September 11th, 2001

Neil Armstrong

Hi again!  Looks like I neglected my blog - three weeks have passed since my last post.  I've been busy working on my dissertation.  Yes, seriously!

I mark the passing of a true, genuine American hero, Neil Armstrong.  The first man to walk on the Moon died last week at the age of 82.  This quiet, retiring man may have shunned his fame but no history book since has failed to mention his exploit.  From earliest times, humans looked up at the Moon with amazement.  Yet, in the Twentieth Century, the technology became available to place people on its surface.  Armstrong was the first, Buzz Aldrin the second, and ten more followed in their steps, so to speak.  It was a childhood dream of mine to meet him, and now I'll never get my chance.  Oh well.  One bit of trivia: he visited the town of Langholm in Scotland in 1972, where a law requiring the summary execution of an Armstrong upon entry still existed on the books.

That's all for now.

Miscellaneous

Hi all!  Sorry for the long pause but July was a busy month.  I helped guide the Moore Center's tour of the Seven Days battlefields around Richmond at the end of June.  While it was HOT, reaching 104 degrees, the tour was a success.  I noticed that the only rebel victory of the battle, Gaines' Mill, was for a long time the only one preserved.  I wonder why!  Only recently has the National Park Service preserved the final and costliest battle, Malvern Hill.  I helped keep everyone organized - we didn't lose anyone, thank goodness - and supplied with water.

August was busy too.  Aside from a trip to Washington, D.C., I spent most of my time researching and writing a paper as part of my fellowship requirements.  My essay dealt with cross-border enlistments in West Virginia.  To my great surprise, many Union soldiers accredited to the future state in fact came from neighboring states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Maryland.  This is separate and distinct from known recruitment in those states.  I concluded that more rebel support existed in West Virginia than previously thought.  I presented these findings to a small audience at Shepherd University on my last day before leaving for home. Thanks to the Center and its excellent staff for a great opportunity.

My trip home included both research and tourism.  I first went to Philadelphia.  The National Archives Mid-Atlantic Office has West Virginia's federal records.  I used one source there in 2006 while researching for my M.A. thesis. It proved so useful that I had to make a second visit.  On this trip, I took a chance of using my digital camera to photograph the records rather than make photocopies.  It worked.  Not only were the images clear, I gathered far more than I originally planned.  Let's hope it pays off like last time.  When not in the archives, I visited many of Philadelphia's historic sights.  I saw Valley Forge, Independence Hall, Benjamin Franklin's grave, the excellent National Constitution Center, and the Museum of Art.

After three days in the City of Brotherly Love, I spend three more days traveling back to Alabama.  On day 1, I went to Annapolis, Maryland to see the lovely United States Naval Academy and its great museum, and the state capital - my twenty-ninth.  I noticed something interesting at the capitol: on one side, they honor black attorney and U.S. Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall; on the other, Roger B. Taney, the Chief Justice of that same court who passed the controversial Dred Scott decision in 1857 which denied African Americans any rights at all.  After Annapolis came Dover, Delaware - my thirtieth state capitol.  I've now seen each capitol located east of the Mississippi river save for Augusta, Maine.  I also saw the U.S. Air Force's Air Mobility Command Museum at Dover Air Force Base.  A long drive down the Delmarva Peninsula to Norfolk, Virginia followed.

Day 2: I left Norfolk early for the Outer Banks of North Carolina to see the Atlantic Ocean (literally getting my feet wet!), the Wright Brothers' Memorial at Kitty Hawk, and Fort Raleigh, the site of the lost English colony of Roanoke from 1587.  I later visited Fayetteville, site of the Airborne and Special Operations Museum and the 82nd Airborne Division War Memorial Museum at Fort Bragg, before stopping in Columbia, South Carolina for the night.  Day 3 was a simple drive from Columbia to Auburn via Atlanta.  I really wanted to get home after three months away.

I don't have a lot more to report right now.  I saw "Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies," a low-budget (and it shows!) film. Aside from a well-cast actor as the president, it's forgettable.  Civil War specialists will cringe at the deliberate historical errors.  Oh well.  Spielberg's Lincoln comes out on November 9th.

History on the Sly

Look what someone inserted at the Highwater Mark at Gettysburg!  What shall we make of this?  I suspect that a pro-Confederate secretly defiled the Union's most important spot at the battle - the defeat of Pickett's Charge (some call it Longstreet's Assault) on Cemetery Ridge.  For shame.  I suggest that someone put a U.S. flag on a similar rebel spot, like Jefferson Davis' grave - to signify his years of loyal service to the Union before he rebelled.    

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Hey again.  I just returned from Martinsburg, W.V., where I saw the new movie Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  Like any Civil War historian, how films and other media portray the war interests and concerns me. I must confess that I have not read Seth Graham-Smith's mash-up novel...yet.  I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone, but I recommend this movie to all.  It does take enormous liberties with Lincoln's life and career.  Most films do (I'm looking at you, Steven Spielberg).  My colleagues may cringe at them, yet there is much to like in the film.  The action scenes are first-rate, which is no surprise coming from Timur Bekmambetov, the director of Wanted (with Angelina Jolie and The Conspirator's James McAvoy.  The cast is a mixed bag.  Benjamin Walker is a good choice as the young and old Lincoln.  However, the stunning - and tall - Mary Elizabeth Winstead doesn't work as Mary Lincoln.  The same goes for Firefly's Alan Tyduk as Stephen Douglas.  Joshua Speed also appears.  Many scenes are CGI, which may distract from the rest of the film.  Cringe-worthy or not, the film is well-cut, moves along at a rapid pace, and is never dull, and nicely photographed by the always reliable Caleb Deschanel (he lensed one of my favorite movies, The Right Stuff, and the only passable thing in The Patriot.)  Remember that it's based on a novel, as was Gettysburg and Gods and Generals, and other films.  I think that my colleagues will enjoy it in spite of themselves.  Now I eagerly await Spielberg's Lincoln due out this Christmas.

The George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War

Hey all!  I've been neglecting my blog.  My responsibilities to my fellowship at the George Tyler Moore Center occupy me.  Each year the center offers a two-month (June-July) position to a graduate student to work for them and do their own research.  Promising historians will appreciate its location in Shepherdstown,  in Jefferson County in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia.  It is literally ten minutes drive - or thirty minutes by bicycle if you prefer - from the Antietam Battlefield across the Potomac in Maryland.  Gettysburg and Manassas are each an hour away by car, with Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and the Wilderness within two hours.  The National Archives in Washington, D.C. are also within easy reach.  Mark Snell runs the center.  He teaches Civil War and military history at Shepherd University, a small state school.  I highly recommend taking a battlefield tour with him.  Last week, we went to Gettysburg.  It was a thrill to watch a master scholar and guide put the battle and the war into many different perspectives.  The other staff here, Denise, Tom and Al, are great too.  We're heading to Petersburg at the end of June.

So far - and I'm only three weeks into the program - I've been able to help them and further my own work.  The Shepherd University Library has a substantial collection of microfilm.  Their own resources of primary materials into West Virginia's Civil War have helped me immensely.  I like to joke that at night (fellows live in their building) they surround me with such a wide range of Civil War books that it's like being a kid in a candy store or a graduate student's worst nightmare!  These sources are necessary.  I must produce and publicly present an original paper as part of the program requirements.  Fortunately this will advance my dissertation research a great deal.

The pictures below are of the center itself on Shepherdstown's main street, and only part of the many books in the center's library.  

    

Look where I was on Sunday

On the left is a photo I took with my camera phone and uploaded to Facebook while standing on the Burnside Bridge at Antietam.  Isn't technology grand!

On the right is the Bridge itself, a rather good photo too.