General musings

Today is a very sad day for the National Pastime. Former Senator George Mitchell’s 408 page report on the use of steroids in Major League Baseball was released today. The entire report can be downloaded for free in any number of places.

Some of the game’s biggest names were implicated in the report. 85 players were named, including MVP’s, 31 All Stars, Cy Young Award winners, and, most interestingly, 16 members of the New York Yankees. Sadly, the most famous name (beside Barry Bonds, that is) is that of the Rocket–yes, Roger Clemens himself. Clemens, with 7 Cy Young Awards, more than 350 victories, and often considered to be THE greatest pitcher of the modern era, has long been a favorite of mine. I can no longer root for him, even though his lawyer has loudly protested his innocence and has proclaimed how unfair the whole thing is.

I always knew that the Yankees were the best team that money could buy. Now, it appears that they were also the best team dope could build. If Bud Selig has any guts–and I can only hope he does–he will strip the Yankees of any World Series championships during the pertinent period of time, including making the dope fiends turn in their championship rings. Perhaps then, and only then, will these cheaters learn that there is a serious price to be paid for their cheating.

Unless Selig is willing to do something that serious, it will come across as a slap on the wrist, and it will also come across as an unwillingness to take steps to restore integrity to the game.

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Many thanks to old friend Harry Smeltzer for bringing this to my attention. From Saturday’s issue of the Hanover Evening Sun newspaper, addressing the burial site of Col. Isaac E. Avery, which I wrote about here late last month:

Man discovers grave experts knew was there
By MATT CASEY
Evening Sun Reporter
Article Launched: 12/08/2007 04:05:28 AM EST

After Clem alerted Avery’s descendent, Bruce Avery, of the grave’s location, Bruce Avery dedicated a granite marker there.

Oops. I hate it when that happens.

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At 46, it shouldn’t come as a great surprise that a child of the 70’s such as myself is a big fan of classic rock. Consequently, my favorite local radio station is an excellent classic rock station called QFM. I’ve been a regular listener of QFM for close to the 20 years that I’ve been in Columbus.

QFM has a long-running morning show that I try to catch at least a part of every day. One of the hosts of the morning show is named Mark Wagner, although EVERYONE calls him Daddy Wags. The other morning, I was listening to the show, and they were talking to a comic from Franklin, Tennessee. Somehow, the topic of the Battle of Franklin came up, and Wags mentioned that his son is a Civil War reenactor. In all the years that I’ve been listening to the show, that was the first time that I have ever heard Wags mention that his son reenacts, or even that Wags has an interest in the Late Unpleasantness.

I sent Wags a e-mail telling him about my work and asking about his son’s reenacting. He responded and indicated that his son reenacts with the 91st Ohio group, and that he participated in the Pickett’s Charge reenactment in Gettysburg in 2006. Wags mentioned how moving it was to see his son participating in something like a reenactment of Pickett’s Charge. To make a long story short, I told Wags that if he and his son were interested, I would be happy to sign a copy of one of my books for them and send it along. After hearing that they’re interested in Gettysburg, I sent out a copy of Plenty of Blame to Go Around to Wags today signed by both JD and me. Maybe it will even get a mention on the air. We’ll see. I certainly don’t expect it, but I wouldn’t complain if it happened.

My point in raising all of this is that one never knows where one will find connections with the Civil War. I certainly never expected this particular one in spite of being a long-time listener to the show. These connections just seem to find me, which I think is cool.

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Reader Billy left this in a comment to my last post: Regarding the movie GETTYSBURG, I hope you will sometime post a critique of it. As an amateur battle historian I thought it was pretty accurate although I agree that the acting was not the best in some cases. But overall I like the movie and usually watch it every July 3. I am not ashamed to admit that I cried watching it the first time. Some of my Confederate family members made the trip with Pickett that day (or should I say they preceded Pickett that day) and two of them lay now in unmarked graves some where on that field without even a stone to mark their passing. But I remember them and admire their bravery that day.

In any case I would LOVE to hear a thoughful critique of the movie and comments from fellow posters

Billy, your wish is my command.

Billy is referring to Ron Maxwell’s Gettysburg, facetiously known to many as “The Movie”.

The first time I saw the movie was on a big screen in a theater, so I found it terribly moving. Parts of it are powerful. I saw it with a friend who is an SCV member who had ancestors who crossed that field with Pickett, and he was sobbing like a baby.

However, it’s critical to remember that this is a Hollywood movie based on a novel, Michael Shaara’s magical The Killer Angels. This means that the movie picks up on all of the inaccuracies contained in the novel. As just one example, during the early scenes addressing the first day of the battle, Sam Elliott’s John Buford (by far, THE best casting and portrayal in the movie) is seen huddling with brigade commanders William Gamble and Thomas Devin, and Gamble’s character goes off on a rant about how Buford’s troopers held against Longstreet’s infantry at Thoroughfare Gap. Nice scene, good dramatic effect. The biggest problem, of course, is that Buford did no such thing. When the fighting occurred at Thoroughfare Gap on August 28, 1863, Buford’s brigade was nowhere near there. Instead, Longstreet encountered stubborn resistance from Union infantry. This inaccuracy was plucked from The Killer Angels verbatim. There are a number of other problems like this.

I’ve always thought that the combat in the movie is depicted far too antiseptically. There’s no blood, and there’s no real violence. The experience of combat just isn’t really captured. Maxwell always said that he didn’t want it to be too violent or too bloody, but it just doesn’t accurately capture the hell of Civil War combat. The depiction of Buford’s stand is not accurate in terms of how things actually played out.

I also think that Ron Maxwell is an atrocious director. He just doesn’t have the ability to create a compelling movie, and only flashes of this movie are compelling. There are just too many long, boring campfire scenes. He didn’t require his actors to be realistic in their depictions like Sam Elliott was–you will note that Elliott’s uniform is the only one that is dirty and dusty. The rest look like they’re dressed up in the Sunday finery and look like they never went on a long march. For the most part, the uniforms look brand new.

Maxwell also allowed Martin Sheen to play Robert E. Lee any way he wanted, irrespective of how it was written or how the real Lee conducted himself. Robert E. Lee never, ever would have been seen walking around camp in his shirt sleeves and with his vest unbuttoned. Proper Victorian gentlemen did no such thing.

One of the opening scenes of the movie is of the spy Harrison being confronted by a rotund, old Confederate sergeant. I’ve seen lots of photos of Confederate soldiers, but I can honestly say that I have never seen one that was a fat old man. Confederate soldiers typically didn’t have the rations to be fat. It’s laughable.

The movie places way too much emphasis on Little Round Top and on Pickett’s Charge, to the exclusion of other important aspects of the battle. There is, for instance, no mention of the brutal, close-in fighting for Culp’s Hill. Had the Confederates driven the Federals from the trenches along Culp’s Hill, the battle would have been over. Likewise, George Sears Greene’s defense of Culp’s Hill was at least as heroic as Chamberlain’s defense of Little Round Top, but doesn’t even get a mention.

That’s not to say that the movie doesn’t have its moments. I thought that it was a real shame that Jeff Daniels did not receive an Oscar nomination for his moving portrayal of J. L. Chamberlain. The same holds true for Elliott’s depiction of Buford. Although only on the screen for a few minutes, Elliott steals the movie and holds you rapt as he brings John Buford to life. Richard Jordan’s portrayal of Armistead was quite good, as was Stephen Lang’s George Pickett. I thought Tom Berenger was good too, even though he distinctly looked like a man with a dead animal on his face and not a beard.

The scenes of the preparations for Pickett’s Charge were well done and quite impressive, and the spontaneous demonstration in favor of Sheen’s Robert E. Lee that broke out (that really was spontaneous and did not appear in the script) was indeed quite a moving sight. So was hearing Jeff Daniels order the bayonet at the climax of the Little Round Top scenes.

That movie easily could have been nearly an hour shorter without the weepy campfire scenes, and little would have been missed. Instead of a bloated and boring movie that’s far too long, it could have been short and sweet and very powerfully presented. In the hands of another director, instead of a hack like Maxwell, it could have been a great film.

I can’t be completely negative about it, though. It has introduced a lot of people to the Battle of Gettysburg, and has generated interest in the Civil War in young folks who might not have had an interest otherwise, and for that reason alone, it’s a worthy film.

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Having grown up in the Philadelphia area in the 1970’s, it was unavoidable that I would end up a lifelong, major fan of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. I have always found his blue-collar anthems and political rants incredibly compelling, I love the complex characters he creates, and I have found him to be the greatest voice of my generation.

I first saw The Boss (yes, I know he hates that name) in concert in 1978 in support of his fourth album, Darkness on the Edge of Town. He played a 4+ hour marathon concert at The Spectrum. His shows were known for their energy, their duration, and for being a celebration of all that is the overblown glory of rock & roll.

The second time was December 8, 1980, again at the Spectrum. After a racuous, great concert of more than four hours that highlighted my favorite Springsteen album, The River, we learned that John Lennon had been murdered in cold blood that night. I next saw him in August of 1984, this time at the Capital Center in Landover, Maryland. We had 12th row seats for the Born in the USA Tour. The problem was that the show was the night before my first day of law school, on a Sunday night. I spent all night driving back to Pittsburgh, got two hours’ sleep and then started law school. I never did get caught up on my rest until after taking the bar exam.

I saw him again in Pittsburgh about eight weeks later, this time on Bruce’s 35th birthday. Of all the shows I’ve seen, that one clearly was the highest energy. He was rockin’ that night, and the crowd genuinely touched him by interrupting him to sing happy birthday. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen him at a loss for words. I then saw him at the nasty old Richfield Coliseum outside Cleveland on the Tunnel of Love tour in 1988. Little did I know it would be more than ten years before I would see him perform with the E Streeters again.

Susan and I traveled to the Gund Arena in Cleveland to see them on the 2000 reunion tour, and it was another great night that chilly November. We caught the band here in Columbus during The Rising Tour in the fall of 2002. This time we were on the floor of OSU’s Schottenstein Center, standing room only. Susan was just coming off ACL reconstruction surgery, and it made for a difficult night for her being on her feet all night on the hard concrete, but it was another great show.

This morning, tickets went on sale for the E Streeters’ March 24, 2008 show at Nationwide Arena here in Columbus, and I got a pair (for face value, too cool). Since my birthday is two days later, I can’t think of a better birthday present to myself. I know that Bruce is now 58 years old and that Clarence is in his 60’s and not in the greatest of health. I know that Danny Federici had to leave the tour to receive treatment for cancer. I know that the days of the incredible four hour marathon shows are long over and that today’s shows last “only” 2.5 hours, but it will be worth it. It will be my eighth time seeing Bruce and the band in concert, and I can’t wait. It’s going to be another great night of the music of my life.

It is, however, the first time I had to buy my own birthday present……

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Col. Isaac E. Avery of the 6th North Carolina Infantry was frightfully wounded while leading Hoke’s Brigade in the assaults on East Cemetery Hill on the night of July 2, 1863. Left unable to speak, Avery scrawled a farewell note to his father in his own blood. Avery died while being transported in the Wagon Train of Wounded. His grave was lost for more than a century. That grave has now been located. Here’s a newspaper story:

From the Associated Press…

Avery’s family was delighted with the news. Bruce Avery, a descendant of the Confederate colonel, who lives on Kent Island, recently dedicated a granite marker at the Rose Hill Cemetery in his ancestor’s honor.

I circled back and included this story in the Wagon Train of Wounded chapter of the retreat manuscript today, as this story was just too good not to include.

I’m certainly happy for the Avery family, but between the Battles of Antietam and South Mountain and the men who died during the retreat from Gettysburg, there had to have been literally thousands of Confederates left behind in unmarked, shallow, and even temporary graves. I can’t help but wonder how many there are, and whether anyone cares about them in the way that Mr. Clem obviously was moved by Avery’s story.

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We’re back home in Columbus after a long weekend of travel. Due to Susan’s work schedule, we couldn’t leave for Pennsylvania until Thursday morning. We dropped the dogs off on Wednesday night, as the boarding place was not taking drop-offs on Thursday morning. We got out early on Thursday and arrived at my parents’ house about 3:00 on Thursday, after checking in at the hotel. Due to their health and our schedule, we ended up going out to dinner. The problem with going out to dinner on Thanksgiving is that there are no seconds, there are no leftovers, and there is no turkey carcass to pick. I would much prefer to eat at home.

We braved the Black Friday crowds, did some shopping for work clothes for Susan, and got to visit with my cousins on Saturday. This morning, we hit the road about 10:30, and the traffic was horrific. It added about an hour to the trip, but we’re home.

Many of you have asked about my father and his progress. We spent some quality time with him. The good news is that the hemorrhage has completely re-absorbed, and that he’s doing well physically. He has a deficit on the right side, but he’s learned to compensate for it, and does so quite well. He can walk pretty well with his cane, and he can get around reasonably well. He can feed himself, and he’s actually made remarkable progress from a physical standpoint. However, his speech is definitely a mess. I can only understand about half of what he says, and then have to figure out the rest from context. It’s a major challenge. Although the speech therapists continue to work with him three days a week, with a nifty Apple Power Book notebook running some very specialized (and astonishingly expensive) software, I don’t see it getting any better. He also has a ton of trouble processing names. My cousin David–his nephew–visited yesterday, and my father called him Raymond all day. He knows David’s name, but with things being jumbled, it comes out as Raymond. He called me “hey you” several times, too. When he’s not thinking about names, he does pretty well. However, when he actively thinks about names, that’s when it gets all jumbled. It’s kind of amusing, but at the same time, it’s very frustrating for him and for my mother.

The most difficult thing for me is that for the first time, I saw him as a little old man. Up until the day before the stroke, he’d managed to avoid the ravages of age. Even at 86, he was very active and very vigorous. He still drove, he still worked a little bit part time, still did crossword puzzles, did all of the grocery shopping and most of the cooking, and never, ever looked or acted his age. What shocked me on Thursday was the realization that the stroke has finally enabled Mother Nature to catch up to him. He now looks and acts like an 87 year old guy. He’s frail, he needs a cane to walk, he’s cold all the time, and he’s finally acting his age for the first time. Never having seen it before, it really caught me off guard.

But, he’s still alive, and all things considered, he’s doing as well as I could possibly have hoped, given the scope and extent of the stroke.

Now, I’m hunkered down on the couch for Sunday night football, wearing my brand-new Philadelphia Eagles hoodie. The question is: just how badly are the Patriots going to whup up on the McNabb-less Birds?

I hope everyone had a good (and filling) Turkey Day. Tomorrow, it’s back to work and back to the Late Unpleasantness.

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Washington, D.C., October 3, 1863
By the President of the United States of America.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

2007 has been a very difficult year for Susan and me. I won’t be sorry to see it end. At the same time, I remain thankful for a lot of things:

I am thankful that my father is still alive and doing well after the terrible stroke he had in July. I am thankful that Susan and I are both healthy. I am thankful that we still have Nero and Aurora, even if we lost Augie. I am thankful for the good, brave men and women who defend our liberties here and abroad, and who sacrifice so much to give us the good lives that we lead. I am thankful for having good friends and brothers in arms like J.D., Mike, Steve, Duane and Dr. Dave. I am thankful that George W. Bush will have to vacate the White House in just over a year (a day that cannot come soon enough).

I am thankful for publishers who find sufficient merit in my work to want to continue to work with me. I am extremely thankful for each and every person who spends his or her hard-earned money to purchase one of my books, and who chooses one of my works over someone else’s. And most of all, I am extremely thankful to each and every one of you who takes a few moments out of your day to indulge my rantings. To each and every one of you, I am extremely grateful and humbled that you do so.

Happy Thanksgiving to you, one and all, and safe travels.

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On October 8, I posted the good news that the long-overlooked diaries of Lt. Col. Theodore H. Lyman of George Gordon Meade’s staff had finally been published.

After an embarrassingly long delay, I finally got around to buying a copy of it tonight. The first thing that I did was go to the index to see whether there were any references to Ulric Dahlgren or to the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid, and I wasn’t disappointed.

In a prior post here, I set out the unusual correspondence sent across the lines under flag of truce, asking whether the Dahlgren Papers represented the policy of the United States government. Here’s what Lyman wrote about that episode on April 18, 1864:

Last night Gen. Meade showed me the photograph copies of the Dahlgren orders, said to have been found on his body. There was an address and a sheet of memoranda. In both, reference was made to killing Davis and cabinet and burning the city. The address was signed “U. Dahlgren”. With it was a letter from Lee asking if the U.S. or Gen. Meade gave or approved such orders? The whole was dated Ap. 1 and sent by flag of truce, endorsed by J.E.B. Stuart, that a reply could be sent to Lightfoot Ford. Gen. Meade replied that no such orders had been given or were approved by him or the U. S. & enclosed was a letter from Kilpatrick saying that he had examined the men with Dahlgren who all denied hearing any such address. Gen. K further stated that he had endorsed “approved” in red ink on an address similar to this, but without the obnoxious passages. Gen. Meade however told me he considered the weight of evidence in favor of the authenticity, and plainly said he did not consider Kilpatrick a trustworthy person.(emphasis added)

This passage appears on pp. 123-124 of the book.

Wow. I never doubted the authenticity of the documents. I’ve got an appendix in the Dahlgren bio that should settle the question of the authenticity of the Dahlgren Papers once and for all. In addition, I’d concluded in my own mind that, aside from Meade lying to protect his subordinates, Kilpatrick was intimately involved in the plot, but this really causes me to reconsider things. I’ve now come to the conclusion that one of two things happened here.

First, and most likely, is that Kilpatrick and Edwin Stanton cooked up the scheme to kill Davis and his cabinet, and that they sucked the unsuspecting Ulric Dahlgren into the plot, and that when he was conveniently killed, they were able to keep their skirts clear by blaming it all on him, knowing full well that there was nobody else to contradict them.

The less likely scenario is that this was something that Kilpatrick and Ully Dahlgren cooked up on their own without the sanction or permission of the War Department or the high command of the Army of the Potomac. I view this as far less likely, largely because Dahlgren only joined the expedition after it had been approved by both Lincoln and the War Department.

It certainly is tantalizing. I think, however, that I’ve now concluded definitely that Dahlgren ended up being a patsy in a bigger game being played by Stanton and Kilpatrick, and this last little piece of evidence clinches it for me.

My original conclusion to the Dahlgren bio was a bit wishy-washy, in that I presented the options and left it to the reader to decide. Stephen W. Sears read the manuscript for me (and wrote a really nice foreword for it) and persuaded me that I should actually draw a conclusion and argue it, and that’s what I’ve decided to do. It’s now going to say that I believe that Dahlgren was a patsy who ended up a victim of the scheming of Kilpatrick and Stanton.

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From June 19-22, 2008, I will be leading a tour for the Civil War Education Association titled The Clash of Cavalry in Virginia. I will be the sole tour leader for this event.

Here’s the description that I’ve written for the weekend event, which I’m really looking forward to:

Join the CWEA for a tour of some of the most hard-fought cavalry actions of the American Civil War. We will tour three cavalry battlefields in Culpeper County, and one in Louisa County. Join Civil War cavalry historian Eric J. Wittenberg for this intensive tour of the cavalry actions of 1863 and 1864.

The March 17, 1863 Battle of Kelly’s Ford marked one of the earliest large scale clashes of the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac and Jeb Stuart’s vaunted cavaliers. With a division of veteran cavalry, Brig. Gen. William W. Averell’s horsemen splashed across the Rappahannock River early on St. Patrick’s Day. They spent the day tangling with the Virginia troopers of Brig. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee’s brigade in a hard-fought clash that led to the death of Maj. John Pelham, Jeb Stuart’s chief of horse artillery, who unwisely joined a saber charge by some of Fitz Lee’s troopers and paid for his poor decision with his life. At the end of a long day of fighting, Averell withdrew, leaving the battlefield in Stuart’s hands. The Battle of Kelly’s Ford is notable as one of the first times that the Federal cavalry went boot-to-boot with Stuart’s vaunted cavaliers. We will tour the Kelly’s Ford battlefield on Friday.

Kelly’s Ford also factors into the June 9, 1863 Battle of Brandy Station, the largest cavalry battle fought on the North American continent. On June 9, 1863, 12,000 Yankee troopers crossed the Rappahannock at Beverly’s and Kelly’s Fords and caught Stuart’s cavalry by surprise. In a fourteen hour engagement that featured mounted saber charges and countercharges as well as heavily contested dismounted fighting. In addition to seeing the Kelly’s Ford crossings, we will see the main battlefield, including a visit to Buford’s Knoll, the ruins of St. James Church, site of hand-to-hand fighting, Fleetwood Hill, Yew Ridge, and Stevensburg. We will also see the site of the Grand Review of Stuart’s cavalry that occurred the day before the great battle at Brandy Station as we continue our tours on Friday.

On Saturday, we will travel to Louisa County for a tour of the Trevilian Station battlefield. Fought on June 11-12, 1864, Trevilian Station was the largest all-cavalry battle of the Civil War. Maj. Gen. Wade Hampton, commanding 6,000 Confederate cavalry, soundly defeated Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan’s 9300 Federal troopers in two long, brutal days of fighting. Although most of the fighting at Trevilian Station occurred dismounted, there were significant mounted charges. We will tour the first and second day’s battlefields, and we will end with a visit to Oakwood Cemetery in nearby Louisa. We will also hear about the battlefield preservation efforts of the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation.

On Sunday, we will visit the famed “Graffiti House”, where we will hear about the preservation work that has accomplished so much at Brandy Station, and then we will visit the town of Culpeper. Culpeper sites include Lt. Gen. A. P. Hill’s childhood home, the train station, which was the site of a small but nasty cavalry engagement that occurred on September 13, 1863, when Judson Kilpatrick’s Federal cavalry division made a dash on Confederate supply trains in the town of Culpeper. We will conclude our tours with a visit to the Culpeper National Cemetery, where Union battle dead from both Brandy Station and Trevilian Station rest.

I hope that some of you will be able to make it. At only $395 (including 2 lunches and a cookout on Saturday night), it really is a bargain. I know I’m really looking forward to it.

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