Having completed the work on Headshots—all but the re-formatting for Smashwords and uploading it there—I have turned my attention back to Documenting America, Civil War Edition. Last weekend I wrote one chapter in manuscript, and typed it. I also went searching for source documents for some non-battle chapters, and had some success. I’d already identified what documents I wanted to use, so it was just a question of whether I could find these on-line, in a copy-able form, to avoid re-typing. I found three of four of them for upcoming chapters, and copied them into my Word document for the book. I still have editing to do on them, but at least they are there. That’s a big part of the work.

Yesterday I began careful reading of the reports I downloaded on the Battle of Shiloh. From a couple of websites I found a good number of reports from generals in the field, from both the North and South. These ranged from initial battle orders to snap reports to detailed reports to transmittals. I didn’t find any orders during the heat of the battle, but possibly back then they didn’t write such orders, rather sending them via orderlies and assistants. A couple of weeks ago I aggregated these reports into a single Word document and formatted it for convenient reading. Yesterday I printed it, and last night I began detailed reading of it. As I was gathering the reports, I mainly skimmed them for general understanding of the content.

I find these reports quite interesting. I’ve talked with military men, at the junior officer level, about what modern military orders and battle reports look like, and I think they are nothing like what was done in the Civil War era. The orders issued by General Johnston of the Confederates said very little about the military objectives of the campaign. I realize I likely don’t have every document, every order he issued. But if, as I think, I have the main one, he’s not very clear about what he wants to do. Drive the invaders out of his country. Turn the enemy’s flank. Corps such and so under General So and So to form a battle line here. But no where does it say, “Our objective is to take [this land] [this town]” or “Our objective is to stop the enemy’s advance south of Shiloh meeting house, and drive him back to the Savannah-Bethel Springs line,” etc.

Snap reports, on both sides, tended to convey little information to remote superiors, and even to misstate things. Both sides claimed they were fighting a foe of superior numbers, whereas history teaches us the two sides were about equal in soldiers and armaments. The North had a slight superiority in that they had ironclad gunboats on the river, close enough to fire on the Southern armies. But except for that, from what I’ve been able to gather, it was a pretty even fight.

The battle results seem to be much the same as the one I looked at for a previous chapter, the first Battle of Bull Run, but with the sides reversed. The South were the aggressors, advancing on Northern positions, with a (seemingly) vague idea to turn the flank of the enemy and thus prevent his retreat. Initially the South had success, capturing Northern artillery, gaining ground, and, at the end of first day, able to report success. After that the North had reinforcements come in, which encouraged their troops and demoralized the South, and they pushed the South back. At the end of the second day the South was defeated and in retreat. It was just like that at Bull Run, but with North and South reversed, and with that battle happening on a single day.

A big difference between the two battles was that at Bull Run, the North retreated in panic and disarray, whereas at Shiloh the Southern retreat was orderly and disciplined. The fighting had been going on eight additional months by this time, and both armies were learning how to fight like soldiers. Their generals, also, were learning how to lead like generals. At Shiloh, the big “star,” if I may call him that, was William Tecumseh Sherman, who had the main success for the North on day two, and was recommended for a promotion as a result.

I’m about 1/3 of the way through these reports. I hope to finish them tonight, or perhaps tomorrow. The following day I’ll edit them, and the day after will write the chapter. Certain parts of the chapter are already coming to mind. Some of it might be similar to parts of this blog. I can for sure see that the battle chapters are going to take longer to research/edit/write than will the other chapters. Shiloh is chapter 11, I think. The book will have 31 chapters if my current plans hold. Since I have much research done for later chapters, I’d say I’m 1/3 or more done with the book. That’s a good feeling.

This past week and weekend, July 21-27, I made some good progress on my current work-in-progress, Documenting America: Civil War Edition. I completed four chapters (out of a probable 30-32), and did the source document editing for Chapters 5 and 6.

That source document is Lincoln’s address to Congress, which he called into a special session to begin on July 4, 1861, to deal with the Southern rebellion. Lincoln faced a tough situation, the toughest, I believe, of any president. At the time of his inauguration, six states had seceded. One more would join them in the next month, and four more after the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Lincoln faced what no other president before or after faced: the dissolution of the Union.

I’m not sure we can fully appreciate the predicament, in our 21st Century comfort, safety, and security. Possibly we are less safe and secure than we were thirty years ago, but we are certainly more comfortable. For three or four decades before the Civil War, threats of secession had been made, not always over the slavery question. The prevailing opinion of many was that any state could leave the Union at any time and become independent.

Lincoln rightly realized the danger in this. What’s to keep one state from extorting the others, saying “Do this for us, or we will secede?” Or for the other states to do an involuntary secession of one? “We don’t like how you run your state. You are no longer part of the Union.” He said that the South “sugar-coated” the rebellion, and that for thirty years the leaders had been drugging their people with thoughts of secession. So when the time came to do it, everyone in the South thought, “Well, of course we can pull out of the Union when we want to. We’ve been talking about it for thirty years, haven’t we?”

Lincoln said, in his inaugural address, that his policy was one of discussion, waiting, and ballots. He wanted to resolve the conflict without resulting to war. But he also wanted to hold the four Federal forts on the coast that had not yet been seized by rebellious forces. Three of these were in Florida, and one—Fort Sumter—was in South Carolina. Unfortunately, the South wanted this last vestige of the USA out of the CSA, so they bombarded Fort Sumter rather than allow it to be resupplied.

The immediate result of this bombardment was for four more states to secede, for Lincoln to call for an expanded military and to allow generals to suspend habeas corpus, and to prepare for war to put down the rebellion.

I found much to inspire me in Lincoln’s speech to Congress on that 85th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In the next couple of articles I’ll focus on a couple of phrases and the issue contained in them, and how they inspire me today.

When I worked my blog writing to-do list a week or so ago, I pegged this post for today, thinking I would give a status report of where I am on Documenting America: Lessons from the United States’ Historical Documents – Civil War Edition. I’ll still do that, but will digress first to explain why my progress of late has been less than hoped for.

About two weeks ago I began to lament 1) the general messiness of my writing workspace; 2) the amount of yard work I have to do after the tree topping; and 3) the fact that I hadn’t done anything with personally budgeting since March. Mix this with the fact that the once every four years World Cup was on, and it was hard to see clear for making much progress on writing.

The weekend before last I began to tackle the mess in The Dungeon. That wasn’t too hard to do, mainly putting back on shelves the many books I had removed to use for references. Then of course were the papers, everywhere. What were all these papers for? Were they necessary to my writing? Quite a few of them were stray notes which, when I looked at them, I couldn’t tell what they were for or about. A lot of them wound up in the recycling bin.

The yard work continues, though I finally see light at the end of the tunnel. I won’t say more about that now.

Last Monday evening (the 7th), I began to work on my budgeting spreadsheet. I did a couple of pages in the checkbook, then shifted to other things. I did this every day last week. Thursday night I had a long phone call with a cousin, and during that call I multi-tasked by making a bunch of entries in the spreadsheet. That put me to the point where Saturday afternoon I had only a few hours and I would be finished. So, rather than write Saturday, I did my finances, and brought them fully up to date. I still have many receipts to file, but it’s a good feeling to have the rest of that done.

So, on to the Civil War Edition, which I’ll abbreviate DA-CWE. I’m working on the second chapter at present. The first chapter is taken from a newspaper account of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the first military action in the Civil War. I decided some time ago that would be my starting point, leaving documents concerning the run-up to the war for another volume. The first chapter is done (subject, of course, to future editing and polishing).

The second chapter is based on the documents issued by President Lincoln between Fort Sumter and when the Confederacy met in their Congress in late April 1861. The third chapter will be Jefferson Davis’ address to that Congress, and the fourth will be Lincoln’s address to his Congress in July 1861—or maybe I get two chapters out of each of those; can’t remember without having my TOC in front of me. I have the rest of the chapters also planned out, and all but seven of the source documents found, and in hand or linked.

My progress on the second chapter is, so far, limited to excerpting the documents. I believe that is done. I may also have started on the commentary section. In case someone drops by and reads this who isn’t familiar with this budding series, my method is to take a document from USA history, excerpt it down to about 500 to 750 words, and write that much commentary on it. The commentary is a mix of explanation, re-quoting, and tying the issues in the documents to something going on in 21st Century America.

From the first chapter, I can see that tying these Civil War documents to the 21st Century will be the hardest part. The issues that caused the Civil War are not present today. Slavery is gone. Sectionalism is less strong than it once was. So I will have plenty of thinking to do on this portion of each chapter. My fear is that the commentaries will all sound the same after a while. I’ll have to work really hard to make that not so.

Thus, DA-CWE is still in its fledgling stages. I’m working on other projects at the same time, so am not dedicating my full writing time to it. I suspect it won’t be till somewhere around chapter 7 or 8 that I get into a writing rhythm, and start making real progress. I had hoped to get this book out this year, but at this point think that is unlikely. Early 2015 is more probable.