Some time ago, I mentioned that, as I was trying to put my new regimental history of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry to bed, I discovered a large set of letters that I had not found the first time around. Consequently, the project had to be put on hold while I tracked the letters down. My researcher in Philadelphia made a trip to the University of Pennsylvania, and reviewed them for me. He reported back that they were great letters, just filled with good material. Thus, there was no choice but to wait, since I just wouldn’t have been able to live with myself knowing that I had missed something significant like that.

The letters arrived while I was in Philadelphia …

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The following is a list of things that I can only pray that you will NEVER find in one of my books:

Every year, English teachers from across the country submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country.

Here are last year’s winners…..

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind …

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As I said on Monday night, Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery is a classic example of Victorian cemetery in the French mode. I took a fair number of photographs while I was there, and I want to share some of them with you.

One note of explanation is required. It was 102 degrees with 90% humidity that day, and it was just beastly hot. Within seconds of getting out of the car, I was drenched with sweat, and it was just too hot to do the sort of walking around and searching that I would normally do. Consequently, there were a couple of graves that I had hoped to visit (and photograph) but couldn’t find because it was too damned …

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I’m writing this from a Fairfield Inn in Dover, Delaware. I’m here because I spoke to the Central Delaware Civil War Roundtable tonight. It was quite an interesting evening.

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked for a photo, as the CWRT apparently placed something in the local newspaper, which ran the photo with the piece. One of my high school classmates–whom I haven’t seen in nearly twenty years, but who lives and works here, spotted it. She had another obligation tonight and couldn’t come hear me talk, but she wrote me a nice note and left it at the meeting place for me. I was taken aback when I was told that there was a note for me …

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I visited Ully Dahlgren’s grave in Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery today. I was struck by just how small the marker on his grave is, particularly as compared to the huge marker for his father that’s quite literally next to Ully’s grave.

Laurel Hill was THE cemetery for Victorian-era Philadelphians. It was designed to be like a park, overlooking the Schuylkill River, and is very different from modern cemeteries. Although it was 100+ degrees out while I was at Laurel Hill, I still did a little bit of wandering around and shot photos of some of the graves of some of the famous folks buried there, but I got to only a small portion of them. It was too hot, I …

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A couple of weeks, I shared some good preservation news from Trevilian Station that a proposal to erect a cellular telephone tower over a critical portion of the battlefield had been rejected by the local board responsible for such things.

Today, I have even better preservation news from Trevilian Station.

The Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation is a grass-roots organization that started with some local folks who live in Louisa County. When they first started out almost ten years ago, they knew next to nothing about how to preserve battlefield land, and they certainly hadn’t saved an inch. Over time, they’ve learned and have bcome one of the most effective preservation groups around.

The battlefield itself ranges over almost 7,000 acres …

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As anyone who has spent any significant time working with the Official Records of the Civil War (the “O. R.”) knows, there was a ton of information–an overwhelming amount, actually–included in them. There was also a lot of information that was not included.

Tom Broadfoot, the owner of Broadfoot Publishing, decided to publish a 100-volume supplement to the O. R. that would add additional reports, a couple of transcripts of court martials or courts of inquiry, and complete itineraries of every regiment of either side. This evening, I went through several volumes of the Broadfoot supplements to make sure I hadn’t missed anything Dahlgren-related, which got me thinking about the set, which is what inspired this post.

There are …

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Last night, I promised that I would address the difference between a covering force action and a defense in depth, and why I am now persuaded that the tactic used by John Buford at Gettysburg was actually a covering force action and not a defense in depth. Here goes…..

I find it easier to use modern military definitions to define these terms. Even though they use modern parlance and anticipate modern weaponry, they still apply equally well to Civil War tactics.

The Pentagon defines a defense in depth as this: “The siting of mutually supporting defense positions designed to absorb and progressively weaken attack, prevent initial observations of the whole position by the enemy, and to allow the commander to …

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I’ve been thinking about some of the feedback that I’ve received on Adam Hendel’s blog. I have to admit that I agree with the folks that noted that there are some flaws with the articles posted on Adam’s blog. Adam found a VERY old writing of mine that described John Buford’s defense at Gettysburg as a defense in depth. Once upon a time, I believed that to be the case, but after a great deal of additional study, I came to the conclusion that his tactic was, in fact, a covering force action. I’ll get into the difference between the two in tomorrow’s post here. Suffice it to say that I have publicly corrected myself numerous times and in numerous …

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Susan’s sister from Pittsburgh came into town today to see an old friend who’s about to move to Arkansas. She brought the twins with her, and we all went out to dinner tonight. After dinner, the four women decided that they wanted to go shoe shopping.

That was an activity that was about as appealing to me as getting my teeth drilled without novocaine, so I took my leave and wandered over to the local Barnes & Noble store. Now, this is the one that I swore rather vehemently I wouldn’t go into since they won’t carry my books. It’s a matter of principle with me, but I went tonight because there wasn’t much else to do to pass the …

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