Today I'd like to go on a bit in honor of Mr. Lincoln's birthday. It is 206 years since he was born, and he left a mark on this land that people still note. He certainly was one of the strongest willed individuals to be inaugurated, and it was this strength that we, the American nation can be thankful for. Without his strength things would have been greatly different.
Let's play what if here. Suppose he hadn't won the election. Suppose Stephen Douglas had. The war would not have taken place because the Southern states would not have seceded, at least not at that time. Slavery would have continued, but a certain section of the country would have been up in arms about that. The New England states were the center of abolitionist feeling at that time. Maybe they would have chosen to secede instead of the Deep South. Perhaps they could have persuaded some Middle Atlantic states to join them. Imagine Robert E. Lee leading the Federal army north to a decisive battle, perhaps at a small county seat in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg.
Suppose the South seceded with a weaker willed president after the 1860s. This president, perhaps fed up with the whining that passed for southern demands, lets them go without a fight. Now the southerners have what they want-a nation of their own where slavery is constitutionally protected. In my opinion, their economy would have collapsed. Other nations which had fought slavery would have shunned them. The British were developing their own cotton sources and would not have needed King Cotton from the South. Perhaps an exodus from the Confederacy to the United States would have occurred. How the United States would have faced this is unknown, but I'm betting they wouldn't have been happy about it.
Suppose Lincoln hadn't gone to the theater that fateful night. How would things have been different? Reconstruction certainly would have been different. He would have been stricter than Andrew Johnson and more lenient than the Radical Republicans. Things might have gone more smoothly. Of course, they might have gone to Hell in a handbasket, too. That's the fun thing about what if. Ya never know.
Another thing I have learned over the years is that Lincoln's politics concerning the working man might have been a bit different than everyone assumes. Harry Turtledove, in his mammoth eleven volume alternate history of the United States between 1862 and 1945, presents Lincoln as a Socialist, and claims that if you read Lincoln's writings you will see his socialist leanings. Why, you may ask, didn't he do anything that looks socialist during his presidency? Well, during virtually his entire presidency he was fighting a war. At its end he was killed. We will never know what a peacetime Lincoln presidency would have been like.
That's about it right now. All I can say is Happy Birthday Abe. We needed you, and Thank God we had you.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
General George Meade
Today I'd like to introduce you to the Union general whom I admire most, George Gordon Meade. General Meade was the last in a long line of commanders of the Army of the Potomac-last because he stayed in command of the army from June 28, 1863 until the end of the war. He was misunderstood and under appreciated by many during his command, but his reputation has been lifted up in recent years.
Meade was born in Cadiz, Spain on December 31, 1815. His family was there because his father was serving as a naval agent for the United States at the time. Though a wealthy merchant, his father was ruined financially while in Spain, and spent the rest of his life trying to get restitution from the government of Spain. It was his support of Spain during the Napoleonic Wars that had done him in financially. The rest of the Meades (he had ten siblings) returned to the United States where George eventually enrolled in West Point due to the fact that it was tuition free. This was not an unusual occurrence at that time. If an appointment could be arranged, a good schooling in engineering with at least a minor in the military arts could be obtained.
Meade graduated in 1835 and spent a year with the artillery before resigning his commission to work as a civil engineer. Upon his marriage in 1840 on his birthday (no problems remembering his anniversary!) he reenlisted in the Army with the rank of second lieutenant in the Topographical Engineers. He fought in the Mexican War and was recognized as a brave soldier, and then went on to a new phase in his career. He designed lighthouses. Some of his best were Absecon Light in Atlantic City, Cape May Light in Cape May, and Barnegat Light on Long Beach Island.
When the Civil War started he was surveying the Great Lakes and had just finished his report. He was jumped from Captain to Brigadier General in August and given command of a brigade in the Army of the Potomac. He led this during the Peninsula Campaign in early 1862 when he was wounded in the Battle of Glendale. He returned to duty in time for Second Manassas and the fought at South Mountain and Antietam, where he assumed command of Fist Corps upon the wounding of General Hooker. His division was the one bright light for the Union at the Battle of Fredericksburg, and he was given command of Fifth Corps afterward. He led the corps at Chancellorsville and urged General Hooker not to retreat, but was ordered to fall back with his corps across the Rapidan and Rappahannock Rivers.
After this came the Gettysburg Campaign. Meade still led the fifth Corps and Hooker was in command of the Army of the Potomac. Hooker sparred with, not the Confederates, but the President and General in Chief in Washington, who were trying to get him to fight more quickly. Finally, Hooker resigned, and President Lincoln almost fell over himself in his eagerness to accept. He had tried to get other generals interested in taking command earlier, but all had declined since they were leery of the President's fondness for interfering. This time, he ordered General Meade to take command, without giving him any leeway to refuse. Meade thought he was being arrested when the President's messenger awoke him in the wee hours of June 28, 1863, and, when he realized the enormity of his task, probably wished he had been arrested.
I ask you now to put yourself in Meade's shoes. He was being given command of an army which was widely dispersed, jumped over at least two generals who outranked him, facing an enemy whose whereabouts were only vaguely known, and having to use the ousted commander's staff due to the lack of time to break in a new one. He was also faced with the wrath of a President who was not shy about firing generals if he lost the battle that was sure to come in the next few days. The task was not impossible, but it looked that way to many. Meade no doubt asked God, "Why me, Lord?" and got to work.
The rest, as they say, is history, and I shall cover it better in a later post about the Battle of Gettysburg. On July 1, 2, and 3, 1863, the Army of the Potomac forced General Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia into uncharacteristic mistakes and defeated them. The stage was set for all the praise in the world to be showered upon George Meade-except it didn't happen that way.
You see, the Confederates got away. Meade was quite cautious by nature, and he followed Lee's army at a distance, hoping to find an opening to attack. Lee seemed trapped at the Potomac River, but he had constructed earthworks of such strength that none of Meade's corps commanders wanted to have a go at them. Lincoln couldn't quite understand the difference between courage and foolhardiness, and was very upset with Meade. He even wrote him an unsent letter telling him so. Finally Meade had about had it with Lincoln and General in Chief Henry Halleck. He told them they should just get rid of him if that was how they felt. Recognizing that this would be a public relations disaster (firing losing generals was one thing; firing a successful one was something else.), they backed off and made Meade a permanent brigadier general in the Regular Army.
The next significant thing for Meade didn't happen to him, but it did affect him and his career. Ulysses Grant was appointed General in Chief of all the Union armies and made his headquarters not in Washington, but with Meade's army. Meade offered to resign and serve elsewhere, which impressed Grant greatly, but Grant said that he wanted Meade to remain in command of the Army of the Potomac, and so Meade did, until the end of the War.
Why was Meade so disrespected? Well, one of his corps commanders at Gettysburg, General Dan Sickles, blundered and put the Union army in a precarious position. He was seriously wounded and made it back to Washington before anyone else. He was full of tales about Meade's "blunders" and how he (Sickles) had saved the day. As he was a former congressman, he had many friends in the government, and he was listened to. That was one blow to Meade's reputation. Another one was the fact that he got the reporters connected to the Army of the Potomac angry with him. They conspired never to mention his name in connection with any victories, but to feature his name in connection with defeats. These added up to people downplaying his role in the victory that reunited the country.
Meade died on November 6, 1872 of pneumonia and complications from his war wounds. He died from war causes as much as a soldier who was shot in the head and died instantly; it just took him longer to go. He didn't get the praise he deserved while alive, but I shall leave you with this thought. On my first trip to Gettysburg I hired a Battlefield Guide. When we got to the statue of General Meade on Old Baldy, his horse, located on Cemetery Ridge, he pointed to it and said, :There's the man who saved the country."
Interesting tidbits:
I recently bought a calendar of Atlantic Coast lighthouses because it featured a picture of the Barnegat Light, built by George Meade. It was for October, my birth month, making it doubly special. Yes, I'm weird.
There was some speculation that Lincoln chose Meade to command the Army of the Potomac because he had been born in Spain, making him ineligible to be president. Lincoln was always aware that a successful or popular general might just try to run against him in an election.
Meade never really intended to be a soldier. He needed a free education. He reenlisted only because he had a wife and few job prospects. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Books
Hello. Today I shall tell you how I became so (ill) informed about the Civil War. In a word-books. I was assigned as a Special Education teacher to teach American History to our students. I chose the American Revolution and the Civil War as my main topics. Knowing very few particulars about the Civil War, I started to read. And read. And read some more. Eventually I acquired a collection of books about the war, some good and some not so good.
Warning: As I was looking over my collection I came to realize just how many books I had about the battle at Gettysburg, and I confessed to myself what everyone else who knows me already knew-I tend to obsess about Gettysburg. With that in mind, here are some of my favorite books .
1) The Civil War by Shelby Foote. This is a mammoth three volume set that covers all the aspects and theaters of the war in depth. It is telling that it is subtitled "A Narrative". Mr. Foote always described himself as a novelist, and his talent as such shows in the beauty of his prose. Yes, some of his facts are questionable, as is his tendency to favor the Confederacy in his attitude, but the pleasure of reading this collection cannot be trivialized.
Interesting fact-Mr Foote wrote all 2700+ pages by hand. He said that doing it that wasy makes one more careful in the choice of words.
2) The Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson. A one volume history of the war which is one of the best, if not the best, one volume treatments of the war. Dr. McPherson lays out the causes of the war and tells of the campaigns in all the theaters. While not as in depth as The Civil War, if you can read only one book to learn about the Civil War, I recommend this one.
Interesting fact-Dr. McPherson believes in writing history so that everyone can read and enjoy it. This has brought criticism down upon him by some of his colleagues.
3) Gettysburg-The First Day, Gettysburg-The Second Day, and Gettysburg-Culps Hill and Cemetery Hill. These three are all by Harry Pfanz, and each tells the story of different critical aspects of the Battle of Gettysburg. Interestingly enough, Mr. Pfanz did not cover Pickett's Charge except to note that some of the Union artillery that opposed it was on Cemetery Hill.
4) The Gettysburg Campaign by Edwin Coddington. Back when I harbored fantasies about becoming a Licensed Battlefield Guide, it was recommended to me that I read this book. It focuses not so much on the fighting, but on the leadership and command decisions made by both sides. I think that this book convinced me that there was much more to a battle and a war than just the fights. Someone has to plan the fights and give the commands, and this book covers all that extremely well.
Interesting fact-when I saw a sample test for the guides, I realized that I was in way over my head, and immediately doggy paddled back to reality. If you do go to Gettysburg, consider hiring a guide. They know everything there is to know about the battle, and can even make sense of something like The Wheatfield. They are based at the Visitor Center, and during the busy months it would be good to make a reservation.
5) Gettysburg-A Testing of Courage by Noah Andre Trudeau and Gettysburg by Stephen Sears. Both of these books are by well known Civil War Scholars. Mr. Sears has written a variety of books about the Civil War and some on World War II. Mr Trudeau is best known for Bloody Roads South, a study of the Overland Campaign from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor.
Both of the books about Gettysburg are excellent studies of the battle.
Okay, this is a good start. I'll have more in a future post, and you can see for yourself how obsessed with Gettysburg I am. To be fair, I am more interested in the campaigns of the Army of the Potomac than in other armies and theaters of the war. I see this as a quirk, not a handicap.
Warning: As I was looking over my collection I came to realize just how many books I had about the battle at Gettysburg, and I confessed to myself what everyone else who knows me already knew-I tend to obsess about Gettysburg. With that in mind, here are some of my favorite books .
1) The Civil War by Shelby Foote. This is a mammoth three volume set that covers all the aspects and theaters of the war in depth. It is telling that it is subtitled "A Narrative". Mr. Foote always described himself as a novelist, and his talent as such shows in the beauty of his prose. Yes, some of his facts are questionable, as is his tendency to favor the Confederacy in his attitude, but the pleasure of reading this collection cannot be trivialized.
Interesting fact-Mr Foote wrote all 2700+ pages by hand. He said that doing it that wasy makes one more careful in the choice of words.
2) The Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson. A one volume history of the war which is one of the best, if not the best, one volume treatments of the war. Dr. McPherson lays out the causes of the war and tells of the campaigns in all the theaters. While not as in depth as The Civil War, if you can read only one book to learn about the Civil War, I recommend this one.
Interesting fact-Dr. McPherson believes in writing history so that everyone can read and enjoy it. This has brought criticism down upon him by some of his colleagues.
3) Gettysburg-The First Day, Gettysburg-The Second Day, and Gettysburg-Culps Hill and Cemetery Hill. These three are all by Harry Pfanz, and each tells the story of different critical aspects of the Battle of Gettysburg. Interestingly enough, Mr. Pfanz did not cover Pickett's Charge except to note that some of the Union artillery that opposed it was on Cemetery Hill.
4) The Gettysburg Campaign by Edwin Coddington. Back when I harbored fantasies about becoming a Licensed Battlefield Guide, it was recommended to me that I read this book. It focuses not so much on the fighting, but on the leadership and command decisions made by both sides. I think that this book convinced me that there was much more to a battle and a war than just the fights. Someone has to plan the fights and give the commands, and this book covers all that extremely well.
Interesting fact-when I saw a sample test for the guides, I realized that I was in way over my head, and immediately doggy paddled back to reality. If you do go to Gettysburg, consider hiring a guide. They know everything there is to know about the battle, and can even make sense of something like The Wheatfield. They are based at the Visitor Center, and during the busy months it would be good to make a reservation.
5) Gettysburg-A Testing of Courage by Noah Andre Trudeau and Gettysburg by Stephen Sears. Both of these books are by well known Civil War Scholars. Mr. Sears has written a variety of books about the Civil War and some on World War II. Mr Trudeau is best known for Bloody Roads South, a study of the Overland Campaign from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor.
Both of the books about Gettysburg are excellent studies of the battle.
Okay, this is a good start. I'll have more in a future post, and you can see for yourself how obsessed with Gettysburg I am. To be fair, I am more interested in the campaigns of the Army of the Potomac than in other armies and theaters of the war. I see this as a quirk, not a handicap.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
How Did It Start?
When looking at any war a legitimate question is "How did it start?" War is an enormous undertaking, costly both in terms of human lives lost and shattered and in terms of money spent to fight. Starting a war is a serious undertaking, and most wars have started for serious reasons that were beyond resolution by any other means. At least it seems that way when the wars started. If all armies were made to fly a banner that stated "It seemed like a good idea at the time." perhaps fewer would march. The idea that got the Civil War going was secession.
Secession was not a new idea for Americans in 1860. The country was founded on the idea of seceding from the British, and we were quite successful at it. The rebels (Americans) felt that the British didn't understand the situation here, was oppressing the Americans, and therefore the best solution to the problem was to break away from the British government. The British responded by using military means, and the Americans bravely won the fight. Except we needed help from other nations. And we needed the British to be distracted by other problems. And we needed the British to run short of money. And we needed the British public to not care much about whether we were in the kingdom or not. All these things came together, and we were a nation.
We were a nation, yes, but we were a nation that remembered how we became a nation, and so the idea of secession was always in the minds of people. It was in the backs of their minds, but every so often it come to the front .
One time was during the War of 1812 when some New England states met in Hartford to discuss secession. They were upset about the loss of trade the war had caused and the fact that the government seemed to be dominated by southerners from Virginia. This convention failed due to a lack of enthusiasm for the idea and the fact that the war ended just as the convention got going.
Another time was the tariff crisis of 1828-1832 produced the theory of nullification from South Carolina, whereby the state would not follow any law (the tariff) that it found to be onerous. This would have been a secession in itself. It was averted by threat of military force and a new tariff that South Carolina found less distasteful. This crisis did leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth, though.
These were two of the big threats. The Compromise of 1850 averted what was sure to be another crisis, but the writing was on the wall for anyone who cared to read it. Someday a state, and the smart money was on the southern states and particularly South Carolina, would secede.
So, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, the slave holding states felt threatened. Lincoln said he didn't want to abolish slavery from where it existed; he only wanted to keep it out of the territories. That, in the South's mind, meant that any states formed from these territories would be free states, and the South would eventually be outvoted in Congress by such a margin as to make the abolition of slavery a sure thing. They didn't want this, and so the southernmost states started to hold conventions whose purpose was to vote on secession. South Carolina was first to vote, and, on December 20, 1860 published its Ordinance of Secession.
It was followed in the next six weeks by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. There the parade stopped. Other slave states in the upper section of the South hels back to see how things developed.
All this happened before Lincoln was inaugurated. The president, James Buchanan, held the interesting notion that while secession was illegal, there was nothing he could do about it. Lincoln took over on March 4, 1861, and he apparently decided to wait and see what the seceded states would do.
What they did was meet in Montgomery, Alabama and form a government with Jefferson Davis, lately the senator from Mississippi as interim president. The government formed an army from the militias of the states and focused their attention on the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. There in the harbor was Fort Sumter.
Fort Sumter was a fort that was supposed to guard the approaches to the harbor, and it was still in the hands of the federal government. The Confederates-taken from the name of the new nation, The Confederate States of America-told Major Robert Anderson, the commander of Fort Sumter to surrender. He politely told the delegation sent to see him that he really couldn't surrender, but that he would run out of food pretty soon, and then they could have the fort.
So there it was. They could, with a little patience, have the fort without bloodshed. This wouldn't satisfy the demands of honor, though, and on April 12, 1861, the Confederates opened fire. After 36 hours the fort surrendered.
The firing on Fort Sumter was, in my humble opinion, the biggest blunder of the war. The Confederates could have had the fort with no effort save the passage of time, and yet they used force to get it sooner. Without the firing Lincoln had only a very vague casus belli. He probably wouldn't have been able to get the public to go along with a war based on the peaceful transference of the fort to the Confederates. With the firing and resultant death of a federal soldier-killed after the bombardment by a misfire while saluting the flag as it was lowered-the populace of the northern states was enraged and called for immediate military action to preserve the Union. Lincoln called initially for 75,000 volunteers, recruiting offices were swamped, and the war started.
The war started with the United States losing a few more states. In the next five weeks Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina all seceded. The stage was set for the bloodiest war in our history.
Secession was not a new idea for Americans in 1860. The country was founded on the idea of seceding from the British, and we were quite successful at it. The rebels (Americans) felt that the British didn't understand the situation here, was oppressing the Americans, and therefore the best solution to the problem was to break away from the British government. The British responded by using military means, and the Americans bravely won the fight. Except we needed help from other nations. And we needed the British to be distracted by other problems. And we needed the British to run short of money. And we needed the British public to not care much about whether we were in the kingdom or not. All these things came together, and we were a nation.
We were a nation, yes, but we were a nation that remembered how we became a nation, and so the idea of secession was always in the minds of people. It was in the backs of their minds, but every so often it come to the front .
One time was during the War of 1812 when some New England states met in Hartford to discuss secession. They were upset about the loss of trade the war had caused and the fact that the government seemed to be dominated by southerners from Virginia. This convention failed due to a lack of enthusiasm for the idea and the fact that the war ended just as the convention got going.
Another time was the tariff crisis of 1828-1832 produced the theory of nullification from South Carolina, whereby the state would not follow any law (the tariff) that it found to be onerous. This would have been a secession in itself. It was averted by threat of military force and a new tariff that South Carolina found less distasteful. This crisis did leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth, though.
These were two of the big threats. The Compromise of 1850 averted what was sure to be another crisis, but the writing was on the wall for anyone who cared to read it. Someday a state, and the smart money was on the southern states and particularly South Carolina, would secede.
So, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, the slave holding states felt threatened. Lincoln said he didn't want to abolish slavery from where it existed; he only wanted to keep it out of the territories. That, in the South's mind, meant that any states formed from these territories would be free states, and the South would eventually be outvoted in Congress by such a margin as to make the abolition of slavery a sure thing. They didn't want this, and so the southernmost states started to hold conventions whose purpose was to vote on secession. South Carolina was first to vote, and, on December 20, 1860 published its Ordinance of Secession.
It was followed in the next six weeks by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. There the parade stopped. Other slave states in the upper section of the South hels back to see how things developed.
All this happened before Lincoln was inaugurated. The president, James Buchanan, held the interesting notion that while secession was illegal, there was nothing he could do about it. Lincoln took over on March 4, 1861, and he apparently decided to wait and see what the seceded states would do.
What they did was meet in Montgomery, Alabama and form a government with Jefferson Davis, lately the senator from Mississippi as interim president. The government formed an army from the militias of the states and focused their attention on the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. There in the harbor was Fort Sumter.
Fort Sumter was a fort that was supposed to guard the approaches to the harbor, and it was still in the hands of the federal government. The Confederates-taken from the name of the new nation, The Confederate States of America-told Major Robert Anderson, the commander of Fort Sumter to surrender. He politely told the delegation sent to see him that he really couldn't surrender, but that he would run out of food pretty soon, and then they could have the fort.
So there it was. They could, with a little patience, have the fort without bloodshed. This wouldn't satisfy the demands of honor, though, and on April 12, 1861, the Confederates opened fire. After 36 hours the fort surrendered.
The firing on Fort Sumter was, in my humble opinion, the biggest blunder of the war. The Confederates could have had the fort with no effort save the passage of time, and yet they used force to get it sooner. Without the firing Lincoln had only a very vague casus belli. He probably wouldn't have been able to get the public to go along with a war based on the peaceful transference of the fort to the Confederates. With the firing and resultant death of a federal soldier-killed after the bombardment by a misfire while saluting the flag as it was lowered-the populace of the northern states was enraged and called for immediate military action to preserve the Union. Lincoln called initially for 75,000 volunteers, recruiting offices were swamped, and the war started.
The war started with the United States losing a few more states. In the next five weeks Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina all seceded. The stage was set for the bloodiest war in our history.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Photo Explanations
I realize that I neglected to caption the pictures I posted. I promise to do better in the future. Gimme a break, I'm new at this!
In case anybody was wondering, the top picture is the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry monument on Cemetery Ridge at The Angle. This is the monument featured on the reverse of the Gettysburg quarter issued in 2011. Interestingly, it was blown off its pedestal on 25 June, 2013 by high winds during a storm. As the statue weighs 1500 lbs., that must have been some storm!
The bottom picture is one of the monuments dedicated to Major General John F. Reynolds. It is on Reynolds Avenue near Route 30 (the Chambersburg Pike of the battle), and it marks the place where, to the best of the survivors' recollections, General Reynolds fell mortally wounded. It is also near the equestrian statue of General Reynolds which is out on Route 30.
Another little tidbit, and then I'll let you go to more productive activities. General Reynolds has an equestrian statue-that is, General Reynolds on a horse. General John Buford's statue depicts him as standing-yet he commanded the cavalry division which opened the battle, and if anyone should be on a horse, it's him!
In case anybody was wondering, the top picture is the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry monument on Cemetery Ridge at The Angle. This is the monument featured on the reverse of the Gettysburg quarter issued in 2011. Interestingly, it was blown off its pedestal on 25 June, 2013 by high winds during a storm. As the statue weighs 1500 lbs., that must have been some storm!
The bottom picture is one of the monuments dedicated to Major General John F. Reynolds. It is on Reynolds Avenue near Route 30 (the Chambersburg Pike of the battle), and it marks the place where, to the best of the survivors' recollections, General Reynolds fell mortally wounded. It is also near the equestrian statue of General Reynolds which is out on Route 30.
Another little tidbit, and then I'll let you go to more productive activities. General Reynolds has an equestrian statue-that is, General Reynolds on a horse. General John Buford's statue depicts him as standing-yet he commanded the cavalry division which opened the battle, and if anyone should be on a horse, it's him!
Friday, January 16, 2015
A New Adventure
Good afternoon, everyone. After much angst and many attempts to find a blog address that wasn't taken already, I finally decided to start a blog. The main topic-the American Civil War- won't be very original, I fear, but it is a subject very dear to my heart. I shall be posting things that I learned from other sources, and I shall certainly try to give credit where credit is due. Along with the known facts, I shall also be giving my opinion about some of the things I post. I tend to have some controversial (to me, anyway) opinions, and since I can find few people masochistic enough to sit and listen to them, I'll put them on the web. I figure they can't be any more fanciful than most of the other stuff on the Internet.
And so, just as Burt Reynolds' character in Starting Over hadn't prepared enough material, and since I can't type any more slowly, I shall end this post and go rustle up something to write about. Meanwhile, I'll leave you all with some pictures to whet your appetites. They are from Gettysburg, and those of you who know me well are probably saying, "Where else?"
And so, just as Burt Reynolds' character in Starting Over hadn't prepared enough material, and since I can't type any more slowly, I shall end this post and go rustle up something to write about. Meanwhile, I'll leave you all with some pictures to whet your appetites. They are from Gettysburg, and those of you who know me well are probably saying, "Where else?"
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