This photo, taken last Sunday on the steps of the Ohio State House at the Ohio Civil War 150 kick-off event, which featured a speech by Wes Cowan of The Antiques Roadshow, pretty much leaves me speechless. Apparently, there was another event going on downtown at the same time….

UPDATE, APRIL 18, 2011: I’ve gotten a piece of hate mail from a fellow member of the Sesquicentennial Commission, slamming me big time for posting this photo. He says it makes the re-enactors look bad and that it also makes the Commission look bad. While I am not a re-enactor and personally don’t get it, I have plenty of friends who are re-enactors who take it very seriously by trying …

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I wanted to take a moment to welcome the Abraham Lincoln Bookshop as the first official sponsor of this blog. Please visit the ALB website. And thanks to the ALB for agreeing to be a sponsor of this blog.

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Part of the fun of doing the Forgotten Cavalrymen series is bringing forgotten heroes back into the spotlight. I take great pleasure in doing that. However, it’s also great fun to commemorate a scoundrel every now and again. I’ve done that a few times in the past, such as when I profiled Col. Sir Percy Wyndham and Col. Napoleon Bonaparte Knight. Today, we’re going to profile another.

Having spent so much time working on the Michigan Cavalry Brigade over the years, I was of course familiar with the first colonel of the 7th Michigan Cavalry, William d’Alton Mann. When I was finishing up the revision to my 2002 book Protecting the Flank: The Battles for Brinkerhoff’s Ridge and East …

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Developer Matt Raymond dropped me a line a few weeks back to let me know that he was completing development of a nifty Civil War app for the iPad, and I told him that when it’s ready, he should let me know, and I would pass along the information about it here on the blog. Matt let me know that the app is not only ready, but that it has actually launched. Here’s the press release:

“HISTORY 3D” iPad App Offers Historic 3D Photos in Honor of Civil War Anniversary

“HISTORY 3D” iPad app offers historic 3D photos in honor of Civil War anniversary; images to be donated to Library of Congress, public domain.

Washington, DC (PRWEB) April 11, 2011

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The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board got it right and rejected LeVan’s second attempt to put a grossly inappropriate casino near the battlefield at Gettysburg.

Here’s the press release from the CWT:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 14, 2011

For more information, contact:
Jim Campi, (202) 367-1861 x7205
Mary Koik, (202) 367-1861 x7231

PROPOSED GETTYSBURG CASINO LOCATION REJECTED BY PENNSYLVANIA GAMING CONTROL BOARD

Civil War Trust praises board for its enduring commitment to protecting this hallowed ground

(Harrisburg, Pa.) – Following today’s decision by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board to reject a second proposal to bring casino gambling to the doorstep of Gettysburg National Military Park, Civil War Trust president Jim Lighthizer issued the following statement:

“Both personally, and on behalf

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Regular readers of this blog know of my great affection for the Brandy Station battlefield, and also of my affection for the great work done for decades now by the Brandy Station Foundation to preserve the battlefield. Last year, its co-founder, Clark B. “Bud” Hall, resumed the presidency and assembled an excellent board of qualified individuals and historians dedicated to battlefield preservation. Bud and his board re-focused the organization on its fundamental mission: preserving battlefield land in Culpeper County, Virginia. However, Bud is a busy guy with lots of commitments, and, having tried to re-focus the organization, he decided not to seek re-election.

Instead, the BSF has elected Joseph McKinney, a former Army officer, as president. I have a GREAT …

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Thanks to years of hard work by Lost Causers and neo-Confederates, the true cause of the Civil War–chattel slavery–has been obfuscated. That’s tragic, because it marginalizes an atrocity and takes the focus away from where it should be in an effort to put a human face on the horror of slavery.

This article from Time does a fine job of explaining why it’s important to keep our eye on the ball here and why it’s important to continue to fight the good fight against this nonsense:

The Way We Weren’t
By DAVID VON DREHLE

A few weeks before Captain George S. James sent the first mortar round arcing through the predawn darkness toward Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12,

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I wanted to announce a number of upcoming events, in case anyone is interested.

First, this Saturday, April 9, 2011, I am one of the presenters at a conference being held at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. The topic is “Railroads, Raids, and Ruins–Laying the tracks of destruction in Virginia’s Civil War”, and it focuses on precisely what it sounds like. The speakers are Professor Peter Coogan (Hollins), Chris Calkins, Gordon Hamilton, a special appearance by Dr. James I. “Bud” Robertson, and me. My friend Clark “Bud” Hall was also supposed to present, but some pressing personal business has forced Bud to cancel, which means that I’m going to cover his slot. My first talk–the one I was scheduled …

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I am a proud member of the Dickinson College Class of 1983. My friend and mentor Brian Pohanka was also an alum of Dickinson (Class of 1977), and his family endowed a chair in his honor when it became obvious that his cancer was terminal. Prof. Matthew Pinsker, who is the chairman of the College’s history department, holds the Brian C. Pohanka Faculty Chair in American Civil War History, and for five years, he and Prof. John Osborn (who was actively teaching when I was a student at the College many moons ago) have been working out the details of a large project called the House Divided Project.

Having ironed out the bugs, the project–which seeks to provide a …

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Jim Lamason went to the New Jersey State Archives for me to look for information on the role of the 1st New Jersey Cavalry’s role in the fighting on Brinkerhoff’s Ridge and East Cavalry Field at Gettysburg for the new edition of Protecting the Flank: The Battles for Brinkerhoff’s Ridge and East Cavalry Field, Battle of Gettysburg, July 2-3, 1863 being published by Savas Beatie later this spring. Unfortunately, Jim didn’t find anything useful there, but he did locate a report of the June 9, 1863 Battle of Brandy Station penned by Maj. Hugh Janeway, in temporary command of the regiment at the time, to the Governor of New Jersey. This report is different from the one in the Official …

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