On Monday, Dan Hoisington, the publisher at Edinborough Press, the publisher of my Ulric Dahlgren bio, informed me that he had approved the blue lines for the book and had returned them. He indicated that the printer was running about two weeks for printing and binding, so it would appear that the book is on track for the end of June release date that I’ve been promising. As this book was one of my labor of love projects, I am particularly eager to see the final product in print.

Stay tuned.

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Yesterday finally ended three weeks of insanity.

On Friday morning, I hit the road for Virginia, headed for Culpeper. It’s nearly 435 miles each way, and it’s a LONG drive. I reached the Graffiti House at Brandy Station about 3:30, and then spent the next 90 minutes laying out a driving tour for my Brandy Station book, including shooting GPS coordinates for the stops on the tour (I ended up shooting 36 of them). I then went and checked into my hotel, had dinner in the hotel restaurant, and spent the evening watching the Pens beat the big, bad Red Wings to bring Lord Stanley’s Cup home to Pittsburgh. It was really pretty remarkable.

Last summer, I auctioned off a two-day tour as a fundraiser for battlefield preservation, and this weekend was time to deliver the goods. That’s why I made the trip. Saturday, with the help of Mike Block, who is a member of the board of trustees of the Brandy Station Foundation, who came along to help me lead the tour, we covered the Battles of Kelly’s Ford and Brandy Station in detail. We finished at the National Cemetery in Culpeper. This is now the second time that Mike and I have done this dog-and-pony show, and we really work together well. I really enjoy doing tours with him.

I was also fortunate enough to have Prof. Chris Stowe, who teaches at the Army Command and General Staff College’s branch campus at Fort Lee in Petersburg, VA, along. Chris is working on George Gordon Meade’s papers, and he is extremely knowledgeable. Finally, I had the opportunity to have Tim Ferry and Lance Williams along, and we had a great day. After a long, hot day, I then had dinner with old friend Melissa Delcour at a terrific Italian place in Culpeper called Luigi’s that I highly recommend.

The Brandy Station battlefield looks great, with the exception of the hideous McMansion that was built on the crest of Fleetwood Hill. We saw pretty much the whole field, although we didn’t hike out to the stone wall on the Cunningham farm. The ground was too soggy, and there would have been too many snakes and too many mosquitoes out there, and I made the command decision not to expose ourselves to it.

On Sunday, I took Chris, Tim, and the four fellows who won the tour to Trevilian Station. We drove the 45 miles down, toured the battlefield–none had been there previously–and then I took Tim and one of the others back to the Graffiti House, where they had left their cars. While I didn’t go off into the woods to look at the property–no time for that–I was able to confirm that the parcel of property that is going to be the subject of the CWPT’s next fundraising campaign is a key parcel because it connects the first and second days’ battlefields with a pristine parcel to make that link. It’s a pristine, 250-acre parcel that was part of the farm that was a major portion of the second day’s battlefield that was called the Gentry farm in 1864.

I then had to drive home. I left at 3:00, and got home at nearly 9:45. With the trip to Trevilians, I drove about 550 miles yesterday while making the banzai run. By the time I got home, I was completely exhausted, and I am still tired now, even after a decent night’s sleep in my own bed last night.

There’s nothing I love more than battlefield stomping, but after three straight weekends of leading tours and too much driving, I am worn out. I’m thrilled at the prospect of actually being home this weekend for a change. I also haven’t had a chance to see stuff I want to see because I’ve been leading tours non-stop. It would be nice to see something new while having someone else lead the tour for a change.

Anyway, that’s it for the banzai runs for now. I have a talk to the Western Pennsylvania Civil War Roundtable on Wednesday night, and then nothing again until October. It’s going to be a nice break. In the meantime, if any of my readers are in the Pittsburgh area, I hope you can make the talk on Wednesday night.

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At 4:30 on Wednesday afternoon, as I was busily working on a draft of a complaint, my laptop suddenly locked up. When I tried to reboot it, it would not boot; the hard drive just made a clicking noise, and I came to the incredibly unhappy realization that I had suffered the same hard drive crash that my wife had suffered 13 days earlier. Apparently, the Fujitsu hard drives that Apple was using at the time (and Sony, too) are prone to zero-sector damages, which lead to crashes.

Of course, my whole life is on that computer. Most of the important stuff had a recent back-up done, but I still panicked. Anything that was sone since the back-up the week before would be lost, and there was a lot of work done during that period of time.

Luckily, everything will be recoverable. I should have it all back early next week. WE went and bought a new 2.5 inch drive for the laptop–Western Digital this time–and it was installed today. The old drive was 120GB, while the new one is 250GB, so I am better than doubling drive capacity. And the best part was that drives have come down so much that it cost me $79.99 for the new drive.

I am using our back-up laptop as I write this. It’s something like 6 years old, and it was the forebear to netbooks. Susan calls it the tiny laptop, for good reason. It weighs like 3 pounds and has a 10-inch screen. However, unlike netbooks, this is a full Pentium II processor running Windows XP, and it will do until I get my machine back Sunday when I get home.

All things considered, it could have been MUCH worse. However, as I told Susan yesterday, I feel like Linus from Peanuts does when he can’t find his security blanket.

I spent the afternoon today laying out the driving tour of the Brandy Station battlefield for my upcoming book, including adding GPS coordinates. I only addressed the publicly accessible portions of the battlefield; the Yew Ridge portion of the battlefield is entirely in private hands, and I have too much respect for the property owners to turn tourists loose on their property.

The battlefield is still beautiful, and I’m so grateful that I know it well enough to be able to lead tours there. I’m leading a tour of Kelly’s Ford and Brandy Station tomorrow and of Trevilian Station on Sunday before making the banzai run home Sunday.

Like I said, all things considered, it could be much, much worse.

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Here is an e-mail that I received from Jackie Barton, the Ohio Civil War Sesquicentennial coordinator for the Ohio Historical Society about a large rally to be held on Thursday, June 11, to protest the slashing of the OHS budget by the Ohio Senate yet again:

Thank you to everyone who has shown their support of the Civil War 150th and the Ohio Historical Society by contacting your State Senators about funding!

Here’s the situation:

The Senate approved their version of the budget yesterday without restoring our funding, BUT there is still time to act. We’ve been hearing from the offices of state Senators and Representatives that our message is being heard!

What now?

The budget will go into conference committee, where members from the House, Senate and the Governor’s Office will reconcile differences in the budget. HERE is where our funding has the best chance of being restored.

What can you do?

RALLY:

Please mark your calendars for Thursday, June 11 from noon – 1 p.m. to Rally for History! at the Ohio Historical Center, located at I-71 and 17th Avenue in Columbus. You’ll also have an opportunity to visit the statehouse if you have time at the end of the rally.

The Ohio Senate voted yesterday to approve the next two-year state budget, which includes significant budget cuts that would reduce the state’s investment in the Ohio Historical Society to the lowest level since 1994. Now the budget goes to a conference committee made up of a small number of House, Senate, and Governor’s Office officials.

There is still time to make an impact and help restore funding for historic sites and the Society’s Outreach programs that affect students, teachers, local history organizations and Ohio communities. It’s time to Rally For History! Please join us on Thursday, June 11. We’ll be thanking all who participate in the rally with FREE parking and admission to the Ohio Historical Center. More details coming very soon…

EMAIL and CALL:

If you have already called and emailed your State Senator, call and email your State Representative. You can also call, write and email Governor Strickland to show your support of restoring funding to the Ohio Historical Society in budget line 509! If you’d like to contact all three at once, use our Legislative Action page: http://capwiz.com/ohiohistory/home/

MAKE A STATEMENT:

We have some ideas about what you can do in your own community to make a statement about these budget cuts. If you want to hear more, call or email me.

Please feel free to call me with questions and thanks for your support! We’ll update you on rally details early next week.

Thank you again-your support is so important!

Jackie

Today, Jackie passed along a link to a new site, Save Ohio History!. Check it out. And, if you live in Ohio, please do what you can to ensure that the dolts in the Ohio State Senate hear your demand that the funding for the OHS not be slashed yet again. If you can’t make it to the big rally in Columbus, the web site will have some ideas of some other things that you can do to ensure that your voice is heard.

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I’m now home from the annual conference of the Civil War Preservation Trust, which was held in Gettysburg this year. More than 500 people attended, by far the largest event I’ve ever been involved with. I finally got to meet a lot of the CWPT personnel that I’ve worked with over the years in person, such as Tom Gilmore, David Duncan, Melissa Sadler, and Rob Shenk. It was really nice being able to put faces with the names.

There were lots of big name historians present, including Ed Bearss, Kent Masterson Brown, Richard McMurray, Ted Alexander, Jeff Wert, Dick Summers, and others of similar talent. It just wouldn’t be a tour if Ted Alexander didn’t get a bus stuck, and he managed to do so on Friday. So did Ed Bearss. Kent Brown’s bus not only got its front end all dinged up, it also took out a row of mailboxes on the West Virginia side at Falling Waters, undoubtedly earning the undying love of the local landowner upon whose property he and his busload were trespassing.

I had a full day tour of cavalry actions at Gettysburg. We toured South Cavalry Field, Farnsworth’s Charge, Brinkerhoff’s Ridge, and East Cavalry Field I had arranged to bring my group onto the grounds of the Rummel Farm on East Cavalry Field, and Dan and Alice Hoffman, who own the farm, rolled out the red carpet. Dan brought out his Spencer rifle and a Burnside carbine, lots of bullets and other relics, photos of the original house, and other goodies. They allowed the two guns to be passed around, and you should have heard the “oohs” and “ahs” from the assembled crowd. It was hot and muggy, and they had had very heavy rains for the two prior days, so the ground was saturated. Everybody got wet and muddy, but nobody seemed to mind.

I got to see some old friends. J.D. and Steve Stanley were there, signing copies of their new book The Complete Gettysburg Guide, and I got one of the advance copies. Great job, guys. Old friend Marc Ramsey of Owens and Ramsey Books of Richmond was there. Friday night, we had a fabulous dinner at Gina’s Place in Bonneauville, where I got to see a bunch of old friends. Saturday night was much the same.

I can’t say enough good things about the CWPT. This organization, which has more than 50,000 members, has saved in excess of 25,000 acres of battlefield land. There is no more effective advocate for battlefield preservation anywhere, and I wholeheartedly support the organization’s efforts and the fine work that it does. None of the land that has been preserved at Trevilian Station could have been saved without the help of the CWPT, and there is plenty more work to do at Trevilians and at many other locations around the country. I encourage all of my readers–and I know that many of you already do–to support the efforts of the CWPT in any way you can, including donating money to help to acquire battlefield land before it is lost forever.

After the conference ended, we traveled to beautiful Middleburg, VA for a memorial for Deb Fitts, the late wife of my dear friend Clark B. “Bud” Hall, and got to see still more friends, including Cricket Bauer Pohanka, whom I hadn’t seen since her husband Brian died, and John Hennessy, the chief historian at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Battlefields, whom I rarely get to see. We drove partway home last night, found a hotel, and finished the trip this morning. I actually got in half a day at the office, which is important for cash flow reasons.

Friday, it’s back to Virginia, this time to lead tours at Kelly’s Ford, Brandy Station, and Trevilian Station. I hope that there will be good news shortly to report about our ongoing preservation efforts at Trevilian Station.

Tonight, I’m tired. Imagine that.

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Winston Groom is a johnny-come-lately to the world of Civil War history. Best known as the author of Forrest Gump, he’s a novelist who has apparently decided that it is his responsibility to pick up Shelby Foote’s cudgel. I wish he hadn’t.

His first effort on the Civil War addressed John Bell Hood’s 1864 invasion of Tennessee. The book is titled Shrouds of Glory: From Atlanta to Nashville: The Last Great Campaign of the Civil War. It contains few maps, little detail and no footnotes. While a pleasant enough read, the lack of footnoting allows him to be lazy about his research, since there is no way to hold him accountable.

Not content to let well enough alone, he’s now tackled the Vicksburg Campaign. Titled Vicksburg, 1863, this book dumbs down the history of the most important campaign of the war. There are few maps, and once again, no significant detail, and not a single footnote. I suppose that it would be an acceptable introduction to the campaign, but it’s certainly not as good as Michael Ballard’s fine Vicksburg: The Campaign That Opened the Mississippi or Terry Winschel’s excellent Triumph and Defeat: The Vicksburg Campaign, both of which are outstanding single-volume treatments of the campaign. Once again, Groom cannot be held responsible for his lack of scholarship, since he again fails to include any footnotes to tell where he got his material.

I guess this sort of book has a place for those who are casual readers and not serious students of the Civil War. However, I, for one, choose not to spend money on them because I refuse to buy any book that does not provide references for its historical interpretations. I just won’t do it. So, I won’t be buying Mr. Groom’s book.

Please go back to doing what you do best, Mr. Groom. Give us wonderful, whimsical fiction that has history as a backdrop like Forrest Gump and, unless you’re willing to act like a real historian, please stop trying to write stuff that tries to pass itself off as legitimate history.

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I received the following from Jackie Barton, who was named the coordinator for Ohio’s Sesquicentennial Commission:

Dear Friends of the Ohio Civil War 150 Effort,

The Ohio Historical Society launched an initiative to commemorate the Civil War 150th anniversary in Ohio early in 2009. With an approach that emphasizes programs and activities that provide lasting value for Ohio ’s communities and history organizations, the effort has already generated an immense amount of interest and support, even garnering a Governor’s Directive in April. Today, the program is in danger of disappearing, as the Ohio Senate is considering cutting ALL FUNDING for the Society’s outreach activities from the state budget! The Civil War 150th, which would provide coordination, traveling exhibits, Civil War collections care, and technical assistance on various topics, would be shut down, and Ohio would be unrepresented in an important national effort to better delivery of community-based history programs. In addition, this funding cut would end important programs like Ohio History Day, the Local History Office, and others.

We need your help! Please contact your Ohio Senator immediately (Senators are finalizing the budget as I type) and tell them that this is unacceptable. The Society has seen ongoing, disproportionate cuts throughout past years, and these cuts will be the final blow to some of Ohio ’s most community-based and effective history programs. Please consider visiting the local senate office or placing a phone call, as these methods have the biggest impact. Send an email if you have limited time, and forward this message to others you feel would be interested, to help protect this and important programs. Here is a link to the OHS Legislative Update website that will provide you with all the information you need to communicate with your Senator (as well as the Governor and your state representative): http://capwiz.com/ohiohistory/home/ (after landing on this page, click on the Take Action button)

If you’d like more information on this, please feel free to contact me or our Government Relations Director, Todd Kleismit (tkleismit@ohiohistory.org, 614-297-2355).

In thanks,

Jackie Barton, Coordinator
Ohio Civil War 150 / Local History Office
Ohio Historical Society

I wish I could say that I’m surprised by this, but unfortunately, I can’t. The morons in Ohio’s legislature, who have no appreciation of history, always look to the OHS budget as the first place to cut. At this point, there’s really nothing left to cut, so the idiots have now slashed the funding for any attempt to recognize the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War.

This, of course, is the same legislature that refused to consider an eminent domain action to preserve Ohio’s only Civil War battlefield, and is also the same legislature that believes that the OHS should operate on a wing and a prayer. It’s also the same legislature that has been operating in contempt of the Ohio Supreme Court for years by refusing to legislate a new school funding system that is not unconstitutional, even though the Court has ordered it to do so more than once. I appreciate the critical budgetary situation in this state, and having lived here for 22 years, I likewise understand and appreciate the fact that the recession has hit Ohio harder than the vast majority of states. I get it that most states are having budget crises. So am I.

At the same time, this sort of thing will bring tourist dollars into Ohio, which, in turn, will generate tax revenue. It seems to me that some tax revenue being generated would be a good thing, and that Ohio should be proud of its contributions to the Union victory in the Civil War. Sadly, I am obviously wrong about this. Instead, the morons we elect–my particular idiot is named State Sen. David Goodman, who, unfortunately keeps getting himself re-elected by using sleazy, slimy campaign tactics–would rather fund their own pay raises.

Never mind that Ohio gave more men per capita than any other state in the Union. Never mind that three of the four Union generals considered the greatest of the war–Grant, Sherman and Sheridan–were all Ohioans. Never mind that Confederate prisoners of war died at Johnson’s Island and at Camp Chase here in Columbus. Never mind that Salmon P. Chase and Edwin M. Stanton were Ohioans. All of this is apparently irrelevant to our legislative geniuses.

For shame, Ohio State Senate. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. While the rest of the 35 states that made up the Union from 1861-1865 celebrate the sesquicentennial, we Ohioans will be on the sidelines, wondering why.

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Tomorrow begins my crazy travel schedule. Tomorrow, it’s off to Gettysburg for the annual muster of the Civil War Discussion Group Online, and a retreat tour on Saturday. We come home Sunday (Susan’s going with me on this one), and then it’s back to Gettysburg again next Friday for the annual conference of the CWPT, where I have a full day tour to lead. Then, we’re off to Middleburg, VA on Sunday night for a memorial for our friend Deborah Fitts, and then home to Columbus on Monday morning. I leave again that Friday, this time for Brandy Station and Trevilian Station, to fulfill a commitment I made last year, when I auctioned off a personal tour to raise money for the CWPT at one of Ted Alexander’s Chambersburg Civil War Seminars.

The good news is that these events will provide lots of opportunities to see friends I haven’t seen in quite a while, including Clark B. “Bud” Hall, whom I haven’t seen since he lost Deb last July. Seeing old friends will make all of the driving worthwhile.

So, it’s going to be a busy next couple of weeks with way too much driving. I will post when I can, but don’t be surprised if postings are a bit sparse until I get through this craziness.

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On this Memorial Day, please take a moment and say thank you to the veterans who gave so much to permit us to enjoy the freedoms that we enjoy and who have worked so hard to keep us safe. Thank you to all who have made those sacrifices. I want to give a special thanks to my friend Col. Wade Sokolosky, who is just finishing up a year in Afghanistan. Wade’s son is also on active duty in the U.S. Army. Thank you, Wade.

And a special thanks to Sgt. Morton L. Wittenberg, USAAF, World War II, and Gunnery Sgt. Joseph L. Pacitto, USMC, Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, and Somalia.

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Dan Hoisington, the owner of Edinborough Publishing, told me tonight that my biography of Ulric Dahlgren goes to the printer tomorrow. That marks the culmination of six long years of work on that project, and it’s the culmination of a labor of love. I can’t wait to see the book in print.

It’s due out by the end of June. I will keep everyone posted as to progress, and it will shortly be available for pre-order on my other web site.

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