Civil War books and authors

We turned in the manscript of the retreat book to Ted Savas last night. It’s hard to believe that, after all of these many years of work, it’s finally finished.

Here are some statistics about the book that you might find interesting:

–There are 18 chapters and an epilogue, along with one appendix. There is a foreword by Noah Andre Trudeau and a preface by Ted Alexander.
–Just the 18 chapters and the epilogue (does NOT include endnotes): 132,944 words.
–With the endnotes, bibliography, tours, appendix, etc., added: 191,964 words.
–There are 1,534 endnotes.
–There will be 16 maps.
–There will be approximately 50 illustrations.
–The bibliography contains over 800 entries, meaning that we looked at more than 800 sources in researching and writing the book. Of those, over 600 are primary sources.
–There are two driving tours, one of the route of the Wagon Train of Wounded, and one that follows the fighting as Meade pursued Lee’s army. Both driving tours contain GPS coordinates.

I’m very proud of it. I can’t wait to see it in print. It’s going to be a BIG book.

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Most serious students of the Army of the Potomac are familiar with the volume of published letters of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman, a volunteer aide who served on the staff of General George Meade from the fall of 1863 until the end of the Civil War. Meade’s letters are especially insightful, and they’re also very funny in places. It was Lyman who dubbed Meade “The Great Peppery” for his explosive temper.

It’s also long been known that Lyman maintained a set of private journals that were not intended for consumption by anyone else but Lyman himself. Consequently, those journals are even more insightful and even more filled with Lyman’s biting wit and astute observations than are his letters home. For years, the journals have cried out for someone to publish them.

The good news is that the Kent State University Press has finally published Meade’s journals. David W. Lowe has edited the journals and has brought them out in a book titled Meade’s Army: The Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman. The book is rather large at 518 pages, but it also has a large pricetag at $45.00.

I’ve ordered the book, and it has not come yet. However, I’m certain that it will be worth the investment, and I expect it to be used often in the course of my work. I will report back once I’ve had an opportunity to review the book.

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One of the things that amazes me about my historical work is how threads seem to unravel as you tug on them. There have been a number of instances where one project has led directly to another.

Here’s just one example.

Sheridan’s Trevilian Raid ended on June 24, 1864, when his two divisions rejoined the Army of the Potomac at Petersburg. In the meantime, the Wilson-Kautz Raid began on June 21 and ended on July 2, 1864. The two expeditions overlapped, and one of the reasons why the Wilson-Kautz Raid was a failure was that Sheridan did not keep Hampton and the Confederate cavalry occupied as Grant expected him to. There has never been a truly detailed study of the Wilson-Kautz Raid (there is one book, but its focus is on the fight for the Staunton River Bridge and not the entire raid), and I decided to tackle that project at some point. I’ve got several hundred research files of primary source material to use to base a book on the Wilson-Kautz Raid upon, and at come point, I will write that book.

In the course of wrapping up the retreat manuscript, J. D. and I identified a really interesting story that stems directly from the Wagon Train of Wounded, and we’ve decided to do an article about it. The article will focus in on something that is interestin but very tangential to the retreat book, but which will also serve to promote the book when the time comes. That’s the best of all worlds, as it means that we will be able to bring a great story to light in detail and still use it as an opportunity to try to bolster our book sales.

It’s a great example of how really interesting stories sometimes end up being offshoots of my projects.

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I just finished spending the vast majority of my last couple of months rewriting the retreat manuscript. We did a tremendous amount of additional research–our bibliography went from 17 pages to 38 in the process. We took what started out as a general but reasonably thorough tactical study of the fighting during the retreat and turned it into a full-blown scholarly study along the lines of Plenty of Blame to Go Around. In the process, we’ve literally used hundreds of sources. I counted, and there are 807 entries in the bibliography, all of which were legitimately consulted, and hundreds of which were actually cited. I’m really proud of it.

There are lots of things that are different from Kent Brown’s book. Brown’s book is primarily oriented toward a study of the logistics of the retreat, and really focuses on the Confederate viewpoint. While it certainly does contain some tactical detail, that’s not the book’s primary function.

Our work is extremely tactical–that’s its primary focus. We’ve written the most tactically detailed interpretations of the fighting during the retreat ever attempted. Our other primary focus is on the decisions made by the Union high command during the retreat and how they impacted the eventual outcome of events. Consequently, our book is complementary to, but at the same time, very, very different from Kent’s.

I’ve sent it to J. D. and Mike for their final passes at it, and then it’s off to Ted Savas to be put into production.

It will be out by the anniversary of the battle next year, and I can only hope that it’s as well received as Plenty of Blame to Go Around has been. I likewise hope that those of you who indulge my rantings here enjoy the book as much as I did putting it together.

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I’ve become a huge fan of Roger Hunt’s work. Roger is one of the most diligent and effective researchers out there. To date, Roger has published three of the most useful books in my reference library. I discussed these books in detail in a lengthy post back in January.

Of special interest is Roger’s series of books profiling Union colonels. To date, two volumes in the series have been published. One book covers just New York. The other covers the New England states. I’ve been referring to them regularly during the writing of our study of the retreat from Gettysburg, and the photos found in these books are also very useful. Other than that the prior publisher had priced them excessively, I can’t say enough good things about these two books. Unfortunately, the prior publisher decided that the books didn’t sell enough copies, and elected to discontinue publishing the series.

I heard some great news the other day.

The newest volume in the series will be published by Stackpole on October 10. Unlike its predecessors, this book is very reasonably priced at $29.95. It covers the Mid-Atlantic states, meaning that it addresses the colonels from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. Fortunately, it will be published in the same 8 1/2 x 11 format as the first two books in the series, and I likewise hope that Stackpole will continue with the high grade, glossy Baxter paper used by the prior publisher.

I’ve been waiting for this book since the New York volume was published in 2003. I’m really looking forward to seeing the new volume.

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Sean Dail’s comment to last night’s post got me thinking about the whole concept of speaking to promote one’s books concept of marketing. I’ve done a tremendous amount of this over the course of the last ten years. I’ve always taken the attitude that when I speak, I have a room full of potential book buyers in front of me. Sometimes, people do buy, but more often than not, they don’t. Some groups are better about it than others, and some are downright terrible about it.

I rarely charge other than some travel money for speaking engagements for this reason. Don’t get me wrong–if it’s part of a commercial enterprise, then I fully expect to get my fair share of the pie. Conferences usually pay pretty well, which is why I readily accept invitations to participate in them. However, the overwhelming majority of Civil War Roundtables can’t afford to pay stipends, and most don’t. Most will cover travel expenses, but there are even a handful that won’t do that. Virtually all will offer the opportunity to sell books.

Over the course of the past ten years, I’ve easily spoken to 40 or 50 Roundtables around the country, some more than once. It’s enabled me to visit places I might not otherwise have gotten to see, such as my trip to New Orleans and Austin this past spring. More often than not, it wears me out. The travel is tiring, and so is the actual act of speaking. I rarely sell more than half a dozen or so books, so it’s questionable whether there’s enough of a financial reward to make it worth the while. To be honest, after nearly fifteen years of doing it regularly (literally hundreds of times), I’m beginning to grow a bit weary of the whole thing. I still enjoy the interaction with the public, but one can only get so excited about doing the same talk for the 100th time.

Stephen W. Sears does not accept speaking engagements at all. He calls it the “cannonball circuit.” I first heard that Steve doesn’t do speaking engagements in 1990 or so when I was the program chairman of our Civil War Roundtable and contacted him to invite him to speak. He has never elaborated for me the reasons why he chooses not to do speaking engagements, and I’ve never asked. I always figured that if he wanted me to know, he would have told me.

Likewise, I know that Bill Frassanito has stopped doing speaking engagements. Bill told me that in person the last time that I was in Gettysburg. Bill would prefer to sit down with his legion of fans at the Reliance Mine Saloon and enjoy an adult beverage or two, in an effort to engage in some direct sales techniques.

I am also aware that some of the academic historians who make up the core of the Civil Warriors blog have a very different philosophy about this. Brooks Simpson spelled it out well in this post.

First, I’m not a traveling bookstore. I’ve never carried with me books to sign. There are plenty of ways to obtain my writings, and frankly I think it’s somewhat embarrassing, even humiliating, to assume we are there to peddle our wares. If I want to publicize something, there are far more effective ways to reach a far larger audience.

Fourth, although many people are very appreciative and kind, I do detect in a few members of the audience some of the traits Mark has highlighted. I don’t think a CWRT or any other group is doing me a professional favor by having me come and talk. Rather, what I’m doing is a professional courtesy. I am very surprised when people in other white collar professions treat me in ways they would not be treated, and expect me to give away for free knowledge and insight for which they would charge … and then assume that I should be grateful for that opportunity. What makes that even more amusing is to hear mumblings afterward that some people ascribe to me behavior they exhibited in my presence: some folks actually like to demean what I do by saying, “that’s your opinion,” “I know better,” or whatever. I don’t think they would take that so kindly if they were the “expert” being consulted; if you are going to treat me that way, then why have me come in the first place, and why do you show up? This said, these encounters with smugness and condescension are the exception, not the rule, in my experience. Then again, I’ve never spoken before some of the groups Mark and Kevin Levin have mentioned.

Mark Grimsley makes similar points. There is a great deal of validity to what they both say.

To be honest, I’m beginning to re-think the whole strategy of promoting my books through speaking to Civil War Roundtables. Each trip keeps me from doing client work that I get paid to do, and each trip prevents me from working on my various research projects and the like. I’m just not sure how many more Roundtable talks I’m going to agree to do that require me to travel more than an hour or two for these reasons.

Let me throw it open to you, my readers. What do you all think about this issue? Please feel free to speak freely; nobody is being graded on this, and it helps me to make some important decisions.

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I have a little bit of attention deficit disorder. It means that I tend to have a short attention span and that my mind often wonders unless I have something specific to focus on. I am able to focus to the point of exclusion of everything else when I need to do so, but I need a little bit of distraction to do so. That’s why I usually have the radio playing in my office during the day, since that little bit of distraction allows me to concentrate.

I had one of those moments today when I didn’t have anything specific to do and allowed my mind to wander a bit. Next thing I know, instead of thinking about my client’s lawsuit, which is probably what I SHOULD have been thinking about, I found myself instead thinking about how George Gordon Meade handled the pursuit of Lee’s army after Gettysburg (which has been a source of nearly constant thought and consideration over the past few weeks). Although it kept me from doing work that I probably should have been doing (and for which I would get paid), I found myself hashing things out in my mind yet again, and damn if I didn’t come up with a new twist today.

I’m not going to share it here, as I don’t want to steal my own thunder just yet, but suffice it to say that it is an insight that I have never had previously, and it’s worthy of discussing in the book. I just need to work on it some more, organize my thoughts, and then I will include it in the final chapter, which is where we present our analysis and conclusions.

It’s another example of me thinking too much. Often, that’s not a good thing. But this time, I think it was.

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My recent rant apparently rankled Marc Leepson, the author of a recent book on the Battle of Monocacy. Evidently, he tried to post a comment to my rant, and failed for whatever reason. Consequently, he tracked me down through my professional website and sent me an e-mail through the “contact me” feature.

So that nobody can accuse me of censorship of comments or of not permitting Mr. Leepson the opportunity to respond, here is the e-mail verbatim (although I have left out his telephone number and personal e-mail address, both of which the form requires):

Name : Marc Leepson
email : XXXXXXXXXX@aol.com
phone : (XXX) XXX-XXXX
comments : I tried submitting this as a post to your blog, but it seemed to be rejected.

Please think twice the next time when you make such harsh criticism. All of the reviews of the book have been extremely positive, from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly Book List, The Washington Post (by Jonathan Yardley), and the Richmond Times Dispatch. You can read the Yardley Review and the PW review in their entirety on the Amazon.com page for Desperate Engagement. The others are exceprted on my web site, www.marcleepson.com

I want to respond to several of the comments.

1. I have, indeed, read the book, just as I read everything that gets published on the Battle of Monocacy. As I have said here repeatedly, this is a subject of great interest to me, and I snap up everything about this battle I can get my hands on. What I did not do was spend a great deal of time going through the footnotes. Instead, I carefully went through the bibliography, and NONE of the sources that Mr. Leepson mentions in his e-mail were included in the bibliography. Why they weren’t included there is a complete mystery to me. I am, however, willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that his publisher made that ill-advised call, and not Mr. Leepson.

It also bears noting that I was referring to UNPUBLISHED manuscript material with respect to memoirs, diaries, and letters, not published sources. Just about all of the sources Mr. Leepson claimed that he used were published. Anyone can find the published materials. The trick–and the talent–is in finding the caches of unpublished material.

2. Sean Dail has already pointed out to me that I was wrong about the Bearss book not being mentioned (see the very first comment to my original post), and I acknowledge that error.

3. I believe that the rest of my critique remains valid and appropriate. The fact is that Mr. Leepson is not an authority on the Civil War, and does not have a solid grasp of either the tactics or the terrain. As an old friend of mine, who spent 26 years as a combat engineer in the U. S. Army, is very fond of saying, “the terrain is THE primary source.” No truer words have ever been spoken. One can only truly understand Civil War combat by spending the time on the terrain and letting it talk to you. You HAVE to understand both the tactics AND the terrain, and, with all due respect to Mr. Leepson, there simply is no way that he could have spent the necessary time on the terrain in three visits, most of which were evidently spent going through the park’s research files, to really understand either the terrain or the tactics. Over the years, I have visited this battlefield at least 15 times, and have had to figure out the terrain and tactics on my own, before there was interpretation available out there.

By contrast, I spent seven entire days on the battlefield at Trevilian before thinking about writing, and then made several more trips DURING the process of writing to make sure that I had the terrain correct. The same holds true of my Monroe’s Crossroads study.

4. The lack of a response to my criticism of the lack of good maps speaks volumes. Again, there is no way to do any sort of detailed tactical study of a major battle with three maps for a 250 page book. It simply can’t be done.

As pointed out in my original post, this book does have some real pluses. It’s very well written, as I would expect of a journalist. It likewise gives an excellent overview of things, and makes for a good introductory study of this important battle. However, as someone who is hardly a novice, I found it really lacking in the sort of depth that I would expect, and instead was disappointed by its cursory examination of these events.

In short, the door remains wide open for a detailed tactical study of this important battle. I understand that one of the park rangers at the Monocacy National Battlefield is working on just that, to be published by the park, so I guess I will just have to wait and see how that pans out.

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If I may be allowed just a moment of blowing my own horn…..

Tom Ryan of Bethany Beach, Delaware, the president of the Central Delaware Civil War Roundtable,, and an expert on intelligence gathering operations during the Civil War, and who regularly reviews new Civil War books, has published a review of my history of Rush’s Lancers in yesterday’s edition of The Washington Times newspaper.

Here’s Tom’s review. I am quite pleased with it, and think it a very fair review of the book:

The 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry became the subject of interest as well as humorous comments during the Civil War because of its peculiar weaponry: The troopers carried 9-foot lances with a colorful pennant displayed on the leading edge. While lances were curiosity pieces, they also proved to be antiquated and ineffective.

In “Rush’s Lancers,” Eric Wittenberg has effectively related the story of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry — men from all social classes who found common ground to fight for the Union cause.

As I said, I’m very pleased with this review. I think Tom’s critique is fair, and I also think that it’s comprehensive. This sort of feedback from knowledgeable peers is part of what makes me keep coming back for more.

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It’s been a long time since my last good rant. However, after scooping something close to ten pounds of dog poop in the back yard, I’ve got a good one coming.

The Battle of Monocacy, fought July 9, 1864, has long fascinated me. I first visited the battlefield in April 1992, not long after the National Park Service acquired the land. At that time, other than the monuments that were placed on the battlefield by the veterans, there was no interpretation whatsoever, and no visitor’s center. We were left to try to figure it out on our own. It was very difficult to do, and knowing almost nothing about the battle, I failed pretty miserably. All I could do was to try to get a feel for the terrain and then try to figure out the details later.

In those years, the park has come a long way. It has a brand new visitor center ably documented by Mannie Gentile. Nearly the entire main battlefield is preserved, save those portions destroyed by the construction of I-270, which cuts through a corner of the field. There is now good interpretation, and there are several terrific walking trails on the Worthington and Thomas farm properties. The park is an oasis in the middle of Frederick, Maryland’s terrible suburban sprawl. Within a few hundred yards of the new visitor center is a huge shopping mall. That’s how close we came to losing this gem of a battlefield.

The northern portion of the field, where Ohio militia stood and fought like veterans against Jubal Early’s veterans, is long gone to development. It’s tragic, but it happened.

As a consequence of the lack of interpretation on the field, I set about educating myself about the battle. I ended up writing an article on it that was published in America’s Civil War, my second ever published historical work. I’ve retained an interest in the battle and visit the field whenever I get an opportunity. A couple of years ago, J. D. and I decided to try to tackle our own interpretation of it.

Consequently, earlier this year, I became very concerned when I learned that a fellow named Marc Leepson was about to come out wiht a new book on the Battle of Monocacy. Leepson describes himself as “a journalist, historian and the author of six books”. While he teaches history at a local community college in Northern Virginia, the vast majority of his career has been spent as a journalist. The book on Monocacy is his first publication on the Civil War.

I bought the book today. The book states that the idea to write it came from Leepson’s agent. In other words, it’s a commercial venture. It wasn’t written because of a long-standing interest in the battle. It wasn’t written because of a fascination with Early’s invasion of Maryland. It was’t the product of a Civil War historian of long-standing credentials. Now, please don’t get me wrong. I’m all for making money. Few truer statements have ever been made than what Dr. Ben Johnson said when he declared, “no man but a blockhead ever wrote but for money.” I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. I don’t begrudge Mr. Leepson success with his book; I hope he makes a nice buck on it.

However, the fact that he is not a Civil War historian is abundantly clear from a glance at the bibliography to his book. He did no newspaper research at all. That means some wonderful sources such as The National Tribune, one of my very favorite sources, were completely overlooked. Published soldier letters, written at the time of the events and then published in the soldier’s hometown newspapers, are also some of my very favorite sources. Finally, conventional newspaper coverage can provide excellent material. Leepson did not touch the newspapers.

He also did almost no archival research. He looked at a few collections at the Virginia State Library and a few at the University of North Carolina, but that’s it. He did apparently ignored crucial repositories such as the United States Army Military History Institute, Duke University, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and others. As just one example, there were two Medals of Honor awarded for valor at Monocacy, and the author failed to examine the Medal of Honor files at the National Archives, which are a treasure trove of good primary source information. Instead, he relied upon a secondary source, which is just plain lazy.

The scope of the author’s survey of the published primary sources also did not impress me. As just one small example, an officer of the 10th Vermont Infantry named Lemuel A. Abbott published his diary and memoirs. The 10th Vermont suffered the highest casualties of any Union unit at Monocacy, but yet the author missed this book. Abbott’s book, by the way, is available in a relatively inexpensive reprint edition, which makes missing it even tougher to swallow. Again, you’re never going to get EVERY source–it’s impossible. However, there are some that shouldn’t be missed, and this is one of them.

The one I REALLY don’t get it how the author–who lives perhaps an hour away–did not even visit the Historical Society of Frederick County, which is located in downtown Frederick. Given that the battle was fought just outside the town limits of the city of Frederick, I can’t begin to imagine how the author missed the collections there, if for no other reason to see whether there were useful civilian accounts in the collection. But he did.

I also didn’t see a reference to Ed Bearss’s study of the battlefield that was published a couple of years ago. It’s available, and it’s less than $20. How could someone claim to be an authority on this battle and not have taken advantage of such an important source?

In short, the book seems relatively well-written, as I would expect of a journalist, with only three maps and a few illustrations. How a battle book can only include three maps is a mystery to me. I find the scope and depth of the research profoundly disappointing. Consequently, the door remains wide open for J. D. and me to pursue our project on Monocacy, which will include the sort of tactical detail and detailed tour guide that we’re known for.

Again, I’m all for writing as a commercial venture. However, it REALLY galls me when someone writes a book like this as a money making venture, lands it with a big commercial publisher (and probably with a nice advance), and turns out something eminently forgettable, as this book is. It bothers me a great deal to see books that don’t deserve it getting promoted and play with the big book chains when they simply don’t deserve it. What’s wrong with this picture?

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