The city council of Lexington, VA has voted, 4-1, to ban the display of the Confederate battle flag on flagpoles owned by the city. Here’s a link to some media coverage of the issue. Kevin Levin has also had quite a bit of coverage of this issue on his blog over the past few days.

What’s important to note here is that this ban applies ONLY to flying the Confederate battle flag from PUBLICLY owned flagpoles. NOWHERE does the ordinance say that the battle flag is banned from any sort of private display. Indeed, such a restriction would be a flagrant violation of the First Amendment. However, nothing in the First Amendment says that the city has to permit the Confederate battle flag to be flown on publicly owned flagpoles.

In spite of that, and surely not to my surprise, the Lost Causers and neo-Confederates are screaming bloody murder about this, intentionally misconstruing the ordinance to make a ridiculous emotional argument. The image below demonstrates precisely what I mean:

I wish I could say that this sort of emotional, manipulative and wholly inaccurate sort of thing would follow very quickly, but I would be lying if I did. Calling for violence when locally elected officials make a policy decision is NEVER appropriate, but here we have “call to arms”. This is grossly inappropriate.

There’s no place for this sort of thing in a rational discussion, but here it is nonetheless…..

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The following poem about the June 9, 1863 Battle of Brandy Station appeared in the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States, Vol. 49, July-August 1911, page 142. It was originally published in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat,, date unknown.

The Cavalry Veteran

This sabre-cut on my forehead scored?
I picked it up at Beverly Ford
The day we turned “Jeb” Stuart’s flank
And hurled him from the river bank.
It was parry and thrust with a hearty will
As we fought for the guns on Fleetwood Hill,
While over the fields and through the pines
Backward and forward surged the lines;
Twelve thousand men in a frenzied fray;
Charge and rally and mad melee —
Oh, the crash and roar as the squadrons met,
The cheers and yells — I can hear them yet!
But we’d forced the fords, so our work was done,
And we galloped away ere set of sun.

With thanks to Clark B. “Bud” Hall for sharing this with me. Good stuff.

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There’s only one word to describe the scope of this reenacting fail…epic….

To see a larger version of the photo, double click on it.

Enjoy.

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The last several weeks have been insanely busy, trying to tackle the wrap-up of two projects at once.

The one closest to fruition is the new edition of my first book, Gettysburg’s Forgotten Cavalry Actions, which has a slightly different title. I have completed my review of the page galleys, and it’s being indexed. As soon as the index is done, it’s off to the printer. The new edition features about 14,000 words worth of new material in the main text, lots of additional photos, a replaced map, and a new appendix that addresses the question of where Farnsworth’s Charge actually happened (co-authored with my writing partner, J.D. Petruzzi) of about 5500 or so words, and walking/driving tours complete with GPS coordinates. The original edition was approximately 140 pages. The new edition will be 225-230 pages in length, so there’s obviously quite a bit of new stuff. That one will be out late September/early October.

The other is that I have submitted my White Sulphur Springs manuscript to The History Press. The tentative title is The Battle of White Sulphur Springs: Averell Fails to Secure West Virginia, and it addresses the August 26-27, 1863 Battle of White Sulphur Springs. Although the battle involved only 4000 men of both sides, it had great strategic significance for both sides, and mine is the first detailed tactical treatment it has ever received. The maps are being done by master cartographer Steve Stanley. The book is being copy-edited as I write this, and if all goes according to schedule, it should be out on or about November 1. That will be my first new title in about 18 months.

I’m excited about both. Stay tuned for more as we get closer, and I will update on both.

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Readers of this blog will remember that I had very little good to say about History’s Gettysburg film when it aired back in May. I wasn’t alone in this assessment. I was concerned that old friend Garry Adelman, who was one of the talking heads in the program, might have his reputation sullied by being involved in such a God-awful project.

Garry has been silent about it to date. However, Garry has penned a guest post on Kevin Levin’s excellent Civil War Memory blog today that addresses his role in the project. Garry points out that the film, even with its almost countless inaccuracies, has spurred new interest in the battle, and for that reason it was worthwhile. I can’t really disagree with that, although I still hate the almost innumerable inaccuracies in it.

Here’s what Garry says about those inaccuracies:

Just before the scripts got under way, the Gettysburg National Military Park’s Supervisory Historian, Scott Hartwig, came on board. Scott and I served as the primary historical consultants thereafter. We reviewed three versions of the script and watched rough cuts of the production as it emerged. Together, we made no fewer than 400 specific comments and requests for changes, and, to History’s great credit, almost every single one of these comments was addressed in the final show. Scott and I have both worked with other production companies before and we agree that none were so dedicated to trying to get it right as was History and Herzog & Co. In the first scripts, there were scores of significant errors and I mean significant.

He points out that there was nothing that could have been done about many of the wrong sets, uniforms, etc., as all of those were filmed before he and Scott Hartwig got involved, so they focused on what they could fix. That makes good sense to me, and I certainly can appreciate it.

The film will air again on Wednesday night. I will do all in my power to avoid it, as I still think it’s just atrocious. However, I do appreciate Garry’s insight, and I also understand completely where he’s coming from on this. And if it does manage to spur new interest in the Civil War, then I suppose I can live with it. Thanks for setting the record straight, Garry.

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I’ve learned of the existence of a very interesting new blog. It’s a compendium of a number of young, emerging Civil War historians, and can be found here. If the first substantive post is any indication of what we can expect of the next generation, then I feel comfortable that we will be leaving things in very good hands indeed.

I’ve added it to the blogroll.

Keep up the good work, folks.

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In the course of finishing the library project yesterday, I found something that I didn’t know that I had. My first book, Gettysburg’s Forgotten Cavalry Actions, was published in 1998. It won the Bachelder-Coddington Literary Award as the best new work interpreting the Battle of Gettysburg of 1998. The book has been out of print for four or five years now, and copies of the original edition have become quite rare. New copies of it sell for over $100, which amazes me. It’s a softcover book of about 140 pages, and it retailed for $12.95.

I have a new edition of the book coming out in just a few weeks. The new edition is being indexed as I write this. It’s fully revised, with a lot of new material being added. I’m excited about the new edition, but the original occupies a special place in my heart as my first book.

When I finished up the library project last night, I found a brand new copy of the 1998 edition of Gettysburg’s Forgotten Cavalry Actions that I didn’t know that I had. It’s been years since I had one to sell, simply because it’s long out of print. It’s too close to the release date of the new edition, so I’m not going to try to sell it.

Instead, I’ve decided that I will give it away to one of you. We’re going to have a little contest. If you want it, leave me a comment that explains the reasons why you should be the one to get it. I will select the winner two weeks from today, and will announce the winner here on this blog. Have at it, and have fun!

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For a couple of years now, I’ve been trying to get a handle on my library. It needed to be completely rearranged, and I needed a good place to put oversized books. Susan came up with a brilliant idea for how to accommodate that need. We got rid of the huge particle board computer desk, and replaced it with the Elfa shelving system from The Container Store. There are now three shelves of oversized books above the new desk, and I have a new desk and place for our old iMac computer.

So, here’s some library porn for you. Every book that you see in these photos is a book on the American Civil War.

This first image
is the corner, where two walls of built-in floor to ceiling bookcases come together. I guess you could call that ground zero of the library.

In this photo, you can see new desk with the three shelves of oversized books above it.

And, finally, this is the right wall. It’s longer than the other wall and has more available space.

Fortunately, after the reorganization, I have about a bookcase and a half left of empty space, so that there is still room left to grow.

I didn’t photograph them, but there are also three bookcases of other history books in the room, ranging from basic military history to presidential biographies, and pretty much everything in between. I also have a bookcase of nothing but books about the Revolutionary War in our bedroom next to my nightstand. And then there are Susan’s books…..

We like books.

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Like every author who has had more than one work published, I have favorites among my various books. There are just certain projects for which I have a certain fondness, for whatever reason. In the case of Trevilian Station, it was my first campaign study, and the book was the first detailed tactical treatment of an important campaign. It was groundbreaking work, and that book was long been one of my favorites as a result.

Another of my favorites is also the source of a great deal of frustration for me. In 2003, my book The Union Cavalry Comes of Age: Hartwood Church to Brandy Station, 1863 was published by Brassey’s. To my displeasure, Brassey’s allowed it to go out of print, and when they refused to print a new edition of it, the rights to the book reverted to me. This is one of my very favorites of my work, as it covers a range of material never covered in real depth before, since, or anywhere else. There are several cavalry actions detailed in this volume that had never received a detailed treatment previously, and I’ve long been proud of it.

The problem is that I cannot find a publisher that would be willing to take a shot with it and bring it back into print. Hence, I face a variety of options:

1. Self-publish it as a print-on-demand book as originally published.

2. Self-publish it as a print-on-demand book as a completely revised edition with new maps.

3. Self-publish in Kindle/Nook format only (thanks to old friend John Geracimos for that suggestion).

4. Continue to look for a new publisher for it.

There are pluses and minuses to each. POD is fine, but I’ve always had questions about the quality of the books so published. I don’t have the cash or warehouse space at the moment to print a large quantity of them in order to have inventory on hand, so that’s not really an option for me. Publishers are hesitant to bring out a new edition of something that has already been published, and Ted Savas, of Savas-Beatie, who is already working on new editions of two of my prior books, has already passed on this one because he doesn’t think there’s a good market for a new edition.

It pains me to see this book out of print. I would really like to see it back in print, but I have limited options. What do you–my readers–think I should do? Please give me your opinions, as I value them. Thank you.

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It seems that there are now three Republican presidential candidates with public records of supporting neo-Confederate ideology. I’ve long known that Ron Paul has long espoused neo-Confederate theories and sympathies, as he plainly demonstrated earlier this year. I’ve addressed Rick Perry’s calls for secession here previously. It’s bad enough that these two Texas loons are in the race.

Apparently, Rep. Michele Bachmann–who has amply demonstrated that she has no command of American history whatsoever again and again in the past–warmly embraces neo-Confederate views of slavery and of the Civil War also. In this blog post, it becomes clear that she takes her view of these events from the writings of a clergyman named Rev. J. Steven Wilkins. Reverend Wilkins is a prior board member of the leading neo-Confederate advocacy organization, The League of the South. Certainly, the view of slavery and the view of the South that Bachmann endorses is the mainstay of neo-Confederate ideology.

I personally find this trend both extremely disturbing and quite scary. What is it about these right-wing Republican candidates and their embracing of neo-Confederate ideology? Two them–Perry and Bachmann–represent the religious right, and if this is what the religious right advocates, then I’m surely worried about one of them actually being elected president. I would surely like to know.

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