True enough. I agree.

Eric

Conversely, the attractiveness of Gettysburg among charlatans and the generally goofy is clearly a sort of founder’s effect. In the same way that no con artist will ever approach you and attempt to sell you the George Washington Bridge, their literary equivalents aren’t going to try to build their flash-and-no-substance careers on some sort of argument about the Port Hudson campaign or Sabine Pass being the fulcrum of the war.

As you and I have discussed, it could be attributable to many things. Maybe it’s a fad at the moment, as Civil War and American history scholarship in general becomes microscopic. Maybe it’s the fading away of the “big hitters” of scholarship, such as the Pfanz’s, Bearss’s, McPherson’s etc and others are trying to take their place by making a name for themselves with some of these wacked-out theories. The only good thing about it all is it makes the rest of us think out our opinions and interpretations more. There’s an old saying that you can learn a lot from a dummy, and these dummies are definitely forcing us to research in more detail and to substantiate our own views.

Learning is never easy, whether it’s on your own accord or from the village idiot, I guess 🙂

J.D. Petruzzi

Eric

As authors, we also get critical of other writer’s work by using that same smell test – note the examples of Carhart’s and Walker’s books, et al. As when we meddle through a myriad of various primary sources on a subject, the same judiciousness is applied to other author’s works. For anyone very familiar with, for instance, the action on East Cavalry Field at Gettysburg on July 3, the stink gets stronger with every turn of the page of Carhart’s book. We would dismiss his book immediately whether it was published in 2005 (as it was) or even back in the early 20th century by one of the early secondary scholars.

A stink is a stink, doesn’t matter how far removed from the events it may be.

J.D. Petruzzi

You’re very welcome, and I’m very pleased to hear that you’re finding something worthwhile here.

Eric