Monthly Archives: December 2012

A winter walk

30 Sunday Dec 2012

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The Hayfoot and I took advantage of the weather to take a walk on the penultimate day of the year.

Mausoleum

Mausoleum

Snowy stump

Snowy stump

Theodore Roosevelt Sr., his wife, and Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt Jr's first wife Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt. Teddy is buried in Oyster Bay with his second wife. Oddly, Teddy Roosevelt's first spouse and mother died on the same day, February 14, 1884.

Theodore Roosevelt Sr., his wife, and Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt Jr’s first wife Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt. Teddy is buried in Oyster Bay with his second spouse. Oddly, Teddy’s first wife and mother died on the same day, February 14, 1884. Note the roses.

The headstones are quite faded but can be discerned if you know what you are looking for.

The headstones are quite faded, but can be discerned if you know what you are looking for.

That the family circle is incomplete is quite touching.

That the family circle is incomplete is quite moving. The Roosevelts are scattered as far away as Hyde Park, Long Island, Washington, DC, Alaska, and elsewhere.

The gate is a nice touch.

The gate is a nice touch.

It was cold and windy, just the right feel for a December walk in a cemetery.

It was cold and windy, just the right feel for a December walk in a cemetery.

Old gate

Old gate

The holly tree added a touch of color.

The holly tree added a touch of color.

Enjoying our holidays.

Happy New Year

28 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by in Historiography

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Hey everybody, I hope you are enjoying your holiday season. The Hayfoot and I have been relaxing and watching The Rockford Files on our iPad. Posting will continue to be light at best between now and January 6th. This is the time of year when I put the Civil War aside for a spell and recharge the batteries. I have some interesting projects I will be working on in 2013 which I will explain in full when the holidays are over.

Last week on his invaluable Civil War Memory blog Kevin Levin asked people to chime in on what they read in 2012. I posted a comment and thought I would expand it a bit more at the Strawfoot. Here is the short list of books I most profited from in 2012, along with a few I am looking forward to in 2013:

Dark Horse: the Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield–I had heard about this when it first came out, but was intrigued about Garfield only after reading Adam Goodheart’s 1861: The Civil War Awakening. We underestimate the lives of the Gilded Age presidents and leaders at our own expense.

The Devil’s Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America–Barnet Schecter covers so much more than the turmoil in July 1863. This title helped me a great deal with my volunteer work at Governors Island. One of my intellectual goals is to become an authority on role New York City and State during the Civil War period.

CapSeward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man–The Secretary of State gets his due. There’s a lot on the antebellum period, including figures such as William Henry Harrison and Millard Fillmore. Again, the tendency is to dismiss such figures because they don’t fit into the popular narrative of our nation’s history. I finished this and started Freedom’s Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War immediately afterward, which covers the same period and gave me a greater understanding of the 1850s. Too many people read about just the war–I suppose because they think the battles are “fun”–but don’t look into the causes and consequences of the conflict. This is, to put it charitably, short-sighted.

Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley–I don’t understand why people read those piece of shit Elvis biographies when Peter Guralnick explains his rise and fall so movingly.

On the list for early 2013:

Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction, by Jim Downs

The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom, by Glenn David Brasher

I’m going to read the two above back-to-back.

John Quincy Adams, by Harlow Giles Unger–My interest comes from the numerous trips we have taken to the National Portrait Gallery over the past few years. You can’t walk the halls of the NPG and not become intrigued with the people behind the canvases.

All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt, by John Taliaferro—This comes out in May. Hay was of course Lincoln’s secretary (with John Nicolay). Less well-known is that he became a big player in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley—Volume two in the Guralnick portrayal

Lots to look forward to in the coming twelve months. I hope you have a healthy, happy, and productive New Year.

The Trial of Stephen Ambrose

24 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gettysburg, Historiography, WW2

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Stephen_AmbroseI remember having coffee with a friend from work in 2002 just a few days after the death of Stephen Ambrose. Specifically I was defending Ambrose against the plagiarism charges that had been leveled against him in the later years of his life. Like many I was using the Fame Defense, the notion that when Ambrose evolved from an academic to a popular historian he became careless. The plagiarism, in this argument, was a product of this carelessness. I had taken his post-1994 output (the year his D-Day oral history was released) with a grain of salt anyway. I never thought much of the Greatest Generation tribute books and films; Flags of Our Fathers, Saving Private Ryan, etc. were and are roughly akin to the regimental monuments Civil War veterans built in their own later years: celebrations and tributes to a cohort rapidly moving on. I never thought there was anything wrong with such tributes; it is just that one must see them for what they are. And Ambrose for good and ill was the dean of the genre.

Well, the Fame Defense just became considerably more difficult to mount after reading David Frum’s indictment of Ambrose and his scholarship, including his work prior to the fame and fortune he later acquired. Rule # 1: Don’t fabricate interactions with a sitting or retired President of the United States. People are keeping track–and record–of where they are every day. Ambrose is ultimately hoisted on his own petard. Not a happy story, but one that cannot be ignored.

(image by Jim Wallace for the Smithsonian Institution)

The Hidden Hand in action

22 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gettysburg, National Park Service

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One of my favorite places in the city of Gettysburg is Eisenhower’s Farm. I wrote my masters thesis on Eisenhower and know a fair amount about the president and general. Ike’s ties to the town go all the way back to Great War, when the then junior officer trained troops at Gettysburg’s Camp Colt. Many people do not know that one of the primary purposes of the national military parks was–and is–to train American service personnel in military and leadership strategy. Eisenhower trained members of the nascent U.S. Tank Corps at Camp Colt. It was 1917, just four years after the 50th anniversary Blue-Grey reunion.

After the Second World War Ike and Mamie purchased a farm in Gettysburg, from which one gets a spectacular view of Little Round Top. The farm was a staging ground for Pickett’s Charge. Among other things Eisenhower raised prize-winning Angus cattle at his farm, and took the task pretty seriously. He entered his cattle in numerous competitions, often anonymously to avoid favoritism, and won a fair amount of the time. During his White House years Eisenhower used the Gettysburg farm to relax with his family, attend to his gentleman farming, and also–no small thing–charm foreign dignitaries. Eisenhower had formidable interpersonal skills and, for good reason, believed he could win just about anybody over if he could spend time with them in both formal and informal situations. This is where the Angus cattle came in; Ike loved taking other heads-of-state out to the barn to show them his prize-winning bulls, have a photo op, and then discuss world affairs in the tranquil setting once the press had been dispatched. A few who got the hidden hand treatment in such a manner included India’s Jawaharlal Nehru (December 1956), West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (May 1957), Nehru nemesis Winston Churchill (May 1959, after he left Downing Street), Nikita Khrushchev (September 1959), and Eisenhower nemesis Charles de Gaulle (April 1960), among others.

Gloria Hertley donating sign to the Eisenhower National Historic Site. Note the photograph of Ike and Nehru, partially obscured in the upper right corner above the ranger's head.

Gloria Hertley donating sign to the Eisenhower National Historic Site. Note photograph of Ike and Nehru, partially obscured in the upper right corner.

In a lighter news story, the farm’s heritage became a bit more complete this month when Gloria Hartley, widow of herdsman and farm manager  Bob Hartley, donated the original Eisenhower Farms sign to the National Park Service. Preserving small details of our national heritage such as this is something the Park Service does well.

Bob Hartley with Angus bull at show, Chicago 1961. Note sign in background.

Bob Hartley with Angus bull at show, Chicago 1961. Note sign in background.

(images: top, NPS; bottom, Hanover, PA Evening Sun)

Christmas 1864

18 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography

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How did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

How did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

The Hayfoot and I are having a cup of coffee in front of our tree. We just got back from a showing of A Civil War Christmas at the New York Theatre Workshop in the East Village. The lateness of the hour prevents me from giving a full review here and now, but suffice it to say that we enjoyed it very much. The musical focuses on events in and around Washington, DC on Christmas Eve 1864. It covers multiple perspectives, including Lee, Grant, the Lincolns, Elizabeth Keckley, John Wilkes Booth, Walt Whitman, and many otherwise regular folk who were observing their fourth Christmas of war. The production has been around for several years and is something one should keep an eye out for in future holiday seasons. I read about it coming to New York way back in June and marked it on the calendar thinking how far into the future December would be. We got a kick out of seeing a high school contingent of approximately fifty students there to see the play. At first we thought they might make noise and disrupt the action, but when the curtain went up they watched and listened attentively. I like to think it will be one of those sesquicentennial events at least some of them will look back on years, even decades, from now. As a cohort, today’s high schoolers will be around for the bicentennial. The play captivated the entire audience for its entire 2 1/2 hours. Try to catch this one if you can.

A Rod Serling Christmas

17 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography, Rod Serling

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Carol_for_Another_ChristmasI do not own a television and so could not have watched anyways, but last night Turner Classic Movies aired Rod Serling’s A Carol for Another Christmas. I know a fair amount about Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone, but my first thought when I read about this was: Rod Serling once made a tv movie called A Carol for Another Christmas? Indeed he did, in 1964 to be exact. Maybe I am wrong–it was over 25 years ago–but I do not recall any reference to this in the well-thumbed copy of Marc Scott Zicree’s The Twilight Zone Companion that I carried around in high school. According to the movie’s Wikipedia page–yes, it warranted its own Wikipedia page–the film aired on December 26, 1964 and was subsequently put into the vault.

Serling covered the Christmas theme a few years earlier on Twilight Zone, when Art Carney played a skid row Santa in Season Two’s “The Night of the Meek.” I’ll be pulling out my box-set over the next few days to watch that one as I do every year around this time.

Serling was involved in many projects in the decade after TZ and before his 1975 death; Night Gallery, Liar’s Club, and Planet of the Apes are three that come to mind. It is no secret that Serling was looking beyond TZ during its final  season, but I find it interesting that Serling did this in 1964, the same year Twilight Zone ended its five-year run. How such a project could be sitting in the can for nearly half a century is beyond me. For one thing it starred Peter Sellers, Sterling Hayden (The Godfather; Dr. Strangelove, with Sellers, Eva Marie Saint (North by Northwest; On the Waterfront), and other notables. Henry Mancini did the score. Hollywood lined up to work with Rod Serling.

Who knows, maybe the film was a turkey and was justifiably consigned to the dustbin of history. If nothing else though, it would deserve to be remembered as both an artifact of the Cold War and part of the Serling catalog. Viewers will have one more chance to find out for themselves when TCM re-airs A Carol for Another Christmas on Saturday December 22nd.

Happy Holidays.

Bigger than the Titanic iceberg

13 Thursday Dec 2012

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General James A. Garfield

General James A. Garfield

You may or may not have been following the recent story regarding the auctioning of a photograph thought to be the iceberg that sunk the Titanic. (Did you get all that?) The sale is apparently still ongoing, but does end today. Here are the details.

As it turns out the same auction house, RR Auction, is also selling a cache of Civil War photographs and documents. This collection of American Civil War iconography is rare enough to be be making news across the pond. Lee, Grant, McClellan, Jeff Davis, Sumter’s Robert Anderson, and James Garfield are just a few of the notables on the block.It is indeed a stunning trove that you can check out for yourself. Yours truly will not be bidding, but it is fun to window-shop. Enjoy.

(image courtesy RR Auction)