A GREAT Gettysburg Special...Errrrrr, Not So Fast (My Two Cents)

A few weeks ago I posted a trailer and press release (here) of a new 2-hour History Channel production entitled "Gettysburg," produced by the Brothers Scott, Ridley and Tony.


The special aired last night and I watched the whole two hours.

Facebook and several Civil War blogs are afire today with post-show reactions and they are uniformly (well, probably a bad word...see below) and universally unflattering.

My two cents, below.

Some of the best reactions are at:

Gettysburg and cavalry expert J.D. Petruzzi's (here) - Even before the special aired, J.D. had scrutinized two trailers released by the channel and spotted numerous errors in uniforms, insignia, weapons, and accoutrements...while these could be passed off as the rantings of a so-called (affectionately) "stitch Nazi," they are not: they are the expert opinion of someone who knows about these things and why they are important and it speaks to a general lack of attention to detail.


and...

J.D.'s fellow Gettysburg and cavalry expert Eric Wittenberg at his blog (here) - Eric only made it through 45 minutes of the two hours but was still able to enumerate no less than ten important errors...as always, the comment field (here) at Eric's blog is as entertaining and informative as the post itself.


I'm no expert on uniforms or the Battle of Gettysburg, but I will briefly comment on my own area of interest: medicine, as portrayed in the show. Basically, I'd call it one step forward and two steps back.

First - the depictions of wounds and deaths in the special were more graphic than I've seen in most Civil War films or documentaries. While some people find find it too graphic or sensationalized and classify it as "battle porn" or "war porn," I wouldn;t go that far. Personally, I think we could do with a little more realism when it comes to the horrors of the Civil War, but that's just me.


Second - in describing a field hospital scene, the narrator stated "medicine was in its infancy" - I don't even know where to start with that...it's a ridiculous statement. They also stated that 2/3 of all men who died during the Civil War "died after treatment in hospitals." This is another ridiculous statement and they are confusing the fact that 2/3 of soldiers did in fact die from disease by connecting it with the hospitals. They did mention that anesthesia was available, which is a step forward, and that amputations were often necessary, but they did not describe some of the other significant advances in medicine and surgery during the war.


Third - the best part of the show for me was a short animation showing how a "Minie Ball" enters the body, flattens, and then severly fractures the bone...it was one of the best depictions I've seen, but was spoiled by the end that the minie ball - bringing with it torn bits of clothing, etc., "carried gangrene," with further animation of what I supposed was to be bacteria...Criminy, guys...at least use Wikipedia if you aren't going to crack open a medical book.

Fourth - there has been some commentary on this on Facebook and other blogs: that is, the inopportune use of the various Civil War experts used as "talking heads" in the special. One of them was Mr. George Wunderlich, someone whom I have met several times, admire very much, and have interviewed (here). As he is the expert, articulate, and passionate Executive Director of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, the directors and producers should have taken advantage of that, but they didn't. I cringed when he rolled out the tired bromide "that would be 6,000,00 dead Americans today..." but in the end I have to trust that if he had a chance to read the script of the final show, he would have begged for some corrections.

My final grade on the special: a D...oh well, a D+.

Great New Medical History Resource from National Library of Medicine!

Via my friends at the Society of Civil War Surgeons comes this GREAT news about an exciting digital resource at the National Library of Medicine for 19th-century history-of-medicine enthusiasts:

The National Library of Medicine, the world's largest medical library and a component of NIH, announces the release of "Medicine in the Americas." A digital resource encompassing over 350 early American printed books, Medicine in the Americas makes freely available original works demonstrating the evolution of American medicine from colonial frontier outposts of the 17th century to research hospitals of the 20th century.

Drawing on the collections of NLM's History of Medicine Division and including works from the United States,Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada, this initial release of Medicine in the Americas encompasses monographs dating from 1610 to 1865. Additional titles, dating up to 1920 and drawing further upon NLM's comprehensive collection of early American printed books, will be available on an ongoing basis in the future.

Medicine in the Americas will be of interest to scholars, educators, writers, students and others who wish to use primary historical materials to help expand knowledge of medical and public health history for the advancementof scholarship across the disciplines and for the education of the general public.

Digital files created for Medicine in the Americas, reside in NLM's "Digital Collections," a repository for access to and preservation of digitized biomedical resources. Digital Collections allows rich searching, browsing and retrieval of monographs and films from NLM's History of Medicine Division. Medicine in the Americas joins the recently launched collection, "The Public Health Film Goes to War," as well as other digital resources, the digital files for which also reside in Digital Collections.

Medicine in the Americas is made possible in part through the participation of the National Library of Medicinein the Medical Heritage Library, a digital curation collaborative supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and administered by the Open Knowledge Commons.

Sample images from works in the Medicine in the Americas collection:

Anatomical tables of the human body,William Cheselden, 1796 and Practical horse farrier, or, The traveller's pocket companion: shewing the best method to preserve the horse in health...,William Carver,1820

There are many titles of interest to Civil War medicine and 19th-century medicine enthusiasts. The digital books are available in many forms, including PDFs.

Galveston Research Summary #3 - Texas' Best Kept Civil War Secret?

Previous "Galveston Research Summaries" can be found below:

#1 - Dissent, Sedition, and Confederate Secret Police (here)
#2 - Ursuline Sisters (here)
Summary of Galveston/Civil War Research Project (here)

And now, for the latest in Galveston Research Summaries (!):

In late 2008, I had the great privilege of being invited to speak at the Waco, Dallas, and Fort Worth Civil War Round Tables over the course of a couple of weeks. It was great fun and I met some wonderful people. I wrote about my experiences in a previous post (here).

As part of my trip to Fort Worth, I took time to stop at the Pearce Museum (website here and on Facebook here) at Navarro College in Corsicana, Texas, (about 2/3 of the way from Houston to Dallas on I-45) which includes both Civil War and Western Art galleries.

The Civil War gallery tells the story of the war in Texas through exhibits that feature some of the more than 15,000 artifacts and documents from the Pearce Civil War Collection.

The collection - founded by Charles S. Pearce, Jr., and his wife, Peggy, started thusly (according to the Collection's history page here):

In 1991, Charles S. Pearce, Jr. purchased a gift for his wife, Peggy. That gift, a letter from the battlefield at Antietam written by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain to his wife Fanny, sparked an ongoing interest that led to the current collection of historically significant Civil War documents. In 1996, when the Pearces decided that their collection needed a home where it could be viewed and researched, they placed it in the care of Navarro College.
























As the collection was not opened up to researchers until the past 10-15 years, a good amount of the material has yet to make it into current scholarship or writing. Previous Pearce Collection archivist Julie Holcomb published one of the larger intact letter collections in an excellent book, Southern Sons, Northern Soldiers: The Civil War Letters of the Remley Brothers, 22nd Iowa Infantry (Northern Illinois University Press, 2003).

The College maintains an excellent finding aid for the collection here.

Consider the interests of two friends and outstanding bloggers: Harry Smeltzer at Bull Runnings and Eric Wittenberg at CivilWarCavalry.com.

Searches for "Bull Run" and "Manassas" yielded interesting results, including:

George Hood Letter (here) - 1861 - Letter from Massachusetts soldier after Bull Run
P.R. Reamy Papers (here) - 1861 - outstanding Confederate soldier letter written from near Bull Run battlefield, July 25, 1861

Searches for "cavalry" and "Gettysburg" yielded:

Oliver Dibble - 8th NY Cavalry - July 7, 1863 letter (here) describes Buford's cavalry charge
Henry B. Crosby Papers (here) - 19 letters describing his service in the 9th New York Cavalry

And many other collections - large and small - in all instances.

In terms of my own research I was able to find several great letters to help with my current Galveston/Civil War research and writing project.

The archivists can provide copies of the letters and transcripts, when available, for a nominal fee.

I encourage all researchers to take advantage of this wonderful resource!

Harry's Just Wild About "Notre Dame and the Civil War"!

I want to thank Harry Smeltzer for writing a very kind review of Notre Dame and the Civil War: Marching Onward to Victory (The History Press, 2010) in his "Harry's Just Wild About" feature in the July 2011 issue America's Civil War magazine.

Excerpt:

"The author consulted an impressive array of unpublished archival materials to relate how the school...answered the call to arms when the time came. Wile detailing the experiences of the men - and nuns - in the field, Schmidt doesn't neglect campus life during and after the war."

Thanks, Harry!

And whether you get the magazine by subscription or pick it up at the newsstand, make sure to check out Harry's article in the same issue: "Irvin McDowell's Best-Laid Plans" - The general was surprised by a fresh contingent of Rebels at Bull Run - or not. It is really interesting and well-written!

And - especially - make sure to visit Harry's excellent blog "Bull Runnings - A Journal of the Digitization of a Civil War Battle"...it is one of the best and most popular Civil War blogs out there!

Read more reviews of Notre Dame and the Civil War: Marching Onward to Victory:

Patrick McNamara's Blog (here)
Civil War News (here)
Civil War Librarian (Rea Andrew Redd) (here)
Almost Chosen People/The American Catholic (Don McClarey) (here)
Confederate Book Review (Robert Redd)(review and interview!) (here)
Irish in the American Civil War (Damian Shiels) (here)
South Bend Tribune Feature (Howard Dukes) (here)

Galveston Research Summary #2 - Sister Act!

Readers of this blog will recall that I am working on a new book project about Galveston and the Civil War...I described the mission of my book in a previous post (here) and my first "Research Summary" in another post (here).

The publisher of this project - The History Press - is also the publisher of my most recent book, Notre Dame and the Civil War: Marching Onward to Victory. One of the subjects of that book was the important and interesting role played by the Holy Cross sister-nurses during the war (you can see posts on this subject at my "Notre Dame in the Civil War" blog here, here, and here).

As it turns out, the Notre Dame project and the Galveston project share something in common: the role of Catholic sister-nurses!

While the Holy Cross sister-nurses represented one of the largest contingents of Catholic sisters to serve as nurses, the sisters in Galveston - of the Ursuline order - represented one of the smallest, if not the smallest, contingent, but their contributions and sacrifices were no less important and their bravery no less intrepid.

According to the "Handbook of Texas Online":

URSULINE ACADEMY, GALVESTON. The Ursuline Academy at Galveston was established in February 1847 by Ursuline Sisters from New Orleans, who had arrived on January 16. The school, Galveston's first parochial school, was on a ten-acre campus. Attended by girls of all faiths, the academy opened in 1854, closed for a time in 1857 during a yellow fever epidemic, and was used as a hospital by both sides during the Civil War. The main Victorian Gothic building, constructed by Nicholas J. Clayton along with the convent in the mid-1890s, sheltered more than 1,000 refugees during the Galveston hurricane of 1900. A total of 306 students enrolled in 1930, and the girls' high school, elementary school, and kindergarten had an enrollment of 225 in 1940. In January 1947 the school celebrated its centennial, and by 1949 the campus comprised seven or eight acres with the academy building, a brick chapel, and monastery. Hurricane Carla damaged both the academy and convent in 1961, and the buildings were subsequently demolished. The campus chapel, redesigned by Clayton, stood from 1871 to 1961, while the convent remained from 1854 to 1973. In 1968 the Ursuline girls' school consolidated with Kirwin Catholic High School and the Dominican girls' school; it was renamed O'Connell High School for Msgr. Dan O'Connell.

See also at the "Handbook":

Ursuline Sisters

HARRINGTON, MARGARET [MOTHER ST. PIERRE]

I am really looking forward to telling their story as part of this new project!

I will use some of my favorite secondary sources on Catholic sister-nurses in the Civil War, sources on the history of Catholic institutions in Texas, the Archives of the Central Province of the Ursuline Sisters, and a rarely-used archival source that I will feature in a future blog post! If you have other ideas, let me know!

ON WISCONSIN! A Great New Civil War Resource from the Wisconsin Historical Society!

Courtesy of Eric Buxton - a friend, former colleague, and "Mad City" resident - and madison.com comes news of a great new Civil War research resource from the Wisconsin Historical Society:

Did your great-grandpa muster for a Wisconsin regiment in the Civil War? How many residents from Lodi fought in the war, and where did they fight?

A new online collection from the Wisconsin Historical Society's may have the answer for you. In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, the society has launched a Web page (here) containing more than 16,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of the war, most of which have never been seen online before.

"Wisconsin in the Civil War" (here) also offers 44 biographies of Wisconsin's Civil War leaders, 73 histories of regiments and 34 summaries of battles in which Wisconsin troops fought.

Users can learn where soldiers from their town served, with 655 municipalities indexed. Genealogists also can search original documents about more than 35,000 individuals.

The collection includes about 1,000 images, 2,500 newspaper articles, 10,000 letters sent home from the front, a handful of original diaries, 250 battle maps and dozens of memoirs.

Five staff members and 19 students, interns and volunteers worked on the project over 18 months. Funding for the project came from the Wisconsin Historical Foundation and from revenue earned by the state Historical Society's genealogical research service and historical image sales program.

My first and quick look at and use of the website does show it to be quite impressive...

The "keyword" search feature is quite useful...a simple search for "medicine" yielded more than ninety hits from sources such as newspaper clippings, transcribed diaries, compiled soldier correspondence, published primary sources, and more.

A keyword search for a battle like "Bull Run" (or "Manassas") - a favorite of our friend and First Bull Run expert, Harry Smeltzer, at the Bull Runnings blog - yielded between 200-400 hits, including pages images from a young girl's diary describing the first reports of wounded and killed from the battle:

The website is also LOADED with photographs, including this interesting one of "A surgeon examines a patient at the steward's quarters. Joseph W. Curtis, hospital steward, is inside the tent, seated on a medicine chest":

I hope you find the website useful in your research and many thanks to the Wisconsin Historical Society for a GREAT resource!

As always, please make sure you pay attention to coyright and publishing restrictions and preferred citations whenever using archival material. In the case of this collection the instructions are:

All material may be printed or downloaded at no cost for nonprofit educational use by teachers, students and researchers. Nothing may be reproduced in any format for commercial purposes without prior permission.