Just a quick post to wish one and all a happy and healthy Thanksgiving.

And be careful not to overdose on tryptophan….  :-) 

 

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Susan and I went to see the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale, on Saturday night. I wondered what this movie would be like for months before it was released.

I liked Pierce Brosnan’s portrayal of Bond. Honestly, it’s a role he was born to play. Brosnan was plagued with a couple of really bad scripts and a couple of completely unbelievable story lines. His last Bond film, Die Another Day, was beyond atrocious, although it wasn’t Brosnan’s fault that it was so bad. The script was absolutely ridiculous, the story line was completely unbelievable, and Halle Berry was so awful in it that it was hard to believe that this same woman won an Oscar. I genuinely …

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Here’s another installment in my periodic series of profiles of forgotten cavalrymen. I discovered Oliver Blachly Knowles during the course of my research and work on William H. Boyd and his company of Philadelphians who served in the First New York (Lincoln) Cavalry.

Much of the information contained in this profile comes from old friend Blake A. Magner’s excellent little research reference, At Peace with Honor: The Civil War Burials of Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Knowles was born in Philadelphia on January 3, 1842, the son of a prominent merchant named Levi Knowles and Elizabeth Adeline Croskey. He attended local public schools and two years of high school before joining his father’s business. The young man loved horses, …

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I live in Columbus, Ohio.  I am, however, a native Pennsylvanian. I grew up rooting for Penn State.  I genuinely could not care less about Ohio State and its football program.

However, here in Columbus, if one does not bow and scrape at the temple of Woody Hayes, one is looked at suspiciously.  I’m absolutely convinced that OSU football is some strange, bizarre, and fatal disease for which there is no cure.  It causes otherwise normal, rational people to turn into drooling, wild-eyed, raving lunatics.  It really is unbelievable.

There’s actually some bozo in this town who makes a living doing a Woody Hayes impression.  Never mind that Woody’s been dead for something like 25 years, and never mind that …

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It’s been a while since we last checked on the results of the unscientific poll on favorite Civil War battlefields on the CWDG web site. Tonight, with 132 votes registered to date, here are the current results:

Antietam 15.91% (21)
Chancellorsville 2.27% (3)
Chickamauga 6.82% (9)
Fredericksburg 3.03% (4)
Gettysburg 46.97% (62)
Petersburg 0.76% (1)
Richmond 0.00% (0)
Shiloh 6.82% (9)
Vicksburg 3.79% (5)
Other–tell us what! 13.64% (18)

Total Votes: 132

Not surprisingly, Gettysburg continues to hold an enormous lead. No news there. I was one of the three votes for Chancellorsville. I wonder who the other two were….

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Fellow blogger Kevin Levin has a lengthy post on his blog today that spells out, in great detail, the plagiarism scandal that has hit the realm of Civil War academia. Prof. R. Fred Ruhlman, who teaches Civil War history at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, apparently plagiarized most of his new book on Capt. Henry Wirz and the Andersonville prison camp from the work of Prof. William Marvel.

From the excerpts posted on Kevin’s blog, it’s quite obvious that Ruhlman simply re-packaged Marvel’s work and published it under his own name. In short, it is plagiarism of the worst variety.

As Peter Carmichael points out in a comment to Kevin’s post, the process of peer review employed by university …

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I know that I have discussed this here in the past, but my work on William H. Boyd in the Gettysburg Campaign has pointed out yet another gaping hole in the coverage of the Civil War.

One of the most important aspects of the Gettysburg Campaign was the capture of Winchester by troops of Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell’s Second Corps on June 14, 1863. Ewell captured most of Maj. Gen. Robert H. Milroy’s division, and took possession of the important town in only a single day. His well-designed and well-executed plan resembled the handiwork of the late Stonewall Jackson, and suggested that Ewell would be a worthy successor to the lamented Jackson. Ewell took only a few hundred casualties …

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I’ve had a couple of dozen articles on the Civil War and four scholarly articles on the law published over the course of my writing career. Writing articles is actually how I got started. When I started law school, I had already finished all of the course work for my master’s degree in international affairs (it was a four-year, dual degree program). During my second year of law school, I wrote my master’s thesis on a piece of legislation, the Arms Export Control Act of 1976. I was able to use my thesis to satisfy my law school scholarly writing requirement. My thesis ended up being published in a law review, and that got me started with doing serious writing …

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Dimitri Rotov’s blog entry for today points out the launching of yet another Civil War blog, called Civil War Gazette. According to the blog’s owner, it is a webzine dedicated to telling the story of the common soldier. There is some good information there. I’ve added a link.

I’m just flabbergasted by the proliferation of Civil War-related blogs. That makes four new ones in the past week or so, and another one that I elected not to include. What’s the deal here? Why the sudden burst in activity?

Don’t get me wrong–it’s all good, and anything that spreads the word is a good thing. I’m all for adding to the body of knowledge. I’m just amazed by the sudden …

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Blogging seems to be converting more and more enthusiasts. Just this week, I’ve learned of two more Civil War blogs that I’ve added to the links on the right.

Mark Wade has started his blog, which is called Maryland Rebel. Mark is a mainstay on the CWDG forum boards, and has decided to plunge into the blogging world. Knowing Mark, I expect good things from his blog.

The other belongs to Texan John Banks, who seems to have a particular interest in the 1862 Maryland Campaign. There are some very interesting items on John’s blog, and I look forward to continuing to enjoy his insights.

Welcome to the blogosphere, guys. Check out their blogs.

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