A week or so ago, I posted here about Twin Commonwealth Publishing, a company and web site that I had not been aware of until Drew Wagenhoffer posted about it on his blog.

After checking out Drew’s post, I went to the Twin Commonwealth web site and reviewed all of the offerings. While their list of Civil War selections is still pretty small, they’ve got some really rare and really interesting stuff. It’s all really rare stuff, much of which I’ve never seen available anywhere else. As I’ve mentioned here previously, I’m working on research to do a book on Morgan’s Indiana and Ohio Raid of 1863, and am always on the lookout for material that’s pertinent. I …

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Every now and again, you find materials in repositories that cause you to say, “how is that this has never been published?”

There are a number of instances of this that I can think of.

When John Pope commanded the Army of Virginia, he had a staff officer named T.C.H. Smith. Smith was extremely loyal, and decided to write a defense of Pope’s conduct during the Second Bull Run Campaign. He spent years corresponding with various veterans of both sides, gathering material. Smith then wrote a book manuscript telling the story of the campaign his way. For some reason, the book has never been published, even though Smith completed the manuscript. The entire collection–manuscript AND correspondence–is at the Ohio Historical …

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Because of my professional responsibilities, I rarely get the chance to go to archives and libraries and actually do the digging myself. I seldom have time, and it also doesn’t make a lot of economic sense for me to spend a lot of time digging myself when it’s much less expensive to pay someone to do this for me. That way, I continue being able to bill my time at my hourly rate while someone else researches for me at a MUCH lower hourly rate.

However, I had promised Noah Andre Trudeau that I would go to the Ohio Historical Society and get some stuff for him. Andy’s working on what will undoubtedly be the definitive work on Sherman’s March …

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Speaking is something I do a lot of. It’s not unusual for me to give 20-30 talks per year, all around the country. Sometimes, I love it. Sometimes, I despise it.

Here’s the thing. Some of the talks that I do, I just can’t stand any more. Like the Sheridan bashing talk that I do. Mind you, I’ve never particularly enjoyed that talk from the beginning. I don’t like Sheridan, and the thought of giving the same talk over and over again just doesn’t excite me a bit, particularly with a subject I dislike as much as I dislike Sheridan. I was invited to speak to a Civil War Round Table in Tennessee in March, and the program chair asked …

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Since the last post was generated by my participation in an on-line discussion group, and since these groups constitute a big part of my activity in the Civil War world, I thought I would follow that up with some additional thoughts about them.

By way of background, I’ve been involved in the Internet since 1996. My wife has a degree in computer science, and was intrigued by the nascent World Wide Web immediately upon its launch. We got our first dial-up account in 1996, and one of the very first things that I did was to subscribe to the Gettysburg Discussion Group, which was one of the very first of its sort. The GDG is owned by three brothers …

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One thing I’ve learned after ten years of very active participation in on-line Civil War discussion groups is that there are a few topics that never, ever lead to anything good, and which should be avoided at all costs. The primary one, of course, is the question of whether the secession of the Southern states in 1861 was illegal. Normally, I avoid that one like the plague, but yesterday, I made the mistake of jumping into that discussion in one of the e-mail groups to which I belong. Big mistake. I used some purely legal analysis to rebut the argument that just because the Constitution does not specifically address the topic does not make it legal.

Today, the following neo-Confederate …

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Well, here are a couple of important updates on things discussed here in the last week.

1. I found out today that the maps for Monroe’s Crossroads are, at long last, all completed. The CD-ROM will be sent to Ted Savas tomorrow, and once Ted imports them into the manuscript, we’re off to the printer. That is stupendous news, which makes me feel a lot better about things.

2. J. D. Petruzzi is going to bail me out and take over the Custer project for me. I have every confidence that J. D. will do his usual superb job, and I’ve told him that I will be happy to provide him with copies of anything and everything that I bought …

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A couple of years ago, against my better judgment, I allowed myself to be talked into doing a 45,000 word biography of George Custer for the series of Military Profiles that Brassey’s has been publishing over the course of the past several years. Brassey’s–now known as Potomac Books–came to me and asked me to do this, largely as a result of my prior work on the Michigan Cavalry Brigade, some of which dealt specifically with George A. Custer. I immediately protested, indicating that I believed that, given the tens of thousands of pages devoted to Custer’s life and untimely death, and in light of Jeff Wert’s terrific 1996 biography of Custer, there was really nothing that I could add that …

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Kudos to Drew Wagenhoffer for the post on his blog today.

Drew’s post brought to my attention a print-on-demand publisher that I had never heard of previously, Twin Commonwealth Publishers. Twin Commononwealth focuses on rare works from the Virginia and Kentucky, which is where the name comes from. This company has an exceptionally ugly and not particularly user-friendly website, but it has a really outstanding selection of extremely rare Civil War books to offer. In perusing the list of available titles, I found an extremely rare work on John Hunt Morgan’s Indiana and Ohio Raid by Basil W. Duke that I have been looking for for quite a while. I promptly ordered a copy.

This company does print-on-demand reprints. …

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Today, I have some good news.

I’m pleased to announce the publication of the third and latest installment in Ironclad Publishing’s “The Discovering Civil War America Series”. For those unfamiliar with the series, the books in it are detailed tactical studies accompanied by a detailed walking or driving tour. The books focus on either smaller battles, or small portions of big battles. They are filled with lots of maps and illustrations. We’re very proud of this series, which has been universally well received. The first two books in the series were my Protecting the Flank and Jim Morgan’s excellent study of the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, A Little Short of Boats. The books are done in softcover and are …

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