General News

In the early 1990’s, I met and became friends with Mike Phipps. At that time, Mike was trying to make a living as a licensed battlefield guide in Gettysburg. He’d done a hitch as an officer in the Regular Army, having gone through Ranger training and then service with the Old Guard. Mike left the Army to pursue a career in law enforcement, and then decided try guiding. Mike’s done a lot of research and writing on John Buford, and has written an excellent account of the fight on East Cavalry Field.

Several years ago, Mike decided to go back into the Army. He joined the National Guard and later enlisted in the Regular Army. This time, he went in as a sergeant and not as a captain, which is the rank he held during his first stint of duty. Mike did one tour in Iraq and then had some health problems, and he wasn’t sure he would be able to go back on active duty. Fortunately, he recovered and re-deployed to Iraq last month.

I got the following e-mail from Wayne Motts by way of my friend Greg Biggs today:

My Friend SSGT Michael Phipps
By Wayne E. Motts
06 May 2007Twenty-one years ago as a nineteen year-old licensed battlefield guide candidate, I had the pleasure to meet Mike Phipps an officer in the United States Army and like me a student of the Battle of Gettysburg. Mike and I took the guide test together and as classmates have guided on the Gettysburg Battlefield for two decades. After leaving the military for a career in law enforcement, Mike re-entered the Pennsylvania National Guard and as a soldier in the 109th Infantry Regiment spent three months in Iraq last year. After being relived of active duty, he decided at age forty-nine to enter the regular army again. Earlier this year, he reported to Fort Hood, Texas and was assigned to the First Cavalry Division.

So, not only is Mike a student of Civil War cavalry operations, he is on active duty as a cavalryman in the modern Army, serving in a great regiment with a storied history. Mike is also the first Iraq casualty whom I know personally, and that puts a completely different face on things. Hopefully, he will recover quickly and will bear no permanent effects of this combat wound.

Please join me in sending good wishes for the speedy recovery of a fellow cav guy. Get well soon, Mike, and come home safely.

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Last August 1, I left one law firm to join another. The new firm was brand new and based on some interesting ideas and some interesting approaches to the practice of law, and those things appealed to me. I spent eight months there, and they were, for the most part, eight good months. Unfortunately, the economics there don’t work for me or our family, and I made the difficult but necessary choice to move on this past weekend. As it was the end of a quarter, it made good sense for me to make the move right away so I could start fresh right at the beginning of a quarter.

So, for the first time since 2001, I am, once again, a sole practitioner. I am in the midst of finding office space and making all of the arrangements necessary to hang out my own shingle again while I make some decisions about my future. It’s all-consuming and takes lots of work, but I’m getting there. I expect to have all of this wrapped up in the next couple of days.

Wish me luck. Once more into the breach……

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Here’s a link to the story on yesterday’s event that ran in the Carroll County Times newspaper today.

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Chris Lewis, the editor of Civil War Times Illustrated, liked my idea of an article on the connections between Ulric Dahlgren and David Herold, so I’m going to explore expanding it into a 4,000 word feature article. We’ll see how it goes, and we’ll see if there’s enough to make it worthwhile, but I’m going to give it a shot. I’ve got two other articles in various stages that need to be completed first, but then I’m going to focus hard on pulling the thing together. For now, the working title is “A Tale of Two Assassins”.

I will keep everyone posted as to progress.

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Today marks one month since I had the cortisone shot, and I’ve had major improvement. It’s 85% better. I continue to wear a band to keep pressure on the tendons, but it feels a great deal better. I’m able to do most of my normal activities either pain free or with very minimal pain, so it’s back to normal and back to my normal blogging schedule.

Thank you very much to everyone who wrote to express their concern and best wishes for improvement. It means a lot to me, and it also helped a lot.

If history holds true, it will flare back up again in a few months, as that’s been the pattern for 25 years. For now, though, it’s feeling pretty good. Posting frequency will probably increase (providing I have something worth saying, that is) now that I don’t have to watch every keystroke. Thanks for your patience and support.

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This Saturday, March 24, J. D. Petruzzi and I are the keynote speakers at the annual Maryland in the Civil War: A Regional Perspective put on by the Historical Society of Carroll County, Maryland. The event is held in Westminster, which is the county seat of Carroll County. J. D. and I are the opening speakers that day, and we will be discussing one of the most important but least known episodes from our Stuart’s Ride book, the charge of the 1st Delaware Cavalry, also known as Corbit’s Charge.

We’re on first, from 9:30 to 10:30. The conference is being held at Carroll Community College, 1601 Washington Road, in Westminster. Lunch is included. We will be signing books after our talk, and we will be around all morning that day.

Hopefully, if anyone’s in the area and is available to drop by, I hope you will do so, and if you’re not someone I already know in person, please be sure to introduce yourself.

We will also be around Gettysburg Friday night before the conference, probably enjoying an adult beverage or two at the Reliance Mine Saloon. If anyone wants to come by and have an adult beverage or two with us, please feel free to do so.

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I received the following e-mail from Mark Dunkelman today. Mark is THE authority on the 154th New York Infantry, and someone whose work I admire.

Dear Eric,

www.hardtackregiment.com

This sort of thing concerns me a great deal. I spend enough money on my research. Making it astronomically expensive to get pension records will be a REAL disincentive to tackle major projects.

My letter goes out tomorrow.

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Please allow me to update you all on the problems you’ve had accessing this site the past two days.

Yesterday, our web host was the subject of a dedicated denial of service attack by hackers that caused their systems to crash. Once they got back up today, the server itself had a failure, and the web sites hosted on it had to be migrated to a new server.

Everything now seems to have been resolved, and everything seems to be pretty much back to normal. I apologize for any inconvenience, and can only join you in hoping that it’s all been resolved and for good.

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When I was in college, I worked hard at trying to make the college baseball team as a pitcher. At my very best, I was a very mediocre right handed relief pitcher. During the winter and spring of my sophomore year, as I worked at getting ready for the season, I did a lot of pitching with a friend of mine catching. In the process of working on my slider, I developed an absolutely hellacious case of tendonitis in my right elbow. Specifically, it’s tennis elbow, as then tendons on top are the ones causing the trouble.

I spent a lot of time in trainer’s room, missed the season, and thought I was over it. That summer–1981–I ran the baseball program at a summer camp for rich kids in Massachusetts and spent way, way too much time pitching. This time, I did pretty much irreparable harm to it. That ended my baseball career, such as it was. It took a lot of physical therapy, prescription strength Motrin, and a lot of rest before it finally settled down to some semblance of normalcy.

The problem has periodically flared up from time to time over the past 25 years. I had one in November, thought it was nothing out of the ordinary, and treated it as I always have. However, this time, it didn’t get better. Instead, it got steadily worse. I finally broke down and saw the orthopedist today. He gave me an excruciatingly painful cortisone shot right into the aggravated tendon, and told me to rest it. That includes typing.

So, I apologize and regret to tell you that posts will probably be short and somewhat sparse for the next couple of weeks while I try to limit my typing to that which is really necessary for my job. I regret any inconvenience that this might cause and ask your indulgence. I will be back. I just need to rest it for a while.

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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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