Eric

Well said. You’re absolutely correct about how this all came together. I can’t wait to see this one in print.

Eric

Eric and I have just completed a book on Jeb Stuart’s ride to Gettysburg. You can see a description of it at http://www.savasbeatie.com/StuartRide.html. Stuart’s ride is a less-studied part of, of course, the over-exposed battle of Gettysburg. We all know the generalities about Stuart’s ride and its impact on the battle and campaign – “Stuart’s to blame,” “Had he been on the field on July 1 everything would have been different,” “He was joyriding and let Lee down,” etc. etc.

No one until now have really done an exhaustive study of the ride and its impact, however – there have been articles, yes, and one book – Mark Nesbitt’s “Saber and Scapegoat” – but articles are rarely exhaustive and Mark’s book didn’t go into the depth, detail, or resources that an exhaustive scholarly study requires.

Stuart’s ride is an “obscure” subject compared to everything else Gettysburg, and his clashes with Federals along the way – Fairfax Court House, Westminster, Hanover, Hunterstown – are even more obscure. However, to more fully understand Stuart’s impact on the battle, and go far beyond the “he was joyriding” and similar generalities, it takes an exhaustive study that analyses the how, where and why. Hence our book. And we found that primary material on the ride had hardly been scratched before, in spite of the many articles and several books that have attempted to explore the subject in varying detail.

What’s the point? Well, along the way, Eric and I both found that we began to modify and qualify our individual and collective opinions along the way. What we intended the book to be when we began, is not how the final product ended up – we found that a deep study of the primary evidence, in all of its context, forced us to be more unbiased than we were when we went into the project. And the title – “Plenty of Blame to Go Around” – came by itself, it’s almost as if we simply couldn’t name the book anything else.

But it’s the modifying of our outlook on the subject along the way that fascinated me, and made both of us mature in our opinions on Stuart’s ride, its impact, Jeb’s decisions, the political/social nature of the controversy that exploded afterwards, etc, and – in the end – made us more fully appreciate the battle of Gettysburg itself and the entire campaign. You simply can’t get that by studying July 1, 2, and 3 as if in a vacuum.

J.D.

I think the guy in blue is winning.

LOL. Good point.

Eric

Fair enough. Like I said, it’s really an issue of how we approach our respective studies of the war.

And I agree with Dave–“aesthetic” is a good word.

Eric

Like, when I think of civil rights I think of Church’s fried chicken. (Prop mans disclaimer sign behind Kelly’s head, “He’s being sarcastic folks.)

Glad to see the doink light came on in your response. Aesthetic is a very good word to choose.

When two obsessive compulsives meet they can bridge the gap with something mutually beneficial; like washing each others hands.

(I really like blogs.)