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A Presidential Library for Ulysses S. Grant?

Last month Mississippi State University declared that its collection of the files of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, including the research files for The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, were now part of what would now be known as the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library.  Its head will be John Marszalek, best known for his biography of William T. Sherman.  Marszalek offered his take on the news here and here; others speculated that it could lead to a boost in tourism.

So far, so good … until Dimitri Rotov raised some interesting questions.  Poking around the links in Dimitri’s blog brings forth some other interesting information.

Years ago on Civil Warriors I explained what Mississippi State had in its possession.  At the core of the new presidential library (which should not be confused with the presidential libraries established under the National Archives) are the files of a documentary editing project, an interesting set of research materials (including Pete Long’s research notes for Bruce Catton, especially for Grant Takes Command), a number of interesting artifacts, and some collections of original documents (including the very interesting papers of Ulysses S. Grant III, along with more of his papers in the District of Columbia Historical Society).

Grant material and artifacts are scattered around the nation, from George Washington University and the Smithsonian Institution to the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library (another private library, but filled with originals from Hayes’s papers), but the main collection of Grant papers remains in the Library of Congress, with a good deal of additional material at the National Archives.  What one will encounter at MSU consists of copies of those documents (which are already available on microfilm), some original documents, and copies of other Grant material collected for the Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (many of these documents are reproduced in those thirty-one volumes, with a final volume to come).

As for how the Grant papers made their way from Southern Illinois University to Mississippi State University, that’s a sad story, which may help explain the reluctance of some people to tell it.  You may consult this for some background.  It appears that some people thought that the matter in question was near resolution when Simon died.  However, the people who shared the information framing Simon’s New York Times obituary decided to share those circumstances, and thus it became a matter of public record; although the original obituary was modified to remove some faulty assertions, that information remained.  In the wake of Simon’s death, the Ulysses S. Grant Association, under its president, Frank J. Williams, decided to relocate the documentary editing project and other Grant-related material to Mississippi State University: here’s a report of the settlement that allowed that deal to go forward.

Here’s Simon himself discussing the project eight years ago.

So, now you know perhaps more than you wanted to know about the background of this story, as well as what exactly is at Mississippi State University, which now boasts that it hosts the Ulysses S. Grant Presidentail Library.  The project is in good hands with John Marszalek and Michael Ballard.

One Explanation of the Civil War

A few days ago I mentioned the decline of the once-mightly usenet group alt.war.civil.usa, which now seems to be a burned-out shack where a few old timers gather to reenact old times.  Other discussion groups never quite get off the ground, as was the case with a Yahoo Group, “civilwardebate.”  Nevertheless, a visit to that group uncovered the following explanation of why the war came:

the North refuses to pay fair market value for Southern Agricultural goods,
they pay the South less for their crops developed in Southern fields,
the Industrial North holds the South at a financial disavantage,
the South depends on the North to sell to the South the products of their industries,
the North charges the South more for their industrial products than it does the Northerners,
as a solution for the complaints of the Southerners,
the North imports slaves from Africa and sells them to the Southerners as cheap field workers,
while making a substantial profit in the slave sales,
the South not having many ships capable of long ocean voyages,
are forced to accept the Norths offer and their control of Southern finances,
the North with their political advantage and control does not allow the South to create legislation to rectify this situation,
eventually the South tells the North,
if you are not going to play fair and treat the South right,
we are going to go someplace else and play,
we are tired of you stepping on us and walking all over us,
the South does not have a military advantage over the North like the North does over the South,
the South does not have a large supply of ammunition and weapons like the North does,
the South does not have the large industry to replenish their military supplies like the North does,
the South has better trained and experienced military leaders than the North does,
but the North outnumbers the South and can outlast them,
if the South presses their advantage in the first battle south of Washington DC,
District of Clowns,
and cleans house,
the War of Northern Agression will have a much different ending,
but the South,
believing they have demonstrated their militay superiority to the North,
discontinues the battle when the North flees like the bunch of schoolgirls they are,
they have no desire to continue to kill citizens of the United States of America,
this is not the case with the North however,
the North advances a war of terror against Southern towns where the majority of the men are in the Army and fighting the war,
the North attacks Southern towns defended by old men, children and women,
they burn, loot, pilage, rape and steal,
Sherman in his march to the sea,
keeps scouts out to avoid Southern Army units,
in spite of his scouts,
some Southern Army units,
are able to attack the larger Northern unit and kick their asses,
Sherman leaves behind him a path of destruction and terrorism on the unarmed civilians of the South,
the inevitable end catches up with the South and we surrender,
the North claims it wins the War of Northern Agression with their superior military force and ability,
then it sets about on a financial and psychological attack of the decimated remains of the South,
if the South took the war North like the North took the war South,
the War of Northern Agression will have been over in a year or so,
with the South victorious,
but,
the Southern Gentlemen,
allow the invading, raping, stealing Blue Belly Bastards to overrun the South

And there you have it.

Sports Night on the Confederate Flag

One of my favorite shows was Sports Night, a rendering of ESPN by Aaron Sorkin, who’s better known for such shows as West Wing and movies such as A Few Good Men.  The cast was pretty good–you’ll recognize several faces–and the writing was usually sharp.  Here’s one example:

Yes, I own the complete series on DVD.

The Curse of Peggy Strikes Twice

We are currently in the middle of the Stanley Cup final, which pits Snooki and Jersey Shore against Kim and all those Kardashians.  Yes, that matchup is not quite the one recently featured on a television station, although some of us can dream:

Damn.

However, I alerted all of you to the curse of Peggy, featuring Tim Thomas of the Boston Bruins (the 2011 champions) and Patrick Kane of the Chicago Blackhawks (the 2010 champions).

I can now report that the curse continues.  Mr. Kane, who is well known for assaulting cabbies, drinking, and being photographed having … a good time, decided to pursue his offseason activities in Madison, Wisconsin, home of the University of Wisconsin, where the beer is cheap and the town is … fun.  Here’s the result.

Oh, my.

And then comes word that Mr. Thomas, who John Foskett would like to ship to my New York Islanders in exchange for a skilled forward … did someone say John Tavares? … might sit out next season, having already moved the family to Colorado.  Thomas has had a tough year: having stiffed the President of the United States by not showing up at the White House for a ceremony honoring the Bruins based on his politics, Thomas surrendered the series-winning goal in overtime to … the Washington Capitals, who were clearly out for blood (and who have several Russians among their leading stars, demonstrating that Commies stick together nowadays).

I warned you.

Once upon a time, of course, there was no curse of Peggy.  In fact, there was no Discover Card.  Who was the last American team to win the Stanley Cup before the introduction of the Discover Card?

We’ll be back.

A Question About Clausewitz

Everyone who writes about Civil War military history, especially on the level of strategy and policy, is bound sooner or later to mention Carl von Clausewitz and his work, On War (1832).  People invoke Clausewitz and his maxims on a periodic basis, especially the notion of the relation between military means and policy ends and the oft-quoted (if perhaps misunderstood and not precisely quoted) “war is politics by other means.”  Surely it would have helped Mark Neely in his continuing crusade to declare that the Civil War was not a total war to check into what exactly Clausewitz meant by that term (as opposed to seeking insight from the writings of Emilio Douhet, who, after all, was writing about air power in the twentieth century).

In fact, Clausewitz spoke of “absolute” war as a conflict waged to eliminate the enemy’s political independence, so, yes, the Union fought such a war … from the beginning.  The issue of escalation is separate from the issue of the end for which the Union waged war: by choosing as his preferred definition the scope of the conduct of the conflict (who’s a combatant, who isn’t, what’s fair game), Neely sets up a straw man (although he is doubtless correct in how historians tossed around the term “total” [and, for that matter, "modern"] rather carelessly).  But it seems more appropriate to discard the application of a twentieth-century concept to a nineteenth-century conflict and focus instead on nineteenth-century thought.

Now it is true that a translation of Clausewitz’s volume was not available in English until after the American Civil War, and there’s some debate over which translation is best.  I would also like to point readers to Christopher Bassford’s chapter about Clausewitz and the American Civil War here; I am particularly fond of the material just before footnote 16, for obvious reasons.  Bassford offers a telling discussion of the introduction of Clausewitz into interwar thinking in the United States here, and that might help in understanding the use of the term “total war” in the mid-twentieth century … a discussion that shaped how T. Harry Williams employed it in Lincoln and His Generals (1952).  More interesting to me would be the degree to which Henry W. Halleck and Dennis Hart Mahan were aware of Clausewitz (given their interest in Jomini, who was aware of Clausewitz, it would be odd if either of them knew nothing of Clausewitz’s thinking, even if they had not been avid readers of On War; in Halleck’s case, he cited Clausewitz’s work).

But here’s where I get to the heart of today’s inquiry.  Historians of the Civil War invoke Clausewitz’s name freely.  How many of them have actually read Clausewitz?  And no, I don’t mean a few choice passages … I mean the entire book.  I have, and I know of a few colleagues who have.  But how can we claim to apply someone’s thinking to an analysis of a historical event if we haven’t read the book in question?

Another Dirty Little Secret

As you have doubtlessly heard by now, it will not be long until Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter makes an appearance on the big screen.   Between the book and the movie, there’s been a lot of chatter about this movie.  Some people see it as funny in a bizarre way.  Others see it as a masterful exercise in marketing with the marrying together of two major obsessions (we would not expect to see Chester A. Arthur: Gnome Gatherer, for example).  I’ve heard Confederate “heritage” advocates deplore the fact that the Confederates are portrayed as vampires (and don’t you think that John Wilkes Booth is a bit of a vampire himself?).

Here’s my dirty little secret: the people who are making the movie consulted with me at several points.  That’s right … I was a historical consultant for the film, although I think that’s putting a bright face on what, after all, isn’t a story grounded in history.

It’s easy to divide my involvement into two stages, which I like to call the monumentally inconsequential and the trivially important.  In the first stage, I talked to people about the story line itself, and how to deal with some logical issues … mainly about how it seemed that if we were to be true to the theme of the story, we’d have to explain how the Confederates in the West were so much less successful than the Confederates in the East, and how did the tide in the East turned.  Perhaps the Confederate vampire detachment was limited to the East; perhaps (I ventured), Ulysses S. Grant was also a vampire hunter, and that would explain how he was able to succeed where others failed (“I don’t know what brand of garlic Grant uses,” Lincoln remarked, “but I’d sure like to know so I could send some to all my generals”).  In short, I was scrambling for explanations in light of my charge to make this fusion historical fiction as plausible (and “accurate”) as possible.

Somehow I don’t think that’s where the movie will go, for we did not build on that first long discussion.

This led to the second stage of my involvement … as someone who commented on what certain scenes might look like.  The folks were somewhat disappointed when I suggested that pirates and Native Americans were probably not walking the streets of New Orleans and  St. Louis.  I’ll be interested to see what happened to those observations.  I was never asked about Zouaves, who I think would have made a colorful addition to the story.

So all that remains for me to find out is whether my name actually appears in microscopic print in the credits.  I suspect not: the IMDb list for the film does not list my name (I have credits listed elsewhere, so this isn’t entirely vainglorious or foolish: indeed, I’m listed on one place as “Brooks D. Simpson,” while I’m simply “Brooks Simpson” in another credit).  But I thought it would be better to come clean now.  See you at the movies.