January 2011

The recent publication of Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander is, in at least two ways, an astonishment. First, it is not a reprint, but a brand-new book by one of the South’s ablest soldiers, 124 years after Appomattox. Porter Alexander of Georgia, the best artillerist in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, saw as much of the war as any man on either side and was central to the action at First Bull Run, the Seven Days, Fredericksburg, Sharpsburg, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor and during the last retreat from Petersburg.

More surprising still is the compelling, intensely personal style in which it is written. Alexander’s new memoirs are relaxed and engaging, lacking the self-importance that mars the memoirs of a good many soldiers with weaker claims to distinction than his, and refreshingly candid about his own frailties and those of some of the Confederacy’s most revered commanders.

Wars are fought with silver bullets. While individual battles are decided by tactics, fire-power, courage, and, of course, luck, victory in the long haul of war has almost always gone to the side better able to turn the national wealth to military purposes.

As it happened, the American Civil War was the first great conflict of the industrial era. It was fought on a scale previously unimagined and foreshadowed the desperate global struggles of the early 20th century. As a result, both sides confronted wholly new fiscal demands and had to invent new ways to meet them. The fact that the North succeeded in coping with expenses of this magnitude, and the South did not, played no small part in the outcome.

Battle Tactics of the Civil War Homespun Songs of the Union Army The Unwritten Chronicles of Robert E. Lee

Yale University Press; 239 pages.

Indiana University Press; 366 pages.

The first modern war or the last old-fashioned war? That question engages two historians seeking to define the Civil War, and their answers are as different as their books. Edward Hagerman, from the perspective of York University in Toronto, states his case unhesitatingly in his title— The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare . Paddy Griffith, a Briton, reaches exactly the opposite conclusion in Battle Tactics of the Civil War .

From the review of J. M. Fenster’s book on the Packard auto (December), it seems that Fenster got somewhat messed up on the subject of near beer.

Before Prohibition the antialcohol forces tried to foist off on the public a non- or low-alcohol product called near beer. Mark Twain is said to have made the definitive remark on this beverage when he said, “The man who named it near beer was a poor judge of distance.”

During Prohibition near beer continued to be brewed, but its alcohol content had to be less than one-half of one percent. It was somewhat valued as a vehicle for “spiking” with another couple of percent of whatever alcoholic product came to hand.

The 3.2 percent beer that your reviewer refers to was the legal limit of alcohol in beer in the very early days after repeal. I don’t think this period lasted very long, although for quite some time in Ohio, Sunday beer sales had to be 3.2 percent, but you could switch to the regular stuff after midnight.

Richard F. Snow’s delightful article on Yorktown ("History Happened Here") in the September/October 1989 issue evoked memories. Our family “did” Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown in 1963, when our son and daughter were ages twelve and nine.

Our Yorktown visit in early autumn, after the elegance of Williamsburg, had a rural, isolated feeling as we discussed the American army’s victory. We too drove down a sunny, deserted road and spontaneously broke into applause as a glorious deer bounded across the path of our car.

We’ve never forgotten that moment nor felt so a part of a moment in history, though not a cannon thundered.

Having grown up in a small house opposite the War Office on Lebanon Green I wish to thank the writer and editors for the article “Revolutionary Village” (April). I have always been interested in the history of our town and I am glad to see Lebanon finally recognized for the importance of its Revolutionary War efforts in a national magazine such as yours.

Lebanon played an important part in our country’s history, and even if no one other than the historians and a few town residents knows it, the past is there tucked away in the trees that still stand and the unmowed grass along the green. As Jonathan Trumbull remarked to his son and repeated in your article, “Connecticut is not Athens.” I have been to Athens and he was correct—there is no place like home.

The first issue of American Heritage, in December 1954, contained an appropriately Christmasy article called “Holiday Time at the Old Country Store.” It was written by Gerald Carson, and it was the first of twenty-seven articles Gerry wrote for us over the years, making him our most frequent contributor except for columnists and staff members. He also served on our Advisory Board from 1964 to 1976 and in 1989.

Gerry died suddenly of a heart attack on Monday, December 4, 1989, at the age of ninety. He never stopped writing and had just completed an article the day before he died.

I was surprised and incensed when I read the November 1989 issue of American Heritage. Judging from its name and self-proclaimed prestige, I expected AH to be a conservative source of American history. Instead the cover read “Must All Our Presidents Act Like John Wayne? (The Wimp Factor in U.S. History)” and the article by Bruce Curtis was demeaning to John Wayne and some of our history’s greatest Presidents. As a captain in the Marine Corps reserve, a small businessman, and an outdoorsman, I am not ashamed to admit that I hold John Wayne in high esteem, as does Ronald Reagan. As a student of history, I also believe Teddy Roosevelt’s concern on feminism to be valid, and not the result of personal insecurity as Curtis implies.

Masculinity is a part of man’s nature and is the driving force that led him to leave the caves of the forest and become the master of his own destiny (God willing, of course). To suppress masculinity will inhibit man and adversely affect further democratic social progress. As civilized man is further emasculated, he will become easy prey to the barbarians waiting to conquer.