How is the mix? Does it lean heavily toward one direction? Or is it pretty even?

Eric

Sam Elliott

Regards
Andy

My “Amen” to Eric’s sermon had more to do with my CW reading/studying preferences. I’ll take a good regimental, well-researched bio or indepth campaign study & let others debate the cause(s) of the conflict.

Mike

Actually, it me who said he was interested in soldiers’ motivations and in the men who fought. Mike Peters was just seconding my comments.

Having said that, your point is well-taken and only elaborates on my original point, which is that while the two disciplines are intertwined, there are nevertheless clear boundaries, and social historians seem to lose interest the moment that boundary is reached.

Eric

I fear that a lot of this is symptomatic of the trend toward political correctness that permeates this country. Touchy-feely is PC. Military history is not. It may be that simple.

I think that the PC factor, in turn, helps to drive the demand/supply for teachers. If there were more interest–less PC, in other words–perhaps there would be more supply.

Eric

So as a “general statement” there is no such thing as a pure Civil War “military” history that somehow orbits in the past a separate sphere.

Intellectual revenge comes in the form of exception. Institutional intellectualism seldom has epiphanies. The really good stuff is usually an outlaw brainfart by some lil’ole genius out cruising on his own…

Kevin’s handwringing and other hardcore instituionalist insistence that military historians are “square pegs” is laughable. They were writing military history a long time before enlightened touch-me feel me socially responsible intellects decided what is now important. (I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect la la la 😉 ). (Tell that to religious based fundamentalists, drug lords, and the starving illiterate welter of the third world looking hungrily at the fat cities of New Rome…)

I could go on, but its not my soap box. (PS: two of the great innovative minds in 20th Century Classical Music were Americans, Charles Ives and Ed. Alden Carpenter. Both were professionally Insurance Salesman.)

Just a manic ramble…

And, I must admit, as a general statement, social history is a discipline that bears absolutely no interest for me. Genuinely, I couldn’t care less. Issues such as slavery and its consequences, and the consequences for the freedmen simply are of no interest to me. What interests me are the military aspects–the battles, the men who fought them, and their motivations. Social trends mean nothing to me in the big scheme of things, with the lone exception of how they might impact on those aspects that do interest me.

Eric:

All I can add to the above is AMEN!

Mike