Every May, Susan and I take a vacation, usually to the beach in North Carolina. This year is no exception. I’m sitting in a hotel room in Raleigh as I write this. I’m speaking to the Civil War Roundtable here tomorrow night, and then it’s on to Wilmington for the rest of the week. I have the Cape Fear CWRT on Thursday night, hosted by my good friend Chris Fonvielle.

The difference this year is that for only the second time in my nineteen-year career, I am taking two weeks off in one shot. When we leave Wilmington a week from today, instead of heading home, we’re off to a second week in the Outer Banks. We won’t be home until May 21.

Part of my reason for telling you this is so that you don’t expect me to be hugely prolific when it comes to blogging while I’m gone. There will be a few posts, but I very seriously doubt that it will happen daily. If there are gaps, please forgive me, I AM on vacation, after all. 🙂

Part of the plan for today was to make a stop and do a bit of battlefield stomping at the Guilford Court House National Military Park on our way to Raleigh. Unfortunately, the battlefield gods were unhappy with me today, because it’s been raining hard since we hit Charleston, West Virginia. As we didn’t have a lot of time to visit the battlefield, and it was raining hard, we decided not to stop, to save it for another day, and just press on to Raleigh. We put in a good 500 miles today, and decided it was better to just get to our hotel here, have dinner, and have a quiet evening resting up. Sorry I have no battlefield stomping after-action report for you. There will be at least one during this trip, as I intend to see the sites on Hatteras Island associated with the Burnside expedition.

I hope everyone has a good week.

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Last week, I posted about a law suit that had been filed by a blogger for criticizing the State of Maine and its marketing agency. In that post, I mentioned that I was so horrified by the filing of this sort of SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suit against a blogger exercising his right of free speech that I was thinking about offer my legal services on a pro bono basis.

I decided to do so yesterday. In researching the suit and its status, I discovered that Lance Dutson, the blogger who was sued, was being represented by lawyers who are associated with The Media Bloggers Association, an advocacy group for bloggers. Here’s the mission statement for the group: “The Media Bloggers Association is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting, protecting and educating its members; supporting the development of ‘blogging’ or ‘citizen journalism’ as a distinct form of media; and helping to extend the power of the press, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails, to every citizen.”

Part of that advocacy is providing a network of attorneys well-versed in the sorts of intellectual property issues that arise, as well as the First Amendment and media law issues that go hand-in-hand. Today, I decided to volunteer some of my time to assist in the MBA’s efforts. If I can do some good, I am happy to do so.

The SLAPP suit against Dutson seems to have backfired, by the way. The MBA spread the word rapidly, and the blogosphere rallied around Lance Dutson. The plaintiff is now backpedaling quickly in the wake of a tsunami of criticism and scorn, and the governor of Maine has asked for a meeting of all of the parties in the hope of making this go away quietly and very quickly. We shall see. If it does go away quickly and quietly, it will be a real victory for the First Amendment, bloggers, and the MBA in particular.

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Apparently, there is justice in this world.

Today, Little Brown, the publisher of Kaavya Viswanathan’s novel, pulled the plug on the thing permanently after learning that Viswanathan had stolen from two other authors. “Little, Brown and Company will not be publishing a revised edition of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan, nor will we publish the second book under contract,” Michael Pietsch, Little Brown’s senior vice president and publisher, said in a statement.

It turns out that Visnawathan stole from the book version of The Princess Diaries by Megan Cabot and also from a book called Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella. Various accounts have reported the same kinds of spookily similar passages in Visnawathan’s book as passages from these two works, much like the eerie similarity of passage from two books by Megan McCafferty that I noted here last week. As I said then, there are simply too many verbatim or nearly verbatim restatements for these things to be coincidental. It’s extremely interesting to note that Visnawathan has suddenly gone silent, refusing comment and refusing to talk to the press. It seems to me that the deafening silence is the best evidence of her guilt; if she was indeed innocent, wouldn’t she be protesting her innocence loudly?

As an author who has worked hard to maintain his integrity and honesty, I am tickled to learn that Little Brown has done the right thing here and has not only pulled the plug on revising the existing book, but also in canceling its contract with the plagiarist. It remains to be seen whether Kinsella or Cabot will pursue copyright infringement claims against Visnawathan (I sincerely hope they do), or whether Little Brown will sue to recover the large advance that it paid to Visnawathan on breach of contract grounds.

Irrespective of whether the publisher or the other authors take legal action, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that Kaavya Visnawathan’s career as a novelist is over. That, in and of itself, is poetic justice. Of course, Hollywood being what it is, she’ll probably land a tell-all book deal and sell the movie rights and make a fortune, thus receiving a huge reward for being a thief.

I can only hope that doesn’t happen. Sadly, though, P. T. Barnum was quite correct when he said “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.” In a society where a brainless, completely talentless bimbo like Paris Hilton is considered newsworthy and admirable for no reason other than genetics, I don’t hold out a whole lot of hope. However, I remain optimistic and I pray that he will be proved wrong and that justice will be served by Visnawathan’s impending fade into obscurity.

At the very least, my belief in the power of karma has been restored. There is justice in this world.

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Susan and I purchased this house in March 1995. It was built in 1968, and featured lots of lovely early Brady Bunch decor features such as olive green floor tile, harvest gold appliances, yellow bathroom fixtures, and lovely flocked wallpaper. We were only the third owners of the house (and still are, for that matter). The thing is that neither of us has ever liked this house. She thought I liked it, and I thought she liked it. Consequently, we decided to purchase this place even though we both hate it. The only things it had going for it are that it is located precisely halfway between Susan’s mother’s place and Susan’s grandmother’s place, and that it has a large fenced yard that’s great for large dogs. However, even that is not without its problems–there’s a portion of the yard that has atrocious drainage, and about half the time, it’s like gelatinous goo out there with bottomless mud that provides a very attractive nuisance for golden retrievers. Needless to say, we spend far more time than we might otherwise enjoy wiping muddy doggy feet as a consequence. We moved in on tax day, and have been here ever since.

When Susan’s grandmother died, we ended up with a bunch of her crap that got stuck in our basement. Then, when Susan’s mother died, we ended up with a lot of her stuff, too. Mix in the fact that we tend to be clutter people and have way too much crap of our own, and it’s a real recipe for disaster.

There’s a nearly 40 year old silver maple tree in the front yard. At this point, it’s as tall as the house, which means it has a huge root network. That huge root network is the root of our problem. The roots broke up the masonry main sewer line, and it then backed up into the basement. Not realizing that the line was broken, we had it snaked out, and everything was okay for about two months, and then it happened again. The plumber ran a camera down the line, and we got to see the true state of affairs: the line was hopelessly broken in multiple places and was far beyond repair. Seven thousand dollars later, we had a brand new PVC main sewer line that’s impervious to the roots.

The problem is that two major back-ups of the main sewer line turned the basement into a toxic waste zone, and we avoided the problem by not going down there unless absolutely necessary. It’s incredibly dusty down there–I am allergic to dust–and God only knows what else. We’ve realized that try as we might, we can no longer avoid that particular zone of the house, and tonight we started cleaning it out. It’s a horror zone down there, and finishing the job is going to be a nightmare. I suspect that I’m going to have to end up hiring someone to finish the job, I recently saw and check out this House Cleaning service in Boise for better results. Because I’ve already got a sinus headache from the short time I had to spend down there. It’s a damned good thing that there’s very little down there worth keeping.

I can’t wait to get out of this house that I hate, but I absolutely dread the process that will be entailed.

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I first heard of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry in 1992. I’ve been drawn to this regiment for years for a variety of reasons. One company of the Lancers–Company G–was raised in my home town, Reading, Pennsylvania. Also known as Rush’s Lancers, the regiment was named for its first commanding officer, Col. Richard H. Rush, a member of the legendary West Point Class of 1846. Rush was the grandson of Dr. Benjamin Rush, the patriot who signed the Declaration of Independence, and who founded Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. When I arrived at Dickinson as a freshman in August 1979, one of the first things I noticed was that the college was split into two campuses, including one named for Dr. Rush. Finally, I am a native Philadelphian, although I grew up in Reading. Many of the names of the men who populated this fine regiment have been familiar to me for most of my life, as many of them went on to become captains of industry in the years after the Civil War.

I encountered this unit while researching John Buford, under whom they served for most of 1863. Buford came to greatly respect the courage and steadfastness of this unit after five companies of Lancers made a magnificent charge into the teeth of an entire battalion of Confederate horse artillery at Brandy Station on June 9, 1863. From that moment forward, Buford referred to the Lancers as his “Seventh Regulars.”

The regimental chaplain of the Lancers, Samuel L. Gracey, wrote a history of the regiment in 1868 that was based on his war-time diary. It was an excellent regimental history for its time, but it was an extremely early one that did not have the benefit of input from his fellow veterans, meaning that there was a tremendous well of untapped primary source material out there that could really flesh out the story of this regiment.

Because the Lancers were a highly educated group of men who thoroughly documented their service, there were at least a dozen sets of letters of members of the unit to be found, several diaries, an other miscellaneous memoirs that had never been used to tell the story of the regiment. Given all of that, I decided to tackle a new regimental history. I had originally intended to write this book alone, and that was the course that I was heading down this road when I learned from Ed Longacre in 1998 or so that he had recently submitted a proposal to Combined Books (now part of DaCapo) for a new history of the Lancers. Realizing that there would not be sufficient demand for two new regimental histories of this unit, I asked Ed if he wanted to do this as a joint venture. We would use my research, and I would take the first half of the war, up to and including Brandy Station. I wrote my half of the book, and then waited for Ed to tell me that he was ready for me to ship my research files to him so he could get started writing. After more than two years of waiting, Ed finally told me that due to his other commitments, he was going to have to back out of the project. So, I now had to go forward with finishing the project alone.

After Combined Books was acquired by DaCapo, I realized that DaCapo was definitely NOT the right press for a history of a Pennsylvania cavalry unit. Combined–a Philadelphia-based company–would have been a perfect outlet for the book, but Combined no longer existed, and that was that. I contacted DaCapo, and told them that I wanted out of the contract. After I repaid the minimal $250 advance I’d been paid, I was released from the contract, and then had to find a new publisher.

Last year, I helped Joe Bilby with the Gettysburg portion of his excellent new book on repeating weapons in the Civil War. Joe sent me a copy of the book as a thank you, and I was very impressed with the quality of the book itself and with the production values that were demonstrated. The book was published by a relatively new publishing company, Westholme Publishing, of Yardley, Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia suburbs. Bruce Franklin, the publisher, and I had a dialogue about the book, and Bruce expressed interest in the project, so I sent him some sample material from the manuscript. He then offered me a contract to publish the book, and my problem was solved.

It’s taken me thirteen years to research this regiment fully, and to write a new history. It was a long process, and much to my surprise, I found the second half more difficult to do than the first half. I had expected the first half to be the more difficult portion. This week, I finally got the last of the primary source material that I’d been waiting for, which was some material from the National Archives. I incorporated the good stuff into my manuscript tonight, and it suddenly dawned on me–after all of these years, the book is finally finished. It was have nearly 100 illustrations and a full set of maps, and I am really proud of it. I think that I’ve done this unit justice.

The only thing it won’t have is a roster. After discussing it with Bruce, adding a full roster–over 1800 men took the oath as members of this unit–would make the book huge and largely unaffordable. Instead, we’ve decided to make the roster available for free as a download on the company web site. It’s in an Excel spreadsheet, but that spreadsheet will be available for download in PDF format for free. Thus, anyone who wants it will have the roster, too.

After all of these years of laboring away at this, and after all of these years of trying to do the memory of these men justice, it is, at long last, finished. I can only hope that I have succeeded in telling their story fully and that I have documented the trials and tribulations of these men well enough to do them justice.

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This is a quick follow-up to Wednesday’s post about plagiarism by the Harvard undergrad. It bears noting that her publisher, Little Brown, has done the right thing, and has pulled the book off the shelves until a revised edition can be brought out. Although Little Brown will take a bath on this, it did the honorable and correct thing, and I tip my hat to the people there who made this difficult decision. Megan McCafferty, the author whose work was plagiarized, has apparently decided that that is a sufficient remedy, and has elected not pursue further action against the plagiarist.

While I can certainly understand and appreciate that, I do wish that she had decided to pursue further action against the plagiarist, if for no other reason than to send a clear and unambiguous message that plagiarism is not acceptable, and that there is a severe penalty to be paid for plagiarism. Perhaps then, we might see some headway being made toward making this problem a bit less commonplace and a bit less acceptable.

Kevin Levin noted in his blog today that even he, as a high school teacher, sees this problem with his students. As Kevin properly points out, ultimately, freely stealing someone else’s intellectual property is, in fact, a reflection on the character of the plagiarist.

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Thanks to Andy MacIsaac for bringing this to my attention with the post on his blog today.

Apparently, a blogger in Maine has been served with a multimillion dollar Federal law suit for stating his personal opinion on his blog. The blogger criticized certain spending policies of the State of Maine in posts on his blog, and was sued for copyright infringement and for defamation. Fortunately, there are some talented lawyers out there who are going to defend him pro bono, as this sort of thing absolutely terrifies me.

It terrifies me on several levels.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution creates and protects the right of freedom of speech. Opinion has traditionally been protected pursuant to the First Amendment, since the failure to protect the free expression of opinion will chill the free exchange of ideas and discourse. Traditionally, Americans have been free to express their opinions about the government freely and without fear of retribution. That’s always been part of the American way. The State of Maine, using some exceptionally heavy-handed tactics, has decided that the suppression of political dissent and the suppression of the free flow of ideas, is more important than the First Amendment. The State of Maine wants to quash the dissent by hitting the blogger with a sledgehammer. This is, in my humble opinion, governmental bullying in its worst form. Has Maine turned into the Third Reich? That it is occurring in a traditionally liberal state such as Maine makes it all the more reprehensible.

The other reason why this horrifies me is that as a blogger, I will now have to be worried about anything that I write. Andy MacIsaac put it quite well when he wrote: “If the Maine Department of Tourism can do this then what is to keep Pulitzer Prize winning authors from aiming their sights at the ACW Blogging community.” What comes next? Suing someone for writing an unfavorable book review?

Thus, I am deeply worried about this turn of events both as a lawyer who occasionally works in the arena of media law, and also as a blogger who takes pride in expressing my opinion freely in this blog. I think I might offer my services to the defense of this law suit on a pro bono basis. I normally would never consider such a thing–I have enough demands on my time–but this one REALLY bothers me a great deal, and I feel compelled to try to do something about it.

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Sometimes, a writer has to know when to keep his or her mouth shut. In those instances, it’s better to stay silent and be mysterious.

Today is one of those days……

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In case anyone has been living under a stone the past few days, a nineteen-year-old Harvard student named Kaavya Viswanathan, who published her first novel–with a half million dollar advance– a few weeks ago. It turns out that she plagiarized quite a bit of it from two books by another author named Megan McCafferty. According to one article I read, there were nearly forty passages of her novel that were too close for comfort, and some that were verbatim.

Viswanathan appeared on Today this morning and claimed that it was unintentional, that she had read the two books several times in high school and that McCafferty’s words had imprinted themselves on her photographic memory. She claims that she was unaware that it had happened and that she had not intended to do so. As Colonel Potter used to say, “Horse hockey!” I’m sorry. There’s just no way that somebody could quote chapter and verse as often as this young woman did without trying very hard to do so.

Thus, we come to the fundamental question: is plagiarism unethical (never mind the illegal copyright infringement aspect of this)? Of course it is. It is taking someone else’s words, their intellectual property, and claiming it as your own without so much as crediting the author. That’s unethical, and my humble opinion is that Visnawathan should be required to pay back the advance she received as well as any future royalties, too.

Every publishing contract includes a representation and warranty that the work is original to the author. By submitting something that contained so many episodes of plagiarism, Visnawathan has breached her contract. As such, the publisher would be perfectly within its rights to demand a refund of the advance paid. Whether it will do so remains to be seen; so far, they have been supportive of her. McCafferty clearly has a copyright infringement suit if she chooses to pursue it. She has remained silent so far, so nobody knows where she stands on this issue.

If I was a customer who spent good money on a plagiarized work like this, I would feel defrauded, and I would definitely demand my money back.

Obviously, there’s a difference between fiction, which is supposed to be entirely made up by the author, and the sort of non-fiction that I write. By definition, I am required to use other people’s words in my work, since I’m telling stories of events that actually occurred. I prefer to permit the soldiers to tell their own stories in their own words wherever and whenever possible, which means lots of quotations. However, I am fanatical about footnoting and sourcing what I write. There’s no doubt about where I get the material I quote–I am fanatical about footnoting my work. Even a cursory review of the footnotes/endnotes of my books will demonstrate this fact. My The Union Cavalry Comes of Age contains well over 1,000 notes.

My point is that while I do make use of other people’s words, I am fanatical about being sure to credit those words to their authors. I doubt anyone could ever accuse me of plagiarism as a result. I am at peace with that.

That is, however, not to say that there isn’t plagiarism in non-fiction work, too. Pulitzer Prize winning historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose both were found to have plagiarized important works. Astonishingly, Goodwin–who continues to deny that she plagiarized–made it to the New York Times best seller list with her most recent book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, and it has been showered with awards, as if the plagiarism never occurred. In short, it says that it’s not only okay to be unethical, you will be rewarded for it. I would prefer to be poor and maintain my integrity than to be accused of plagiarizing someone else’s work.

For her sake, I can only hope that Ms. Visnawathan is able to find some peace with her intellectual dishonesty. Because that’s what it is, pure and simple.

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I saw the first review of my Monroe’s Crossroads book today. Because Savas-Beatie prepared bound galleys of the book for review purposes, the review actually was written before the book was released, as it was written for inclusion in the monthly mailer for the History Book Club. The book was chosen as an alternate selection of the month for the Club. William C. “Jack” Davis wrote it, and it was extremely flattering. In fact, I couldn’t have been more pleased with it if I had written it myself. That it came from someone of the stature of Jack Davis made it all the more exciting for me.

Im not a member of the HBC, so I had to work my network today to track it down. It took a bunch of e-mails and several hours, but I did get it. A couple of people were kind enough to get a copy of it for me from the HBC web site. A couple of others are also sending me the published version of it so I have it as included in the packets that were sent out to Club members.

It also carried me back to the publication of my first book in 1998. The book, Gettysburg’s Forgotten Cavalry Actions, was published in June of that year, and the first review did not appear until October. I remember waiting for it with a combination of great impatience but tremendous fear, all at the same time. I had no idea how it would be received by the reviewing public. So, when the issue of Civil War News arrived that contained the review of my book, my hands were literally shaking. I finally got to it, and my heart felt like it stopped.

And then I read it.

When it was a good review, I let out a whoop of joy. It felt like a ten thousand pound weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I still get excited when I see good reviews of my work, but nothing will ever feel like that first one did. There’s only one first time for anything.

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