Civil War books and authors

Some time ago, I mentioned that, as I was trying to put my new regimental history of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry to bed, I discovered a large set of letters that I had not found the first time around. Consequently, the project had to be put on hold while I tracked the letters down. My researcher in Philadelphia made a trip to the University of Pennsylvania, and reviewed them for me. He reported back that they were great letters, just filled with good material. Thus, there was no choice but to wait, since I just wouldn’t have been able to live with myself knowing that I had missed something significant like that.

The letters arrived while I was in Philadelphia earlier this week. I got to see them for the first time on Tuesday and was blown away by just how good they are. In truth, they’re probably worthy of publication on their own. For these purposes, though, I had to go through them one at a time and insert pertinent material into my manuscript. It took me pretty much all evening for three straight nights to get this finished, but I’m pleased to report that it is, in fact, finished. I sent the final versions of all chapters to the publisher this evening. The final version of the manuscript is just about exactly 120,000 words in length.

I finally feel like I’ve gotten everything that there was to be had on this regiment. I have about a dozen different sets of letters, several post-war memoirs, a couple of diaries, the 1868 regimental history, and tons of newspaper articles. If there’s anything more out there, it’s in private hands and I don’t know about it.

I’ve been working on the Lancers in earnest since 1994, which is when I decided to tackle researching this regiment and studying their storied history. Twelve years later, it’s finally done. It’s almost an undescribable feeling.

I have also finished chapter 12 of the Dahlgren bio. With the completion of that chapter, Dahlgren is dead and buried in his final resting place in Philadelphia. The controversy surrounding his life and death has been spelled out in detail. I have one chapter left to go: my assessment of Ulric Dahlgren’s unfinished life. There’s also one appendix to do, which will address the authenticity/legitimacy of the so-called “Dahlgren Papers” found on Ulric’s body when he was killed on March 2, 1864. In short, there’s finally a very large light at the end of that particular tunnel after nine months of working (on and off, but mostly on) on the first draft of the manuscript. I will start on that final chapter when I get back from my coming trip to Richmond, meaning that I’m taking the week off from writing beginning tomorrow and ending a week from Sunday.

Of course, once I do finish that first draft, there will be lots of editing and tweaking to do, but the important thing is that the heavy lifting is finally almost done.

I feel like I’m finally getting somewhere.

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The following is a list of things that I can only pray that you will NEVER find in one of my books:

Every year, English teachers from across the country submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

This stuff is every bit as bad as Snoopy’s “It was a dark and stormy night….” stories. 🙂

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As anyone who has spent any significant time working with the Official Records of the Civil War (the “O. R.”) knows, there was a ton of information–an overwhelming amount, actually–included in them. There was also a lot of information that was not included.

Tom Broadfoot, the owner of Broadfoot Publishing, decided to publish a 100-volume supplement to the O. R. that would add additional reports, a couple of transcripts of court martials or courts of inquiry, and complete itineraries of every regiment of either side. This evening, I went through several volumes of the Broadfoot supplements to make sure I hadn’t missed anything Dahlgren-related, which got me thinking about the set, which is what inspired this post.

There are two major problems with the Broadfoot supplements. First, and foremost, is the price. The $5500 price is enough to make anyone gag; only libraries with too much money have the ability to afford this set. It’s not available on CD-ROM, so if you want it, you’ve either got to bite the bullet and spend the money, or you have to find a library and use it there.

That, of course, raises the question of whether they’re worth the outrageous price. My humble opinion is that they are not. I have a small portion of the set–the twelve volumes that truly supplement the O. R. and the two trial transcripts. I also have four or five of the itinerary volumes. When I got the first volume of the itinerary stuff, I was definitely not impressed, but I decided to wait, get a couple or three more of those volumes, and then make a decision. I decided that they were definitely NOT worth the money and terminated my subscription at that point. I have those volumes of the Broadfoot supplement that are worth owning.

There’s also the issue of what’s in the volumes of supplemental material. Some of it is quite good. Much of it is not. The sense that I get is that Broadfoot was hasty about trying to get the set published instead of investing more time and effort into researching and gathering additional material, as I am aware of some good material that was uncovered after these volumes were published but which would have been appropriate to include. As just one example, I recently found a report of the actions of the 1st Vermont Cavalry during the Gettysburg Campaign written by the regimental commander to the Vermont adjutant general that was not included in the O. R. but which was published in a local newspaper in Rutland, VT. This report is different from the one in the O. R., and includes some different/additional details on the specifics of Farnsworth’s Charge on the third day at Gettysburg. It’s just one of many such examples that I am aware of.

My conclusion, therefore, is that the set might have been worth its absolutely outrageous purchase price if the additional time and effort to do it right had been invested by the publisher. As it stands, it’s one of those “what might have been” things that remains a persistent disappointment to me.

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Susan’s sister from Pittsburgh came into town today to see an old friend who’s about to move to Arkansas. She brought the twins with her, and we all went out to dinner tonight. After dinner, the four women decided that they wanted to go shoe shopping.

That was an activity that was about as appealing to me as getting my teeth drilled without novocaine, so I took my leave and wandered over to the local Barnes & Noble store. Now, this is the one that I swore rather vehemently I wouldn’t go into since they won’t carry my books. It’s a matter of principle with me, but I went tonight because there wasn’t much else to do to pass the time. It was the better of two bad options.

Having said that, I was very pleasantly surprised when I got there. If anything, this store’s selection of Civil War books is even smaller now than it was the last time that I was in it. They had maybe 25 Civil War books in the history section, and I was stunned to find four copies of my Monroe’s Crossroads book there among the 25 or so Civil War books. I was so stunned that I had to call Susan and tell her.

I gathered up the four copies, took them to the counter, and asked if they would like me to sign them for them. The guy behind the counter looked at me like I was brain damaged, so I told him that yes, I am the author of the book, and yes, I live in Columbus, and that I would be very pleased to sign the books if they wanted me to do so. He blinked stupidly a couple of times, and then what I was telling him finally sunk in. At that, he grabbed a Sharpie and asked me if I would mind signing all four. I said sure, and did so. I prefer a fountain pen with a medium nib when signing, but on this occasion, I would have signed with anything. I gave him a business card and told him to call me if he needed any more signed.

I was so tickled by finding my book there that I actually spent some money in the store. I bought a dirt-cheap ($5) copy of the Mary Chesnut diary (hard to believe, I know, but I never owned a copy of it before tonight) and a magazine, spending, all told, about $9.00. Considering that it’s been over a year since I last spent anything in there, that was pretty remarkable.

I MAY actually go back there again some time soon. As long as they continue to carry my books, I will gladly go back. The minute my books disappear again, so do I.

It’s my own little futile gesture. I realize it’s meaningless in the big scheme of things, but it makes me feel better. Ultimately, that’s what really matters here.

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Lest it be said that I am a complete Cro-Magnon Man, I wanted to follow up on what I said yesterday.

Someone–who didn’t have the guts to sign his name to his comment–posted a comment on Kevin Levin’s blog that says that I research and write for entertainment. I want to address that comment. While it’s true that my projects are chosen based on my own interest, I also do so because researching and writing about things is how I LEARN about them. I find that doing so is the best way for me to learn. While I don’t have to worry about the old “publish or perish” rule, and don’t write because my job security depends on it, I also write because I am, at heart, a teacher, and since I erred in going to law school and not history grad school, this is how I scratch that particular itch.

Also, when I finish Dahlgren, I have a book on John Hunt Morgan’s great Indiana and Ohio Raid of 1863 under contract. Given the fact that the raid covered about 1100 miles and that many, many civilians fell in its path–many of whom had horses, cattle, and other possessions taken from them by Morgan’s men–the social history aspects of the raid will, by necessity, take up as much space as the tactical (let’s face it–there’s not much tactical to discuss simply riding from one place to the next). Showing how Morgan’s men affected these folks–and in places like Louisville and Cincinnati, which were brushed by the raid but not directly invaded–is most assuredly an appropriate melding of social and military history, and one where I believe it is appropriate. Hence, a good portion of my research is from the civilians along the way and not just the reminiscences of soldiers.

If I can pull this off–and I hope I can, as I don’t have much experience with the social history aspects–then I think that I will have accomplished the sort of blend that meets what Ken Noe called “the new Civil War history” in his fine Perryville book.

That, I believe, is the sort of balance that should be the focus. To be very clear about my position on these matters (which, I think, has been a bit misconstrued, and which is probably my fault for not being clear), my complaint is where the social history overwhelms the military/tactical. That’s where I think that the problems arise, and that was my complaint about Rable’s book on Fredericksburg. In my mind, the best study is that which is balanced, and that’s what I’m trying to accomplish.

Note to the commentator on Kevin’s blog: It’s really a shame that you didn’t have the guts to sign your comment and to engage me in a dialogue directly, as it might have been fun. Instead, you took the low road, insulted me, made personal attacks on me, and then hid behind a veil of anonymity. Very mature of you. I can only hope that the likes of you aren’t in front of a classroom teaching America’s youth. By the way, anonymous comments are not permitted here, so you won’t be able to play your cowardly game here. If you want to discuss something with me, do so like a man. Otherwise, you are beneath contempt.

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Today, being the 143rd anniversary of the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, seems a good time to make an announcement.

In 1986, Ed Longacre published his book The Cavalry at Gettysburg. It won lots of awards when it was published–and rightfully so. It was a groundbreaking work, the first full-length study to focus entirely on mounted operations during the Gettysburg Campaign. There are a couple of problems with the book. First, and foremost, Ed’s never been known as a tactical historian. His works always deal with the big picture and seldom contain much in the way of tactical detail. Consequently, all of the campaign’s mounted actions, including the fourteen hour slugging match at Brandy Station, are covered in 338 pages. That, by definition, means that there is little in the way of tactical detail, and few maps.

Second, Ed’s book is now a bit dated. It no longer represents the state of the art. For one thing, the book repeats lots of myths as the gospel truth, including repeating the myth that John Buford’s troops were armed with repeaters at Gettysburg on July 1, when this is not the case. Lots of good new primary source material has surfaced since the publication of Ed’s book twenty years ago. As one excellent example, Ed lamented the fact that John Buford evidently did not pen an official report of the Battle of Brandy Station. Three years after the publication of Ed’s book, Buford’s report was found in the Joseph Hooker papers in the archives of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, thereby changing the interpretation of the battle forever.

J. D. Petruzzi and I got to talking about things, and we realized that, between us, we have published on about 85% of the mounted actions during the Gettysburg Campaign, and that we had plenty of research material on the remaining 15%. We realized that if we combined all of our stuff and updated it, we could then produce a two-volume set on mounted operations in the Gettysburg Campaign that would hopefully stand as the definitive work on the subject. It will represent a lifetime’s work for both of us–probably thirty years of combined research and scholarship. Our proposed project will have the tactical detail that Longacre’s book lacks, and we will also be able to update the research and make it reflect the state of the art for the research.

John Heiser, who is technically retired from cartography, has agreed to make an exception for us and to complete our map set. Between the prior maps and the new ones, the set will have approximately 50 maps, and we anticipate somewhere in the vicinity of 100 period illustrations and probably 50-100 contemporary views of the sites involved. All told, the thing could approach 1,000 pages in length, and we hope that it will stand as THE work on the subject.

The working title for the project is To Horse!: Mounted Operations in the Gettysburg Campaign. It’s obviously going to take a substantial period of time to complete a project of this magnitude, so please don’t expect it to be done tomorrow, or in six months. I have to finish Dahlgren, and I have a book on John Hunt Morgan’s Indiana and Ohio raid of 1863 under contract that will have to be completed, too. We’ve approached Ted Savas of Savas-Beatie about publishing it, and Ted has expressed a definite interest.

We will keep everyone posted.

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I put in a couple of good hours on Dahlgren tonight. My chapter on the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid is now at 6900 words, and I still have a LOT of material left to go before I feel like it’s done. My guess is that it will exceed 10,000 words when it’s all said and done. It feels really good to get back to it. I’m re-energized and finally back in the groove. I think that I will be able to finish this eleventh chapter in a week or so. Once it’s done, I have two more chapters and a couple of appendices to go, and then, at long last, the first draft of the Ulric Dahlgren biography will be complete.

I won’t be able to work on it again until Thursday. Tomorrow is Susan’s and my 14th wedding anniversary, and even though it’s a week night, we’re going to go have a nice dinner. Wednesday night will be a lot of fun. One of my clients is a local theater company called the Shadowbox Cabaret. Imagine Saturday Night Live at its best, only with a killer in-house band instead of visiting bands. Wednesday night, in a special appearance, Garrett Morris of SNL fame will be performing with the Shadowboxers, and we’re going with a bunch of friends. It’s going to be a great time and great way to celebrate our anniversary.

See everyone on Thursday.

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I wanted to give everyone an update as to the status of the book on Stuart’s Ride during the Gettysburg Campaign that I did with J. D. Petruzzi.

Originally, the book was supposed to have been published by now. We had hoped and expected that it would have been out by now, or at least that was the plan. However, the History and Military Book Clubs were evaluating the book, and that process took an unreasonably long period of time, something like two months. That obviously trashed the time line for the release of the date, and meant that we missed the 143rd anniversary event commemorating Corbit’s Charge in Westminster, MD this weekend. We had originally hoped that the book would be out in time for us to sign books there. Unfortunately, that didn’t come to pass.

The good news, though, is that the book clubs have apparently FINALLY finished their reviews and the book goes to the printer tomorrow. That means that in six weeks or so, we will have books. Stay tuned. More to follow…..

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As promised, today I will tackle some the mechanics of how I write. No, I don’t mean noun, verb, adverb, preposition. What I mean is how I get to finished product.

By way of background, my style has always been to permit the soldiers to tell their own stories in their own words wherever possible. I therefore often see my role as narrator, connecting their stories in the proper factual context, so that the whole thing makes sense and is historically correct.

Also, as my regular readers know, I am a lawyer. I write pretty much all day every day. Due to the nature of what I do, I rarely have the luxury of spending hours and hours laboring over a single paragraph. Instead, we have to get stuff done, often promptly and quickly, due to deadlines and budgetary constraints. Finally, I have a very short attention span, too short to be able to labor over a single paragraph for hours on end. Instead, my preferred method has always been to get things down on paper–a complete draft–and then to go through multiple revisions to tweak it. My book on Sheridan’s Trevilian Raid went through about twenty drafts because of this.

I start with an outline. Because I know what I want to say, the outline is not terribly detailed, and is just really there to remind me to make sure that everything gets included. I then build a baseline of narrative. For purposes of illustration, we can use what I’ve done on the Dahlgren manuscript the last two nights. Ully Dahlgren’s death triggered a tremendous controversy, so it’s extremely well documented, probably more so than the death of any other colonel of the war, save perhaps Elmer Ellsworth. Consequently, I have a huge amount of material on the subject, so figuring out what to use is a critical piece of the puzzle.

The baseline is the basic facts. For this chapter, I used two sources to craft the baseline: volume 33 of the OR, and the memoir of Ulric’s life by his father. They mesh together well enough that I have assembled the basic facts. Next comes the process of incorporating additional materials to flesh it out. Having selected those things that I want to use, I plug stuff in, making sure that there are proper transitions, and that the additional material does not break up the flow of the narrative and makes sense where it’s been added.

When that’s done, and an entire draft is complete, then I begin tweaking and revising. My first drafts are decent, but they always need work. I will print it out, grab different colored pens, and then start going through the manuscript, marking changes. I use a different color of ink for each complete pass at the manuscript so that I can easily tell when I made the change. Once I’m done–usually three passes–I will then sit at the computer and plug in the changes. I will then print it out one more time, and then go through it the same way once or twice more. At the end of that process, I typically am completely incapable of seeing anything else wrong or that needs work.

When I reach that point, I then bring in my network of friends who read stuff for me. They will read it, mark up the draft and then send it back. Using my author’s discretion, I decide what of those suggestions to use or not use, but I typically end up making over 90% of the suggested changes, and usually 100% of the suggestions to correct factual errors (yes, we all do make them). Once I’ve gotten the last set of feedback, I take one last pass at it, and then it’s finished.

It’s a cumbersome process, but it works for me. I’ve actually learned to short-cut the process a lot over the years. The Monroe’s Crossroads book only went through about seven drafts instead of the twenty-four that Trevilian went through. By the time it leaves my hands as a finished product, I’ve been through it so many times that I can’t see anything more, but it does not leave my hands until I am satisfied that it’s the best product I can produce, and that it’s factually correct and accurate.

So, that’s the process. Like legislation and sausage making, it’s not a pretty thing to watch, but hopefully, the final product is worth the bother. 🙂

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In a comment to last night’s post, Charles Bowery asked, “You may have done this before, but for the benefit of the members of your fan club who also write, could you do an entry describing your work methods? How much time you spend daily, how you set up your space, how you use technology/notes, etc.” Good questions, Charles. Interestingly, I had already thought of addressing these questions on my own, and was intending to do so. I’m going to break this up into a couple of pieces, so the first part will run tonight and the rest tomorrow night. Tonight, I will address the logistical issues that Charles mentioned in his comment, and tomorrow night, I will address the actual mechanics of how I go about writing.

When I’m in writing mode, I try to write at least two hours at a time, at least three nights per week. That’s about the minimum time for me to be reasonably productive, and I need to sustain it in order to develop some momentum and make substantial progress toward the completion of the project. I try to write between three and five pages of new material each night when I do write. I find that’s a good benchmark, as it covers the actual writing as well as the sourcing work that I have to do. Anyone who’s familiar with my work knows that I’m pretty fanatical about footnoting, and I also like to include substantive material in footnotes, and all of that takes time.

How do I set up my space? That’s easy. I do virtually all of my writing on my laptop. I haven’t written a major project on a desktop computer in years. That way, even though I am working very intensely on what I’m doing, I can still do it in the same room with Susan and the dogs, and I have the TV for just a little bit of distraction. I need a little bit of distraction to be able to concentrate, which is why I firmly believe that I have a mild but undiagnosed case of ADD.

I work on the couch in our family room. All around me are piles of books and file folders of research material. I also have a nifty little rolling book cart that sits across the family room from me, and which serves to store the material that is pertinent to the specific portion of the project that I’m working on. The end table next to me is typically pretty piled up with research material, and so is the coffee table in front of me. It definitely looks like a worked-in space between my stuff and the piles of paperback books that Susan is inevitably processing into our Amazon.com database.

As for technology, I’m a pretty hardcore Mac user. I do the bulk of my writing on my Mac G-4 Powerbook laptop, which runs Mac OS X, version 10.4.6, which is also known as Tiger. I use MSWord. To say that I despise Microsoft products is an understatement (I view Microsoft as the Evil Empire, and think that the vast majority of Microsoft’s products are really crappy), and I typically refuse to use them whenever and wherever possible. Unfortunately, I have little choice but to use Word for my writing because it’s the industry standard, and because Word Perfect no longer makes a Mac version. I have a high speed flatbed scanner at my disposal upstairs, and I will regularly scan things and then use the OCR software to convert them to Word files, which can be a great way to save time.

I have the OR’s, Southern Historical Society Papers, and Confederate Military History on CD-ROM, but the truth is that I much prefer to use the books. I own a complete set of the OR, and I generally prefer to use them when doing my work because I like to thumb through the pages of the OR to see what little hidden treasure I might find that might not be picked up by the search engines on the CD-ROM’s. I do use the CD-ROM’s to avoid having re-type lengthy passages, but OCR is imperfect, and you have to be especially vigilant about looking for typos and the like in what you retrieve from the CD-ROM’s.

My personal Civil War library consists of somewhere between 1200 and 1500 Civil War books, including the 128 volumes of the OR’s (I haven’t counted recently and have pretty much lost count). Due to space/storage limitations, the vast majority of what I buy, probably 90%, is stuff that’s pertinent to my work, meaning that most of my library is a working research library. The truth is that most of my pleasure reading is NOT Civil War–at the moment, I’m reading the newest W.E.B. Griffin OSS novel for my mindless bed time pleasure reading. The library is upstairs.

In addition, I also have about a dozen banker’s boxes filled with manila file folders of research material. The stuff is typically organized by subject matter, and usually by project. Sometimes, there’s overlap between the books upstairs and the contents of the research files, but for the most part, the material is different. I always maintain a working bibliography as new material is received, thereby enabling me to keep track of what I’ve got.

When I’m ready to tackle a project, I will go upstairs, pull all of the pertinent files and books, cull through them and decide what I want to use, and then get to work.

Tomorrow night, I will address the mechanics of how I actually put together my various projects.

Charles, I hope that this boring little diatribe is what you were looking for…..Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. 🙂

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