New promo video trailer for "Old Slow Town"

Wayne State Univerity Press, the publisher for my newest book titled "Old Slow Town": Detroit during the Civil War has just completed the promotional video trailer which will be used on their website, social media and the like. Check it out!

Forty Years of Active Service

Just acquired this Neale book, published in 1904 by Colonel Charles. T. O'Ferrall (1840-1905). It just might have the longest subtitle ever: "Being Some History of the War Between the Confederacy and the Union and of the Events Leading Up To It, with Reminiscences of the Struggle and Accounts of the Author's Experiences of Four Years from Private to Lieutenant-Colonel, and Acting Colonel of the Cavalry of the Army of Northern Virgina. Also, Much of the History of Virginia and the Nation in which the Author Took Part for Many Years in Political Conventions and on the Hustings and as Lawyer, Member of the Legislature of Virginia, Judge, Member of the House of Representatives of the United States and Governor of Virginia."

Per the Neale bibliography, this ex-governor of Virginia (1894-1898) served in the 12th Virginia Cavalry and his reminiscences of their exploits are solid and valuable. O'Ferrall hailed from western Virginia and despite the strong Unionist sentiments in the area, felt his true allegiance to be to Virginia and the Confederacy. He enlisted as a private in the cavalry, quickly advanced to sergeant, and then promoted to major after displaying significant gallantry and promise in battle. O'Ferrall had advanced to colonel by war's end and was in command of all Confederate cavalry in the Shenandoah Valley. He was wounded 8 times during the war, including once so seriously that he was left for dead.

Copies shown here are generally in the $150-250 range and I suspect the book's collectability has as much to do with its Neale Book status as for the material contined within it.

I don't usually discuss novels here, however yesterday I found what appears to be a small, hilarious gem, and will hopefully be good for more than a few laughs. The book is titled The Mindleberg Papers (by author Jacob Hay) and is described on the jacket's front panel as An irreverent, malicious spoof of the Civil War Centennial madness.

Read the jacket copy below and you'll see that, though published 50 years ago, many of the "hot button" issues so prevalent in today's online ACW community were also around back then. History always repeats!

“For readers fed up to their campaign hats with the peculiar contemporary madness engendered by the solemn celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the Civil War (the War Bewteen the States, that is), here is a zany, outrageously funny tale of a Dixie centennial that threatened to secede from history. When Nick Saltire, a free-lance writer, his soul leased to a New York public relations firm, arrives in the town of Textilia, North Carolina, he little suspects he is destined to do for this charming little backwash of local color what Sherman did for Georgia. Nick, familiar only with history as it is written in books and presented by Yankee publishers, is only too willing to go along with the commonly held notion that the Civil War ended at Appomattox. Indeed, his primary interest in history may be said to be limited to the dates that appear on his paychecks.

Unfortunately, history is now his job. For Pierre Mindleberg, a textile tycoon who virtually owns Textilia, lock, stock, and cracker barrel, has decided that there can be no finer contribution to the town’s Civil War Centennial than an account of the noble part played in the Great Conflict by the Mindleberg Textile Mills. There is, however, one small stumbling block – a Mindleberg ancestor whose role in the war could not be called exactly heroic. It could be called many things – but definitely not heroic.

Undeterred, and despite distractions – distractions that take the forms of a pretty research assistant and a local heiress and a buxom carhop – Nick plunges into the past and emerges with a bundle of mysteriously coded letters. In them lies a revelation that transforms a dead reprobate into a Gallant Son, spurs the town to a frenzy of enthusiastic activity, and, most important to Nick, opens up new and spacious vistas of personal gain. That is, until a certain history professor arrives (from the North, of course) with information that, if revealed, can make the Stars and Bars hang at half-mast and can turn ‘Dixie’ into a dirge. More than that, Nick realizes as he views the fanatic light burning in southern eyes, it can easily make him the final casualty of the Civil War.

Casting an impartially satiric eye on the strange folkways of both Madison Avenue and the Land of the Cottonmouth, this delightfully lively spoof will prove irresistible to all but the most hopeless of Civil War buffs.”

How to Spot a Fake: Rare Books

Check it out here.

"But It's Not A Lie If You Believe It's True"

"The South Still Lies About the Civil War" says Tracy Thompson. Check out this excerpt here from her new book The New Mind of the South.

Lincoln's Critics: The Copperheads of the North

For a generation or two, Professor Frank L. Klement (1908-1994) was considered by many to be the leading authority on the Copperheads during the Civil War. The majority of his books and essays focused on those Democratic northerners who dissented against Lincoln and Republican war policy. His best known works include The Copperheads in the Middle West (1960), The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War (1970), and Dark Lanterns: Secret Political Societies, Conspiracies, and Treason Trials in the Civil War (1984). Considered a revisionist historian who spent his life carefully analyzing the primary sources, Klement's fundamental thesis running throughout his works was that the influence and danger of Copperhead and purportedly pro-Southern "secret societies" operating throughout the North had been grossly and intentionally overestimated by the Republicans for their own political propaganda purposes. In the case of these "secret societies," such as the Knights of the Golden Circle and the later Sons of Liberty, Klement asserted that they were little more than paper-based organizations that had been inflated by the Republicans to dangerous bogeyman status, but whose actual influence was negligible. As a nod to Klement's influence, James McPherson wrote that "although I did not always agree with Frank Klement's interpretations of the Copperheads, I found them unfailingly stimulating," and that Klement's books were "invaluable for anyone working in the Civil War field."

So in the course of some research for my next book, I came across this book and decided I'd like a copy for my personal library. Published posthumously by White Mane Publishing in 1999, the book is a collection of Klement's articles and essays written over the course of his life that, obviously, relate to the book's title. As it's only 13 years old or so, and published by a national Civil War-oriented publisher, I figured landing a copy would be inexpensive and routine.

Boy, was I wrong. The book appears to be out of print at the publisher, nor was I able to get a reply from WM as to whether there might still be a copy or two languishing in the warehouse. Then I went to ABE and discovered "only" 7 copies, the least expensive of which was $120 (!) and running as high as $400! Nor do any of the other internet bookselling sites I frequent have copies. Can anyone who reads this post offer some insight on this book? I'd love to know why it seems to be such an expensive book.

CSS Hunley Legend Altered By New Discovery

For nearly 150 years, the story of the Hunley’s attack on the USS Housatonic has been Civil War legend. And it has been wrong. Check it out here.