Biography as History

“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. Many sneer at such thoughts. Certainly, most academic historians would not agree with this assessment, and I don’t either. In fact, the overwhelming majority of my work has been writing battle narrative, not writing biography.

As my regular readers know, I’ve been working on a special labor of love, a full-length biography of Ulric Dahlgren. Tonight, after nearly ninety days away from it as a result of our having to put one dog to sleep and then bringing a new puppy into the house, I finally got back to working on it. I finally got to finish up the tenth chapter of the book, which required only about two hours of work to complete, and the first draft of which is now finished.

This book is my first attempt at the solo writing of a full-length biography. For years, I’ve been working on a full-length biography of John Buford with a friend, so it’s a collaboration and not a solo project. It’s been a challenge putting meat on these bones, but in order to understand Ulric Dahlgren, and in particular, the fashion in which he met his demise, the context of his short but full and controversial life is critical. If you only look at the last few days of his life–and the controversy that has raged for 140+ years as a result–it’s not possible to place Dahlgren’s life in its proper context.

My objective with this project is to fully tell the story of this fascinating young man’s life, place it in its proper historic context, and then do a thorough analysis of his deeds and flaws, and speculate upon what might have been had he lived, which is always a risky thing to do.

I doubt that this will be the last biography project that I will tackle. I can think of a couple of others that I hope to do at some point, including a biography of Union cavalry General David McMurtrie Gregg, and Brig. Gen. Theodore J. Wint, who spent more than forty years in the Army and whose life is microcosm of the United States Army during the second half of the Nineteenth Century. Both of these men deserve to have the stories of their lives told, as nobody has done so to date (although there’s a bad biography of David Gregg that was self-published by the author in the 1980’s).

At the same time, with yet another new biography of Ulysses S. Grant about to hit the market in a couple of weeks, it’s difficult to avoid the nagging question of whether there’s enough undiscovered material out there to justify the publication of yet another biography of a man whose already had dozens of biographical treatments of his life, some very good indeed, and some not very good at all. Is there anything out there that hasn’t already been turned up to justify continuing to churn out more biographies that add little to the body of knowledge?

I can only hope that, by choosing lesser known figures who nevertheless made an impact, I will actually add something useful to the body of knowledge and literature. I specifically hope that my Dahlgren biography–the only full-length treatment of his life yet attempted–will be considered to be a worthwhile project even if its commercial appeal will be limited.