Civil Warriors

What Gettysburg is to battlefields, Yankee Stadium is to ballparks.  Both are special places to me.  Four generations of Simpsons have visited both places.  I remember my first visit to both places, and I remember how important it was to me to bring my daughter Rebecca, a diehard Yankees fan, to Yankee Stadium in 2006.  We had obtained tickets some time before, and on the day of the game both of us were sick … but we were going to go.  And we did.  We took the Long Island Railroad into Penn Station, walked up to Grand Central Station, and boarded the 4 train for the Stadium.  When we got there, it was off to Monument Park.  When I was a kid, the monuments were in play in deep center field (the ballpark closing today is a renovated version of the ballpark of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, and a young Bobby Murcer and Thurman Munson).  The ballgame itself was a Yankee victory, 12-3 over the Baltimore Orioles, and our tickets cost $75 apiece (I recall mailing in a check for $12 in 1970 and getting back three behind-home-plate box seats for a twilight doubleheader against the Minnesota Twins).

Like Gettysburg, Yankee Stadium is as much about family history as it is about a larger history.  I first saw the Stadium on television in 1966 or 1967, and I’ll see it for the last time on television tonight.  So I have two top-six lists of memorable moments.  The first list involves what I saw on television: the second list involves games I saw in person.  Yes, the Aaron Boone homer in 2003 was memorable, in part because I got to celebrate it with my son Buddy, who had been a Yankee fan long before he became my son.  Love him, hate him, you can’t forget Reggie Jackson’s three home runs that capped the Yankees’ first World Series win in my active rooting experience.  Nor could I forget how nineteen years later Charlie Hayes squeezed the final out of the 1996 World Series.  I loved game one of the 1998 World Series, in which Tino Martinez broke a postseason slump with a grand slam to top the Padres.  Three years later, Martinez and Derek Jeter spearheaded a tremendous World Series comeback game, and the Yankees repeated that magic the following night.  But for me, what will stand forever is Bobby Murcer’s magnificent tribute to his fallen friend, Thurman Munson, on August 6, 1979, when, after the Yankees had buried their captain in the afternoon, Murcer drove in all five runs in a 5-4 triumph … over those same Baltimore Orioles.

Everyone knows of those games.  My personal in-person favorites are in their way no less special.  In 1999, I took my father to a September game in the Bronx, where the Yankees rallied late to tie the Devil Rays, then prevailed in extra innings when Alfonso Soriano hit his first major league home run, a walk-off blast just inside the left field foul pole.  Then there was Bat Day in 1970, when my father took my sister and me to the ballpark, only to have the bus get stuck blocks from the stadium.  We got in as the game was just underway: I still have my treasured Murcer bat, while Joy picked up (and later gave to me) her Munson bat.  The Yankees lost that day to the White Sox, but they did not lose when Rebecca and I went to see the Yankees in 2005, a game made memorable when we saw the rarest of sights: Randy Johnson laughing.  That was Rebecca’s first game in Yankee Stadium: my first game was on May 17, 1969, when the Yankees beat the California Angels (as they were known then), 6-0, a game topped by an inside-the-park home run by Yankee catcher John Ellis, who was playing in his first major league game.  I took my father and sister to a July 1973 doubleheader against the Cleveland Indians during the stadium’s 50^th anniversary: the Yankees swept both games, with Murcer, my favorite Yankee, having a tremendous day, including a home run in the second game.

That was my last experience in the old (pre-renovated) Stadium.  My best may well have been another doubleheader, the previously-mentioned 1970 twilight doubleheader against the Twins, where we sat behind home plate, just a few rows off the field.  The Yankees won the opening game rather handily.  We noted that if we turned around and looked up, we could see the Yankee broadcasters, including Phil Rizzuto.  My sister waved at Rizzuto, and Phil, wonderful as always, waved back.  I went one step further, making my way up to the booth between games, and getting the announcers’ autographs (I still have that piece of paper as well).  Game two (my first night game in person) was a close affair, and I could see my father getting worried (this was the New York City of the Lindsay years).  How was he going to get two kids home safely to suburbia in the dead of night via subway and train?  Finally, at the end of the eighth inning of a 1-1 tie, he announced that we were going to leave at the end of the next inning, win, lose, or tied.  Needless to say, I was extremely unhappy.  Mike Kekick (he of the infamous wife-swapping with Fritz Peterson several years later [Peterson had won the first game]) got out of a jam in the top of the ninth.  Murcer (who else?) reached first to lead off the ninth, moved to second on a sacrifice bunt, reached third after an intentional walk and Munson hitting into a fielder’s choice.  Two outs.  One more out and we’re gone.  Gene Michael, the light-hitting shortstop, pinch-hit, with Twins ace reliever Ron Perranoski on the mound.  Michael got around on one of Perranoski’s pitches and pulled it down the left field line … just foul.  Strike two, I believe.  It didn’t look good.  And then the ghosts came out for this thirteen year old kid, for with it all on the line, Perranoski reared back … and uncorked a wild pitch.  As the ball bounced back, straight towards us, Murcer scampered home, the Yankees won, 2-1 … and I was as happy as happy could be.

Much has changed over the years.  Murcer, Munson, and Rizzuto are gone (Mickey Mantle was already a legend when I became a baseball fan).  Don Mattingly and Martinez are retired.  So is Bernie Williams, even if he refuses to admit it.  Bob Sheppard, the voice of Yankee Stadium, has been ailing (you knew you were in the Stadium when he came over the PA system).  So it will be left to Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, and Jorge Posada (my three current favorite Yankees) to carry on the tradition in the new building just north of the present Stadium.

Farewell, good friend.

Here’s a newspaper account of the public hearing on the NPS’s plan to charge for admission to the museum as well as for a film and a chance to view the Cyclorama at Gettysburg NMP’s visitor’s center.

Kevin Levin’s offered his take on this article; you’ll see that I’ve offered my response in the comments section.   Kevin and I share much common ground on this issue, but I think the NPS has much to answer for as well, especially in its handling of this matter.

Dimitri Rotov’s called renewed attention to a series of websites that have done their best to connect themselves to the Civil War blogosphere: The American History Club and The American Civil War Forum.

There’s something wonderfully fradulent about the discussion groups on both sites: each site recycles old usenet threads from five years ago, distributes those threads among fictional members, and then pretends the result constitutes a current set of conversations.  This means, in part, that the original author of a long-forgotten thread may see his or her comments redistributed among a number of fictional discussants: since the texts themselves retain the names of the original participants, the result is funny, curious, bizarre … and ultimately an outright effort at fraud.

At various moments the people who run the site and who are using it to construct blogs that are extended commentaries on other blogs contact the usual suspects, who, given their usual friendliness, can find themselves drawn into this mess unawares.  I learned about this early enough to alert some fellow bloggers to what was going on, but I can see that at least one’s been ensnared.

You’ve been warned. 

I apologize to Brooks, Mark, and all of you out there for my (I am sure much lamented) absence from this site recently. Mainly, this has been a consequence of a very heavy work load here at the staff college the past few weeks, part of which has consisted of carrying out my new duty of working with the tech folks here at Fort Leavenworth to set up and manage a blog for CGSC’s Department of Military History. It is up now and will no doubt lead me to be even less active than I was before here on this site. Still, I anticipate that much of what I will be posting on our department blog will be relevant to the focus of this one and will probably just end up cross-posting on both sites a lot. To wit:

As the author of the block of lessons the instructors on the August academic calendar here at the staff college will be executing in the next few weeks, I am responsible for leading a department round table tomorrow morning to discuss the assigned readings and teaching methods. (As Mark is finding out at the War College and chronicling in various posts over at Blog Them Out Of the Stone Age, in the professional military education system courses are generally taught following a centrally developed curriculum; at this institution on the subjects below I am that center. God save us all.) 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–cover the influence of the Industrial Revolution on warfare, as well as the enduring effect of the French Revolution’s merging of mass politics and warfare. The block consists of two two-hour lessons. The first covers the American Civil War; the second, the Wars of German Unification.

In line with the overall course objectives, in the lesson plan, I have made the assigned readings for the Civil War lesson: 1) The section from The Cambridge History of Warfare (or Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare) covering the Civil War so students will get a general background on the war in a book that addresses the “Western Way of War” theme; 2) Mark’s essay “Surviving Military Revolution” from MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, The Dynamics of Military Revolution to examine the war in the context of the industrial revolution and mass politics “Military Revolutions” themes of the course; and, 3) the chapter on the Civil War from Andrew J. Birtle’s US Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1860-1941 to cover the unconventional aspect of the war. Because the block that proceeds mine looks at the Napoleonic Wars with an entire lesson on Clausewitz, I used to make my “McClellan, Clausewitz, and the Politics of War” essay an optional reading, but the cost of securing copyright from the publisher eventually made this prohibitive. For the same reason, I was recently compelled to drop from the readings Albert Castel’s essay “Quantrill’s Bushwhackers: A Case Study in Partisan Warfare”–a terrifically effective, yet concise analysis of the subject–for which the Birtle reading is designed to serve as a substitute.

As Mark is no doubt also discovering, once in the class itself, instructors actually have much latitude in exactly how they want to pitch the lesson. For that reason, as lesson author I provide my colleagues with a list of optional readings they can use, with the proviso that general guidance from above remains no more than 40-50 pages of assigned reading per lesson. In the Civil War lesson, for instance, instructors have the option of using my colleague Christopher Gabel’s Railroad Generalship: Foundations of Civil War Strategy and Rails to Oblivion: The Decline of Confederate Railroads in the Civil War; all or part of Russell Weigley’s essay, “American Strategy from its Beginning through the First World War” from Makers of Modern Strategy; Glenn Robertson’s essay on First Manassas from America’s First Battles, 1775-1965; the section from Grant’s memoirs laying out his planning for the 1864 campaign; or a short essay by my colleague Lou DiMarco on the U.S. Army and Reconstruction.

I generally conduct round tables in a very informal fashion, as most of the members of my department have already taught the lesson being covered. Thus, I usually only point out to my fellow instructors changes (if any) that might have made to the lesson since they last taught it (the new reading by Lou, for instance), quickly describe the Union strategic planning exercise I have developed if they are interested in using it, and reiterate the big themes of the general course and the lessons linkages to it. I then throw the discussion out to my collegaues by asking them to discuss what has worked for them in pitching the lesson, what hasn’t, and the approaches they take to the material.

Earl J. Hess has a new book out: The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Myth and Reality. I recommend it highly. Back in February the publisher asked me to blurb the book. I’m very selective about responding to such requests, but after reading the manuscript I had no hesitation:

“Conventional wisdom has long held that the carnage of 1861-1865 stemmed primarily from accuracy and extended range of the rifled musket. Earl Hess questions this assumption more thoroughly, thoughtfully, and convincingly than any historian thus far. This book is required reading, not just for students of the U.S. Civil War, but for anyone interested in the history of warfare.”

In a session at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, I amplified upon this a bit:

[The Civil War] can be seen as the last of the Napoleonic wars — indeed, as what Paddy Griffith suggestively called “a badly fought Napoleonic war.” In Battle Tactics of the Civil War (1989), Griffith argued that the rifled musket was at best an incremental improvement over the smoothbore musket, and that the linear tactics used in the war were therefore appropriate, not outmoded as the prevailing orthodoxy maintained. The key problem, he argued, was that Civil War units lacked the tactical sophistication to execute a Napoleonic assault successfully.

In so doing, Griffith took direct aim at Grady McWhiney and Perry Jamieson’s Attack and Die (1982), the best study to emphasize the transformational impact of the rifled musket. Initially Civil War military historians greeted his thesis with skepticism, partly because of his iconoclastic presentation and partly because of his limited evidence base. Over time, however, they have taken it with increasing seriousness, and Earl J. Hess’s forthcoming The Rifle Musket in the Civil War largely confirms Griffith’s thesis. In fact, Hess’s book is so well executed that upon publication it will become the standard work on the subject, and the Griffith thesis will become the new orthodoxy.

No kidding: If you think of yourself as a serious student of military history, this is one book you need to read — sooner rather than later.

… at the New-York Historical Society.

Generalship and the Civil War: Grant and Lee in War and Peace

Three experts take a closer look at the men who carried the heavy weight of command in our nation’s Civil War. From Grant and Lee to Sherman and Jackson, the generals of the Civil War were a varied and complex group. What qualities of character and mind defined the principal leaders of the armies on each side?

Date: 12/02/2008 06:30 PM

Just received this announcement from C-SPAN. I’m happy to see that this newly-opened site is getting the attention it deserves.

President Lincoln’s Cottage on C-SPAN

Saturday, September 6th

at 8:00pm

C-SPAN will air a two hour program devoted to President Lincoln’s Cottage.

This program will present the first high definition footage taken at the Cottage and will include a never-before-filmed panorama shot from the top of the tower adjacent to the Cottage. Historians Matthew Pinsker, Edna Greene Medford and Frank Milligan (Director of President Lincoln’s Cottage) will discuss the Lincoln’s life at the Soldiers’ Home, the momentous decisions made there and Lincoln’s daily commute through Civil War Washington.

. . . is now available for purchase wherever fine history books are sold. Here is the description:

The generalship of Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy’s greatest commander, has long fascinated students of the American Civil War. In assessing Lee and his military career, historians have faced the great challenge of explaining how a man who achieved extraordinary battlefield success in 1862-63 ended up surrendering his army and accepting the defeat of his cause in 1865. How, in just under two years, could Lee, the Army of Northern Virginia, and the Confederacy have gone from soaring triumph at Chancellorsville to total defeat at Appomattox Court House?

In this reexamination of the last two years of Lee’s storied military career, Ethan S. Rafuse offers a clear, informative, and insightful account of Lee’s ultimately unsuccessful struggle to defend the Confederacy against a relentless and determined foe. Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy describes the great campaigns that shaped the course of this crucial period in American history, the challenges Lee faced in each battle, and the dramatic events that determined the war’s outcome.

In addition to providing readable and richly detailed narratives of such campaigns as Gettysburg, Bristoe Station, Spotsylvania, and Appomattox, Rafuse offers compelling analysis of Lee’s performance as a commander and of the strategic and operational contexts that influenced the course of the war. He superbly describes and explains the factors that shaped Union and Confederate strategy, how both sides approached the war in Virginia from an operational standpoint, differences in the two sides’ respective military capabilities, and how these forces shaped the course and outcome of events on the battlefield.

Rich in insights and analysis, this book provides a full, balanced, and cogent account of how even the best efforts of one of history’s great commanders could not prevent the total defeat of his army and its cause. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in the career of Robert E. Lee and the military history of the Civil War.

Now I am sure some of you are saying: “I have an interest in the career of Robert E. Lee and the military history of the Civil War. But why should I get a copy of this instead of, say, saving up for the admission fee to Gettysburg?” Well, word on the street is:

“Controversial and compelling from first page to last, Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy achieves a trifecta. It affirms Lee’s stature as a perceptive strategist who understood Confederate independence could only be achieved by breaking the Union’s will in battle. It demonstrates the Army of the Potomac as a fighting force and its successive generals as competent commanders and it establishes Rafuse in the front rank of a new generation of scholars applying fresh perspectives to the Civil War.”—Dennis Showalter, Colorado College

“Combining lucid writing, judicious analysis, and refreshing common sense, this new study of Robert E. Lee’s generalship shows once again why Ethan S. Rafuse is one of the finest Civil War military historians at work today.” – Mark Grimsley, The Ohio State University; author of And Keep Moving On: The Virginia Campaign, May-June 1864

What are you waiting for?!? Get clicking here or here to order your copy . . . today!