Chris Swift has deleted the content from his blog, and it’s gone. Consequently, I have deleted the link from my blogroll. And another one bites the dust…..

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Benjamin F. Cooling, who has written two very good books on Early’s Raid on Washington, left the following comment on my blog this morning:

Am curious – why do you think the project is worth doing – your seventeen page bibliography suggests that it has been done over and over and over. Even I am postholing Fort Stevens and a new biography of Wallace looms with Gary Gallagher presumably still working his Early biography. Fred Ray has done the sharpshooters, the Ohio 100 dayers story has been done. The arcane and obscure belong to the NPS on site for their interpretation and Ed Bearss gave them a good basis awhile ago – his flock publishing the government study. So, what

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On July 11, 1864, Confederate staff officer Charles Blackford wrote to his wife,

The sinking of the Alabama gives us great concern, and we are very anxious to hear from Early. I fear he has undertaken more than he can do with his small force, and he is likely to come to grief.”

From that, J. D. came up with a great title for our project, which I unveil here:

Likely to Come to Grief: Jubal Early’s Washington Raid, the Battle of Monocacy, the Johnson-Gilmor Raid, and the Fight at Fort Stevens

I like it.

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J. D. and I have been working up an idea of what we’ve already got and what we need to obtain in order to feel like we’ve gotten what there is to have on Early’s 1864 raid on Washington. Between us, we already have quite a bit of information. However, the easiest way to keep track of what we’ve got and what we need is to maintain a working bibliography of the sources we’ve either already got, or want to get. Our working bibliography is already 17 single-spaced pages long so far, and there’s plenty more to go.

We’ve been working our network enlisting help where we can with tracking things down. Old friend Dave Powell sent along two excellent …

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On January 29, I reported on the arrest of Daniel Lorello, an archivist employed by the State of New York, who stole hundreds of documents and then sold many of them on eBay.

Then, J.D. Petruzzi reported that he had been contacted by the New York Attorney General’s office because he had apparently purchased a stolen document from Lorello on eBay. J.D. figured he was out the money, but he was ready to return the document to the archives, where it rightfully belongs.

Now, because eBay has decided to do the right thing, it looks like J. D. will get his money back.

EBay To Buy Back Stolen Historical Items, Michael Gormley, Associated Press, February 9, 2008.

Documents dating

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Susan and I got up yesterday morning at the ungodly hour of 4:00 a.m. to catch a flight to Richmond. I was invited to be the speaker at the commemoration of the anniversary of Jeb Stuart’s birth by the Stuart-Mosby Historical Society. There was a commemoration at Stuart’s grave in Hollywood Cemetery, and then a luncheon at a lovely place called the Commonwealth Club. Susan did a good job of acting as photographer; these are her photos. Fortunately, it was 67 degrees in Richmond yesterday, and it was really nice being able to walk around without a coat in early February.

Detachments of two different reenacting groups provided honor guards. One was a fife and drum corps and the …

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For the first time in years, there is money in the Federal budget for land acquisition at Gettysburg. From today’s issue of The Hanover Evening Sun newspaper:

Battlefield bucks: Gettysburg Park could get $2.2M for expansion
By ERIN JAMES
Evening Sun Reporter
Article Launched: 02/06/2008 10:42:44 AM EST

For the first time in eight years, the Gettysburg National Military Park could receive federal money to buy and preserve privately owned property within the park’s 6,000-acre boundary if the president’s 2009 budget for the country’s national parks is approved by Congress as it is proposed.

The budget is not yet law, but it includes $2.2 million for land acquisition within Gettysburg’s park.

The last time the Park Service received land-acquisition funds

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I’ve been spending a lot of time combing through old newspapers for material pertinent to our Monocacy, Fort Stevens, and Johnson-Gilmor Raid project. As I mentioned here the other day, I found a lot of good material at the Ohio Historical Society going through reels of microfilm.

Today, I spent a fair amount of this morning digging through on-line archives of Civil War-era newspapers, and I wanted to share those sites with you. There is a tremendous amount of material available for free, and anyone interested in doing this sort of research should be aware of what’s available.

First is the granddaddy of them all, the New York Times. Until last year, the Times charged for access to …

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I spent much of the day going through reels of microfilm of old newspapers at the Ohio Historical Society today. Although OHS continues to be a whipping boy for the General Assembly whenever it needs a budget to slash, the OHS manages to struggle on, doing an excellent job with the outstanding collections it has. It has a truly impressive collection of Civil War newspapers on microfilm.

I’ve always enjoyed the accounts that can be found in newspapers. A lot of newspapers published soldier correspondence, and you can find great stuff there. Those accounts tend to be very reliable, because they were written contemporaneously and with the knowledge that the folks at home would be reading them. As just one …

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Susan found a REALLY cool template for this blog that we installed last night. I really liked it, as it was quite unique. However, it had a black background, with white letters, and within minutes of it going up, I had a complaint about it being hard to read. When I got a second one today, I figured it had better go. So, I’m going with this newspaper theme instead. I hope y’all like this one better.

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