General musings

Since the last post was generated by my participation in an on-line discussion group, and since these groups constitute a big part of my activity in the Civil War world, I thought I would follow that up with some additional thoughts about them.

By way of background, I’ve been involved in the Internet since 1996. My wife has a degree in computer science, and was intrigued by the nascent World Wide Web immediately upon its launch. We got our first dial-up account in 1996, and one of the very first things that I did was to subscribe to the Gettysburg Discussion Group, which was one of the very first of its sort. The GDG is owned by three brothers named Bob, Dennis, and Jack Lawrence, and the Lawrences have always pretty much set the gold standard for on-line discussion groups. Discussions there are normally quite cordial, and there are very few flame wars. The Brothers Lawrence do a fine job of keeping folks in line with firm but diplomatic moderation, and while my participation in the group ebbs and flows with my level of immersion in writing, I’ve been a member for most of the last ten years, although I did take a break for a time. At one time, when I was less busy and more active in the group, I was actually an elected trustee, which was a great honor. Dennis and Jack came to hear my talk to the Kansas City Civil War Roundtable last March, which was a nice surprise.

The biggest problem with the GDG is that its focus is, by definition, quite narrow. It means that the same topics get hashed over and over and over again, until they become ad nauseum. As one very good example, I’ve never found Pickett’s Charge the slightest bit interesting, nor do I care to discuss it or be involved in discussions of it. But, it comes up again and again. Or then there was one member who pretty much monopolized things for a while with inane postings about some ancestor of hers that fought there irrespective of whether anybody gave a damn. I very nearly left over that one.

At the same time, I’ve made lifetime friendships as a result. I can genuinely say that some of the people I’ve met there are some of the very best people I will ever have the honor of calling my friends. Several of them are now my business partners in Ironclad. One of them insisted, quite vigorously, that Susan and I stay with him and his wife when we last visited the L. A. area a few years back. Another friend, whom I first met through the GDG, and who lives in North Carolina, has become like a member of our family, and Susan and I value that relationship a great deal. We look forward to visiting with this person at least once per year a great deal. I met Dave Powell through the GDG. Dave and I have a lot in common, and we’ve become friends. Ironclad will be publishing one of Dave’s books, and Dave’s been a big help with research over the years. As a general rule, until I got overloaded with doing conferences and had to cut back, I ALWAYS enjoyed the GDG musters in Gettysburg, in part due to the fellowship with other people afflicted with this Civil War illness of ours.

In the interest of expanding things a bit, and to replace the Antietam Discussion Group, which imploded a few years back due to the lunacy of the group’s owner, Teej Smith and I started the Civil War Discussion Group, which follows the same format as the GDG, but which doesn’t have the restrictions of a single battle. That group has about 100 stalwart members, one of whom was Brian Pohanka. I’ve enjoyed it a great deal, and we’ve had a couple of terrific musters–one at Chancellorsville and another last May on Sherman’s Carolinas Campaign. I’ve tried to pattern my moderation after the way that the Lawrences moderate the GDG.

I then was enlisted to participate in a forum board group, from which I was inexplicably and unfairly excommunicated by the owner, perhaps because I refused to permit myself to be abused by other members of the group. I’ve never been given a satisfactory or sensible explanation of this by the group owner, and have given up on the idea of receiving one. In truth, I’m not all that upset about it–that particular forum has become the place where bizarre theories about the Battle of Gettysburg are espoused, and the person who espouses them is placed up on a pedestal. My thoughts on these bizarre new interpretations of the battle are well known and need not be repeated here. However, it was through this particular group that I met J. D. Petruzzi and Mike Nugent, and it is responsible for a number of what appear to be lifelong friendships that have grown into business relationships, too.

So, I went along with the formation of a competing new group that turned out to be nothing more than a con job by a master con man. Unfortunately, I put my imprimatur on this con man’s efforts, to my eternal embarrassment and dismay. Once I became aware of the magnitude of the fraud being perpetrated by him, I made the site disappear immediately, and his house of cards came crashing down. From the ashes of that group arose a successor that Susan and I started, the on-line forums version of the Civil War Discussion Group, which now has more than 300 members and is something of which I am quite proud.

I’ve also joined a couple of other e-mail discussion groups, including the one where I did the neo-Confederate bashing the other day.

My point in raising all of this is that, while one ends up kissing a lot of frogs along the way, my experiences with on-line discussion groups have generally been very positive, and they’ve led to some terrific long-term relationships. They also, in a very direct way, led to this blog, as Harry Smeltzer, who is a long-time CWDG member, turned me on to Dimitri Rotov’s blog, which, in turn, inspired me to do this. Thanks, Harry.

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Susan and I went to see the movie Capote tonight. Philip Seymour Hoffman gave one of the most remarkable performances I have ever seen by an actor. He transformed himself into Truman Capote. If he doesn’t win the best actor Oscar, something is dramatically wrong with the system.

You’re probably wondering what the hell this has to do with the Civil War. Please be patient. I’ll get there.

I raise it because the focus of the film is how Truman Capote suffered for his art. He wrote what was probably the finest piece of true crime work ever published. He had to wait out two or three stays of execution, waiting for the final act of the drama he was documenting before he could finish his book, and the waiting tore him up, knowing what would happen once the saga did end. It literally brought about a paradigm shift. At the same time, the course of researching and writing this book took a tremendous toll on him, such that he never finished another novel or non-fiction work of any significance again for the nearly 20 years of the rest of his life. He died of alcoholism twenty years after the publication of his greatest work. The ordeal took so much out of him that it rendered him utterly unable to function as he had previously.

Now, I can honestly say that I have never suffered for my art quite like Truman Capote did. While I’ve certainly suffered with the pains and frustrations of what I do, it’s never caused me to lose direction of my entire life, and I sincerely hope that nothing I do ever will. I hope that I never end up a drunken stumblebum who literally becomes a charicature of himself like Capote did toward the end of his life, living on his past glories. Now, in fairness to Capote, he so immersed himself in the research for his book that he attended the hangings of the two killers, and it undboutedly took a heavy toll on him (which is part of the brilliance of Hoffman’s performance–he nailed the transformation of Truman Capote). Obviously, I can’t go back in time and participate in Civil War battles, so I won’t be victimized by that, and I’m not a military veteran (although I regret that I’m not. I’m a child of the 1970’s, and the very LAST thing that any of us wanted to do when I graduated from high school in the Carter Administration was enter the military, something that, with retrospect, I deeply regret today).

As a writer myself–although I would certainly never flatter myself by putting myself in the same category as Truman Capote–I could really appreciate what he went through to get it right. I’m constantly asking myself whether I’ve left some important stone unturned in the course of researching one of my projects, whether there’s something more that I could have done to tell the story better. I understand the struggle to find out how it will end, how it will come out. Sure, we know who won these battles, but the issue here is not so much who won, but how. What factors had to fall into line for things to turn out the way they did. It’s that analysis, understanding how all of that played out, is what presents the problem for me and causes all of the gnashing of teeth. As I sat and watched Hoffman’s/Capote’s ordeal unfold on screen in front of me, I could relate to almost every aspect of it. I found myself as emotionally wrung out as the character did by the end of the movie, carefully relating in my own mind the ordeal of every book I’ve ever written, including the inevitable feeling that it’s NEVER going to be finished. That part of Capote’s ordeal, I really understand and relate to.

I struggle for my art, although certainly not to the extent that Truman Capote did. I think that every writer worth his or her salt does to some extent. In the end, it makes me a better writer. Or so I hope.

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The Second Battle of Bull Run was fought August 28-30, 1862. I have, for a long time now, found this battle to be particularly compelling and especially interesting. As Ulric Dahlgren was the acting chief of artillery for the Army of Virginia’s First Corps during the battle, addressing it renewed my interest in this campaign. I’ve long toyed with the idea of doing a book that would be called “Pope’s Horsemen: The Union Cavalry in the Second Bull Run Campaign”, and may yet do so; the research for it is largely finished.

The opening engagement is often treated as a separate battle, the Battle of Brawner’s Farm, also sometimes called the Battle of Groveton. In this action, Brig. Gen. John Gibbon’s brigade of western soldiers (Indiana and Michigan troops) earned the name the Iron Brigade, and Maj. Gen. Richard S. Ewell, Stonewall Jackson’s ranking division commander, was badly enough wounded that it cost him a leg. The main battle opened the next day, with Maj. Gen. John Pope’s Army of Virginia launching uncoordinated, piecemeal attack after uncoordinated, piecemeal attack against Jackson’s Corps, which was using an unfinished railroad cut near the 1861 Bull Run battlefield, as a natrual breastwork. One of Pope’s attacks briefly punched through the line, and was driven back, and the day’s fighting ended up with the opposing forces in pretty much the same positions they had held at the beginning of the day.

Pope was so focused on the enemy in front of him that he refused to believe intelligence reports that indicated that Maj. Gen. James Longstreet’s Corps had passed through Thoroughfare Gap and was moving on his flank. Brig. Gen. John Buford, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks’ active and extremely competent chief of cavalry, sat on a bluff at Gainesville and personally counted Longstreet’s battle flags as they passed. Buford reported this intelligence to Brig. Gen. James Ricketts, who passed it to Irvin McDowell, who pocketed it. For reasons that are unclear, McDowell waited for six hours to give this intelligence to Pope.

The next day, Pope renewed his attack, sending 12,000 men of the Fifth Army Corps against the center of Jackson’s line. In extremely fierce hand-to-hand combat, the Fifth Corps attack was repulsed. By then Longstreet’s Corps was on the field, and not long after the repulse of the Fifth Corps attack, Longstreet launched a counterattack that rolled up Pope’s flank and drove his army from the field in a disorganized rout. By September 5, Pope’s Army of Virginia had ceased to exist and Pope was on a train to Minnesota, where he spent the balance of the war fighting Indians.

Robert E. Lee suffered no major casualties in the Army of Northern Virginia’s officer corps, Ewell being the highest ranking casualty. On the other side, two of Pope’s division commanders were killed in a confused fight in a raging thunderstorm at Chantilly the next day (September 1). Second Bull Run was probably Lee’s greatest victory; there was no other instance where an army ceased to exist as a consequence of a battlefield defeat (other than through surrender, such as at Vicksburg). Yet, Pope’s army was that soundly beaten.

What I’ve never quite understood is why this battle gets little respect and even less attention. Perhaps it’s because Pope was such a dislikeable fellow, described by Lee as a “miscreant”, and hated by his own men. Perhaps it’s because it did not really involve the Army of the Potomac or any of its principal commanders. Perahps it’s because the battle was fought on the same ground as the July 1861 fight occurred. Perhaps the total destruction of all but four acres of the Chantilly battlefield adds to it. Perhaps it’s because the Army of Northern Virginia fought a mainly defensive battle. However, it’s hard to argue the merits of what Lee achieved or the significance of the battle, which engendered panic in Washington. In my humble opinion, it was Lee’s greatest victory, overshadowing even Chancellorsville, which cost him the services of Stonewall Jackson and led to the wounding of A. P. Hill in the same errant volley. Yet, Chancellorsville (which is a campaign and battle that also fascinates me) gets far, far more attention, both in terms of visitation and the number of pages of published works devoted to it than Second Bull Run could ever hope to achieve.

In addition, the Second Bull Run Campaign has produced one of the finest Civil War campaign studies ever published in John J. Hennessy’s excellent Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas. John’s book really is one of the best studies of a full campaign I’ve ever seen; it’s hard to imagine anyone ever doing a better job of it than he did. And while John’s book is universally respected (and rightfully so), it hasn’t done much to generate a lot of interest in this battle, either.

Interestingly, the men of Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel’s First Corps–which later became the much-maligned Eleventh Corps–did some of the hardest fighting on the two days of the main battle at Second Bull Run, including a desperate last stand on Henry House Hill. Yet again, they get no respect for this fight, either.

Also, the massive push to save Stuart’s Hill from development required Congressional intervention and the purchase of the land at an exorbitantly high price. This particular preservation fight focused a great deal of attention on the plight of Civil War battlefield land perservation, in light of the loss of the Chantilly battlefield. Even the loss of the Chantilly battlefield had an unforeseen but very favorable outcome–it led to the creation of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites, the successor organization to which is today known as the Civil War Preservation Trust, in response to the destruction of all but four acres of the Chantilly battlefield.

I wish I could understand why this battle and campaign doesn’t get the respect and attention it deserves, but I can’t. I can only hope that some day, it does finally receive the respect it really deserves.

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Part of the researcher’s task is, of course, finding material. To that end, experience is worth everything. My years of experience in conducting Civil War research has taught me where the really good repositories of material are. As a general rule, I try to avoid sweeping generalizations, but they do sometimes have value. Here’s one: my experience tells me that the best repositories of primary source, unpublished manuscript material are, in no particular order:

1. The National Archives
2. The Library of Congress
3. The United States Army Military History Institute
4. The University of North Carolina
5. Duke University
6. The University of Virginia
7. The University of Michigan
8. Navarro College
9. Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park (what an awesome collection Bob Krick and company have cobbled together there……)
10. Virginia State Archives
11. Virginia Historical Society
12. Alabama Department of Archives and History
13. Museum of the Confederacy
14. Historical Society of Pennsylvania
15. Western Reserve Historical Society

I could go on, but you get the idea. Knowing this makes it fairly easy to put together a research strategy for tackling a given project. While this list isn’t exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination, it will certainly give you a damned good start on any major research project.

The Internet has also made the process so much easier. Many–not all–institutions now have on-line finding aids available, which makes it easy to get a good flavor for what’s available in their collections. That makes the task much easier and makes the process more efficient, since I can map out what I want before I ever even leave my house, and it even makes it possible to obtain some of the desired materials strictly by mail. That’s a big plus.

There’s also a real value to knowing where things aren’t. In working my way through my Dahlgren project, I thought of a few potential sources for the 6th Ohio Cavalry, a portion of which accompanied Dahlgren on his November 1862 Fredericksburg Raid, and I checked a couple of them out today. These were things that I remembered seeing during my travels, knew that they pertained to the 6th Ohio, but had no idea whether they were pertinent to my specific question. So, I called in a favor today and had someone check them out for me. Neither were pertinent. That’s okay–they are what they are. However, where it becomes relevant is that if they were, I probably would have had to have found time in my schedule to dash over to USAMHI in Carlisle, PA to get them, or hire someone to do that for me. Knowing that these two sources were a dry hole means that I don’t have to worry about them, and also means that I don’t have to go to extraordinary lengths to get what’s there.

Like I said, there is not only a real, tangible value to knowing where things are, there’s a similar value to knowing where things aren’t.

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Here, in no particular order, are some things I would like to see happen in 2006 (some deal with the Civil War and some don’t. Warning for those of you who support the present occupant of the White House–there will be one blatantly political item that you probably won’t much appreciate; consider yourselves warned):

1. For the traitor Johnny Damon to hit .200 or lower, and for the Yankees to finish dead last. It couldn’t happen to a nicer team.

2. For the traitor Billy Wagner to have an ERA in excess of 6.00 and no saves and for the Mets to also finish dead last. Are you detecting a pattern here?

3. For us to have an entire year without the publication of a single book claiming to expose Robert E. Lee’s real plan for the Battle of Gettysburg.

4. For us to have an entire year without people feeling the need to develop bizarre and unsupportable theories about the Battle of Gettysburg in the misplaced hope of unlocking the secrets of that battle that have evaded all of the rest of us for 142+ years now.

5. For old friend Bud Hall to finally finish his long-needed and greatly anticipated book on the June 9, 1863 Battle of Brandy Station, and finally give this epic event the scholarly treatment it has needed for so long, and for Gordon Rhea to conclude the sixth and final volume of his epic study of the 1864 Overland Campaign.

6. For Donovan McNabb to return to the Eagles hale, hearty, and 100% again, ready to lead his team to the promised land.

7. For Mother Nature to spare important historical sites from the wrath of Category 5 hurricanes. We lose too much historically significant land as it is. We don’t need to lose important historical sites to hurricane and flood damage, too.

8. For our troops to return home safely from a war that was started based on a lie and for which we never had any business engaging in in the first place.

9. For publishers to listen to the wishes of consumers, and remember that a book can never have too many maps or too many illustrations.

10. That only GOOD, worthy, worthwhile Civil War books be published in 2006. I’m not holding my breath on this one.

11. That the Columbus Blue Jackets NOT suck. I’m DEFINITELY not holding my breath on this one.

12. That the construction of our new house and the resulting move be smooth and pain free. I know better than to hold my breath on this one.

13. That I get to visit lots of Civil War battlefields this year, including some places that I have never visited previously. I can think of a number of places I’ve never been but would like to tramp. A few come to mind: Wyse’s Fork in North Carolina, Mine Creek in Kansas, and Stones River in Tennessee. There are also the Custer Battlefield in Montana, Washita in Oklahoma, and Blue Water in Nebraska for some Indian wars-related sites.

14. That my regimental history of the Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry finally gets completed this year, after more than a decade of work.

15. That all of you who give their time and energy to indulging my rants have a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year filled with lots of great reading.

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I’m in the midst of writing my biography of Ulric Dahlgren. Beginning with Franz Sigel’s appointment to corps command in the Army of Virginia in June 1862, until Sigel was relieved of corps command in the Army of the Potomac in early 1863, Dahlgren served as on Sigel’s staff, and for much of that time, was Sigel’s acting chief of artillery. During October and November 1862, but especially during October, Dahlgren was particularly active, leading daring scouting missions, chasing Confederate guerrillas, and then commanding a bold dash into the town of Fredericksburg on November 9. Dahlgren particulalry distinguished himself during this period of time.

It’s an interesting period. Although there wasn’t much in the way of major fighting during this time frame, there was a lot of skirmishing, particularly cavalry skirmishing, in the Loudoun Valley. Some, in fact, have argued that this time frame truly marked the turning point for the Union cavalry and not the spring of 1863, as I have claimed in print. Stuart’s Second Ride Around McClellan occurred during this time. It’s also the period when Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s tenure as commander of the Army of the Potomac was under the heaviest scrutiny and when Abraham Lincoln became most dissatisfied with McClellan’s “slows,” as Lincoln put it. Consequently, McClellan was relieved of command on November 6, just before Dahlgren’s mad dash into Fredericksburg.

However, after a fair amount of searching, I have yet to find a detailed treatment of events (especially dealing with the tactical aspects that fall) during this period. I’ve even sent out e-mails to the discussion groups that I belong to, looking for input on books that address this period, all to little avail. That brings me to the point of this post.

Although there have been countless books written about major events, such as the Battle of Gettysburg–why in the world do we need yet another book on Pickett’s Charge, anyway–there are none on other, lengthy periods of the war where important events occurred. There are so many areas that have been done to death, and yet there are other significant areas where nothing at all has been written. The asymmetry of this can be stunning. I have tried very hard to choose topics that are off the beaten path–obscure things and events–instead of writing yet another useless account of Pickett’s Charge, or the invention of some bizarre theory in the hope of making my mark by coming up with something new on ground that’s already been plowed too damned many times. A careful review of my work will demonstrate this. When I have written about big battles like Gettysburg, I’ve selected small or obscure aspects of it. From my perspective, the more obscure the better.

Let me use one of my own books as an example. Sheridan’s second raid–and the resulting Battle of Trevilian Station–were important aspects of Grant’s Overland Campaign, but had not had any sort of a detailed treatment. There was PLENTY of excellent primary source material out there just waiting for somebody to tackle it, but it had never happened before I tackled it. I was able to cobble together a nearly 150,000 word treatment of this campaign that has been very well received, and has sold reasonably well.

Here’s another example. Until just a handful of years ago, there hadn’t been a good, modern, scholarly treatment of the Fredericksburg Campaign until two appeared in the space of one year–George Rable’s and Frank O’Reilly’s–that covered this campaign in the sort of detail it had been crying out for. The Petersburg Campaign really needs a detailed treatment–the entire campaign has never had one; only Andy Trudeau’s The Last Citadel covers the whole campaign, and that’s more of an overview than anything else. This campaign lasted 8 months, was really one of the most important phases of the war, but yet it’s been largely ignored by historians in spite of some brutal, bloody fighting. It really needs the sort of superb multi-volume treatment like the one that Gordon Rhea’s done on the previously overlooked Overland Campaign. I don’t understand why this hasn’t happened to date, but it clearly hasn’t.

Still others have gotten some attention, but cry out for a really thorough treatment. Two come to mind immediately. Until Ken Noe’s excellent Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle was published in 2001, the only detailed treatment that the Battle of Perryville had received was the God-awful and unreadable book by Kent Hafendorfer. Yet Perryville marked the high water mark of the Confederacy in the West. It needed a real treatment, and Ken finally gave it one. Or John Hunt Morgan’s Indiana and Ohio Raid of 1863, which also needs a solid tactical treatment based on real scholarship, and not on family oral history that cannot be corroborated.

Even though there have literally been tens of thousands of books published on the Civil War, there are still very large gaps in the historiography and there are still plenty of worthy topics that remain virgin, untouched territory. I would love to see someone beside me tackle some of these more obscure topics and a lot less speculation on Lee’s “true” plan at Gettysburg. Ultimately, we will all be richer for it.

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Our friends Greg and Karel Lea Biggs are in town, visiting us from Tennessee. Greg is a vexillologist who specializes in Confederate flags. The Ohio Historical Society houses more than 350 Ohio battle flags as well as a handful of other miscellaneous flags, including a recently discovered captured Confederate battleflag which Greg cannot identify. When examined closely, you can still plainly see the blood stains on the white portions of the flag. Greg really wanted to see this flag, and made arrangements for us to have access to the flag collection today to see it. They have all been photographed, and many of them have been rendered as paintings. Photos of all of them are available on the OHS web site.

Only 16 of the Ohio battleflags have been through a full conservation procedure, and are the only ones that are displayed as a result. The ones that have been done are quite nice. One, in particular, really caught my attention. It’s the national colors of the 10th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, and this flag is nothing short of spectacular. There are a handful of other flags that are similarly preserved and similarly displayed.

Sadly, the overwhelming majority of them are in bad shape. In the 1960’s, at the recommendation of the National Park Service, the flags were glued to nylon in the hope that they would not disintegrate completely, and were then furled. The furled flags are still on their staffs. They’re stored standing upright in four large wheeled bins, and have tags on them to identify them. Some of them are in such atrocious shape that there’s nothing left of them but dust. There’s nothing to unfurl, meaning that they have been lost forever. From what I could tell, there are 15-20 of these that are in such poor condition that they’re forever lost. Virtually all of them are missing large chunks, as silk does not age or wear well. These flags are not only display, are not in the main facility of the Ohio Historical Center, and are not generally available to the public. An appointment must be made, and visitors must be escorted. You’re really not supposed to touch them, but if you do, you must wear white cotton gloves to do so.

Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of the flags remain furled, as they cannot be unfurled without undergoing a special treatment. Once they’re unfurled, they have to be stored flat in special cabinets. Since Union flags can be quite large (6 feet by 6 feet square), the large flags must be stored one per shelf in these special cabinets. The curator of the flags told us today that in order to unfurl and store all of the flags flat will require 24 of these huge cabinets. Each of these cabinets costs about $15,000, but the Ohio Historical Society has no budget with which to purchase them.

My thoughts on battlefield preservation are well known. We can’t afford to lose an inch of valuable land, and I continue to support battlefield preservation as I always have. However, I’ve come to really appreciate these flags, as they won’t be with us much longer unless steps are taken to preserve them. At the very least, they need to be unfurled. They can’t be unfurled until OHS has sufficient storage facilities for it to do so. For those who are interested in this topic, please feel free to contribute to OHS’s fundraising efforts. I encourage you all to do so. The land will still be there. The flags won’t.

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I can’t decide whether it’s a good thing or a pathetic thing when one has to move in order to accommodate one’s library. That is, however, precisely the dilemma that Susan and I are facing. And the decision that we ultimately made is not to get rid of books but instead to get rid of the house.

Here’s the situation. We bought our existing home in 1995. It was never our dream house; it was very convenient, and it was what we could afford at the time. Most importantly, it was exactly halfway between Susan’s mother’s place and her grandmother’s place. Both had significant health issues, so accessibility was an important thing. Unfortunately, both women are no longer with us, so that means that the convenience factor has now been removed.

The present house is a five bedroom house with about 2500 square feet. It was built in 1968, and it shows. Aside from its early Brady Bunch decor (most of which has already been replaced, because we just couldn’t stand it), the use of space is not good–we have a formal living room that is 13×28 feet, meaning that it, alone, is 364 square feet, or 14% of the total square footage of the house. You could almost roller skate or bowl in that room, it’s so big. It’s also almost completely wasted space. In order to accommodate our library as it existed in 1995–Susan also collects books in areas that interest her (we have a massive collection of computer books and an even larger collection of vampire and ghost stories that’s all her stuff)–we took one of the bedrooms and had 24 linear feet of floor to ceiling bookcases built in. The entire library–all of it, hers and mine–fit in there then.

The problem is that both of us have added books exponentially since then. Her stuff gradually got squeezed out of there as my collection grew–I now own about 1500 Civil War books alone–and it had to go somewhere. Consequently, we now have at least one bookcase in every room in the house, except for the kitchen and the formal dining room (only because there simply is no room for one with the dining room furniture, or there would be). Those bookcases are now full, and because our basement is damp, we are completely out of room for additional books. There is just no shelf space left. New books–I bought two on Sunday–are now beginning to just pile up on the floor in my library because there simply is nowhere to put them.

This summer, a year after Susan’s mother died, we came to the inevitable conclusion that it was time to look into moving. We quickly realized that unless we built a home, we were going to have an extremely difficult time finding something that would reasonably accommodate the books. So, we set out to find a builder that had a workable floor plan that would also work with us to give us what we want/need. Fortunately, we found just that, and we’re about to break ground on a new house. The new house will have two offices–mine and Susan’s. Mine will have approximately 45 linear feet of 9-foot tall floor to ceiling bookcases, which will not only accommodate my collection but also leave room to grow. Susan’s office will have another 16 or so linear feet of floor to ceiling bookcases, which will accommodate her stuff. The builder says it’s six months from breaking ground to closing, so we’re looking at moving into the new place some time around July 4 or so. I can’t wait. I’ve never particularly liked our current house, and I am frankly tired of pouring money into a bottomless pit. At nearly 40 years old, stuff is dying or wearing out. In the last 18 months, we’ve put on a new roof, had both chimneys re-bricked, replaced the central air conditioning unit, and replaced the main sewer line, since the roots of the 40-foot-tall silver maple tree in the front yard smashed up the existing masonry pipeline. And there’s plenty more where that ugly little list came from…..

So, when push comes to shove, the simple truth is that we’re moving because we need more space for books. And I can’t decide whether that’s a good thing or a really pathetic thing.

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In response to yesterday’s bout of shameless self-promotion, I was led to ponder once again a question that I get asked often–why do I write?

The answer is simple–because I need to do so. It’s no secret that I don’t much like my job–I’ve bored all of you to death with that already, and won’t beat that poor dead horse any more than it’s already been beaten. However, my dissatisfaction with my employment leaves me with a need to find an outlet. I have always found the writer’s art–finding ways to put words together in a fashion that tells a story–absolutely fascinating. One thing about how I make my livelihood–you quickly learn the power of words and you quickly learn that how you put words together can have a tremendous impact on people’s lives. Consequently, I’m on a never-ending journey to find the perfect way to tell a story. While I know that there is no such thing as the “perfet way to tell a story,” the fun lies in the attempt. As I go back and read things that I wrote early on, I can see a dramatic change in the quality of what I write from even 1998 or 1999. Like anything, writing is one of those things where the more you do, the better you get.

Writing has always been good therapy for me. Since I got serious about writing history about a dozen years ago, I have found that losing myself completely in events that happened 140 years ago is incredibly liberating. It removes me from the stresses of everyday life, and is so far removed from what I do professionally that a couple of hours spent writing completely recharges my batteries. It energizes me and it enables me to be able to refocus my admittedly short attention span on my professional responsibilities. Losing myself in events of the past allows me to forget about the war in Iraq, or terrorism, or any of the other things that cause day-to-day stress in our lives. For me, it’s an ideal way of getting a couple of hours entirely for myself.

I also find that the best way for me to really learn about a battle or an action is for me to research it and write about it. Doing so forces me to really learn and understand it–how can I explain it clearly in words if I don’t understand it? It’s a good tool for forcing me to focus and learn. So, that’s yet another reason for why I do what I do–to educate myself.

Further, I get an enormous kick out of the process of researching an event or a person and then in pulling all of the disparate threads of the story together to weave them into a cohesive narrative that makes sense. For me, that is not only the true challenge, but also the the true reward. It’s like doing detective work. Half the fun of tackling obscure, unknown events is figuring out what really happened and then crafting a narrative that follows that interpretation of events. Part of the fun of that is finding and reviewing the participant accounts and then trying to figure out what’s reliable and what isn’t.

It’s important to remember that when I–or any other historian, for that matter–write an account of something, it’s just that: MY account, MY interpretation. We were not there, so we have no first-hand knowledge. Rather, what we do is figure out how we THINK event occurred, put those events together using the available evidence, and then present the story of those events in a fashion that’s consistent with our interpretation. I fully understand that there are other interpretations out there and that not everyone will agree with my interpretations about things. That’s okay with me; I have no urge to be absolutely right about everything.

Sometimes, the interpretation changes as the narrative is forged. There are times when I set out to write something and the evidence leads in such a different or unexpected direction that it deviates completely from what I originally had in mind, and my interpretation ends up changing. It’s all about flexibility and going where the evidence leads you, not drawing a desired conclusion and then manipulating the evidence to support that conclusion, whether warranted or not.

Finally, there’s an intangible reason. Buried deep inside me is my true calling, which is to have been a teacher of some sort. Since I don’t get to stand in front of a classroom and pontificate, doing so in writing is my way of teaching and sharing my knowledge. When I write, with the knowledge that something will be published, I do so knowing that it will help to scratch my teaching itch. That’s an entirely selfish reason.

So, the short answer is: I write because I have to. It’s how I keep my sanity, it’s how I learn, and it’s become an integral part of who and what I am.

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Today is December 7, 2005, the sixty-fourth anniversary of the Japanese sneak attack on the U. S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii. The next day, when he addressed Congress to ask for a declaration of war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said:

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to the Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. Very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island. This morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.

Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces – with the unbounded determination of our people – we will gain the inevitable triumph – so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December seventh, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”

And with that, World War II officially began for the United States.

What astounds me is that a scant sixty-four years later, with plenty of veterans still around–my friend J. D. Petruzzi’s father survived the attacks at Pearl Harbor as a very young sailor–there has been nary a word of the significance of this date on the news or in the media. Has this date really become so insignificant as to not warrant even a glimmer of attention?

Apparently, President Roosevelt was wrong. The day no longer does live in infamy. Our lives are so focused on the here and now that we have forgotten about the sacrifices made for us by what Tom Brokaw calls “the greatest generation.” My father is 85 years old, and is a member of that generation. That’s my nexus to it, and at 85, I’m not foolish enough not to realize that he won’t be with us too much longer.

2,388 American soldiers and sailors were killed that day, with nearly half of them on the U.S.S. Arizona alone. Another 1,178 were wounded in the Japanese attacks that day. It is certainly tragic and wrong that more than 2,000 Americans have died in Iraq in a war that we had no business starting. I don’t mean to downplay their sacrifices at all. At the same time, in more than three and a half years of war, our losses in Iraq are still less than they were in that single day at Pearl Harbor. We can’t have tunnel vision and simply forget about the generation that won World War II in order to pay tribute to the sacrifices of our honored dead in Iraq, even if they died fighting a war based on a lie. There is room for both.

If you see a World War II veteran, please take a moment and thank him or her for what they did for us. They deserve nothing less.

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