Civil Warriors

If there is nothing quite like having your first book published, there is also nothing quite like waiting for those first book reviews to appear.  Of course, you crave a review that will anoint you as the next big thing; you sweat over the possibility that someone will tear you apart.  Moreover, you never get the same feeling about other books, because by that time you have a somewhat more realistic expectation of what might appear in a review.

For academic historians, reviews come out in distinct waves.  In the field of Civil War studies, one might expect a prepublication review or two (these often are placed on Amazon.com and other online booksellers as well, although at times Amazon does a poor job of distinguishing between publicity and prepublication reviews).  Reviews in Choice, for example, are critical to library sales in places where Choice reviews are printed out on cards and distributed to acquisitions people at college libraries (and sometimes those cards are passed down to faculty members to make recommendations, as was my experience at Wofford).  Then come the reviews in newspapers and blogs (the latter are sometimes delayed), followed by reviews in various popular magazines, followed by a wait for reviews to appear in professional journals.  In academic circles, the reviews in professional journals count the most, although any institution is pleased if a faculty member’s book is reviewed in a national newspaper or journal of opinion.  That’s more likely to happen with bigger books, and those books usually appear later in someone’s career, although I was fortunate enough to see a review of Let Us Have Peace appear in the New York Review of Books as part of a larger essay review.

But it is when it comes to that first book that it seems the pressure is the greatest, precisely because it is the first book.  Maybe you’ll be lucky and have a big name review the book; maybe you’ll be unlucky and have a big name trash your book.  Maybe you’ll have someone only slightly senior to yourself review the book, and then you hope that don’t take the opportunity to work out some of their own issues over your book.  You may even have an advanced graduate student review the book, and then it depends on the professional maturity of the reviewer (some people simply rule out graduate students as reviewers, which I think is a mistake: while I believe that flagship academic journals should as a rule be more selective in the choice of reviewer, I also believe that senior status does not always bring with it a sense of responsibility, and that the review’s the thing, especially in third tier professional journals).  For the author, of course, a positive review by a recognized authority is the best possible outcome; for the assistant professor seeking professional advancement, it would be best if that review appeared in a leading professional journal.  Thus, while a newspaper review might bring with it celebrity, a professional journal review carries more weight professionally.  No all reviews are alike, and each type of review is aimed at a somewhat different audience.  Oh, and by the way, online reviews at bookseller websites tend not to carry much weight within the profession … just so you know.

I had cause to reflect on the dynamics and responsibilities of reviewing this past weekend, when a newspaper reviewed a first book written by an ASU graduate, Andy Fisher.  I did not serve on his committee when he was a grad student at ASU; our only significant professional contact during his time in Tempe was when he served as my grader, an experience that proved memorable for both of us and remains something of an office legend among the grad students at ASU.  You see, Andy once handed back midterms to both classes without recording the grades.  He realized this only after he had left town for a few days.  When he telephoned me to tell me what had happened, I replied, “This is not good,” with all the restraint I could muster.  Apparently that’s a key part of the legend.  Anyway, he came back, appeared before both classes, confessed to his act, collected the exams, recorded the grades, returned the exams, and that was that, although the story’s been told and retold.  Since then, he’s developed into a fine young historian who ASU pursued this last spring for a teaching position he chose not to accept.  I for one would have been very pleased to have him as a colleague.

So much for a disclaimer of any possible conflict of interest: the book in question isn’t even a Civil War/Reconstruction title.  Andy is now tenured, just as his book has appeared, and so the professional ramifications of a review are not what they might be.   Besides, those journal reviews won’t appear for a while.  But he was surprised and dismayed when a review did appear in a newspaper that positions itself as the state paper of record for Oregon.  He posted a link to the review, and I read it.  It was not until the final paragraph that I understood why he was so bothered, and then I understood that he had every reason to be bothered.

(Continued)

The 54th Annual Missouri Valley History Conference will be held March 3-5, 2011 in Omaha, Nebraska. The Society for Military History sponsors a full slate of sessions at the MVHC and also will again be sponsoring a “huddle” for Society for Military History participants. Individual proposals and session proposals are welcome. For individuals, send a one page proposal and short c.v. (only c.v. if volunteering to chair/comment). For sessions, send one-page session proposal, one-page proposal for each paper, and short c.v.s for all participants. Please include e-mail address. Deadline for proposals is October 31, 2010.

Send proposals, c.v.s and inquiries for contest rules to: Connie K. Harris, PO Box, Grasston, MN 55030 or send by e-mail to ckharris1@juno.com. The Society for Military History and the First Division Museum Cantigny sponsors the Kevin J. Carroll award for the best graduate student paper in Military History. This prize is valued at $400 dollars. In addition, the Society for Military History and the First Division Museum Cantigny sponsors a paper prize for the Best Undergraduate Student paper in any area of History which is valued at $200. For information on this prize please send inquiries to Charles King at cwking@mail.unomaha.edu.

About two months ago, one of my fellow alumnus of the 1999 West Point Summer Seminar, Dr. Nick Sarantakes of the Naval War College, threw out the question, “What mistakes did Lincoln make?” Here is part three in the series of points that were debated.

Mistake No. 3: Decision to allow West Virginia to secede from Virginia and bring the Confederacy back into the Union, one piece at a time. This, along with the Emancipation Proclamation, guaranteed that the war would be fought to a bitter end.

My response: As my good friend Mark Snell of the George Tyler Moore Center (whose annual seminar, scheduled for 24-27 June, will be studying Petersburg this year) this has observed, the mistake was the naming of “West” Virginia. The loyal western Virginians should have claimed the title Virginia and made the secessionist section of the state rebrand itself as East Virginia, Chesapeake, Treasonistan, or something else. And, given the federal nature of the system and the way secession had happened, there was no constitutional or practical alternative to restoring loyal governments in the South province by province. Also, cause and effect are more complicated than suggested in the statement about the Emancipation Proclamation. That its symbolism made the South fight harder is without question; indeed, that was McClellan’s objection to it. But the Emancipation Proclamation was also the product of a realization–probably correct–that by July 1862 (due to the defeats in the Shenandoah Valley and perceived reversal on the Peninsula reviving Southern morale) Northern hopes that the war could be won quickly would not be realized and the South was ALREADY determined to fight harder than anticipated. Thus, tougher measures were perceived to be needed. Lincoln’s big botches came in his handling of the military operations that produced the setbacks that revived southern morale.

Response: First off, be careful what you say about WVa! I agree with what you say about making the western part of the state the true seat of government, but that is not what happened. Plus, Lincoln is in the midst of efforts for Reconstruction, attempting to bring Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee back into the Union; yet, why hack off a piece of Virignia? On the issue of changing the nature of the war with the Emancipation Proclamation, I am sure that we all have views and opinions on this, not to mention a slew of books already written on the subject. I am always struck by the timing and wording, just before the 1862 mid-term elections and giving the Confederates the option to come back in by Jan. 1. Why give them the option if tougher measures are needed? Was Lincoln going to forget everything and keep slavery? Probably not.

What do you think?

Civil War Memory’s Kevin Levin raises a very interesting point in a recent blog entry about Earl Ijames, curator at the North Carolina Museum of History:

“As I stated before, I would have no problem if we were talking about a private individual; however, Mr. Ijames is an employee of a public institution.  The North Carolina Museum of History and Office of Archives and History have a responsibility here.  Are we in the historical community supposed to believe that Earl Ijames speaks for the museum and the rest of the public historical community in North Carolina?  Is this the level of scholarship that they expect from their employees and is this the level of scholarship that we would find in other historical areas?”

Kevin’s raised a series of questions here that, taken on their merits, contain interesting implications for all sorts of institutions, including museums, historian agencies, federal agencies, and public academic institutions.

The fact that someone’s an employee of a public institution in itself should not be taken to mean much, so long as the person does not portray the views of the individual as the views of the institution.  Indeed, the whole notion of academic freedom touches on this issue.  I do not speak FOR Arizona State University when I express my opinions on matters of public import.  Academic freedom means that ASU and the state of Arizona give me a wide berth when it comes to expressing my views and sharing my research.  Indeed, as I’ve said before, if you are easily offended, don’t come to a college or university campus. 

Now, if one portrays themselves as speaking on behalf of an organization, everything changes, and to claim that one speaks on behalf of an institution invites all sorts of queries.  Yet, someone employed by one of these institutions will as a matter of course mention their affiliation with an institution, and indeed that’s the norm.  One could, I guess, offer the standard disclaimer that one’s views are one’s own: one should also expect that if one works for a public institution, one will receive threats about informing one’s superiors of what one has said (I’ve encountered this from time to time, and I take it as a sign that someone’s conceding that they have failed to prevail on the merits of the case, and thus want to coerce me into silence … unsuccessfully).  I accept that as part of the job.  Some people love me for the enemies I have made.

Nor do I readily understand the notion of institutional responsibility for individual research.  ASU does not take responsibility for my research and it does not sanction it with a seal of good housekeeping.  Had my research been found lacking by my professional peers, I doubt I would have been tenured, promoted twice, and awarded an endowed chair.  However, so long as the speaker does not make the claim that he is speaking on behalf of the institution, the issue of institutional responsibility is not what it otherwise be.  For example, I don’t always agree with my institutional colleagues, and they don’t always agree with me.   Institutional responsibility in that case has to do more with ensuring a fair process of conflict resolution according to previously agreed-upon rules.  There is no institutional line at ASU about why Confederates fought, for example, and the institution would be justified in reprimanding me only if it found my research to be substandard or otherwise unprofessional (plagiarism comes to mind). 

Say, however, that someone wrote me inquiring about an academic question in my professional capacity, and I replied in a matter that was explicitly insulting and outrageous.  If I’m writing an e-mail from my ASU address, or using ASU stationery, I might want to consider how I express myself (here the internet has raised all sorts of new questions about which server one’s using, etc., so let’s set that aside).  Just as I now normally use a private e-mail address for non-job-related matters on the internet (although the definition of my professional interests is rather broad) and have never claimed to speak on behalf of an institution, anything I offered on institutional stationery or through my professional e-mail address in correspondence is fair ground for someone to ask my superiors to scrutinize for matters of taste, professional deportment, etc.  Thus, I had no problem with Kevin’s recent decision to copy Mr. Ijames’s superiors on his original request or to forward Mr. Ijames’s response, which I think was ill-advised, to his superiors.  What Mr. Ijames’s superiors choose to do with that information is up to them.  I would have a problem if someone asked that Mr. Ijames be reprimanded or disciplined because of the views which he espouses.  I have no problem with someone scrutinizing his scholarship, and, frankly, neither should he.  That’s also part of the job.

I don’t think anyone should be punished for the academic views they espouse just because I may not agree with their academic views, or that a fellow professional should be silenced because of the political views they espouse, even when I have found those views absolutely repugnant.  There are constraints on such speech, and it’s up to those who endorsed those restraints to address those issues.  I have no reluctance in exposing poor scholarship for what it is, and to demonstrate the flimsy basis upon which certain people advance certain interpretations.  Let’s not confuse these things.

The program for the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History, which is being held on 20-23 May in Lexington, Virginia, and sponsored by the Virginia Military Institute, has recently been posted. There will be a number of sessions and papers that address topics of interest to students of American Civil War military history. Moreover, as usual, there will be a pretty decent contingent of Civil War historians in attendance, including Mark, Carol Reardon, Susannah Ural, Brian Holden Reid, Gary Gallagher, and Joe Glatthaar. I will be presenting a paper in a session on “The U.S. Cavalry in the Civil War Era” and participating in various activities associated with chairing the SMH Awards Committee, which made some most excellent selections this year.

The recipients of the Distinguished Book Awards, which are given to outstanding works in the following categories, U.S., non-U.S., biography/memoir, and reference, are:

Daniel E. Sutherland, A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War (University of North Carolina Press)
Edward J. Drea, Japan’s Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853-1945 (University Press of Kansas)
J.P. Harris, Douglas Haig and the First World War (Cambridge University Press)
Spencer C. Tucker, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (ABC-CLIO)

The Moncado Awards for outstanding articles in The Journal of Military History go to:

John Morgan, “War Feeding War? The Impact of Logistics on the Napoleonic Occupation of Catalonia” (January 2009)
Irving W. Levinson, “A New Paradigm for an Old Conflict: The Mexico-United States War” (April 2009)
Brian Holden Reid, “Michael Howard and the Evolution of Modern War Studies” (July 2009)
Kevin M. Boylan, “The Red Queen’s Race: Operation Washington Green and Pacification, 1969-70” (October 2009)

Further information about the SMH program and logistics for the meeting can be found here.

The Department of History at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point has posted its call for applications for the 2010 Summer Seminar on Military History. This three-week program brings together approximately two dozen junior scholars of military history (graduate students who have completed all but their dissertation are also eligible) at West Point to participate in a terrific program of seminars, lectures, and staff rides.

This is pretty much a mandatory experience for anyone who has aspirations as a military historian. When I did the program as a fellow in 1999, the guest lecturers included such great scholars as Fred Anderson, John Lynn, Don Higginbotham, William Skelton, Brian Linn, and Williamson Murray, while the staff rides were led by Carol Reardon (Gettysburg) and Mark (Antietam). On top of all the great stuff you get to do in the course of the program, participants receive a very generous stipend, as well as coverage of expenses. This year, it is scheduled to run 1-23 June.

Application packets consist of a completed application form, current curriculum vitae, a sample of academic writing, and a letter of recommendation. The deadline for applications is 1 February 2010. More information can be found here.

Was back in Virginia a few weeks ago helping Chris Stowe and the rest of the CGSC teaching team at Fort Lee on the third iteration of an Appomattox Staff Ride. In the time since the first iteration of the ride in April, Chris wisely adjusted the ride to start at Fort Gregg instead of Five Forks. This avoided the problem last time of spending a huge chunk of time (time management is always the biggest challenge on these rides) on the events of 1 April and the whole background and conduct of the Battle at Five Forks. Instead, we simply started out saying, “OK, it is the morning of 2 April, Five Forks has happened, what is the situation?” After discussing this and the events of 2 April that led up to the fight for Fort Gregg, the four groups (led respectively by Chris, Fort Lee team leader Bob Kennedy, Fort Belvoir’s Chris Keller, and myself) did stands at Sutherland Station, Amelia Court House, Hillsman House, Kershaw Ridge, Cumberland Church, Final Battle, McLean House, and ended at the Gordon-Chamberlain salute/Grant-Lee second meeting site.

Some photos from the ride are below, courtesy of Kaysteine Briggs, who belonged to the staff group assigned to me, which proved to be an outstanding one. Although a bit chilly, we were spared the rain that accompanied the recon we did the day before and the April ride.

Sutherland Station

Hillsman House Here, and throughout the ride, a major point of debate was just how much faster Phil Sheridan would have ended the war if not for that punk George Meade. (Boy, wouldn’t it be great, especially at a time when people are trying to figure out how to spend gift cards, if there was a really good recent book out there on Meade–or even just a decent essay? For that matter, wouldn’t a book that discusses Lee during this campaign–especially one that, in the words of one unimpeachable source “shows once again why [its author] is one of the finest Civil War military historians at work today”, also be a great addition to one’s bookshelf? )

Kershaw Ridge

Near Appomattox Court House

Some photos from a rainy visit to Valmy last week with my wife and daughter. The photo below on the left is of me and Corinne at the Kellerman monument; the photo on the right is of the famous Moulin de Valmy, a major landmark on the 20 September 1792 battlefield that was reconstructed a few years ago. Further down is a photo of the rear of the Kellerman monument looking toward the windmill.

Perhaps the most notable participant in this battle, aside from General Francois Kellerman (later given the title the Duc de Valmy), who famously rallied the French army by shouting “Vive la Nation!”, was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe later wrote of his experience:

I had now arrived quite in the region where the balls were playing across me: the sound of them is curious enough, as if it were composed of the humming of tops, the gurgling of water, and the whistling of birds. They were less dangerous by reason of the wetness of the ground; wherever one fell, it stuck fast. And thus my foolish experimental ride was secured against the danger at least of the balls rebounding.

In the midst of these circumstances, I was soon able to remark that something unusual was taking place within me. I paid close attention to it, and still the sensation can be described only by similitude. It appeared as if you were in some extremely hot place, and, at the same time, quite penetrated by the heat of it, so that you feel yourself, as it were, quite one with the element in which you are. The eyes lose nothing of their strength or clearness, but it is as if the world had a kind of brown-red tint, which makes the situation, as well as the surrounding objects, more impressive. I was unable to perceive any agitation of the blood; but every thing seemed rather to be swallowed up in the glow of which I speak. From this, then, it is clear in what sense this condition can be called a fever. It is remarkable, however, that the horrible uneasy feeling arising from it is produced in us solely through the ears. For the cannon thunder, the howling and crashing of the balls through the air, is the real cause of these sensations.

After I had ridden back and was in perfect security, I remarked, with surprise, that the glow was completely extinguished, and not the slightest feverish agitation was left behind. . . .

At last I was called upon to say what I thought of the engagement, for I had been in the habit of enlivening and amusing the troop with short sayings. This time I said, “From this place and from this day forth commences a new era in the world’s history, and you can all say that you were present at its birth.”

This passage was evidently on David L. Thompson’s mind when he recalled in an essay in Battles and Leaders that during the 9th New York’s attack at Antietam: “the air was full of the hiss of bullets and the hurtle of grape-shot. The usual strain was so great that I saw at that moment the singular effect mentioned, I think, in the life of Goethe on a similar occasion–the whole landscape for an instant turned slightly red.”

You hear it all the time … at least I do.  Critics of this historian or that historian claim that the historian in question is pushing a personal political agenda.  Their professional work reflects that personal political agenda: if anything, their scholarship is nothing more than their politics refracted through a flawed prism of the past.

Doubtless this is true in some cases.  One could point to Howard Zinn or Thomas DiLorenzo as prime examples.  Other people confront the accusation as well: Eric Foner finds himself attacked as a Marxist when people don’t like what he has to say.  People who read Foner’s work seriously often find that his Marxism influences and informs how he approaches historical problems, but I haven’t seen a successfully sustained argument that his accounts of the Republican party in the 1850s, Thomas Paine, or Reconstruction, to name but three areas on which he has written with such skill, are warped by Marxism.  You don’t have to be a Marxist to agree with his analysis, and when I’ve differed I haven’t resorted to the cheap trick of calling him a Marxist as if that in itself was sufficient.  When we disagree, we do so on the basis of the work before us, not on our assumptions about the politics that some people think must be behind that work.

It is interesting to me that some people who are unabashed in their political positions and who freely reveal how their politics influences their historical perspective offer mindless rants claiming that other people’s history is flawed because of their politics.  This is especially true when they assume a set of political beliefs are held by the historian they criticize.  I came under such an attack some time ago, and when I pressed the blogger to outline my political beliefs, he declined, although he continued to insist that my scholarship must be flawed because I was supposedly left-leaning, whatever that means (he then resented being identified as a coward, claiming that was a personal attack, when in truth it was simply an accurate description of his behavior).  He was joined in his attack by a fellow who seems a bit reluctant in his professional biography to identify himself as a leader in a state chapter (or “division”) of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.  You would think that if that fellow was really proud of that affiliation, he’d place it out front on his biographical sketches that accompany his publications.  Perhaps the best part of these recent rants was the claim that I was one of several historians who wanted to control the interpretation of history (again, somehow this claim was not accompanied by any evidence of this nefarious scheme: please forward it so I can use it on next year’s annual performance evaluation).  When this comes from a fellow whose group is famous for issuing “heritage violations” as if they were parking tickets, I have to laugh.  People who study this thing as a professional call this projection, I believe.

(Note: not all SCV members share the same beliefs or behave the same way.  So say my friends who are in the SCV.)

Now, personal perspectives and interests often influence what historians choose to explore.  I tend to be interested in the political struggles for emancipation and equal rights, for example, and how the political environment shapes that struggle.  Our SCV PhD, for example, prefers to regale listeners with stories about Nathan Bedford Forrest’s staff as well as “the deliberate Northern policy of targeting Southern civilians and Confederate prisoners of war for death.”  To each his own, I guess.  But I would find it bad historical practice to criticize the latter presentation simply by saying it was a simple reflection of his personal beliefs and perspective.  That’s poor historical criticism.  Nor would I make the wild-eyed assertion that the historian in question was attempting to control historical interpretation because I think that to make that claim about anyone is to make oneself look foolish.  But, again, to each his own.  If I disagree with an interpretation, then I’ll do it using evidence.  I’ve done this with the work of historians, regardless of their political beliefs, and in many cases I don’t know what political beliefs they possess.  To me it’s all about the work.

When I went to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, I entered a rather politicized body of graduate students.  I once joked that there were no conservatives, liberals, or radicals at Madison: there were capitalists and Marxists, and I was clearly identified as being in the former camp (although when it came to a debate over financial aid, I found that the Marxist students were ironically the ones out for themselves at the expense of the community.  Don’t worry … they lost).  When I taught at Wofford College, Republican students asked me to serve as the adviser to the College Republicans, not because they believed I was a Republican (they confessed they didn’t quite know what I believed), but because I stood for the open discussion of ideas, and that was all they desired.  Since then, committed and principled conservatives have had no problem calling upon me: one placed me on the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s civic literacy advisory board, and if you know anything about ISI, it’s not liberal.  In short, real conservatives respect me and my work, making it easy to dismiss the rants of certain uninformed partisans who hope that their intolerance and cant about political correctness and so on will be treated as something other than the whining it is.  Indeed, I think these folks are a standing embarrassment to serious conservatives: they are the Howard Zinns of the right, except that many of them lack his scholarly skills (I need not add that I don’t care much about Zinn’s scholarship, but then I also think Paul Johnson sometimes offers warped perspectives).

Serious conservatives and libertarians I take seriously.  Jeff Hummel sent me his manuscript on the Civil War era, and we once met for lunch: you can find my blurb inside his book.  I invited Barry Goldwater to speak to my military history class in the 1990s because I wanted him to have a chance to connect directly with my students.  Si Bunting and I have had many pleasant discussions, and when he came to speak in Phoenix last year, we had a terrific time … and we shared a stage with Jim McPherson last December at the New-York Historical Society.

And then there’s my teaching.  Two stories should suffice in that regard.  In the fall of 2000 I taught a course on the American presidency.  Many students recalled afterwards how in an October lecture I suggested that it would not be long until we would have to reacquaint ourselves with the workings of the electoral college, because someday it would play a critical role in an election outcome.  Others preferred to remember a different moment.  At semester’s end, two students approached me.  They identified themselves politically.  The Democratic student believed I was a Republican; the Republican student believed I was a Democrat.  They wanted to know which party I favored.  I asked why, and they responded that they didn’t know.  My reply was simple:  “And that’s how it should be.”  No one asks to which party do I belong: all students know that they will get a fair hearing in my classroom.  So it was with some satisfaction that a student e-mailed me yesterday to thank me for the letter of recommendation I had provided in support of his application for an internship.  He had just gotten the position … with the Heritage Foundation.  Apparently that organization trusted my assessment: it did not ask me to identify my political beliefs.

Now, does all this mean I’m a conservative?  No.  Indeed, it really doesn’t say anything about the political beliefs I hold, at least in terms of partisanship.  What it should suggest, however, to anyone with an open and discerning mind is that to the people who matter most … my students … there’s no political line preached in my classroom, and students from across the political spectrum have filled my classrooms and asked for my assistance, secure in the belief that what’s important to me is the work, the quality of argument, the use of evidence, and so on … not the politics of the student or the professor.  The same goes for my fellow professionals, whose beliefs are sorted across the political spectrum.

I understand it when people whose scholarship is fatally infected by their political beliefs assume that such much be the case with everyone they encounter … especially those with whom they disagree.  That’s why they call it projection.  Given them their fifteen minutes to issue their creeds: intelligent and discerning readers will know better.

The blogosphere’s an interesting place.  Really.  Anyone can gain a measure of legitimacy by setting up a blog or posting reviews on Amazon or making comments on websites.  In an age of ever-opening information and access, everyman can be his own historian, as Carl Becker once put it … and everywoman as well.

Indeed, blogs are one way to challenge the supposed boundaries between professional and amateur, scholar and buff.  People who would not have gotten a hearing twenty years ago are now players in an ever-broadening discussion about the history of the Civil War era.  I count many of these people among my friends, even if they rooted for the wrong team in this past fall classic.

But with access comes responsibility.  If one enters the conversation and wishes to be taken seriously, then one must not run away when one is taken seriously and has one’s arguments subjected to scrutiny.  Here’s one example.

I don’t care much for the phrase “politically correct.”  All too often it’s simply a signpost that the author has decided that whatever he/she finds disagreeable can be dismissed simply by calling it “politically correct.”  It’s a neat way of sidestepping the issue of whether something is historically accurate, and it carries with it the assumption (an all-too-revealing one) that one’s perspective on historical events is hostage to one’s political beliefs.  Oddly enough, that characterization is often quite true when it comes to describing the very people who resort to this cant of “political correctness” as a substitute for sustained historical analysis.

Can anyone identify a scholar who subscribes to the set of beliefs outlined in this blog entry?  Does such a person exist?  Or is this to be taken as being more along the lines of a screed protesting uncomfortable truths by distorting them?

So, tell me, dear readers … can you name a historian who embraces the notion that the North was 100% right or the South 100% wrong?  I can’t, especially as “the North” is a rather diverse place, as is “the South,” and there was no single “Northern position” or “Southern position” (for example, black slaves in the South were southerners, too, as all those fans of black Confederates like to tell us).   Does any historian say that slavery was the only difference between North and South (especially as some slave states did remain in the Union)?  And what is this rant about black Confederates?  I don’t know of any historian who rejects the notion that the Confederacy employed slave labor (thus Butler’s contraband policy), or that a handful of people of African American ancestry served in Confederate ranks.  The debate is over what this means, as well as a demand that those who argue that there were tens of thousands of African Americans who voluntarily served in Confederate ranks produce a shred of evidence to support their contention (this is one place where the cry of “politically correct” comes across loudest, from people who would rather not submit their assertions to any sort of scrutiny).

Much the same can be said for some of the claims the author of this column makes about Reconstruction (the author’s own blog reminds us that he is also a “top 500 Amazon .com reviewer”).  And, of course, there are also some bizarre assumptions implied in the post.  Is someone going to argue seriously that Gone With the Wind (both the movie and the novel, but especially the novel) was not influenced by racist assumptions?  Its history of Reconstruction shows its dependence on a combination of the Dunning school, Thomas Dixon, and Claude Bowers.  The author is so angry about John Brown that he comes up not once, but twice, in the laundry list, but he has some kind words to say about the Ku Klux Klan as being somewhat misunderstood.

But here’s my favorite part of the rant:  “A defining trait of the PCM is the insistence that there is no such thing as the Politically Correct Myth of the American Civil War.  A second part of this argument is that there is no such thing as political correctness, just the truth.”  In short, to challenge this garbage is evidence that the author’s charges are true.

People who know me know I don’t suffer foolishness or stupidity gladly.  Sometimes the best way to deal with it is to circulate it for wider discussion in order to expose it for what it is.

With the deadline for submissions having passed, here are the books that have been submitted by publishers for the Society for Military History 2009 Book Awards:

And, for fellow suffering Redskins fans in need of a quick nostalgia fix, here’s something cool.

Ah . . . Fall. The leaves are changing, the temperatures are dropping, and, for the fourth and last time, a flood of books is rolling into my office at Fort Leavenworth, submitted by publishers for consideration for the Society for Military History’s Distinguished Book Awards. These awards are given in four categories: U.S., non-U.S., biography/memoir, and reference. Here is a chronicle of the awards given at the 2007, 2008, and 2009 Annual Meetings of the SMH. To go even further back in the history of these awards or find further information on the nominating process click here and here.

Since I suspect my duties chairing this august committee (the other members are Rob Citino, Pete Kindsvatter, Adrian Lewis and George Satterfield) this year won’t give me time to contribute much to this space between now and the time the committee makes its decisions in January, I figured at the least I could use it to document the growth of what my colleagues have dubbed “the pile”. At this point, we are still very early in a process that last year saw around 200 books nominated. Here is the pile as of this afternoon:

As you can see, its defense is in good hands thanks to a gift from the Singaporean officer I worked with this year.

Was in Manassas last week working alongside Gary Ecelbarger, Jeffry Wert, and Carol Reardon on the Penn State Alumni Association’s 17th annual Civil War Battlefield Study Tour. The program was titled: “Lee’s Masterpiece: The 1862 Battle of 2nd Manassas/Bull Run”, and consisted of a day of lectures and two days taking the seventy or so participants around to the various sites associated with the Second Manassas campaign. On day one, we started at Kelly’s Ford (with Carol in the lead), then went to Remington (Carol once again leading), Jeffersonton (me), Jackson’s march (Gary), Thoroughfare Gap (me), and ended with a long Brawner Farm walk (Jeff). The next morning we started at Manassas Junction (Gary and Carol), walked the Unfinished Railroad (Gary on Sigel’s attack, Carol on Grover’s, Gary on Nagle’s, and me on Kearny’s), then did Stone House (me), Groveton (Gary), walked Porter’s Attack (me), 5th NY (Jeff), and walked Chinn Ridge (Carol).

One of the many highlights of this great program (watching Gary, Carol, and Jeff work was of course another, as was getting one of the buses stuck in a ditch at Jeffersonton) was getting to see the area around the Brawner Farm and Deep Cut for the first time after the extensive tree-cutting that has recently taken place. As at Gettysburg, the effect is amazing–actually, “jaw-dropping” would be more accurate–and really makes for a better understanding of what happened. The first photo below is of two then-West Point cadets, Josh DeJournett and Dan Lawton, in front of the “Groveton Monument” with them facing toward the Deep Cut during a 2002 staff ride. The other photo was taken on Saturday and looks toward the monument (it is at right center, click on for a better, full size image) from the parking lot from where we began our walk of Fitz John Porter’s 30 August 1862 attack.

If your last visit to Manassas came more than two years ago, you will remember, like myself and the cadets in 2002, following a trail to find the monument in a clearing surrounded by trees and struggling to visualize S.D. Lee’s artillery firing into Porter from the Brawner Farm. Now the monument looks almost lonely out there by itself . . . but, man, what a fantastic development for students of the battle. The area on the other side of the cut has been cleared as well, so you no longer have to start out your talk about Baylor getting killed in an open field while trying to bring up the Stonewall Brigade with “imagine there are no woods here”.

Second Manassas has always been in my mind one of the most interesting campaigns of the war, and it is hard to think of one in the East that is better for military professionals interested in studying the operational level of war. Thanks to the work recently done on the field, its value for those interested in tactical events is now also high–although not as high as it would be if someone could figure out how to make that darned intersection less of a pain.

but I got nothing else right now, so I thought I would copy-and-paste a post I recently did for the CGSC Department of Military History blog. It is in some ways a sequel to my Civil Warring at CGSC post, in which I discussed my work as author for our course block on warfare and the Industrial Revolution, which consists of two two-hour lessons on the American Civil War and Wars of German Unification. After about three years as the author for these lessons, I decided earlier this year to hand them off to my colleague Terry Beckenbaugh and picked up authorship of our Early Modern Revolution block, which consists of two lessons and helps justify the visit to Breitenfeld that produced the photo below. (Needless to say, my wife thinks I should try to get a block of lessons covering Pearl Harbor and the South Pacific next year.)

Anyway, here is the post:

Teaching War in Early Modern Europe and the Age of Limited War

As the author of the block of lessons instructors on the August academic calendar at CGSC will be executing in the next few weeks, I am responsible for leading a department round table to discuss the assigned readings and teaching methods. The block of lessons I am responsible for in our “Rise of the Western Way of War” course–-the first of three history courses the students take during their nine-month program here–-address the evolution of warfare in the late Middle Ages to the eve of the French Revolution in line with the course themes of revolutions in warfare and the development of the “Western Way of War”. These themes are designed to help students develop the ability to use historical context to inform professional judgment and analyze the causes, consequences, and contexts of revolutionary change in warfare. The block of lessons I am responsible for consists of two two-hour lessons. The first, entitled “Rise of the State and the Dawn of Modern Warfare” addresses the intertwined transformation of warfare and European society during the three centuries prior to 1650 historians often refer to as “THE Military Revolution”; the second, entitled “Limited War in the Eighteenth Century” looks at how military practices in Europe continued to evolve in the century after the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-48.

In the lesson plan, assigned readings for the first lesson consist of the section of Geoffrey Parker, ed., The Cambridge History of Warfare that begins with the revitalization of infantry in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and ends with the Thirty Years’ War. To ensure instructors have sufficient flexibility in how they wish to pitch the lesson, though, they are also given the option of adjusting their reading assignments to incorporate Gunther Rothenberg’s essay from Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age on “Maurice of Nassau, Gustavus Adolphus, Raimondo Montecuccoli, and the ‘Military Revolution’ of the Seventeenth Century”; an essay by DMH’s own Scott Stephenson on the 1631 Battle of Breitenfeld in the Book of Readings the Department of Military History puts together for the students, or Cliff Rogers’s essay, “‘As if a new sun had arisen’: England’s fourteenth-century RMA,” from MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray’s The Dynamics of Military Revolution.

Assigned readings for the “Limited War in the Eighteenth Century” lesson consist of: 1) The section from The Cambridge History of Warfare covering military developments during the late seventeenth century, the Wars of Louis XIV and Frederick the Great , and the Seven Years War; and 2) John Lynn’s essay “Forging the Western Army in seventeenth-century France,” from Knox and Murray, Dynamics of Military Revolution. Optional readings are Henry Guerlac’s essay on Vauban and R.R. Palmer’s essay on Frederick the Great from Makers of Modern Strategy and Jay Luvaas’s essay on “Frederick the Great: The Education of a Great Captain” from the DMH Book of Readings.

Department lesson round tables are generally conducted in an informal fashion, as almost every member of DMH has already taught every lesson successfully. Thus, the task of the lesson author is usually to simply call attention to changes (if any) they have made in the lesson and reiterate the big themes of the general course and the lessons linkages to it. Finally, the lesson author throws the discussion out to the department (especially its members at the satellite campuses, who teach the course three times every year) to find out what has worked for them in pitching the lesson, what hasn’t, and the various approaches they take to the material.

The U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) will be opening a new satellite campus at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, and is looking to hire a military historian to join the Huntsville teaching team. A completed PhD in history and teaching experience (especially military history) are the most important qualifications, with publications and engagement in other professional activities being helpful. Field of research and study is completely open.

The job consists of teaching the core Intermediate Level Education course on military history, H100: Rise of the Western Way of War, three times a year, plus other instructional and administrative duties as required by the teaching team. H100 is a twelve-lesson (24 hours total) course, developed by the Department of Military History here at Fort Leavenworth, that covers military history from approximately 1400 through World War I and is oriented around the theme of military revolutions. The texts are Geoffrey Parker, ed., Cambridge History of Warfare and MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, eds., The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050, plus a book of readings put together by the course and lesson authors. For each iteration of the course, you will also be required to conduct a one-day staff ride (Chickamauga and Murfreesboro are probably your best bets), supported by me and other instructors from the Department of Military History.

The job announcement (Vacancy Announcement Number SWEX09523295) will be posted Thursday and remain up for two weeks only. The Army really hopes to get the Redstone Arsenal team in operation in time for a January start. Missing that, a first class in May.

This is especially relevant to those determined to miss the public service message provided here.