Civil Warriors

Here’s a quiz — seriously intended — for those of you who have given tours or staff rides of Gettysburg.

Let’s say you’re bringing fifty visitors to the battlefield aboard a bus.  Let’s further say that your arrival time on the battlefield is 8:45 a.m.  Departure is 4:00 p.m.  And let’s say that between 11:45 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. there will be a lunch break on the battlefield or in a picnic area nearby.

That leaves six and a half hours to visit the battlefield.  Deducting drive time on the battlefield and the time required to get everyone on and off the bus leaves about six hours.  Question:  How many dismounted stops would you make?  Where?  And why?

I look forward to hearing from as many of you as possible.

Click here to view (or download) a recent Gettysburg NMP brochure.

… you come across a haunted Civil War doll … err, “action figure.”  And another one.

From the description from one ad:

Amazingly enough, the next morning, the soldiers we had placed at the field of Pickett’s Charge and in various other points were still there, but I just figured it was a stroke of sheer luck, that someone couldn’t stand the thought of stealing a child’s toy when they might come looking for it later.  So we gathered them up each night and finished out the rest of our trip, went back to the hotel that night and rested peacefully without one glimmer of anything strange or unusual.  This all changed though when we got back home.

My brother began to call me about all the weird things happening in the middle of the night.  He said on more than one occasion, simply out of no where, came the strongest scent of smoke and gunpowder.  he said that he was hearing noises, faintly but distinctly, like the cries of wounded soldiers begging for help, begging to be put out of their misery.  He could hear the beat of drums, the shot of muskets firing he claimed, the clank of bayonets.  The sounds were not all bad though, there were plesant sounds too.  Songs sung over a campfire, the beautiful but melancholy sound of the fiddle.  Laughter and joking over a card game.  Quiet but constant reminders of the lives this group of the bravest men had shared.  Dreams he thought maybe at first, from all the reading he did before bed at night.

But when he would put the soldiers in one place at night, and find them in another the next morning, he could no longer ignore the fact that somethinghad happened during those nights these dolls spent alone on the battlefield.  That somehow the veil between this world and that world had been lifted back, and the essence of their spirit had been passed to these forms that so rememble them.  That perhaps the world we live in is not so black and white after all, but filled with every color of gray and blue in between.

Now, do you think that if they sold these on Steinwehr Avenue, business would pick up?  Apparently they need something.

I will note both … action figures … are Confederate.  So is this one.  But, in honor of the only Union regiment that seems to have fought at Gettysburg, we do have our token soldier from the 20th Maine.

Kevin M. Levin’s relentless war against all things Confederate continues.  His new target is Confederate commemorative art.  See what he has to say in a recent post:

Afterwords I took a quick walk through New Market and grabbed a bite to eat.  I stopped in a cheesy little Civil War store where you can find John Paul Strain paintings on just about every object imaginable.  Do people actually buy that crap? 

Well, Kevin, this is for you.

Mind you, I don’t mind this piece:

Wonder why.

In October 2003 I managed to drag my wife and then five-month old daughter up to Grant’s Cottage. A really neat site (and it comes after a beautiful drive) in the fall with the leaves changing in the Adirondacks. Not only is the cottage full of good stuff, a short hike from it takes you to an overlook with a great view of the valley below that Grant spent time at during his stay there. Unfortunately, the cottage is only open Memorial Day through Columbus Day, and then on a very limited schedule that becomes even more limited after Labor Day. Details are here.

The view from the porch from where my daughter and I are sitting is of the recreation area of Mt. McGregor Correctional Facility. Indeed, if you want to go up to the cottage you must first stop at the access post and check in. A bit of a pain, but the reward is being able to sit at a spot on the porch where Grant wrote his memoirs, close your eyes, maybe think about the war as Grant wrote about it—and then open your eyes to quickly get a reminder of his presidency.

Sorry, Brooks–I couldn’t resist.

It’s with sadness that I share with you the news of Alan Nolan’s passing.  Fellow bloggers Kevin Levin and Eric Wittenberg have already commented on this news.  I can add that I met Alan at the Civil War Institute when we were both speakers: he was a generous man and a serious scholar.  Gary Gallagher and Alan did what amounted to a two-man show debating the merits (or lack thereof) of Robert E. Lee: that the two men were warm friends despite their differences was evident when they teamed together to edit a book, The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History, to which I contributed an essay. 

Alan is best known for two areas of scholarship: his work on the Iron Brigade and his interest in understandings (and misunderstandings) of Confederate history.  I think people misread what many scholars consider to be his best-known work, Lee Considered (1991): it’s best to understand that his primary target was Lee’s biographers and those students of Confederate military history who tended to worship Marse Robert.  That book was often controversial and sometimes quite persuasive.  Sometimes I believe I admire him most for some of the enemies he has made among Lost Cause apologists: Nolan reminded us of Lee’s willingness to defend slavery and his disgust with abolitionists.  It’s another tragic loss for the community of Civil War scholars.

The Grant Cottage

I recently came across a nice television piece on what is now known as the Grant Cottage.  It’s not the easiest place to visit: it is the most important Grant site that I have yet to visit (although my parents visited the cottage years ago). 

The caretaker is more right than she knows about Grant reading (and commenting) on newspaper speculation about his dying.  He did not care for criticism of his doctors, but otherwise he usually seemed amused by the various reports. 

Grant’s Memoirs remain something of a masterpiece of American literature.  Considering the circumstances under which they were composed, the volumes are even more of an achievement than one might suppose.  They tell the story of the war from Grant’s perspective: one of the Memoirs’ achievements is that it is left to the discerning reader to understand that Grant is, indeed, making his case, countering critics, slighting certain people, and so on.  The Memoirs has its share of errors and questionable interpretations, and, as one might suspect, those who don’t care for Grant make the most of what they can of those errors and impute the worst of motives to him.

But for me the real story is how Grant faced death by focusing on an important task, motivated by the desire to do what he could do for his family.  That human drama is often overlooked, even in Grant biographies.  Also overlooked until recently is how Grant, both in his writing and in the way he lived his last year, reached out to reconcile with old foes while refusing to concede the rightness of the Union cause or to abandon his belief that the sectional crisis was fundamentally due to slavery.  David Blight and Joan Waugh have written about this, and you can be sure I’m doing so as well in the second volume of the biography.

I’ve had cause to reflect on people writing books while facing death.  Earlier this month, New York Yankee ballplayer and announcer Bobby Murcer passed away after battling brain cancer for nineteen months.  He hurried to place his recollections on paper, and while no one will hail the result, Yankee for Life, as an instant masterpiece, still one sees Murcer’s essential decency, sense of humor, and concern for others, much as Grant’s self-assuredness and cast of mind come through in his book.  Murcer’s book isn’t a whisper-and-tell book, but neither does it shy away from personal disappointments (including stints with the Giants and Cubs) … rather, he rarely dwells on them, although he expresses regret at how Mickey Mantle treated himself.  Something of the same tenor is evident in Grant’s book.

Like Grant, Murcer faced death bravely.  Like Grant, he did not spend time feeling sorry about himself, and he thought of his family.  Like Grant, he remained alive long enough to learn how much people loved him.  I tip my cap to both men. 

Please excuse my long absence from blogging. It has been quite a year for me thus far, between work and caring for an elderly relative in our home, but I hope to be able to contribute more regularly in the near future.

On Saturday afternoon I had the privilege of participating in a tour led by Eric Wittenberg, assisted by J.D. Petruzzi, covering Farnsworth’s Charge. Of course, Elon Farnsworth was one of the three boy generals appointed by General “Alf” Pleasonton (along with Custer and Wesley Merritt), who tragically was killed only a few days after attaining his star simply because he had the misfortune of serving under a certain Judson (”Kill Cavalry”) Kilpatrick. It’s a fairly well known story among Civil War enthusiasts, so I will only briefly summarize the circumstances leading to his death on July 3, 1863.

After the repulse of Pickett’s Charge that day, Kilpatrick, who commanded the 3rd Division of the Cavalry Corps, ordered Farnsworth to make a charge with his brigade against Confederate positions south of Devil’s Den and below Little Round Top. Farnsworth protested the order, saying the proposed charge into a hilly and rocky area within range of considerable Confederate artillery would be suicidal and had no hope of success. He finally agreed to lead it after Kilpatrick allegedly suggested that he was a coward. The charge was indeed quickly repulsed with heavy losses. Farnworth himself was killed near the Bushman farmhouse. He died a needless death in a gloriously futile charge that Eric suggested to us was somewhat reminiscent of the famous Charge of the Light Brigade.

No action was taken against Kilpatrick for ordering the charge.  And similarly shocking, no monument has ever been erected to Elon Farnsworth on the most heavily monumented battlefield in the United States. He is apparently the only Union general killed at Gettysburg who does not have a monument. You would think that would be enough, but the National Park Service has told folks who have approached it about a monument to Farnsworth that its position is that there should be no more monuments - so Elon is just out of luck.

Well, anyone who has been paying attention in recent years knows that, in addition to the famous “Longstreet on a pony” debacle, certain powerful politicians have somehow managed to get (unwarranted?) new monuments added to the battlefield. And of course it would be silly to think that it would be otherwise; as long as there are constituencies (and contributors!) to be satisfied, there will be monuments added at Gettysburg - though hopefully they can be kept to a minimum. However, Farnsworth’s case speaks for itself, and the Park Service needs to wake up. On an excessively monumented field like Gettysburg, how can it deny a monument to the only Union general killed on the field who doesn’t have one? Add to that the drama of a 25-year-old boy general dying just days after his promotion because of his commander’s reckless ineptitude (and his own bravery), and one wonders how poor Elon has waited this many years to begin with. Let’s start a movement…

This interview with Frank J. Williams makes for interesting reading, especially in his use of Lincoln to explore current policies and practices. 

Whether, on the eve of the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth, we need to agree with this perspective is another issue entirely, although this would seem to be an example of “getting right with Lincoln,” as David Donald once put it.  Still, to say that certain aspects of the interviews make me uncomfortable is a fair if understated assessment.

Note:  This suggests that others have also raised questions about Williams’s understanding of Lincoln in regards to present policy.  The debate goes on.

Note the revised version of John Y. Simon’s obituary in the New York Times.  Thanks to the person who pointed me to the revision.  The original version can still be found here.

Cross-posted from Blog Them Out of the Stone Age

Sorry for the dearth of posts in recent days. I’ve been in the throes of my move from Columbus to Carlisle, Pa., where I’ll spend the coming year as the Harold K. Johnson Professor of Military History at the U.S. Army War College (AWC).

Right now things are quiet at the AWC. The resident class of 2008 graduated in early June and has now departed. The resident class of 2009 doesn’t officially arrive until next week, and the academic year proper doesn’t start until August 1. The only students already here are the 40 international fellows: officers from other countries who will be taking the year long course of study as well. They’re here early because in most cases, they’re not just transitioning into a new assignment but also into a new culture.

Most of the faculty are away on leave. The main exceptions are the ones tasked to help orient new faculty members like myself. We just completed a week-long introduction to how things work at the AWC. It’ was far more elaborate than anything I recall when I joined the OSU faculty sixteen years ago, and included not just administrative info but also a lot of info about adult learning (andragogy) and discussion-based instruction.

Instruction at the war college is built around tightly knit seminar groups consisting of 15 US officers, 2 international fellows, and 3 faculty members — one from each of the main teaching departments: Command, Leadership, and Management; Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations; and National Security and Strategy. The “tightly knit” doesn’t happen automatically. The AWC expends a lot of effort by way of ice breaker events for each seminar, mandatory softball games in which one seminar competes against the others, etc. The core curriculum of six courses is centrally planned but executed by the faculty members within each seminar, and as long as the major learning objectives are achieved there’s considerable flexibility in how this is accomplished. It could hardly be otherwise, given that the faculty’s role is mainly to facilitate, not lecture. Most instruction is done via discussion among the students, who will have done the readings for the day’s lesson and, ideally, will conduct a focused dialog on the readings with minimal intervention from the faculty. Faculty and students normally wear business attire, not uniforms, in order to minimize rank consciousness and encourage candid exchange of views.

I’m off to a mixer with the international fellows. More soon.

OBLIGATORY CIVIL WAR RELATED ADDENDUM:  The war college is located at Carlisle Barracks, just east of the town of Carlisle.  Its halls and conference rooms are festooned with military paintings and prints, many with a Civil War theme.  (Mort Kunstler fans will think they’ve died and gone to heaven.)  I’m told that ironically, the figure who appears most often in this artwork is Jeb Stuart, who burned Carlisle Barracks — then a major supply depot for Union cavalry — in June 1863.

To do the two parts of this post in proper sequence, click here for the first part then come back– or just scroll down to read the first part.

Day 4: Leipzig

I had originally planned to spend a day after Hradec Kralove recharging my batteries in Prague before heading up to Leipzig, but problems with the airlines that postponed my departure from Kansas City by a day nixed that part of the plan. Fortunately, the ride from Prague to Leipzig was very smooth–and had the added benefit of taking me through the pass in the hills of northern Bohemia at Lovosice (Lobositz) where Frederick the Great defeated von Browne’s Austrians in the first significant engagement of the Seven Years’ War in October 1756. The first stop after reaching Leipzig was the Volkerschlachtdenkmal, or Monument to the 1813 Battle of the Nations. After going through the absolutely superb museum dedicated to the 1813 Battle of Leipzig (the photo on the far left below was taken in a park near where Schwarzenberg had his headquarters during the battle), I spent a few hours going through the truly awesome monument and was rewarded for my hike up some very narrow stairways to its top with great views of Leipzig, then posed for the photo below in front of the monument. I then proceeded up to Breitenfeld to look at the site of the 1631 battle there. Aside from a monument to Gustav Adolf on the periphery of the battlefield, there was nothing to indicate something really important had happened there. Nonetheless, the area around Podelwitz where the battle was fought is still in very good condition and with the right maps and accounts of the battle in hand I was able to get a lot out of my visit. In the center right photo below, I am standing approximately where Gustav Horn, commander of the Swedish left, realigned his forces during the battle to counter the advance of the Imperial tercios toward the camera after the rout of the Saxons. After Breitenfeld, I went over to Lutzen to check out the scene of Gustav Adolf’s last battle. This is another site that is such good condition that it is very easy to visualize the battle. The photo below on the far right is of a memorial to Gustav Adolf located near where he was mortally wounded while engaged in the fighting of November 1632 on the left center of his line.

Day 5: Jena-Auerstedt

For my last day of battlefield tramping, I headed south from Leipzig to the battlefields of Jena-Auerstedt. I started at the excellent museum at Cospoda and gathered a bunch of maps and guides. I then hiked up to the Napoleon stone on the Landgrafenberg, where you get a great view down to Jena in the valley of the Saale below. From there I moved over to the scene of the fighting for Dornburg and Rodigen, and then to the position held by the Prussians around Vierzehnheiligen. In the center left photo below, the Prussian position and Vierzehnheiligen are in the distance behind me, so it gives you the perspective of the French attackers. I then made my way over to Hassenhausen via Auerstedt to check out the battlefield where Davout and the “three immortals” defeated the Prussians. After spending some time in the museum in Hassenhausen (pictured below), I moved around the various French and Prussian positions, getting a great sense of the battle and the terrain over which it was fought. The photo below on the far right is of the marker indicating the position of the Wartensleben division during a critical phase of the battle, from which it unsuccessfully attacked the French position on the heights above the marker south of Hassenhausen and then was routed by Morand’s division.

After spending the night in Dresden, I made my way back to Prague the next day and spent much of my last evening there walking around the historic sections of the city. I didn’t make it up to the castle to see the site of the second defenestration but did manage to stop by New Town Hall where the first took place.

Well, Monday marks the resumption of the academic year here at the staff college, so it is back to work. I have sixteen hours in the classroom at the staff college (lessons on amphibious ops in the Pacific and Combined Bomber Offensive) scheduled for next week, plus a lecture and very short tour of Westport to lead for an NEH seminar in Kansas City on the Border Wars. Then it is off to the East Coast for a week to help lead a Chancellorsville staff ride for the folks at Fort Belvoir, spend time with relatives, and participate in Ted’s big Gettysburg show. Then its back home for another full week of classes at Fort Leavenworth and the second iteration of the NEH seminar.

A busy month to say the least; but it is hard to complain, since, like Chazz Reinhold, I’m just living the dream—minus the picking up hot chicks at funerals thing.

Those who have to use their vacation time to see Civil War and Revolutionary War battlefields undoubtedly wonder at times what those of us for whom visiting battlefields is part of our job do with our vacation time. The answer in my case this year is: See battlefields from other wars! Earlier this month, I hopped over to the Czech Republic and spent about a week running around some battlefields. Here are the highlights of that trip, with thumbnail photos that you can click on for the full image.

Day 1: White Mountain (Bila Hora)

After landing in Prague late in the morning of 2 July, I took a detour off the route to my hotel to check out the Hvezda Preserve. This is a large park west of downtown Prague whose main attraction is a large building, known as the Hvezda Summer Pavilion, which is in the form of a six-pointed star and was built in the 1550s. This structure was most famously where the 20,000 Bohemian Protestants commanded by Christian of Anhalt anchored their right flank during the 1620 Battle of White Mountain (Bila Hora or Weisser Berg). Unfortunately, it did nothing to prevent the Protestant force from suffering a crushing defeat at the hands of the forces of the Holy Roman Empire and Catholic League, which then occupied Prague and executed twenty-seven leaders of the Bohemian insurrection, an event commemorated by twenty-seven crosses embedded in the cobblestone in front of Prague’s Old Town Hall.

Day 2: Austerlitz (Slavkov)

The following morning, I got into my rental car, did the two-hour drive to Brno/Slapanice, and then spent the rest of the day walking and driving around the Austerlitz (Slavkov) battlefield. The photo on the right was taken on Zuran Hill, where Napoleon had his headquarters, looking toward Stare Vinohrady (Old Vineyards) and Pratzen Heights. After stops in Krenovice (the site of the Allied conferences before the battle) and Telnice to look at the site of the opening engagements, I stopped at Sokolnice and saw the castle there (pictured below). I then traveled north through Kobylnice to Ponetovice. Near where I am standing just outside Ponetovice in the photo below is the point from which Napoleon and Marshal Soult launched St. Hilaire’s assault on Prace and the heights beyond (which I am pointing to). After this I went over to Stare Vinohrady where the Allied fourth column was routed and drove through Prace up to Mohyla Miru, the battle monument and museum pictured below on the Pratzen Heights. I then drove down to Zatcany and checked out the famous (and now drained) ponds over which some of the Russians attempted to make their escape; the photo on the far right below looks over the site of one of the ponds toward Pratzen Heights. Santon Hill was the next stop to look at site of the fighting on the northern end of the field and from there I proceeded to Austerlitz (Slavkov) to see the castle and did a stop at Stara Posta (the Old Post Office). After seeing these sites, I had dinner at a car park near Santon Hill where they found a mass grave during the construction of a McDonalds a few years ago.

Day 3: Koniggratz (Hradec Kralove)

After staying in Brno overnight (at the Best Western Austerlitz, where I had the “Broglie Room”), I spent the early morning of the fourth driving up to Hradec Kralove to see the 1866 battlefield. After stopping at the 1866 museum on Chlum Heights, picking up some materials (none of these were in English, but between the maps and my limited German, I was able to get around without too much trouble), and checking out the “Battery of the Dead” memorial, I went up the nearby observation tower. I then drove down to Sadova and the Bystrice River to get the Prussian First Army’s view of Chlum Heights, and made my way over to the Field Rifleman monument, which marks the entrance to the trail through Les Svib (Sweipwald). I spent an hour or two going through the Alley of Death where numerous crosses (such as the one below in the left center) and monuments identify the location of soldiers who had fallen in the fight between the Prussian division and two Austrian corps for the woods. The terrain and foliage of the woods combined with the history of the site to make for a rather chilling experience walking through the woods. Then, at the eastern edge of the woods, one was rewarded with a superb view of the ground over which the Prussian Second Army advanced against the decimated Austrian right. After making my way back to my car, I headed over to the village of Horineves. The photo below on the right center provides the view from the outskirts of the village toward the high ground beyond it. When he saw his troops had possession of Horineves heights, Moltke reportedly proclaimed to Wilhelm I that the battle was won with Vienna now at his feet. I then went back to Chlum Heights to look over the scene of the bitter fight between there and the village of Rozerbice in which the Austrians desperately tried to salvage their position. The monument on the far right is on high ground below which is Rozerbice. After going over to Probluz and Dolni Prim to look at the site of the fighting between the Saxons and Elbe Army, I headed back to Prague.

Here is part two.

This morning John Y. Simon’s obituary (see below for new link) appeared in the New York Times.  It proved to be interesting reading.  What first drew my attention were the following two paragraphs:

The volumes helped cement Grant’s place as a literary memoirist and not just a war diarist. But perhaps more important, said Harold Holzer, an Abraham Lincoln scholar and a senior vice president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they changed the nature of documentary editing, bringing the perspective of a biographer rather than a cataloger to the enterprise.

“He changed the whole ethos of presidential papers,” Mr. Holzer said in an interview Wednesday. “He matched incoming correspondence with outgoing, so researchers would have a complete episode. He included editorial commentary that was more substantial than footnotes. He wrote introductions to each volume. They’re a model for the Jefferson papers, the Wilson papers; he’s the father of this whole discipline.”

I’m not sure where to begin in correcting this rather erroneous assessment of the place of John Y. Simon in Civil War historiography and the practice of documentary editing, but here goes:

First, Grant wrote a memoir, not a war diary.  I’m not sure how the publication of the papers enhanced Grant’s literary reputation, except to prove that he wrote far more than some previous people had claimed that that his letters were still around, contradicting an earlier claim by William Best Hesseltine.  Perhaps that’s a matter of opinion and interpretation.  What follows, however, is grounded in sheer ignorance at best.  Apparently Mr. Holzer is unaware that the presidential papers of Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson preceded the publication of the first volume of the Grant papers in 1967.  Volume one of the Jefferson papers, edited by Julian Boyd, appeared in 1950.  The first volume of the Wilson papers appeared in 1966.  Those papers were edited by a team headed by distinguished Wilson biographer Arthur Link.  It would be far more accurate to say that Boyd’s editing style informed that of his successors, and certainly Link brought a biographer’s insight to Wilson before Simon did (for, after all, Simon never did compose a biography of Grant, although he wrote extensively about him). 

Anyone who takes a look at either the Jefferson or Wilson papers will see extensive footnotes and commentary: indeed, Boyd had a practice of going on and on about the documents he was editing.  So did other projects, including one with which I had more than a passing familiarity, the Papers of Andrew Johnson (which also first appeared in 1967), in which the introductions eventually came to dwarf those available in the Grant papers to the point of excess.  Both projects published volumes related to the papers, something the Grant papers tried once in a series of essays.  If anyone’s the father of the modern discipline of editing the papers of a president, it’s Julian Boyd.  John himself was content to be called “the dean of documentary editing,” although that term was also used to describe Link.

Besides, as people who work on documentary editions know all too well, it’s a team effort.  Simon didn’t edit Grant’s papers all by himself: he supervised a team of people who did a great deal of work.  He acknowledged as much in accepting the Lincoln Prize.  Sometimes people unfamiliar with the practice of documentary editing (as sadly seems to be the case with Mr. Holzer) should keep that in mind.

John Y. Simon’s contributions in assisting people to understand the life and times of Ulysses S. Grant remain substantial enough to stand the test of time, garner praise, and deserve our gratitude without misrepresenting them.  In my opinion, the obituary’s misinformed (and also contains a serious lapse of judgment).  There are better ways to remind people of John’s achievements: see here and here. 

Sometimes one needs to be saved from one’s friends.

Update (July 14, 2008):  Apparently the obituary has been updated.  Here’s the original: here’s the updated version. 

Today I learned of sad news, first from a good friend, then from this article.

Since 1967 The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant has been a model of documentary editing.  It certainly has been important to my work.  I own all twenty-eight volumes, with two more just appearing now. 

John Y. Simon headed the project that published those papers.  He was an imposing presence, with a sharp and subtle wit (well, always sharp, and usually subtle).  I first met him in 1985, when I visited Carbondale to look at some of the papers associated with the project and with Grant (as opposed to the files of documents to be published by the project–those were off limits).  John and his wife Harriet hosted me at dinner, and if you’ve been to Carbondale (as Steve Woodworth can testify), that was a welcome relief from the prospect of fast food.  John helped secure my first opportunity to review a book for the journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (called, appropriately enough, Documentary Editing), reviewed the manuscript of my first article for Civil War History prior to my submitting it, and on the whole was supportive of my early endeavors.

Over the past two decades John and I appeared at various conferences and institutes, including Gettysburg College’s Civil War Institute (2001) and at a meeting of the Police Chiefs of New Jersey (2007).  At the latter meeting he was still recovering from the effects of an accident, but that did not dampen his wit or dim the twinkle in his eye as we were held hostage in a limo by a driver who had lost his way in downtown Trenton.  He was unfailingly polite when we met.  We also collaborated on several projects, most notably the American Experience series on Grant.

John enjoyed life a great deal, and one almost always found him funny, even if the barb was directed at you.  He was blessed to be married to Harriet, who always looked out for his best interests.  He had a deep interest in Grant and The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant remains an essential resource.  Agree with him, disagree with him, engage him in give and take–he was a person, a force, with which I had to reckon, and I’ll miss him.             

Recently I spent some time in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, an activity with multiple meanings for me.  Sure, I’m a Civil War historian, but I’ve also visted Gettysburg a number of times, starting with my first visit in 1967, so I have various memories connected with various trips.  Two direct ancestors of mine fought at Gettysburg: William M. Thomas, a drummer boy with the 23rd Pennsylvania, was at Culp’s Hill, while James L. Denton’s 146th New York fought at Little Round Top.  The New Yorkers were all dressed up in slate blue (or powder blue) Zouave outfits, such as this one currently on display at the visitor’s center:

   Pretty dandy duds, to be sure.

On July 2, 1863, the 146th New York, along with the 91st and 155th Pennsylvania, scurried up the north slope of Little Round Top in the wake of the 140th New York, led by Patrick O’Rorke.  You know the story of how O’Rorke led his men across Little Round Top just in time to save the right flank of Strong Vincent’s brigade as the 16th Michigan gave way (yes, believe it or not, there were other people on Little Round Top besides Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine).  Although the other three regiments were not involved in this original action, they must have seen a little fire that day or the next, because the 146th New York suffered 28 casualties … four killed and twenty-four wounded.

Most of you know exactly where the 146th New York was deployed on Little Round Top.  Indeed, most of you (if not virtually all of you) who have visited Little Round Top have stood exactly where this regiment was deployed.  The best way to prove this is to show you a picture of the 146th monument:

  That’s right … the regiment was deployed at the Warren monument.  Indeed, the regiment included veterans of the 5th New York, which was once commanded by Warren; Denton joined the regiment when Warren was its brigade commander.