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Bring Your Black Friends to Civil War Events
After several people recently lamented the lack of black people at Civil War events along with potential reasons why this is the case, Jimmy Price described an experience at the macro level that I have experienced on a micro level. Quite simply—black Americans, especially men, are just as interested in discussing the topic of war, especially the Civil War, like any…
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Counterinsurgency Prior to Clausewitz
We need to expand the literature and case studies we use to analyze counterinsurgency to include ancient and medieval periods. In the recent “Thinking and Writing about COIN,” John T. Fishel and Edwin G. Corr provide a great overview of counterinsurgency literature over the past century. Their point is obvious in that if we are…
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Will Americans Support War on Nameless Enemies?
In On Strategy (1982), Harry G. Summers, Jr. bemoaned LBJ’s “conscious decision not to mobilize the American people—to invoke the national will—for the Vietnam War,” specifically not declaring war. Summers believed that by not declaring war, LBJ failed to invoke the national spirit of the country. Thus, he concluded that because the national will had “never…
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The Three Types of Civil War Buffs
When friends and coworkers discover I frequently visit Civil War battlefields, they often ask me if I reenact. I do not. Never had the desire. Of course, this leads to the next question—then what the hell are you (and your friends) doing out there? Their tone usually indicates they could not conceive what else people…
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Book Review: Battles of the Scottish Lowlands
In Battles of the Scottish Lowlands, Stuart Reid offers a sweeping survey of battles and campaigns occurring around Stirling over a period of nearly 450 years (1297-1746). The focus and selection of events is purely geographical and the Reid freely admits that readers may immediately criticize the lack of some significant Scotland battlefields (e.g., Culloden), but…
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John Cummings’s “Harvest of Death” Location
For nearly two years, John Cummings has gone through a discovery process to find the location of one of the most iconic images from Gettysburg, and the Civil war—Alexander Gardner’s “The Harvest of Death” and its companion, “Field where General Reynolds Fell.” I still remember these images from my textbook in grade school. When I…
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The 150th of Pickett’s Charge from the Peter Rogers House
Roughly 15,000 people were there for the 150th of Pickett’s Charge. After walking these fields numerous times, I can confidently say you just cannot get to a spot where you can see all the highs and lows of the hills between Cemetery and Seminary ridges. Here is what I saw. By 12:00 PM on July…
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Why I Keep Going Back to Gettysburg
Next week, I will spend five days and four nights at Gettysburg. Over the past few years, I have been there more than two dozen times. Every time I visit, I bring people with me—family, friends, coworkers, Temple students—giving them tours that last the entire day. I often have to explain my obsession, literally answering…
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Between Niche and Broad History Subjects
I have now read two different historians recently taking different positions on niche and broad-focused histories. In the realm of niche subjects, in Historiography (2012), Jeremy Black points out, [Academics] have sought out hole-in-the-corner subjects that, a critic might imagine, they can invest with meaningless complexities, as defensive walls against penetration by the initiated (16). The…
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8 Books for the Military History Undergrad
The size of my library ebbs and flows, but it is currently pushing 600 books. I collected most of them during the past four years, as I worked on a military history degree. The focus was vast, covering the ancient Egyptians all the way to the Libyan Civil War. While I have used all of…
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Save Historiography for the Last Year?
In trying to understand why students dread historiography, I came across several works by Jeremy Black, a prolific military historian. In his recent Historiography: Contesting the Past; Claiming the Future, Black describes the current approach to teaching the subject and why it often fails. The conventional pattern at present is that of a compulsory first-year…
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Bud Hall’s Brandy Station Battlefield Tour
This past Saturday (June 8), my buddy Brian and I had the privilege of attending a tour of the Brandy Station battlefield to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the battle. The Loudoun County Civil War Roundtable set up the whole thing and had Bud Hall on hand to lead the tour group of over a…
