New and Noteworthy---Loyal Americans Becoming Confederates: Lee, Ramseur and Early Viewed By Gary Gallagher

Becoming Confederates: Paths to a New National Loyalty by Gary W. Gallagher, University of Georgia Press and Mercer University Press, 152 pages; $59.95 hardcover, $18.95 paperback [May 1, 2013]

Description From the publisher:

In Becoming Confederates, Gary W. Gallagher explores loyalty in the era of the Civil War, focusing on Robert E. Lee, Stephen Dodson Ramseur, and Jubal A. Early-three prominent officers in the Army of Northern Virginia who became ardent Confederate nationalists. Loyalty was tested and proved in many ways leading up to and during the war. Looking at levels of allegiance to their native state, to the slaveholding South, to the United States, and to the Confederacy, Gallagher shows how these men represent responses to the mid-nineteenthcentury crisis.

Lee traditionally has been presented as a reluctant convert to the Confederacy whose most powerful identification was with his home state of Virginia—an interpretation at odds with his far more complex range of loyalties. Ramseur, the youngest of the three, eagerly embraced a Confederate identity, highlighting generational differences in the equation of loyalty. Early combined elements of Lee's and Ramseur's reactions—a Unionist who grudgingly accepted Virginia's departure from the United States but later came to personify defiant Confederate nationalism.

The paths of these men toward Confederate loyalty help delineate important contours of American history. Gallagher shows that Americans juggled multiple, often conflicting, loyalties and that white southern identity was preoccupied with racial control transcending politics and class. Indeed, understanding these men's perspectives makes it difficult to argue that the Confederacy should not be deemed a nation. Perhaps most important, their experiences help us understand why Confederates waged a prodigiously bloody war and the manner in which they dealt with defeat.

Focuses on the competing allegiances of Robert E. Lee, Stephen Dodson Ramseur, and Jubal A. Early.

Blurbs:

Once again, Gary Gallagher, the master essayist on the Civil War, has given us wonderful food for thought on the nature of Confederate nationalism. Through three cross-generational test cases—R. E. Lee, Dodson Ramseur, and Jubal Early—Gallagher penetrates the thicket of state versus national loyalty in the Confederacy and emerges with some fascinating insights about the nationalizing power of slavery and the war and the persistence of Confederate national sentiment in the postwar years."—Joseph T. Glatthaar, author of Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia: A Statistical Portrait of the Troops Who Served under Robert E. Lee

"These three powerful portraits, painted with bold strokes and evocative detail, bear the unmistakable marks of Gary Gallagher's mastery of the historical craft. The decisions made by these men help us understand the decisions all white southerners faced in the era of the Civil War."—Edward L. Ayers, author of In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863, winner of the Bancroft Prize

"In this slim volume, based upon his 2011 Lamar Lectures delivered at Mercer University, Gary W. Gallagher offers major new insights into how we should understand the Civil War soldier and his core motivations. . . . At one level, Gallagher offers valuable interpretive capsule biographies of the lives of three celebrated Confederate officers: Robert E. Lee, Stephen Dodson Ramseur, and Jubal A. Early. Even readers familiar with all three men will find new nuggets in each chapter. But in a broader sense, Becoming Confederates proposes a template for assessing the behavior of the Civil War participants, both military and civilian."—Matt Gallman, Civil War Monitor

"While Gallagher’s examinations of this trio of men are interesting enough, it is the broader argument for which they serve as a base that is the true value of the book: namely, that the Civil War was not a conflict between regional entities (i.e., North vs. South), but rather between fleshed-out nations—'the United States versus the Confederacy'. . . . An excellent addition to Civil War scholarship." —Publishers Weekly

The Author:

Gary W. Gallagher is the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia. He is the author of many books on the Civil War, including most recently The Union War and Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War.

CWL: Gary Gallagher is among the top five prolific Civil War historians today. His writing style is clear, concise and primary source based. His CSPAN 2 and CSPAN 3 appearances are available online. Gallagher's two Teaching Company courses, The Civil War and Lee and His Lieutenants are notable.

Forthcoming---America's Longest Siege: Charleston, South Carolina's Slavery, Siege and Surrender

America's Longest Siege: Charleston, Slavery And The Slow March To The Civil War, Joseph Kelly,  Overlook Press, 384 pp., $28.95.   June 27, 2013.

From The Publisher: In 1863, Union forces surrounded the city of Charleston. Their vice-like grip on the harbor would hold the city hostage for nearly two years, becoming the longest siege in the history of modern warfare. But for almost two centuries prior, a singular ideology forged among the headstrong citizens of Charleston had laid a different sort of siege to the entire American South--the promulgation of brutal, deplorable, and immensely profitable institution of slavery.

In America's Longest Siege, Joseph Kelly examines the nation's long struggle with its "peculiar institution" through the hotly contested debates in the city at the center of the slave trade. From the earliest slave rebellions to the Nullification crisis to the final, tragic act of secession that doomed both the city and the South as a whole, Kelly captures the toxic mix of nationalism, paternalism, and unprecedented wealth that made Charleston the focus of the nationwide debate over slavery. Kelly also explores the dissenters who tried--and ultimately failed--to stop the oncoming Civil War.
Exhaustingly researched and also compulsively readable, America's Longest Siege offers an insightful new take on the war and the culture that made it inevitable.

From the Invitation To Book's Launch Party at the Old Slave Mart, Charleston, SC on June 26: America's Longest Siege: Charleston, Slavery, and the Slow March toward Civil War, begins and ends with the Union's siege of Charleston, the longest in modern warfare until Hitler's attack on Leningrad. But it also tells the story of the evolving ideology of slavery from the colony's founding through the Civil War, focusing on key moments of change: the Stono and Vesey rebellions, the American Revolution, the Constitutional Convention, and the Nullification Crisis. Taking seriously the founding fathers' expectation that slavery would die a gradual and natural death in the new republic, the book reveals how the hard and determined work of a relatively few South Carolinians sustained slavery against the odds, through chicanery, torture, the politics of intimidation and fear. 

This talk will narrate one chapter in the moral history of the nation: how John Rutledge and the Pinckneys, contrary to the conscience and wishes of most delegates, connived to protect slavery in U. S. Constitution. Joe Kelly has been a professor of literature at the College of Charleston since 1992. His interests range from modern Irish literature and nationalism to the history of American Southern ideology. His archival research has been supported by NEH and Mellon fellowships. His first book, Our Joyce: From Outcast to Icon, uncovers the manipulations of this monumental figure of modern literature by liberals and conservatives in the American culture wars. His popular introductions to literature, W. W. Norton & Company's Seagull Readers series, are entering their 3rd editions. America's Longest Siege: Charleston, Slavery, and the Slow March toward Civil War, is his first foray into narrative history. He earned his Ph. D. in literature with a minor in history from the University of Texas at Austin.

CWL: Steven Channing's 1974 Crisis of Fear: The Secession Crisis In South Carolina was a hallmark study while I was in graduate school; Channing's work has been in print continously for nearly 40 years and has stood the test of time and scholarship.  Stephen Wise's 1994 Gate of Hell: The Siege of Charleston, 1863 offers a fine, detailed account of the seige and the struggles of the troops and their commanders on both sides.

News---20 ' Long, 20' High, 6' Diameter: Rodman Canon, Wonder of the 19th Century, Reproduction Exhibited In Pittsburgh

Heinz History Center To Display Copy Of Huge Fort Pitt 1864 Cannon,  Len Barcousky, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette June 10, 2013

 

Fabricating a full-size reproduction of a 20-inch Rodman cannon required the help of a 21st century 3-D computer modeling program. The artisans at LF Creative Group needed about two months to complete the job. "It takes amazing technology to make this kind of copy," LF Creative partner Travis Gillum said. "What is more amazing is that workers were able to make something this big in the 1860s."

The barrel of the Rodman reproduction is about 20 feet long and about 6 feet in diameter at its widest point. When mounted on its iron carriage, the artillery piece will stand about 20 feet tall. The model will serve as the centerpiece of the 9,000-square-foot "Pennsylvania's Civil War" exhibit that opens June 22 at the Heinz History Center. The original 20-inch Rodman cannon was cast in 1864 at the Fort Pitt Foundry, That manufacturing plant was located on the banks of the Allegheny River, just across Smallman Street from the history center. The "20-inch" refers to the interior diameter of the weapon's bore.

The giant gun was built according to a design developed by U.S. Army ordnance officer Thomas Jackson Rodman, the one-time commander of the Allegheny Arsenal in Lawrenceville. Rodman's cannons were made of cast iron and cooled from the inside out by water flowing through the center of the mold. The metal shrank inward as it cooled, producing a stronger barrel far less likely to blow up while being fired. Rodman developed several other military innovations, according to Andrew Masich, president of the Heinz History Center. "He perfected a bullet-making machine that used compression rather than casting," Mr. Masich said. "It allowed workers to crank out thousands of bullets per hour, each uniform in weight and size."

Rodman also designed new cartridges for use in breech-loading, rather than muzzle-loading, weapons. Because they offered increased strength and safety, Rodman cannons could be made much larger. Charged with 200 pounds of gunpowder, the 20-inch Rodman could fire a half-ton ball 4 1/2 miles. The barrel of the smooth-bore, cast-iron artillery piece weighed more than 58 tons and required a special railroad car to transport it to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. Its original role was to protect the Verrazano Narrows entrance to New York's upper bay. While it no longer keeps watch over the harbor, the cannon remains near its original location in a small park. The only other cannon Rodman made this size is at Fort Hancock in Sandy Hook, N.J. The model of the Rodman cannon is one of the largest single pieces that the Ohio-based LF Creative Group ever has produced, Mr. Gillum said. With a foot in several different worlds, LF Creative does work for both museums and theme parks, he said.

. . .  Full Text Continued at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 10, 2013

New and Noteworthy---How Soldiers Die In Battle

The following is a portion of a book review written by Andrew Burtch, Canadian War Museum, published by Michigan War Studies, June 13, 2013.

The Last Full Measure: How Soldiers Die In Battle, Michael Stephenson, Crown Publishing, 464 pp., 2013, $28.00.

In The Last Full Measure, Michael Stephenson combines a compelling, encyclopedic analysis of the history of warfare with firsthand accounts of battlefield carnage. The finished product is accessible, informative, convincing, and moving. It forgoes any discussion of the geopolitical and strategic elements of warfare to get at what Stephenson defines as the core of military history—killing and dying. Whether inflicted by fire-hardened sharp sticks, swords, axes, arrows, musket balls, high velocity rounds, cruise missiles, or IEDs, violent death links soldiers across the centuries.

Stephenson states his central thesis in a discussion of combat in the Pacific during the Second World War: "The fighting ... reminds us that combat is a bloody gutter-slop: nasty, brutish and short—an abattoir that is only later cleaned up, perfumed, and decorated with the laurel crown of history" (262). He also dismantles the myth of the "Western Way of War," characterized by heroic man-to-man confrontations on the battlefield, by highlighting accounts from the sharp end, where "the last sound from the lips of the stricken is not so much the rousing call 'for the motherland' as the heartbreaking cry for mother" (xii–xiv).

. . . .

The book has no formal conclusion, perhaps because wars and their aftermaths are still ongoing in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and any attempt to assess definitively their outcome or meaning would quickly be outdated. But Stephenson misses an opportunity to use his considerable store of evidence to answer a question he raises at the close of his Civil War chapter. If war is such a devastating experience (in General Sherman's words, if "war is hell"), why does it continue to exist? Why is it that a man like Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., wounded and thoroughly disillusioned, resigned his commission, yet less than twenty years later, "Like some American samurai, … discovered a fervent belief in the mystical importance of a warrior's unquestioning obedience unto death" (165).

Why, in short, do men so easily forget the atrocities of past wars just in time for the next one? Of course, many historians have fruitfully explored the meaning and memory of death and the heroic ideal after the battle, but we are left to wonder about Stephenson's thoughts on the subject.
This book is a thoughtful, respectful treatment of a difficult subject. Its author deftly balances personal, sometimes extremely graphic accounts of death and mutilation with enlightening historical analyses, steering clear of the purely anecdotal war stories or "pornography of violence" that John Keegan warned against. I recommend The Last Full Measure to both scholars and general readers with any interest in military history.

The full text of the review is found at Michigan War Studies, June 13, 2013

New And Noteworthy---Chancellorsville NPS Guide Tours on Video: Jackson's Flank Attack and The Wounding of Stonewall Jackson

Civil War Battlewalks---The Battle of Chancellorsville: Jackson's Flank Attack and Civil War Battlewalks---The Battle of Chancellorsville: Wounding of Stonewall Jackson, Frank O'Reilly, Pennsylvania Cable Network, 2006. $19.95 each.

Both battle walks occur within the National Park Service's Fredericksburg-Spotsylvania National Military Park and both tours are given by Frank O'Reilly, one of the NPS historians that work in the park. He is the author of The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War On The Rappahannock. O'Reilly's in depth familiarity with the story and ground of the Battle of Chancellorsville is evident in both segments. He concisely covers past and present interpretations of the events and offers his own evaluation of the evidence. 

The Battle of Chancellorsville: Jackson's Flank Attack is 49 minutes in length and The Battle of Chancellorsville: Wounding of Stonewall Jackson is 40 minutes in length.  The Pennsylvania Cable Network has long filmed the battle walks of the NPS historians at Gettysburg National Military Park. PCN's expertise continues to be evident as it starts to work in Virginia.  There are no shaky cameras, no sun flares, and no editing distractions.  While viewing the tours, a map such as the Earl McElfresh's watercolor map of the terrain at the time of the battle is recommended by CWL.

News: Kick Starting The Angels Of Our Nature: A Film Set In The Civil War

Angels of Our Nature film's producers describe their effort as a short film that follows a Civil War sketch artist who meets his long lost twin brother on the opposite side of the war.  The film is to be created in Mississippi. Angels of Our Nature about the early days of the war. Battle sketch artist Cale Bacall travels with a regiment of eager yet inexperienced Confederate soldiers into hostile combat, where he must come to terms with his own conflicting ideologies on war and death at the hands of his fellow countrymen.
Cale Bacall's loyalties are complicated, however, when he recognizes a long lost face from his past, fighting for the Union. It is the face of a cunning and battle hardened soldier who he hasn't seen since he was a young boy -- his twin brother.

They cite The National Geographic's article on Civil War battlefield sketch artists as the inspiration for the story line.  Investments from $5 to $10,000 are appreciated and will be rewarded with items such as autographed storyboards, autographed scripts, autographed posters, DVD copies of the film and screen credits. Angels Of Our Nature's creators discuss the film and its inspiration at the Kick Starter website. 

 

New and Noteworthy---The Gettysburg Campaign: Numbers, Losses, Strengths, Maps, Synopses In Color

The Gettysburg Campaign In Numbers and Losses; Synopses, Orders of Battle, Strengths, Casualties and Maps, June 9-July 14, 1863, J. David Petruzzi and Steven A. Stanley, Savas Beatie Publishing, 210 pp., 42 maps in color, 10 charts, $32.95.

Q: Of what does the Gettysburg Campaign consist?
A: 16 battles, 23 skirmishes, 3 fights 1 siege, and 1 raid

One of the more attractive, useful and informative reference books of the sesquicentennial is now available from Savas Beatie Publishing and authors David Petruzzi and Steve Stanley. The Gettysburg Campaign In Numbers and Losses; Synopses, Orders of Battle, Strengths, Casualties and Maps, June 9-July 14, 1863 presents over 40 color maps and synopses of 44 engagements occurring in June and July during The Pennsylvania Campaign.

With clear writing and interesting anecdotes, each engagement is described in a brief synopsis.  Offered immediately after the synopsis is a listing of the units engaged, their commanders, the number of soldiers entering the engagement, and the number of killed, wounded in missing.  The narrative style of the synopses is accessible and engaging. The bar graphs are clear and offer important visual comparisons of strengths and losses. The four Battle of Gettysburg bar graphs show July 1, July 2, July 3 and the total casualties; the colorful graphs are compelling. Those leading groups that discussing the campaign will find the ten bar graphs very useful.

Photographs of the major commanders in engagement offered within each synopsis; the majority are from the Library of Congress. Several are images from historical societies and the author' collections. Striking are the images of Captain Robert Bell commander of  the Independent Adams County Cavalry and Colonel Jacob G. Frick commander of the Wrightsville and Columbia defenses.

The Gettysburg Campaign In Numbers and Losses; Synopses, Orders of Battle, Strengths, Casualties and Maps, June 9-July 14, 1863, J. David Petruzzi and Steven A. Stanley is essential for most readers of The Pennsylvania Campaign and The Battle of Gettysburg.  Those taking the battlefield guide exam will likely keep within arm's reach The Gettysburg Campaign In Numbers and Losses.

News---Environmental History: A New Lens Through Which To View The American Civil War

ASU Professors To Write Book On Civil War From New Perspective, Appalachian State University News Service,  May 29, 2013.

With more than 55,000 books in print about the Civil War, one might assume that there is no new information to be gleaned about the event that separated states, communities and families.  But there is a topic that has received scant attention — the environmental history of the Civil War.

Professor Timothy Silver and associate professor Judkin Browning from the Appalachian State University Department of History have aligned their academic interests on a project that has received a $100,000 collaborative research fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. Silver is an environmental historian and the author of “Mount Mitchell and the Black Mountains: An Environmental History of the Highest Peaks in Eastern America” (University of North Carolina Press) and “A New Face on the Countryside: Indians, Colonists and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests, 1500-1800” (Cambridge University Press).

Browning is a military historian and the author of “The War Begins Anew: The Seven Days’ Campaign, 1862” (Praeger Publishers) and “Shifting Loyalties: The Union Occupation of Eastern North Carolina” (University of North Carolina Press), as well as other books about Civil War leaders and military campaigns. “Essentially, we plan to recast the Civil War as an environmental event and not so much as a military conflict,” Silver said.  The book will illustrate the war’s disruptive influence on the relationships between people and nature and how natural factors, such as disease, malnutrition and weather, helped shape the course of the war, according to information from ACLS.

“I have always been interested in how war disrupts or changes the relationship between people and the environment,” Silver said. “The Civil War is the only semi-modern war fought on American soil and arguably, I think, the second largest movement of people and animals in American history — the first being Europeans colonizing the Americas.”
The historians will document how the large-scale movement of troops and animals changed communities and towns, including the effects of disease outbreaks, such as measles and typhoid in humans and diseases that affected animals, such as hog cholera and glanders in horses. Silver said that Union and Confederate soldiers accused each side of releasing diseased horses in an effort to infect their enemy’s herds.

Silver and Browning will turn to rosters, soldiers’ diaries and letters, and published materials for their research.  “We like to say our sources are hiding in plain sight,” Silver said. “The great thing about working on the Civil War is that it’s the most written about event in American history. A surprising number of sources have been published or are available digitally. We are using sources that a lot of historians have used before but never really looked at through the lens of environmental history.”

As a military historian, Browning has many examples of battles that were determined in some ways by the weather. For example, the largest battle in Kentucky might not have happened if it had rained more in the area during the summer and fall of 1862.
The full text is continued at Mountain Times.com

CWL: The American Civil War's environmental history has been addressed within the past five years. Most notable is Lisa M. Brady's fine War Upon The Land: Military Strategy and the Transformation of Southern Landscapes During the American Civil War [2012], Kate Nelson's exceptional Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War [2012] and Kelby Ouchley's encyclopedic Flora and Fauna of the Civil War: An Environmental Reference Guide [2010]

 

Challenged Story----Descendant of POWs on Stamp: Is It Family Folk Lore?

Following is a portion of the discussion regarding the barber's declaration that the three Confederate POWs in the famous photograph are his relatives. 

This discussion is on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's webpage for the article.

Here is a portion of the discussion:

Eric Lindblade · Part Owner at Green Bay Packers

"Simply put this story does not add up with the historical records we have:

        I pulled the service records for all three (and looked them up in the NC Troop roster) and theyall come from the same region of North Carolina (Ashe, Alleghany, Wilkes Counties). Only one minor problem, the Andrew who is mentioned as being a member of the 30th NC was wounded in the right lung at Chancellorsville and died of wounds on June 19, 1863, almost an entire month before the battle of Gettysburg.

In addition to that the ages of the men make the story a bit difficult, Andrew was listed as being 21 years old when he enlisted on September 21, 1862, Ephraim Blevins is listed as 18 years old at the time of his enlistment on August 15, 1862. Somewhat difficult to be the father when you are only separated by three years.

This does not mean one or two could not be identified, but I am still very skeptical of this, especially with the identification of Andrew Blevins."

• Bryant Henderson · University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  

  "Re Andrew Blevins of the 30th NC: Even in the case that his wounding at Chancellorsville and subsequent death on June 19 MIGHT POSSIBLY have been erroneous, the 30th NC Regiment of Ramseur's Brigade did not take part in the Confederate assault of the third day at Gettysburg. They had been positioned in what was called "long lane" opposite the bend in the federal lines below Cemetery Hill. They did not fight at Gettysburg after the first day, out on the Forney Farm at Oak Hill."

   

  Eric Lindblade · Part Owner at Green Bay Packers
• "There is only one Andrew Blevins listed on the rolls of the 30th NC. Each one of these men are listed as being in three separate regiments, in three separate brigades, in three separate divisions in the Army of Northern Virginia. That to me is another of the red flags of this story. I do not believe anyone has claimed that these men are survivors (or if they have I missed it) of Pickett's Charge (of the three regiments only the 37th NC took part). Sadly I would have loved for this story to be true, but there are just too many holes in the historical record that do not match up with the story from Mr. Dollinger."

News----Gettysburg POWs' Photograph On US Stamp Recognized By Descendant

 A Postal Service Event In Gettysburg Features A Descendant of Rebels In A Famous Stamp  Photo, Tom Barnes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 23, 2013.

Ever since 1949 -- when he was only 10 years old -- Clate Dolinger of southwestern Virginia has known that the three Confederate soldiers in a famous Civil War photo taken in July 1863 were his ancestors. "The soldier on the right is Andrew Blevins, and he was my granddaddy's granddaddy," he said in a cell phone interview Wednesday. "The one on the left is his son, Ephraim Blevins, and the one in the middle is my grandmother's great-uncle, John Baldwin."

Mr. Dolinger spoke to a reporter while making a six-hour drive from his home in Pembroke, Va., to Gettysburg, Pa., where today he will speak at a news conference held by the U.S. Postal Service as it unveils a new postage stamp honoring the battle of Gettysburg and, in particular, a part of it called Pickett's Charge, fought July 3, 1863. The stamp shows Southern forces under Gen. George Pickett trying unsuccessfully to dislodge Union forces from a hilltop stronghold.

On the back of each sheet of Gettysburg stamps will be the photo taken by famed Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, showing the three Confederate soldiers related to Mr. Dolinger. They were taken prisoner on the battle's last day. The photo shows them carrying extra bedrolls but without weapons. They shuttled to various prison camps and often were put on burial detail.
"Humiliated and knowing they would be transferred to a POW camp, they collected extra clothing and blankets from the dead, to prepare for their internment," Gettysburg officials said in a news release. The three Southerners weren't released by Northern officials until after the war ended in April 1865.

Mr. Dolinger said he stopped into his local post office a couple weeks ago and saw a sheet of the new Pickett's Charge stamps, with the photo of his family members on the back.
"I told the postal clerk that I wanted five sheets of these stamps," he said. "She said why, and I said, 'Because that's my kin.' She said, 'The men in the photo are your people?' and I said yes. They were drafted into the [Confederate] army and they had to go."

The Virginia postal official called Washington, D.C., and told them about Mr. Dolinger, and he was invited to speak at today's stamp ceremony. Mr. Dolinger, now a 73-year-old barber, is still cutting hair every day for only $4 a head.  Full Text Continued At Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 23, 2013

Forthcoming and Noteworthy---Jonathan Letterman, Surgeon in Blue and Pioneer of Battlefield Emergency Care

Surgeon In Blue: Jonathan Letterman, The Civil War Doctor Who Pioneered Battlefield Care, Scott McGaugh, Arcade Press, 30 black and white photographs,bibliographic notes, bibliography, index, 340 pp., hardcover, $25.95. 2013, Available July 1.

From the publisher: Jonathan Letterman was an outpost medical officer serving in Indian country in the years before the Civil War, responsible for the care of just hundreds of men. But when he was appointed the chief medical officer for the Army of the Potomac, he revolutionized combat medicine over the course of four major battles—Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg—that produced unprecedented numbers of casualties. He made battlefield survival possible by creating the first organized ambulance corps and a more effective field hospital system. He imposed medical professionalism on a chaotic battlefield. Where before 20 percent of the men were unfit to fight because of disease, squalid conditions, and poor nutrition, he improved health and combat readiness by pioneering hygiene and diet standards. Based on original research, and with stirring accounts of battle and the struggle to invent and supply adequate care during impossible conditions, this new biography recounts Letterman’s life from his small-town Pennsylvania beginnings to his trailblazing wartime years and his subsequent life as a wildcatter and the medical examiner of San Francisco. At last, here is the missing portrait of a key figure of Civil War history and military medicine. His principles of battlefield care continue to be taught to military commanders and first responders.

Text Source:  Arcade Press

CWL:  From a review copy---the bibliographic notes run from about 20 to 50 for each chapter and range from the December 1865 Atlantic Monthly essay on the Gettysburg Battlefield, a 2004 PhD dissertation on Letterman's development of a battlefield evacuation system and Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide Phil Lechak's  A Blue and Gray Sea of Misery [unpublished]. McGaugh spent a full day with 'brogans on the ground' with Lechak. Also, McGaugh has found a rare photograph of  the home in which Letterman was born in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania [three miles from CWL's house].

There are four chapters on four battles; Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Other chapters focus on Letterman's July 4 1862 rise to command on  of the Army of the Potomac's medical service and his service of coroner for the city of San Francisco. The book's spine is firm and the text block falls open easily.  CWL is anxious to begin Surgeon In Blue: Jonathan Letterman, The Civil War Doctor Who Pioneered Battlefield Care.

New and Noteworthy---The Civil War In 50 Objects?

Bernard von Bothmer: Review of Harold Holzer's "The Civil War in 50 Objects" (Viking, 2013) published at History News Network, May 19, 2013

From the HNN review: "The task of choosing 50 objects was a difficult one, given the enormous amount of artifacts the Society has from the time period. In The Civil War in 50 Objects, distinguished Civil War scholar Harold Holzer strikes a fine balance between political, social, cultural, military, and economic history, discussing a wide range of paintings, letters, weapons, photographs, woodcuts, uniforms, drums, diaries, petitions, drawings, and documents. There is something here for any student of the Civil War. And by distilling the conflict to a manageable number of objects, described in chronological order, Holzer gives the era a sense of clarity, allowing one to walk through the conflict’s key events and themes.

"The writing is engaging, lively, gripping, and riveting at every turn, with wonderful dramatic pacing. Chapters are filled with countless touching tales that link the objects with the era’s larger history.

"Holzer ends nearly each of the brief 50 chapters with a wonderful story, nugget, or turn of phrase. Among them: a slave that returns to a plantation and, during a brawl, killed his wife’s excessively cruel former master; an artist whose work during the war changed from stereotypical views of blacks towards a sympathetic portrayal of their plight is described as “in the space of just three years … also liberated” (15); the tale of a New Yorker who fought for the Confederacy and died in action -- on April 14, 1865; a painting that was reassembled in time for the New-York Historical Society recent reopening after extensive renovations -- on November 11, 2011, Veteran’s Day; the Georgian who stated that “If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong,” prompting Holzer to write: “By war’s end, the 200,000 or so African American men in arms proved [his] point” (158); though northern newspaper accounts after the Battle of Gettysburg were full of optimism, “In fact, the war was only halfway over” (188); Holzer’s outrage that “none of the rioters who plundered and torched the Colored Orphan Asylum” during the 1863 New York Draft Riots “was ever brought to justice” (214); an amusing list of predictions from the 1864 Metropolitan Fair of New York about life in the city in 1964 that would actually come true. When Lee at his surrender met Grant’s military secretary, Ely S. Parker, a Seneca Indian, Lee reportedly paused, and then said “I am glad to see one real American here,” to which Parker responded, “We are all Americans” (315)."

The author of these remarks is Bernard von Bothmer is an adjunct professor of history at the University of San Francisco and Dominican University of California.

For the complete review go to History News Network

New and Noteworthy---Guide to Gettysburg Battlefield Monuments: Handy and Easy To Use For Visitors and Students

Guide to Gettysburg Battlefield Monuments, Tom Huntington, Stackpole Books, Inc., 2013, 234 pp., profusely illustrated with color photographs,, 39 color maps. $9.95.

7 1/4 inches tall, 4 1/2 inches wide and 1/2 thick, Huntington's Guide to Gettysburg Battlefield Monuments fits both on a dashboard or inside a pants back pocket. A strong flexible binding encourages its frequent use. The locations of over 800 monuments, tablets and markers are presented with both GPS locations and map locations. The text offers "a bit about each monument, the division or person each one honors and whet the honoree did during the fighting." Additionally it includes listings, location and coordinates for all the tablets.

Monument descriptions with color photographs are organized by state. Following these descriptions, additional monuments that memorialize brigades, divisions, corps, people are included.  The year of dedication is included for both the state and additional monuments. Each monument is numbered and the number appears on a map; there are maps A through GG at the back of the book. Guide to Gettysburg Battlefield Monuments is an attractive, easy to use, and informative book for visitors to the battlefield, readers and students.

Off Topic----Into The Fire: Earning A Medal Of Honor In The Afghan War

Into The Fire: An First Hand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War, Dakota Meyer and Bing West, Random House, 259 pages, 2012, $27.00.

From the Publisher: During the fall of 2009, Taliban insurgents ambushed a patrol of Afghan soldiers and Marine advisers in a mountain village called Ganjigal. Firing from entrenched positions, the enemy was positioned to wipe out one hundred men who were pinned down and were repeatedly refused artillery support. Ordered to remain behind with the vehicles, twenty-one year-old Marine corporal Dakota Meyer disobeyed orders and attacked to rescue his comrades.

With a brave driver at the wheel, Meyer stood in the gun turret exposed to withering fire, rallying Afghan troops to follow. Over the course of the five hours, he charged into the valley time and again. Employing a variety of machine guns, rifles, grenade launchers, and even a rock, Meyer repeatedly repulsed enemy attackers, carried wounded Afghan soldiers to safety, and provided cover for dozens of others to escape—supreme acts of valor and determination. In the end, Meyer and four stalwart comrades—an Army captain, an Afghan sergeant major, and two Marines—cleared the battlefield and came to grips with a tragedy they knew could have been avoided. For his actions on that day, Meyer became the first living Marine in three decades to be awarded the Medal of Honor.

Into the Fire tells the full story of the chaotic battle of Ganjigal for the first time, in a compelling, human way that reveals it as a microcosm of our recent wars. Meyer takes us from his upbringing on a farm in Kentucky, through his Marine and sniper training, onto the battlefield, and into the vexed aftermath of his harrowing exploits in a battle that has become the stuff of legend.

Investigations ensued, even as he was pitched back into battle alongside U.S. Army soldiers who embraced him as a fellow grunt. When it was over, he returned to the States to confront living with the loss of his closest friends. This is a tale of American values and upbringing, of stunning heroism, and of adjusting to loss and to civilian life.

We see it all through Meyer’s eyes, bullet by bullet, with raw honesty in telling of both the errors that resulted in tragedy and the resolve of American soldiers, U.S. Marines, and Afghan soldiers who’d been abandoned and faced certain death.   Meticulously researched and thrillingly told, with nonstop pace and vivid detail, Into the Fire is the unvarnished story of a modern American hero.

CWL:  When U.S. Army leadership failed, and when Washington DC policies contradict the situation on the ground, Sergeant Dakota Meyer did everything in his power to save the lives of his comrades in arms, both Marine and Afghan. Born and raised in rural Kentucky, Meyer excelled as a Marine Corps school trained sniper and then as a combat infantryman. In a combat situation in which everything that could go wrong did go wrong, Meyer provided boots-on-the-ground leadership and courage.

Into The Fire: An First Hand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War is an clear and concise story of an unrealistic Pentagon policy crafted in Washington, D.C. that encumbers the effectiveness of combat teams and their ability to call in artillery fire and reconnaissance support.  An unnecessary tragedy occurred at Ganjigal.

New and Noteworthy----Hell Or Richmond: Ralph Peters' Adds to Cain At Gettysburg

Hell or Richmond:  A Novel, Ralph Peters, Forge Publishing, 542 pp., maps, May 2013, $25.99

Those who thoroughly enjoyed 2012's Cain At Gettysburg will greet Hell or Richmond.

From the publisher: Between May 5 and June 3, 1864, the Union and Confederate armies suffered 88,000 casualties. Twenty-nine thousand were killed, wounded or captured in the first two days of combat. The savagery shocked a young, divided nation.

Against this backdrop of the birth of modern warfare and the painful rebirth of the United States, New York Times bestselling novelist Ralph Peters has created a breathtaking narrative that surpasses the drama and intensity of his recent critically acclaimed novel, Cain at Gettysburg.

In Hell or Richmond, thirty days of ceaseless carnage are seen through the eyes of a compelling cast, from the Union’s Harvard-valedictorian “boy general,” Francis Channing Barlow, to the brawling “dirty boots” Rebel colonel, William C. Oates. From Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee to a simple laborer destined to win the Medal of Honor, Peters brings to life an enthralling array of leaders and simple soldiers from both North and South, fleshing out history with stunning, knowledgeable realism.

From the horrific collision of armies in the Wilderness, where neither side wanted to fight, to the shocking slaughter of the grand charge at Cold Harbor, this epic novel delivers a compelling, authentic, and suspenseful portrait of Civil War combat.

Commemorating the approaching 150th anniversary of this grim encounter between valiant Americans, Ralph Peters brings to bear the lessons of his own military career, his lifelong study of this war and the men who fought it, and his skills as a bestselling, prize-winning novelist to portray horrific battles and sublime heroism as no other author has done.

Ralph Peters, New York Times bestselling author of Cain at Gettysburg, is a retired U.S. Army officer, a controversial strategist and veteran of the intelligence world, a journalist who appears frequently in the broadcast media, and a lifelong traveler with experience in over seventy countries on six continents.

In addition to works under his own name, he is also the author, under the pen name Owen Parry, of a series of award-winning Civil War mysteries.
Peters has studied the Civil War since childhood. Combining painstaking research, years of walking those fields of battle, with insight gleaned from his own military career, Ralph Peters tells this great American tale in a masterful style.

CWL: Just received a copy and will start it this weekend. Grand expectations!!

New and Noteworthy--The Furtherst Tide: Confederates At The Gates Of Harrisburg

The Confederate Approach On Harrisburg: The Gettysburg Campaign's Northernmost Reaches, Cooper H. Wingert, History Press, 222 pages, 45 illustrations, 8 maps, appendices, bibliographic notes, bibliography, index, 2012, $21.99, trade paperback.

Pennsylvanians, fans of the Army of Northern Virginia and enthusiasts of the 1863 Pennsylvania Campaign are well served by Cooper Wingert's The Confederate Approach On Harrisburg: The Gettysburg Campaign's Northernmost Reaches. Personalities, terrain, military objectives are smoothly woven into a compelling story of an invasion and an emergency response.

On June 15 1863, while wading the Potomac river, Richard Ewell's Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, understood that Pennsylvania was the target and Harrisburg was the bull's eye.  On June 12 Governor Andrew Curtin anticipated the invasion and called up the state's militia for the dual purpose of patrolling Fulton, Adams and York counties and constructing defenses for Harrisburg.  During the next fifteen days, Chambersburg, Gettysburg, Carlisle and York would be seized by Ewell's divisions and their assigned cavalry escorts.

Spies, scouts and assorted ner' do wells are pushed forward, through and behind the Confederate advance. Whirl becomes king for nearly three weeks. The New York State Militia arrives in Harrisburg and makes progress with the east bank earthworks. On June 28 a Confederate cavalry brigade galloped into Mechanicsburg, a mere 30 minute dash west of Harrisburg.  Brief artillery salvos occurred around Peace Church. June 29 at Oyster Point the closest Confederate approach to Harrisburg occurred. The artillery skirmish provided cover for scouts to reach a spot from which  Harrisburg's fortifications were viewed. Ewell prepared orders for an attack on June 30, but other
orders reached him from Lee.  Ewell's divisions [Rodes, Early, and Johnson] were to return to the Chambersburg-Gettysburg area.

Wingert presents clearly and concisely the many personalities and circumstances of Ewell's approach to Harrisburg. Maps are admirably drawn by John Heiser, cartographer for GNMP and Gettysburg Magazine.  Photographs include the many well known soldiers and civilians; many photographs are historical and present day images of regional locations. Wingert provides an insightful and detail discussion of the Confederate march further east of Gettysburg. Segments of the text are short and focused; the author stays within the limits of the primary sources available; artificial suspense is not injected into the story. The Confederate Approach On Harrisburg: The Gettysburg Campaign's Northernmost Reaches is an example of local history well written.

News---11th Mississippi Soldier's Letters Discovered, Donated and Digitized

Letters From the Civil War Donated to Ole Miss, Lucy Weber, May 6, 2013, Clarion Ledger

Richard Bridges seemed like a typical college kid in his letters home: He tells his family he may need more money and definitely more clothes, talks about hanging out with old friends from home and sounds a little homesick at times. Through his letters, this one-time University of Mississippi student has returned to the Oxford campus 150 years later.

Mike Martin of Madison, his sister Pat Owen of Rankin County and two of their cousins in Memphis — Bridges’ great-great nephews and nieces — recently donated to the university the 27 letters that Bridges wrote when he served in the University Greys, the unit organized by students to fight in the Civil War.  “We found out that it was significant in that these were only the second set of letters from one of the original 130 University Grays to ever find their way back to the university,” Martin said. “They were proud to receive them and we were proud to give them.”

The letters are housed in the university’s special collections and can be read online. Some of the letters are on display in a special exhibit that opened recently, “Preserving Our Past: Highlights from Archives & Special Collections.” “These letters are indeed one of our treasures,” said Jennifer Ford, head of archives and special collections at Ole Miss. “The Bridges’ letters are a significant addition to our collection.”

Martin said the letters were handed down to his mother in the 1960s from his great aunt, Dot Batton who lived in Crystal Springs where Bridges lived. “I remember Aunt Dot mentioned Uncle Richard and then she pulled out this tin box. She told her (Martin’s mother), “Martha, I want you to have these,” Martin said. “Mama went home and transcribed all those letters. We knew they were special.”
Through the years, the letters were tucked away for safekeeping. After Martin’s mother died, the letters ended up in Owen’s possession. “We talked about how to keep them safe,” Martin said.

Eventually, the family decided to contact officials at the university to see if they wanted them. “The letters needed to be back where he was,” Martin said. “I really thought this was no big deal, that they get stuff like this all the time, but in fact this is only the second set of original letters,” he said.
Written in the graceful penmanship of the day, Bridges’ letters tell of his life from 1861 to 1863. He writes of camp life, asks for more pants and blankets, asks for money when he hasn’t received his military pay, tells briefly of battles and reports on his health, including not-so-serious and serious wounds. There’s longing for home when he writes: “Wealth, honor and ease are but poor things to compare with the pleasure that it would afford me just to see you all once more.”

In the first letter, written Jan. 26, 1861, before he enlisted in his freshman year, he tells one of his sisters that he’s well despite a great deal of sickness, pneumonia and diptheria, in the college and how much he enjoyed the recent holidays at home. The last letter from Bridges is one he dictated on May 26, 1861 “thro’ the kindness of a Va. lady” following the amputation of his left leg after he was struck by a minnie ball during the Battle of the Wilderness.

The last letter in the collection, dated June 3, 1864, came from the woman who wrote the previous letter, Louisa A. Smith of Staunton, Va., telling the family that Bridges passed away peacefully the day before. Smith also enclosed one of his shirt buttons and a lock of Bridges’ hair, which the family kept with the letters through the years. Reading through the letters chronologically shows how Bridges changed over the course of his service that included seeing action in battles at Manassas, Ball’s Bluff, the Seven Days Campaign, and Gettysburg, Martin said.

“In the first letters, he was a peaceful sort of guy. Then, his attitude changed to not bloodthirsty but that he didn’t want to lose,” Martin said. “The guy’s been dead 150 years, and I still get emotional.”
After deciding to donate the letters to the university, Martin said the family delved into Civil War history, trying to learn more about Bridges. They found a picture of him — “he’s a good looking guy” — in a book detailing the history of the 11th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, which included the University Greys in Company A, Martin said.

In the book, Bridges is listed on the Confederate government’s Roll of Honor, dated May 5, 1864. “He was included after that last injury so I think he was considered particularly brave,” Martin said.
The special exhibit “Preserving Our Past” will be on display until January 2014 on the third floor of the J.D. Williams Library on campus. Besides select Bridges’ letters, the exhibit includes special pieces from the archives’ blues collection, including rare 78s of bluesman Robert Johnson, signed baseballs by Ty Cobb and Ted Williams and several pieces from literary collections.

Text and Image Source: The Clarion Ledger

News--- Stephen Lang's The Wheatfield: Gettysburg Foundation 's Centerpiece Of July 1 Commemoration

Salute To the States: Gettysburg Foundation's Signature Event, July 1, 2013

The Gettysburg Foundation invites you to join us for our special 150th Battle of Gettysburg commemorative event, Salute to the States, highlighted with a special performance by renown actor and playwright Stephen Lang.

Lang will perform his solo piece, The Wheatfield, in which he, in the character of Medal of Honor Recipient James Jackson Purman, relates the events that transpired at The Battle of Gettysburg on July 2nd and 3rd, 1863. The personal story that Purman tells is both stark and rich in detail; highly emotional and intensely dramatic. It is an 18 minute tour de force of theatrical expertise.

The performance will be followed by the world premiere of the short film The Wheatfield, written and acted by Lang; directed by Alexander and Adrian Smith; produced by Jake Boritt; original music by Robert Kessler; music performed by celebrated double-bassist Tim Cobb.  Following the film an onstage Q&A with Lang and the filmmakers will be hosted by the eminent Lincoln scholar and author Harold Holzer. Holzer will conduct the interview and invite questions and comments from the audience.

This ticketed event also includes a culinary tour of America featuring signature cuisine from various regions of the United States, Civil War-era ballroom dancing, living history performances by Confederate and Union Generals who share their experiences at Gettysburg, and a unique exhibit of reunion badges from each state that fought at Gettysburg (display courtesy of Gettysburg National Military Park.)

Held at the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center, from 7:00 p.m. to midnight, the cost of tickets is $100 Individual Ticket and $150 Patron Ticket (additional $50 contribution supports 150th preservation, acquisition and education projects.)
Registration/RSVP deadline is June 1, 2013. To purchase tickets and for more information, please call 717-339-2148 or visit www.gettysburgfoundation.org.

Text Source: Gettysburg Foundation
Image Source: ALT Move Guide

News----Third Winchester Farm's Middle Field That Held 3,000 Casualties To Be Returned To Wheat

Winchester Battlefield To Return To 1864 Farm Appearance, Linda Wheeler, Washington Post, April 27, 2013

 

Five years ago, The Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation purchased a 209-acre parcel of the Third Winchester Battlefield that included the infamous Middle Field where some of the most desperate fighting had taken place. In that one phase of the battle on Sept. 19, 1864, more than 3,000 men became casualties.

Battlefields are usually purchased simply to be preserved. This one will be different. The foundation decided early on that the best preservation practices include land conservation, and made plans to return the Middle Field to its 1864 appearance. Soldiers encountered wheat stubble when they fought over the Middle Field and, if all goes well, visitors to the battlefield on its 150^th anniversary next year will see the same thing.

The $80,000 project is a big undertaking because wheat hasn’t been planted on the land for almost 50 years. In its absence, a thick undergrowth of shrubs and a dense stand of non-native trees have filled in the space. All of that has to be cleared before the land can be prepared for planting, a multi-year project if done by hand or even with tractors. Instead, the foundation brought in two large mastication machines capable of tearing up trees with trunks as large as four inches and crunching the heavy undergrowth and, best of all, leaving behind mulched material.

Large oaks, cedars, red buds and dogwoods will be saved from the mechanical jaws. New tree plantings will probably include the American chestnut said Manager for Stewardship Chase Milner, who has filled a briefcase with his research into the farm and 1860s horticulture. Other plans for the Middle Field include planting an assortment of native warm-season grasses, a good habitat for wildlife.

By early May, James Madison University and the Archaeological Society of Virginia will have begun an archaeological investigation of the Middle Field, according to foundation Executive Director Denman Zirkle. He is concerned that work will attract unwanted relic hunters, and to prevent that, he said the land will be posted against trespassers and patrolled round-the-clock by a private security company working in concert with the Frederick County sheriff’s department.

Full Text Link: Washington Post, April 27, 2013

Image Source: Shenandoah At War

Off Topic---Post Civil War Medicine: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of madenss, Medicine and the Murder of a President, Candice Millard, Doubleday Publishing, 340 pp.,  34 illustrations, bibliographic notes, bibliography, index, $28.95 hardcover; $16.00 trade paperback.

On July 2, 1881 about four months into his presidency, James A. Garfield was shot in the back by Charles J. Guiteau using a .44 caliber British Bulldog pistol. Garfield died September 19 of the same year. He was medically attended to by D. Willard Bliss who had attendied Abraham Lincoln when he had been assassinated. Millard's book offers many intriguing stories regarding Garfield's death and his assassin's life.

Among those aspects, Millard discusses the dissmissal by Bliss of Joseph Lister's work with germ theory and antiseptic surgery.  Lister used Louis Pasteur's research in microbiology and he promoted the practice of sterile surgery. Carbolic acid used for cleaning wounds and sterilizing medical instruments reduced infections. During 1867-1869 Lister introduced his discovery to British surgeons. Throughout the 1870s sterilization became a wide spread practice in England.

Bliss appears to be represenative of American doctors in 1881 in that he dismissed in the 1870 Lister's work. Additionally, Bliss excessively probed Garfield's wound and inadvertently created a new wound in Garfield's body.  Millard's story contains insights to the American medical establishment of the late 19th century.  Also, she covers the politics and the diagnosis of mental illness during this era.  Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of madenss, Medicine and the Murder of a President is a nicely paced narrative that is accessible to the general reader.

Author discusses Destiny of the Republic on CSpan BookTV  [52 minutes]

News---Three Inch Schenkl Unfired Artillery Shell Found Buried On Sharpsburg Farm

 

Sharpsburg Man Unearths Live Civil War-Era Shell, Dave Rhodes, Herald Mail, April 11, 2013
A Sharpsburg man planting trees at his Powell Road home Thursday unearthed a live Civil War-era shell that authorities later disposed of by setting it off at a neighboring farm. “When I saw it I knew what it was,” J.D. Taylor Jr. said. “It was the second one I found here. 

“It was some kind of experience.” Taylor said he at first thought he hit a rock with his steel shovel while digging in his yard about a mile from Antietam National Battlefield sometime between 8:30 to 9 a.m. He pushed the shovel under the object, which was five or six inches deep, and knelt to pry it out.

The Maryland State Fire Marshal’s office said in a news release that the object was a 3-inch Federal Navy Schenkl that had not been fired and had an intact fusing mechanism. Taylor said it weighed about eight pounds, was about nine inches long and had a spring-loaded detonator on the end. “It looked like a torpedo without the fins,” he said.

Taylor said he wasn’t afraid to handle it. “I said, ‘Oh my Lord, there’s another one,’” he said.
He had prior experience with another one found 30 years earlier and about 12 to 13 feet away.
Taylor said a contractor working to build his home in 1983 found one just like it while digging on the site.

He said he left the first one at a tree in the woods and it eventually disappeared. He thinks it was probably taken by Civil War artifact hunters.  After finding the second shell on Thursday, Taylor called the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, which requested bomb technicians from the state fire marshal. Those technicians were joined at Taylor's home by U.S. Army bomb technicians from Fort Belvoir, Va. Fire and emergency medical service personnel from Sharpsburg stood by, according to the fire marshal’s news release. Taylor said Maryland State Police were also at the scene.

Authorities using computers in their vehicles researched the device and determined it had been used by both the Union army and navy during the Civil War, according to Taylor. The technicians took the shell to the neighboring farm and detonated it, he said. “It made a decent boom,” Taylor said.
No one was hurt. The on-site research showed that had the shell been inert, it would have been worth about $600 to a collector, Taylor said.

Text Source: Herald Mail
Image Source: ICollector

News---Pennsylvania's State Museum Exhibits Objects of Valor To Commemorate Civil War Sesquicentennial {Pittsburgh Post Gazette}

   

Objects of Valor Exhibit To Open In Harrisburg, Tom Barnes, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, April 14, 2013.

Gettysburg isn't the only place where Civil War buffs can see paintings, uniforms and artifacts related to the historic three-day battle fought in July 1863. The State Museum of Pennsylvania is getting in on the act also.

Starting Friday, an exhibit called "Objects of Valor" will open at the museum, located on Third Street across from the state Capitol. The exhibit is designed to "commemorate the Civil War in Pennsylvania," said the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in a statement.
Perhaps the most noteworthy item in the exhibit is a large painting depicting the unsuccessful charge by Confederate Gen. George Pickett's troops against Union forces on July 3, 1863, in which hundreds of men on both sides were killed or wounded. Its ultimate failure to dislodge Union troops from their lines led Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to pull his forces back to Virginia the next day. This painting -- 16 feet high and 32 feet wide -- was commissioned by the state Legislature in 1865, the year the war ended, and was completed in 1870 by a Luzerne County artist named Peter F. Rothermel. There will be interactive panels beside the painting that visitors can use to get information about Pickett's Charge and about how the painting came to be done.

"The exhibit tells of the painstaking research conducted by Rothermel and its much-anticipated unveiling in 1870 at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia," museum officials said. The Rothermel painting of "Pickett's Charge" is done on a single canvas, and is completely different from what is probably a better-known artwork that also depicts Pickett's Charge -- a 42-foot high, 377-foot Cyclorama painting that was created in the early 1880s by a French artist, Paul Philippoteaux. That one hangs in a circular gallery inside the National Military Park and Visitors Center in Gettysburg, which is run by the National Park Service.

Other Civil War artifacts that will go on display at the state museum in Harrisburg include a chair that Gen. George Meade, the Union commander at Gettysburg, used in his headquarters on the battlefield; a musket that a 69-year-old civilian named John L. Burns used to help defend Union soldiers at Gettysburg; and various pieces of shot and shell taken from the battlefield. Also on display will be recent acquisitions of uniforms, weapons and tools used by African-American soldiers who fought in the Civil War -- some of them former slaves -- who were members of a unit called the United States Colored Troops.

Other items that have been donated by military veterans and their families over the past 100 years will also be available for viewing, including swords, sashes and paintings of Civil War generals as well as "everyday items saved by common soldiers to memorialize their war experience," museum officials said.  The Harrisburg museum (www.statemuseumpa.org or 1-717-705-8639) is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday and from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $5 for adults and $4 for children and senior citizens. The Historical and Museum Commission, based in Harrisburg, operates 25 historical sites and museums around the state.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/state/objects-of-valor-exhibit-to-open-in-harrisburg-683394/#ixzz2QkQJSMDb

News--Gettysburg's New Seminary Ridge Musem Opens July 1 {Pittsburgh Post Gazette}

Seminary Ridge Opening To Mark Gettyburg Anniversary, Tom Barnes, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, April 14, 2013.

. . . A major part of the celebration will be the opening of the $15 million Seminary Ridge Museum, which, appropriately, takes place July 1. It's been created in a large building that was a Lutheran theological seminary in 1863 and which became a makeshift hospital for both Union and Confederate troops wounded in the fighting.

PG map: Seminary Ridge Museum

Construction of the new museum "will allow visitors to walk the halls of a building where wounded soldiers suffered, hear their voices of duty and devotion and stand in the spot in the cupola on Seminary Ridge where Union Gen. John Buford stood to observe the approaching Confederate forces," said museum director Barbara Franco.

The seminary, which educated Lutheran pastors, was founded on the ridge in 1832 and is still located there, although it has expanded and modernized, with many more classroom and administrative buildings than it had 150 years ago.
The four-story, red brick building that was the original seminary building has been turned into a Civil War museum. It still has its tall cupola on top -- a one-time bell tower where Buford spotted thousands of Confederate troops advancing from the west toward his small band of cavalry, who stepped down from their horses to fight. "He could see the Confederate campfire lights off in the hills to the west," Ms. Franco said. "He could see that the Union was vastly outnumbered."
. . . . . 
The museum's depiction of the medical care includes lifelike, human-size figures created to represent the suffering soldiers, with many stretched out on beds or the floor.
In many cases Union soldiers who were wounded on the first day of battle didn't receive any care for three days because Confederates controlled the makeshift hospital and were tending to their own wounded. Care for these Union soldiers didn't come until July 4, when rebel forces finally retreated south to Virginia. The seminary was used as a hospital until September 1863.

One room shows a surgeon with a saw preparing to amputate the leg of a soldier, with (fake) blood all over the floor. There was chloroform and ether to somewhat ease a patient's suffering.
"The pain these guys must have been in, with broken arms and legs and gunshot wounds, is unbelievable," Ms. Franco said. She added the museum has done research to uncover the names of all the patients treated in the hospital and the nurses who treated them. The second floor is devoted to moral and theological disputes during the war. "Religion played a major role in the war, with both North and South claiming God was on their side," Ms. Franco said.

She's hoping to attract a new crowd to Gettysburg -- Christians and others interested in social justice issues, including the owning of slaves and what the Bible has to say about it. She said biblical quotations were used by both pro- and anti-slavery advocates to justify their positions.
One second-floor room is devoted to Adams County abolitionists who helped escaping slaves flee from the South through the Underground Railroad, a series of houses where they stayed.
Ms. Franco hopes to attract 70,000 people a year to the museum.

The Seminary Ridge Historic Preservation Foundation was formed in 1999 to bring greater public knowledge of what happened that July 1. Working with it on the museum were current officials of the seminary and the Adams County Historical Society. Also, a mile-long outdoor walking trail around the seminary property is being created by the National Park Service and a promotional group called Main Street Gettysburg.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/civilwar/museums-opening-to-help-mark-gettysburg-anniversary-683389/#ixzz2QkP52mYo

News--Civil War Coded Message Needs Decoded

Nancy Basinger Brewer Requests The Following : 

 

"I am looking for someone who can crack Civil War codes. This is a spy letter, that I think may be Rose O'Neil Greenhow- (See front and Back view of her in tin type) The code was hidden between the two tin types. (believe it or not I found this at a flea market)"   

 

 

Nancy's email is msnacybnc@aol.com  Visit nancybbrewer.com 

New and Noteworthy In Paperback--- Abraham Lincoln, A Life In Two Volumes by Michael Burlingame

Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volumes, One and Two,  Michael Burlingame, Johns Hopkins University Press, Paperback, Volume One, 1035 pp., 10 illustrations, bibliographic notes, index, Volume Two, 1048 pp.,  23 illustrations, bibliographic notes, index.  Each volume is $29.95.

In the first multi-volume biography to be published in decades, Michael Burlingame offers comprehensive and fresh look at Abraham Lincoln's entire life. Accessing the field notes of earlier biographers, and relying upon decades of his own research in manuscript archives with extensive newspaper collections, Burlingame as produced a remarkable work.  A fresh look?  Is that still possible?  Indeed, it is possible and it has been achieved. Abraham Lincoln: A Life both alters and reinforces readers' understanding of the sixteenth president.

Volume One presents Lincoln's early childhood as a farm lad in Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, his legal training, and his 1846-1848 term in the U.S. House of Representatives.  The volume through the end of 1860 as Lincoln chooses is presidential cabinet.  Volume Two begins with his February 1860 trek through the North and ends with his assassination in 1865. Military dilemmas, battlefield crisises, relentless office seekers, challenges from senators and representatives, the death of a son, stresses to his marriage are presented with new interpretations.

Published during the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, Burlingame's hallmark study reinforces his reputation as a thorough author of Lincoln's life and era.  Abraham Lincoln: A Life has been named as one of the top ten Lincoln books by the Chicago Tribune. The work has also won the 2008 Prose Award of Best Book in U.S. History and Biography and the 2010 Lincoln Prize from the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. Readers who have enjoyed the narrative styles of Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote, will likely also enjoy Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life.

 

News---Gettysburg's George Spangler Farm's Eleventh Corps Hospital and Armistead Death Site Open

The 156-acre George Spangler farm served as the Union army’s 11th Corps field hospital from July 1 to the first week in August, 1863. Over 1,600 Union and Confederate wounded were treated here. Recently preserved by the Gettysburg Foundation, the farm stands as the finest example of a field hospital that exists on the Gettysburg battlefield.

 For the 150th battle anniversary, the Foundation is opening the George Spangler Farm to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from May 24 through August 18. Each Friday at 1:30 p.m. the public is invited to join a Gettysburg National Military Park Ranger for a special program exploring this unique site and discovering how an army corps hospital functioned. Access to the farm is by free shuttle bus from the Museum and Visitor Center.   For more information about visiting the George Spangler farm go to:  www.gettysburgfoundation.org

Text Source: Gettsyburg Foundation
Image Source: Gettysburg Daily

Off-Topic----The Black Banners of al-Qaeda: How To Successfully Interogate A Terrorist Without Resorting To Violence

The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 And The War Against Al-Qaeda, Ali H. Soufan, with Daniel Freedman, W.W. Norton Publishing, 608 pp., map, list of characters, list of documents cited, $26.95 hardcover, 2011.

Ali H. Soufan, former Federal Bureau of Investigation interrogator and counter-terrorism operative, discloses the successes, failures, bureaucratic incompetence and turf protection of some federal agencies from al-Qaeda's declaration of war in 1996 through the death of Usama bin Ladin in 2012. Soufan is a Lebanese American who graduated in 1995 from Mansfield University, a institution in the Pennsylvania university system.

On September 11, 2001, FBI Special Agent Ali H. Soufan was handed a secret file. Had he received it months earlier, when he had requested it, the 9/11 attacks may have been prevented. From his beginning employment in 1995 through his 2005 departure from the FBI, Soufan interrogated prisoners and elicited some of the most important confessions from terrorists in the war against al-Qaeda. His method of interrogation used conversation only and he never used violence. Soufan provides intimate firsthand knowledge of the investigation into the October 2000 attack on the USN Cole in Yemin.  Al-Qaeda hideouts, CIA and FBI interrogation rooms, Guantanemo Bay and al-Qaeda in America are the environments are are revealed either by first hand observations or revealed in interrogations. Usama bin Laden's personal celebration of the 9/11 bombings, the mindset, personal lives of  terrorists as well as their thought processes and operate style are each presented.  The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 And The War Against Al-Qaeda essential and compelling reading.  Words, phrases and paragraphs within the text have been blackened out by order of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Lower image source: Harpers magazine