Yearly Archives: 2017

Otto Eisenschiml: a scientist looks at Civil War history 6 comments

 in Grant's Memoirs / Historiography / Sherman by

While Lloyd Lewis composed his book, Sherman: Fighting Prophet—which advanced a romantic, one-sided, and severely erroneous view of William T. Sherman—Otto Eisenschiml was arguing for a more scientific investigation of the American Civil War and its participants. Although he still fell into the trap by believing much of Grant’s Memoirs, Eisenschiml’s method and many of his conclusions help us reach a more correct account of that conflict. I just read […]

Hamlin Garland’s unusual activities

 in Grant / Grant biographies / Wilson by

Going through the Hamlin Garland papers at USC today, I noticed some unusual activities of this Grant biographer from the turn of the century. At places, his notes had been obviously censored, with two sections being obviously cut out. Elsewhere, he contradicted or disbelieved his interviewees (most notably in James H. Wilson’s case), yet he said not a word when Grant’s family and supporters made outrageously incorrect claims. Worse, in […]

National Geographic’s free USGS topos on multi-page PDFs 1 comment

 in Mapping by

You can’t really know a Civil War battle if you don’t know the geography of the battlefield. “National Geographic has built an easy to use web interface that allows anyone to quickly find any 7.5 minute topo in the continental U.S.A. for downloading and printing. Each topo has been pre-processed to print on a standard home, letter size printer. These are the same topos that were printed by USGS for […]