One of the things that I really enjoy doing when working on my projects is developing orders of battle. I’ve always been very proud of my ability to put together detailed orders of battle that include a lot of useful information, such as the names of regimental commanders, and, if something happened to them, successors.

Sometimes, it’s just not possible to get everything. Given that the Battle of Monroe’s Crossroads occurred a scant few weeks before the end of the Civil War, and given the wretched state of Confederate record-keeping at that time, in spite of years of research and my very best efforts to do so, I was unable to identify several of the regimental commanders on the Confederate …

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Always being on the alert for examples of neo-Confederate idiocy, I came across this prize on one of the Yahoo Groups e-mail lists on the Civil War that I subscribe to. It came across last night, and I hereby declare it the neo-Confederate grand champion for 2008, as I cannot imagine ANYONE topping this little prize:

I would also like to add that I am a founding family of Virginia and America. My family fought for the South. None of my ancestors owned any slaves. Also, with my family coming into this country in 1609 and 1614 I had many direct ancestors die in the Rev. war. If your family has not been in this country since before the ACW,

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As you will recall, last week, I posted here about a thread that I had started on the Armchair General forum boards about the differences between Union cavalry in the Eastern vs. Western Theaters of the war.

When I began that thread, I was afraid the someone would hijack it and try to turn it into a “Nathan Bedford Forrest was God” discussion, and I worked very hard to try to prevent that. After years of study, I remain absolutely convinced that Forrest was nothing more than a nuisance, John S. Mosby on a larger scale (No, Val, this will not become a Mosby discussion, so please don’t go there). My only point was that it’s easy to run up …

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Jack Dempsey, a fellow barrister from Detroit, has been keeping us posted on Michigan’s efforts to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. Jack recently posted a proclamation by the Governor of Michigan forming a committee to plan the state’s commemoration of the sesquicentennial. Today, the Michigan State Senate passed a resolution commemorating the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial. Michigan is keenly aware of the significance of the Civil War, and deserves a vast amount of credit for being proactive in commemorating the sesquicentennial.

My state, Ohio, unfortunately has nothing remotely like it. Sadly, history is given short shrift in this state; when the General Assembly needs to cut funds, the Ohio Historical Society is the first budget they slash. To …

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William Henry Bonser (“Harry”) Lamin was a British enlisted man who served in the trenches of the Western Front during World War I. His grandson, Bill Lamin, an information technology teacher in England, found his grandfather’s letters home while a boy, and has decided to present them in a blog format. The letters are run, verbatim, on Bill’s blog on the 70th anniversary of the date on which they were written. The first letter appeared in 2005, and 57 of them ran in 2006. Bill refuses to give any clue’s to Harry’s fate, and his readers wait to find out what will happen to Harry in real time. The letters contain a fair amount of mundane discussion of family matters, …

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David Woodbury has an absolutely hysterical take on neo-Confederate nonsense on his blog today. Be sure to click on the picture to get the enlarged image, or else it won’t make sense.

Enjoy.

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Dave Powell left an incredibly insightful comment on last night’s post adding to what I wrote and amplifying on it as well. It was so good, in fact, that I decided to give Dave the bully pulpit here. Here’s Dave’s comment:

Eric,

Thanks for this supremely (to me) interesting post.

A couple of things:

1) I am not sure that Rosecrans really disliked David S. Stanley all that much, despite his faults. However, starting in early september, Stanley was getting ill, which definitely hindered his capacity, so much so that on September 16th Stanley relinquished command and was hauled back to Stevenson by wagon. He would be some time recovering.

The ranking commander under Stanley was a politician that scared

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Last week, I asked this question on the Armchair General forum boards: I’ve often said that part of the reason why I don’t have a great deal of respect for Nathan Bedford Forrest is because, with the distinct exception of James H. Wilson at Selma, he always faced the second team.

Then, there was Wheeler, who enjoyed a modicum of success in spite of not being particularly talented. Wheeler faced pretty much every Union cavalry commander in the West, including the Eastern Theater retreads (he put a damned good whipping on Kilpatrick at Aiken, SC in February 1865).

I have some thoughts on the subject, but I would be interested in hearing why people think that, until Wilson’s independent …

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The following article appears in today’s issue of The Culpeper Star-Exponent newspaper, and it’s some of the very best preservation news that I’ve heard in a VERY long time. Congratulations to the Brandy Station Foundation and the Civil War Preservation Trust, and, of course, Bud Hall, who has devoted the last twenty years of his life to saving this battlefield, for a job VERY well done:

‘The vortex of hell’

Important Civil War Land Saved at Brandy Station
By Rob Humphreys, Managing editor

One Civil War expert calls it “the vortex of hell … the most fought upon, marched upon and camped upon piece of property in this country.”

Now, the Civil War Preservation Trust is calling it a …

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Almost a year ago, I noted here that Ira Shaffer, a descendant of perhaps the greatest cavalryman of all, Marshal Joachim Murat, Napoleon’s cavalry chief, had asked me to become a member of the board of trustees of Friends of the Alligator, a group dedicated to raising funds to build a museum to house a replica of Philadelphia’s own U.S.S. Alligator, the U. S. Navy’s first combat submarine, at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where the submarine was built. The Gator sank off the Outer Banks in terrible weather in 1862. It predated the C.S.S. Hunley. The difference is that the Hunley has been found, while the Gator has not.

Today, Ted Savas, who is also a member …

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