Civil War books and authors

In case anyone has been living under a stone the past few days, a nineteen-year-old Harvard student named Kaavya Viswanathan, who published her first novel–with a half million dollar advance– a few weeks ago. It turns out that she plagiarized quite a bit of it from two books by another author named Megan McCafferty. According to one article I read, there were nearly forty passages of her novel that were too close for comfort, and some that were verbatim.

Viswanathan appeared on Today this morning and claimed that it was unintentional, that she had read the two books several times in high school and that McCafferty’s words had imprinted themselves on her photographic memory. She claims that she was unaware that it had happened and that she had not intended to do so. As Colonel Potter used to say, “Horse hockey!” I’m sorry. There’s just no way that somebody could quote chapter and verse as often as this young woman did without trying very hard to do so.

Thus, we come to the fundamental question: is plagiarism unethical (never mind the illegal copyright infringement aspect of this)? Of course it is. It is taking someone else’s words, their intellectual property, and claiming it as your own without so much as crediting the author. That’s unethical, and my humble opinion is that Visnawathan should be required to pay back the advance she received as well as any future royalties, too.

Every publishing contract includes a representation and warranty that the work is original to the author. By submitting something that contained so many episodes of plagiarism, Visnawathan has breached her contract. As such, the publisher would be perfectly within its rights to demand a refund of the advance paid. Whether it will do so remains to be seen; so far, they have been supportive of her. McCafferty clearly has a copyright infringement suit if she chooses to pursue it. She has remained silent so far, so nobody knows where she stands on this issue.

If I was a customer who spent good money on a plagiarized work like this, I would feel defrauded, and I would definitely demand my money back.

Obviously, there’s a difference between fiction, which is supposed to be entirely made up by the author, and the sort of non-fiction that I write. By definition, I am required to use other people’s words in my work, since I’m telling stories of events that actually occurred. I prefer to permit the soldiers to tell their own stories in their own words wherever and whenever possible, which means lots of quotations. However, I am fanatical about footnoting and sourcing what I write. There’s no doubt about where I get the material I quote–I am fanatical about footnoting my work. Even a cursory review of the footnotes/endnotes of my books will demonstrate this fact. My The Union Cavalry Comes of Age contains well over 1,000 notes.

My point is that while I do make use of other people’s words, I am fanatical about being sure to credit those words to their authors. I doubt anyone could ever accuse me of plagiarism as a result. I am at peace with that.

That is, however, not to say that there isn’t plagiarism in non-fiction work, too. Pulitzer Prize winning historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose both were found to have plagiarized important works. Astonishingly, Goodwin–who continues to deny that she plagiarized–made it to the New York Times best seller list with her most recent book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, and it has been showered with awards, as if the plagiarism never occurred. In short, it says that it’s not only okay to be unethical, you will be rewarded for it. I would prefer to be poor and maintain my integrity than to be accused of plagiarizing someone else’s work.

For her sake, I can only hope that Ms. Visnawathan is able to find some peace with her intellectual dishonesty. Because that’s what it is, pure and simple.

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The Stuart’s Ride project is finished, but for the index. I’ve already made my misery with the subject of indexes known here.

The Stuart’s Ride book is the second book I’ve done with Savas-Beatie Publishing. These two books are also the only two books I’ve done of the twelve where I’ve been forced to go out of pocket to pay for the index myself. Typically, I have either been asked to pay for them by deductions from royalties (the usual method), or in recent contracts, I have specifically negotiated this issue in the contracts, and specifically, making this a strictly publisher cost. None of the other accomplished and well-respected Civil War authors I know are asked to pay for indexes, and I have to admit that it REALLY irks me that I have to go out of pocket to pay for this.

Let me explain why.

Over a period of about twelve years, I have probably invested four or five thousand dollars in researching the materials that ultimately led to the publication of this book. The maps cost us another thousand dollars or so, as the maps are usually author expenses (although I’m going to start trying to get the publishers to absorb those costs, too–neither Jeff Wert nor Gordon Rhea are asked to pay for their maps). That means that I’ve got even more money tied up in this project, and I now have to go out of pocket to pay for the damned index. It galls me. To a very great extent. We’re going to have to sell a hell of a lot of copies of this book just to break even.

I might also add that these two books are the first two that I’ve had published by commercial publishing houses since my first book where I haven’t been paid some sort of an advance to help defray some of the expenses I incur in doing these projects. Some have been decent ($4,000) and some miniscule (one was $250), but there has been something. There are no advances with Savas-Beatie, AND I now have to dig into my pocket to pay for this damned index. Part of me would be perfectly content to see the book go to press without an index if I have to pay for it, but I know that it would be savaged by reviewers without one. Thus, as much as it galls me, I have very little choice but to suck it up and dig into my pocket yet again.

I went with Savas-Beatie for a couple of reasons. First, and foremost, Ted Savas is an old friend of mine, and I know that he creates terrific books. His track record bears that out, and the final product of my Monroe’s Crossroads book is first-rate. Second, Ted does a good job of marketing his books and does a good job of getting his books out there for the public to see and buy. As an example, Ted does a great job of getting the book clubs to pick up his titles (Monroe’s Crossroads is an alternate selection of the month for the History Book Club, and we’re hoping that Stuart’s Ride will be chosen as a main selection; it’s about to be submitted), which is an entirely new market sector for my work. Thus, I made the decision to have him publish those two books even though there were to be no advances coming for either book. What I didn’t know, though–and shame on me for not asking–was that I would end up being responsible for paying for the indexing. So, I guess it’s my cross to bear, even though it galls me almost beyond words’ ability to describe to have to pay for this.

I can only hope that these two books will sell well enough to allow me to recoup the extra $1000 or so that I will end up investing in the indexes for the two books. At least with the Stuart’s Ride book, I have JD to share this miserable expense with.

I know one thing: this is the last time I will ever go out of pocket to pay for an index, even if that means not signing a contract with a given publisher. I think I’ve earned the right to be treated like my peers Gordon Rhea, Jeff Wert, and Andy Trudeau.

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Dimitri wrote the following in his blog post for today, quoting me in the process:

If that quote doesn’t grab you, if it strikes a “yeah, yeah, okay” note, you haven’t lately read any of the vast sea of Pulitzer Prize-winning history rooted in secondary sources. To paraphrase Tom Rowland (again), the deeper one goes into the material, the greater becomes the shock and personal fear at discovering how dependent one has been on other people’s previous surmises.

The risk of not going down Eric’s path, of trusting the previous treatments, is that you are made the fool by aggregating bad stuff. And that, in a nutshell, is the central problem in Civil War history today.

In an interview published on the Savas-Beatie website, I said, “Primary documents are always the foundation of my research. I am known for turning up obscure published and unpublished source materials, and that’s what I focused on for this book.” I thought I would follow up on this a bit and explain what I meant here.

By way of introduction, I absolutely agree with Dimitri on this subject. Allow me to share a special favorite myth that has been passed along ad nauseum because it has been repeated in so many secondary sources. According to legend, the reason why John Buford’s dismounted cavalrymen were able to hold off an entire division of Confederate infantry on the first day of the battle of Gettysburg was because his men had rapid-firing Spencer carbines that laid down such a severe fire that the Southerners flinched. Or so goes the urban legend. This myth has been repeated more times than I can count, and even by the likes of Ed Longacre in his award-winning book The Cavalry at Gettysburg (to Ed’s credit, he has since corrected this error in later works).

The truth: First, and foremost, on July 1, 1863, there were perhaps a dozen Spencer carbines in existence, all of which would have been prototypes. The weapon did not go into mass production until September 1863, so it’s a factual impossibility. That leads us to the question of whether Buford’s men might have carried Spencer repeating rifles, as elements of the the Michigan Cavalry Brigade did at Gettysburg. A review of the June 30, 1863 ordnance returns for the Cavalry Corps, Army of the Potomac–THE primary source–indicates that of the 92% of Buford’s companies that reported on that date, not a single company was armed with a repeating weapon of any sort. Rather, the majority of them were armed with Sharps .56 caliber single-shot, breech-loading carbines. The rest were armed with other similar weapons: the Ballard, Starr, Merrill, Burnside, or Gallagher carbine.

This myth is easy to disprove by using the primary sources. However, it has become engrained in Gettysburg lore. Why? Because so many secondary sources repeat it. This is just one of many examples, but it’s an easy one to discuss.

Consequently, when I’m writing, I try to stick to primary sources wherever and whenever possible. I try to limit my use of secondary sources to things like background discussions (such as pertinent local history) or capsule biographies of leading players. When it comes to writing about the actual action, I try to limit myself to using primary sources at least 90% of the time. In some instances, it’s 100%. Most of the time, it’s about 95%. Every once in a while, it can’t be helped.

However, my purpose in trying to limit myself to the primary sources is that when I do so, I have the pure material in front of me: the ACTUAL words of the participants, not someone else’s interpretation of those words. That way, when I do my own interpretation, it’s a first-generation interpretation, as opposed to going several generations deep on someone else’s interpretation of that primary source. Another technique that I try to follow is to allow the soldiers to tell their own stories in their own words wherever possible, and it’s absolutely mandatory that I use the primary sources when I do so, or else I run the risk of not accomplishing my goal.

Here’s an analogy from my professional life. Hearsay–defined as an out-of-court statement by a third party that is not subject to cross examination–is generally not admissable in evidence because it’s unreliable. Why? Because it’s someone else’s words being construed/interpreted by a third party. That’s the specific reason why hearsay is usually not admissable in evidence. The idea is sound, and it’s precisely the rule that I try to follow whenever possible in my historical work. A review of the endnotes of any of my books will bear this out.

Finally, I really enjoy uncovering these obscure and/or seldom-used primary sources. I think that they add a great deal to the work by adding insight/evidence that is different and fresh, and not the same old, tired sources used by everybody. For me, finding this stuff–the process of doing the detective work–is what I find most rewarding of all about what I do. I like to think that this is one of the things that sets my work apart from some of the other people writing Civil War history.

So, I very much share Dimitri’s concerns. There’s nothing like primary sources when trying to tell these stories. That’s the only way to get the raw material in an untainted fashion.

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I got my author’s copies of my Monroe’s Crossroads book today. I finally got to see the finished book for the first time.

Ted Savas did a terrific job with the book. I couldn’t be more pleased with how it turned out. There are about 30 maps and about 50 illustrations, and it really came out every bit as well as I hoped it would. Let’s hope that it sells well. Books on the Carolinas Campaign seem to sell very well. The only question is whether a purely cavalry study will sell as well as the books on the larger battles seem to do.

In September 2001, I made my first trip to North Carolina. I was scheduled to speak to the Rufus Barringer Civil War Roundtable, which meets in Aberdeen, NC. Aberdeen is the home of Bethesda Church, and it is also the location of the Malcolm Blue farm. Aberdeen is, as the crow files, about fourteen miles from the Monroe’s Crossroads battlefield site. My friend Teej Smith lives in Southern Pines, the next town over. She was the founder of the RBCWRT, and her group has sort of adopted the Monroe’s battlefield, at least so much as the Army will let them.

Teej arranged a battlefield visit for me. It was September 7, 2001, just a few days before events that changed our world forever. However, because it was BEFORE that tragic day, it was much easier to get access to the field. None of us had much working knowledge of what happened there, and there is very little in the way of interpretation there. We were left to our own devices, and it left me craving more information. All there was on the battle were a couple of chapters in books, and a not-very-good publication by the Army that really dumbed it down and was not very well researched. So, I decided to tackle the project myself. And the book was born that day.

I spent more than three years researching it, and made multiple visits to the battlefield, getting to know the terrain. I spent a long time writing it, piecing the story together, and putting it in a form that would give the reader an opportunity to understand what happened there. I gave a novice cartographer a shot at the big time by giving him this project. He did the maps, or so I thought. I’m not much on the technical side, so I didn’t realize that they would require a complete re-do, top to bottom, in order to be usable in the book. That process took nearly four months, which is why it took so long for it to be published, and not in October, as we originally hoped.

I wish I could describe the sense of satisfaction that I feel in finally seeing this thing finished and in actual book form. I can honestly say that I have felt a greater sense of satisfaction over seeing the final product previously, but I would not be telling the truth if I said that. I hope you will all forgive me if I crow just a little bit. This one was a LONG time coming.

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In a comment to yesterday’s post, Andy MacIsaac asked, “Could you provide some insight on your experience in using paid researchers. I have never done this so I am unfamiler with the process.” Sure, Andy. No problem.

Please let me set the stage for why I use paid researchers. Believe me, it’s not for laziness.

First, and foremost, I live in Central Ohio. On a good day, it’s a seven hour drive to Washington, DC. That means that for me to make a trip there, I spend two full days just driving. So, any trip has to have that time built in. Then, there are my professional responsibilities. My time is billed at an average rate of $200 per hour, as I am a partner in a law firm. Aside from the fact that my practice keeps me EXTREMELY busy, a day out of the office costs me $1000-1500 in billable time for which I do not get paid. Thus, I have to be careful about taking time away from the office, both for reasons of having a busy schedule, but also because of the need to maintain/control cash flow.

As I have a long history with the town of Carlisle–I went to college there–and I have long-standing relationships with some of the personnel there, I usually try to save work at USAMHI for myself, although for the last two projects, I found myself without time to do so. I also will handle the Ohio Historical Society myself, as their facility is about ten minutes from my office.

By contrast, the researchers that I use charge me $15.00 per hour. Thus, I can purchase 13 hours of their time for the cost of one hour of my time. Now, I’m no accountant, but even my feeble mind understands that it makes good economic sense for me to pay them to do the work for me while I remain here, plugging away at billing hours. Further, two of the three live in the Washington, DC area (one lives about a block from the Library of Congress), so there’s not much of a travel time issue involved.

Let me also be clear about the scope of what they do for me. I direct all activities. I give them very specific instructions as to what I’m searching for, and, in most cases, actually provide them with very specific lists of sources that I want them to review. At all times, I direct the process, although I’m always willing to accept suggestions from those who are familiar with the available resources. Basically, they’re doing my leg work for me.

I use two in Washington by necessity. One used to do all of the work. However, he was banned from the National Archives for allegedly damaging an original document (a muster roll he was examining at my behest while working on strengths and losses for the Battle of Monroe’s Crossroads). It was originally intended to be a lifetime ban, but a lot of us–including Gordon Rhea and Andy Trudeau–use his services, and we put together a concerted effort to have him reinstated. He has been partially reinstated on a probationary basis. He can now go there, but he is restricted to the microfilm collection. If he has six months incident free, they will consider full reinstatement. However, the microfilm collection is only a very small portion of the collection, and not much of it is pertinent to my needs. So, that left a big hole in my line-up. This particular individual does my Library of Congress work. He’s thorough and he knows the collection. He’s especially good at newspaper research–I have no real ability or patience to go through endless rolls of microfilm, but he does.

That meant that I had to locate someone to access records for me at the National Archives. I had quite a few record groups that needed to be reviewed in depth in order to complete the research for my regimental history of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry, so I have retained the services of another researcher whose specific task is to review those record groups for me and to obtain copies of anything pertinent to the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry.

The third researcher is an archivist at the Civil War Museum and Library in Philadelphia. I’ve been using his services for more than a decade, and I have absolute trust in his abilities. He does work for me in the Philadelphia area, and is the one who coordinates my efforts to obtain things from the various university archives that I often obtain. As this is his primary source of income, he’s also willing to travel for me, and regularly does so. He’s great, but I only get one package of material from him per month, so I have learned to be sure to give him plenty of lead time to get things done. Nothing is ever done quickly.

So, the issue is this. On one hand, I would prefer to do the work myself–it’s great fun, and I really enjoy the detective work. On the other hand, being self-employed, it just doesn’t make a great deal of economic sense for me to spend a lot of time traveling and doing the work myself. It is, therefore, a mixed bag for which I have intensely mixed feelings.

I hope that answers the question, Andy.

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In response to yesterday’s post, reader Dave Kelly wrote, in part, “You’ve been off for 5 days. Figured Savas had you electricity cut off and your house surrounded so he could go to press without another stop.” While Dave was obviously jesting when he wrote that, the point actually was well-taken, and I thought I would offer an explanation for the uncharacteristically long spell of silence.

Last week, I posted about the horrific nightmare that we faced in trying to fix bollixed-up notes for one of the chapters that happened when our researcher waited until the last possible second to get us new material, and we had to plug it into our manuscript when it was already in the page galley stage. Quite a bit of the especially useful new material went into the third chapter, which deals with Corbit’s Charge in Westminster, MD. It really fleshed out the chapter. Ted did his best to shoehorn the stuff in, but his efforts to do so meant that the notes to that chapter–85 of them–were completely and totally FUBAR’ed (for those not familiar with the acronym FUBAR, I suggest you look here for the definition). I had to spend the major part of day re-working those, and JD took another seven hours fixing this stuff, too.

In short, I spent most of those five days getting the bugs ironed out of the Stuart’s Ride manuscript, and also with work-related stuff. As a result of the intense frustration toward our researcher for putting us into that situation, being tired from concentrating, and the normal things of every day life that interfere with my hobbies, I simply didn’t have the motivation, time, or wherewithal to blog.

Thanks to Susan, I got to sleep in yesterday for the first time since the puppy came home, and I finally started feeling less sleep deprived and more alert yesterday for the first time in ages. We’ll see how long that lasts.

In the meantime, the Stuart’s Ride manuscript is now complete, and Ted’s proofreader is finishing up his work on it. Then, it goes to the History Book Club for consideration for a selection of the month. More on that as the process goes along.

Finally, Ted told me today that the copies of my Monroe’s Crossroads book had hit the warehouse, so it will be available for purchase in a day or two. Yahoo!!!!

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Dimitri Rotov had a very interesting post/rant on his blog today. He mentioned that I, along with several others, have been encouraging him to write a book about McClellan for some time now. I really think that Dimitri is the logical choice to write the definitive study of Mac’s life, and I can only reiterate the hope that he will do so.

Dimitri wrote:

I may write a book. I’m thinking about it. But I don’t feel obliged to do so.

Can that be my credo?

I thought I would kick in my two cents’ worth on this interesting issue. Let me begin by stating that I have a very real and very powerful bias/preference for real, honest-to-goodness books. I like the feel, sight, and smell of a book. I love the look of a full bookcase, brimming with volumes. Having said that, I am also a bit of a techno-nerd, and am married to a propeller head. So, I get the idea of making information generally available on the Internet.

Here’s my problem with Dimitri’s concept. I am, and remain, very concerned with protecting the integrity of copyright. The Internet makes it ridiculously easy to steal copyrighted material (it is, of course simple enough to xerox or scan a book, but you can’t copy/paste a book). My thoughts on this topic have been explored in depth on this blog with respect to Google’s massive copyright infringement scheme, and I won’t beat that poor dead horse here again. Having said that, the concern is legitimate and valid. How would you at least make an effort to protect the integrity of your intellectual property, Dimitri?

The other issue that I wanted to address is the question of how does one make any money from something that is entirely published on a blog? Let’s be clear about this: I am a realist. I don’t expect to get rich writing books on the Civil War. It’s not going to happen, and I understand that. At the same time, I spend a lot of money doing the research for my books, between buying books, paying researchers, traveling to battlefields, and paying cartographers. While I don’t expect to get rich, I would at least like to break even on these projects. Getting paid at least provides the basic funding for the next book project, so that I’m not having to dig deeply out of pocket each time that I commence another project (and I usually have several different research projects going on at any given time, all in different stages of the process). In other words, the royalties for the prior books provide the funding for future books. It is, frankly, about the only way that I can justify the expenditures to Susan. If she had her way, we’d be making John Grisham money from my writing, unrealistic as that might be. Heck, I’d settle for David McCullough or Doris Kearns Goodwin money.

From my perspective, the only way that I could get behind the idea of “publishing” a book on a blog would be if there was some way to guarantee a flow of revenue coming from it. Writing a couple of hundred years ago, Dr. Ben Johnson wrote, and quite correctly: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote but for money.” I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Johnson’s observation, and I may be a lof of things, but I am not a blockhead, if this is the operative definition of blockhead.

Perhaps the ITunes model of paying for individual songs before downloading them might be a solution to this problem, but it would require some fairly sophisticated e-commerce capability on the web site. I won’t speak for Dimitri, but I can unquestionably say that I don’t have the technical skills to do so, meaning that Susan would have to do it. There’s also the question of how you would price the downloads, etc. I’m really not sure how Dimitri intends to address this issue, if at all, but for me, this one would be a real deal-breaker.

So, the upshot of it is that while I think that Dimitri’s got an extremely interesting idea here, I think that it requires some serious thought and serious planning in order for it to work. I wish him well with it, and I will be watching carefully to see how he tackles these issues.

And to reiterate what I’ve said before: write the damned book, Dimitri. Mac deserves as much.

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Today, J. D. got another package of newspaper articles from our Washington researcher, this time from the New York Herald. Once again, our researcher was well aware that we have been working on this Stuart’s Ride project for the better part of two years, and only just now got around to providing us with these articles at the very last possible moment. Of course, we’re even closer to the drop dead date for adding material now than we were last week when we got the articles from the Baltimore American that I posted about last week.

There was even better stuff this time around. For instance, if you read Jeb Stuart’s report of his activities during the Gettysburg Campaign, when you get to the section about the Battle of Hanover, he mentions that, at the beginning of the battle, as things begin to get intense, there was no word from Fitz Lee, who was supposed to be covering his left and rear. An article in the Herald indicates that Fitz sent a note to Stuart via courier, and that the courier was captured. The dispatch itself is quoted verbatim–it specifically indicates that Kilpatrick was moving on Stuart’s left. Had that message been delivered, it might have made a real difference in Stuart’s dispositions, that’s for certain. So far as I know, no account of the Battle of Hanover has EVER used this particular item previously. So, we’re going to be changing the interpretation of this battle by virtue of adding it into the manuscript.

There are apparently several other useful articles that deal with other aspects of Stuart’s ride that also haven’t been used previously. The problem, of course, is that our backs are up against the wall. We are quite literally out of time if we’re to get the book out by June. Plus, we drove poor Ted Savas nuts last week with the stuff from the American, and he’s not willing to re-do the entire book (I certainly can’t blame him for that–I wouldn’t, either). So, the compromise was that we got to add a paragraph and a single note to chapter four, including quoting the captured dispatch from Fitz Lee to Stuart. We’re pleased with that, although we’re also greedy and would love to plug ALL of it in.

Fortunately, we have enough time to plug additional material from these two newspapers into our manuscript on the retreat from Gettysburg. Those will also be excellent additions, so please don’t get me wrong. But, we’ve been working on that project even longer than we have on the Stuart’s Ride project, so the same lingering questions about timeliness apply there, also. It’s damned frustrating.

The issue here, of course, is the same as the one we had last week. Our researcher has known about this project for more than eighteen months, and why he waited until this last possible second to produce this material to us remains a complete and total mystery, and one we’re not particularly happy about. This problem was created completely by him, and it leaves me wondering if there is something else equally as significant still hanging out there that he was supposed to get for us but failed to obtain.

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In February, James L. Swanson published his book Manhunt, which is a narrative of the pursuit and ultimate killing of John Wilkes Booth by Federal forces. The book covers a period of twelve days, and is the most detailed narrative of these events yet written.

This book has lots of problems. First, and foremost, the author states specifically that he takes liberties with sourcing. He adopts the old “I don’t want to bog down the reader with frivolities like notes” trick, which many do when they’re trying to cover up the lack of depth of their research. This book fails to meet my tests for academic standards, which makes it difficult for me to endorse it.

At the same time, it’s a fabulous read. Swanson’s style is easy and fast-moving, and it really reads more like a novel than it does history. The best way to describe it is to call it pop history. From my perspective as a serious researcher, I always have trouble endorsing that sort of a work. At the same time, well-written pop history will probably help to bring new readers to the Civil War, just as the Ken Burns film generated new interest in the war when it debuted.

I think that the thing that bothers me the most about this book is that it was obviously written as a means of boosting interest in the forthcoming film that is going to be made. It’s almost like this book was written to drive movie ticket sales, and not the other way around, as most books that are turned into films usually work. I have already addressed the most interesting aspect of this forthcoming film: how 64 year old Harrison Ford is going to pull of playing 31 year old Lt. Col. Everton Conger, the secret agent who commanded the force sent to hunt down booth.

The way I see it, this book is, at best, a very mixed bag. I can only hope that it won’t generate an whole new generation of poorly researched pop history.

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Yesterday, Kevin Levin wrote:

While I understand Eric’s point I would like to hear more about the virtues of obscurity. What exactly is important about an obscure military event in the Civil War like the Wilson-Kautz Raid? I know people here in Charlottesville who can tell me close to every single detail about the small engagement at Rio Hill which led to the capture of Charlottesville and the University of Virginia. When I hear the name Rio Hill I immediately think of the IHOP and an order of pancakes. Yes, I learn about new people, but it seems to me what I learn fails to reveal anything new about the soldiers – same stories and experiences in a different time and place. I sometimes want to ask why it is necessary to know this much detail. How does knowing more detail help me understand better? There is of course the element of local interest and a desire to know the history of one’s backyard, but that only sheds light on a small group. Is there a hope among people who write detailed battle studies of such events that the obscure will eventually become more familiar, and if so is this a worthwhile endeavor? Is this ultimately the same obsession that drives Gettysburg historians, but applied on virgin ground?

I will attempt to answer Kevin’s question. However, as an opening note, it should be pointed out that Kevin and I have fundamentally different interests in the war. From what I’ve divined, Kevin’s primary interest is with the social issues, with a special and definite focus on the issues of race relations. I, on the other hand, am interested in the tactics and strategy, and in dissecting those tactics and strategic decisions to see how they worked out in the field. The social issues don’t interest me much, and I leave those to others. So, with that analytic framework in mind, let’s proceed.

In this context, I think I may have unduly limited myself by using the word “obscure” to describe my interests, although I have an undying fascination with and love of those obscure places. I genuinely enjoy visiting obscure Civil War sites and figuring them out, perhaps more than anything else. Instead, I think that a better way to describe my interests and to describe what I find interesting is that which others have not written about in any detail. There are a variety of reasons for this. First, I’ve already stated my thoughts about things like “who really needs another book about Pickett’s Charge?” Instead, I prefer to look at things that others haven’t, as doing the research and figuring them out for myself is not only extremely challenging, it’s also extremely gratifying.

The reason why I like to pursue these actions is because there are lessons to be learned from the tactical and strategic analysis, even for those events that are obscure or smaller in scale. We at Ironclad recently published a book on the Battle of Averasboro. Averasboro fascinates me, even though the Confederate side numbered less than 10,000 men, because it was a textbook example of an almost perfectly designed and almost perfectly executed defense in depth. To me, that makes it fascinating and makes it worthy of study, even if it was a smaller battle that nobody would ever call a decisive battle.

As someone who is primarily interested in tactical study, the Wilson-Kautz Raid offers me a lot of interesting lessons. It demonstrates, for example, the consequences of trying to pursue a strategic vision that is too aggressive. By trying to do too much, it meant that Wilson’s and Kautz’s commands got chopped to bits, losing fully one-third of their men (mostly captured), all of their artillery, and all of their wagons. It also offers very interesting lessons in the dynamics of the consequences of what happens when one event is tied to another, and the underlying event does not work out the way it was hoped or planned (in this case, the event that did not work out the way it was planned was Sheridan’s utter failure to achieve his objectives for the Trevilian Raid, thereby freeing Wade Hampton to pounce on Wilson and Kautz with three full divisions and two independent brigades. That any of Wilson’s or Kautz’s units made it out intact at all is really remarkable). Those are the things that interest me, and those are the things that make this worthy of study in my mind.

While the Battle of Rio Hill suggests IHOP and pancakes to Kevin, to me, it serves as a prime example of a situation where a commander did a poor job of picketing his camp, got caught by surprise, and still managed to turn that situation around and make the best of a bad situation. Again, there are lessons to be learned from that, and those lessons are interesting to me, and which make that action worthy of study.

Obviously, these things are not of the scale of the Battle of Gettysburg. That much is clear, and I doubt even Kevin would dispute that. Just because they’re smaller or lesser known events doesn’t mean that there are not lessons to be learned from the study of them, and that, in turn, makes them worthy subjects for scholarly study.

Bottom line, Kevin: I think that our disconnect here arises as a result of the fundamentally different approach that we take to Civil War history.

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