Civil War books and authors

Although I have done some tweaking and tinkering, trying to complete the draft of a chapter that had been hanging, and also in messing around with wrapping up the Rush’s Lancers regimental history project (which took much longer than I thought it would, by the way), I finally got back to work on Dahlgren tonight for real. The last time that I really sat down and wrote, pulling together a new chapter, was the night of March 7, which was the night that Cleo had her stroke. Between having to put her down, and then with the puppy’s arrival, I simply haven’t been able to write in any consequence since then.

Susan and I also have an on-line bookselling business. We purchased the entire inventory of a used book store that went out of business for next to nothing, and Susan’s been diligently working on getting this stuff (more than 10,000 books, mostly paperbacks) inventoried an listed for sale on Amazon. It’s a complicated process which I won’t bore you with. Suffice it to say that while she’s doing that, I can’t write, as I have to take the puppy out to pee every ten or fifteen minutes. We’ve come up with a formula that seems to work. We alternate nights. On nights when she’s doing a box of books, I watch the dogs. On nights when I write, she watches the dogs. Last night was a book inventory night, so tonight was my night to write.

And write I did. I got about six pages of new material written tonight, addressing Dahlgren’s role in the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid (although the controversy comes in the next chapter). I quit tonight after reaching midnight on the night of March 1-2, 1864. March 2 was the last day of Ulric Dahlgren’s life. He was killed shortly after dark that night. I’m just doing basic narrative right now, laying out the basic facts, and will then go back and put meat on the bones once I’ve done so. However, I made some substantial progress for the first time in months, and I have to admit that it felt damned good.

Tomorrow night is Susan’s book night, so it will be Thursday night before I get to write again. Now that I have gotten back into the swing of it, I think that it will go quickly and that I will get this chapter done pretty quickly. The truth is that I had been dreading this one, but it’s come together much more quickly and easily than I ever imagined it would.

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One of the things that I’m really excited about for the history of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry is the collection of illustrations that I’ve accumulated over the years. I have photos of more than 70 members of the regiment plus a bunch of other associated illustrations. They run the gamut from photos of the two regimental monuments at Gettysburg to contemporary woodcuts of the Lancers in the field, to a handsome Winslow Homer painting of Rush’s Lancers in the field in 1862. All told the book will have something in the range of 80 illustrations and about 15 maps. Finding a publisher who would permit me to use/include all of this stuff was critical to my efforts; I didn’t go to all of the trouble of collecting all of this stuff not to include it. For instance, I own a tintype of Lt. William Carey of the Lancers that has never before been published, so I’m really excited about the fact that it will be included. I’ve also gotten a number of photos from descendants of veterans of the regiment that obviously have never been published, either.

The flip side of this equation, however, is that I have spent the last two evenings huddled over the flat-bed scanner upstairs, diligently scanning all of these images. Fortunately, we have a new scanner that’s much faster than our old one, or it would take me about a week to get all of these images scanned. It’s tedious work that doesn’t require much in the way of intellectualism, but it has to be done. So, I turn on Radio Margaritaville and listen to Jimmy Buffett while I slog away at the scanning. I have one photo left to do, and then the maps, and then this particular job is finished. Good riddance, if you ask me.

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Last week, Dimitri Rotov posted about his recent visit to a Barnes & Noble store. He wrote:

Shortly before my recent vacation, I stopped by the Barnes & Noble in Reston to see what was doing in the ACW section. Among regional bookstores, their Civil War section is the smallest for some reason.

There’s the market for you – uncertain. Sweet and sour news for Eric…

Thanks to Dimitri for noticing, and thanks also for the kind words about the book, which is, indeed, a handsome volume.

Then, Mike Koepke picked up the cudgel. Mike wrote:

I would say that I have noticed the same thing. Over the past year, Barnes & Noble has made a conscience decision to reduce the number of Civill War titles on its shelves. Of the 2 stores in my area I have visited, I would say the shelf space devoted to Civil War has dwindled by 50%-60% over the past year. Unless you’re looking for the top sellers or Barnes & Noble books reprints, they are not the place to go if you want to just browse for other off-topic books. Borders has consistantly devoted a much larger section in History to Civil War titles. I would say Borders now has at least 10-15 times more selection.

A number of folks commented that they had seen the same thing, including me. In fact, there are two different Barnes & Noble stores near my house. One is about four miles away, and the other about eight. The closer one is a small store in a neighborhood strip shopping center. The last time that I was in that store, they had about fifteen Civil War books on their shelves. Period. The other store is a superstore–it has two stories, is quite large, and has about three times the inventory of the smaller one. The last time that I was in there, they had about the same number of Civil War books. Our two local Borders stores, on the other hand, continue to maintain a large selection of Civil War books, including multiple copies of many titles. It’s really kind of a shocking comparison.

Given my druthers, I absolutely and categorically refuse to enter either of those Barnes & Noble stores any more. I’m a local author, and they won’t carry my books. I’ve tried to arrange signings at the larger store, and can’t even get the courtesy of a “go pound sand” from them. I used to spend a lot of money in those stores, but I will no longer go in there, and I will no longer buy anything in either one.

Today, Kevin Levin, who has some first-hand, personal knowledge of these things, weighed in. Kevin, who used to work at a Borders store, wrote:

A few of my fellow Civil War bloggers have commented on the poor offerings of Civil War titles at their local stores. Most of us browse either our local Barnes and Noble or Borders and have noticed a difference in the quality of the overall selection. Since I worked for Borders from 1994 to 1998 I can comment on the difference. I worked at the Borders in Rockville, Maryland, which as many of you who live in that area know is one of the larger stores in the chain. I was in charge of the magazine section, but given my growing interest in the Civil War at the time was also responsible for the Civil War section. Those of you who have commented on the selection between these two competitors have rightfully pointed out that Borders seems to offer more. At least when I worked for the company I had the option of ordering any title that I thought would enrich the section. I took full advantage of this opportunity.

There is no doubt that the selection of Civil War titles has diminished in the major chain stores. There is no conspiracy however; it is a simple question of how best to utilize limited space. If you want large selections of books than I suggest you find religion or engage in a little self-reflection to uncover your short-comings and any other psychological malfunction that could be helped by browsing the Self-Help section. I suspect that many people are buying on-line where there are some excellent discounts available. I’ve recently moved in this direction, but I still enjoy browsing a well-stocked store. Amazon typically offers up to a 36% discount on newly-released titles. Small press titles are probably suffering more than those published by the university presses, and the reason is that the latter will be bought by both colleges and university libraries. Perhaps that is why they can get away with charging higher prices as they don’t need to print as many. As I’ve said before, most Civil War enthusiasts don’t read books. And most of the people who attend Civil War Roundtable meetings are senior citizens which suggests that unless new blood is discovered the Civil War section will be even more difficult to find in your local store.

Thanks, Kevin. This is useful insight, and I really appreciate it. It also makes a degree of sense, and goes a long way toward explaining some of the seeming lack of interest.

At the same time, my beef with the local Barnes & Noble stores remains intact and unchanged. That they ignore a local author bothers me to no end. I take it personally, even though the logical side of my brain knows it’s not personal. As I said, I will not go in any of the local B&N stores willingly, and I refuse to spend a dime there when I do go in. On those occasions when I feel compelled to visit one of the large chain bookstores, I will choose Borders almost every time, because our local stores always have at least one of my titles in stock. And when we travel, and I have the option, I really like the Books-a-Million stores. Unfortunately BAM does not have a store anywhere near Columbus, so it’s not very often that I get to shop there, typically only when we’re in North Carolina vacationing.

As I said last night, I much prefer to patronize independent book sellers. For one thing, they appreciate the business more than do the megachains. For another, they have a lot more latitude in what they carry, and finally, they are the bread and butter for small, niche publishers such as Ironclad. Thus, whenever I can, I will patronize one of them before the big guys, and if I have to buy from a big mega-bookseller, I prefer Amazon. They discount, and the book gets delivered to me. I can shop from the convenience of my couch. And they ALWAYS have my books in stock….

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On Saturday, Susan and I visited a local independent bookseller. They actually have a much better selection of Civil War books than any of the local Barnes & Noble stores (I hate Barnes & Noble. However, that’s another rant for another day). Also, the best customers that Ironclad Publishing has are the independents, so I go out of my way to patronize the independents wherever and whenever possible, just because I feel compelled to support those who support us.

Being an independent bookseller, they also have a lot more latitude to focus on things of local interest and on local authors. However, I was unprepared for what I saw when I walked into the store on Saturday. There, in a very prominent position–an end cap–was an entire shelf dedicated to nothing but my work, with a little shelf tag that indicated that I was a local author. There was a second shelf tag, indicating that the book on Stuart’s Ride was forthcoming soon. I was blown away by this…I had no idea that my work was being featured to prominently in a town that has little interest in history as a general rule.

They had about half of my titles there, more than I had expected. I was, however, very surprised not to see a copy of the Monroe’s Crossroads book on the shelf, so Susan asked about it. The clerk said that he was certain that they had a copy of the book in stock, that he had just seen it recently. He looked, and, sure enough, no book. So, he went and checked on the computer, which indicated that it had not been sold and was still in inventory. We looked all over history and local interest, and even in the newly-arrived stuff that was waiting to be shelved, and we couldn’t find the thing anywhere.

The clerk concluded that the book had been the subject of a ten-finger discount. That somebody would shoplift one of my books absolutely blew me away. It simply never had occurred to me that someone would want one of my books enough to steal the thing. It hit me as bizarre and surrealistic, all at the same time. I’m not often left speechless, but on this occasion, I nearly was. I had no idea what to say about it, and I still don’t quite know what to make of it.

That I’m never going to get rich doing this sort of work is something I realized long ago, and it’s something I’m comfortable with. Therefore, it’s just bizarre that somebody would steal one of my books. I thought only best-selling authors had that happen. 🙂

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Last Friday, when we went to Trevilian Station, I photographed about a dozen sites around the battlefield. These photos will be used in the new edition of my study of Sheridan’s Trevilian Raid that will be published by Bison Books in 2007. Although I was hoping to add new material to the main body of the book, I understand why that would be very difficult. It would change everything, from pagination to the existing index, and everything else.

Instead, we agreed that I would be permitted to add a driving tour of the raid that will feature about a dozen contemporary views of the battlefield, which explains the photography last week. I’ve been working on putting together the driving tour, which will be a bit different from the one that was included in the 2002 issue of Blue and Gray magazine that was dedicated to the Trevilian Raid. Things have changed since we originally put that tour together, and it needed more detail and an update.

After a lot of work, I finished the revised driving tour tonight. All that remains to be done is to download the photos from my digital camera and burn the whole works to a CD-ROM, and it’s all done, ready to go to the publisher. I will do that this weekend, and then the project is complete. That’s one that I can check off my list of open and pending projects, which is always a good thing.

There’s still plenty of work to be done on other projects, of course–I still have to incorporate the additional set of letters that’s coming into my new regimental history of the Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry, which will arrive in a week or so. I also have in excess of 100 illustrations to scan for that book and a dozen or so maps. Once I get that stuff done, then that project can, after a dozen-plus years, also be put to bed. After so many years, it hardly seems possible that it will be finished, but so it is.

There’s always more. J. D. Petruzzi and I are kicking around an idea that will be a monumental task, probably requiring two volumes in order to do it right. More on that later, as the idea coalesces.

For now, fear not. I am plenty busy.

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As an author who always has multiple projects going on, each one of which is typically in a different stage of the production process, it can sometimes be difficult to keep all of it straight. Sometimes, I feel like I need a critical path schedule like those used in construction projects, which sets benchmark dates and prioritizes things.

That would, of course, be overkill, but it sometimes feels like it’s that confusing. Here’s an example. At present, I have the following projects going on:

1. Stuart’s Ride: waiting for the book clubs to make their decisions and then to the printer; nothing to do but wait.
2. Retreat from Gettysburg: In copy editing. Will require revisions upon completion (this one is a real challenge, since I have two co-authors).
3. Rush’s Lancers regimental history. Waiting on newly found set of letters; must scan over 100 illustrations and a dozen maps.
4. Dahlgren bio: Ten chapters in rough draft form, three to go. Project is temporarily on hold.
5. New edition of Trevilian Station book: Have to finish putting together driving tour and shoot battlefield photos (I’m doing that on Friday of this week). I will work on the driving tour some yet this evening.
6. Morgan’s Raid: In the research phase. Making progress, but it’s going to be quite a while before I’m ready to begin writing.

That’s not all of it, but you get the idea.

Right now, my number one priority is finishing up that driving tour for the new edition of the Trevilian Station book so I can put that project to bed. That is, in part, why the Dahlgren project is temporarily on hold. The other reason is completing the Lancers project. So, while I’m back to work, I’m kind of all over the road with this stuff.

I had hoped to add new material to the Trevilian book–I’ve had a bunch of good new material surface since the book was published in 2001–but Bison Books will not permit to add anything substantive to the text, only the driving tour of the raid with some photos. That’s disappointing, of course, but at least the book will be back in print. It was a pretty good seller, so I’ve never understood why Brassey’s allowed it to go out of print in the first place, especially considering that it was only a couple of years after the book was published, and they had to remainder a whole bunch of them to permit it to go out of print. When push comes to shove, I’m just happy it’s going to be back in print.

And, on top of everything else (and this does not include my professional responsibilities as lawyer), I have my Ironclad duties to attend to. This evening, I had some bookkeeping to do and an order to pack.

How do I keep it all straight? Honestly, I have no idea. I just know that an author’s work is never, ever done. Even for books that have already been published. 🙂

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“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. Many sneer at such thoughts. Certainly, most academic historians would not agree with this assessment, and I don’t either. In fact, the overwhelming majority of my work has been writing battle narrative, not writing biography.

As my regular readers know, I’ve been working on a special labor of love, a full-length biography of Ulric Dahlgren. Tonight, after nearly ninety days away from it as a result of our having to put one dog to sleep and then bringing a new puppy into the house, I finally got back to working on it. I finally got to finish up the tenth chapter of the book, which required only about two hours of work to complete, and the first draft of which is now finished.

This book is my first attempt at the solo writing of a full-length biography. For years, I’ve been working on a full-length biography of John Buford with a friend, so it’s a collaboration and not a solo project. It’s been a challenge putting meat on these bones, but in order to understand Ulric Dahlgren, and in particular, the fashion in which he met his demise, the context of his short but full and controversial life is critical. If you only look at the last few days of his life–and the controversy that has raged for 140+ years as a result–it’s not possible to place Dahlgren’s life in its proper context.

My objective with this project is to fully tell the story of this fascinating young man’s life, place it in its proper historic context, and then do a thorough analysis of his deeds and flaws, and speculate upon what might have been had he lived, which is always a risky thing to do.

I doubt that this will be the last biography project that I will tackle. I can think of a couple of others that I hope to do at some point, including a biography of Union cavalry General David McMurtrie Gregg, and Brig. Gen. Theodore J. Wint, who spent more than forty years in the Army and whose life is microcosm of the United States Army during the second half of the Nineteenth Century. Both of these men deserve to have the stories of their lives told, as nobody has done so to date (although there’s a bad biography of David Gregg that was self-published by the author in the 1980’s).

At the same time, with yet another new biography of Ulysses S. Grant about to hit the market in a couple of weeks, it’s difficult to avoid the nagging question of whether there’s enough undiscovered material out there to justify the publication of yet another biography of a man whose already had dozens of biographical treatments of his life, some very good indeed, and some not very good at all. Is there anything out there that hasn’t already been turned up to justify continuing to churn out more biographies that add little to the body of knowledge?

I can only hope that, by choosing lesser known figures who nevertheless made an impact, I will actually add something useful to the body of knowledge and literature. I specifically hope that my Dahlgren biography–the only full-length treatment of his life yet attempted–will be considered to be a worthwhile project even if its commercial appeal will be limited.

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Old friend Rick Sauers tipped me off to the existence of ArchiveGrid, a new searchable database of available manuscript collections held at various institutions. For researchers who like to make extensive use of unpublished manuscript materials in their work, this is a truly indispensable tool. While they’re getting things ramped up and doing beta testing, access to the site is free. It will only be free until the end of June, and then it will become a for-pay service. Many thanks to Rick for bringing this extremely valuable tool to my attention.

I had my first chance to check it out last night for the first time. I did multiple searches on ArchiveGrid, looking for manuscripts that are pertinent to my various pending projects. I searched for material on John Hunt Morgan’s Indiana and Ohio Raid of 1863, Ulric Dahlgren, the 6th Michigan Cavalry (I am debating whether to do a regimental history of this unit, and am leaning toward doing one), and finally, the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry, which is also known as Rush’s Lancers.

Some of you might recall that before we went on vacation, I made a post here, crowing about how I had finally finished my new regimental history of the Lancers after years and years of work, and that I had submitted the manuscript to the publisher. I was celebrating what I thought was the completion of a project that has lasted for more than a decade. Apparently, and to my very great embarrassment, I spoke too soon.

My search on ArchiveGrid last night turned up a complete set of letters by a trooper of the Lancers that I had never seen or heard of previously. This set of letters was by a member of Company K, and was apparently hiding in plain sight. This collection of letters, by a fellow named Henry Inch Cowan, is in the manuscripts collection at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. I had gotten some material from Penn earlier in the course of my research, so it never even occurred to me that there might be additional material there, let alone a very large set of letters that I had completely missed.

Fortunately, my contract with the publisher doesn’t call for submission of the manuscript until June 30, so I have just over a month to get this stuff and get it incorporated into the main body of the manuscript. I called my researcher in Philadelphia today, and told him about the urgency of getting this material, and he’s going to get it for me in the next ten days or so. If he does, that will leave me plenty of time to get this stuff incorporated into the manuscript.

After twelve long years of researching this regiment, I’m stunned that there’s a major collection of primary source material out there that I had somehow missed. Fortunately, I found it with sufficient time to permit me to obtain the material and to incorporate it into the manuscript without missing my submission date or otherwise jeopardizing the projected October 31 publication date for the book. All I can say is, “whew!”

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Apparently, there is justice in this world.

Today, Little Brown, the publisher of Kaavya Viswanathan’s novel, pulled the plug on the thing permanently after learning that Viswanathan had stolen from two other authors. “Little, Brown and Company will not be publishing a revised edition of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan, nor will we publish the second book under contract,” Michael Pietsch, Little Brown’s senior vice president and publisher, said in a statement.

It turns out that Visnawathan stole from the book version of The Princess Diaries by Megan Cabot and also from a book called Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella. Various accounts have reported the same kinds of spookily similar passages in Visnawathan’s book as passages from these two works, much like the eerie similarity of passage from two books by Megan McCafferty that I noted here last week. As I said then, there are simply too many verbatim or nearly verbatim restatements for these things to be coincidental. It’s extremely interesting to note that Visnawathan has suddenly gone silent, refusing comment and refusing to talk to the press. It seems to me that the deafening silence is the best evidence of her guilt; if she was indeed innocent, wouldn’t she be protesting her innocence loudly?

As an author who has worked hard to maintain his integrity and honesty, I am tickled to learn that Little Brown has done the right thing here and has not only pulled the plug on revising the existing book, but also in canceling its contract with the plagiarist. It remains to be seen whether Kinsella or Cabot will pursue copyright infringement claims against Visnawathan (I sincerely hope they do), or whether Little Brown will sue to recover the large advance that it paid to Visnawathan on breach of contract grounds.

Irrespective of whether the publisher or the other authors take legal action, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that Kaavya Visnawathan’s career as a novelist is over. That, in and of itself, is poetic justice. Of course, Hollywood being what it is, she’ll probably land a tell-all book deal and sell the movie rights and make a fortune, thus receiving a huge reward for being a thief.

I can only hope that doesn’t happen. Sadly, though, P. T. Barnum was quite correct when he said “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.” In a society where a brainless, completely talentless bimbo like Paris Hilton is considered newsworthy and admirable for no reason other than genetics, I don’t hold out a whole lot of hope. However, I remain optimistic and I pray that he will be proved wrong and that justice will be served by Visnawathan’s impending fade into obscurity.

At the very least, my belief in the power of karma has been restored. There is justice in this world.

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I first heard of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry in 1992. I’ve been drawn to this regiment for years for a variety of reasons. One company of the Lancers–Company G–was raised in my home town, Reading, Pennsylvania. Also known as Rush’s Lancers, the regiment was named for its first commanding officer, Col. Richard H. Rush, a member of the legendary West Point Class of 1846. Rush was the grandson of Dr. Benjamin Rush, the patriot who signed the Declaration of Independence, and who founded Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. When I arrived at Dickinson as a freshman in August 1979, one of the first things I noticed was that the college was split into two campuses, including one named for Dr. Rush. Finally, I am a native Philadelphian, although I grew up in Reading. Many of the names of the men who populated this fine regiment have been familiar to me for most of my life, as many of them went on to become captains of industry in the years after the Civil War.

I encountered this unit while researching John Buford, under whom they served for most of 1863. Buford came to greatly respect the courage and steadfastness of this unit after five companies of Lancers made a magnificent charge into the teeth of an entire battalion of Confederate horse artillery at Brandy Station on June 9, 1863. From that moment forward, Buford referred to the Lancers as his “Seventh Regulars.”

The regimental chaplain of the Lancers, Samuel L. Gracey, wrote a history of the regiment in 1868 that was based on his war-time diary. It was an excellent regimental history for its time, but it was an extremely early one that did not have the benefit of input from his fellow veterans, meaning that there was a tremendous well of untapped primary source material out there that could really flesh out the story of this regiment.

Because the Lancers were a highly educated group of men who thoroughly documented their service, there were at least a dozen sets of letters of members of the unit to be found, several diaries, an other miscellaneous memoirs that had never been used to tell the story of the regiment. Given all of that, I decided to tackle a new regimental history. I had originally intended to write this book alone, and that was the course that I was heading down this road when I learned from Ed Longacre in 1998 or so that he had recently submitted a proposal to Combined Books (now part of DaCapo) for a new history of the Lancers. Realizing that there would not be sufficient demand for two new regimental histories of this unit, I asked Ed if he wanted to do this as a joint venture. We would use my research, and I would take the first half of the war, up to and including Brandy Station. I wrote my half of the book, and then waited for Ed to tell me that he was ready for me to ship my research files to him so he could get started writing. After more than two years of waiting, Ed finally told me that due to his other commitments, he was going to have to back out of the project. So, I now had to go forward with finishing the project alone.

After Combined Books was acquired by DaCapo, I realized that DaCapo was definitely NOT the right press for a history of a Pennsylvania cavalry unit. Combined–a Philadelphia-based company–would have been a perfect outlet for the book, but Combined no longer existed, and that was that. I contacted DaCapo, and told them that I wanted out of the contract. After I repaid the minimal $250 advance I’d been paid, I was released from the contract, and then had to find a new publisher.

Last year, I helped Joe Bilby with the Gettysburg portion of his excellent new book on repeating weapons in the Civil War. Joe sent me a copy of the book as a thank you, and I was very impressed with the quality of the book itself and with the production values that were demonstrated. The book was published by a relatively new publishing company, Westholme Publishing, of Yardley, Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia suburbs. Bruce Franklin, the publisher, and I had a dialogue about the book, and Bruce expressed interest in the project, so I sent him some sample material from the manuscript. He then offered me a contract to publish the book, and my problem was solved.

It’s taken me thirteen years to research this regiment fully, and to write a new history. It was a long process, and much to my surprise, I found the second half more difficult to do than the first half. I had expected the first half to be the more difficult portion. This week, I finally got the last of the primary source material that I’d been waiting for, which was some material from the National Archives. I incorporated the good stuff into my manuscript tonight, and it suddenly dawned on me–after all of these years, the book is finally finished. It was have nearly 100 illustrations and a full set of maps, and I am really proud of it. I think that I’ve done this unit justice.

The only thing it won’t have is a roster. After discussing it with Bruce, adding a full roster–over 1800 men took the oath as members of this unit–would make the book huge and largely unaffordable. Instead, we’ve decided to make the roster available for free as a download on the company web site. It’s in an Excel spreadsheet, but that spreadsheet will be available for download in PDF format for free. Thus, anyone who wants it will have the roster, too.

After all of these years of laboring away at this, and after all of these years of trying to do the memory of these men justice, it is, at long last, finished. I can only hope that I have succeeded in telling their story fully and that I have documented the trials and tribulations of these men well enough to do them justice.

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