Dana Shoaf on the Confederate Soldier

Here’s Civil War Times editor Dana Shoaf on the Confederate Soldier:

See here.

Great News – and Coming Up…

The great news is that I received a communique from the Godfather of battle digitization, Brian Downey, and he plans to be active on his blog again this year (work commitments kept him away for most of 2010).  To show he is in earnest, he has a new post up at Behind Antietam on the Web.  Welcome back, Brian!

Things I’m working on for the next few posts:

• an interview with a Gettysburg entrepreneur;
• a preview/review of the January 10 American Experience program on U. S. Grant;
• a preview of the new issue of America’s Civil War magazine;
• a couple of items of interest from the new issue of North and South magazine;
• an expansion on my article on Gettysburg’s Jacob Weikert farm in the current issue of Civil War Times magazine;
• another way to follow Bull Runnings using an e-Reader (that is what they call those things, right?);
• and something I’ve been putting off for a long while, a look at an essay that discusses expectations at the time that the great military leader of the Civil War would emerge from a place other than the military establishment.

As usual, other things are sure to come up, including more primary material on First Bull Run and various news items, so stay tuned!

Turnabout

Last night I completed my answers to questions that will appear in interview format in the upcoming issue of a quarterly Civil War magazine.  I’ve conducted seventeen of these things for Bull Runnings, but this is the first time I’ve been on the receiving end.  It’s tough work, writing about yourself.  Tough enough that I put it off as long as I could.  But I think it came out fairly well, though you can never tell with anything that appears in print media – every editor is different.  For a humorous account involving Mark Twain and an editor with a heavy hand, see volume one of his autobiography, pages 164-180.  (Editors work under strict time and space limitations, and so sometimes the submitted manuscript gets what authors typically refer to as “hacked up” or “butchered”.  But good editors make good writers.  I try not to get too upset with changes, and only protest when the changes result in factual errors.  I encourage anyone in this situation to firmly – but tactfully – express your feelings.  The editor or publisher doesn’t want egg on his/her face any more than do you.)

Thanks to the magazine in question for their interest in the blog and me.  2011 is shaping up to be a busy year for me as a result of the sesquicentennial and the role of First Bull Run in the first year of it.  I suppose in 2012 I’ll retreat to obscurity, but it’ll be fun while it lasts.

Collateral Damage: Call for Subjects

As I may or may not have mentioned earlier, my Collateral Damage column has been picked up for another year with Civil War Times magazine. I’m really happy that editor Dana Shoaf decided to run with an idea I pitched to him during a Facebook chat and that the folks at the magazine and the readers liked what I came up with enough to sign on for another six pieces.

Now, here’s where you guys come in.  I have a few sites in mind already, but I can always use suggestions - if you’re a regular reader you know that the theme of the column concerns dwellings and their occupants that were impacted by the war, either as a result of their location on or proximity to a battlefield or due to their use during some other event associated with the war.  I prefer that the structure is still standing, but that’s not a prerequisite.  The dwelling or its site may be one that is owned by the NPS or other federal, state or local government agency, or it can be privately owned.  It’s a necessity though that documentation (on the history of the site and the occupants, before, during, and after the event) be available in some central repository, preferably at or near the site.  There’s a short turnaround time for these articles so I need to blitz the sources – make lots of copies - in one visit, paid either by myself or a surrogate.  And speaking of surrogates, I may need help in that area as well.  I can’t pay you, but I can thank you!

So, if you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments section.  Thanks!

Civil War Times February 2011

Inside this issue:

Letters

• Ethan Rafuse and Ron Baumgarten each wrote in to comment on the Bonekemper McClellan article from the December 2010 issue.  For an expansion on Rafuse’s letter, see here.
• Kevin Levin is criticized for “excusing” the execution of Colored Troops after the Crater – how bizarre is that?

Blue & Gray

• Gary Gallagher challenges modern Civil War “PCness” and considers if perhaps the war was actually won in the east.

Field Guide

• Our nation’s capital’s Civil War monuments

Collateral Damage (by your host)

• The Jacob Weikert farm behind Little Round Top on the battlefield of Gettysburg.  I’ll have more on this later.

Interview

• Garry Adelman and the Center for Civil War Photography

Features

• Judging George Custer - Stephen Budiansky
• Lee to the Rear - R. K. Krick
• Hell on Water (slave ships) – Ron Soodalter
• Lee’s Armored Car (rail mounted guns) – David Schneider
• Super Spy from Wales (Union agent Pryce Lewis) – Gavin Mortimer

Reviews

• Civil War Citizens: Race, Ethnicity and Identity in America’s Bloodiest Conflict - Susannah Ural (ed.)
• The 111th New York Volunteer Infantry: A Civil War History - Martin Husk
• American Civil War Guerilla Tactics - Sean McLachlan
• The Lincoln Assassination: Crime & Punishment, Myth & Memory - Holzer, Symonds, Williams (eds.)
• At the Precipice: Americans North and South During the Secession Crisis - Shearer Davis Bowman
• Recollections of War Times: By an Old Veteran While Under Stonewall Jackson and Lieutenant General James Longstreet - by William McClendon
• The Grand Design: Strategy and the U. S. Civil War – by Donald Stoker (see his interview here)

New Journal: Gettysburg College

The first issue of the Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era, a joint publication of The Civil War Institute and the school’s Civil War Era Studies Department, is available free in pdf format here.  The journal is unique in that it features studies by undergraduates.  Three of the four contributors are currently pursuing their bachelor’s degrees, while the fourth graduated in 2008 and is now working on her master’s.  None attends or attended Gettysburg College, though one was a participant in the Gettysburg Semester in 2009.

America’s Civil War January 2011

Inside this issue:

• An interview with an American who conducts Civil War tours in England.
• Red Soodalter on High Bridge
• Mosby’s Confederacy by Teri Johnson
• Iowa’s “Hairy Nation” goes to war  – Robert B. Mitchell
• Harold Holzer on how some Southerner’s sought to abate secession fever
• Cynthia Wachtell looks at how some men of letters considered the morality of war
• Reviews
  • The Maryland Campaign of September, 1862, Vol. I by Ezra Carman, edited by Thomas Clemens
  • Reluctant Rebels: The Confederates Who Joined the Army After 1861, by Kenneth Noe
  • My Old Confederate Home: A Respectable Place for Civil War Veterans, by Rusty Williams
  • Northerners at War: Reflections on the Civil War Home Front, by J. Matthew Gallman
  • The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta, by Gary Ecelbarger
  • Harry’s Just Wild About…
    • Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Redemption, by Shane Kastler
    • Mississippi in the Civil War: The Home Front, ,by Timothy B. Smith
    • After the War: The Lives and Images of Major Civil War Figures After the Shooting Stopped, by David Hardin & Ivan Dee
    • Confederate Generals in the Western Theater: Classic Essays on America’s Civil War, Vol I, Lawrence Hewitt & Arthur Bergeron, editors

Interview with Eric Weider

I have a few irons in the fire that should result in some interesting posts here in the near future, couple of interviews (questions have been sent out), couple or three book previews.

Just to tide you over, here’s a CWPT interview with Eric Weider (left), who owns the two magazines for which I write.  Since he signs my checks, or at least pays whoever it is that signs my checks, I guess he’s on topic, even if we’ve never met and he has no idea who I am.

Civil War Times December 2010

Inside this issue:

Letters

• One is not mad at Gary Gallagher, one is.  Of course, the one that is mad is mad because, as we all know, Slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War, and in fact saying it did have anything to do with it should never be allowed to appear in print.  Another is mad at Gallagher because he ranked George Thomas too low as the fourth greatest Union commander.   And still another is upset with Dana Shoaf for not hammering the great villain of the war, George McClellan, hard enough in his op-ed on Stanley McChrystal.  That reader should be pleased with America’s Civil War’s November issue in which Harold Holzer goes ape-shit on Mac’s ass.

News

• Brandy Station expands.  Camp Lawton site found.

Departments

• Blue & Gray – Gary Gallagher on what Union soldiers fought for.
• Collateral Damage – Yours Truly on Bennett Place
• Interview - Waite Rawls of the MOC
• Field Guide – Chris Howland at 2nd Bull Run
• Editor Letter - Dana Shoaf on the GBPA’s endorsement of the Gettysburg Casino

Features

• General Disobedience - McClellan hatchetographer Edward Bonetopickemper’s hit piece on the centennial’s favorite punching bag.
• Substitute for a Corpse - David Lowe & Philip Shiman on creative battlefield photography.
• Joseph Whitworth’s Deadly Rifle – Fred Ray on the favorite weapon of Southern sharpshooters.
• All Glory and No Gore - Doug Dammann on Elmer Ellsworth’s militia tour of 1860.  This is followed by a photo gallery of Ellsworth memorabilia.
• Crisis of Faith - George Rable on spiritual revivals

Reviews

• The USS Carondelet: A Civil War Ironclad in Western Waters, by Myron J. Smith, Jr.
• Gentlemen Merchants: A Charleston Family’s Odyssey, 1828-1870, Philip N. Racine
• Kilted Warriors: Music of the 79th New York Volunteer Infantry, 79th Regimental Band (CD)
• Double Death: The True Story of Pryce Lewis, the Civil War’s Most Daring Spy, Gavin Mortimer
• Plus a list of eleven books for the holidays.

America’s Civil War November 2010

Sorry to be so late with this.  Inside this issue:

Letters

Everybody’s mad at Harold Holzer because as we all know Slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War and if it hadn’t ever existed in the first place there still would have been a war because of, ummm, er, ah, TARIFFS – yeah, that’s the ticket!

News

• Segways on the battlefield and other high-tech touring trends.
• Gettysburg Casino debate.
• Interview with Gettysburg College Civil War Institute’s Pete Carmichael (which put the kibosh on one that was in the works for Bull Runnings).  Read it online here.

Features

• Dateline: Gettysburg (Richard Pyle) – a reporter on the Gettysburg Address.
• Shooting Above the Clouds – Photos at Lookout Mountain
• Uncivil Action (Jonathan Turley) – The legality (or not) of Secession.
• Bring Out the Big Guns – Pros and cons of siege guns
• The Tactical Genius of Bloody Bill Anderson (Sean McLachlan) – Hunh?
• Twilight at the White House (David Selby) – The actor who portrayed Quentin Collins on Dark Shadows weighs in on Abe and Nosferatu.  I’ve written a bit on that here.

Reviews

• The Confederate Alamo: Bloodbath at Petersburg’s Fort Gregg on April 2, 1865, John J. Fox, III
• Indiana’s War: The Civil War in Documents, Richard Nation and Stephen Towne, eds.
• Union Combined Operations in the Civil War, Craig L. Symonds, ed. (this review is notable because Symonds is quoted as criticising Rowena Reed’s similarly titled book not because of methodology or handling of evidence or inaccuracies, but because  of what some perceive as the author’s “determination to portray [George] McClellan as a military genius of war.”  Very curious criticism indeed – I wonder how this determination is proven.)
• The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of  1864, Jack H. Lepa
• Libby Prison Breakout: The Daring Escape From the Notorious Civil War Prison, Joseph Wheelan.
• Jews and the Civil War: A Reader, Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn, eds.
• An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge, Robert Enrico, Director.  View the film as presented on The Twilight Zone here.
• In this issue, I was Just Wild About:
  • Breckinridge: Statesman, Soldier, Symbol, William C. Davis (reissue).
  • Lincoln and McClellan: The Troubled Partnership Between a President and His General, John C. Waugh.
  • Louisianans in the Western Confederacy: The Adams-Gibson Brigade in the Civil War, Stuart Salling.  See Stuart’s blog here.
  • A Friendly Little War, John Sherman.  Fiction by a descendant of Cump’s brother.