News--- Gettysburg NPS Prepares To Level Buildings Then Landscape Ziegler's Grove's 45 Acres at Cost of $10 Million

Gettysburg battlefield: Rehabilitating Cemetery Ridge, Erin James, Evening Sun Reporter, May 17, 2008.

Map in hand, park ranger Karlton Smith lays an index finger on one rectangular shape he trusts to orient visitors with their historic surroundings. "This building's actually McDonald's," he says. "That's a good marker." Seconds later, an outstretched arm points toward the modern-day structure as it stands in real life on Emmitsburg Road - across the street from where Smith stands on Cemetery Ridge, a chunk of land on which hundreds were killed and wounded during the Battle of Gettysburg.

The use of 20th-century developments as reference points is one way Smith said he has been able to help visitors better understand what happened here in 1863. But it's a teaching method that could someday be considered passé. For several years now, the Gettysburg National Military Park has been carrying out plans to "rehabilitate" some of the land within its 6,000-acre boundary.

Trees have been removed from places they didn't exist in 1863, when Civil War soldiers fought on open land. Telephone poles and utility lines have been relocated underground so as not to impede on a history student's perspective. The overall goal is to make the battlefield again look as it did in 1863 - or, at least, as close as possible. Next on the project list is 43.5 acres of land where the former Visitor Center and Cyclorama building are located.

Smith stands on a small piece of the entire project area, situated between Taneytown and Emmitsburg roads. It includes Ziegler's Grove, several historic structures and part of Cemetery Ridge. Because of the restaurant's proximity to the battlefield, Smith could actually be using McDonald's as a landmark for many more years. The restaurant is located in the borough of Gettysburg, outside the park's boundary, and not included within the project area. Park officials have said there is no intent to stretch "rehabilitation" into the borough.

But other modern structures will soon be removed from Smith's repertoire of visitor-orienting landmarks. Plans call for the demolition of both the Visitor Center and Cyclorama building and their parking lots, the underground relocation of 6,700 feet of power lines and a restoration of the landscape as it once was.

Park spokeswoman Katie Lawhon calls the upcoming rehabilitation project the most "comprehensive" and "complex" of all. But before anything changes, the Gettysburg National Military Park needs for Congress to allocate more than $2.5 million in federal project funds. The total cost of the project is estimated at more than $9.5 million, but the Gettysburg Foundation has committed $7 million from fundraising efforts.

The park is relying on Congress to make up the balance, and it's requesting that the funds be included among the 2009 allocation of Centennial projects for parks nationwide. In 2016, the National Park Service turns 100 years old. Park service officials and preservation groups are pushing Congress to commit millions dollars for hundreds of park improvement projects nationwide to be completed before that birthday.

Almost $25 million in federal funds were committed to the initiative this year for a total of 110 improvement projects at 76 different parks. Gettysburg is not on this year's list, but officials have requested that the Cemetery Ridge area be included on the 2009 list. If the Gettysburg battlefield is going to return to a look more 1863 than 2008, Congress needs to pay up, Lawhon said. "We couldn't do it without funding," she said.

This diagram shows the outline of the 43.5 acres of Cemetery Ridge planned for rehabilitation. It details plans for reconstructing the area to look much as it did during the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. (Graphic Courtesy National Park Service)

Almost 145 years ago, men in blue uniforms stood and fought for three days on this land, in defiance of a Confederate Army that lined a distant tree line and the town below. When thousands of those soldiers marched across the field of Pickett's Charge on July 3, 1863, the southern portion of this 43.5 acres was crucial to the Union's victory. The northern part was considered the key to the Union line, though that's difficult to discern with all the modern development.

"This area has seen a lot of action," Smith says while standing on the northern end of Cemetery Ridge, just west of the Cyclorama building. Nearby stands the statue of Union Gen. Alexander Hays, whose brigade fought on this land, much of which was transformed into parking lots and welcoming centers for tourists between the 1930s and 1960s.

Smith gestures toward the Cyclorama building, where an artillery battery supporting Hays was posted. That building - built in 1961 and designed to house the 19th Century circular painting that depicts Pickett's Charge - is scheduled for demolition, though a lawsuit was filed last year by the Recent Past Preservation Network to stop the razing. It's just one example of what wasn't there in 1863 - and what the park service would like to eliminate in 2009.

In addition to demolishing the two buildings, the park wants to eliminate most of the parking lots, sidewalks and other modern intrusions. About 6,700 feet of power lines along Taneytown Road from Steinwehr Avenue to Granite School House Lane will be relocated underground. And some things removed will return - including seven monuments placed by veterans of the war but relocated during the construction of the Cyclorama building.

Stone walls built by soldiers, which once ran through what are now parking lots and sidewalks, will return. Some trees will be removed, others planted - all to resemble what the land looked like during the battle. When all the work is done, someone sitting at McDonald's on Emmitsburg Road will be able to look up the hill and see the National Cemetery, Smith said.

In 1863, much of this 43.5 acres of land - with the exception of Ziegler's Grove - was used for agricultural purposes, Smith said. Hay, wheat and corn were planted here, he said. The crops are unlikely to return, but meadow grass will be planted in its place, Lawhon said. That's because "rehabilitation" is different than "restoration." Restored land would return to exactly how it once was; rehabilitated land, however, is meant to resemble what once was. "Rehabilitation means we're just trying to give people a sense of what it looked like at the time of the battle," Smith said.

Smith talks about the way tree removal at Devil's Den has helped park rangers and battlefield guides explain each army's sight lines during the battle. He hopes the park's project will do the same for rangers explaining the action on this piece of the battlefield. "It's a lot easier to try to imagine," he said. "It brings things in a little bit closer."

There is no guarantee that the Gettysburg National Military Park will get the $2.5 million worth of federal funds in 2009 as they've requested. But the project has already been endorsed by the Department of Interior for potential Centennial funds. In fact, it was actually Gettysburg officials who requested the project be placed on the list of 2009 projects, rather than 2008 projects, Lawhon said.

"Because we had our hands full of the museum opening, we asked for it to be pulled," she said. The list of National Park Centennial projects this year includes $187,500 federal funds committed to another Pennsylvania park, the Valley Forge National Historical Park. That money will go toward two educational programs and the creation of a new trail near George Washington's headquarters site.

The most money committed to one park project in 2008 is $4.5 million for the construction of Wisconsin Avenue Plaza at the Georgetown Waterfront Park in Rock Creek Park, in Washington, D.C. Lawhon said that Gettysburg park officials hope to begin the rehabilitation of the Cemetery Ridge area in 2009, assuming they get the funds needed to do the work.

Now that the huge undertaking of opening the new $103-million Gettysburg Military Park Visitor Center and Museum has been completed, there may be the time to do it.
And Lawhon said she takes the endorsement of the Department of the Interior as an indication that Gettysburg is on the national radar as a priority. "That's kind of like making a short list," she said.

For Enlarged Diagram: http://www.eveningsun.com/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=1948100

Text Source: http://www.eveningsun.com/ci_9293688?source=most_viewed

Photos: Top--Evening Sun; Bottom--Gettysburg National Military Park

New In Paper---"Ma Rats" ? Notions of Self Government 1789-1865

Self-Government, The American Theme: Presidents of the Founding and Civil War, Will Morrisey, Rowan Littlefield Publishers, 290 pp $29.95 (Paper)

Americans introduced themselves to the world by declaring their independence. They recognized that their "unalienable rights" were secured by institutionalized government that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. In Self-Government, The American Theme, Will Morrisey defines the concept of self-government and tracks its permutations in the ardent writings of key American presidents. He shows how the transition to a more powerful national state was managed on political soil where "self-government" was not an indigenous crop. Morrisey considers the genesis of "self-government" in the political thought of the founding U.S. presidents, comparing their understanding of the term with that of President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate States of America President, Jefferson Davis.

In this text Morrisey aptly demonstrates how the regime of the founders was replaced by a much more statist regime during the Civil War. He offers salient interpretations of the writings of the key presidents of founding and civil war periods, and interpretations centered on the key word, "self-government". This book is an essential contribution to the understanding of early American history and politics.

Table of Contents
Self-Government and the Founding Era: Prospects and Contingencies
Self-Government and the American Father: George Washington
Self-Government and the Fiery Spirit: John Adams
Self-Government as Natural Right: Thomas Jefferson
Self-Government and the Antebellum Era: Crisis of the Self Divided
Self-Government and Secession: Jefferson Davis
What Is "The New Birth of Freedom"? Abraham Lincoln
Conclusion: Davis and Lincoln Compared
Conclusion: Self-Government, The American Theme

About the Author
Will Morrisey is assistant professor of history and political science at Hillsdale College.

Text: from publisher

Forthcoming in Paperback---Treason in 1775 and 1860

"Whom Can We Trust Now?": The Meaning of Treason in the United States, from the Revolution through the Civil War,Brian F. Carso, Jr., 262 pp., Rowan Littlefield Publishers, $50.00. (paperback expected in late 2008)

For several hours in August 1787, the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention debated the two sentences defining treason that would serve as the only criminal law in the U.S. Constitution. As storied and controversial as this ancient crime was, the meaning of treason for the new democratic republic was difficult to foresee. Historian and lawyer Brian Carso demonstrates that although treason law was conflicted and awkward, the broader idea of treason gave recognizable shape to abstract ideas of loyalty, betrayal, allegiance, and political obligation in the United States. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Carso begins by exploring the nature of loyalty and betrayal in a democratic republic, using examples ranging from Socrates in Plato's Crito to the dilemma of Robert E. Lee in 1861 and the trial of Timothy McVeigh in 1997. Turning to legal history, the study considers the historical antecedents of the Treason Clause of the U.S. Constitution and examines the utility of American treason law as it was applied in a variety of cases, most notably in the 1807 trial of Aaron Burr, in which Supreme Court Justice John Marshall used twenty-five thousand words to explicate the Treason Clause. Finding that the antinomies of treason law in a democratic republic make successful prosecutions against treason nearly impossible, Carso turns to the political, intellectual, and cultural realms of civic life to identify and to explain the broader meaning of treason. The study investigates the perpetual condemnation of Benedict Arnold and the many ways treason animated civic discourse during the Civil war. By examining editorials, sermons, histories, orations, art, literature, and political cartoons, Carso identifies how the meaning of treason engaged the public imagination in a variety of compelling forms and instructed citizens on loyalty and betrayal outside the courtroom as much as within it.

Table of Contents
"What is a Traitor?" Loyalty, Betrayal and the State
"A Republic, if you can Keep It" The Evolution of Treason in America, 1620-1787
"Seasons of Insurrection" Early Rebellions and the Trial of Aaron Burr
"The Damnation of His Fame" Benedict Arnold and the Cultural Punishment of Betrayal
"With Malice Toward None" Treason, Amnesty, and the Language of Betrayal During the Civil War

About the Author
Brian F. Carso, Jr., holds graduate degrees from the University of Rochester, SUNY Buffalo School of Law, and Boston University, where he received his PhD in American Studies. A practicing attorney, he has held public office in both county and state government. He is currently an assistant professor of history at College Misericordia in Dallas, Pennsylvania.

Text: from publisher

New---Henry W. Slocum: The Now Not-So-Forgotten Union General

Sherman's Forgotten General: Henry W. Slocum, Brian C. Melton, Shades of Blue and Gray Series, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007. xi + 292 pp. Illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $44.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8262-1739-4.

Reviewed for H-CivWar by Gerald J. Prokopowicz, Department of History, East Carolina University

The Now Not-So-Forgotten Union General

In their quest to find something new to write about the battle of Gettysburg, Civil War authors have curiously overlooked the men commanding the seven infantry corps that comprised the bulk of the Army of the Potomac. Winfield Scott Hancock (II Corps) and Dan Sickles (III Corps) have been the subjects of excellent modern biographies, but John Reynolds (I Corps), George Sykes (V Corps), John Sedgwick (VI Corps), Oliver O. Howard (XI Corps), and until now Henry W. Slocum (XII Corps) have not received serious biographical treatment in the last forty or fifty years, if ever. With Brian Melton's solid biography of Henry Slocum now on the shelves, it's three down, four to go.

Civil War aficionados best remember Slocum, when he is remembered at all, for his role at Gettysburg, but Melton indicates in his title that there is more to the story. He begins by briefly tracing Slocum's prewar career, including graduation from West Point in 1852, resignation from the stagnant prewar army in 1856, and success as a businessman and investor in Syracuse. In 1858 Slocum was elected as an antislavery Republican to the state legislature, and was sufficiently prominent to receive a commission as colonel of the 27th N.Y. when war broke out in 1861. He received a wound at First Bull Run, was promoted to brigadier general, and subsequently led a brigade, division, corps, and wing of the Army of the Potomac. Two months after leading his troops on the field at Gettysburg, Slocum was transferred west with the XII Corps, to serve at Chattanooga under William T. Sherman and eventually in the march to the sea.

How could someone who participated at a high level of command in so many important campaigns be accurately described as a "forgotten general?" One reason is that Slocum left few documentary traces of his career. The author takes the reader into his confidence in a forthright introduction that reveals the difficulty of finding source material. There are no substantial collections of Slocum's papers, and historians have written little about him, with the exception of his role at Gettysburg.

A second reason Slocum has been forgotten is that he was something of a military chameleon, taking on the characteristics of whichever officer he happened to be serving under. In the Peninsula Campaign, he displayed a McClellan-like devotion to drill and pessimism about victory, as well as a tendency to overestimate the size of Confederate forces opposing him. He nonetheless did well enough in command of a division to earn a promotion to major general, and in the Antietam campaign his small but significant victory at Crampton's Gap brought him command of XII Corps. When McClellan was replaced by Ambrose Burnside, who was in turn replaced by Joe Hooker, Slocum tended to emulate his new leaders, in particular showing some of Hooker's battlefield aggressiveness as well as much of his penchant for army politics. Slocum considered Hooker a "worthless loafer" (p. 94) and a "braggadocio and drunkard," (p. 95) and after the battle of Chancellorsville he devoted himself to getting Hooker removed from command of the Army of the Potomac, just as Hooker had maneuvered to remove Burnside. Slocum's effort, like Hooker's, was successful; the army replaced Hooker with George Meade just before the battle of Gettysburg.

Slocum's performance at Gettysburg is the one moment in his career that has attracted substantial attention from historians, little of it favorable. In the late afternoon of July 1, 1863, he led the XII Corps onto the battlefield, too late to prevent the defeat of I and XI Corps. Melton argues that an acoustic shadow prevented Slocum from hearing the sounds of battle clearly, and that in any case he delayed his march at Two Taverns only for a few hours, not a whole day as some detractors of "General Slow-come" have written. Melton convincingly defends Slocum against charges of sloth or cowardice, but acknowledges that his cautious advance reflected the continuing influence of McClellan's command style. On July 2, Slocum executed Meade's ill-judged order to reinforce the Union left wing by moving almost all of XII Corps away from the army's right flank, leaving it dangerously exposed, another move for which historians have blamed Slocum. Melton's explanation of Slocum's performance verges on the kind of Monday morning quarterbacking that fills the pages of too many traditional Civil War military histories, but does effectively exonerate him by showing both that he was following Meade's orders, and that by the end of the day he had returned to Culp's Hill and stabilized the situation.

When the XI and XII Corps received orders to transfer to Tennessee in September 1863 under the command of Joe Hooker, the move put Slocum once again under his old enemy. Both generals complained to Lincoln, until Slocum was finally given a new assignment as the military administrator of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Not until Hooker resigned in a fit of pique at the height of the Atlanta campaign was Slocum recalled to his old corps. Serving under Sherman, Slocum again adapted to his environment and became a proponent of a hard war against Southern property. He led the left wing of Sherman's army on the March to the Sea, by far the largest force he had commanded.

After the war, Slocum again served as a military administrator in Mississippi, where he zealously enforced the rights of the recently freed former slaves, but his political sympathies were evolving toward his former foes. He resigned from the army in September 1865 and joined the Democratic Party, effectively committing what Melton describes as "political suicide." He spent the rest of his life in Brooklyn, where he was involved with the construction of the famous bridge named after the city, and served a term in Congress, but for the most part he simply faded away, overlooked by Republican historians and journalists who wrote him out of their accounts of the war because of his political defection afterward. Melton's sturdy biography may not be enough alone to rescue Henry Slocum from the fate of being "Sherman's forgotten general," but in taking the focus away from Slocum's moment at Gettysburg, it at least reminds the reader that there was much more to his career.

Source: H-NET BOOK REVIEW, Published by H-CivWar@h-net.msu.edu (May 2008)
www.h-net.org/~civwar/

Copyright (c) 2008 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online.

Photos: Top--Library of Congress, Bottom--University of Missouri Press

Forthcoming This Month---The Rest of the Gettysburg Campaign was One Continous Fight

Authors, J.D. Petruzzi and Michael F. Nugent, and Eric Wittenberg have launched the wwwsite for One Continuous Fight: The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863. The book is scheduled to be released during the latter part of May. Two noted, and by CWL appreciated, authors are enthusiastic about the trio's accomplishment.

“It is fair to say that [Wittenberg, Petruzzi, and Nugent] have combed the countryside more thoroughly than Albert Jenkins’ cavalry to bring their readers scores of previously unpublished soldier accounts of the retreat and extensive fighting encompassed within it… [This book] is one of the most original, most deeply researched, and one of the most scholarly works to come out on the Civil War in many years.” (from the Foreward, Ted Alexander)

“[The authors] have brought together an impressive array of primary materials, so that much of the action unfolds in the words of those who were there… The authors of this book have taken the time and care to get the story right and the tour directions correct; I encourage you to take full advantage of both.” (from the Preface, Noah Andre Trudeau)

Here's the table of contents of One Continuous Fight:

Chapter 1: A Vast Sea of Misery: The Wagon Train of the Wounded
“As many of our poor wounded as possible must be taken home.” -- Robert E. Lee

Chapter 2: The Retreat of the Main Confederate Army Begins
“Genl Meade never brought his ‘rascally virtue’ of caution to a better market than when he let us alone—for we should probably have given a good account of him.” -- Maj. Campbell Brown, Confederate Gen. Richard Ewell’s staff

Chapter 3: July 4: The Midnight Fight in the Monterey Pass
“It was one of the most exciting engagements we ever had.”
-- Capt. James H. Kidd, Custer’s Michigan Brigade

Chapter 4: Meade’s Pursuit Begins
“I wonder if Napoleon or even Robt. Lee were our commander this evening would they pursue a defeated army in this cautious, courteous way?”-- Federal officer

Chapter 5: The Confederates Garrison Williamsport
“The Rebel army is in a bad state & there is not telling how they are going to get out of it.”-- Col. John B. McIntosh, 2nd Federal Cavalry Division

Chapter 6: July 6: The Battle of Hagerstown
“We’ve got them now, boys... Charge!” -- Jeb Stuart

Chapter 7: July 6: The Battle for Williamsport
“[I] quickly organized a small force of dismounted, sick, and wounded men who were along with the train and who snatched up arms and ammunition as could be found… I managed to inspire the men with confidence and led them in.”-- Lt. Col. William Delony, Cobb’s Legion Cavalry

Chapter 8: July 7: In Full Pursuit
“The boys are confident that we will whip Lee’s Army so that he will not be fit to do anything more for some time to come. We have good news all the while from our pursuing forces.”-- Sgt. Ellis C. Strouss, 57th Pennsylvania Infantry

Chapter 9: July 7: Skirmish at the College of St. James and the First Battle of Funkstown “[T]he road of slumbering wrath was marked here and there by cleft skulls and pierced bodies…” -- Brig. Gen. William E. Jones, Confederate cavalry brigade commander

Chapter 10: July 8: Heavy Fighting at Beaver Creek Bridge and Boonsboro
“They are all bully boys, and they don’t fear the Rebbs a bit… Gen. Buford says…the only fault he finds with us is that he can’t stop us when once we get the Rebbs to running.” -- 8th Illinois cavalryman

Chapter 11: July 9: Sniping Along the Lines
“The game of war went on with determination on one side and desperation on the other.”-- Member of the Federal Iron Brigade

Chapter 12: July 10: The Second Battle of Funkstown
“Our brigade seems to be doing all the fighting. As usual.”
-- Samuel Gilpin, 3rd Indiana Cavalry, Col. William Gamble’s brigade

Chapter 13: July 11: The Armies Jockey for Position
“Mr. Yank would have smelt powder & ball before getting us out of the breastworks.” Confederate infantry officer

Chapter 14: July 12: The Second Battle of Hagerstown
“Call no council of war. It is proverbial that councils of war never fight.”
-- General-In-Chief Henry Halleck to George Meade

Chapter 15: July 13: A Frustrating Day Spent Waiting
“We hope Lee can’t get away but his neck is slippery and we can only count on him when we get him.”-- Sgt. Frank Saunders, 6th New York Cavalry

Chapter 16: July 14: The Crossings at Williamsport and Falling Waters
“Old Virginia never looked so sweet and inviting.” -- John J. Shoemaker, Stuart’s Horse Artillery

Chapter 17: The Federal Advance and Aftermath
“It is enough to say that although [Lincoln] was not so profoundly distressed as he was when Hooker’s army recrossed the Rappahannock after the battle of Chancellorsville, his grief and anger were something sorrowful to behold.”
-- Noah Brooks, newspaper correspondent and friend of President Lincoln

Conclusion
“Covering the retreat of an army is not a fun thing to do. It was one continuous fight until we reached Hagerstown, Md.; and even after that, for we had skirmishes everyday until Gen. Lee crossed the Potomac.”
-- Pvt. L. T. Dickinson, 2nd Virginia Cavalry

Epilogue

Appendix A: Driving Tour of the Retreat from Gettysburg
Appendix B: Driving Tour of the Wagon Train of Wounded
Appendix C: Gettysburg and Retreat Order of Battle

One Continuous Fight includes endnotes, a bibliography, and an index.

Check out the site; the portal page is sharp!

www.gettysburgretreat.com,

New--Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility

Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility, Jason Phillips, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007. ix + 257 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8203-2836-7.

Reviewed for H-War by Susannah Ural Bruce, Department of History, Sam Houston State University

Why They Fought On: New Interpretations of Confederate Soldier Ideology

After the overwhelming Confederate defeats at the battles of Franklin and Nashville in 1864, Union General John Schofield puzzled over the determination exhibited by the Southern forces so late in the war. Years later, he reflected, "'I doubt if any soldiers in the world ever needed so much cumulative evidence to convince them that they were beaten'" (p. 115). It is this astonishing resolve that inspires Jason Phillips's Diehard Rebels. Part of the work is grounded in classic soldier and combat ideology studies, like Gerald Linderman's Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (1987), Reid Mitchell's Civil War Soldiers (1988), and, more recently, James McPherson's For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997). But, Phillips argues that scholars need to approach the subject differently if we are to understand "why thousands of men continued to fight for cause and comrades despite the long odds of 1864 and 1865" (p.3). Phillips sees the essential question as not "what they fought for" but rather "why they fought on" (p. 3).

In fairness, Linderman, Mitchell, and McPherson recognized the difference between these issues, but Phillips, offers something new. He does this by narrowly focusing his study on the years from 1863 through 1865, and restricting himself to wartime correspondence to avoid any false postwar memories or motivations. Within these tight confines, Phillips packs a wealth of source material. He admits that his study favors literate officers, but Phillips insists that their convictions were quite similar to those of the enlisted men. He clarifies, though, that diehard rebels were not typical Southerners. Rather, "They were often more privileged, more educated, and more attached to slavery than their fellow citizens were" (p. 4). Phillips compensates for these limits by incorporating a broad swath of material from soldiers serving in the Army of Northern Virginia, the Army of the Tennessee, and the Army of the Trans-Mississippi.

Diehard Rebels follows a thematic rather than chronological path with each chapter focusing on a key to Phillips's explanation of Confederate "culture of invincibility." Born during the Second Great Awakening, these soldiers, like the South, Phillips argues, were defined by their Protestant faith and their confidence that God smiled upon them and the Confederacy. That faith sustained the men and clarified the often incomprehensible. As Phillips explains,"triumphs proved God's favor and presence among Confederate legions; defeats confirmed God's love by chastening Rebels for their sins" (p. 187). Through it all, the Confederates' will to fight was sustained by their faith in God and their trust in God's faith in them.

In chapter 2, Phillips contends that the Confederate dehumanization of federal forces and Northerners in general also sustained their fighting spirit. While this tool is not unique to Southern soldiers, Phillips still proves its effectiveness for Confederate troops, and argues that their images of the enemy may have been more extravagant than most. Blending newspaper cartoons and popular songs with poetry from letters and diaries, Phillips shows how "many Confederates considered total war campaigns and the proliferation of black troops' evil portents of the South's future should the rebellion fail" (p. 74). The result, he argues, was a belief that anything, including death, was better than surrendering to such a foe.

Chapter 3 explains how the environments of camp and battlefield sustained the Confederate will to fight. Even in the face of defeat, Phillips's diehard rebels pointed to large numbers of Union dead as evidence of their ability to continue the war. Phillips cites strong combat leadership and close bonds forming in the intensity of conflict as additional factors that led Confederates to misrepresent casualties in letters, and maintain a blind faith in their best officers. Chapter 4 builds on this concept with an analysis of camp rumors that soldiers readily believed. Phillips shows how "during the nadir of Confederate morale, diehards intoxicated each other with gossip of improbable victories, northern disasters, and foreign intervention" (p. 117). This theme of faith and reliance on illogical outcomes continues through chapter 5, which studies Confederate soldiers in the final four months of the war and into the period of Reconstruction. In some ways, the themes of all previous chapters converge here as religious faith, negative caricatures of the enemy, rumors, and the bonds between soldiers sustained Confederates in early 1865. Quotes echo Sergeant Marion Fitzpatrick's pledge to his wife in Georgia that "'Yankees may kill me but will never subjugate me'" (p. 153).

It was this determination, a blend of all of the motivations outlined in Diehard Rebels, that carried Confederates into the period of Reconstruction. Phillips concludes that the Southern soldier "did not come home victorious; he did not come home humbled. Johnny came marching home with a loaded pistol. He came home an unconquered loser, armed with wartime convictions that shaped his postwar identity, ideology, and actions" (p. 179). These values and attitudes guided diehard rebels through the remainder of 1865 and in the years that followed. They helped Southerners to introduce and sustain the myth of the Lost Cause and allowed Confederates to win the peace that defeated Reconstruction, created Jim Crow, and defined the New South.

There are some minor weaknesses to the work. While there is a certain timelessness to the soldier experience, it is dangerous to compare the ideology of American soldiers in World War II with those of Confederates. At one point, Phillips does this to underscore the concept of diehard rebels fighting, at least in part, for their fellow soldiers. More perplexing, though, is Phillips's decision to prove this by quoting a WWII veteran speaking long after that conflict (just as he did General Schofield in the example that opens this review). One could make the case that scholars have tossed out valuable sources in the trendy animosity toward memoirs, but Phillips has already insisted that "postwar accounts cannot answer wartime questions" (p. 4). Clearly opposed to the evidentiary use of postwar memories, he cannot now cite one to support an argument. On a different theme, Phillips argues at several points that readers must resist the temptation to view Confederates' determination as "absurd or a mystery," and he insists that "Diehard Rebels were not insane, delusional, or bombastic" (pp. 189, 4). Phillips may be creating a bit of a straw man here. Surely scholars are well past such warnings about the Confederacy and Confederate ideology.

But these points are minor. Phillips succeeds brilliantly in accomplishing his goal to "tell us more about southern culture and warfare in general than about Confederate defeat," though I think he has done that nicely as well (p. 4). Diehard Rebels will make an outstanding addition to any course on the American South or the U.S. Civil War era.

Source: H-NET BOOK REVIEW, Published by H-CivWar@h-net.msu.edu (May 2008) www.h-net.org/~civwar/

Copyright (c) 2008 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online

Photo: Library of Congress, Battle of Antietam, Hagerstown Pike, Confederate Dead

CWL----For Gettysburg, Is the Army of Northern Virginia Represented in the Official Records?

Happily perusing Benjamin Dixon's new Learning The Battle of Gettysburg: A Guide to the Official Records, I asked "For Gettysburg, Is the Army of Northern Virginia Represented in the Official Records?" The answer was found on pages 136-144. Of what I found this is a summary of Army of Northern Virginia's Reports in the OR:

Of three infantry corps, all three corps reports are missing.

Of the auxiliary corps (artillery, ordinance, cavalry) there are
two of three are there with the cavalry report missing. Did Lee
possibly
command the cavalry corps while Stuart and his division were away?

Of the First Corps divisional (infantry/artillery) reports, all of
Longstreet's divisional reports are missing.
Of the First Corps' 15 brigade reports, 14 are missing.

Of the Second Corps 4 divisional (infantry/artillery) reports,
there are zero missing.
Of the Second Corps 18 brigade reports, only one is missing.

Of the Third Corps 4 divisional reports, none are missing
Of the Third Corps 18 brigade reports, only one is missing.

Why is the First Corps have all these missing reports?

News---Gettysburg Monuments Project Trust Passes Halfway Mark

Readshaw’s Pennsylvania Gettysburg Monuments Project Trust Passes Halfway Mark, State Rep. Harry Readshaw, D-Allegheny, ,
House Democratic Communications Office, May 9, 2008.

The Pennsylvania Gettysburg Monuments Project begun by state Rep. Harry Readshaw, D-Allegheny County, has passed the halfway mark in its drive to endow trusts for the future maintenance needs of the more than 140 monuments and markers to the Pennsylvanians who fought in the Civil War battle.

Readshaw today announced the organization has turned over to the trust about $30,000 raised in the past year. The deposit brings the trust amount to $250,000. The goal is $431,000 to pay for such routine work as cleaning the stones and their bronze features and re-pointing mortar.

The perpetual maintenance trust was begun after Readshaw raised $160,000 to ensure that current repairs needed by the monuments were funded. Those repairs have included replacement of broken features, such as the new hand put on the 114th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Zouave on Little Round Top, one of the most photographed monuments in the park. One hand and the end of the rifle the soldier is loading had been missing for decades, possibly due to a lightning strike. Money was also provided to replace bronze features vandals ripped from the 90th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry monument several years ago, though the Park Service has not yet made the repairs.

In 2006, Readshaw’s Raiders, as the representative and his monument preservation supporters have come to be called, reacted swiftly in providing the Park Service funds to repair the bronze memorial on Emmitsburg Road that honored the 114th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry after it was toppled by vandals and provided seed money for campaigns to restore two New York and Massachusetts monuments shattered by the same vandals. “The monuments project has been a refreshing break from the partisan politics in Harrisburg, as it has always enjoyed sweeping bipartisan support,” said Readshaw. “Most of the monuments were originally put up by the survivors of the battle to ensure that the story of their struggle, their losses and their ultimate triumph is there for future generations to visualize.

“Everyone who has assisted the Monuments Project should feel honored that they have been able to play a role in handing these ‘icons of freedom’ on to yet another generation of Americans and ensure they that will remain for many more to come."
In addition to individual contributions, the Pennsylvania Gettysburg Monuments Project is assisted by the annual Preservation Ball sponsored by the Victorian Dance Ensemble in the Rotunda of the Pennsylvania Capitol Building each March and the annual Ride to Gettysburg held by the Alliance of Bikers Aimed Toward Education (A.B.A.T.E.) of Pennsylvania each September.

Individuals or groups wishing to donate to the Gettysburg Battlefield Monument Trust can do so directly through the Adams County National Bank, Trust Department, P.O. Box 4566, Gettysburg, PA 17325. More information about the Pennsylvania Gettysburg Monuments Project can be obtained by calling Readshaw’s Harrisburg office at 717-783-0422 or by e-mail at gettysburg@pahouse.net.

SOURCE: Jay Purdy, House Democratic Communications Office
Phone: 717-787-7895 Email: jpurdy@pahouse.net

Photo: gettysburg-acw.blogspot.com

CWL: Note 3rd and 4th Paragraphs---Without checking a map, I am pretty sure the 114th Pennsylvania (Zouave) monument is across from the Sherfy Farm house, near the Peach Orchard as shown in the photograph.

Off Topic Novel--- Heart Shaped Box: Beware of Ghosts Offered Over The Internet

Heart Shaped Box, Joe Hill, William Morrow Publishing, 384 pp., $24.96, hardcover, and Harper Fiction Publishing, 366 pp., $7.99 paperback.

A spoiled Goth rock star buys a dead man's suit, advertised with a ghost included, over the Internet. By page 205 in the paperback edition, the author reveals what this reader learned very early in the story: "In time Jude (the 50+ heavily bearded rocker) had developed something like an immunity to the condition of feeling stupid. So when he paused, it wasn't out of a reluctance to speak but because he honestly didn't know what to say."

Jude Coyne, aging head-banger, comes with baggage: a coke-addled brain, a live-in groupie who was a former pole-dancer, a business manager who gave his sister a hot shot of heroin, an abusive father who hates rock and roll and takes a hammer to Judes' fingers at a very early age and this father is now on his deathbed. The Ghost comes with baggage: formerly a army intelligence off icier in Viet Nam whose daddy handled snakes during worship services, formerly a step-father who raped his step-daughters and who had designs before he died on his grand-daughter. One of his victims was a live-in group of Jude Coyne; the other victim is the advertiser of the suit with the ghost. These coincidences pile up every third or fourth chapter. With the pace and descriptive style of a graphic novel, Joe Hill's story is reminiscent of Stephen King's early novels and like-wise this reader sees a C+ movie being belched from Hollywood.

Now, why did I read Heart Shaped Box? 1.) The reviews. 2.) I like classic horror and have shelf of it with my several shelves of classic detective fiction. 3.) I was sick with a three-day cold. But I don't regret that I did read it. Though the characters are simple-minded and emotionally dull, there were elements of the plot I enjoyed. How does one kill a ghost whose purpose in the afterlife is to kill you and your friends? How does a step-father carry his sociopathology successfully into the afterlife? How do the dead take revenge on the dead? All interesting questions, if you suspend some of your disbeliefs about the nature of the afterlife. So, I have Joe Hill's short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts, in a second hand paperback edition and will get to it sometime when I'm sick.

News---Lincoln Sites: $1 Million A Year For 15 Years For Illinois' Lincoln Trail

Federal Money Will Help Central Illinois Promote, Develop Lincoln Sites, Kenneth Lowe, Herald and Review, Springfield, Illinois.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said Monday that Congress' approval of a plan to bring $15 million in grants to Illinois historic sites will help develop the resources to tell Abraham Lincoln's story. Durbin spoke with reporters in the atrium of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield as students viewed the museum's exhibits. "When I stand here and look at this museum, I think back 18 years ago when this was an idea," Durbin said. "The idea that there are hundreds of thousands of people streaming through those doors each year is an indication that this was the right idea."

If signed by President Bush, the money will go to the Looking For Lincoln Heritage Coalition, which has earmarked the money to give to Central Illinois communities in 42 counties for the development of historical and tourist attractions having to do with Lincoln. Counties that would receive money include Macon, DeWitt, Douglas, Logan, McLean, Tazewell, Sangamon, Piatt, Moultrie, Shelby, Coles and Woodford.

Nicky Stratton, associate director of the coalition, said the federal money does not carry with it any mandates on what the historical sites must do. "What happens is, communities will come to us with projects, and the idea is not for us to use this money, but to share it with those communities that can develop something really interesting," Stratton said.

Durbin said the investment in Illinois communities should create a good return in a tough economic time. "This may turn out to be an economical vacation to come down to our part of the world here and take the family on a tour through these communities," Durbin said.

Some sites affected by the grants:

- Thomas and Sarah Bush Lincoln Log Cabin Historic Site (pictured)

- Mount Pulaski and Postville State Historic Sites

- Vandalia Statehouse

- Lincoln Doubles Debate Museum in Charleston

- Macon County Log Court House

- Richard J. Oglesby Mansion in Decatur

- Lincoln Trail Homestead State Memorial in Decatur

Kenneth Lowe can be reached at kenneth.lowe@lee.net

Source: http://www.herald-review.com/articles/2008/05/06/news/state/1032304.txt

CWL---New On The Personal Bookself: Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine

The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine, Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein. M.E. Sharpe Publishing, 2008, 419 pp., illustrations, chronology, bibliography, index, $95.00.

This history of Civil War medicine in encyclopedia form offers 200+ A to Z entries on people, medical terms, disease, wounds, treatments, hospitals and volunteer organizations. Both Battles of Manassas, Peninsula Campaign, Antietam, Chickamauga, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Shiloh have entries listed in the table of contents. Other battles, such as Olustee, are found in the index. Clearly written, well annotated, and concisely organized, this one volume encyclopedia is reminescent of Mark Boatner's Dictionary of the Civil War and Terry Jones' Historical Dictionary of the Civil War.

Schroeder-Lein's work encompass's the most recent scholarship on the medical aspects of the war. There are usually three or more bibliographic notes for each entry along with usually five or more 'See Also' links. The chronology runs twelve pages and the bibliography spans fourteen. The reading level is accessible to the high school student who has a desire to learn new medical terms such as hydrotherapy, allopath, varioloid, and quotidian.

From the table of contents, CWL picked out the entries 'medical historiography, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, Hunter Holmes Maguire and Silas Weir Mitchell for a first reading; from the index the terms 'libraries' (of course), nuns, nursing schools received attention by CWL.

Glenna R. Schroeder-lein received a PHD in history from the University of Georgia and is the author of Confederate Hospitals on the Move: Samuel H. Stout and the Army of Tennessee. She has assisted in the editing of the Andrew Johnson Papers and is currently the manuscripts librarian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois.

Listed at $95.00 by the publisher, The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine can be found at a 20% discount and free shipping from Amazon.com. Lucky me, I picked up a librarian's fine discount. Of course at the the retail and discounted prices, one must ask 'is it worth it?' As an enthusiast of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine and as a reenactor of Civil War medicine, CWL's answer is 'yes.' The paperback edition is likely to take two or three years to arrive and CWL doubts whether the History Book Club or Zooba.com (now BOMC2.com) will have it available. Two options are to buy it for your community library and get a tax write-off or request the book as an inter-library loan. Once you have open in your hands, it is likely that you will be spending quite a bit of time in The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine.

Just Released---From The Hearth, Through The Battlefield, To The Grave

Awaiting the Heavenly Country: The Civil War and America's Culture of Death, Mark S. Schantz, Cornell University Press, 256 pp., $24.95.

"Americans came to fight the Civil War in the midst of a wider cultural world that sent them messages about death that made it easier to kill and to be killed. They understood that death awaited all who were born and prized the ability to face death with a spirit of calm resignation. They believed that a heavenly eternity of transcendent beauty awaited them beyond the grave. They knew that their heroic achievements would be cherished forever by posterity. They grasped that death itself might be seen as artistically fascinating and even beautiful."--from Awaiting the Heavenly Country

How much loss can a nation bear? An America in which 620,000 men die at each other's hands in a war at home is almost inconceivable to us now, yet in 1861 American mothers proudly watched their sons, husbands, and fathers go off to war, knowing they would likely be killed. Today, the death of a soldier in Iraq can become headline news; during the Civil War, sometimes families did not learn of their loved ones' deaths until long after the fact.

Did antebellum Americans hold their lives so lightly, or was death so familiar to them that it did not bear avoiding? In Awaiting the Heavenly Country, Mark S. Schantz argues that American attitudes and ideas about death helped facilitate the war's tremendous carnage. Asserting that nineteenth-century attitudes toward death were firmly in place before the war began rather than arising from a sense of resignation after the losses became apparent, Schantz has written a fascinating and chilling narrative of how a society understood death and reckoned the magnitude of destruction it was willing to tolerate.

Schantz addresses topics such as the pervasiveness of death in antebellum America; theological discourse and debate on the nature of heaven and the afterlife; the rural cemetery movement and the inheritance of the Greek revival; death as a major topic in American poetry; African American notions of death, slavery, and citizenship; and a treatment of the art of death--including memorial lithographs, postmortem photography and Rembrandt Peale's major exhibition painting The Court of Death.

Awaiting The Heavenly Country is essential reading for anyone wanting a deeper understanding of the Civil War and the ways in which antebellum Americans comprehended death and the unimaginable bloodshed on the horizon.

Blurbs:
"The premise of this very interesting and very satisfying book is that an antebellum American culture of death contributed mightily, even decisively, to the destructive nature of the Civil War. Mark S. Schantz's excellent research melds with his deep knowledge of the war in making persuasive links between antebellum culture and Civil War behaviors--North and South, male and female, black and white, home front and battlefield."--David Waldstreicher, Temple University

"Awaiting the Heavenly Country is an eloquent and insightful analysis of the culture of death and dying in antebellum America. Mark S. Schantz argues that the carnage of the Civil War may perhaps best be explained by a culture that embraced several anesthetizing notions about death: the idea that death was ennobling, that it ushered the deceased into a materially and emotionally rich heavenly existence, that the body itself could be purified and restored in the act of death. Schantz is a generous and sympathetic guide to the mind-numbing bloodletting of the Civil War who manages to explain the inexplicable."--Susan Juster, University of Michigan

Source of Text: publisher

CWL: Coming on the immediate heels of Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering which was released in January, Schantz's work may get a boost from Republic of Suffering's very high sales or the book could be in the shadow of Faust's heavily reviewed work. CWL plans to read both in June and offer readers a comparative review before the July 4th. Related reading CWL hopes to catch up on in June includes Mark Noll's The Civil War As A Theological Crisis.

News---Archaeology: Heating Military Hospitals in Alexandria

Two intriguing discoveries were made in Alexandria in 2003 and 2004. These were underground heating structures built by Union troops during the Civil War to heat hospital tents. It is believed that these are the first features of this exact type to be excavated. These structures were called Crimean Ovens and may have been somewhat experimental in nature.

The land where the first Crimean Oven was uncovered was on a residential lot on Quaker Lane which was once part of the plantation, "Cameron," owned by General Samuel Cooper. General Cooper was the Adjutant General of the U.S. Army (the second highest officer in the army) before the Civil War. When Virginia seceded, he resigned and became the Adjutant General of the C. S. A. Army. Because of his action, his property was confiscated by the federal government and one of the forts in the Defenses of Washington was built on his land. The Cooper house was torn down and the bricks used to construct the large powder magazine of the fort. The fortification was referred to as "Traitor's Hill" until 1863, when it was officially named Fort Williams. Federal army units camped in the vicinity of the fort and in many places throughout Alexandria.

Prior to development, the City, in accordance with the Archaeological Preservation Ordinance, required an archaeological investigation of the lot on Quaker Lane. It was likely that the remains of a Union camp were present because the property was just to the southeast of the site of Ft. Williams. Wally Owen, Assistant Director of Fort Ward Museum and a local authority on the Civil War, examined the area and observed how the property adjacent to the lot to be developed shows evidence in its undulating lawn of the raised regimental company "streets" with drainage ditches on either side, that are typical of long-term Civil War period encampments.

The developer hired Thunderbird Archeological Associates and the fieldwork was conducted during the summer of 2003 by archaeologists directed by Tammy Bryant. The owner had given permission for a local relic hunter to use a metal detector on the property and he found various Civil War period artifacts in addition to an area with bricks. He claimed to have removed “at least a hundred” bricks before the archaeologists began their work. The archaeologists uncovered a channel about 50 feet long, a foot wide, and about a foot below the ground surface edged on both sides by three courses of bricks. In three or four places thin sheets of metal, possible covers, were found crushed down into the bottom of the channel. The parallel lines of bricks descended down a slope and ended in a two course-wide brick rectangular structure about eight feet long, three feet wide and two feet deep. There was a partial dividing wall near the center of this box which might be the wall of the original box which was then expanded to double its size. The earth in the bottom of the box was reddened and baked almost as hard as a brick as was the dirt floor of the flue channel extending from the box. A layer of charred wood lay on the floor of the structure and was covered with a layer of fine sand about three inches thick. This probably was an ash pit that would have been below a fire where wood was burned. The fill soil of the entire feature contained artifacts dating to the Civil War and earlier, including Minie balls, a brass button from a New York Regiment, plus a brass and lead eagle breast plate. The end of the brick channel opposite the fire box was totally disturbed where the relic hunter had removed the bricks. The soil was scraped on each side of the flue to try to identify any remains of tent locations. The idea was that tents or huts could have been heated by hot air diverted from the flue channel. No evidence of structures was observed.

Stephen Potter, NPS National Capital Region Chief Archeologist, provided a reference to the MA thesis of Todd Jensen, on archaeological evidence of Civil War camps, that contained a reference to a letter written by a Union surgeon describing a heating system for heating hospital tents. Wally Owen went back to the original letter and found a nearly exact description of the feature found on Quaker Lane. In November of 1861, Dr. Charles S. Tippler, Surgeon and Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac described how to build a heating system “...for warming the tents and drying the ground a modification of the Crimean oven, which has been devised and put in operation by Sr. McRuer, the surgeon of General Sedgewick’s brigade, appears to me to be the cheapest and most effective.” He goes on to describe the system:

A trench 1 foot wide and 20 inches deep to be dug through the center and length of each tent, to be continued for 3 or 4 feet farther, terminating at one end in a covered oven fire-place and at the other end a chimney. By this arrangement the fire-place and chimney are both on the outside of the tent; the fire-place is made about 2 feet wide and arching; its area gradually lessening until it terminates in a throat at the commencement of the straight trench. This part is covered with brick or stone, laid in mortar or cement; the long trench to be covered with sheet-iron in the same manner. The opposite end to the fire-place terminates in a chimney 6 or 8 feet high; the front of the fire-place to be fitted with a tight moveable sheet-iron cover, in which an opening is to be made, with a sliding cover to act as a blower. By this contrivance a perfect draught may be obtained, and no more cold air admitted within the furnace than just sufficient to consume the wood and generate the amount of heat required, which not only radiates from the exposed surface of the iron plates, but is conducted throughout the ground floor of the tent so as to keep it both warm and dry, making a board floor entirely unnecessary, thereby avoiding the dampness and filth, which unavoidably accumulates in such places. All noise, smoke, and dust, attendant upon building the fires within the tent are avoided; there are no currents of cold air, and the heat is so equally diffused, that no difference can be perceived between the temperature of each end or side of the tent. Indeed, the advantages of this mode of warming the hospital tents are so obvious, that it needs only to be seen in operation to convince any observer that it fulfills everything required as regards the warming of hospital tents of the Eighth Brigade, and ascertain by observation the justness of this report.

In the summer of 2004, a property just to the south of the Quaker Lane project, was to be developed. It was a lightly wooded row of backyards of modest houses built between 1940 and 1955. This property also had the potential to contain the remains of Union camps. John Milner and Associates archaeologists, directed by Joe Balicki, conducted the investigation. Through the use of metal detectors, and aided by a trusted local relic hunter, they found a typical scatter of Civil War-period dropped bullets, buttons, and other military accouterments, along with a number of small hearths indicating a light encampment. As the work continued, during the excavation of an epaulet, bricks were found. Further excavation uncovered another Crimean oven flue with the intact chimney end – the only part missing from the Quaker Lane site oven. The construction of this feature was nearly identical to the one previously found, except that the fire box end of this structure had been graded away, probably when the nearby house was built. Because the destruction of this feature could not be avoided due to development, it was decided to remove this structure to Ft. Ward Museum for use in some future exhibition. The bricks were all numbered and photographed so the oven could be reassembled.

There are plans now to build a house on the property where Wally Owen observed the surface indications of a camp with company “streets.” There will be an archaeological investigation there and might we expect that there is a third Crimean oven to be found?

CWL: While my Civil War Lady (who at times is also known as Cold War Lady for her interest in post-WWII naval confrontations between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.) was planning a news writers conference in Washington, D.C., I was fortunate to stay for two days in Alexandria, Virginia. CWL has been on the research trail of an Alexandria Virginia Slave Pen that was also used as a prison for Confederate prisoners. I found it and will post it this month on Civil War Librarian. CWL was also delight to find that in Alexandria there is an agressive campaign to recover history through archaeology. CWL found a mention in the CWRT of Washington, D.C.'s newsleter that on June 10, Joe Balicki will present on the archeology of Civil War Battlefields. CWL googled 'Joe Balicki' and followed links to source for the above text: http://oha.alexandriava.gov/archaeology/ar-crimean_ovens.html