My Answers to an Author Library Questionnaire

Q: Roughly how many books do you have in your collection?

A: Our library contains a couple thousand books.  It includes volumes on the warfare of all eras.  I have fewer than a hundred books on the Civil War.

Q: When did you start your collection?

A:  I began to contribute to my family’s collection while I was in grammar school.  My father had begun his collection, judging from the inscriptions in his books, in the Fifties after he married my mother.  I inherited his collection in the Nineties.

Q: What does your wife think of your library?

A:  Part of my family’s collection belongs to my wife, who is also my law partner.  She comes from Richmond, Virginia.  She is connected with how I began to write about the Civil War.  Her grandmother asked me to trace their family back as far as I could.  In doing so, I found soldiers from the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Civil War.  I became interested in Colonial Virginia first and collected books on that.  I also acquired volumes on Petersburg, Dinwiddie County, and Brunswick  County, where her ancestors had settled, and she approved of those.  Only when I began writing books about the Civil War in the late Eighties did I begin to collect books about it.

Q: How many times have you had to move with the library?

A:  My family moved as I entered eighth grade and again while I was away at law school in New York.  Some volumes disappeared in these moves, including Three Lights from a Match, an unforgettable group of stories about World War I by Leonard H. Nason.  The first move was in 1984, to cart my collection about five miles across town from my parents’ house to the house my wife and I had bought.  Shortly afterward, my wife and I moved her collection about twenty-five miles from downtown Chicago to our house.  The biggest move was in 1995 to transport my father’s collection across town to my house after he and my mother had died.  The moves across town were easy.  Moving my wife out from Chicago was difficult.  We moved her out on the coldest night in Chicago history, twenty-six below.  The moving van broke down on the Dan Ryan Expressway.  The movers got drunk.  The van had to be towed out to our house.  Her plants died and it seemed to take weeks for the house to warm up, but her books survived.

Q: What's your most prized book?

A: Richmond Redeemed: The Siege at Petersburg.  It contains the following inscription by Dr. Sommers, whom I regard as the standard setter for research in the field:

To John Horn

The road to New Market Heights runs from Deep Bottom; the road to Peebles Farm runs from Globe Tavern; before Richmond could be redeemed, the Weldon Railroad had to be destroyed.

Richard J. Sommers

June 3, 1995

(The title of the first edition (1991) of The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 was The Destruction of the Weldon Railroad.)

Dr. Sommers and the Harrisburg Civil War Round Table were kind enough to have me out to talk with them in the Nineties to talk about the August 1864 fighting around Petersburg and then help lead a tour of the August 1864 battlefields I had written about in the first edition of The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864.

Q: Are your books in one room or spread out through the house?

A: Our collection is scattered throughout our house and law office.

Q: How are the titles organized?

A: A bookcase in our living room contains our books on Colonial Virginia as well as the books I’ve written.  Volumes on mountaineering occupy a table in what used to be our elder daughter’s room—she’s now a lawyer in Atlanta.  I am putting my books on the Siege of Petersburg on a shelf in my law office to prepare for a revision of The Petersburg Campaign which will have footnotes, an index and more maps.  Our travel books, mostly Michelin guides, some from my wife’s first trips to France in the Seventies, are collected in our dining room and in a bookcase on our upstairs landing.  Otherwise there is chaos.

Q: What's next on the "To Buy" list?

A: Next on my “To Buy” list is Dawn of Victory, by Edward Alexander, a new book about the closing battles of the Petersburg Campaign.

Q: Do you spend a lot of time in your library?

9) Since almost every room in our house and law office contains books, I’m very often in my library.

Q: Do you have any final thoughts?

10) A book has to be mighty tough for me to put it down.  I’d read a train schedule.

Bryce A. Suderow, Outstanding Civil War Scholar

               Bryce A. Suderow stands high among students of the Petersburg Campaign.  Few know more about his intricacies than he.  Probably nobody knows more about First and Second Deep Bottom.  He has studied those battles for well over a quarter century.  Bryce shares his knowledge of the campaign generously.  He shared his research with me when I wrote the first edition of my book, and he shared his updated research as well as his manuscript on the subject when I wrote the second edition.  He also put me in touch with others knowledgeable about Second Deep Bottom.  Without his help I doubt that I could have understood Second Deep Bottom to the extent I did in the first edition, and to the greater extent that I did in the second.  It is a very difficult battle to grasp, primarily because the accounts of Union corps commander David Bell Birney, Union division commanders Alfred H. Terry and William Birney, and Confederate brigadiers George T. Anderson and John C. C. Sanders either never existed or remain unavailable.  These soldiers occupied decisive points on the critical days of the battle. 

                Bryce did not stop there, though.  Once you get to know him, he drops research on you on topics he knows interest you—without your even having to ask him.  He occupies a central position in scholarship on the Petersburg Campaign.

               Over the years I have employed Bryce as a researcher on other projects, with happy results.  No one was more pleased than I to see him receive the Douglas Southall Freeman  History Award last year.  Few share his passion for Civil War history.  I could not have written a history of the August 1864 fighting around Petersburg without him.  His phone number is 202-556-8483, and his email is streetstories@juno.com. 

Adding Value to Your Civil War Battle/Campaign History, Final Postscript

           One more way has occurred to me to make it easier to attain the standard of research set by Dr. Sommers, though on a smaller scale  This way does not involve the history of a battle or a campaign.  What I mean is, write a unit history.  Focusing on a single unit reduces the amount of material you must master.  As a general rule, the bigger the unit, the more the material one must master.   On the other hand, some units generated more material than others—a lot more.  A particularly literate infantry regiment might have penned more diaries, letters and memoirs than relatively less literate brigades.  Some units authored so little as not to afford worthwhile subjects for a unit history.  I currently have a manuscript at SavasBeatie on the 12^th Regiment Virginia Infantry, in which a couple of my wife’s ancestors served.  The 12^th Virginia’s soldiers generated volumes of material.  Two future governors of the Old Dominion served in the 12^th.  At least four volumes were published by the 12^th’s soldiers, and other volumes remain in manuscript.  When I chose a unit to write about, also I considered the 12^th Regiment Mississippi Infantry, in which another of my wife’s ancestors served.  Very few letters, diaries or memoirs existed from that regiment.  There were individual writers from the 12^th Virginia who have left more surviving material than the entire 12^th Mississippi.  I also considered the 29^th United States Colored Troops, an infantry regiment raised in Illinois.   Practically no literature survives from that regiment.  One could probably write an interesting article about how African Americans were recruited in a state that banned free blacks, practiced de facto slavery (calling it indentured servitude), and had almost declared itself a slave state (in 1829), but without the particulars afforded by diaries, letters and memoirs, it would be a pretty dry and indeed speculative tome. 

ADDING VALUE TO YOUR CIVIL WAR CAMPAIGN/BATTLE HISTORY, GENERAL POSTSCRIPT

               There is another way to add value to your Civil War battle/campaign history that I have not yet mentioned because I did not employ it in my book.  It would be to restrict the subject to the point where you could research it exhaustively.  For example, it would have been possible to write a book about Second Deep Bottom, or Globe Tavern, or Second Reams Station alone.  It would have been possible to focus even more narrowly and write about the action of August 14, 1864, or August 16, 1864, or even August 18, 1864, at Second Deep Bottom; the action of August 18, 1864, or August 19, 1864, or August 21, 1864, at Globe Tavern; or the fight by moonlight of August 23, 1864.  David Faris Cross employed this tactic when he wrote A Melancholy Affair at the Weldon Railroad: The Vermont Brigade, June 23, 1864.  Dr. Cross did an in-depth study of the background to, events of, and aftermath of the Vermont Brigade’s fight near Globe Tavern on June 23, 1864.  Author A. Wilson Greene, then of Pamplin Historical Park, called Dr. Cross’s book “among the ten best books ever written about the Petersburg Campaign.”

Adding Value to Your Civil War Battle/Campaign History: Part V, Crunch Those Numbers!

     Finally, to add value to the revised edition of my book, I tried crunching numbers and doing a statistical analysis of the fighting.  This also drew on my previous readings in military history over the years.  Reasonably reliable figures were available for numbers and losses on the Union side.  Figuring out Confederate numbers and losses ordinarily requires more work.   Once I had the numbers, I drew generally upon the work of Beninger, Hattaway, Jones and Still in Why The South Lost The Civil War and Dupuy in The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare.  The model I employed came from Dupuy's A Genius for War: The German Army and General Staff, 1807-1945.  The results put Grant's modest achievement in his Fourth Offensive at Petersburg in a very positive light.  To have made any progress against the Confederates with his relatively inferior troops despite his three to two numerical superiority testifies to Grant's talent and skill as a commander. 

  
 

Adding Value to Your Civil War Battle/Campaign History, Part IV: Put the Action in Perspective

ADDING VALUE TO YOUR CIVIL WAR BATTLE/CAMPAIGN HISTORY

Part IV: Put the Action in Perspective

                Another way to add value to your battle/campaign history is to put the action you are writing about in perspective.  You have probably been reading about battles and campaigns since you were a child.  Make the most of your reading!  The Civil War was neither the first war to occur nor the last, and it had aspects in common with others.  Discussing the respective merits of reinforcing old units (a Confederate preference)  as opposed to forming new ones (a Union tendency), I was able to draw upon Field Marshal von Manstein’s views on the subject as it played out in World War II.  Commenting on the failure of the Secessionists to prevent the Federals from digging in on August 20, 1864, I could shed some light on the problem by quoting Major General von Mellinthin on the perils of allowing Soviets to dig in on the Eastern Front.  Major General J.F.C. Fuller, a British military theoretician, has written several books on Grant and Lee that provide a great many thought-provoking comments.  Robert E. Lee’s narrow turning maneuver at Chancellorsville reminded me of Frederick the Great’s similar movement at Leuthen.  Grant’s wider enveloping movements reminded me of Napoleon’s at Ulm and Jena/Auerstadt.

                Compare, liken, contrast.  Put things in perspective.

ADDING VALUE TO YOUR CIVIL WAR BATTLE/CAMPAIGN HISTORY, Part III: Draw Those Maps!

ADDING VALUE TO YOUR CIVIL WAR BATTLE/CAMPAIGN HISTORY

Part III: Draw Those Maps!

                Yet another way to add value to The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864, was to add more maps, particularly of the first day of Second Deep Bottom, the most critical day of the whole Fourth Offensive.  I had a much clearer idea of troop movements on that day than when I wrote the first edition of my book (The Destruction of the Weldon Railroad: Deep Bottom, Globe Tavern and Reams Station, August 14-25, 1864) more than twenty years ago.  Chris Calkins’ maps for that book were fine—I just did not ask him to draw enough of them.  Hampton Newsome drew six new maps of the first day alone.  We used a combination of the U. S. Geological Service Map and the map drawn by U. S. Army engineers after the War.  The new maps help put Second Deep Bottom into a rightfully more prominent place in the narrative.  As a general principle, the more maps the better.  A lack of maps has always been the main criticism of my Petersburg Campaign.  One day I hope to revise that book, adding a map for every major fight around the Cockade City.  That will involve around thirty maps.