CWL's Top Ten Gettysburg Books: Most Frequently Consulted and Enjoyed

The Battle:
Generals of Gettysburg: The Leaders of America's Greatest Battle, Larry Tagg.
Brigades of Gettysburg: Union and Confederate Brigades at the Battle of Gettysburg, Bradley Gottfried.

Studying for the Gettysburg Licenced Battlefield Guide Test taught me that the key to developing a tour was to understand the generals and the brigades. Both Tagg and Gottfried have provided books that are comprehensive and accurate. Nearly anyone reading a short biography of a general and then the movements of his brigade to, during and after Gettysburg will come to a new level of understanding of the process of the battle.

Gettysburg Trilogy: The First Day The Second Day, Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill, Harry Pfanz.
Gettysburg: The Third Day, Jeffry Wert.

Taken together Pfanz's and Wert's works provide an integrated story of the brigades and their movements in the battle. Both authors offer telling details and anecdotes that emphasize the human element on a battlefield that held over 150,000 troops.

Guides to the Battlefield:
Complete Gettysburg Guide, J.D. Petruzzi.
Gettysburg: A Battlefield Guide, Mark Grimsley.

Petruzzi's and Grimsley' companions to touring the military park are accurate and easy to use. The Complete Gettysburg Guide has many photographs, maps, and sidebars that are vital to successful tour. It also features extensive tours of the pre-July fighting, the cavalry fights that are east, south, and west of the main battlefield, the borough, the two cemeteries, the hospital sites, and the rock carvings. Grimsley's book is clear, conscise and nearly complete with maps and tours that offer the essentials.

Post Battle:
A Strange and Blighted Land, Gregory Coco.
A Vast Sea of Misery: A History and Guide to the Union and Confederate Field Hospitals at Gettysburg, July 1-November 20, 1863, Gregory Coco.
Retreat From Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics and the Pennsylvania Campaign, Kent Masterson Brown.

Coco's and Brown's work enlarge the three day battle in a tactical, strategic and human ways. Coco's writing is wonderful and his immersion in primary sources of the civilians and the enlisted men is without parallel. Brown handles tactics and logistics quite well and offers sound insights into Lee's and Meade's leadership and the ability of their endure a rigorous and deadly campaign.

The Gettysburg National Military Park
This Holy Ground: A History of the Gettysburg Battlefield, Barbara Platt.
Often neglected is the history of the military park, its monuments, and its interpretations. Platt's work may be close to one of a kind, having a clear focus on the acres in the park's boundaries but not becoming overwhelmed by the myths and realities of interpreting the battle.

Honorable Mention: Learning the Battle of Gettysburg From the Official Records, Ben Dixon. This work clearly opens the Official Records to the layman; the 'needle in the haystack' days of the three Gettysburg volumes of the OR are over.

Honorable Mention: Virtual Gettysburg, Stephen Recker. Offering a two hour audio tour of the battle, a huge photo archive of the monuments and the farms, and clear maps that show you where the tour guide is on the battlefield, Recker was achieved a remarkable and thorough presentation for use on your computer.

Honorable Mention: Grappling With Death: The Second Corps Hospital at Gettysburg, Roland Maust. Maust has mined primary sources to a remarkable level in order to tell the story of one Union corps' medical staff, the civilian workers and the wounded. The agony of the July heat and humidity are told in the words and incidents of the people who were there. The heartbreaking relief of the rain and then the terror of the flood that engulfed Rock Creek leaves the reader humbled.

Coddington's A Study in Command, Sears' Gettysburg, Trudeau's A Testing of Courage and Frassinito's studies of photography are all well known, have their obvious strenghts and are on most top ten lists. They are on CWL's shelves and are consulted, especially Trudeau's maps with the clocks. The list consists of CWL's favorites.

Forthcoming Novel---John Bell Hood After The War

A Separate Country, Robert Hicks, Grand Central/Hanchette Publishing, September 2009, 432 pages, $25.95.

Set in New Orleans in the years after the Civil War, A Separate Country is based on the incredible life of John Bell Hood, arguably one of the most controversial generals of the Confederate Army--and one of its most tragic figures. Robert E. Lee promoted him to major general after the Battle of Antietam. But the Civil War would mark him forever. At Gettysburg, he lost the use of his left arm. At the Battle of Chickamauga, his right leg was amputated. Starting fresh after the war, he married Anna Marie Hennen and fathered 11 children with her, including three sets of twins. But fate had other plans. Crippled by his war wounds and defeat, ravaged by financial misfortune, Hood had one last foe to battle: Yellow Fever. A Separate Country is the heartrending story of a decent and good man who struggled with his inability to admit his failures-and the story of those who taught him to love, and to be loved, and transformed him.

Robert Hicks has been active in the music industry in Nashville for twenty years as both a music publisher and artist manager. The driving force behind the perservation and restoration of the historic Carnton plantation in Tennessee, he stumbled upon the extraordinary role that Carrie McGavock played during and after the Battle of Franklin. He is the author of The Widow of the South. The author states that nearly 80 images of New Orleans created during the mid-nineteenth century offered him inspiration for the novel. In particular Hicks found compelling, the paintings of Edgar Degas, who worked in New Orleans during 1872 and 1873

Image and Text Source: Amazon.com and publisher's materials.

New on the Personal Book Shelf: The ANV, Southern Journalism and The Anti-Slavery Movement

CWL received an offer from Louisiana State University Press and picked up a nice stack of books for $7.50 each and that included shipping! Unfortunately, the books doubled the size of the stack labeled 'Read This Summer'.

Audacity Personified: The Generalship of Robert E. Lee, edited by Peter S. Carmichael. Six essays that praise and fault the Marble Man.

The Cause of the South: Selections From De Bow's Review, 1846-1867, edited by Paul Paskoff and Daniel Wilson. De Bow's Review was one of the preeminent Southern publications of the antebellum period. Based in New Orleans, the journal was the forum for agricultural and industrial issues, the slavery vs. wage labor issue, southern nationalism and Black Republicanism issues among others. A book for the primary source shelf.

Legacy of Disunion: The Enduring Significance of the American Civil War, edited by Susan Grant and Peter Parrish. Twelve essays on the myths, memories, leaders, legacies, perceptions and realities of the war.

Campbell Brown's Civil War: With Ewell and the Army of Northern Virginia, edited by Terry Jones. Since its publication in 2001 Campbell Brown's journals have added a new dimension to the study of the Army of Northern Virgina's leadership.

A Troublesome Commerce: The Transformation of the Interstate Slave Trade, Robert Gudmestad covers the emptying out of the Upper South's slaves into the lower and trans-Mississippi South during the three decades before the war. Speculation in slave prices was comparable to the speculation in oil prices today.

No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Anti-Slavery Politics, Frederick Blue. Anti-slavery politics generated Southern fears that it could lose the right to hold property in slaves. Pittsburgh's Jane Grey Swisshelm gets a chapter in the book.

The Smoothbore Volley That Doomed the Confederacy by Robert K. Krick. Ten essays that consider the death of Jackson, Jackson's persecution of Garnett, the accuracy of Longstreet's memoirs and his relationship with McLaws, brigade commanders Rodes, Gregg and Early, Confederate bibliography and other topics.

CWL will start with Audacity Personified, then Campbell Brown's Civil Warand then The Smoothbore That Doomed the Confederacy next. Hopefully finish one in July one in August and one in September. After reading Glaathar's General Lee's Army during the winter, it seems to be shaping up to be a Army of Northern Virginia year. CWL probably focus on John Brown in October as a way of saluting the 150th anniversary of the Harpers Ferry Raid.

Off Topic---Code in Thomas Jefferson's Archive Cracked: Check Out The Online Interactive Video

Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code: Unlocking This Cipher Wasn't Self-Evident; Algorithms and Educated Guesses, Rachel Emma Silverman, Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2009.

For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.

The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group that promoted scholarly research in the sciences and humanities -- and were enthusiasts of ciphers and other codes, regularly exchanging letters about them. In this message, Mr. Patterson set out to show the president and primary author of the Declaration of Independence what he deemed to be a nearly flawless cipher. "The art of secret writing," or writing in cipher, has "engaged the attention both of the states-man & philosopher for many ages," Mr. Patterson wrote. But, he added, most ciphers fall "far short of perfection."

To Mr. Patterson's view, a perfect code had four properties: It should be adaptable to all languages; it should be simple to learn and memorize; it should be easy to write and to read; and most important of all, "it should be absolutely inscrutable to all unacquainted with the particular key or secret for decyphering." Mr. Patterson then included in the letter an example of a message in his cipher, one that would be so difficult to decode that it would "defy the united ingenuity of the whole human race," he wrote. There is no evidence that Jefferson, or anyone else for that matter, ever solved the code. But Jefferson did believe the cipher was so inscrutable that he considered having the State Department use it, and passed it on to the ambassador to France, Robert Livingston.

The cipher finally met its match in Lawren Smithline, a 36-year-old mathematician. Dr. Smithline has a Ph.D. in mathematics and now works professionally with cryptology, or code-breaking, at the Center for Communications Research in Princeton, N.J., a division of the Institute for Defense Analyses. A couple of years ago, Dr. Smithline's neighbor, who was working on a Jefferson project at Princeton University, told Dr. Smithline of Mr. Patterson's mysterious cipher. Dr. Smithline, intrigued, decided to take a look. "A problem like this cipher can keep me up at night," he says. After unlocking its hidden message in 2007, Dr. Smithline articulated his puzzle-solving techniques in a recent paper in the magazine American Scientist and also in a profile in Harvard Magazine, his alma mater's alumni journal.

The 1801 letter from Robert Patterson to Thomas Jefferson The code, Mr. Patterson made clear in his letter, was not a simple substitution cipher. That's when you replace one letter of the alphabet with another. The problem with substitution ciphers is that they can be cracked by using what's termed frequency analysis, or studying the number of times that a particular letter occurs in a message. For instance, the letter "e" is the most common letter in English, so if a code is sufficiently long, whatever letter appears most often is likely a substitute for "e."
Because frequency analysis was already well known in the 19th century, cryptographers of the time turned to other techniques. One was called the nomenclator: a catalog of numbers, each standing for a word, syllable, phrase or letter. Mr. Jefferson's correspondence shows that he used several code books of nomenclators. An issue with these tools, according to Mr. Patterson's criteria, is that a nomenclator is too tough to memorize.

Jefferson even wrote about his own ingenious code, a model of which is at his home, Monticello, in Charlottesville, Va. Called the wheel cipher, the device consisted of cylindrical pieces, threaded onto an iron spindle, with letters inscribed on the edge of each wheel in a random order. Users could scramble and unscramble words simply by turning the wheels.

But Mr. Patterson had a few more tricks up his sleeve. He wrote the message text vertically, in columns from left to right, using no capital letters or spaces. The writing formed a grid, in this case of about 40 lines of some 60 letters each.

Then, Mr. Patterson broke the grid into sections of up to nine lines, numbering each line in the section from one to nine. In the next step, Mr. Patterson transcribed each numbered line to form a new grid, scrambling the order of the numbered lines within each section. Every section, however, repeated the same jumbled order of lines. The trick to solving the puzzle, as Mr. Patterson explained in his letter, meant knowing the following: the number of lines in each section, the order in which those lines were transcribed and the number of random letters added to each line.

The key to the code consisted of a series of two-digit pairs. The first digit indicated the line number within a section, while the second was the number of letters added to the beginning of that row. For instance, if the key was 58, 71, 33, that meant that Mr. Patterson moved row five to the first line of a section and added eight random letters; then moved row seven to the second line and added one letter, and then moved row three to the third line and added three random letters. Mr. Patterson estimated that the potential combinations to solve the puzzle was "upwards of ninety millions of millions."

After explaining this in his letter, Mr. Patterson wrote, "I presume the utter impossibility of decyphering will be readily acknowledged." Undaunted, Dr. Smithline decided to tackle the cipher by analyzing the probability of digraphs, or pairs of letters. Certain pairs of letters, such as "dx," don't exist in English, while some letters almost always appear next to a certain other letter, such as "u" after "q".
To get a sense of language patterns of the era, Dr. Smithline studied the 80,000 letter-characters contained in Jefferson's State of the Union addresses, and counted the frequency of occurrences of "aa," "ab," "ac," through "zz."

Dr. Smithline then made a series of educated guesses, such as the number of rows per section, which two rows belong next to each other, and the number of random letters inserted into a line. To help vet his guesses, he turned to a tool not available during the 19th century: a computer algorithm. He used what's called "dynamic programming," which solves large problems by breaking puzzles down into smaller pieces and linking together the solutions. The overall calculations necessary to solve the puzzle were fewer than 100,000, which Dr. Smithline says would be "tedious in the 19th century, but doable."

After about a week of working on the puzzle, the numerical key to Mr. Patterson's cipher emerged -- 13, 34, 57, 65, 22, 78, 49. Using that digital key, he was able to unfurl the cipher's text:

"In Congress, July Fourth, one thousand seven hundred and seventy six. A declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. When in the course of human events..." That, of course, is the beginning -- with a few liberties taken -- to the Declaration of Independence, written at least in part by Jefferson himself. "Patterson played this little joke on Thomas Jefferson," says Dr. Smithline. "And nobody knew until now."

Cracking the code is shown in an interactive video at the Wall Street Journal's site.

Text and 2nd and 3rd Images' Source: Wall Street Journal, July 3 2009.

First Image: image.google/National Treasure film
Second Image: Robert Paterson from University of Pennsylvania Archives
Third Image: Thomas Jefferson, WSJ illustration

CWL: Isn't really more exciting than the films National Treasure and National Treasure 2?

Civil War Community---Scholars Who Blog Pick Most Important Gettysburg Books

Brett Schulte manages TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog for the obsessively compulsed and informed amateurs who study the American Civil War. Schulte has asked professional historians and writers to pick the most interesting from their point of view Gettysburg books. Check out TOCWC and you'll find Ethan Rafuse's, Eric Wittenberg's and Mark Grimsley's lists and about eight other's lists. The list of lists began on July 1. Looking through them, Edwin Coddington's, Harry Pfanz's and at least one of the several Gettysburg books from Savas Beatie Publishers are nearly everyone's list.


Go to TOCWOC for the lists.
Image Source: Rea Andrew Redd, CivilWarLibrarian, 40th New York monument located on east side of Plum Run at Devils Den.

News---U.S. Senate Apologizes For Its Role In American Slavery And Segregation Laws

Senate Apologizes For Slavery, David Welna, All Things Considered, June 18, 2009.

The U.S. Senate apologized Thursday for slavery and for the segregationist Jim Crow laws, 144 years after the Civil War and 45 years after passing the Civil Rights Act. The action came in a nonbinding resolution adopted unanimously by voice vote.

The Senate chamber was nearly empty as Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin rose to call for a measure that he said was long overdue for the descendants of 4 million blacks who were enslaved in the U.S. "A national apology by the representative body of the people is a necessary collective response to a past collective injustice," Harkin said. "So, it is both appropriate and imperative that Congress fulfill its moral obligation and officially apologize for slavery and Jim Crow laws."

The resolution states the congressional apology is made to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States for "the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors." That is followed, however, by a disclaimer that says nothing in the resolution authorizes any claim against the United States. Kansas Republican Sam Brownback, who co-sponsored the measure, says that disclaimer was necessary to win the support of senators who feared the apology could be used by African-Americans seeking reparations. "It was a difficult negotiation," he says. "We had to get the reparation issue right."

Last year, the House passed a similar resolution, but without the reparations disclaimer. New York Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, says he isn't sure he supports the Senate's reparations disclaimer. "If it ... can be construed to mean that ... it rules out [reparations], then that's a problem," Meeks says.

Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen, who sponsored last year's House resolution, says he hopes the House passes the Senate's apology soon, but he wants it done by voice vote. "This should be a congenial, kumbaya moment," he says. "A roll call could expose some fissures in what should be a cohesive spirit of apology and rectitude and more perfect union."

CWL: I am looking on the web for the text of the apology. Let's see what the House of Representatives does and the Supreme Court.

Text Source: National Public Radio

Image Source: Washington University Library

CWL---Was Lee Still Looking For A Battle of Annihilation After Gettysburg?

"Lee's Search for the Battle of Annihilation", Peter Carmichael in Audacity Personified: The Generalship of Robert E. Lee, Peter Carmichael, ed., LSU Press, 2004, pp.1-26.

By the fall of 1863 did Robert E. Lee's expectations far exceed what the Army of Northern Virginia could realistically accomplish? Much has been made of Lee's spring 1863 remark that the ANV was unbeatable. Did Lee continue to believe that the ANV could annihilate the Army of the Potomac after Gettysburg? Carmichael describes how Lee did believe just that. Lee looked for a decisive victory from Early in the summer of 1864 in the Shenandoah Valley. Carmichael believes that Early's army best served Lee by forcing Grant to send troops away from Petersburg to protect Washington. Lee failed to appreciate that defensive victories could both dishearten the North during the autumn elections and sustain Southern morale. The fall of Atlanta, the march to Savannah and the battles of Fisher's Hill and Cedar Creek led to Lincoln's presidential victory.

Discussing the works of Douglas Southall Freeman, Thomas Connelly, Allan Nolan, Michael Fellman and Emory Thomas, Carmichael covers the changing interpretations of Lee's audacity during the war. Carmichael cites Lee's July 1864 remarks, "if we can defeat or drive the armies of the enemy from the field, we shall have peace. All our efforts and energies should be devoted to that object, to illustrate Lee's continuing quest for a battle of annihilation. By ordering the assaults at The Wilderness, Harris Farm, North Anna, Bethesda Church, Cold Harbor, Weldon Railroad, and Fort Harrison Robert E. Lee engages in questionable tactics Carmichael feels. With these assaults and the 1864 Valley Campaign the ANV sustained battlefield losses at a time when Confederate numbers should have been conserved Carmichael concludes. Lee does deserve credit for making the effort in 1864 but the offensive forays drained the lifeblood out of an already anemic Confederacy.

"A defensive operations strategy afforded the best chance to ruin Lincoln's reelection bide with protecting Southern manpower," Carmichael summarizes (p. 26). The goal was to break the North's will to fight and defensive tactics as long could have accomplished this goal. In 1864 Confederate defeat was non inevitable and as Gary Gallagher has pointed out, Carmichael notes, the Southern people still had the will to outlast the enemy if the armies could be preserved.

Image Source: Lee Cart d'viste 1864

News----GNMP Is Likely To Take Possession of RR Station; Fate of Old Cyclorama Building Still Up In The Air

Federal Lawmakers OK With Train Station Sale, Scot Andrew Pitzer, Gettysburg Times, Monday, June 8, 2009.

Federal lawmakers have agreed to cooperate with the proposed sale of the Gettysburg Railroad Station, from Borough Council to the National Park Service. Before the real estate swap occurs, the boundaries of Gettysburg National Military Park must be re-drawn to include the Carlisle Street depot. The park intends to purchase the renovated station, and transform it into a visitor orientation complex.

“Congressman Todd Platts, and Senators (Bob) Casey and (Arlen) Specter have agreed to co-sponsor legislation to include the train station in the park boundary, as soon as we’re ready,” said GNMP Supt. John Latschar. Preliminary work for the train station sale is progressing, albeit slowly. “It’s moving forward,” said Borough Council Solicitor Harold A. Eastman Jr., “but it’s moving forward at a federal government pace.”

In order to operate and maintain the two-story station, the park is seeking access to adjacent properties, owned by Gettysburg College and the CSX corporation. “We have reached an agreement with the college, and are near an agreement with CSX,” Latschar reported. “It was relatively easy for the agreement with the college.”

Previously, the minimum asking price for the station was set at $722,000, but that is subject to change. Negotiations between the park and borough are private, because real estate discussions between two government entities are not subject to the Sunshine Law. “I don’t know if there’s a timeline out there,” Councilwoman Alice Estrada said regarding the sale of the station.

“It’s in the indefinite future, so it looks like the borough will be the landlord for a while,” Estrada said. This year alone, the borough budgeted $8,970 to operate the building. Currently, the Civil War Institute Office occupies the station’s top floor. The bottom floor serves as an interpretive center, run by the National Trust for Historic Gettysburg. “For right now, I think it’s pretty revenue neutral, because there is a tenant in there,” said Estrada.

The two-story station, adjacent to the Majestic Theater along the first block of Carlisle Street, was donated by the Olinger family to the borough government in the late 1990s. Following the transfer, the municipality launched a capital campaign to restore the dilapidated structure. Federal and state grants were obtained as part of the $2.5 million restoration project.President Abraham Lincoln arrived and left town via train when he visited Gettysburg in November 1863.

Fate Of Cyclorama Suit Unclear, Scot Andrew Pitzer, Gettysburg Times, Monday, June 8, 2009.

Now that a preservation group and the National Park Service have rendered opinions in the Cyclorama case, the federal lawsuit is likely to head in one of three directions, according to Gettysburg Battlefield Supt. John Latschar. “The district court judge has the option of adopting the magistrate’s recommendations as the court decision, or changing those recommendations, or of sending the case back to the magistrate with further instructions,” explained Dr. Latschar.

“Obviously,” Latschar continued, “I have no idea which of those three will happen. Only time will tell.” The 2.5-year-old lawsuit concerns whether the park’s decision to demolish the Cyclorama building complied with procedural requirements set forth in the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. Magistrate Judge Alan Kay ruled in favor of conserving the 47-year-old building in March 2009, although he also partially sided with the Park Service, opposing the preservation group’s stance that the park violated the National Historic Preservation Act.

Objections to the ruling were due May 18, and since then, no additional paperwork has been filed in federal court. Presiding Judge Thomas Hogan has the final say in the case. If Kay’s opinion is adopted by the high court, the park will have to perform an environmental assessment of the proposed demolition, and also study alternatives, such as relocation. “That’s when we’d figure out the costs of the project,” Latschar told the park’s Advisory Commission in April.

A preservation group, The Recent Past Preservation Network, wants to protect the building, while the park wants to tear it down, and return that portion of the Civil War battlefield to its 1863 appearance. The park’s General Management Plan — adopted in 1999 — calls for the removal of the building from Ziegler’s Grove, which was the scene of Pickett’s Charge during the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. But the preservation group has argued since Dec. 2006 that the park failed to comply with federal code, by not considering alternatives to demolition. “The law clearly requires federal agencies to consider the environmental consequences of their proposed actions and potential alternatives to those actions,” said Recent Past Preservation Network Attorney Matthew Adams.

Federal attorneys believe that a six-year statute of limitations to file a civil suit expired before Dec. 2006, when the preservation group took the park to court. The park contends that the statute triggered in 1999, coinciding with the park’s adoption of its General Management Plan. The cylindrical structure once housed a 370-foot long painting depicting Pickett’s Charge. It opened in 1962, designed by internationally-renowned architect Richard Neutra, and his partner Robert Alexander. Neutra’s son, Dion, is a plaintiff in the case along with the Recent Past Preservation Network.

The painting underwent a $16 million renovation, in a project that launched about five years ago, and the artwork was moved to a new $103 million Battlefield Visitor Center. Subsequently, the old Cyclorama Center closed two years ago, and awaits its fate. The Park Service, which awarded Neutra the design commission in 1958 under the federal “Mission 66” program to improve national park facilities, wants to tear down the building as part of plans to reconstruct the landscape of Ziegler’s Grove to an 1863 appearance. It has agreed to hold off on demolition until the lawsuit is resolved.

Text and Image Source: Gettysburg Times, Railroad Station

Text Source: Gettysburg Times, Cyclorama Building Lawsuit

Cyclorama Image Source: Green Gettysburg

News---Gettysburg Anniversary Battlewalks

Battle of Gettysburg Anniversary Programs, 2009

Join Park Rangers and Licensed Battlefield Guides for a series of free guided walks that discuss the three days of battle and its impact. Each program is approximately three hours in length and may include up to two miles or more of walking. Some of the terrain is moderately difficult and programs may pass through tall grass. Water, headgear, sun protection and comfortable, sturdy walking shoes are highly recommended.

July 1, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. The Attack and Defense of Oak Ridge
After the initial Confederate thrust toward Gettysburg was repulsed on the late morning of July 1, the battle escalated as both armies brought more troops onto the field, lengthening their respective battle lines. Sometime around noon Maj. Gen. Robert Rodes’s Confederate Division arrived from the north and quickly occupied Oak Hill, a strategic height northwest of town. Rodes deployed his troops and soon after launched them against the right flank of the Union First Corps located on Oak Ridge. The resulting action was confused and bloody, as the outnumbered Union defenders tenaciously held their ground against repeated Confederate attacks from the north, northwest and west. Join Park Ranger Eric Campbell as he examines this chaotic struggle from the perspective of both the advancing Confederates and the Union defenders.
Meet at the Eternal Light Peace Memorial, Auto Tour Stop 2. Additional parking is available along the right side of North Confederate Avenue, beyond the Eternal Light Peace Memorial parking lot, or along Buford Avenue, south of the Mummasburg Road. Note: Please park your vehicle on the right side of the road, but with all wheels on the pavement.

July 1, 2009 at 3:00 p.m. "We got off 80 men out of 350 that went into the fight." In the Footsteps of the 157th New York
Follow in the footsteps of the 157th New York Infantry on July 1. For years the scene of their desperate battle with Doles' Georgia brigade was occupied by a car dealership. Today, the dealership is gone and the ground restored so that the story of this unheralded but desperate action can finally be understood. The 157th lost more men killed and wounded than any regiment in the 11th Corps on July 1, 1863, and though driven from the battlefield, the regiment was not defeated for want of courage and determination. Join Park Historian D. Scott Hartwig in retracing the route of this hard- fought Union regiment at Gettysburg.
Meet just east of the 157th New York monument on the corner of Mummasburg Road and West Howard Avenue. Be prepared for hiking through tall grass meadows over uneven ground, total distance of approximately two miles.

July 2, 2009 at 10:00 a.m.
“Impeded by immense boulders and sharp ledges of rock.” The Attack of Maj. Gen. John B. Hood’s Division on July 2, 1863
Join a team of Park Rangers as they follow in the footsteps of the four brigades in Maj. Gen. John B. Hood’s Division during their attack against the Federal forces stationed in Devil’s Den and the adjacent areas of the Wheatfield and Little Round Top. The focus of the program will be the fight for Devil’s Den but it will also examine how the terrain effected movements and complicated the command and control of a 7,000 man infantry division.
Meet rangers John Heiser, Karlton Smith, Matt Atkinson and Eric Campbell at the Texas Brigade monument on South Confederate Avenue. The program will end at the 99th Pennsylvania Monument on the summit of Devil’s Den. The walks will average between a mile and a mile and one half. It is highly recommended that you wear good hiking boots and be prepared for rough terrain and tall grass. Park at the picnic area on South Confederate Avenue, or along the right side of South Confederate Avenue.

July 2, 2009 at 2:30 p.m. “I gave orders to General Hays to...advance upon Cemetery Hill when a favorable opportunity should occur.” Major-General Jubal A. Early Early’s Attack on East Cemetery Hill
On July 2, 1863, General Early’s Confederate division faced Cemetery Hill, the centerpiece of the Union position at Gettysburg. Commanding General Robert E. Lee had ordered the Union flanks to be attacked on July 2, either for the purpose of driving them toward a critical mass against Cemetery Hill or to pull Union strength away from that point for Confederate reserves to seize it directly. It seemed apparent, at least by 6:00 pm on July 2, that Union Commanding General George G. Meade had committed his strength to the flanks, thus leaving General Early’s division, along with other Confederate reserves facing Cemetery Hill, the daunting task of seizing the main position directly. Early’s attack was not an afterthought, but rather the defining moment of the three day battle in Lee’s plan. Cemetery Hill was the main position of the Union army and Meade had given Early “a favorable opportunity” to seize it directly. Join Ranger Troy Harman as he follows the steps of Early’s July 2 evening assault, and traces the more precise High Water Mark at Gettysburg. Meet in front of Keefauver School on Lefever Street. Be prepared for hiking through tall grass meadows over uneven ground, total distance of approximately one and one-half miles.

July 2, 2009 at 2:30 p.m. In the Footsteps of the 15th Alabama: A Family Program
A special program for children ages 8-14 and accompanied by an adult or guardian. Ranger Barb Sanders will explain the role of the 15th Alabama Infantry during the fighting on July 2, 1863, and the impact the battle had on the local populace. Meet at Alabama Monument, near Auto Tour Stop 7. This walk is over hilly terrain and ends approximately 1.5 miles from its starting location, so please plan and dress accordingly.

July 2, 2009 at 6:00 p.m. “The Fight Was Remarkable” The Struggle for Culp’s Hill on July 2
Join Licensed Battlefield Guide Charlie Fennell as he details the significant action at Culp’s Hill, the anchor of the Union right, on July 2, 1863. Here it can be argued was the best chance for a Confederate victory at Gettysburg. That the Union army prevailed was in no small part due to the heroic valor of a single brigade of New Yorkers commanded by the oldest general in the Army of the Potomac, Brig. Gen. George Greene. As one veteran stated, “Deeds of heroic valor were preformed upon every part of the field during the three days…but nowhere…was more dauntless heroism displayed than in defense of Culp’s Hill by the men in Greene’s brigade…on the night of July 2, 1863.” Meet at the Culp’s Hill Observation Tower on the summit of Culp’s Hill.

July 3, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. “We arrived on the open ground within a few hundred yards of our old position...the night being quite dark....” Col. Silas Colgrove, 27th Indiana. The Pre-Dawn Engagement at McAllister Ridge
Shortly after 10 p.m. on July 2, 1863, Union Brigadier General Alpheus Williams’ Division returned to the Baltimore Pike expecting to reoccupy their defensive works located along an obscure ridge between Powers Hill and Spangler Meadow. To their dismay, Confederates held their fortifications and the ridge, prompting Colonel Colgrove to push-out skirmishers from the 2nd Massachusetts to investigate. In a rare instance of Civil War night fighting, the Massachusetts soldiers successfully completed a sortie that not only found the enemy and recaptured the Union breastworks; it set off a confusing chain of events that lasted well into the early morning hours of July 3. The success of the 2nd Massachusetts overnight was countered by their ill-fated charge across Spangler Meadow later that morning. Join Ranger Troy Harman in walking this recently rehabilitated “open ground”, visible for the first time in over a century thanks to ongoing battlefield rehabilitation. Meet at the flagpole in front of the new Museum and Visitor Center at 1195 Baltimore Pike. Be prepared for hiking through tall grass meadows over uneven ground, total distance of approximately two miles.

July 3, 2009 at 3:00 p.m. The Attack and Repulse of Pickett’s Charge
Follow in the footsteps of Virginia soldiers of General George E. Pickett’s Division during their ill-fated assault against the Union center. Join the team of park rangers- Jim Flook, Raffi Andonian, and Jennifer Murray, as they tramp the route of the brigades of Brig. Gen. Richard Garnett, Brig. Gen. Lewis Armistead and Brig. Gen. James Kemper of Pickett’s now famous command. Meet the rangers at the Virginia Memorial (Auto Tour Stop 5), along West Confederate Avenue.
For the perspective of the Union soldiers who repulsed the attack and to learn about the Union response to Pickett’s Charge, meet the park ranger at the Abraham Brien farmhouse, located along Hancock Avenue, directly behind the old Cyclorama Center. Suggested parking at the National Cemetery Parking Lot.

July 3, 2009 at 6:00 p.m. Cemetery Ridge: A Visual History
The history of Gettysburg’s Cemetery Ridge goes far beyond the stories of Generals Lewis Armistead and Winfield Scott Hancock. Tens of thousands of soldiers were involved in the fighting there on July 2 and 3, 1863, and in the years following the area would develop into one of the Civil War’s most iconic places. Join Licensed Battlefield Guides Garry Adelman and Tim Smith to explore Cemetery Ridge though the lens of the camera. Like no other resource, historical photographs provide us with a glimpse into the transformation of the field of battle into the memorial it is today. The Angle, the Copse of Trees, the Bryan House, Meade’s Headquarters, the old observation tower, and the soon-to-be removed Cyclorama building are just some of the topics to be covered. Learn of the 1890s efforts to restore Zeigler’s Grove, and the battle over the Gettysburg Electric Railway. As always we will discuss moved monuments and avenues long gone. Meet at “Ranger Program Begins Here” sign at the National Cemetery Parking Lot.

July 4, 2009 at 3:30 p.m.
To Save a Life – The Evacuation and Treatment of the Wounded
Follow the path of men of Brigadier General George Willard’s New York brigade into combat on July 2, and then trace the experience of those who are wounded through their evacuation and treatment. Meet a team of rangers at the Pennsylvania Monument, Auto Tour Stop No. 12. Please park along the right side of Hancock Avenue.
National Park Service

Source: Gettysburg National Military Park

Images: Civil War Librarian

Big Civil War Book Sale: LSU Press

The following are some of the American Civil War Books that are on sale at Louisiana State University Press.
CWL bought seven for $60 and that included shipping ($6 for the first book, $1 for each of the others). Many are as little as $5 and none that CWL purchased were over $10.
Here are a few titles that are on sale and the weblink.
http://www.lsu.edu/lsupress/summerSale.html




Bergeron, Arthur W., Jr. - Confederate Mobile
Blackford, W. W. - War Years with Jeb Stuart
Blanton, DeAnne and Lauren Cook - They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers Civil War

Carmichael, Peter S., ed. - Audacity Personified: The Generalship of Robert E. Lee
Cimprich, John - Fort Pillow, a Civil War Massacre, and Public Memory
Connelly and Bellows - God and General Longstreet: The Lost Cause/the Southern Mind

Connelly and Jones - The Politics of Command: Factions & Ideas Confederate Strategy
Cooke, John E. - Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, Adventures
Cooper, William J., Jr. - Jefferson Davis and the Civil War Era

Dufour, Charles L. - Gentle Tiger: The Gallant Life of Roberdeau Wheat
Duncan, R. - Lee's Endangered Left: The Civil War in Western Virginia, Spring of 1864

Dunkelman, Mark H. - Brothers One and All: Esprit de Corps in a Civil War Regiment
Dunkelman, Mark H. - War's Relentless Hand: Twelve Tales of Civil War Soldiers
Durden, Robert F. - The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation

Everett, Donald E., ed. - Chaplain Davis and Hood's Texas Brigade
Fitzgerald, M. - Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile,
Forbes, Edwin - Thirty Years After: An Artist's Memoir of the Civil War

Franklin, John Hope, ed. - The Diary of James T. Ayers: Civil War Recruiter
Freeman, Douglas S.- South to Posterity: Introduction Writing of Confederate History
Gaines, W. Craig - Encyclopedia of Civil War Shipwrecks

Gordon, Lesley J. and John C. Inscoe, eds. - Inside the Confederate Nation
Gragg, Rod - Confederate Goliath: The Battle of Fort Fisher
Grant & Parish, eds. - Legacy of Disunion: The Enduring Significance o/t Civil War

Hearn, Chester G. - Ellet's Brigade: The Strangest Outfit of All
Hearn, Chester G. - When the Devil Came Down to Dixie: Ben Butler in New Orleans
Hyde, Bill, ed. - The Union Generals Speak: The Meade Hearings on Battle Gettysburg

Jones, Terry L., ed. - Campbell Brown's Civil War: With Ewell in the A N V
Krick, R. K. - The Smoothbore Volley that Doomed the Confederacy:
Krick, Robert K. - Conquering the Valley: Stonewall Jackson at Port Republic

Lowry, T. - Confederate Heroines: Southern Women Convicted by Union Military Justice
Massey, Mary Elizabeth - Refugee Life in the Confederacy
McWhiney, Grady, ed. - Grant, Lee, Lincoln and the Radicals: Essays Civil War Leaders
Radley, Kenneth J. - Rebel Watchdog: The Confederate States Army Provost Guard

Rhea, Gordon C. - The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5–6, 1864
Rhea, G. - Battles for Spotsylvania C. H. and Road to Yellow Tavern, May 7–12, 1864
Rhea, Gordon C. - Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26–June 3, 1864
Rhea, G. C. - In the Footsteps of Grant and Lee: The Wilderness through Cold Harbor
Rhea, Gordon C. - To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13–25, 1864

Siddali, S.R. - From Property to Person: Slavery and the Confiscation Acts, 1861–1862
Starr, Stephen Z. - Union Cavalry in the Civil War: From Fort Sumter-Gettysburg,
Starr, Stephen Z. - Union Cavalry in the Civil War: The War Gettysburg to Appomattox
Starr, Stephen Z. - Union Cavalry in the Civil War: The War in the West, 1861–1865

Wiley, Bell Irvin - Road To Appomattox
Wiley, Bell Irvin - The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy
Winschel, Terrence J., ed. - The Civil War Diary of a Common Soldier: William Wiley of the 77th Illinois Infantry

News----Obama Honors Confederate and Black Soldiers on Memorial Day

Separate but Equal Wreaths are Not a Permanent Solution to the Memorial Day Conundrum, James W. Loewen, History News Networtk, May 29, 2009.
See CWL entry May 20, 2009 for petition to not set a wreath at Arlington's Confederate Memorial. Mr. Loewen, the author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, started a petition asking President Obama not to honor the Arlington Confederate Monument.

Although I had signed petitions to the President going back to the '60s, before Memorial Day 2009 I had never helped to start one. This year, the fact that neo-Confederates misconstrue the Confederate monument in Arlington National Cemetery to misconstrue the Civil War to misconstrue the Confederate cause got to me ... especially since every Memorial Day, the President of the United States lends his prestige to that monument by sending it a wreath.

We (Ed Sebesta and I) wound up with more than 60 co-signers, including major historians of the Civil War period like David Blight, Vernon Burton, and James McPherson; other distinguished historians like John Dittmer, Paul Finkelman, and Kenneth Jackson; and scholars in allied disciplines like Grey Gundaker, Florence Roisman, and Amilcar Shabazz. Leaders or former leaders of important organizations lent their names, including Josh Brown, Lee Formwalt, Susan Glisson, and Roger Kennedy. Professors of education signed, including Sonia Nieto, David Shiman, and Bill Ayers.

Ayers is on my contacts list because, more than a dozen years ago, he participated in inviting me to speak to pre-service teachers at the University of Illinois (Chicago) about ideas in my best-seller, Lies My Teacher Told Me. When sending out emails to people on my list, I considered omitting him, since I knew of his toxic fame. I emailed him anyway, because Sarah Palin had told us all he was a "pal" of President Obama, because it did not feel right to censor my contacts list, and also because I just wanted to see what would happen.

It turned out that the only name the media cared about was Ayers. The Chicago Sun-Times, for instance, headlined its story, "Radical Bill Ayers dogs Obama, even on Memorial Day." Within the story, Ayers's name does not appear until the 14th paragraph, which is appropriate. But no other signer's name appears at all — not mine, not Sebesta's, not even McPherson's, surely America's pre-eminent scholar on the period, whose Battle Cry of Freedom won the Pulitzer Prize. Today, searching for "Ayers Obama "Memorial Day" wreath yields 7,570 hits, while "McPherson Obama "Memorial Day" yields just 2,570.

On Sebesta's list of contacts was art historian Kirk Savage, whose book, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves treats Civil War memorials. Savage penned an op-ed to the Washington Post suggesting that President Obama continue the tradition of the Confederate wreath, but also send one to the new African American Civil War Memorial in DC. (He had proposed this to Sebesta, but for reasons this essay notes, Ed rejected the idea.) The Post never did a story about our petition but did print Savage's op-ed opposing it.

Despite the Post's silence, AP and other outlets picked up the story. A minor controversy followed. HNN's posting of our petition drew 90 comments. A blog about the matter at Daily Kos spurred more than 250. Savage's op-ed generated nine pages at WashingtonPost.com. Many were from neo-Confederates attacking any challenge to their beloved Confederate legend. Others, however, came from people respectful of the cause of good race relations while also respectful of the dead.

Americans need to understand that Confederate Memorials come in two kinds. One type remembers and honors the dead. The other glorifies the cause and typically obfuscates what it was (which was slavery). The Arlington monument is of the second type. Donated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, erected during the Nadir of Race Relations, it does not purport to tell accurate history. It even gets the number of Confederate states wrong, implying that 14 seceded, when only 11 did. Moreover, in recent years neo-Confederates have deliberately misconstrued a black body servant, included in the bas-reliefs, as a Confederate soldier. Then they cite him as "evidence" that thousands of African Americans fought for the Confederacy. As a corollary, this claim continues, the South could not have seceded for slavery.

Why should the President privilege this monument over, say, the Confederate monument in neighboring Alexandria, a pensive statue of the former type? Why, for that matter, should the President privilege this monument over every single monument to United States troops in the Civil War?

It might be said that he no longer does. Unlike his predecessors from Wilson to W, Obama eventually followed Savage's idea and sent two wreaths, one to the Confederate monument, one to the African American monument. Doing so was certainly a significant advance over former practice. However, dual wreaths implicitly equate service for the Union and service against it. They also implicitly equate war fought to maintain and extend slavery with war eventually fought (admittedly, not at first) to end slavery. Surely both sides are not of equal moral value.

This is not the place to make the argument that the South seceded for slavery, not states' rights. Everyone knew this in 1860-61. Today anyone who believes that the Southern states left because they favored states' rights has only to search for and read "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union." Also useful is my short chapter on Gettysburg in Lies Across America, which tells why and when the states' rights myth began to be told.

To be sure, neither Savage nor the president probably intended to equate North and South. Surely, both Savage and the president meant this "solution" as a way to sidestep all such moral and historical issues and merely honor the dead on both sides. Thus the president assuages two "special interests": neo-Confederates on the one side, and African Americans (and historians) on the other. Left out are United States Civil War veterans as a whole — white and black together.

Hoping to avoid post-petition depression, I humbly suggest that important historical questions remain. Why would presidents of the United States, for almost a hundred years, send wreaths just to the Southern side — the losing side and the wrong side — of our greatest war? Did presidents ever send wreaths to U.S. Civil War monuments — perhaps to the G.A.R. monument in DC — before the Nadir of Race Relations set in? Has even one of the 2,000+ Union monuments ever received a presidential wreath on Memorial Day since the Nadir? What is the connection between race relations of the time and how we remember the past?

Text and Image Source: History News Network

Image Caption: The day after, the President’s wreath lies in a heap to the side of the Confederate monument.

CWL---Open On The Desk, In The Car and On The Nightstand: Three Books To Start The Summer

Cavalryman of the Lost Cause: A Biography of J. E. B. Stuart, Jeffry D. Wert, Simon and Schuster, 496 pages, illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index, $32.00.

Jeff Werts' books take up about half of a shelf of my 12 seven shelf book cases; his book on Stuart is his newest and like his others uses the familar to open up the nuances of personalities and events. His one volume history of the Army of the Potomac presents a topic that is often encountered battle by battle but rarely from beginning to end. Reading Wert's Sword of Lincoln and Glatthaar's General Lee's Army one would probably be encountering the two best books in their field.

CWL is up to page 160 and the Second Manassas/Antietam Campaign is finished. Stuart shines while in Virginia but loses control while in Maryland. The expeditions against Catlett, Bristoe and Manassas stations are remarkable preludes to the Battle of Second Manassas. But on September 8 Stuart hosts the Sabers and Roses ball in Urbana Maryland, while the Federal cavalry occupies Poolesvile a few miles to the south and cuts Rebels off from a Potomac River ford. Wert states that "Lee's lack of undertanding of the progress of McClellan's army resulted from an apparent lack of vigilance on the part of Stuart." (p. 144) On September 11, Stuart is again dancing, Heros Von Borcke reports, with spirited Irish girls at a farmhouse west of Frederick as the Federal army is readies itself to occupy Frederick the next day. Stuart rides to Harpers Ferry with a small escort to be present at its surrender while Confederate forces are forced out of the South Mountain gaps and his cavalry is idle. Lee orders a cavalry assault on the Federal right during the afternoon of the battle of Antietam but Stuart tips his hand in the attempt by having the horse artillery put the Federal First Corps on notice that the game is still being played.

CWL recommends each of Wert's books: General James Longstreet: The Confederacy's Most Controversial Soldier , Mosby's Rangers, The Sword of Lincoln: The Army of the Potomac , Gettysburg, Day Three, A Brotherhood Of Valor: The Common Soldiers Of The Stonewall Brigade C S A And The Iron Brigade U S A and From Winchester to Cedar Creek: The Shenandoah Campaign of 1864.

Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, Fred Kaplan, Harper Collins, 406pp, $27.95. While reading Cavalryman of the Lost Cause at Starbucks and on the patio, CWL has Lincoln: Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan on audio compact disk in the car; the commute to work is 45 minutes, 90 minutes round trip. In the deluge of new Lincoln biographies, CWL recommends Ron White's A. Lincoln: A Biography and Kaplan's. The more one wrestles with Lincoln intellect the more one wrestles with the question: What did Lincoln Read? Kaplan examines in his first chapter entitled 'All The Books He Could Lay His Hands On---1809-1825' Lincoln's childhood opportunities and the main ideas found in what the young impoverished reader encountered. CWL finds that Lincoln by the age of 15 is familar with the best literature in West Civilization: the Bible, Shakespeare, Aesops' Fables and the Arabian Nights. Also, Lincoln is familar and adept at the oratory of stump politics and chapel pulpits.

On the nightstand is Jacob's Run: A Novel of 1860 Wilmington (Whittler's Bench Press, $24.95). What initially attracted CWL was to this novel is that one of the authors is the founder of the Center for Civil War Photography. The other attraction is that the setting is in a Southern antebellum city, a topic in which CWL reads at least one book a year. Bob Zellers The Blue and Gray in Black and White: A History of Civil War Photography, and The Civil War In Depth, Volumes 1 and 2. Zellers and co-author John Beshears balance historic details with characters that are larger than the mundane life of a North Carlina port city. A devil-may-care newspaper reporter, a nasty plantation family, a Yankee insurance investigator, a bright, articulate slave who hides behind a thick accent and a bum leg, a second villian who is a black lowlife and owns slaves are wrapped together in the historically accurate aspect of Southern slaveholders insuring the lives of their slaves. CWL asks readers of Jacob's Run to happily suspend their disbelief and be intertained.

Will Sickles' Reputation Be Redeemed? Giving Sickles Credit Where Credit Is Due.

Civil War Presentation Trust recently interviewed James Hessler about his new book and Sickles’ battlefield preservation efforts.

Sickles at Gettysburg The Controversial Civil War General Who Committed Murder, Abandoned Little Round Top, and Declared Himself the Hero of Gettysburg, James A. Hessler, Savas Beatie Publishing, hardcover, 432pp., 20 photos and maps, bibliography, notes, index, June 2009, $32.95.

CWPT: How important were Sickles’ battlefield preservation efforts at Gettysburg?

JH: Very important. He had the political clout, celebrity, and drive to get things done. I would never call him Gettysburg’s most important preservationist, David McConaughy deserves that honor, but I’d certainly put Sickles near the top of the list. He chaired the New York Monuments Commission for almost three decades, put a lot of monuments on the battlefield, helped attack William Tipton’s commercial developments near Devil’s Den, and introduced the bill that created Gettysburg National Military Park. He even drew up the Park’s initial boundaries. The veterans cheered him when he went back to Gettysburg to give speeches. Imagine how different the reaction would be if he went back there today. Of course, money was missing from the Monument Commission’s coffers, and I cover that in the book too . . .

CWPT: Do many people know about Sickles’ preservation efforts?

JH: No. Few participants, if any, combine to be as important during and after the battle as he was. Yet the typical visitor has never heard of him, and has certainly never heard anything positive about him. Sickles even gets short notice in a lot of the histories of the battlefield, yet he put a lot of the monuments on the field, dedicated a number of them, introduced the bill, and set the boundaries. His modern critics will sometimes say that certainly someone else would have created the National Park were it not for Sickles. That is revisionism. The simple fact is that it was Sickles who got the job done. It was the most positive and lasting accomplishment in his long career and it is unknown, overlooked, or downplayed by a lot of people who enjoy the battlefield today.

CWPT: What do you hope this book will accomplish?

JH: I hope it will give Sickles’ reputation some balance and perspective. It is not a love letter to Sickles. I am certainly critical of him when he deserves it. I also hope that battle enthusiasts, particularly of the second day, will find it indispensable in understanding what happened and why. Finally, I hope that the preservationists will pause to remember that Sickles would be very supportive of their efforts, even though you might not want to give him your grandmother’s money, and that we owe a lot of the Gettysburg National Military Park we know today to Dan Sickles.

CWPT: Thank you for the interview, Mr. Hessler. We appreciate your time.

JH: You’re welcome, thank you for the opportunity. I hope your readers enjoyed it, and will look forward to learning more about Sickles.

For the entire interview go to Savas Beatie Publishing's posting of it.

Image Source: Gettysburg Daily.Com May 24, 2009.

CWL---Off Topic: Classic Literature on Stalingrad

Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad, William Craig, Readers Digest Press, 462pp, 1973.

Craig's 1973 book is a fine non-fiction account of the Stalingrad Campaign. It's title was taken for use by the producers of the 2001 Paramount Pictures film staring: Joseph Fiennes, Jude Law, Ed Harris, Rachel Weisz, Bob Hoskins and Ron Perlman. The book contains the story of Vaselli Zaitsev and Tania Chernova, Russian snipers and a duel with a master German sniper. Craig cautions that the duel may have the the creation of the Communist war propaganda bureaucracy, but the essential facts of Zaitsev and Chernova are available in documents and interviews. Craig's discussion covers about 20 pages throughout the book.


Craig's Enemy at the Gates was republished by Penguin Press in 2000 with cover artwork from the film. The film was probably from David L. Robbins 1999 novel War of the Rats. Robbins' plot is generally the same as the movie but the movie carries the name of Craig's non-fiction book.

Craig's Enemy At the Gates is a fine history that strength of which is the reliance upon interviews with the survivors of the campaign. Russians, Germans, Italians, and Romanians were interviewed. Craig's book contains startling stories from the front line soldiers to those at headquarters. Amazing accounts of cannibalism, burning wounded prisoners in their hospitals and the floor-to-floor fighting of the campaign unique. Headquarters' strategy and battlefield tactics are presented in the words of the participants. There is no doubt that Hitler carries the blame for not breaking von Paulus' army out of the kesseland that Goering the diaster of not keeping the German army supplied.

David L. Robbins' War of the Rats, 392 pages
Bantam hardcover edition, 1999 handles admirably the dual tasks of storytelling and staying close to history. Those who read historical fiction will be well satisfied by Robbins' character driven sharpshooter's dual in Stalingrad. Tania Chernova in Craig's history is truly a remarkable character who begins the campaign as one person and by the end of it is some else. Her episode of crawling through Stalingrad's public sewers to reach the Russian line shows her capacity to endure. Indeed of the two others that start the trek with her, one suffocates in the sewer lines. Robbins reinforces the Chernova's true story with enough reliance on his imagination to create a strong character who is not a stereotype of a woman among men at war. There is a striking similarity between the novel and the film. CWL is not sure if the film and the novel were started at the same year, 1998. Both did use Craig's Enemy at the Gates as a source document. For a good introduction to Stalingrad look for Voices from Stalingrad by John Bastable which CWL covered March 1 2009.

CWL---New: Lincoln's Labels---Best Known Brands of the Civil War is Essential for Reenactors and Living Historians

Lincoln's Labels: America's Best Know Brands During the Civil War, James M. Schmidt, Edinborough Press, 208 pp., 19 illustrations, index, sources, notes, 2009, $27.95

In this bicentennial year of Lincoln's birth readers are deluged with Lincoln books. James Schimdt has written one for the subscribers of Civil War Historian and Citizens' Companion magazines, who will enjoy and keep handy Lincoln's Labels as a ready reference. Members of Authenitic Campaigner will sit back and relax with this overview which explores the brand names that during the Civil War supplied food, medicine, clothing, and weapons. Civil War era soldiers and civilians used Du Pont’s gunpowder, Brooks Brothers’ uniforms, Procter & Gamble’s soap and Borden’s condensed milk.

James M. Schmidt relates a variety of rarely told stories of inventions, marketing and quartermaster purchasing. Linoln's Labels touches upon how each firm mirrors the war and how family and friendships were torn asunder, as well as how politicans and merchants conspired and crossed paths with Abraham Lincoln. Soldiers and civilians are also the focus of this book. In Chapter Five, Fire and Brimstone, the author begins the chapter on July 3 1863 on Culp's Hill with Henry J. Hunt, chief of artillery, inspecting federal artillery ammunition supplies. In Chapter Six, Medicine Man, Schmidt has uncovered and presents a truely harrowing first person account of an 11th Illinois soldier wounded in February 1862 in Tennessee.

CWL will keep his copy close by and also assign the library's copy to business majors who are CWL's U.S. history survey class. Schmidt's narrative is also accessible to an avanced placement high school audience also.

James M. Schmidt is the Civil War Medicine columnist for Civil War News and has a web log at http://civilwarmed.blogspot.com is the author of more than 50 articles on American history. He has been featured in Chemical Heritage, Learning through History, North & South and World War II magazines . He lives near Houston, Texas.

News----Historians Protest Tradition: President's Memorial Day Wreath on Confederate Memorial In Arlington Cementery

Scholars Ask Obama Not to Send a Wreath to Confederate Memorial Press Release by James Loewen, History News Network, May 20, 2009.

More than four dozen prominent professors, historians and authors have signed a letter asking President Barack Obama to break with a tradition that they say represents the values of white supremacy and neo-Confederacy. The group is asking Mr. Obama to be the first president since Woodrow Wilson not to send a wreath to the Arlington Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington DC on Memorial Day.

Co-signers of the letter include: James Loewen, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Vermont; Paul Finkelman, William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law, Albany Law School; James McPherson, Professor of History, Princeton University; William Lee Miller, Scholar in Ethics and Institutions at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia; and many others.

The letter, written by Edward Sebesta, editor of "Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction," University of Texas Press, and James Loewen details the history of the monument and the way that racist and neo-Confederate groups have used the monument to glorify the Confederacy and racist values.

The monument was given to the Federal Government by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and in 1914, and was, Sebesta writes, "intended to legitimize secession and the principles of the Confederacy and glorify the Confederacy." Prior to the administration of George H. W. Bush, the commemorative wreath was presented on or near the birthday of Jefferson Davis. The occasion has been marked on Memorial Day since the presidency of George H.W. Bush.

"It isn’t just a remembrance of the dead," Sebesta continues. "The speeches at its ground-breaking and dedication defended and held up as glorious the Confederacy and the ideas behind it and stated that the monument was to these ideals as well as the dead. It was also intended as a symbol of white nationalism, portrayed in opposition to the multiracial democracy of Reconstruction, and a celebration of the re-establishment of white supremacy in the former slave states by former Confederate soldiers. In its design it also tells wrong history, boasting fourteen shields with the coat of arms of fourteen states. Thus it claims that Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland were part of the Confederacy. They weren’t."

Text Source: History News Network Tuesday,May 19, 2009

Read the Letter.

Image Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Off-Topic Novel---Do You Own The Patent On Your Body?

Next, Michael Crichton, HarperCollins, 448 pages, 2006, $29.95.

What's coming next? Twenty percent of all human genes are owned by corporations and universities. It's possible to sell human eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars. Prenuptial agreement includes testing for genetic predispositions.

Next blends facts with fiction. Economic realities and the presuppositions of morality are set along side the comically bizarre mundane world of scientific research by Crichton. Most readers who have an affinity for property rights will become angry at the CEOs, CFOs of corporations and universities in Next. Crichton focuses upon genetic engineering handled by corporations and lawyers. He challenges what's wrong with Congress' current handling of gene patents and with the laws governing human tissues. There are many plots that share elements of consumerism, finance, research and bureacracy.

Next could be placed on a bookshelf between Dr. Doolittle and The Planet of the Apes. There is a character with mixed human and chimp DNA; it is an intelligent hybrid rescued from a government research lab and is passed off as a fully human child with a defective gene. Another character is Gerard, an unusually bright parrot which does math and knows way to many rock lyrics and lines from movies. The humans at times come off as stock characters who have no or very little development through the novel. Like many Crichton novels Next is driven by what the animals will do next. Yet, readers will probably come away with two questions: How much of this is true? How worried should I feel?

News---Battle Cry of Freedom vs. Battle Cry of Commerce

Wal-Mart vs. the Wilderness, James McPherson, Washington Post,Sunday, May 3, 2009

In May 1864, two armies clashed in a desperate struggle for the course of our nation's history. The Battle of the Wilderness was a great turning point of the Civil War -- the first clash between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant and the beginning of the end for the beleaguered Confederacy. The fighting was so intense that the tangled underbrush caught fire, burning wounded soldiers alive.

To commemorate the bloody struggle, portions of the Wilderness -- which is near Locust Grove, Va., in Orange County -- were set aside as a national military park. However, just 21 percent of the battlefield is permanently protected; other key areas are privately held and vulnerable to development.

This vulnerability became apparent when Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced plans to build a 138,000-square-foot superstore on historically sensitive land directly across the road from the national park. The store would sit on a hill overlooking key parts of the battlefield, looming over a national treasure.

Preservationists are not opposed to Wal-Mart opening a superstore in the region. A coalition of national and local conservation groups has merely asked Wal-Mart to choose a different location. Together with more than 250 other historians, I signed a letter to the company in support of that idea. We wrote that "the Wilderness is an indelible part of our history, its very ground hallowed by the American blood spilled there, and it cannot be moved. Surely Wal-Mart can identify a site that would meet its needs without changing the very character of the battlefield."

"Wilderness Wal-Mart" supporters argue that because the proposed store site lies just beyond the park, it lacks historic significance, a profound misunderstanding of the nature of history. In the heat of battle, no unseen hand kept soldiers inside what would one day be a national park. Such boundaries are artificial, modern constructions shaped by external factors, and they have little bearing on what is or is not historic. To assume the park boundary at the Wilderness encompasses every acre of significant ground is to believe that the landscape beyond the borders of Yosemite National Park instantly ceases to be majestic.

With Civil War battlefields we have a true tool for determining historic value: the findings of the congressionally appointed Civil War Sites Advisory Commission. I was privileged to serve on this distinguished panel of historians and lawmakers, and I stand by our decision to include the area Wal-Mart is considering within the battlefield's historic boundary.

The controversy illustrates another misconception about historic preservation -- that it must occur at the expense of economic development. A properly managed historic site can be a powerful economic driver for its community, creating jobs and generating tax revenue by drawing tourists.

Recognizing this, preservationists have proposed a comprehensive planning process to balance protection of the Wilderness Battlefield with regional economic development goals, marrying respect for the old with the promise of the new. It is a process by which everyone -- Wal-Mart, local residents and the battlefield -- wins. The alternative is the type of piecemeal development that has swallowed up historic sites and destroyed the identities of countless communities. It is a scenario in which only Wal-Mart wins.

There is still time for Wal-Mart to recognize its error and identify another location. This week marks the 145th anniversary of the Battle of the Wilderness, a perfect opportunity to seek a solution in everyone's best interests. The Wilderness Battlefield is a living memorial to American sacrifice and heroism. It would be tragic if such a landmark was lost through the short-sightedness of local decision-makers and Wal-Mart's stubborn refusal to consider reasonable alternatives.

The writer is the George Henry Davis '86 Professor of History at Princeton University and a past president of the American Historical Association. McPherson won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for "Battle Cry of Freedom" and is a two-time winner of the Lincoln Prize.

Text and Image Source: Washington Post, May 3, 2009

CWL: Do you remember Manassas NMP vs. Disneyland in the early/mid-1990s? The weight of popular opinion carried the day. Three set of voices cried out: the academics, the history buffs and those who would be living to close to the Civil War theme entertainment park Now there is only two voices: the academics and the history buffs. CWL talked to several northern Virginians who are living close to the proposed Walmart site and were visiting Gettysburg. They didnn't mind it. Low prices on everything including gasoline and within ten miles of home. In the Disney episode, one could sense the turning of popular opinion against the history themed amusement park. At this point, this episode is too close to call for either side.

New---Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide Analyzes Sickles

Sickles at Gettysburg: The Controversial Civil War General Who Committed Murder, Abandoned Little Round Top, and Declared Himself the Hero of Gettysburg, James Hessler, Savas Beatie Publications, 432 pages, 20 photographs and maps, notes, bibliography, index, $32.95.

Sickles at Gettysburg: The Controversial Civil War General Who Committed Murder, Abandoned Little Round Top, and Declared Himself the Hero of Gettysburg, by licensed battlefield guide James Hessler, is the most deeply-researched, full-length biography to appear on this remarkable American icon. And it is long overdue.

No individual who fought at Gettysburg was more controversial, both personally and professionally, than Major General Daniel E. Sickles. By 1863, Sickles was notorious as a disgraced former Congressman who murdered his wife's lover on the streets of Washington and used America's first temporary insanity defense to escape justice. With his political career in ruins, Sickles used his connections with President Lincoln to obtain a prominent command in the Army of the Potomac's Third Corps-despite having no military experience. At Gettysburg, he openly disobeyed orders in one of the most controversial decisions in military history.

No single action dictated the battlefield strategies of George Meade and Robert E. Lee more than Sickles' unauthorized advance to the Peach Orchard, and the mythic defense of Little Round Top might have occurred quite differently were it not for General Sickles. Fighting heroically, Sickles lost his leg on the field and thereafter worked to remove General Meade from command of the army. Sickles spent the remainder of his checkered life declaring himself the true hero of Gettysburg.

Although he nearly lost the battle, Sickles was one of the earliest guardians of the battlefield when he returned to Congress, created Gettysburg National Military Park, and helped preserve the field for future generations. But Dan Sickles was never far from scandal. He was eventually removed from the New York Monument Commission and nearly went to jail for misappropriation of funds.

Hessler's book is a balanced and entertaining account of Sickles' colorful life. Civil War enthusiasts who want to understand General Sickles' scandalous life, Gettysburg's battlefield strategies, the in-fighting within the Army of the Potomac, and the development of today's National Park will find Sickles at Gettysburg a must-read.

James A. Hessler works in the financial services industry and is a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg National Military Park. He has taught Sickles and Gettysburg-related courses for Harrisburg Area Community College and the Gettysburg Foundation. In addition to writing articles for publication, Hessler speaks regularly at Civil War Round Tables. A native of Buffalo, NY, he resides in Gettysburg with his wife and children.

Text Source: Savas Beatie Publications/Sickles

CWL---Off Topic: Coal, A Somewhat Human History

Coal: A Human History, Barbara Freese, Penguin, 320 pages, i15 illustrations, index, notes, bibliography, paperback,$14.00.

While entering the Metro in Washington D.C.there are four posters, each depicting an myth: Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, Easter Bunny and Safe Coal. When Barry Obama was confronted with a question regarding the future of coal generated electricity in America, Joe Biden shoved his face of Obama's left shoulder and said that the only place coal fired generators will be built is in China.

America loves coal but hates it smoke. Freese, an assistant attorney general of Minnesota whose task is to enforce environmental law, offers a short chronicle of a description of coal's geological formation and its the rise as a source of heat and energy. The Romans and the Chinese and other ancient civilizations used coal ornamentaly. In early Roman Britain, coal replaced wood as a heating source. After a about 1200 years, the mineral ignited in Britain the Industrial Revolution by firing the newly invented steam engine to pull water out of coal mines. Quickly the steam engines were laid on wagons and the wagons were placed on tracks to hall the coal from the mines to the ports. Freese briefly tells the discovery of coal in the Britain's American colonies, and the ensuing development of the first American coal-fired urban community, Pittsburgh.

Coal: A Human History describes the side effects of the industry on miners and the cities of Pittsburgh, Manchester and London. The book also compares the U.S.'s coal mining and electricity generation history with China's current use of coal. A cheap, warm, dirty energy source, as coal burning leaves sulfur and carbon dioxides in such quantities that both buildings and lungs suffer. Offering EPA studies, Freese states that coal emissions kill about 30,000 people a year, which is approximately the same figure of deaths caused by influenza and automobile crashes.

Fresse spends a little effort on differentiating between anthracite and bituminous coal and offers next to no information on coal labor unions or black lung disease. In Coal: A Human History people as workers and consumers receive little attention. Freese closes her monograph with a denunciation of coal; she advocates an immediate reduction of coal's primary pollutants, sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide, and in the future its replacement as an energy source. There is no discussion of how coal would be replaced and no substantive discussion of efforts to clean coal or store or reuse its waste.