The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I am rereading the three volume set that was the basis for that miniseries by Shelby Foote.  The first time I read them I was surprised how good it was. 

Obviously, there is a lot of detail, I like reading about the various actors in their own words from letters and whatnot.  It also shows how many of the battles fought were very disorganized affairs with stuff happening somewhat at random at times.

I would not say that Shelby Foote's 3-volume The Civil War: A Narrative is the "basis" of Ken Burns' The Civil War miniseries.  But he gets more airtime by far than any other talking head, so his viewpoint is on prominent display.
As I just posted in response to Longhorn 320, Foote is not really a serious historian.  He certainly is well-informed on this subject, and he writes a beautifully compelling narrative of the war.  But his pro-southern, pro-Confederate point of view comes through on every page.  He's reverential about key Confederate leaders, and he's got reasonable explanations for many others who don't warrant reverence.
There's a lot in those 3 volumes that a "Lost Cause" advocate would happily agree with.
BTW, I posted to 320 that I just finished watching Georgia PBS' "When Georgia Howled."  At the end it shows a visual of what Sherman's route into Atlanta looks like today.  There's a highway sign for the Ringgold exit.
I didn't know until I started teaching this military history class anything about Samuel Ringgold, developer of the "flying battery" and sometimes called the "father of modern artillery." Or maybe I knew but forgot it.  He was killed at Palo Alto, the first battle of the Mexican-American War, and he may have been the first U.S. officer killed there.
It was a rather gruesome death.  While mounted on a horse, he was hit by a cannonball that mangled both his thighs just below his crotch.  He refused to leave the battlefield, and fully debriefed the battle, before dying three days later at Port Isabel, Texas.
I imagine that it was much more grisly than this depiction.


And I suspect that his horse must have been mortally wounded as well.

There are probably things he would change if he had it to do all over again and had an unlimited budget.  But he doesn't have either of those.  I think he did a marvelous job considering what he had to work with.
Do I agree with his every presentation of every issue?  No.
But producing "history" is a subjective art, so no one's ever going to agree with all of it.

Is your wife fluent in English, to the extent that she gets inferences and nuances in conversational speech, CD?

Our French teacher is French, and she has a French accent, but she's married to an American and seems to navigate Anglophone culture very easily.

President Hamlin, eh?

Lincoln doesn't ditch him for the '64 election, or Lincoln doesn't make it to the '64 election?

I had some other "helpful" comments, but the email address I have for you is no longer correct.  Care to PM me the current one?

Errors, schmerrors!  You're writing fiction.

  So, they had talked, and to John’s surprise Mary was all for the marriage, right away she said.  She noted the war had already lasted longer than most had expected, and it could last years longer.  She also more secretly fearer the two love birds might start acting as if they were married and end up with a pregnancy.  She wouldn’t mind a grandchild at all, but not one conceived out of wedlock.  That wouldn’t do.  She also said that the number of widows she was hearing about was increasing for obvious reasons.  And if Lucy didn’t marry now, the number of eligible women available might outnumber marriageable men.

So, John was a bit hemmed in, two votes to one, as it were.  John had no other confidants.  His father was very distant, emotionally, and physically, a three day journey.  His father had barely remarked in a letter when John had written him of his engagement.  His other friend was a former slave, Billy, who John had manumitted.  This wasn’t the sort of thing he’d confide in Billy.  And Billy had already married Edna, the house cook, who also was a freed woman.  John had been wounded, fortunately not badly as it turned out, but he knew how close to death he had come on several occasions.  He had some dark memories of that day charging up the hill at Port Republic with screaming Louisianans beside him.  Something fierce and unexpected had come over him, battle lust they called it, and it scared him that he could be so, well, crazy all of a sudden.  His luck might not hold out forever.  He had seen too much death around him to think that.

It was late December, and cold and blustery, but he thought better on a horse, or so he thought, so he went to the stables and started to saddle Maggie, his faithful steed.  She was as usual happy to see him, she liked going for a ride.  The trip from the army encampment near Fredericksburg to Green Valley was long but had not tired her out.  He rode her into town, meaning Lexington, where he had been in school at the Virginia Military Institute before General Jackson had requested him as junior aide de camp.  He was in uniform, with a nice coat showing captain’s bars, and people were friendly, some recognized him, like the owner of the general store and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson.  He decided to do some Christmas shopping, and the wife as before helped him find some things.  He noticed their stock of most stuff was rather low.