Greatest Living Civil War Historian
Dave Smith
historians come along in the past. Often times they were categorized
as Northern or Southern historians - D.S. Freeman comes to mind as a
great Southern historian, and Bruce Catton could probably be earmarked
as a great Northern historian.
Who are the great living Civil War historians? How, for example, do
you classify an Ed Bearss (not necessarily North or South)? Will we
ever see, for example, works like those of Allen Nevins produced
again?
Dave
Cash
"Dave Smith" <dmsmi...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:707e7d28.03122...@posting.google.com...
Allow me to cast a highly prejudiced vote in favor of my old prof, James I.
Robertson.
Honorable Mentions are (in no particular order) James McPherson, Gary
Gallagher, David H. Donald, Stephen Sears, Gordon C. Rhea, and of course,
Brooks D. Simpson.
Regards,
Cash
James F. Epperson
<Cas...@hawaii.rr.com> writes:
>"Dave Smith" <dmsmi...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:707e7d28.03122...@posting.google.com...
>> Who are the great living Civil War historians? How, for example, do
>> you classify an Ed Bearss (not necessarily North or South)? Will we
>> ever see, for example, works like those of Allen Nevins produced
>> again?
>Allow me to cast a highly prejudiced vote in favor of my old prof, James I.
>Robertson.
>
>Honorable Mentions are (in no particular order) James McPherson, Gary
>Gallagher, David H. Donald, Stephen Sears, Gordon C. Rhea, and of course,
>Brooks D. Simpson.
That's a good list; let me add a couple of names: Mark Grimsley and
Mark Neely also deserve mention.
Meaning no disrespect to your former professor (who I think is great):
For writing ability, I would say McPherson is the best of the lot. For
scholarly excellence, I would point to a somewhat caustic participant
in this NG.
JFE
James F. Epperson
http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/causes.html
A student who changes the course of history is usually taking an exam
Dennis Maggard
wrote:
>In article <P4lGb.27495$nG3....@twister.socal.rr.com>, "Cash"
><Cas...@hawaii.rr.com> writes:
>
>>"Dave Smith" <dmsmi...@aol.com> wrote in message
>>news:707e7d28.03122...@posting.google.com...
>
>>> Who are the great living Civil War historians? How, for example, do
>>> you classify an Ed Bearss (not necessarily North or South)? Will we
>>> ever see, for example, works like those of Allen Nevins produced
>>> again?
>
>>Allow me to cast a highly prejudiced vote in favor of my old prof, James I.
>>Robertson.
>>
>>Honorable Mentions are (in no particular order) James McPherson, Gary
>>Gallagher, David H. Donald, Stephen Sears, Gordon C. Rhea, and of course,
>>Brooks D. Simpson.
>
>That's a good list; let me add a couple of names: Mark Grimsley and
>Mark Neely also deserve mention.
>
>Meaning no disrespect to your former professor (who I think is great):
>For writing ability, I would say McPherson is the best of the lot. For
>scholarly excellence, I would point to a somewhat caustic participant
>in this NG.
Nicely put!!! :-)
And I do agree as to scholarly excellence. As to writing ability, it
seems to me that Robertson and McPherson are pretty close, but
neither writes nearly as well as Shelby Foote.
Dennis
James F. Epperson
<dmag...@MAPSONjuno.com> writes:
>As to writing ability, it
>seems to me that Robertson and McPherson are pretty close, but
>neither writes nearly as well as Shelby Foote.
Foote is a drop-dead brilliant writer. I wish I had an ounce of
his talent. But his historical work is tainted, a bit (IMO), by
his lack of scholarly ability. To put it simply, he accepts way
to much "conventional wisdom."
Brian Hampton
wrote:
>Meaning no disrespect to your former professor (who I think is great):
>For writing ability, I would say McPherson is the best of the lot.
Really? I mean, I think he can string words together to get his point
across just fine, but, well, he lacks flair, imo. He bores me just a
little. The only way I have of explaining that is by saying that I
read Robertson's bio of Jackson without being particularly interested
initially, but in the end I was wishing he'd done Longstreet's bio.
McPherson writes on topics that interest me regardless, and when I
read him, I think of taking naps.
Brian Hampton
wrote:
>Allow me to cast a highly prejudiced vote in favor of my old prof, James I.
>Robertson.
Allow me to cast a highly prejudiced vote *against* my old Civil War
military history professor. He was just horrible. :-)
Brian Hampton
>Who are the great living Civil War historians?
Gary Gallagher comes to my mind first.
I suppose one would have to include McPherson in such a list, even
though I personally have some quibbles with some of his methods,
especially in _For Cause and Comrades_. I have quibbles, bigger
quibbles, with Freeman, but there's no doubting his greatness.
Ed Bearss is certainly one of the greats.
I'd also like to mention Leon Litwack who, although probably not
technically a Civil War historian, has provided us with some of the
most thoughtful and in-depth examinations of slavery and race
relations north and south before, during, and after the war ever
written.
>Will we ever see, for example, works like those of Allen Nevins produced
>again?
I hate to say it, but I doubt it, at least not in our lifetimes. When
we're all dead, someone will come along with the totally new idea
chronicling the ancient American Civil War much the same way some
modern historians have chronicled the Persian Wars. We probably
wouldn't recognize it. :-)
James F. Epperson
<bdh...@netscape.net> writes:
It's mostly a matter of taste, I guess, and I like McPherson's writing.
He's not nearly as lyrical as Catton or Foote, but I do think he is
better than Robertson. But this is like arguing over Blanton's vs.
Maker's Mark bourbon; both are pretty good.
Dennis Maggard
wrote:
>In article <2258b44e215e7251...@news.teranews.com>, Dennis Maggard
><dmag...@MAPSONjuno.com> writes:
>
>>As to writing ability, it
>>seems to me that Robertson and McPherson are pretty close, but
>>neither writes nearly as well as Shelby Foote.
>
>Foote is a drop-dead brilliant writer. I wish I had an ounce of
>his talent. But his historical work is tainted, a bit (IMO), by
>his lack of scholarly ability. To put it simply, he accepts way
>to much "conventional wisdom."
I guess that disclaimer needs to be added any time you say anything
nice about Shelby Foote. But then I don't really count him as an
historian, my point being that I wish real historians could come
closer to his writing level. They have some of the greatest stories
ever told to tell, especially regarding the Civil War, and their
writing should do it justice.
Dennis
Doubs43
books on smaller campaigns as well as day three at Gettysburg. Included
are the final Valley engagements, Mosby's Rangers and an excellent
comparison of the soldiers of the Stonewall Brigade and the Iron
Brigade. His style is interesting and readable.
Cash
"Doubs43" <Dou...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:6s9Hb.5082$6l1.199@okepread03...
> Not yet mentioned and worth reading is Jeffrey Wert who has authored
> books on smaller campaigns as well as day three at Gettysburg. Included
> are the final Valley engagements, Mosby's Rangers and an excellent
> comparison of the soldiers of the Stonewall Brigade and the Iron
> Brigade. His style is interesting and readable.
Well worth reading, but I don't think I'd put him in the same group as
McPherson, Robertson, and Gallagher. This is not a slam on Wert, whose
books I enjoy very much. I think since we're discussing the "Greatest"
living historians we have to draw the line somewhere, and IMO Wert comes
close but just misses the cutoff.
I also enjoy reading Ed Longacre's books, but while I like his writing a
great deal and he's a friend of mine, I have to in all honesty leave him out
of consideration for "Greatest."
Regards,
Cash
Dimitri Rotov
Good topic Dave. Nevertheless, Nevins is a bit of a hot button for me.
There is a nice recap of a famous Nevins plagiarism scandal in this
article:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/travel/7568638.htm
...but you have to scroll way down into the piece for the Nevins bits.
As the author suggests, Nevins behavior is exemplary for being so far
beyond the bounds of most plagiarism, the cappers being (1) that he
actually suppressed the journal submission after stealing new research
from it (2) he beat the author to press with the new research, having
stolen it.
Note also that Nevins left one historical association to found
another. His reasons were that the organization was committed to "dry
as dust" history. I think he meant by that, he could not abide by the
ethical code - all that attributing, the need to disclose counter
theses, etc. See this link http://www.theaha.org/ for a taste of
ethical codes which Nevins, Catton, McPherson and Sears have never
bothered with, but which publishers need to start enforcing. (Knopf,
i.e. Random House, is enforcing it.) (Note that from this linked page
you scroll down, then download the 2003 Statement on Standards of
Professional Conduct - and please, everybody, do read it and keep it
with you when reading ACW history).
To give readers a sense of whom Allan Nevins is and how present day
ACW publishing is generally a reflection of his thesis-driven civil
war history, allow me to lengthen this post with an excerpt from my
blog of 9/12/2003. I wrote a lot on Nevins and Catton in September and
October at hhtp://cwbn.blogspot.com ... look to the archive links at
the left, if interested.
Let us never confuse good reading with good history.
Happy holidays to all,
Dimitri
***** start excerpt ****
James McPherson, mentioned yesterday, is probably the best example of
the consensus that Allan Nevins built starting in the 1940s. The most
famous recipient of Nevins' patronage was Bruce Catton, and of course
many more people are familiar with Catton's views than Nevins' or
McPherson's, though they are essentially the same.
It is the Nevins/Catton/McPherson view of Civil War history that
dominates ACW storytelling even today. The mechanism for that
dominance is worth a few words.
Nevins, like Catton, began his working life as a journalist, a
story-driven, detail-excluding transformer of mundane information into
drama. He discovered history after his basic attitude to information
had already been formed by deadline writing and the need to sell
newspapers to the broadest audiences possible. Nevins was irritated by
scholarship-driven history - he called it "dry-as-dust history," and
when the preeminent historical organization of the first half of the
century failed to back his idea for a popular history magazine, Nevins
started The Society of American Historians in 1939 and used it as a
platform from which to later launch American Heritage.
Though Nevins became a professor at a respectable university -
Columbia, which now has an Allan Nevins chair - he never adopted the
respectability of the profession as his own. He preferred publicty.
And so, the The Society of American Historians differentiated itself
with its literary interests and its drive for broad public readership.
A book recently sponsored by the Society carries this: "From its
inception, the Society has sought ways to bring good historical
writing to the largest possible audience."
Good writing, large audiences. Not scholarship, necessarily. Pop
historian Edmund Morris said he was a writer first and an historian
second. This was more tersely stated by Stephen Ambrose who said, "I
tell stories!" when asked about his duty to sources. I don't know if
these are/were Society members, but they embody the problem the
Society engendered.
"I tell stories!"
To understand the conflict between an ethos of strorytelling and of
history, we need go no farther than the Statement on Standards of
Professional Conduct issued by the American Historical Association, a
different organization:
"Scholars must be not only competent in research and analysis but also
cognizant of issues of professional conduct. Integrity is one of these
issues. It requires an awareness of one's own bias and a readiness to
follow sound method and analysis wherever they may lead. It demands
disclosure of all significant qualifications of one's arguments."
The reigning Civil War consensus is not based on "disclosure of all
significant qualifications of one's arguments" or "an awareness of
one's own bias and a readiness to follow sound method and analysis
wherever they may lead." These would burden stories with boring
digressions.
To a talespinner, the work of "history" not only needs a "story line"
to keep it moving, it needs a specific "editorial line" to justify its
narrative choices. This editorial line is the "master narrative"
Edward Cline discusses in his Rhetorica blog.
Membership in the Society has been by by invitation only and is
limited to 250 authors. Nevins, then, founded a club of influential,
published historical writers, just large enough to guarantee a certain
level of consensus.
Members promoted each other's works in reviews and blurbs; they gave
each other well-publicized prizes; and they published in American
Heritage, enormously popular at the time of the Civil War Centennial.
AH presented a defined editorial line to deliver one coherent "voice"
across many articles and issues, a coherence that invited reader
loyalty.
For acquisition editors of the major publishing houses of that time,
the Nivens view defined Civil War reality; a book proposal deviating
from that would be out of synch with the broad ACW reading public's
understanding of events; it would be a commercial risk that invited
unfriendly criticism from the best known experts in the field. An
article submitted to AH that embarassed a Society member would not be
welcome. A book published by a scholar operating outside the editorial
line would not be favorably reviewed by this Society of friends.
This is actually where we are today, decades later: at the head of a
mass outpouring of consensus work, festooned with the Society members'
own prizes awarded to each other. This is the "reality" of recent
Civil war history. The editor of Grant's papers, John Y. Simon,
expressed the situation most bitterly when he said that the Civil War
reader was a little child who wanted the same bedtime story told
exactly the same way every night.
To extend Simon's metaphor, Nivens and his colleagues reared that
child.
Bruce Catton, assiduously sponsored by Nevins, was an editor of AH at
one point, and Stephen Sears was his protege. They actually shared a
Pulitzer early in Sears' career. Sears has done less well than
McPherson in preserving the Nivens/Catton consensus, however. He has a
taste for generating controversy. He adds a twist of lime to what
would otherwise be a very familiar drink.
McPherson, started teaching at Princeton in 1962 during the height of
Nivens influence (control?) and Catton's popularity. McPherson's
loyalty to the teachings of the period have brought him into collision
with new sources that overturn old interpretations but he soldiers on.
Much more on this in future posts.
The society Nevins founded is still around. Its 250 members still give
each other awards and issue press releases about their achievments;
there is even a Bruce Catton Prize. McPherson is a principal of the
organization; only the disgraced Doris Kearns Goodwin may be the
better known member. But nowadays, the Society's rolls includes far
fewer ACW historians than ever before, which, with the failing of
American Heritage, is another threat to the maintenance of the broad
consensus Allan Nevins built, as we shall see.
******************* end ********************************
Dimitri Rotov
is the correct link:
http://hnn.us/articles/1696.html
I like this part:
>There's cruel irony in both the Economic History Association and the
Society of American Historians giving an "Allan Nevins Prize" for best
dissertations. It's rather like giving a "Bill Clinton Prize" for best
internship.<
- Dimitri
http://
Michael Furlan
McPherson, Simpson, and Foner. Foner, because as we are seeing now in Iraq, what happens
after the war is as important as what happened during the war.
And, incidentally, they all have visited soc.history.war.us-civil-war.