* "The library has been unable to maintain its professional staff and to make necessary investments in digital technology"The place has been a patronage sink made ludicrous by its pretensions. Will separation from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency fix that?
* "The museum’s famously innovative exhibitions, created a decade ago, are in need of a major reinvestment"
* "The lack of a professional culture is acutely evident at the State Historical Library"
* "... maintaining the status quo for ALPLM governance is untenable."
2/12/2015
ALPLM hits the wall
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, the management of which has long been derided in this blog, now faces reorganization driven by the Illinois legislature. A new report makes interesting points:
2/11/2015
James McPherson's favorite books and authors
In a New York Times interview, James McPherson recently identified some of his favorite authors and books. I thought I'd add some fun links to the names below.
Best ACW book ever: Allan Nevins' Ordeal of the Union. (Scroll down to the sixth para where Nevins plagiarism is discussed.)
Favorite ACW biography: "Jean Edward Smith, Grant. (See my posts, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).*
"Most important military history ever written": John Keegan's Face of Battle.
One of "the best historians writing today": Eric Foner.
In the "first rank of military historians": Craig Symonds, Gary Gallagher, Joseph Glatthar.
Happy reading!
----
* Smith and McPherson make beautiful music together:
McPherson: "He may have been an alcoholic in the medical meaning of that term. He was a binge drinker." [BCOF P 588]
Smith: "Grant was a binge drinker. In a clinical sense, he may have been an alcoholic." [Grant P. 231]
McPherson: "For months he could go without liquor, but if he once imbibed it was hard for him to stop." [P 588]
Smith: "He could go for months without a drink, but once he started it was difficult for him to stop." [P. 231]
McPherson: "His wife and his chief of staff John A. Rawlins were his best protectors." [P 588]
Smith: "For the most part, Grant remained sober, protected from alcohol by his adjutant, Colonel John Rawlins, and especially by Julia." [P. 231]
Smith can also make Catton's dead prose come alive!
Catton (Grant Takes Command): "Grant saw more of the fighting here than he did in the Wilderness because the country was more open."
Smith (Grant): "Grant was able to witness more of the fighting at Spotsylvania than in the Wilderness because the terrain was more open."
Catton: "During the afternoon he saddled up and rode out to several points where he could watch the fight for the tip of the salient."
Smith: "During the afternoon he ordered his reliable pony Jeff Davis saddled and rode out to several points where he could observe Hancock's troops fighting at the tip of the mule shoe and Wright's assault on the west angle."
Catton: "It seemed to him that on balance things had gone well and that evening back at headquarters he sent Halleck a wire summing up his impression [quotes wire]."
Smith: "On balance, Grant thought things were going well. Back at headquarters that evening he wired Halleck [quotes and paraphrases wire]."
Catton: "On the evening of May 11 Grant had sent Julia an optimistic message [quotes message]."
Smith: "Later he wrote Julia he was well and full of hope [quotes message]."
Best ACW book ever: Allan Nevins' Ordeal of the Union. (Scroll down to the sixth para where Nevins plagiarism is discussed.)
Favorite ACW biography: "Jean Edward Smith, Grant. (See my posts, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).*
"Most important military history ever written": John Keegan's Face of Battle.
One of "the best historians writing today": Eric Foner.
In the "first rank of military historians": Craig Symonds, Gary Gallagher, Joseph Glatthar.
Happy reading!
----
* Smith and McPherson make beautiful music together:
McPherson: "He may have been an alcoholic in the medical meaning of that term. He was a binge drinker." [BCOF P 588]
Smith: "Grant was a binge drinker. In a clinical sense, he may have been an alcoholic." [Grant P. 231]
McPherson: "For months he could go without liquor, but if he once imbibed it was hard for him to stop." [P 588]
Smith: "He could go for months without a drink, but once he started it was difficult for him to stop." [P. 231]
McPherson: "His wife and his chief of staff John A. Rawlins were his best protectors." [P 588]
Smith: "For the most part, Grant remained sober, protected from alcohol by his adjutant, Colonel John Rawlins, and especially by Julia." [P. 231]
Smith can also make Catton's dead prose come alive!
Catton (Grant Takes Command): "Grant saw more of the fighting here than he did in the Wilderness because the country was more open."
Smith (Grant): "Grant was able to witness more of the fighting at Spotsylvania than in the Wilderness because the terrain was more open."
Catton: "During the afternoon he saddled up and rode out to several points where he could watch the fight for the tip of the salient."
Smith: "During the afternoon he ordered his reliable pony Jeff Davis saddled and rode out to several points where he could observe Hancock's troops fighting at the tip of the mule shoe and Wright's assault on the west angle."
Catton: "It seemed to him that on balance things had gone well and that evening back at headquarters he sent Halleck a wire summing up his impression [quotes wire]."
Smith: "On balance, Grant thought things were going well. Back at headquarters that evening he wired Halleck [quotes and paraphrases wire]."
Catton: "On the evening of May 11 Grant had sent Julia an optimistic message [quotes message]."
Smith: "Later he wrote Julia he was well and full of hope [quotes message]."
The passing (cont.)
I shared some thoughts with Brooks Simpson and his readers on how the old guard's views will be carried on into the future (see comments).
2/10/2015
My, how history rhymes
"If he lacked the flexibility to suffer fools gladly..."
The Papers of Jefferson Davis: 1808-1840, page vii
Lynda Lasswell Crist 1971
"One of the adjectives that is usually applied to President Davis is the word 'austere'..."
The Papers of Jefferson Davis: 1808-1840, page vii
Lynda Lasswell Crist 1971
"He appears humorless..."
The Papers of Jefferson Davis: July 1846--December 1848, p vii
Lynda L. Crist, Mary S. Dix, 1982
"Austere and humorless, Davis did not suffer fools gladly."
Battle Cry of Freedom, p 429
James McPherson, 1988
"Austere and humorless, Davis did not suffer fools gladly."
The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom : The Civil War Era, p 363
James McPherson, 2003
"He did not suffer fools gladly ... Davis could be austere, humorless and tediously argumentative."
Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief quoted in reviews
James McPherson, 2014
---
(p.s. If anyone knows who these fools are whom Davis did not suffer, please drop a line.)
The Papers of Jefferson Davis: 1808-1840, page vii
Lynda Lasswell Crist 1971
"One of the adjectives that is usually applied to President Davis is the word 'austere'..."
The Papers of Jefferson Davis: 1808-1840, page vii
Lynda Lasswell Crist 1971
"He appears humorless..."
The Papers of Jefferson Davis: July 1846--December 1848, p vii
Lynda L. Crist, Mary S. Dix, 1982
"Austere and humorless, Davis did not suffer fools gladly."
Battle Cry of Freedom, p 429
James McPherson, 1988
"Austere and humorless, Davis did not suffer fools gladly."
The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom : The Civil War Era, p 363
James McPherson, 2003
"He did not suffer fools gladly ... Davis could be austere, humorless and tediously argumentative."
Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief quoted in reviews
James McPherson, 2014
---
(p.s. If anyone knows who these fools are whom Davis did not suffer, please drop a line.)
2/07/2015
Low Davis content in "Jefferson Davis"
Began reading Jefferson Davis, Confederate President by Hattaway and Beringer, which came out in 2002.
Reading and reading, I got angrier and angrier. The book is really a general history of Confederate military operations, many of these operations undertaken with no Davis input. No Davis strategy, no Davis decision trees, no Davis work habits, no Davis routine interactions, no business style, not even superficial analysis of this presidency: this is what the authors deliver. They supply 5-10% Davis content at most and no more than 15-20% presidency content.
Expect a handsomely bound Civil War primer that treats its real subject, operations, hurriedly and it's pretend topic, the Davis presidency, not at all.
Reading and reading, I got angrier and angrier. The book is really a general history of Confederate military operations, many of these operations undertaken with no Davis input. No Davis strategy, no Davis decision trees, no Davis work habits, no Davis routine interactions, no business style, not even superficial analysis of this presidency: this is what the authors deliver. They supply 5-10% Davis content at most and no more than 15-20% presidency content.
Expect a handsomely bound Civil War primer that treats its real subject, operations, hurriedly and it's pretend topic, the Davis presidency, not at all.
2/03/2015
The passing
A friend writes,
Just saw news of Pfanz’s death, and was thinking about Civil War history and generations of historians:Your thoughts, dear reader?
I guess you saw Harry W. Pfanz just died (age 93). Albert Castel died in November (age 86).
Stephen Sears is 82. McPherson is 78. James I. “Bud” Robertson is 84 or 85. Ed Bearss is 91. William C. Davis is a spritely 68, but just retired.
Are we now, fully and finally, in the age of Simpson, Rafuse, Grimsley, Symonds, Woodworth, Carmichael, Hess, et al.? And if so, what will they do as they seize the wheel? With their power to shape history? Will we see new and powerful analyses of battles and leaders and logistics and politics, or just blog posts about social history and latter-day “controversies” like the Confederate flag? How many of those guys are working on major books at this point? Do we have anything to look forward to?
(Then there’s the threat of Michael Korda and the like. Don’t get me started.)
1/14/2015
New Lincoln resettlement document
This undated blog posting refers to a new find: a resettlement agreement signed by Lincoln that puts freed slaves in what is modern Belize. I had heard of these plans but had no idea they reached the point of government-to-government agreements.
History is full of messy details which writers take pains to eliminate.
History is full of messy details which writers take pains to eliminate.
12/11/2014
World plagiarism study
The final check is a computer program that compares the paper's text with the text of every other paper already published on arXiv.Emphasis added. Excluded: books, paywalled papers, unpublished papers, lectures. The limits of this check are so obvious, that it's a wonder any significant cheating was discovered at all. But is this kind of thing at least useful for a snapshot?
We need much more such policing in Civil War history and social science generally. There is the problem of plagiarizing others and then of plagiarizing one's own work.
Academics have the luxury of blaming graduate assistants for their crimes but others are not so lucky.
And although an Allan Nevins could confidently steal Fremont research from an unpublished paper, one wonders at the mentality of a pop culture celebrity who thinks his theft from a recent issue of the New Yorker would go unnoticed. Hell, who among his TV fans reads at all?
Thieves. A friends' house was burgled in the night and the next day, he found the stolen stuff scattered around the garden, under bushes and in the driveway. It made no sense. He asked the police, "Why?" He received a look of scorn. "These aren't rocket scientists, you know."
Plagiarists: not rocket scientists. Not even garden variety scientists, really.
11/27/2014
Books
This post is to acknowledge some of the many review copies received here over the last year even though most fall outside of my competence and interest. I'll give the same comments you would receive if we were browsing in a bookstore.
Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War is by Michael Adams whom you may know through his Our Masters the Rebels, a book I thought interesting and worthwhile but as a "speculation" (author's characterization) it seemed to me to go too far. This new work looks to be a corrective the general run of airbrushed history, compiling the miserable squalor of the soldier's daily grind with the plight of civilians and veterans. There are war crimes too: "Evidence exists that, as the war went on, Union authorities deliberately reduced the ration" allowed to CSA POWs. This is the kind of remark that demands a little more exploration. So too do many hit and run observations: Thomas's "preference for winning through superior deployment;" "Many officers also failed to register that defensive firepower had shifted the tactical advantage...;" "Billets remained unclean." There is a tendency to footnote generalizations instead of argue them.
The Civil War as Global Conflict: Transnational Meanings of the American Civil War is a collection of essays under a title that suggests more focus than the assembled content possesses. Here we have King Cotton, atrocities, immigration, Gone with the Wind, quite the grab bag. The essay that attracted my interest especially was "Nurse as Icon," examining Florence Nightingale's effect on the ACW entirely as a pop culture phenomenon. The leading American nurses appear in Jane Schultz's piece ever so briefly as failed celebrities. This is a remarkable and disturbing way to approach Civil War meanings.
Last to Join the Fight: The 66th Georgia Infantry follows the misadventures of this late-war regiment through the famous end-of-war Western campaigns. Generally, the author works his data into narrative but this book does offer one table and it is fascinating: it shows the individual and parental wealth of the regiment's officers. Of 25 officers listed, only one shows neither personal nor parental wealth; I notice $400,000 on the top end and these are US dollars based on previous census figures.
The 66th Georgia (speaking of which) rates no fewer than 13 citations in Robert Jenkins' The Battle of Peachtree Creek: Hood's First Sortie, an enormous study of 423 pages, not counting rosters, bibliography, notes, front matter, pictures, etc. Two complaints about the book posted to Amazon address the unit-by-unit storytelling approach and the emphasis given to Stewart's part of the battle. My own complaint is about discouragement. I dread starting a book this detailed on such a specific topic outside of my more familiar reading. It seems an invitation to enter into disputes about which I know nothing. In this case, the treatment of Hood is of a mainstream/neutral flavor and Hardee is found wanting. The author, at least, is not a polemicist, and follows a process of describing actions and results.
Challenges on the Emmaus Road: Episcopal Bishops Confront Slavery, Civil War, and Emancipation offers, as its title says, an Episcopalian view into the ACW. This does not, however, mean that this big book enjoys a single point of view. The material ranges across time and personalities and the effect is episodic. Our good friend Leonidas Polk figures here, as he ought to, but many others also appear briefly as specific issues come up. There is, for instance, the matter of John Pope's Indian executions, to which Minnesota's bishop objects. An interesting church history.
William Gilmore Sims's Selected Reviews on Literature and Civilization offers the views of a leading Southern critic in short pieces often on books or personalities known to us. Sims is regarded by some as the leading literary figure of that place and time but to those of us steeped in contemporary research, too much of this reads like ordinary newspaper fare. He becomes interesting when pushing outside that range of tone, for instance when savaging De Forest's ACW novel, Miss Ravenel's Conversion ("the embodiment of all the brutal malignity Northern writers have ever conceived..."). Occasionally, the editors' introductions run longer than the piece itself, as in the review of Carlyle's Latter Day Pamphlets, and sometimes, as in the case of Carlyle, the underlying review is worthless except as a brand-name touch-point for readers and an opportunity for Sims to take another swipe at the North.
The Devil's to Pay: John Buford at Gettysburg: A History and Walking Tour brings us new work by Eric Wittenberg. We know the author as a cavalry specialist, a Buford advocate and a deep researcher whose treatment of primary sources is exemplary. This volume includes material from new primary sources, with the walking tour following the narrative in an appendix. There are other appendices (among maps, notes and other goodies), including Eric's masterful debunking of "The Myth of the Spencers" in Appendix B. This "Myth" reveals Eric's deep powers as historian, historiographer, researcher, analyst, and critic. If future writers skip this tome, mistaking it for a tour guide only, they will lose a broader understanding the general battle.
On the general theme of tour books, Savas Beatie has released a series of what might be considered to be battlefield backgrounders. These are not guides or map books but rather short, heavily illustrated descriptive narratives. The series includes Simply Murder, the Battle of Fredericksburg; A Season of Slaughter, the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House May 8-21, 1864; That Furious Strugle: Chancellorsville and the High Tide of the Confederacy May 1-4, 1863; Hurricane from the Heavens: The Battle of Cold Harbor, May 26-June 5, 1864; and No Turning Back,: A Guide to the 1864 Overland Campaign from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, May 4-June 13, 1964.
Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War is by Michael Adams whom you may know through his Our Masters the Rebels, a book I thought interesting and worthwhile but as a "speculation" (author's characterization) it seemed to me to go too far. This new work looks to be a corrective the general run of airbrushed history, compiling the miserable squalor of the soldier's daily grind with the plight of civilians and veterans. There are war crimes too: "Evidence exists that, as the war went on, Union authorities deliberately reduced the ration" allowed to CSA POWs. This is the kind of remark that demands a little more exploration. So too do many hit and run observations: Thomas's "preference for winning through superior deployment;" "Many officers also failed to register that defensive firepower had shifted the tactical advantage...;" "Billets remained unclean." There is a tendency to footnote generalizations instead of argue them.
The Civil War as Global Conflict: Transnational Meanings of the American Civil War is a collection of essays under a title that suggests more focus than the assembled content possesses. Here we have King Cotton, atrocities, immigration, Gone with the Wind, quite the grab bag. The essay that attracted my interest especially was "Nurse as Icon," examining Florence Nightingale's effect on the ACW entirely as a pop culture phenomenon. The leading American nurses appear in Jane Schultz's piece ever so briefly as failed celebrities. This is a remarkable and disturbing way to approach Civil War meanings.
Last to Join the Fight: The 66th Georgia Infantry follows the misadventures of this late-war regiment through the famous end-of-war Western campaigns. Generally, the author works his data into narrative but this book does offer one table and it is fascinating: it shows the individual and parental wealth of the regiment's officers. Of 25 officers listed, only one shows neither personal nor parental wealth; I notice $400,000 on the top end and these are US dollars based on previous census figures.
The 66th Georgia (speaking of which) rates no fewer than 13 citations in Robert Jenkins' The Battle of Peachtree Creek: Hood's First Sortie, an enormous study of 423 pages, not counting rosters, bibliography, notes, front matter, pictures, etc. Two complaints about the book posted to Amazon address the unit-by-unit storytelling approach and the emphasis given to Stewart's part of the battle. My own complaint is about discouragement. I dread starting a book this detailed on such a specific topic outside of my more familiar reading. It seems an invitation to enter into disputes about which I know nothing. In this case, the treatment of Hood is of a mainstream/neutral flavor and Hardee is found wanting. The author, at least, is not a polemicist, and follows a process of describing actions and results.
Challenges on the Emmaus Road: Episcopal Bishops Confront Slavery, Civil War, and Emancipation offers, as its title says, an Episcopalian view into the ACW. This does not, however, mean that this big book enjoys a single point of view. The material ranges across time and personalities and the effect is episodic. Our good friend Leonidas Polk figures here, as he ought to, but many others also appear briefly as specific issues come up. There is, for instance, the matter of John Pope's Indian executions, to which Minnesota's bishop objects. An interesting church history.
William Gilmore Sims's Selected Reviews on Literature and Civilization offers the views of a leading Southern critic in short pieces often on books or personalities known to us. Sims is regarded by some as the leading literary figure of that place and time but to those of us steeped in contemporary research, too much of this reads like ordinary newspaper fare. He becomes interesting when pushing outside that range of tone, for instance when savaging De Forest's ACW novel, Miss Ravenel's Conversion ("the embodiment of all the brutal malignity Northern writers have ever conceived..."). Occasionally, the editors' introductions run longer than the piece itself, as in the review of Carlyle's Latter Day Pamphlets, and sometimes, as in the case of Carlyle, the underlying review is worthless except as a brand-name touch-point for readers and an opportunity for Sims to take another swipe at the North.
The Devil's to Pay: John Buford at Gettysburg: A History and Walking Tour brings us new work by Eric Wittenberg. We know the author as a cavalry specialist, a Buford advocate and a deep researcher whose treatment of primary sources is exemplary. This volume includes material from new primary sources, with the walking tour following the narrative in an appendix. There are other appendices (among maps, notes and other goodies), including Eric's masterful debunking of "The Myth of the Spencers" in Appendix B. This "Myth" reveals Eric's deep powers as historian, historiographer, researcher, analyst, and critic. If future writers skip this tome, mistaking it for a tour guide only, they will lose a broader understanding the general battle.
On the general theme of tour books, Savas Beatie has released a series of what might be considered to be battlefield backgrounders. These are not guides or map books but rather short, heavily illustrated descriptive narratives. The series includes Simply Murder, the Battle of Fredericksburg; A Season of Slaughter, the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House May 8-21, 1864; That Furious Strugle: Chancellorsville and the High Tide of the Confederacy May 1-4, 1863; Hurricane from the Heavens: The Battle of Cold Harbor, May 26-June 5, 1864; and No Turning Back,: A Guide to the 1864 Overland Campaign from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, May 4-June 13, 1964.
11/20/2014
Election note from '58
On October 6, 1858, The Loudon Democratic Mirror newspaper reprinted an article from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin about the elections occurring in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia:
A Sardinian ElectionInteresting!
[...]
The qualifications for a voter, though apparently reasonable to a "European mind," would be so many shackles to a freeborn American. In the first place, a voter is required actually to be born Piedmontais and to reside in the district where he votes.
[...]
11/18/2014
Virginia vintners promote Sesquicentennial
Sorry I did not mention this earlier... a tie in between battlefield tours and nearby wineries.
11/14/2014
Civil War beer
I thought of this today while reading the October 6, 1858 edition of the Loudon Democratic Mirror in a library near Ball's Bluff. There was a beer advertisement that opens a window into the popular tastes of that time. The ad was placed by Arny & Shin, bottlers out of Georgetown, and the units offered were 12-bottles per price shown. The list below is complete as posted. The numbers are dollars. The bottle shown top right is contemporary with the ad.
Kennett Ale ---------- 1.25
Burton Ale ----------- 1.00
Philadelphia Ale ----- 1.00
XX Ale --------------- 1.00
XXX Pale Ale --------- 1.00
India Pale Ale ------- 1.50
XX Family Porter ----- 1.00
Brown Stout ---------- 1.50
Crab Apple Cider ----- 1.50
Champagne Cider ------ 1.50
If you were going to be an 1858 Joe Sixpack, it would cost you no less than 50 cents per day in a land where $5/week was a decent income.
Interesting that Loudon's significant German population is not represented in these beer styles. Perhaps they were Moravians and therefore abstainers. These English beer styles would be supplanted from coast to coast by the all-pervasive Central European yellow lager after the war.
But what of these beer styles?
Kennett ale seems to have been a strong ale spiced with coriander and chili peppers.
Burton Ale seems to have been strong, dark and sweet and a precursor to today's Baltic porters.
Philadelphia ale is something I could not identify.
XX Ale is probably something we would recognize as similar to a Sam Adams Boston Ale, though as an XX, I assume weaker.
XXX Pale Ale is a style we know well. It's having quite a revival just now.
India Pale Ale, likewise. This extreme form of Pale Ale caters to hop heads and was devised in Burton-on-Trent to help offset the loss of sales in Burton Ale caused by Russian import duties.
XX Family Porter has the most intriguing name. "C'mon, kids! Drink up!" It seems to be an over-hopped porter with the added ingredients of licorice and molasses. This 19th Century recipe lets the fermentation run its course, so the molasses would increase the alcohol content rather than act as a sweetener. At the same time, it's just an XX, so we have unanswered questions here.
Brown Stout:
Here’s a quote from a book called ‘A General Dictionary of Commerce, Trade and Manufactures,’ published in 1810: ‘Porter may be divided into two classes, namely brown-stout and porter properly so called … Brown-stout is only a fuller-bodied kind of porter than that which serves for ordinary drinking. A great deal of this is exported to America and the West Indies.”Here's a discussion of an 18th Century recipe for brown stout.
Today's beer snobs would be very happy in Civil War times.
----
p.s. A note on the bottle shown here:
The true green bottles pictured [above] are very typical short, squat, mid-19th century beer (ale, porter, stout) bottles with fairly abrupt shoulders and comparatively tall, straight (non-bulging) necks. Mineral finishes are most commonly seen on this style, though occasionally other finishes are present like the blob or oil finish. This distinct shape was and is often referred to as a "porter" or "porter bottle" (von Mechow pers. comm. 2011) and was undoubtedly used very frequently for that early type of beer (and occasionally mineral water); bottles noting that they contained "Porter" or "Ale" via the embossing are frequently seen.
The early example pictured [displays] an overall crudity befitting its manufacturing date of about 1854 to 1856.
9/09/2014
An antidote to Easter Bunny history
On Sunday I spoke with a business owner who takes his employees on outings once or twice a year. He had no idea I was interested in Civil War history much less that I was an ACW contrarian.
On Friday, instead of a seminar "where people fall backwards and are caught," as he put it, he took his staff to the nearby Antietam battlefield for a staff ride conducted by the Army War College Foundation (apparently in exchange for a donation to that charity). He couldn't stop talking about it.
As I probed with questions about the tour, each answer surprised me. The guides had an interesting view of the causes of the war that they shared with their audiences. They had a fully developed economic perspective, and their political view of Lincoln was one that a mainstream reader would have found difficult. They offered something like 360 degree views of strategy and tactics deeply intertwined with personalities, political struggles, political economy, and skulduggery. It was an escape from the readymade world of easy answers. I could paraphrase the fascinating specifics but coming from me, it would be third hand stuff.
This War College tour was not the history you get through headphones, my informant told me. "I can't stand Santa Clause history," he said, adding (perhaps unfairly) he would never take a battlefield tour with battlefield park staff. Once you get into that consensus-driven mainstream, that "Easter Bunny" stuff, all the richness and detail is lost to future generations, he told me with great force.
This must be quite a program. In its effect it resembles evangelism for big H History.
On Friday, instead of a seminar "where people fall backwards and are caught," as he put it, he took his staff to the nearby Antietam battlefield for a staff ride conducted by the Army War College Foundation (apparently in exchange for a donation to that charity). He couldn't stop talking about it.
As I probed with questions about the tour, each answer surprised me. The guides had an interesting view of the causes of the war that they shared with their audiences. They had a fully developed economic perspective, and their political view of Lincoln was one that a mainstream reader would have found difficult. They offered something like 360 degree views of strategy and tactics deeply intertwined with personalities, political struggles, political economy, and skulduggery. It was an escape from the readymade world of easy answers. I could paraphrase the fascinating specifics but coming from me, it would be third hand stuff.
This War College tour was not the history you get through headphones, my informant told me. "I can't stand Santa Clause history," he said, adding (perhaps unfairly) he would never take a battlefield tour with battlefield park staff. Once you get into that consensus-driven mainstream, that "Easter Bunny" stuff, all the richness and detail is lost to future generations, he told me with great force.
This must be quite a program. In its effect it resembles evangelism for big H History.
9/08/2014
Confederate Tide Rising and Southern strategy
Steve Woodworth compiled some reviews of Joseph Harsh's Confederate Tide Rising that give glimpses of what might be a Confederate strategy. This may whet the appetite of those not familiar with this work. I have an alternate view which I will recap in a future post.
Meanwhile, as President Obama prepares for his big strategy speech on Wednesday, he might consider the wisdom of the 17th Century Book of Five Rings:
Meanwhile, as President Obama prepares for his big strategy speech on Wednesday, he might consider the wisdom of the 17th Century Book of Five Rings:
The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him.
9/05/2014
Confusion about strategy
When President Obama recently said "We don’t have a strategy yet," political reporters became obligated to define "strategy," which (predictably) they refused to do (in any story I've seen).
Leaving "strategy" to the imagination of the political class, it could mean "objectives," "tactics," "general intentions," political or military posture, or "frame of reference."
To the military history reader, strategy refers to an outcome based on overall goals, with intermediate objectives, timetables, possibly means, and pre-selected milestone events (as needed). Such a reader might imagine WWII in the west: North Africa landings, Sicily, Italy, France; likewise the island hopping in the Pacific culminating in a home islands invasion.
We cannot, however, reasonably expect any politician anywhere to ever adopt anything like what we would call strategy. This makes the idea that Obama was "speaking our language" absurd. Whatever the "gaffe" was in making his statement, we can assume it was not military or strategic because politicians do no strategy, politicians do contingency.
I have said it before:
- Any strategy is death to political control of the military. It puts the politician at the mercy of events, ends and means having been decided and posted to the court of public opinion.
- There is a long list of inhibitors that guarantee strategy cannot be formulated or adopted.
- "He means to win the war by strategy" - biggest laugh line of the Civil War.
What about Roosevelt's war strategy, unfolding as it did? North Africa, specifically Operation Torch, was the military's desperate, improvised reaction to Roosevelt's non-negotiable demand that the European Axis must be engaged by American troops in 1942. It was pick a front and go. After Torch, Sicily was clearly opportunistic and with the fall of Sicily, the second opportunity of Italy promised a political effect against Mussolini: this was low hanging fruit. The decision to invade of France was a political football that remained in play into early 1944. After accepting the conditional surrender of Vichy in Africa and Badoglio in Italy, unconditional surrender suddenly became unconditional - a policy that would govern strategy or the absence of strategy to war's end. Note to political pundits: policy is not strategy.
In the Pacific, the same pattern emerges. The Navy's war was haphazard and self-directed. The Army's war, under MacArthur, followed the general's strategy for returning to the Philippines (one new book showing how MacArthur obtained incremental buy-in from Roosevelt in the absence of a presidential strategy).
And of Korea, Vietnam, the post war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the less said the better.
Since WWII, the political control of the military has so deeply affected the military's culture, our generals and admirals are at a complete loss as to what strategy is. They cannot seem to transcend the political bubble. Here are the comments of the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs on "strategy" (emphasis added):
- Strategy is operational excellence
- Strategy is is perspective, position, plan, and pattern
- "Strategy is that which top management does that is of great importance to the organization"
And yet, Google's top-of-search gives all the presidents, policymen, and policy executors what they need: strategy is "a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim." This definition is surprisingly close to what military readers think of as strategy, not that we should raise our hopes that others will agree with us. Because strategy is clear and actionable and measurable and it succeeds or fails, this must be poison to politicians. President Obama will adopt no strategy. Neither did Lincoln or Davis.
Leaving "strategy" to the imagination of the political class, it could mean "objectives," "tactics," "general intentions," political or military posture, or "frame of reference."
To the military history reader, strategy refers to an outcome based on overall goals, with intermediate objectives, timetables, possibly means, and pre-selected milestone events (as needed). Such a reader might imagine WWII in the west: North Africa landings, Sicily, Italy, France; likewise the island hopping in the Pacific culminating in a home islands invasion.
We cannot, however, reasonably expect any politician anywhere to ever adopt anything like what we would call strategy. This makes the idea that Obama was "speaking our language" absurd. Whatever the "gaffe" was in making his statement, we can assume it was not military or strategic because politicians do no strategy, politicians do contingency.
I have said it before:
- Any strategy is death to political control of the military. It puts the politician at the mercy of events, ends and means having been decided and posted to the court of public opinion.
- There is a long list of inhibitors that guarantee strategy cannot be formulated or adopted.
- "He means to win the war by strategy" - biggest laugh line of the Civil War.
What about Roosevelt's war strategy, unfolding as it did? North Africa, specifically Operation Torch, was the military's desperate, improvised reaction to Roosevelt's non-negotiable demand that the European Axis must be engaged by American troops in 1942. It was pick a front and go. After Torch, Sicily was clearly opportunistic and with the fall of Sicily, the second opportunity of Italy promised a political effect against Mussolini: this was low hanging fruit. The decision to invade of France was a political football that remained in play into early 1944. After accepting the conditional surrender of Vichy in Africa and Badoglio in Italy, unconditional surrender suddenly became unconditional - a policy that would govern strategy or the absence of strategy to war's end. Note to political pundits: policy is not strategy.
In the Pacific, the same pattern emerges. The Navy's war was haphazard and self-directed. The Army's war, under MacArthur, followed the general's strategy for returning to the Philippines (one new book showing how MacArthur obtained incremental buy-in from Roosevelt in the absence of a presidential strategy).
And of Korea, Vietnam, the post war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the less said the better.
Since WWII, the political control of the military has so deeply affected the military's culture, our generals and admirals are at a complete loss as to what strategy is. They cannot seem to transcend the political bubble. Here are the comments of the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs on "strategy" (emphasis added):
Yeah, I will say up front that normally we talk about ends, ways and means mostly during the budget season, when the means become the prominent feature in strategic discussions.To understand how confused the general can be about strategy, consider these pop culture assertions:
The other way we talk about strategy throughout the year is choices and consequences. You know, we are blessed as a nation to have, you know – we have multiple options in how to deal with issues, in ways that some other countries – most other countries around the world have far, far fewer options.
[...]
And then the other interesting thing about strategy, to me, is whether it’s best to define an end state and then deliberately plot a series of actions to achieve that end state. That’s the traditional thinking, by the way. You identify the end state and then you back plan from that and you chart a course with milestones to decide whether you’ve got it right or not; or whether the world in which we live today actually is one where, kind of like the Heisenberg principle in physics, where you should touch it and see what happens.
- Strategy is operational excellence
- Strategy is is perspective, position, plan, and pattern
- "Strategy is that which top management does that is of great importance to the organization"
And yet, Google's top-of-search gives all the presidents, policymen, and policy executors what they need: strategy is "a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim." This definition is surprisingly close to what military readers think of as strategy, not that we should raise our hopes that others will agree with us. Because strategy is clear and actionable and measurable and it succeeds or fails, this must be poison to politicians. President Obama will adopt no strategy. Neither did Lincoln or Davis.
8/12/2014
Lincoln bric-a-brac: some ideas
It's the 40th anniversary of Hello Kitty and the various writings on the subject, from scholarly papers to marketing analyses, miss the really big point about this little emblem. Hello Kitty was and is a floating signifier. So,
For the broad masses, Lincoln suggests no more than "good guy" or "president whatever." At the same time, the hat and beard are "branded." The Lincoln image offers manufacturers a royalty free, license free trademark.
Hello Kitty went through stages.
In summary, Lincoln imagery offers free branding. The buyer projects something from within onto the meaningless but "cute design" of Lincoln's image. A transaction results.
It has taken me a long time to work this one out.
Hello Kitty was and remains content free. This helps me understand why Lincoln's face adorns so much product.Hello Kitty doesn’t have a body of film work or comic strips that define her character in a meaningful sense such as Mickey Mouse and Snoopy. She is like a mirror, reflecting back any desires or feelings you project upon the character
Hello Kitty went through stages.
In 1962, Shintaro Tsuji, founder of Sanrio, began selling rubber sandals with flowers painted on them. Tsuji noted the profits gained by adding a cute design to the sandals and hired cartoonists to design cute characters for his merchandise.This early phase in Hello Kitty's development seems to be where things are with the Hello Abe franchise. Hello Abe has had much time to go beyond this point but remains in plastic sandals, as it were.
In summary, Lincoln imagery offers free branding. The buyer projects something from within onto the meaningless but "cute design" of Lincoln's image. A transaction results.
It has taken me a long time to work this one out.
8/10/2014
Wipe out
He had drafted a book about an event with controversy surrounding Lincoln's involvement. After exhaustive research and his typical just treatment of sources, our author decided he could not solve the controversy and ended the work with an open question.
He had asked a famous ACW author (again, known to us all) to comment on his final draft. Here was the frustration. The celebrity historian, an expert in selling his own books, told him that one could not end things on an open question, one absolutely had to take sides. It was imperative. Our author had weighed the evidence and found no clear answer but he was strongly urged to settle questions for the reader.
The story reminded me of an interview with another celebrity author, James McPherson, in which he said that it was the job of any history writer to tie up loose ends for the reader. He was referring to the loose ends of evidence, not doing more research. IIRC, McPherson made it the historian's core mission to order the chaos of incomplete and contradictory primary material.
We are not speaking here about an historian telling the reader what evidence he, the historian, finds most compelling and why. No, these two best-selling authors called for writers to develop conclusions that go beyond the evidence.
This is not small beer. It renders history a fable. A fable offers a moral. We pass from history to literature.
The second tier of pop history writers willingly draw morals from conclusions to which they are not entitled. These morals are then recycled into derivative works, to "juice" the narratives, sort the good guys from the bad, to stage manage "characters" who play their "roles" to narrative perfection.
Notice the business books that draw "lessons in leadership" from Civil War pop lit. These "lessons" purport to be drawn from history, but they are drawn from the morals of fables.
I was reminded of this by a recent mass mailing advertising a Gettysburg-based program that trains executives.**
Lessons drawn from fables: can history be more diluted? Yes.
A reader sent this quote from a new Sherman biography, Fierce Patriot:
Let me propose an admittedly unconventional but useful analogy--big-wave surfing. Not nearly so many die as in war, but it does happen. . . . So surfers have learned to cooperate, take turns, share the waves. This too is the way of war.More, via Amazon:
Streaking down the face of a monster breaker, attached to your board by nothing more than a coat of wax, agile feet, and an awesome sense of balance, and then leaning in at precisely the right instance at precisely the right angle that will send you rocketing out from under just before the whole thunderous mass comes crashing down - or being buried in the attempt - that is the essence, the whole point, of everything else. The parallel with military strategists shouldn't be missed.Literature here has moved beyond fables and morals. It can use these to build ever newer metaphors, one on top of the other, until all is so far abstracted from history that the record is completely wiped out.
We wind up with "product" that actually destroys history.
--
* As this was a private talk, I should not mention names.
** Note that the boss isn't flattering someone with a mandatory leadership course. You wonder about the people sent to these courses.
5/14/2014
The "Maleficent Ecology" of Civil War history
From Baudrillard's essay "Maleficent Ecology":
By producing highly centralized structures ... by remorselessly condensing down functions and models, we are transforming all the rest into waste, residue, useless relics.How much Civil War history has been transformed into "waste, residue" by the prevailing narratives and the huckster authors who haunt this corner of the nonfiction world?
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