October 2009 Civil War Times

On Saturday I received my complimentary copies of Civil War Times magazine.  You may ask “Hey Har, hows come you got complimentary copies?  I thought you wrote for America’s Civil War magazine?”  If you’re a Pittsburgher, you may have ended that with “n ‘at” or the more popular spelling, “N @”.  Well, as you can see from the cover, this issue includes “10 Must-See Sites at First Manassas.”  Inside is my contribution to CWT’s “Field Guide” series.  Thanks to the folks at Weider History Group for giving me the opportunity to move up to the Granddaddy and expand my writing resume’ a bit. 

A little explanation is in order.  The title of the article on page 24 (neither the cover blurb nor the article title were of my making) is “The First Manassas You’ve Missed”, which I think more accurately describes where I was going with my list of ten sites to see on and around the battlefield.   While the Jackson Monument, Henry House, Stone House, and Stone Bridge are certainly must-sees, they are also among the few sites seen by most visitor’s to the field, who tend to walk the little Henry House loop, visit the Stone Bridge before or after, and wave at the Stone House in between (or stare at it a long time as they sit in traffic near the Sudley Road-Route 29 intersection).  I’m not going to go into my list – you need to buy the magazine if you want to see that.  But after you’ve read it, please feel free to leave comments on the article here.

Also in this issue:

• Peter Cozzens on John Rawlins and his relationship with Grant.
• Earl Hess on The Battle of the Crater and Confederate efforts at turnabout.
• Robert McGlone on John Brown.
• Glenn LaFantasie on the strange journey home of a Georgia colonel killed at Gettysburg.
• Gary Gallagher on the relevance today of D. S. Freeman and Bruce Catton.
• Mike Musik on Hardee’s Tactics.
• Reviews, including fellow blogger Jim Schmidt’s Lincoln’s Labels, which looks really good but I’m not allowed to buy any more books on Lincoln.  Visit Jim’s blog here.

This issue should hit news stands next week.