General News

Today is the 142nd anniversary of the death of Maj. Gen. James Ewell Brown Stuart, who received a mortal wound at the Battle of Yellow Tavern on May 11, 1864. He was taken to Richmond, where he died the next day. When Robert E. Lee heard that Stuart was dead, he said, “He never brought me a wrong piece of information” and then turned away so nobody would see the depths of his emotional response. For once, Lee’s icy exterior came down after hearing of the loss of a much beloved subordinate. Stuart was the quintessence of the Civil War cavalryman. He had a real gift for scouting and screening, and brought verve and dash to an otherwise mundane job. However, I often think that the march of technology–and the corresponding shift in the primary role of the cavalry–eventually would have left Stuart behind. I tend to think that he died at just the right moment, forever young, dashing, and heroic, and before the bloom came off the rose as a result of being beaten by the Yankees. Nevertheless, Stuart was perhaps the greatest of all American cavalrymen, and I would have been remiss had I not noted his passing.

I spoke to the Cape Fear Civil War Roundtable here in Wilmington last night. I had a very large turnout, which included old friend Horace Mewborn, who drove down from his lovely home in New Bern just to see us and to hear my talk. I’ve now been the May speaker for this group for four of the last five years. It’s a great excuse for us to visit a part of the country we dearly love and also gives us a chance to catch up with some old friends along the way. If only I could find a way to support myself here in the style to which we’ve grown accustomed…..

We spent a good morning at the beach today, and will again tomorrow. Sunday, it’s off to the Outer Banks.

To borrow a line from a favorite Jimmy Buffett song, the weather is here, wish you were beautiful. 🙂

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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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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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Chris Wehner has a new blog, called Blog4 History, which features a Civil War component. Welcome to the blogosphere, Chris.

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Lt. Edward B. Williston was an 1856 alumnus of Norwich University, Vermont’s version of VMI. Williston was one of those superb career Regular Army artillerists that made his mark on the American Civil War. He had a thirty-plus year career in the Regular Army and retired as a colonel with a Medal of Honor. He was awarded his Medal of Honor for his magnificent performance on the second day of the Battle of Trevilian Station, June 12, 1864.

Williston’s battery of Union horse artillery typically served with the Reserve Brigade of the 1st Division, Cavalry Corps, Army of the Potomac. On June 12, after repulsing seven determined Union attacks, Wade Hampton unleashed a savage counterattack that rolled up the Union flank and drove the Federal cavalry from the field in a wild rout. Williston actually advanced one of his guns in front of the Federal main line of battle and personally pulled the lanyard, at point blank range. In his report of the battle, Merritt wrote, “The light 12’s were magnificent,” and lavished praise on Williston and his men. Consequently, Williston was awarded the Medal of Honor without much resistance or fanfare in the 1890’s.

Norwich has commissioned Dale Gallon to depict the scene of Williston manning his guns that afternoon. I had a chat with Dale today, and offered my assistance. I will be showing him the battlefield in June, and will be providing him with most of his research material to depict the scene. My price for all of this: a copy of the print, personally signed to me. My old friend Wayne Motts was Dale’s primary research assistant for years, and knowing how thorough Wayne is, I’m sure that Dale will take pains to get every detail right. Unlike Mort Kunstler, who obviously never visited the battlefield before painting his scene, I expect Dale will get the terrain right. Kunstler, on the other hand, got the terrain all wrong in his depiction of the charge of the Citadel Rangers company of cadets of the 4th South Carolina Cavalry, led personally by Wade Hampton, on June 11.

Having worked with both Don Troiani and Don Stivers (on a depiction of the climax of Farnsworth’s Charge), I’m now very much looking forward to working with Dale to get this done as well and as accurately as possible. I think it’s going to be fun, and I think it’s going to be fascinating to compare the experience of working with him with my past two experiences working with Civil War artists.

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Earlier this week, my co-author for the Stuart’s Ride book, J. D. Petruzzi, unexpectedly received a large pile of copies of articles from the Baltimore American newspaper from June and July 1863 from the researcher that we use to find things for us at the Library of Congress. Never mind that our researcher has been aware of this project for more than a year–he just now got around to sending us this stuff, right at very last possible moment.

To our surprise, J. D. found a number of really useful articles for the project in this pile. In particular, we were able to flesh out our discussion of Corbit’s Charge at Westminster, MD a great deal thanks to some of this newspaper coverage. The problem is that we are in the final page galley stage; the book is nearly finished being laid out. Adding this material was much more difficult that turning on the “track changes” feature of Word and then typing it out. Instead, we had to carefully prepare the inserts, show Ted Savas, our editor/publisher, where they were to go, and then hope that Ted got it right. It was a big deal for Ted to do this and to get it right.

Ted tried, but the endnotes for one of the chapters got all bollixed up. It’s NOT Ted’s fault–it was actually a pretty major job, and it’s not a huge surprise that things got bollixed up. I just spent an hour going through the galley of the second chapter and then going through the endnotes in order to make sure that everything matched up the way it was supposed to. Since I was the primary author of that chapter, I was the logical choice to do this, and not J. D.

Let me tell you, I now have a world-class headache from it. It was a major chore doing that, and it was also essential that it be done correctly. The very last thing that we want is for the notes to be all wrong, and for some reviewer to catch the fact that all of the notes are wrong, and give us a bad review as a consequence. So, I had to be very, very careful, and I think that they’re all correct now. Poor Ted. He must have been about ready to pull his hair out by the end of it, and I know that he threw his hands up about the endnotes, which is why he threw it back in our lap in order to make sure that we’d gotten it right.

J. D. and I have both said this before: we’re lucky to have Ted as the publisher on this book, as I doubt that anyone else would have permitted us to make such substantial additions at the very last minute, as we just did. Thanks, Ted. We really appreciate your dedication to publishing the very best book possible.

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We’ve been having a major discussion among the ownership group at Ironclad Publishing about where we go from here in terms of continuing to grow our business.

Several years ago, I came up with the idea for “The Discovering Civil War America Series.” The concept behind the series is to do a detailed tactical study accompanied by an equally detailed walking or driving tour. My idea was to focus on either a small and overlooked portion of a large battle, or an overlooked or interesting smaller action. There was a third prong to this, although we have yet to actually publish a book like this: a study of the role played by a specific city, such as Richmond, Atlanta, Charleston, etc. What I didn’t want to do was to cover something for a battle where there is already a Luvaas and Nelson guide, or something like it. The first book in the series was my study of the fight on East Cavalry Field at Gettysburg, an important but often overlooked aspect of the main battle of July 3.

The second bookin the series is Jim Morgan’s excellent study of the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, which has sold far better than I imagined it would. The the third is our most recent title, a study of Sherman’s Carolinas Campaign from Fayetteville to Averasboro. Although this book has only been out for about six weeks, I’ve already had to order a second printing of it. It has also done far better than I had imagined it would.

The second and third entries into the series fall into the second category of books that I described, while my book falls into the first category. The next volume, which will go to the printer in a few weeks, addresses the fighting by Winfield Scott Hancock’s Second Corps on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. It will, therefore, fall into the first category of books.

Recently, we’ve been having a discussion about where to go from here. One of my partners has been advocating a study of a campaign that, while strategically interesting, did not feature a major battle. While it’s interesting, and while there might even be something of a market for a book on this particular campaign, I can’t imagine that it would sell enough copies to make it worth our while. As it would also be a full campaign study, it would not fit into any of the three categories for books in our series. I just don’t think that it’s worth investing a lot of our limited funds and resources into a book that would have limited market appeal and which would not fit into our business model. Most of my partners agree with me on this, but the person who has been advocating it remains steadfast about pushing it.

These sorts of debates are good for a company. The free flow of ideas and the ability to air our differences is clearly good for the company. However, there also comes a point where the discussion becomes frustrating, as neither side is able to persuade the other to see things as they do. I won’t change my mind about this, and I doubt that my partner will change his. Hence, we’re at loggerheads here. Since we run our company as a democracy, he will be outvoted, but I can’t help but wonder if he will understand that the reason is that it doesn’t make business sense, and not because we think he’s got a bad idea.

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In addition to being St. Patrick’s Day, today also marks the 143rd anniversary of the Battle of Kelly’s Ford, fought on March 17, 1863, along the banks of the chilly Rappahannock River.

On February 24, 1863, Confederate Brig. Gen. Fitz Lee, under orders to find the end of the Union line, led a raid of 500 hand-picked troopers of his brigade on the far right flank of the Army of the Potomac at Hartwood Church. Marching forty miles across country in deep snow, Fitz’s men launched a vicious dawn surprise attack that scattered the Federal cavalry pickets. Lee’s men chased them until they came under the guns of the 124th New York Infantry. Having found the Federal infantry, Fitz broke off and withdrew, although not before taunting the Federal cavalry commander responsible for the sector.

Brig. Gen. William Woods Averell and Fitz Lee had been very close friends at West Point, and they remained friends. Fitz left his old friend a bag of tobacco and a taunting note. “Dear Averell, If you won’t go home, why not pay me a visit? I hear your horse is faster than mine. Fitz.” Infuriated, Averell vowed revenge. He got his chance a couple of weeks later.

Averell took his division of Federal cavalry on an expedition designed to break up a concentration of Confederate cavalry in the vicinity of Culpeper, Virginia. He left three hundred of his 2100 men behind to guard his rear and marched.

Arriving at Kelly’s Ford early on the morning of March 17, he found intense preparations by the Confederates awaiting him. They had dug rifle pits and felled trees to block the way, and Averell had to fight his way across the river, a process that took most of the morning. When he finally got across, he engaged in a bitter six hour long fight with the 800 men of Fitz Lee’s Brigade that featured saber charges and counter charges, the Yankee horsemen going boot-to-boot with their Southern rivals. Maj. John Pelham, commander of the Confederate horse artillery, had foolishly decided to lead a saber charge, and paid for it with his life when a fragment of a Union artillery shell lodged itself in his brain. The Gallant Pelham died a few hours later as a weeping Jeb Stuart stood by his deathbed.

At the end of the day, with victory in his grasp, Averell broke off and withdrew. He thought he had heard trains bringing reinforcements to Fitz Lee, and knowing he was alone and far behind the enemy lines, Averell felt he had done enough, even though he had not fulfilled his orders for the mission. Before leaving, he left a bag of coffee and a note for Fitz Lee that said, “Dear Fitz, Here’s your visit. How’d you like it? How’s your horse? Averell”

By any measure, Kelly’s Ford was a Confederate victory. They held the battlefield at the end of the day, and Averell utterly failed to fulfill his strategic objectives for the raid. However, the importance of Kelly’s Ford cannot be overstated. First, and foremost, it proved definitively that the Union cavalry could hold its own against the very best that the Confederacy had to offer. Second, it cost the life of Pelham, the very competent commander of the Stuart Horse Artillery. Pelham had no business leading that charge, and it cost him–and the Army of Northern Virginia–dearly. Finally, it demonstrated that the Confederate cavalry could be beaten on the field of battle under the right commander.

Kelly’s Ford marks a milestone in the maturation process of the Union cavalry. For that reason alone, it is worth studying.

So, hoist a green beer to the memory of the Gallant Pelham today, and also recognize the bravery of the cavaliers who fought long and hard that day.

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On Tuesday night, Lakesyde’s Have a Good Morning, whose call name is Aurora, came home to join our family. She was born on Martin Luther King’s birthday, meaning she’s eight weeks old. She’s named after the Roman goddess of the dawn, and we chose the name because she represents the dawn of a new day in our family. She weighs just over eight pounds, is adorable, and is cute and surprisingly funny for a very active puppy. Her picture appears here. For those of you who don’t know me, that’s me holding her. We will probably call her Rory.

The other dog in the picture is Nero, who is fourteen months old. Nero and Rory have a common grandfather and both came from the same breeder, so you can get a pretty good idea of what she will look like when she’s fully grown. He’s a good looking guy.

Augie, who’s nearly ten and a half years old, won’t have anything to do with her. It took about two weeks for him to accept Nero last year, so my guess is that will happen again here. Nero, on the other hand, either wants to play with her, or he’s busy being jealous that nobody’s paying attention to him. That’s to be expected, I guess.

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