There’s my job, which is how I support myself and my family. And then there’s my avocation, which is researching, writing, and publishing books. The two things are, for the most, not terribly consistent with each other.

My job: I’m a partner in a law firm with a pretty busy practice. I’ve made a career of avoiding domestic relations work, which is all about emotions and almost never about what makes business sense, and criminal defense work, with which I have fundamental philosophical issues. My bent is, and always has been, what makes business sense? The legal issues are what they are, and they have to be factored into the process of making decisions, but my fundamental issue has always …

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Today is November 19, the 142nd anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. The anniversary has really taken on a life of its own in Gettysburg.

Every year on Remembrance Day, as the anniversary is known, there is a parade of reenactors honoring the soldiers who fought at Gettysburg. I have never been there for the Remembrance Day parade, nor does the event hold even the slightest, tiniest little bit of interest for me.

I’m not a “living historian,” whatever that means (I say “whatever that means” because I have yet to come up with a definition of the term that more that two people agree with). Three very close friends of mine portray individuals who were at Gettysburg. One portrays Lt. …

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Dimitri Rotov had a fascinating round-up of the reviews of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s new book on his blog yesterday. One, in particular, jumped off the page at me.

“Goodwin and company have little new to tell us and stick to the standard fare. Most of the familiar Lincoln stories are here — from the suggestion from a young girl that he grow a beard to his attitude about Ulysses Grant’s drinking.” She does introduce this novelty, the reviewer says: “Goodwin describes the scene when an aide to Stanton visits Lincoln’s office to ask a question: Lincoln greeted him. ‘What’s up?’ Really? What’s up with that?” This review came from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which is a pretty decent newspaper.

This …

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I have incredibly mixed feelings about indexes. On one hand, they’re absolutely critical to making a Civil War book useful. As a general rule, I won’t buy a book if it doesn’t include an index. At the same time, indexes are the bane of my existence.

As a general rule of thumb, authors are required to provide their own indexes to books. All but one of the publishing contracts that I have ever signed have said that the index is the author’s responsibility. This creates real problems for me. As someone who admittedly has a short attention span and who also has too much on his plate, the thought of being forced to do my own index turns me into …

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Yesterday, I discussed the process by which I find the material that goes into my work. Today, I will discuss what happens to it once I’ve got it.

As a lawyer, I’ve been trained in evaluating evidence. Evaluating and presenting evidence is my job. With experience, you learn what’s credible and what’s not. You learn when something can be relied upon and when it can’t. A key, of course, is whether something can be corroborated. If it can be corroborated by an independent source, then it’s reliable. So, the key for me is to evaluate the sources and then to determine what’s reliable and what isn’t.

I always look for things to corroborate my sources, or, as an old friend …

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I’m often asked about how I parse out sources for my writing projects, so I thought I would answer the question in a two-part series.

In this first part, I will address how I choose sources to use in my writing. Tomorrow, I will address what I do with those sources once they’ve been selected.

With that in mind there are a few general rules that apply to the selection of sources.

1. Primary sources are always preferable to secondary sources. I try to only use secondary sources for background material if I can help it. A good example is a biographical sketch of someone who plays a role in the story, such as those included in Ezra Warner’s Generals …

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Our blogging community has a new member, Kevin Levin, a high school history teacher from Charlottesville, Virginia. Kevin has commented on some of the posts that I’ve made here. I’ve read Kevin’s initial posts, and enjoy his insights. I commend his blog to to those of you who appreciate introspective thought on the Civil War. Welcome aboard Kevin, and good luck with your blog.

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As the clocks tolled the arrival of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the guns finally fell silent. After more than four years of butchery, The Great War, The War to End All Wars, World War I, came to an end.

The anniversary of the end of the war was known as Armistice Day. However, it changed to Veterans’ Day in recognition of the sacrifices of the many men and women who have sacrificed to give us the country we have today. As you go about your business today, think of those brave men and women, and thank them for their sacrifices. Thank them for the country we have today.

A Canadian doctor …

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Today, I’m going to wrap up this series on battlefield preservation. I hope that it hasn’t been too boring.

In my mind, the key to successful battlefield preservation is being pro-active instead of reactive. In other words, think ahead, plan ahead, and make the necessary arrangements to preserve the ground instead of panicky, crisis mode responses to threats.

Here’s an example.

Ohio has only one Civil War battlefield, at Buffington Island in Meigs County on the Ohio River. On July 19, 1863, Federal cavalry forces under Generals Judah, Hobson and Shackleford finally caught up with Morgan’s raiders, and a short but sharp engagement followed that led to more than half of Morgan’s command being captured. About 13,000 cavalrymen were engaged …

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Today, I want to address the question of prioritizing. A couple of days ago, Drew Wagenhoffer made an especially prescient comment in response to one of the other posts in this series: “Also, I would prefer that money be spent on open spaces rather than buildings, which are outrageously expensive to “restore”. People seem to want to keep every little shack that was a general’s HQ during some battle or another. I always cringe when I see several million dollars being spent on restoring some old home because “Washington slept there” or some other thing.”

Drew jumped the gun on what I had intended to say in this post, so kudos to him for making a very valid point.

Everyone …

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