CWI 2014: The conference continues

          Speedyleeway Research Month continues. When last we looked, our hero was preparing to attend the first day of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College…

The first full day of the 2014 Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College was mostly carried live by the cable television network CSPAN. The presenters were all very informative, leading us through the questions surrounding the theme of this year’s Institute, the Civil War in 1864.

          A day earlier, Brian M. Jordan started the event with a big picture look at 1864. Jordan made a complicated question easier to understand, linking events and people together. That keynote address set us up for the things to be discussed throughout during this year’s CWI.

          Later on Friday, Peter Carmichael and author Gordon Rhea discussed the campaigns of 1864. Carmichael heads up the CWI team.

          Saturday, we got deep into matters. Carmichael opened the day by discussing the generalship of Robert E. Lee. Lee’s aggressive approach to the war, Carmichael said, led to heavy Confederate losses.

Carmichael suggested that Lee should have retreated to Richmond and Petersburg earlier than the Army of Northern Virginia eventually did. Such a move would have saved 20,000 Confederate lives, Carmichael told us, making the defense of Petersburg and Richmond easier jobs.

 

Some clown, easily recognizable to readers of this blog, stood up and asked how falling back to the Petersburg/Richmond area earlier would have made a difference for the Confederates. Some people will do anything to get on television.

Brooks Simpson talked about U.S. Grant and the problems Grant faced in attacking Virginia in 1864. Simpson, who is among the most entertaining Civil War speakers, discussed Grant’s difficulty with his subordinates in the Union’s Army of the Potomac and the fact that Grant was basically fighting on Lee’s home turf. Simpson said, during the question and answer session following his presentation, that Grant did not give the order for the final Union charge at Cold Harbor.

Ari Kelman discussed the massacre of a group of Native Americans at Sand Creek in Colorado. Kelman argued the event was a part of the Civil War, since it happened in 1864. Whether you agree with that idea or not, and your loyal blogger does not, it was still an outstanding presentation. Kelman’s look into the event does allow for a discussion about how myth and memory about history can differ, depending on your point of view. That point resonates with any audience interested in the study of the Civil War.

Next on the schedule was a group of breakout sessions. Attendees were free to select the sessions of their interest. Brian C. Miller offered a look at CSA General John B. Hood and his ill-fated period as commander of the Army of Tennessee. Hood’s performance is easy to pick on and many historians have used his performance at the head of the AoT as a chance to make jokes. Miller, it seemed to this observer, avoided that temptation and instead studied the man and his career, the pluses and the minuses.

The next session was Megan K. Nelson’s look at the burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania by Confederates. Drawing from the material generated while writing her book on the subject, Nelson managed to put a lot of information into her presentation. Chambersburg was just one city of many to suffer major damage during the war but Nelson brought this particular event to life with some tremendous images from the period, along with a few others from the present day. It was interesting to learn the towns people were tipped off that the Confederates were coming and the people managed to send their valuables away, including the money from the local bank. The story of rebuilding the town is interesting. This was an excellent talk.

Susannah Ural was the final speaker of the day and her presentation mirrored the title of her latest book, Don’t Hurry Me Down to Hades. Ural discussed how soldiers and non-combatants back home coped with the issues we Americans know all too well today, starting with family separation. Ural quoted letter after letter from the battle front and from the home front and pointed out changing viewpoints that are obvious from the letters. But this was more than a letter reading party. Ural told the stories of everyday people in various walks of life before the war and how the war impacted them. To understand the war, you have to understand the era and Ural’s talk gave terrific insight.

Every speaker joshed with Carmichael on a wide range of topics, giving all of us in the audience the joy of humor in the form of unexpected jesting at opportune moments.

The CWI continues through Tuesday.

          Thanks for reading and happy Research Month!

Gettysburg: Heat, rain and ground-bound bees

          Speedyleeway Research Month continues with yours truly arriving in Gettysburg two days ahead of the 2014 Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. It is a standard policy to arrive a few days ahead of the conference so as to spend a few days on the battlefield, Nikon in hand.

          This year there is the added goal of grabbing a few images for an old pal and fellow Civil War enthusiast, Buck Weber.

          Upon arrival, Mrs. Leeway and I noted the ambient conditions: 91 degrees and very humid. Mrs. Leeway, observing in some depth the atmospheric idiocy, headed for the air conditioned hotel room while your loyal blogger headed out toward the battlefield.

          Hmmm.

          Generally speaking, it was a successful afternoon. By that, the sharp-minded reader will assume there were no automobile accidents and, in this, the sharp-minded reader would be correct.

          The conditions were very hazy, which is common this time of year here, so no images were collected. Both legs suffered sore muscles from climbing the steps in the Pennsylvania Monument and a steep trail on Culp’s Hill.

          Today’s wanderings included some images collected while dodging raindrops.

          This image shows the spires atop the Codori barn. This barn, with its three spires, is among the most recognizable structures on the entire battlefield and I tried the old back-lit trick against the morning sun. I confess to enhancing the contrast with the Photoshop program.

          The next two shots also come from the Codori location, one showing the Copse of trees the Confederate army aimed at during the third day’s charge and the other to the south of the Codori farm area. These images were collected in the early afternoon.

        

 

  Just to give the reader a frame of distance, there is an image of the Virginia Memorial from across the road from the Codori area, nearly a mile away. The Virginia Memorial is a very tall structure but undulations in the ground make it look short in the distance,

          Next is an image of a Union general, William Wells, who eventually was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. This image is near the base of Round Top, not far from Little Round Top.

       

        Once heavy rain started, the Nikon went under cover and your loyal blogger started driving around, looking for several markers on Culp’s Hill. None of the markers in question were found, but there was a eye-catching sign warning of swarms of ground-bound bees in the immediate area.

          The inside of the car seemed to be the better option.

          Day 1 of the CWI is Friday. I can’t wait.

 

          Thanks for reading and Happy Research Month!

Next up for Research Month: CWI at Gettysburg

          The next event in our 30-day observation of Speedyleeway Research Month is the June 20-24 Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.

          This is one of the crowning events on the Speedylee calendar every year.

          The Civil War Institute is a five-day gathering of those of us interested in the history of the terrible war that cost hundreds of thousands of families untold pain and suffering. It also ended slavery on the North American continent and, in the approximate words of Shelby Foote, changed our nation from those United States of America to the United States of America.

          The CWI annually gathers the leading scholars on the subject together with like-minded enthusiasts. The event includes addresses in large halls and meetings in classrooms for lectures and discussions. New to the CWI last year was the dine-in concept whereupon individual professors/authors eat dinner with small, assigned groups to discuss a specific topic about the war. There are two nights of dine-ins this year.

          All-day tours to various battlefields are offered as a part of the package as are half day tours of the Gettysburg battlefield.

          Your loyal blogger has never left the CWI without feeling energized and excited. The single problem with leaving the CWI is the idea that the next Gettysburg conference is 360 days into the future. That’s a long wait. Not as bad as waiting two years until the next Pro Football Researchers Association meeting, but still a long wait.

          Some of the classroom sessions, which the CWI terms ‘Breakout Sessions,’ are assigned and others are open to selection by attendees. These sessions are usually very interesting and because the size of the gathering is small enough, there is plenty of interaction with the speaker.

          Yours truly takes notes during every session, including the walking tours, and I ask a lot of questions. A lot of questions.

          The CWI offers scholarship deals for high school students interested in attending and lots of teachers attend also.

It’s too late for 2014, obviously, but you can find the CWI at www.gettysburg.edu/cwi/. The info about the next year usually starts showing up soon after the completion of the last one.

 

          Thanks for reading and happy Research Month!

Research Month opens with Pro Football Researchers Association meeting

          June is Research Month here at Speedyleeway. We observe Research Month every year by attending conferences dedicated to, you guessed it, research. Sometimes, we get so fired up we even do some research.

          First up is the Pro Football Researchers Association meeting this weekend in the Cleveland area. The PFRA meets every other year and this year’s event will include several presentations covering the Cleveland Browns’ NFL championships in 1954 and 1964. Members of those squads are scheduled to meet with PFRA members and several researchers and authors will speak as well.

          The meetings will be held at two locations. Friday we’ll be at the Browns’ practice facility and Saturday we’ll meet at the stadium.

          The PFRA is a registered charitable organization. It publishes a newsletter named The Coffin Corner. Several members have published books about the history of the game and believe me when I say that it is exciting to walk into a room full of people who know more about the history of professional football than I do.

          This year’s meeting, like every PFRA function I have attended, is an outstanding chance to learn something about the game America loves.

          It is easy to learn more about the PFRA. Just go to www.profootballresearchers.org. Information about how to join up – the dues are very reasonable – and all things PFRA are available on the site. You’ll even find a forum where non-members are welcome to contribute.

          What could be better for a football fan?

          Among the players expected to attend the meeting this weekend is Bob Gain, who played on the 1954 Browns title team and played his college ball at Kentucky. That means Gain played for Bear Bryant in college and for Paul Brown in the pros, two legendary coaches. Gain will be an interesting man to hear speak.

          Next week this blog will address the second half of June’s research doubleheader.

          Thanks for reading and happy Research Month.

Rooting for Kurt Busch

          Kurt Busch will try something this weekend that sounds impossible.

          He is scheduled to drive in the Indianapolis 500 Sunday morning and afternoon, then drive in the Coca Cola 600 in the late afternoon and evening. That’s one race in Indianapolis, Indiana and another in Concord, North Carolina, all in one day.

          If he completes both races, that’s 1,100 miles of competition.

          Three drivers have attempted the double in previous years and one has actually completed the entire distance. Any rain delay or spate of caution flags at Indy could ruin the entire effort.

          I wish Busch well and I want to tell you why.

          Kurt Busch raced in NASCAR’s Southwest Tour in 1998 and 1999, winning the Rookie of the Year in his first full season and the championship a year later. Before he was done with the awards banquet following his championship season with the Tour, Busch had signed a contract to race in NASCAR’s Truck Series. His talent was pretty obvious.

          I saw each of Kurt’s SWT races because I was the PR guy for the series back then. I came to know him a little bit and I liked him. Never had the first moment of trouble with Kurt Busch when we were both with the Tour and I still haven’t.

          Busch tried his hand a drag racing a few years ago, twice racing in the NHRA’s Pro Stock category at the Gatornationals. I worked both those events and every time I saw him, Kurt stopped, said hello and we shook hands. Same thing has happened when I’ve worked at a few NASCAR Cup races since he joined that Series.

 

           Kurt Busch gets along with people, in my experience. When I read about how Kurt has changed since he had trouble with the media and had to leave Roger Penske’s organization, how he has now repaired his image, I think back to the guy I worked with for two years.  

 

           Wow, can Kurt Busch drive a racecar. In the 15 years since we were both with the Southwest Tour, he has only gotten better. Remember when he won his Cup title on the final day of the season? A wheel broke off of his car during the race and he somehow managed to get that three-wheeled thing onto pit road without damaging the car, then got back out there and won the championship. Drivers don’t just do that.

          Kurt Busch is a combination of other-worldly talent and tremendous competitive spirit. That drive to win pushes him to the edge of his car’s potential, which is what happens with the great ones. And when a driver hangs it out that way on every lap, it isn’t easy to turn off all the internal mechanisms and become cool, calm and collected immediately after climbing out of the race car, even if things went well. It’s really hard to be cool and calm after a wreck or some kind of trouble on the track.

          Kurt Busch is a heckuva race car driver. I hope he does well this weekend. And I’ll be happy as hell to shake his hand the next time I see him.

 

          Thanks for reading.

Walking and reading without chewing gum

          The Horseshoe Ridge area of the Chickamauga National Military Park is a hilly location. It is a historically important piece of ground that was among the bloodiest positions in the entire American Civil War.

          Yours truly has devoted a large part of the last five years trying to understand

The view from near the top of
Hill 1 of Horseshoe Ridge
toward the Snodgrass buildings.

fully what happened along that pretty ridgeline on September 20, 1863 and on the sides of the hills which approach the ridge. Professional Civil War historians, no doubt, know a better way to do this. There is probably some slick academic method, some logical process the big-name pros use to study battlefield history and determine who did what, where they did it and when. You have to learn how sooner or later, too.

          These professional researchers know where to read about all the information they need for a given project. Many of these professionals are professors and they have assistants (read that students) who produce the needed information. These assistants, in turn, learn all the fancy research methods. The cool tricks.

          Yours truly does not know the fancy tricks, the ins and outs of academia, the time-saving procedures.

          I have to do it the hard way. First, I make copies of the material pertinent to the mysteries I want to solve. I insert each sheet into a plastic page protector and put the covers in a small notebook. I carry the notebook in the field and I read as I walk.

          I don’t try to chew gum at the same time.

          This week found your loyal blogger at Horseshoe Ridge, walking up and down the hills, notebook in hand. It is instructive to read the post-battle reports and letters from soldiers while walking the grounds.

The gap between Hill 1 (to the right) and Hill 2 (left). Notice the low spot between them.

          For example, if you want to determine approximately where a specific battalion went up the hill, you compare all the reports. Did an officer describe the ground his battalion fought over in the regimental report? Did a soldier describe the ground in a letter home to his family?

          If so, try to match the description of the topography in the report to what you see. Maybe one report describes a gentle slope while another describes and steep climb. Photograph what you see for future comparisons.

          The hillsides of Horseshoe Ridge are not smooth and easily traversed. There are undulations and draws that can make it difficult to go up hill in a straight line. The only consistent thing is change.

For that reason, a 106-year-old letter from a veteran of the fighting to the son of another veteran is valuable to a modern day researcher because it describes the ground covered by the writer’s battalion and names the commanding officer of the battalion to his right.

So I read the letter over and over while walking the various pathways repeatedly. Once in a while I figure something out and, in an uncertain world, THAT is a blessed event.

          Reading that letter as you walk the Ridge makes you feel as though you have company on that hillside. You can almost hear the voice of the writer and it feels as though the boys are with you.

          It is a unique experience. I highly recommend it.

 

          Thanks for reading.

This is a just for fun image. The images available from here are interesting.

A few notes on life...

          A few notes from your loyal blogger:

          It turns out that I was wrong. Pop Tarts are not the equivalent to the military’s MREs.

          One of the causes of the dreaded shingles malady is stress. If you develop a case of shingles during the month of April, shouldn’t that be a tax dodge? I mean, what causes more stress than the tax season?

          I’ve seen a Dodge Ram. I’ve seen players from 31 different NFL teams dodge the Rams. I’ve even seen Chevys and Fords ram Dodges. And I have no idea what it all means.

          The NFL Network had a program ranking the quarterbacks of the 1970s. Fran Tarkenton, who never won the Super Bowl, was ranked above Terry Bradshaw, who won four in that decade. Huh?

          The NFL draft is about a week away. Newspapers and sports networks have devoted months to predicting what college players will be selected and football franchises have devoted thousands of man hours and millions of dollars preparing for their chance to select the next batch of stars. Keep in mind that these star college quarterbacks were drafted in past years: Giovanni Carmazzi, JaMarcus Russell and Ryan Leaf. These quarterbacks were not: Kurt Warner (won a Super Bowl, holds Super Bowl records) and Anthony Calvillo (professional football’s all-time passing yardage leader).

          No kidding, yours truly saw a product in the grocery store today named Joan of Arc Kidney Beans. You have to assume they were burned with the steak.

 

          Thanks for reading.