Welcome. I’m glad to have you aboard.

For those unfamiliar with Art’s work, he was the staff historian at Pamplin Park for a number of years, before he accepted a position at USAMHI in Carlisle. If anybody would know what’s going on with Petersburg scholarship, it would be Art.

Thanks for the input and the update.

Eric

I agree that the Petersburg Campaign (and it was a campaign, not a “siege”) has not been covered adequately. Andy Trudeau’s book was a start, and there are a couple of good books on individuals battles during the campaign (Sommers’ being the best). The “definitive” history has yet to be written. Will Greene has finished a book on the town during the war, but I doubt that he will venture into a full campaign study. Tackling such a huge project probably scares off most historians.

Your point about other battles and campaigns needing better coverage is also correct. Maybe we don’t need 50 books on Palmetto Ranch, but we need a new study of the Red River Campaign.

Art

I really appreciate your insight here-it helps me to focus on where you’re coming from.

I think that you’re probably right in your analogy…I’ve heard Bruce Springsteen talk about how many thousands of times he’s sung “Born to Run”, but that he knows it’s what the folks who buy the tickets to his concerts want to hear.

Eric

A weekend trip to GB last Sept. led me to dig out the Shelby Foote series my wife bought years ago. Most of the volumes were still in cellophane. My only other reading was Killer Angels.

I am hooked. I need a hobby that requires reading and study like I need a Minie ball to the occiput, like my fellow Lancastrian. For the newbie, GB is fascinating and for me, accessible. There is so much to digest for the beginner. It’s led me to begin Lincoln and the prelude. I’ve gone back to the founding and the debate on Federalism. My bookshelves are groaning.

In my mind, EW’s lament is akin to the singer with new material being tired of requests for their first “hit”. For better or worse, those folks are the market, too. To mangle some more metaphor, it’s like throwing away your seed corn. GB is a great way for people to enter the community.

The scholar must lead, and I imagine it can be frustrating, especially given the economics of publishing. I’m reading as fast as I can 🙂

Thanks again,
Don

Gosh, I thought that was the complaint of the “western campaign” folks?

Of course, holistically, the Virginia meat grinder, and the breakthroughs in other departments were interdependent. Didn’t somebody complain that Gettysburg’s mythos was too “southern” dependent? The Lost Cause maunder that Gettysburg was supposed to be the place where we won the war; but “someone” was a traitor…

It’s taken some time for us commoners to remove the blinders and understand that Vicksburg tipped the scales by freeing up the Army of the Tennessee to run amuck and throw its weight into the balance in central TN and on to Atlanta and the Carolinas. Maybe YOU know that the war was won in the west, maybe Steve Woodworth knows it; but I’m old enough to recall suggesting it 20 years ago and getting slapped around for it ;).

(Hey, I moved back to Virginnie, just so I could drive to all them thar useless eastern battlefields….)

I had heard that about Glenn Robertson. Any idea where he stands on it?

As for your take on things, I agree. An interesting question to explore is the question of why things are as they are. That would make for an interesting study for someone some day.

Eric

It is it a product of irrational obsession to say that Gettysburg is a cool and interesting (not to mention important) campaign to study, whether on the field or in an armchair? That’s why so much is published on the campaign and so many people visit the field–although the battlefield’s proximity to major population centers certainly helps. While I agree the battle receives disproportiate attention in Civil War literature, am I the only one who detects a whiff of snobbery in the complaints of the Gettysburg and Eastern Theater bashers? Yes, yes, we “know” the war was won in the West–as long as we ignore the fact that the killing of diehard Confederates that was a necessary precondition for Union victory occurred on a greater scale in the East and particularly at Gettysburg than anywhere else.

Your point is, of course, well-taken, and it’s very easy to lose sight of these issues. Thanks for raising it.

Those of us who are interested in this field are demanding, and that’s what triggered this rant in the first place.

Eric

You said:

“This means that there are only a relatively small percentage of books devoted to the other 10,000 or so battles and skirmishes that took place during the Civil War. This means that there are still plenty of fascinating actions that deserve a detailed treatment but have been completely overlooked by history for whatever reasons.”

This is true…and I do find it a little odd (especially as an outsider) that so many ACW books are about Gettysburg, in much the same way that I find it odd that so many books on the Second World War are about the Normandy campaign.

On the flip side, I would ask you to stop and pause a moment and appreciate the COLOSSAL amount of work that has been done on the Civil War, work that for me as a relative latecomer to the field is utterly intoxicating in its breadth, quantity and sheer quality of scholarship.

I have a broad range of interests in military history, including the Eastern Front during the last war, Britain’s smaller colonial campaigns, the wars of French Indochina, the Falklands campaign, the Crimean war and the Risorgimento amongst others.

I’m used to having a maybe a dozen books of real quality to choose from and often less, discovering the American Civil War scholarship was like having my mouth stuffed with sweets. It was almost too much.

I have never come across a conflict for comprehensively researched, pored over and written about, including the last war.

Not that you’re not right vis a vis the Gettysburg obsession, but be thankful for the smashing stuff that’s produced.