September, 2006

Today, I received an invitation to join the Military Writers Society of America. Here’s how the Society web site describes its mission:

We are an association of more than five-hundred authors, poets, and artists, drawn together by the common bond of military service. Most of our members are active duty military, retirees, or military veterans. A few are lifelong civilians who have chosen to honor our military through their writings or their art. Our only core principle is a love of the men and women who defend this nation, and a deeply personal understanding of their sacrifice and dedication.

Our skills are varied. Some of us are world class writers, with many successful books. Others write only for the eyes of their friends and families. But each of us has a tale to tell. Each of us is a part of the fabric of Freedom. These are our stories…

The good folks at Savas-Beatie arranged the invitation, which I gladly accepted.

Please check out the MWSA. Theirs is a worthy mission. Honoring the men and women who have served this country is always an admirable goal.

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I got the new issue of North & South magazine today. It contains an article on the mystery of what Lincoln knew and when he knew it with respect to Ulric Dahlgren’s role in the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid. The article was written by Prof. David E. Long of East Carolina University.

I have been aware of this article for quite some time. David spoke to our Civil War Roundtable last year, and we spent some time together discussing the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid. Between his CWRT talk and our private discussions, David laid out his theory in detail, although I’d never seen it spelled out in writing. David contacted me about eight weeks and asked if I would be willing to read and comment on the thing before it was actually published. I said sure, but for reasons that I don’t quite understand why it never materialized. He never sent it. Today was the first time that I read it.

It says precisely what I expected it to say: that Lincoln not only knew, but that he specifically ordered the assassination of Jefferson Davis, and that Ulric Dahlgren was his hand-picked instrumentality for accomplishing the objective. While David is now a history professor, he spent a number of years practicing law (here in Columbus, ironically enough), and the article is written as if he is making legal arguments.

However, David faces the same lack of specific evidence that I did, and his arguments are based solely on circumstantial evidence, as there is no direct evidence whatsoever for any of us to rely upon. He argues that Ulric Dahlgren became a trusted confidant of Lincoln, and that Lincoln used Dahlgren as a mole in Army of the Potomac headquarters. When the time came to implement this plan, Dahlgren got the job as the leader of the raid.

According to David’s theory, Kilpatrick’s column was the diversionary column, while Dahlgren’s column had the primary responsibility for executing the plan. He correctly points out that conventional interpretations of these events have it the other way around, and argues that the White House actually created a veil of deception to create the illusion that the raid was the brainchild of Kilpatrick in the minds of the public.

Just after the end of the Battle of Chancellorsville, Dahlgren proposed a raid on Richmond from the southwest if the Confederate cavalry went on a raid. The plan was rejected because Joseph Hooker felt it was too risky. David correctly points out that none of the prior published histories of the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid have connected the proposed 1863 raid with the 1864 raid (although I discussed it in my 2003 book The Union Cavalry Comes of Age, and I also discuss it at length in the biography in two places). In his mind, it’s proof positive that Dahlgren was the driving force behind the plan to assassinate Davis and his cabinet.

He addresses the validity of the Dahlgren Papers and concludes that they were authentic, a conclusion I wholeheartedly support. However, the authenticity of the documents doesn’t reach the point of proving that Lincoln knew.

David is working on a book-length treatment of these events. I gave him some material on Ulric Dahlgren that he hadn’t seen, and I will be interested to see how he uses it in the book when the time comes. I’m not sure what the status of the book is, but I’m looking forward to reading it when it’s done. It’s got to be better than Duane Schultz’s The Dahlgren Affair: Terror and Conspiracy in the Civil War, which is such a stretch that I can’t even begin to suggest that he’s drawn valid and supportable conclusions.

I’m glad that I finally got to read what I’ve been hearing about for a long time. I remain unconvinced. While I respect David’s scholarship and his enthusiasm for the subject, the fact remains that the only evidence is purely circumstantial, and in my lawyer’s mind, when you add it all up, it doesn’t constitute sufficient evidence to meet the burden of proof to convict Lincoln of complicity in the conspiracy. I continue to believe that Lincoln did not know, and that Stanton was the driving force behind this episode, not Ully Dahlgren or Abraham Lincoln.

I also still beleive that there’s at least a 50-50 chance that Dahlgren was just cowboying when he went off on his raid. I think it’s entirely possible that he was acting “off the reservation”, as the expression goes.

I repeat what I’ve said previously: the evidence is not persuasive one way or the other, and we will never know the truth. Which makes it a fascinating controversy to explore again and again. I know that it intrigues me.

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Tonight, I finished the third pass at the Dahlgren manuscript. The next step, which begins tomorrow, is to plug the changes into the computer, and then it’s ready to be circulated to a few friends for review and comment. I’m finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. I will have all of the changes entered into the computer by the end of the week, and then it goes out. I’m looking forward to taking a bit of a break before launching into the next project. Stay tuned.

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144 years ago today, September 17, 1862, the Battle of Antietam was fought. In a day-long slugging match along the banks of Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, that marked the climax of the first Confederate invasion of the North, the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia fought the bloodiest single day of the war. Lee’s army, outnumbered nearly two to one, held against McClellan’s assaults for an entire day. At the end of the day, 12,401 (2,108 killed, 9,540 wounded, 753 captured/missing) Union soldiers, and 10,316 (1,546 killed, 7,752 wounded, 1,018 captured/missing) Confederate soldiers–nearly 23,000 in all–were casualties. Lee waited for McClellan to attack him again on September 18, but McClellan had had enough. Finally, on September 19, Lee retreated back across the Potomac to the safety of Virginia. The first invasion of the North was over.

This post is dedicated to the memory of the soldiers who fought and died at Antietam. Their memory and their sacrifices are not forgotten.

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Ted Savas recently published a book titled Playing With the Enemy. The book tells the story of Gene Moore, whose extremely promising baseball career was interrupted by World War II. Moore was sent on a secret mission to guard German prisoners of war, and ended up teaching them to play baseball. It makes for quite a story, and it’s a terrific book. Gene Moore’s son Gary wrote the book to honor his father and tell his story.

The rights to Gene Moore’s story were recently sold to a major Hollywood producer, Gerald R. Molen, who is going to make a major Hollywood movie from it. Presumably, Gary Moore was paid a substantial amount of money for the movie rights to his father’s story. I hope he was. There’s so little money being made in history that I root for anyone who does happen to hit it big.

I can only hope that some day, some way, one of my books will be sold to Hollywood. Maybe then, I can finally tell Susan, “See? I told you we’d make back all of that money I spent doing my book projects eventually.” 🙂

Congratulations, Gary, and best wishes.

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Now that the Dahlgren project is winding down, I face the challenge of finding a publisher for the project.

I will finish my third editing pass at the manuscript no later than the middle of next week, and then I will put the revisions into the computer. Once I’ve done that, it’s ready to be circulated to a few chosen friends for review and comment. In other words, it’s getting close to completion.

Before anyone asks, I will answer the question. It’s not an appropriate book for Ironclad because we made a conscious business decision to devote all of our resources to publishing only volumes in our “The Discovering Civil War America Series” (with the exception of two other titles that were already under contract when we made that decision), and a biography of Ulric Dahlgren most assuredly doesn’t fit into the Series. Therefore, Ironclad is not an option.

So, I’m left with the challenge of finding a publisher for this project. As fascinating a young man as Ully Dahlgren was, he died at the age of 21 years, 11 months. He was a colonel, not a general. The story is intriguing, the controversy fascinating, and the saga of what happened to his body after his death tantalizing, but the fact remains that Ully was a minor player in the big scheme of things. That, by definition, means that we’re looking at a limited demand for the book. A limited demand means that placing it with a commercial publishing house will be a challenge at best. Ted Savas has passed on it for that reason, and so have Bruce Franklin of Westholme Publishing and Don McKeon of Potomac Books, formerly known as Brassey’s, and which has published four of my books to date.

It would appear, therefore, that a university press will be where it ends up, in spite of my well-known reservations about university presses. The LSU Press has expressed some interest in the project, and I will give LSU the first shot at it. I sent LSU a query letter, and the acquisitions editor asked to see the manuscript when it’s ready. However, I would really prefer NOT to go with a university press if I can help it for the reasons that I’ve spelled out in the past here. The last book of mine done by LSU took nearly three years to find its way into print, and I really don’t want to have to wait that long for this one.

If anyone has any suggestions for me of other potential commercial publishing houses that might be an appropriate place for my Dahlgren bio, I’m happy to entertain them.

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My first book was published in 1998. It’s titled Gettysburg’s Forgotten Cavalry Actions, and was published by Thomas Publications of Gettysburg. The book won the Bachelder-Coddington Literary Award given each year by the Robert E. Lee Civil War Roundtable of New Jersey as 1998’s best new work interpreting the Battle of Gettysburg.

The book covers Farnsworth’s Charge, Merritt’s fight on South Cavalry Field, and the Battle of Fairfield. It’s short, only about 150 pages, but it’s the first time that anyone ever really tackled these issues in depth. It features excellent maps by John Heiser and lots of photos, including a bunch of modern-day views. The book sells for the very reasonable price of $12.95, as it’s softcover.

Here’s where it came from: I had done an article on South Cavalry Field that was published in Gettysburg Magazine, and one on Fairfield that appeared in America’s Civil War, and I actually was researching Farnsworth’s Charge for another article. My friend Rick Sauers suggested that I should do a book project instead, so I did.

Since I wrote this book, additional sources have surfaced that I would have liked to have been able to include. However, I stand by my conclusions and my analysis, and I think that the book has aged reasonably well. And therein lies the crux of my dilemma.

The book has sold steadily but not spectacularly. To date, it has sold something like 4300 copies–not bad–and there are less than 200 copies left in the inventory at Thomas Publications. Dean Thomas, the publisher, has already told me that when they’re gone, he doesn’t intend to reprint the book and that he will revert my publishing rights to me.

At the same time, J. D. and I plan to write a three-volume history of cavalry operations during the Gettysburg Campaign where I will be able to update the thing and include the additional material, etc. At the same time, it will be a comprehensive study and not a volume devoted to a particular topic.

So, I find myself on the horns of a dilemma. Do I seek out another publisher to keep Gettysburg’s Forgotten Cavalry Actions in print? Or do I let it go out of print and just wait for the multi-volume study to come out? Since it has always sold well, I’m inclined to find another publisher, but that raises yet another dilemma: who?

I welcome input from you, friends. What do you think I ought to do?

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I’ve been plugging away at the third pass at the Dahlgren manuscript steadily for the past few days. I’ve been making good progress–I’ve gotten through six of the thirteen chapters. I’ve been trying to do two chapters per night when I work on it, meaning I’ve worked at it the last three nights solid.

I decided to take tonight off. Once in a while, I just need an evening off. I’ve had an extremely intense last week or so, and I just don’t feel like it tonight. So, I’m just going to spend the evening hanging out.

On another note altogether….

Today, I met a friend for lunch at a nearby upscale Italian restaurant. It’s a very busy place, and it’s also very convenient, as it’s just over a mile from my office.

I got there a couple of minutes early and was seated. As I was being taken to my table, I thought I recognized the person sitting at the first table as I walked back to mine. I got a good look at him, but I wanted to be sure that it was who I thought it was. So I asked the server, and she confirmed that it was, in fact, Eric Clapton sitting at that table.

Slow Hand married a Columbus gal, and has actually lived here for six or seven years. My office is just across the Scioto River from his home. It’s not all that unusual for people to see him around town, but it was the first time I have seen him myself.

I never noticed that he’s left handed–or at least he eats left-handed–before today.

The coolest thing about it was that people left him alone, let him have his space.

Too cool. A David Letterman brush with fame moment. 🙂

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I was going to bore you with my thoughts about how Skippy Bush has so horribly mismanaged things since 9/11, but then I found Keith Olbermann’s rant. Olbermann said it much better than I could ever hope to have done myself, so here are his words, which I wholeheartedly endorse:

Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

May this country forgive you.

Olbermann gave this speech at Ground Zero last night, and it appears on the MSNBC web site. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

I’ve now pushed enough of my personal political views on you, so I will move on. Enough said.

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Mark Grimsley posted the lyrics to “The Rising,” Bruce Springsteen’s brilliant tribute to the firefighters who died at the World Trade Center, on his blog today, with an image of a grieving firefighter sitting by the rubble of collapsed Twin Towers, being comforted by two angels. It was a simple but incredibly eloquent and moving way to remember those who gave their lives in the hope of that others might live. They don’t call New York’s firefighters “The Bravest” for no reason.

We should not–no, cannot–ever forget what happened on September 11, 2001. The world as we know it changed forever that day. And thousands of normal people who were just going about their daily routines lost their lives as a consequence.

I spent the night of September 10, 2001 in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I spoke to the Rappahannock Valley Civil War Roundtable on the Battle of Tom’s Brook that evening. I’d been on the road for a few days–I’d spoken to a Roundtable in Pinehurst, NC, and then had a few days of battlefield stompling. I was scheduled to go home on the morning of 9/11.

My plan was to take I-95 to 395, go past the Pentagon, pick up the George Washington Parkway, cut the corner, take it to the Beltway, follow the Beltway to 270, take 270 to Frederick, and then pick up I-70 at Frederick. My house sits about a mile north of I-70 here in Columbus, so it’s pretty much a straight shot on 70. If all had gone according to the original schedule, I would have passed by the Pentagon at just about the precise moment that the American Airlines plane slammed into it.

However, at that time, I was in the process of finalizing my arrangements with the dean of American Military University, who asked me to stop by the office to meet me on the morning of 9/11. So, I drove up to Manassas from Fredericksburg to meet with the dean.

I called Susan on my cell as I was driving. The first plane crashed into the World Trade Center while we were talking, and we were still on the phone when the second one also hit. She was watching it all unfold on the Today show, and she described the events to me as they occurred. AMU’s offices are right next to the Prince George’s County airport, and by the time I got out of my meeting, the Pentagon had been hit and United 93 was down. When I walked out of the meeting, there were armed guards everywhere around the entrances to the airport, wearing camouflage fatigues and toting automatic weapons. It was a chilling sight, to say the least.

I quickly realized that my original route wouldn’t be a good possibility. I also heard that due to the crash of United 93, the Pennsylvania Turnpike was closed, and that was my normal route. I had to find a new route.

I decided that the best bet was to take I-66 to its terminus in Front Royal, pick up I-81, take it north to Hagerstown, and pick up I-70 there. I would take 70 to Hancock and then get I-68, which goes through the mountains of western Maryland and West Virginia. I-68 ends in Morgantown, WV, where I would pick up I-79, take it to Washington, PA, get I-70 there, and finally make my way home. And that’s what I did.

As I was driving west on I-66, I was in the left lane at one point. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw a convoy of black Chevy Suburbans with red and blue lights coming up behind at a very high rate of speed, so I pulled over to let them go by. By then, they were already saying that Cheney had been taken to some undisclosed safe location, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether these vehicles had something to do with that (I subsequently learned where that “undisclosed location” is, and it’s not likely that they had anything to do with it). They whizzed by me like I was standing still.

I have to admit that I was glad that I took such a long and roundabout route to get home. I felt safer going through the West Virginia mountains, figuring that I would be safe out in the middle of nowhere. What was really strange was not seeing any aircraft in the sky. I was listening to NPR all day, so I knew as much as anyone did, but I hadn’t seen any of the horrifying but now familiar video. I also couldn’t reach Susan on the cell phone because the cellular telephone system was in bad shape from the combination of losing cells in New York and from its being horribly overloaded.

I finally crossed into Ohio about 5 PM. I stopped to use the bathroom at a rest stop, briefly asking the Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper how he was doing. When I came out, I looked up in the sky and saw a single large plane surrounded by multiple fighters and knew that it could only be Air Force One. Now, I am no fan of the current occupant of the White House–I think that he stole the 2000 election and took office without having being elected and my opinion of him has only gone down by leaps and bounds since then–but I have to admit that I was glad to see him that day. It gave me a small measure of comfort.

I finally got home about 7:00 that evening. It had been a long and brutal day, and I finally saw the horrific videos I’d heard about all day. I just wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.

Susan’s cousin was on the 22nd floor of the South Tower when it was hit. If she hadn’t been in a meeting there, she would have been dead, as her office was on the floor that was hit. Or there was my friend Mark’s sister, Jennifer. Jenn had just gotten off the train from New Jersey and was cutting across the plaza at the WTC to catch the subway, completely unaware of what had happened–she was underground when the plane hit–and was yanked out of the way by an alert policeman, or else Jenn would have been hit by the body of someone who jumped from one of the floors above the conflagration. To this day, nobody knows whether that nameless but nevertheless heroic policeman survived. My friend Jim Nolan–a lifelong New Yorker–saw the whole thing from his office window in mid-town Manhattan and then had to walk home to Queens. “Look what they’ve done to my city,” he thought.

Indeed. Look what they’ve done to our world. It will never be the same again. I will save my rant against the present administration for tomorrow before leaving the topic for good. Tonight, it’s not appropriate.

We can never forget the firefighters, the policemen, and the employees of the firms headquartered in the WTC. We can never forget the civilians and the soldiers and sailors of the Pentagon who gave their lives. We can never forget Kevin Levin’s cousin Alisha Levin, who died at the WTC. We can never forget the flight crews of the airliners that crashed, or the innocent passengers who filled those planes. We can never forget the heroic men and women of United 93 who saved the White House or the Capitol from a horrendous fate. And we can never forget the people who lost loved ones in these tragic events.

For a brief, shining moment, as we poured out our grief, we Americans permitted the better angels of our nature to shine through. Instead of partisan politics, for once, we united and came together. The generosity of people in this time of crisis was staggering (just as it was in the wake of Katrina). It’s really a tragedy that we need a disaster of nearly unprecedented scale to bring us together, but it seems to be the case.

We must never forget. For those who fail to learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them.

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