There might be a little sidebar by a Hottentot who cooks. NYRB's readers would be "loaded for bear" at the next cocktail party, should someone serve a Hottentot appetizer. And in the weeks that followed, the letters column would be filled with back-and-forth on the subject.

(Oddly, the NYRB did not apply this approach to ACW books, which were the exclusive province of one James M. McPherson. McPherson's reviewing technique tends to be to recapitulate the historical event underlying the book - without reference to the book. He made an exception for Keegan, whom he attacked for errors, but generally, he does not do historiography or analysis.)

The newspaper format is large enough for this discursive, in-depth NYRB approach while magazines tend to be constrained and therefore run bland little informational notices.

So congratulations to Russell Bonds for giving a newspaper some taste of how it could be if done right.

Nevertheless, the constraints remain and the only place nowadays you can function as a Hottentot food critic (or critic of ACW histories) is on a blog.

Smoking stats (OT)

Thanks for visiting. I should say that more often.

Sick of ...

Really, really sick of ACW writers skipping the historiography and backtracking to the OR, to a few letter collections, and to thoroughly mined manuscripts to produce "fresh" histories for general audiences.

But you knew that when you signed up for this blog.

It's lazy, dishonest, mean spirited, and ultimately ignorant, in all senses of that word.

Amazon reviews as entertainment (OT)

They may drive authors crazy but Amazon critics can do pack comedy. Scroll down. I'm moonstruck.

H/T Instapundit.

Don't skip the video ad.

Dialog with a Civil War author

Imaginary, yet urgent.

DR: This history you're writing - you've got to use this opportunity to answer your critics!

Author: What critics? The book isn't out yet.

DR: The material you cover includes controversies. There are many authors with different positions than you on these controversies. You need to answer them wherever you take a position on a particular Civil War controversy.

Author: This is out of sync. They've already published their books, I'm just now publishing mine. How are they my critics?

DR: Their books are not going away. Even if they gather dust on a library shelf, they contradict your work with facts, logic, and argument. They can be picked up and read by the same person who buys your stuff next month.

Author: Maybe they need to address my book since mine is new.

DR: Maybe they already addressed your book because the content is old. What's in your book?

Author: Oh, I've gone back to the primary sources and worked exclusively from those.

DR: Newly discovered sources? Never before used sources?

Author: No, the gold standard. The OR, some correspondence, some key manuscripts.

DR: And you think this is the first time that's been done?

Author: I'm pulling more together to tell a richer story and paint a more complete picture in a compelling way.

DR: And what do you think about the work that has already been done on this?

Author: I'm not really that interested in it. I have my favorite authors but I'm trying to do this right, from scratch, with a clear mind and a minimum of influences.

DR: The people who came before you wasted their time, it seems.

Author: That's not my problem.

DR: So how are you resolving all these controversies you encounter?

Author: I'm not really seeing many controversies at all. I follow the sources, apply some logic, done.

DR: What do you do when sources contradict each other?

Author: I just go with the more credible source. This is not rocket science.

DR: Who is "more credible"?

Author: The person with the more durable historical reputation, usually. The more iconic, the more credible, to be blunt.

DR: There is a lot of new research, regimental histories, letters, and so on, that bears on these controversies and contradicts the iconic accounts. Then, there's context.

Author: That's getting into the weeds. That's not writing a general or campaign history, that's writing a specialized monograph for scholars.

DR: What if I told you that repeat Civil War readers were self-made scholars of different grades?

Author: I'm writing for a general audience, a mass audience. They want answers not puzzles.

DR: How do you know you've given them the right answers?

Author: I have my primary sources and credible testimony to settle controversies.

DR: So, you won't answer your critics?

Author: My critics are the future buyers of my book. They'll judge me on flow, human interest, and a satisfying reading experience. If I score high in those areas, I may have no critics at all.

DR: Except at CWBN.

Publisher's advances

Via Drudge: Penguin is suing celebrity authors for non-delivery of "product." One-time celebrity blogger "Wonkette" is on the list.

Get a load of those advances: and Penguin is charging credit card level interest rates. Interesting!

Plagiarism, cont.

C-SPAN saw fit to give Jean Smith major airtime this weekend. (Click the link and then scroll down to the bottom of the post for links to the entire series on Smith's plagiarism.)

At the same time, Bob Dylan lashed out at "wussies and pussies" who attack plagiarism. Any number of ACW authors should thank him.

H/T to friendly reader.

Plagiarism

Nice to have a plagiarism blog out there, even if it's a company storefront.

Likewise, good to have whitepapers on self-plagiarism and the snowballing effects of research misconduct.

September 17-19, 1862

Savas-Beatie has brought out two very useful books to commemorate this time 150 years after the fact.

Bradley Gottfried's The Maps of Antietam, like his Gettysburg book before it, is a volume you can get lost in for many hours. Let's see, 124 color maps at 10 minutes minimum per map, there goes 20 hours right there. I expect to see this in many tourists' hands on my next visit to the battlefield. (I wouldn't be surprised, either, if his mapped vegetation plots put some pressure on park plantings.)

Tom Clemens' second volume of annotated Ezra Carman is out, The Maryland Campaign of 1862, and it weighs in at 668 pages, for a total of 1189 pages including Volume 1.

The first volume covered the campaign up to the battle and this volume addresses the battle itself.here, moreso than in Volume 1, Clemens' discursive footnoting really comes into its own.

For example, I compared the same subsections of a chapter from Joseph Pierro's one-volume edition (516 pages total) of Carman's work with Tom's Volume II. The chapter is "The Burnside Bridge" which Joe changed (for some reason) to "The Rohrbach (Burnside) Bridge."

In this matched comparison of passages of the same length, the Pierro book shows four footnotes, all of the type

McClellan to Thomas, Oct. 15, 1861, 31

Pierro's sparse notes are intended to correlate some of Carman's material to outside sources such as the OR. A discursive note from Pierro's book might spend a sentence or two on the implications of misspelling Duryee as Duryea.

Clemens also has four footnotes, two of them short and two longer. Here is his version of Pierro's note (shown above):

McClellan's October 15 report, ibid., p. 31. This language is notably absent from his August 1863 report.

You see the value, immediately, even in Clemens' shortest notes.

In the matched passages, Carman describes the terrain around the bridge calling out a spot where four Union batteries were located. Clemens' footnote says how Carman likely developed the distance data. He also records, with interesting citations, that Carman is the only source for putting Roemer's battery at the bridge site on this day. Very nice points and not mirrored in Pierro's book, where notes have been pressed into a different kind of service.

In the passage addressing McClellan's order to attack over the bridge, Clemens gives an elegantly compact, masterfully edited note that embraces where Carman got his language for the narrative describing this incident; highlights of the controversy regarding the timing of the order; and he mentions a major contribution to the study of this controversy in 2007 by our friend Moe D'Aoust.

Pierro did us good service bringing a Carman edition public when there was none but the best is the enemy of the good. You have to buy Clemens' Carman for the notes. They are superb.

Meanwhile, here are Tom Clemens and Brian Pohanka in a two-hour CSPAN conversation about the campaign and battle.

Update 5/7/14: Mr. Pierro wrote a very nice email complementing the Clemens work and the scholarship involved. He sums it up nicely:

I applaud Tom for moving the ball further down the field in the years since the release of my edition. The difference between our two approaches reflects the difference between a landscape in which Carman's text was not readily available, and one in which it now is.

Regarding my question of the Rohrbach vs Burnside Bridge nomenclature, he said "Carman HIMSELF wasn't consistent in his original text," which is why there is a difference.

As I went on to explain in note 8 (same page), Carman thenceforth usually (but not always) referred top it as the "Burnside Bridge." But I believe (as I did then) that it is anachronistic to talk about soldiers fighting and dying for the Burnside Bridge when it was only the volume of that very fighting and dying that gave the structure a new name in later years.

Good point. He adds "Much the same spirit animated my very lengthy note on page 411 (n. 48) regarding the proper rank by which Joseph Mansfield should be referred when discussing September 17." I appreciate the updates!

Ten Things Antietam taught me

(1) You can win every battle in a campaign and still be portrayed as a loser.

(2) You can lose every battle in a campaign and be portrayed as a genius.

(3) Horrendous levels of straggling on both sides will NEVER be reported in history books, unless it is on one side to make the GENIUS look good.

(4) You can be in continuous contact with your president about the horrendous levels of straggling and he will still pretend you missed a fabulous opportunity, even while privately acknowledging unbelievable levels of straggling.

(5) You can lead an army to victory in offensive operations 20 days after their defeat and still be considered a complete loser, if not a traitor.

(6) If your defeated army that won a victory on America's bloodiest day does not resume the offensive immediately after the battle, you will be branded a certified failure if not a traitor.

(7) If you order your fresh, reserve corps in pursuit of the defeated enemy two days after the bloodiest day in history, it will not be reported as a pursuit by historians.

(8) If the enemy organizes his army to repulse the corps-level pursuit, it will be reported as yet another pathetic failure by the loser.

(9) If you try to reorganize or refit after the bloodiest battle in American history, you will be labeled a shirker, a loser, a time-waster, a cry-baby.

(10) If you read histories of the Maryland campaign, you really have a whole lot of digging to do. A whole lot. And you will gain insight into the corrupt state of Civil War history, because these problems are not local to the East, nor to the AoP, nor to McClellan.

In the Lincoln movie trailer...

... the Mary character says to the Abe character, "No one is more loved by the American people than you."

Of course Mary Lincoln was committed to a mental institution, but one doubts she was crazy enough to utter those words. Ask Larry Tagg.

The overall feel of the trailer was hinting at DeMille or DW Griffith, IMHO, with all the visionary or masterpiece elements removed. Lots of night scenes and really loud musical strokes to underline the Seriously Dramatic snippets of dialog.

Some insight into the Goodwin element here:

According to Spielberg, Goodwin's entire book about Lincoln's presidency is "much too big" for a film, but the director said that the film will focus in on the last few months of Lincoln's life, the ending of slavery, and the Union victory in the Civil War. "What permanently ended slavery was the very close vote in the House of Representatives over the Thirteenth Amendment - that story I'm excited to tell," said Spielberg. [...]

Screenwriter Kushner reportedly spent six years writing the screenplay, saying he was very interested in "the relationship of Lincoln to the abolitionist left."

Goodwin's meme and content seem to have been sidelined.

Icons will be icons

Thought for today from Tom Clemens (h/t to a correspondent):

"When we impart history for the masses, we tend to generalize,” Clemens said. We tend to create heroes and villains and things become more black and white, good and bad, right and wrong.

We know that two of the great icons of American history are Abraham Lincoln, the martyred president, and Robert E. Lee, the noble soldier. So when George McClellan argues with one and defeats the other, it doesn’t fit into the mold,” he continued. “We have to somehow reduce McClellan and minimalize his achievements so that the icons remain icons."

John Pope's Maryland Campaign (cont.)

So how did John Pope come to lead, ever so briefly, Union forces in the Maryland campaign of 1862?

Ask you favorite historian and you'll get one of two irrelevant explanations:

(1) Lincoln appointed McClellan to command the armies against Lee after Second Manassas.

(2) Halleck appointed McClellan to command the armies against Lee after Second Manassas.

I have seen a third very rare explanation, cunning in the way it hides critical information:

(3) Lincoln appointed McClellan commander of the Washington defenses and acquiesced in McClellan's taking a force against Lee.

This (3) is so infrequent, we need not consider it at length.

The idea that Lincoln appointed McClellan to lead the armies has as its basis Halleck's testimony to the CCW. They asked him how in blazes McClellan ended up in command of the field force and that was Halleck's reply. There is no document or other evidence to substantiate Halleck's claim. The whole "Lincoln ordered McClellan" rests on one assertion made after the fact by a man expert at evading responsibility.

The idea that Halleck appointed McClellan rests on what Lincoln privately told a couple of political visitors who were giving him grief. A second-hand report of that conversation is the whole case (lock, stock, barrel) for Halleck appointing McClellan.

Lincoln initially told his Cabinet that McClellan's command was restricted to the Washington defenses. Halleck reinforced this in replying to a query from GBM as to the limits of his authority. In his response and in following communications, Halleck explained to GBM that McClellan was to prepare a force for the field, that McClellan would not lead that force, and that the naming of that commander would be GBM's prerogative.

The OR then contains some messages on the lines of, "and have you chosen the field commander yet?"

McClellan breaks the ice by appointing Pope on September 5. As I wrote here:

McClellan’s orders to Pope are clear and unambiguous – read them yourself - Pope commands in the field. And the orders to Pope have a context – McClellan was directed to name a commander of the field army. More generally, McClellan had also earlier been assured by Halleck that when the forces were united, Mac would command Pope. On September 5, the armies are together and Mac commands Pope.

The McClellan/Pope team emerges. But it lasts only a short time.

I also wrote, long ago, a compressed timeline of the command crisis that excludes Pope's command of the combined armies but which is otherwise useful. It also contains some technical notes on the idea of GBM being "restored" to command of the AoP, as if it were the AoP which had sallied against Lee!

Many of you could do better than I have with the underlying material; have at it.

Meanwhile, if a book tells you that Pope was relieved after Second Manassas or McClellan restored to command the AoP against Lee's invasion, put that book away, far away.

John Pope's Maryland Campaign

September 5th passed and I missed commemorating the 150th anniversary of John Pope being appointed commander of the Union armies to oppose Lee's invasion of Maryland.

Oh, you haven't heard of it? Could it be that you read the swill that we call Civil War history? Could it be that you believe Pope was relieved after Second Manassas?

Shame on you. Here I go starting a blog to keep you out of the sewer of pop history and you continue to wallow. Sears writes so well! Catton is so inspiring!

Wake up, reader. (I'm trying to be positive here.)

On September 5th, 1862, George McClellan, charged by Halleck with designating a commander of the field army that would oppose Lee, ordered John Pope to the field. Lincoln wanted Halleck to take charge. We know how that worked out. Lincoln and Halleck then tried to get Burnside to take the job but Burnside demurred. GBM learned of the demurral and appointed Pope.

Please look it up in the OR. Please. That act will make you smarter than 99.5% of all ACW historians who ever wrote about this period. Rafuse excepted.

Notice, in the OR, the flurry of messages from John Pope indicating a tantrum after McClellan's appointment of him. He is beside himself at being ordered to take his army against Lee. This is what gets him relieved - not the defeat at Second Manassas - the tantrum he threw at being appointed commander of Union forces to lead what we call the Maryland Campaign.

I'm sorry our favorite pop historians know nothing of this but you can fix that by reading the OR.

With the consecutive refusals of Halleck, Burnside, and Pope to take to the field, McClellan himself takes field command contrary to Halleck's orders that he stay commander of the DC area only. This is how the Maryland Campaign began.

This campaign teaches us many things among which is the quality of Civil War history.

The soldier vote

A major ACW issue continues to fester.

I had the Civil War for lunch today

Click on the ridiculously blurry snapshot and see the fourth item. They served SO 191 in the form of chicken and dumplings. I ate it with oysters and champagne on the Potomac, Fredrick being close enough to the Potomac for luncheon purposes and cask-conditioned stout being close enough to champagne.

I'm not much of a re-enactor. Stanton was rolling in his grave, nevertheless.

Mary Lincoln, carnival attraction

"... the Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission and the Lincoln Museum are set to give Mary Todd Lincoln a new [insanity] trial, starting in October."

They'll dress in period costumes while arguing 2012 involuntary commitment law.

And who's insane here?

What is it about Lincoln that turns people into jackasses?

On Garnett being killed at Gettysburg

Was amazed to receive a post pointing to an article about Gen. Garnett being killed at Gettysburg. Everyone knows that Robert S. Garnett was the first CSA general killed in the ACW.

Except that this was Richard B.

Arguing with press releases

Brooks Simpson is arguing with press releases. This is an idea whose time has come.

Amazon drives authors crazy

Once upon a time, the Princeton Internet Society (if that was its name - I was a member and don't remember) hosted an author talk, very well attended, on the obscure subject (then) of buying Web development services. As someone who transacted most of his Internet business on USENET in TIN with occasional recourse to GOPHER, I was interested.

But the author was obsessed, not with his topic, but in the negative reviews he had been collecting on this WWW site called Amazon. I might have been accessing Amazon with a MOSAIC browser at that point. Don't remember. Do remember how this author tried to finagle us into getting on Amazon to polish his apple.

The issue was that his publisher paid close attention to Amazon reviews. The publisher had this author on the run.

Couldn't help myself, had to look. Despite the complaints, the negative reviews were impeccable. Not enough substance. Too many generalities. Not enough how-to. Out-of-date.

Today, the "problem" of Amazon reviews persists but I don't know if it's a matter of publisher interest or author egos.

Those of us who sat in the boiling oil of USENET for however many years developed an insensitivity that is very useful in the realm of comments, reviews, hate mail, crank communications and all manner of vituperation.* I seriously doubt that today's authors could stand up to serious trolling (possible exception: USENET survivor Brooks Simpson).

You've been good enough to read this far and let me thank you with a couple of amazing links. The first was sent by a friend (h/t) and is (o/t) ACW-free. A certain lady novelist uses her husband to pounce on negative reviews that are not really too negative. The resulting drama suggests ego rather than publisher jitters.

The second link involves British novelists behaving badly by sock puppeting comments on Amazon. Hello USENET! It is difficult to say if this is a publisher appeasement program, a nasty trick on perceived rivals, or just another strain of I AM THE ARTIST foolishness.

Click the links and feast on authorial folly.

p.s. Would it kill you to go on Amazon and write a few lines about your favorite or most hated ACW book?

* So why don't I allow comments? Because I have seen wheels spin, heat without light, strife without resolution, and foolishness without end.

Could be a Civil War ship

Could be something else.

The Maps of Gettysburg

Bradley Gottfried's Maps of Gettysburg is a very special undertaking that lays out the entire campaign in text and schematic, a first.

The work is beautifully done and intra-day map iterations add extra layers of information representing an immense amount of work and care.

My problem with military atlas makers generally is about sourcing and validating. But Gottfried here offers (humbly) his own extensive walking experience in combination with his bibliography of sources. He admits to fallibility and simply pledges his best effort. Transparency forecast: good.

No one who owns this work can fail to spend several imaginative hours in an easy chair, right and left brain at play in a major work of ACW history.

Another Harvard plagiarism scandal

Some 125 young Harvard strivers appeared to have overdone it in the quest for 4.0 averages.

The University notes that if any of the plagiarists can prove he or she is a Civil War historian, immunity will be granted immediately.

(That last part hasn't been reported yet. Alternative history, if you like.)

Holiday weekend reading: Who is Rooster Cogburn?

Can't say enough good words about the American novelist Charles Portis. Your general Portis novel is a series of Tristram Shandy-like digressions in monologue aimed at the literate reader. I think Laurence Sterne called them "progressive digressions." Very funny stuff and magical in a wordsmithy way.

Portis's most famous novel True Grit, however, combines very tight (pulp fiction type) plotting with all the stylistic Shandyesque humor you can stand. It's a book you can finish in one sitting with a "wow" setting that passes from front to back.

The idea of making Tristram Shandy or True Grit into movies has always made me confused and unhappy. Sort of like "I'm going to make this TV show out of this radio show," etc. The magic is in the source medium.

Nevertheless, two movies have been made of True Grit and good luck to the Portis estate in this. I thought you might like to know about the fictional character of Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn:

- Rode with Quantrill and Bill Anderson
- Participated in the Centralia massacre
- Knew the James brothers, though not Jesse
- Welshed on his loyalty oath
- Robbed a Union payroll after taking the loyalty oath
- Obtained federal marshal appointment through a friend who knew Jo Shelby

Maybe this was exposed in the movie sequel that I haven't seen yet.

Even the better literature holds some Civil War content.

Painting by the numbers

Note: The overwhelming majority of Red River campaign overviews give multiple reasons for the campaign.

The continuing concern about French actions in Mexico caused the Lincoln administration to recommend a greater military presence in Texas, which could be achieved by continuing the movement up the Red River into that state.
- James M. McPherson, War Upon the Waters, 2012

Lincoln wanted to establish a Union presence in Texas to counter Maximilian's French-supported regime in Mexico. Thus, Nathaniel P. Banks was placed in command of an expedition to move up Louisiana's Red River to capture Shreveport...
- Terry L. Jones, Historical Dictionary of the Civil War, Volume 1, 2011

The President favored a demonstration by Banks up the Red River to Shreveport in order to show the American flag to Napoleon III's interlopers in Mexico...
- Maurice Matloff, American Military History, 1996

The President favored a demonstration by Banks up the Red River to Shreveport in order to show the American flag to Napoleon III's interlopers in Mexico.
- Richard Winship Stewart, ed., American Military History Volume 1, 2005

Because of the French threat (Maximilian) in Mexico, Lincoln wanted military operations undertaken early in 1864 to raise the Federal flag over some part of Tex[as].
- Web site, Overview Of The RED RIVER CAMPAIGN OF 1864 (10 Mar.-22 May '64).

Because of the French threat (Maximilian) in Mexico, Lincoln wanted military operations undertaken early in 1864 to raise the Federal flag over some part of Texas.
- Web site, Brown Water Navy

The President favored a demonstration by Banks up the Red River to Shreveport to show the American flag to the French occupying Mexico.
- The Civil War 1864-1865 (textbook)

Lincoln also wanted to make some gesture in the Southwest in response to the French machinations in Mexico...
- Bob Lancaster, The Jungles of Arkansas: A Personal History of the Wonder State, 1989

Punditry in motion

The commotion around a new book by Great Historian Slotkin caused me to notice something. Perhaps you noticed it too.

Every so often a writer comes up with a single insight that might possibly pan out into one 600-word newspaper column. Rather than test the insight, he writes an entire non-fiction book bending the light of truth so as to surround his sliver of punditry with an extended and colored account of events.

Pop culture outlets, feasting on punditry as they do, pounce on such a book and deliver to the author air time, interviews and other expressions of interest because in their world, a single insight is about all their simplified presentations can deliver.

After a time, the tiny insight loses its sparkle. If we are unlucky, it becomes a general meme ("team of rivals"). If we are lucky, the insight and its Major Author fade away.

That, today, seems to be the working of our marketplace of ideas.

Pop history professors: a modest proposal

What is an historian? Harry Smeltzer and Eric Wittenberg tried to settle the issue some time ago, but I have a different approach.

I would like to suggest that universities immediately purge all faculty members whose entire published work consists of pop history. If you write pop history, you are not advancing knowledge in your field. You are entertaining Those Who Haven't a Clue. We all know that.

There was a time when I didn't have a clue, but the people who clued me in were not given tenure or prizes.

Anyway, this would be the first purge. We would not be done purging. The second purge would be launched when professors least expected it, because no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, and that should be our model.

The second purge would be of professors who had some scholarly publications but who were generally known for their pop culture writing or for their celebrity appearances on NPR, PBS or other middlebrow venues.

One would like these dismissals to include hurtful and insulting language, but we can't control that. That is up to the purgers and no purge is perfect.

There would be a third purge and ideally the purgees would be thunderstruck, so sudden and unexpected would this purge be. These would be the students of the purged professors, specifically those students who showed a marked affinity with pop history and storytelling.

Some scholarly students will get caught up in this purge through no fault of their own, just because they were mandated to take a course given by a pop history professor. Such tragic loss is well worth the greater good.

To launch these purges, we will need political backing greater than the purgees can muster. I suggest the following:

- The combined tenured salaries will be divided among pop historians who stay out of history faculties.

- Scholarships will be given to young scholars to study history rather than tell stories.

- Students enamored of pop history will be given scholarships to teach creative writing.

- The government shall sponsor lavish annual "What Went Wrong?" conferences for out-of-work pop history professors. These conferences will match GSA events for pure decadence. Pop history knows decadence.

This seems a humane yet stern solution to our pop history problem. Join me in this initiative, won't you?

McPherson is for novices

Good to keep in mind. Reduces disappointments.

Now, I don't want to put historians who blog on the spot but rather I want to ask readers, has any such ever reviewed a McPherson book?

And why do you think that is? Could it be that McPherson is for novices?

UK is stepping up

Now Canada, get busy.

Fiasco, baby! Let me tell you!

The U.S. Navy “suffered embarrassment over the fiasco of the Casco class of shallow-draft monitors.” - James McPherson, War on the Waters, 2012

“The light draft monitors fiasco...” - Angus Konstam, Union Monitor 1861-65, 2002

“...20 light draft monitors of the Casco Class. Total cost in public funds for this fiasco...” Battle Cry, newsletter of the Sacramento CWRT, 2006

“Casco Class: This class of light-draft monitors... proved disastrous and the entire class was an expensive fiasco for the Union.” - Union Coastal Ironclads page of the Ironclads and Blockade Runners of the American Civil War website (seems to date from the late 1990s)

“US Civil war, Shallow draft monitor fiasco” - Topic, Naval Weapons Discussion Board, 2006

“What a fiasco with the entire Casco class...” Discussant on ageod game forum, 2007

To some, a good cliche is like a fine, vintage wine.

A really good cliche will also rhyme for the added value of mnemonics.

The mind of a great historian

Civil War history continues to attract the very best minds.

From RCOCEAN:

George McClellan - Wannabee Dictator

From NPR review of Richard Slotkin author of "The Long Road To Antietam: How The Civil War Became A Revolution.":

Slotkin : (On the situation in late 1861) So it's a poisonous situation, and there is actually a serious proposal to make McClellan a dictator, and what they mean by that is that they would - not that there would be a military coup but that they would pass a law vesting the power to run the war effort in McClellan and formally take - in a sense taking it away from Lincoln.

Remember that draft law? When all those Democrats controlled Congress in 1861? Scary stuff, kids!

NPR: And he wrote a lot of letters to his wife, many of which have endured for historians like yourself. What do they tell us about his (McClellan's) musings about taking control of the republic?

Slotkin: Well, they show a few things. He was really unrestrained, and it really is a window into the mind of a man who is a narcissist of world-class status. He really does see himself as the indispensable man, and he - his resentments of Lincoln are phenomenal. He (McClellan) refers to him (Lincoln) as the original gorilla, a traitor or the tool of traitors.He believed that he should be in charge of the government, that Lincoln should defer to him, and he was outraged by Lincoln's refusal.

Those were awesome letters. I hope someday they find them. Meanwhile, his amusement at being treated as indispensable shall be treated as him thinking he was indispensable. His quoting Stanton's term for Lincoln, "original gorilla," shall be attributed to McClellan. His expressions of wry humor at being regarded a power in the land shall be translated into assertions that he was the power in the land and his resentments at Lincoln's slights, Lincoln's conniving, Lincoln's bypassing the chain of command, these shall be presented as paranoid thought crime. What normal man would resent Lincoln's usual treatment? (Whoops: see all cabinet diaries.) The "letter" about Lincoln being a traitor or the tool of traitors or GBM being in charge of the government has yet to be discovered on proactively reconstructed.

Slotkin on McClellan's Harrison Landing Letter:

And he really - McClellan in effect makes three important demands of Lincoln. First, that the administration reject any move against slavery, and the letter says in a kind of threatening way that if anything radical is done about slavery, the army itself will dissolve - that is, the soldiers will refuse to fight.

And the second thing he says, and this is kind of a legalistic point, but it's an important one, he says that a war of subjugation would be against the Constitution - that is, it's not - Lincoln can't treat the Southerners as rebels, that as the Southern territory is liberated from the Confederates, Southerners have to be restored to their political rights, so that no sooner are they liberated than ex-Confederates can start voting for Democrats.

And the third thing he says is that Lincoln should appoint a commander-in-chief - that is, a soldier commander-in-chief - and give him power to act essentially without interference from the political - from the civilian government. And it's stunning. Basically a defeated general is asking the president to give up his political power and surrender his own party's interest and platform to the platform and interests of the opposition.

Interesting characterization of that letter, for sure, but have a look at this. To those NPR listeners who think, oh this does not apply to their other programming, these are not the standards that generally apply! Let me say, you have a much larger problem and you should thank Major Historian Slotkin for double underlining it with day-glo highlighters.

UPDATE 8/25: Harry has a postscript.

Cast your outdated naval histories on the waters

Oh look: James McPherson has written a fresh and exciting new book: War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865. He's always doing something new and innovative.

I think we can just donate some old tomes to Goodwill now that we have a naval history that is as authoritative as it is innovative! Think I’ll go to the attic and box them up.

Lincoln and His Admirals, Symonds (co-winner of the 2009 Lincoln Prize) - "We know a great deal about Lincoln and his generals, but until now very little about Lincoln and his admirals. With a compelling portrait of personalities and a sharp analysis of strategy, Craig Symonds offers a gripping narrative that finally gives the Union navy--and its commander-in-chief--the credit they deserve for the important part they played in winning the Civil War." --James M. McPherson

The Civil War at Sea, Symonds - "Craig Symonds combines his talents as a fine historian of the U.S. Navy and of the Civil War to produce this outstanding study of the Union and Confederate navies. Focusing on the ways in which Southern technological innovations and Northern industrial productivity shaped the strategy and tactics of the naval war, he offers important insights on the course and outcome of the conflict." --James M. McPherson

Oh, and look at this old stuff gathering dust:

The Navy in the Civil War by Mahan. Who is this Mahan, anyway?

Commanding Lincoln's Navy: Union Naval Leadership During the Civil War by Taaffe. Did he clear this book with Symonds?

Civil War Navies, 1855-1883 by Silverstone. If he got the dates of the Civil War wrong, what else did he get wrong?

Lincoln's Navy: The Ships, Men and Organization, 1861-65 by Canney. I don’t think a naval historian published by the Naval Institute Press is going to have the ability to engage a broad public.

Rebels and Yankees: Naval Battles of the Civil War by Hearn. Chester Hearn. Name sounds familiar.

Blue & Gray Navies: The Civil War Afloat by Tucker. VMI professors should not try to compete with Princeton professors.

I think this new McPherson book serves an important, immediate need. Maybe it can “stop the madness” of an endless stream of general ACW naval histories.

At least until the next one comes out.

McPherson's "War on the Waters"

And so we begin.

"He [Porter] was ambitious, able, and energetic but also cocky, self-seeking, and careless with the truth." James McPherson, War on the Waters, p.56

"Porter was talented and energetic but he was also self-promoting, boastful, casual with the truth..." Craig L. Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals, p. 19