Harvard University stands poised to appoint its first woman president, named Drew Gilpin Faust. Prof. Faust is, I am very happy to report, a Civil War historian of some distinction.

Prof. Faust has written a number of very well-regarded books on the Civil War South. Her most recent title, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, was described as “a major contribution to both Civil War historiography and women’s studies in this outstanding analysis of the impact of secession, invasion and conquest on Southern white women” by Publisher’s Weekly. She is also the author of The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South, a study of the growth of the Confederate nationalist movement.

Although Prof. Faust’s studies are not military studies, they nevertheless are devoted to the Civil War. That can only help, and I hope that here appointment heralds the coming of a new respect for the Civil War era and for the military history of that important period of American history among the halls of academia. Congratulations, Prof. Faust, and keep up the good work.

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The work I do serves two purposes. First, and foremost, it scratches my teaching itch. It’s how I fulfill my need to write, which is something of a compulsion.

It’s also intended to be something of a money-making venture. Now, I fully understand that my work is never, ever going to make any bestseller list. At the same time, doing the research, acquiring illustrations, and paying cartographers costs money. Sometimes, it costs a LOT of money. The upshot, therefore, is that I have to at least be able to break even in order for me to be able to justify the expenditure to Susan. In a perfect world, I even get to make some profit. Hopefully, I will be able to collect some decent money from the sales of the Stuart’s Ride book, which has sold very well.

I’m trying to figure out the best way to spur sales of my other titles. I’ve been talking to some web developer types about how to do just that. We’re slowly but surely coming up with some ideas about how to do this. It’s clear that I am going to have to spend some money to make some money, and I am not opposed to doing so if it appears that there will be a worthwhile rate of return for doing so.

Ultimately, there will be some changes coming to this particular web site. However, this blog will continue to exist no matter what and no matter what changes do occur. Please stay tuned.

In the interim, if anyone has any ideas about how best to drive sales of books, I will be more than happy to hear them. And thanks for your time and for continuing to indulge my rantings.

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I’ve long maintained a deep and abiding interest in Hubert “Leatherbreeches” Dilger. As a student of the Eleventh Corps, I’ve had a chance to study Dilger’s actions at both Chancellorsville and Gettysburg in some detail, and I’m convinced that there was probably no better company level artillery officer on either side during the Civil War than Dilger. Dilger’s stand in the Plank Road at Chancellorsville–just his six Napoleons against Jackson’s whole corps–is one of those wonderful stories that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Dilger was awarded a Medal of Honor for that stand, and rightly so.

He probably also should have been awarded one for his work at Gettysburg on the first day, also. His performance that day was just as spectacular. At one point, he personally sighted a gun, pulled the lanyard, and said, “I”ve spiked their gun for them.” The Confederate OR’s talk about how a Confederate gun on Oak Hill was put out of commission when it was struck on the muzzle by a Union artillery shell. That would have to be the shot fired by Dilger.

Legend also has it that Dilger fired the shot that tore Bishop Leonidas Polk apart on Pine Mountain during the 1864 Atlanta Campaign. Some recent evidence suggests it wasn’t, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Dilger did fire that shot–he was that good an artillerist.

After the war, Dilger settled in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he raised a large family. One of his sons, Anton Dilger, although born in Virginia and a U. S. citizen, went to college and medical school in Germany. Anton spent an idyllic childhood on the family farm in Virginia. Like his father, Anton was a superb horseman. Anton Dilger, physician, U. S. citizen, and fiercely loyal to the Fatherland, became a useful tool. He was recruited by the German government and sent back to the U. S. to act as an agent provacateur.

Taking up residence a scant six miles from the White House, Anton Dilger’s task was to develop and implement a campaign of biological warfare against his own country. Specifically, he was sent to the United States to engage in germ warfare against his countrymen. His target would be the horses and cattle supplied to the Allied armies by the then-neutral United States, and Dilger set about cultivating anthrax bacteria and Pseudomonas mallei, the germ that causes glanders, a crippling equine disease. Fortunately, Dilger’s scheme failed and his plot was unsuccessful. He died of the Spanish flu at age 34 during the global pandemic of 1918.

Anton Dilger’s nefarious scheme has been documented in a new book by a journalist named Robert Koenig titled The Fourth Horseman: One Man’s Secret Campaign to Fight the Great War in America. I first learned about this book from a post on David Woodbury’s blog (thanks for making me aware of this book, David) and ran out and bought a copy. I’m working my way through it.

It’s really a fascinating read. Koenig focuses on German issues, and writes well. He made good use of surviving members of the Dilger family, and has done a good job of telling the story. His Civil War materials are not entirely accurate; he relied on a biography of Hubert Dilger written by one of Leatherbreeches’ great grandsons, and it’s not particularly accurate in its telling of the story of Dilger’s Civil War service. If you can get beyond that–and I highly recommend doing so–it’s a fabulous story and filled with lessons that have to be learned. That a foreign agent could do this kind of work–and nearly succeed–literally in the shadow of the White House is a terrifying prospect at best. And that the son of a true American hero–a Medal of Honor winner–could act as a saboteur for a foreign government is even more unfathomable.

I highly recommend this book. It’s filled with important but chilling lessons with an amazing connection to the Civil War.

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My self-imposed break of several months has about run out of steam. After several months of absolutely no motivation, I’m finally starting to feel motivated to get back to work. So, I think that the plan is to get back to work tomorrow night, after one more night of goofing off to watch the Super Bowl. Tomorrow night, I start working on my Boyd article in earnest. And there’s other stuff backed up in the queue behind it. So, I guess I’d better get back at it…..

The break was much needed. I feel much more motivated about things, and I feel much more prepared to face the pile of accumulated projects.

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Yesterday, I got a call from JD, asking me if I had received a letter in yesterday’s mail accusing us of plagiarism of our work on the charge of the 1st Delaware Cavalry at Westminster, Maryland on June 29, 1863. Specifically, we were accused of plagiarising an unpublished manuscript on these events written by correspondent, submitted to the Carroll County, Maryland Historical Society, but never published by them. Neither JD nor I had ever even heard of the manuscript, let alone seeing it. In short, we’ve been accused of stealing from a manuscript we’ve never seen.

Neat trick, eh? I’ve often wished that I was good at mind-reading; I know my wife wishes I was a mind-reader when it comes to her. 🙂

However, it’s never been one of my talents, and try as I might, I am utterly unable to read long distance by osmosis–and take verbatim–pieces of a manuscript that I not only have never seen, but had never even heard of prior to reading this individual’s letter. The basis for the claim was our using the moniker “the John Burns of Westminster” to describe civilian Francis Shriver, who joined the 1st Delaware Cavalry in fighting Fitz Lee’s Virginians, and because we made use of several unpublished manuscript sources.

Well, a descendant of Shriver wrote a book about his family’s role in the Civil War that was published by Heritage Books of Westminster, Maryland, and we got that particular moniker from Shriver book. As for the unpublished manuscript sources, well, let’s see….there is a copy of one of them in the archives of the Gettysburg National Military Park, which is where we discovered it. I found another by doing a Google search and then having a friend go to the Winterthur Museum and Gardens in Delaware to go get the manuscript material for me, and the final material came from another published source.

So, here’s the deal: we got all of our sources from fair and legitimate sources. Neither JD nor I have ever even heard of this manuscript, let alone having seen it. It is, therefore, entirely impossible for us to have plagiarized something we’ve never even seen. Needless to say, receiving this letter really pissed us both off. We combined forces to draft a response that is firm, professional, but quite insistent that we did absolutely NOTHING wrong.

We’ve both come to the conclusion that this guy–who claims to have spent forty years researching these events–is really pissed that we stole his thunder by publishing a well-respected account of the episode and beat him to the punch. All I can say is that it’s not our fault that the Carroll County Historical Society elected not to publish his manuscript–and there must be a reason for that–and that he’s angry that someone else is getting the credit for conducting good scholarship and writing a good account that made its way into print. So, instead of accepting that he might have had something to do with his own failure, it must, therefore, be our fault and we must have plagiarized a manuscript we never saw to do so.

Needless to say, this really pisses me off. I guess it’s the price of doing this sort of work, doing it well, and stealing someone else’s thunder in the process.

I’m sorry you feel that way, but it’s not my fault. Get over it.

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While working on the Kelly’s Ford article, I re-discovered a couple of fabulous, parallel quotes that describe some of the mounted charges and countercharges that took place during the Battle of Kelly’s Ford. What’s particularly interesting about them is that one is by a Yankee trooper and one is by a Confederate trooper, but the similarity is really striking. Have a look:

“A cavalry charge is a terrible thing. Almost before you can think, the shock of horse against horse, the clash of steel against steel, crack of pistols, yells of some poor lost one, as he lost his seat and went down under those iron shod hoofs that knew no mercy, or the shriek of some horse overturned and cut to pieces by his own kind,” recalled Pvt. William Henry Ware of the 3rd Virginia Cavalry. “It is Hell while it lasts, but when man meets his fellow man, face to face, foot to foot, knee to knee, and looks him in the eye, the rich red blood flows through his veins like liquid lightning. There is blood in his eye, Hell in his heart, and he is a different man from what he is in the time of peace.”

“It was like the coming together of two mighty railroad trains at full speed. The yelling of men, the clashing of sabers, a few empty saddles, a few wounded and dying, and the charge is over. One side or the other is victorious, perhaps, only for a few minutes, and then the contest is renewed,” observed Sgt. George Reeve of the 6th Ohio Cavalry. “A charge of this kind is over almost before one has time to think of the danger he is in.”

I’ve often said that if I could turn back the hands of time and witness a single event of the Civil War, it would have been the grand, five brigade front charge by the Union cavalry that won the Third Battle of Winchester on September 19, 1864. The charging Union line was fully two miles long, and the accounts of the veterans indicate that the ground trembled like an earthquake as those 9,000 troopers came pounding down on Jubal Early’s Confederate infantry at Fort Collier. The Thur de Thulstrup illustration that you see here is a depiction of that magnificent charge.

Is it any wonder that I find cavalry operations so fascinating?

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The death of Barbaro yesterday reminded me yesterday of just how fragile horses are. For all of their size and strength, horses are delicate, fragile beasts. The truth is that they were never intended to tolerate the abuse that we humans so often subject them to. And unless properly fed, watered, and cared for, they will break down.

Capt. Charles Francis Adams served in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry. The grandson of one U. S. President, and the great-grandson of another, Adams possessed the family’s gift for the written word. The winter of 1863 was an especially harsh one. Adams had a chance to observe the torment of his unit’s mounts as they suffered alongside their masters:

My tent is logged up, I have a good fire-place, a pretty complete outfit and am as comfortable as I have any wish to be; but I feel for my men and dare not go and look at my horses. I know just how they look, as they huddle together at the picket-ropes and turn their shivering croups to this pelting north-easter. There they stand without shelter, fetlock deep in slush and mud, without a blanket among them, and there they must stand–poor beasts–and all I can do for them is to give them all the food I can, and that little enough. Of oats there is a sufficiency and the horses have twelve quarts a day; but hay is scant, and it is only by luck that we have a few bales just now when most we need them. I have them fed four times a day–at morning, noon, night and midnight–and if they have enough to eat, they do wonderfully well, but it comes hard on them to have to sustain hunger, as well as cold and wet. It is all over, however, with any horse that begins to fail, for after a few days he either dies at the rope, or else glanders set in and he is led out and shot. I lose in this way two or three horses per week.

Charles Francis Adams to his father, January 28, 1863. Some 1.5 million horses are estimated to have died in the American Civil War.

The Battle of Monroe’s Crossroads was fought near Fayetteville, North Carolina on March 10, 1865. Pvt. William F. Sewell of the 5th Georgia Cavalry received a mortal wound in that harsh fighting. While the Battle of Bentonville raged on March 19, local blacks ventured out onto the Monroe’s Crossroads battlefield. They found Sewell’s unburied body lying on the bank of a creek where he fell and died on March 10. His large black horse, still saddled and and still carrying all of its accouterments, grazed nearby, faithfully waiting for his master to awaken and for them to get back to work. That black horse loyally stood by its dead master for nine long days.

The National Sporting Library in Middleburg, Virginia–the heart of modern Virginia horse country–commissioned a monument to the Civil War cavalry horse. Rather than portray a hale and hearty horse, the monument shows an exhausted, malnourished cavalry horse, still faithful and still serving, even though it was clearly near the end of its rope. The scabbard to his master’s saber is empty; we don’t know what happened to his master. The monument accurately depicts the condition of Civil War cavalry horses, and shows the frightful toll that endless hours of marching and picketing took on those proud beasts.

Although Barbaro was a pampered and beloved thoroughbred, he demonstrated the same fighting spirit as those faithful cavalry horses, and I admire him. He proved that the mark of a champion is not necessarily won-lost record, but rather heart and courage. In demonstrating the heart and courage of a champion, he proved himself a worthy heir to the cavalry horses who sacrificed so much in the Civil War.

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Keith Poulter of North and South magazine has been soliciting a raft of new articles for upcoming issues. Last weekend, Keith asked–and I agreed–for four articles from me. Fortunately, three of the four are things that can be adapted from different book projects. One of them will be an article on the June 30, 1863 Battle of Hanover, adapted from Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart’s Controversial Ride to Gettysburg. JD’s doing the bulk of the work on that one.

Right now, I’m working on a piece on the March 17, 1863 Battle of Kelly’s Ford. This one is an adaptation of a chapter from The Union Cavalry Comes of Age: Hartwood Church to Brandy Station, 1863. The problem is this: the chapter from the book was nearly 19,000 words long, by far the most detailed treatment of this day-long slugging match ever published. It’s literally filled with great stories of the deeds/exploits of individual troopers.

Keith asked for 7000-7500 words. That means, in order to meet his target length, I have to cut nearly 60% of the text. I’ve taken two full runs at it so far and have managed to cut about 8000 words, meaning I’m presently at about 10,500 words. I still have to write several introductory paragraphs for it to put it in its proper context. I’ve cut out virtually all of the individual soldier stories and have just the battle narrative left and some analysis at the end of the article, although there’s much less of it than there was at the end of the book chapter.

I don’t see any way that I can get it down to the target of 7000-7500 words without pretty much eviscerating the thing. I might be able to cut another 500-1000 words before writing the introductory paragraphs, but that’s it. I guess I will have to leave it to Keith to either cut more out of it or to simply run with it the way that it is.

And then I get to do the same thing all over again with the two days of the Battle of Trevilian Station. That will be even more difficult….

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I think that I have mentioned here that J. D. and I did an article on Corbit’s Charge at Westminster on June 29, 1863 for Gettysburg Magazine. The article is based on the chapter on Westminster from Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart’s Controversial Ride to Gettysburg, but is actually quite different from the chapter in the book.

The chapter in the book was definitely written from Stuart’s perspective. Consequently, the focus is really on Stuart’s men and on how this episode impacted Stuart’s advance into Pennsylvania. The article, by contrast, really is a true tactical battle narrative. It focuses equally on both sides, and includes several sources that were not included in the book chapter. Thus, although they’re quite similar, they’re also very different. I think that the article nicely compliments the book chapter.

In any event, the article is in the new issue of Gettysburg Magazine, which is the newly-released issue 36. We’re the lead-off article for the issue, so we kind of got top billing, which is pretty exciting. I was also very pleased to see that Ed Bearss had a lot of nice things to say about it in his traditional introductory piece that is lead-in for every issue of the magazine.

For those interested in the drama of Corbit’s Charge, or in Stuart’s advance into Pennsylvania, then you might want to get a look at this article. J. D. and I are both quite pleased with it.

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Over at the excellent group blog Civil Warriors, and citing my ruminations about whether to obtain an advanced degree in military history, Brooks Simpson has chimed in with a very thoughtful and well-stated analysis of the sticky question of amateur vs. professional historians.

I think that Brooks has it exactly right.  It shouldn’t be about degrees and professional designations, but rather about whether one produces quality work, based on solid research, that adds to understanding and to the body of knowledge.  I couldn’t agree with that more.  Ultimately, when push comes to shove, the work ought to be able to stand on its own and speak for itself.  I hope that when my time comes, people will be able to say that my work met those criteria.  If it has, then it doesn’t matter whether I had a Ph.D. in history or a law degree.

Brooks also points out quite correctly that there are any number of academic historians who can’t write to save their lives, and who simply don’t produce much over the course of their careers.  I have one particular friend who is an academic historian who has so much going on in his life–two teenaged daughters and trying to get tenure at his school–that getting anything from him is like pulling teeth.  I don’t resent that–in fact, I understand it and am sympathetic to it. 

The whole “publish or perish” thing that faces a lot of academic historians has to be a tough row to hoe.  I guess I’m fortunate to have the time and motivation to do this work and NOT have my professional life at stake as to whether I get something published or not.  For me, the very fact that I am not an academic historian gives me the freedom to work at my own pace and to focus only on those things that interest me, as opposed to writing for some dry, dusty academic journal because it’s what’s expected of me as part of my job requirements.

J. D. Petruzzi has also tackled this issue on his blog today.  Here’s his take: In the end, I think the distinction between “professionals” and “amateurs” in the field is important to only a very small segment.  Most folks don’t think about such a distinction, probably never heard of it, and don’t care one way or the other.  When it comes to books and articles, folks will read what interests them and ignore what doesn’t, regardless of who the author is or his/her credentials.  The reader’s level of familiarity with the subject, and reviews, will allow them to assess the writing’s value and scholarship.  I also tend to agree with this as well.

Finally, Kevin Levin has also addressed this question on his blog today.  Kevin candidly points out that he’s faced many of the same demons that have plagued me about this question, and draws precisely the same conclusion I have: Whether my friends and other acquaintances that I’ve come into contact with through publishing and conferences consider me to be an academic/amateur or professional historian doesn’t matter much to me at all.  I too hope that my published work stands or falls on the merits of the research and the quality of the argument.”  I agree. 

I will be the first to admit that my insecurity and bristling about being labeled an amateur has everything to do with my own personal foibles and very little to do with the opinions of others.  It’s important to me for my work and me to be taken seriously and to have the respect of those whom I consider to be peers, and I tend to be a little thin-skinned about this particular issue because it plays to my own insecurities. There have been some academic historians who have turned up their snoots at my work, and that has offended me to no end and has caused a great deal of the insecurity that drives this particular bogeyman for me.  I think it’s time to get over it and move on.

In the end, I think that Brooks, Kevin, and J. D. have said pretty much the same thing in different ways.  They’re right–there’s no reason to go looking for a fight when there’s not a fight to be had.  Ultimately, it’s all about the work and letting the work stand on its own merits, and I have to remind myself of that from time to time.

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