(this post first appeared, in modified form, on Civil Warriors on January 25, 2007)
I can well understand how some people who have done good research and produced meritorious scholarship are taken aback when they believe they’ve been dismissed all too quickly by an academic historian (and, no, I don’t think this is just a product of the offended’s imagination). It’s also true, however, that at times I have come under criticism from some people who have a very narrow focus (and sometimes an obsession) and where what I say has been dismissed as “politically correct” (that’s hilarious, for reasons I may discuss another time; I’m more worried about being historically correct) or that I’m some academic historian who hasn’t done the work, doesn’t understand something, I’m serving some secret agenda (for example, depriving George H. Thomas of his due), and, by Jove, I’m not half the researcher and historian they are (this is more likely from someone who’s never published a word or a peer-reviewed word).
Crossroads 