I’ve been busy. Beside my professional responsibilities, which are especially heavy at the moment with the still-ongoing transition to the new firm, I’ve spent most of the last two evening incorporating the good material from the letters into my Rush’s Lancers manuscript. I’m halfway through the manuscript, having gotten through six of the twelve chapters.

These letters are some of the best soldier letters I’ve ever read, and are definitely a major and important addition to the manuscript. They provide tons of additional details that really help to put additional meat on the bones of the manuscript. They go a long way toward rounding out the story and making the telling of this regiment all the more compelling.

I’m very …

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I learned from Ted Savas last night that the Stuart’s Ride book is making good progress at the printer’s, and that is tentatively scheduled to ship on September 1. For those who’ve been waiting, it will only be a little bit longer. I can’tw ait to see this one in print.

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You may recall that when I got home from Richmond last month, I told you that another set of letters by a trooper of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry had surfaced, much to my shock and consternation. Fortunately, my publisher seems to have the patience of Job, because he agreed to push the thing back for the second time in order for me to add more primary source material to something that had already been submitted as a final product.

The letters arrived today, and I was unable to stop myself from reading a few of them. Before I knew it, I couldn’t put them down. I spent most of the morning reading them, yellow highlighter in hand, working on …

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My friend Scott Patchan has spent about five years working on a manuscript on a long-overlooked but interesting period of the Civil War, the period of time between Jubal Early’s withdrawal from the Washington suburbs on July 13, 1864 until just before the Third Battle of Winchester, which was fought on September 19. Among the interesting events that took place during this time were thrashing of George Crook’s army at Second Kernstown, the burning of Chambersburg, the defeat of the Confederate cavalry at Moorefield, WV on August 7, and a lot of other similarly interesting events.

However, this period has received scant attention from historians. Perhaps it’s because this period lacks the drama of Sheridan’s Valley Campaign. Perhaps it’s because …

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After the publication of the annual Gettysburg issue of Blue and Gray magazine two issues ago, J. D. Petruzzi and I felt an overwhelming need to respond. The featured article was by a licensed battlefield guide named Andrea Custer that spells out a new interpretation of Farnsworth’s Charge on the afternoon of July 3, 1863. That article relies on misrepresentations and twistings of facts to suit the theory, and we came to the conclusion that it was written to intentionally mislead the public to promote the author’s own agenda.

Consequently, we composed a 5500 word rebuttal of the theory that was based entirely on the facts. We knew it was long, and we knew that we ran the risk of …

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Dimitri Rotov beat me to the punch on this one. Google’s at it again, still pressing forward with its scheme of massive copyright infringement. This time, its partner in crime is the University of California system.

Here’s the latest:

The University of California (UC) system announced on Wednesday that it has inked a pact with search giant Google to digitize millions of books in its libraries as part of the Mountain View, Calif.-based firm’s Google Books Library Project, an initiative that aims to digitize volumes from the world’s vast array of libraries and make content available online, The Daily Californian reports.

Robert Dynes, UC president, said in a release that the project “greatly expands our ability to give scholars and …

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Tonight was the regularly scheduled meeting of the Central Ohio Civil War Roundtable. I had intended to go to the meeting tonight, as fellow blogger Mark Grimsley was the speaker tonight, and I had really wanted to hear Mark’s talk.

Instead, I got bogged down in a project at work, lost track of time, and completely forgot about the Roundtable meeting. Consequently, I missed Mark’s talk.

Mark, if you see this, I am very, very sorry that I missed your talk. I had every intention of making it, and then was stupid and flat out forgot what day of the week it was. My apologies.

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I told you all that I had finished the first draft of the Dahlgren biography the other evening, and I got to enjoy that fact for about 24 hours.

The hard part now begins. The difficult part is the process of editing and tweaking what I’ve written. I sent the very rough draft of two chapters to Frank O’Reilly for review and comment. Frank not only corrected the factual errors and the like, he also did an extremely thorough copy edit, probably much more than such an early draft required or deserved. I neglected to tell Frank that he was reading what was quite literally first draft, and he thought it was supposed to be something close to a finished …

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My list of pending projects is really kind of staggering:

1. Finish up the history of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry.
2. Turn in the material for the new edition of Trevilian Station.
3. Edit and finish the Dahlgren biography.
4. Complete the research and write the study of John Hunt Morgan’s Indiana and Ohio raid of 1863.
5. The Gettysburg cavalry project.
6. Complete the rewrite of my half of the John Buford biography.

Then there are ideas that are in the research phase:

1. Monocacy (this battle fascinates me, and has for a long time).
2. A study of Union cavalry operations in Pope’s Army of Virginia.
3. A biography of David McMurtrie Gregg.
4. A study of the …

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There are more developments to discuss pertaining to the question of what Lincoln knew and when he knew it.

First, however, the good news: I just completed the first draft of the Dahlgren manuscript. After nearly a year of writing it, the first draft of this complex and fascinating young man’s life is complete. Plenty of work remains to be done; my writing style has always been to put things down on paper and then play with them, so I have lots of editing and tweaking to do. However, the first draft is, at long last, complete. It’s a great feeling.

I had an epiphany tonight about Stanton’s role, so I added a new paragraph to the chapter. By way …

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