Hallowed Ground and Highways

I don't like cars. I never have. They're loud, they're dangerous, they're smelly, they're bad for the environment, and they make walking around otherwise nice cities an exercise in frustration. If I really put my mind to it, I could think of a thousand different reasons for why I dislike cars. I would much prefer to travel by train or go really old-school and ride a horse. I think that the ascent of the automobile in the early 20th Century marked a significant diminishment of human civilization.

On top of all the many reasons why I dislike cars, I would add the fact the damage that they do to the physical and historical landscape of our nation. Allow me to explain.

I recently returned from a five-day trip to see Civil War battlefields in Maryland and Virginia with my father. Part of the purpose for the trip was to do research for my upcoming novel Shenandoah Fire, but it was also simply to have a good time with my dad and recreate some of the wonderful trips on which he took me when I was a boy. We visited nine different battlefields and also took in the battle reenactments associated with the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Cedar Creek. We also ate some wonderful food at local restaurants. All things considered, it was a lovely trip.

My father and I acting like kids at the Monocacy Visitor's Center.

The first battlefield we visited was at Monocacy in Maryland, just south of Frederick. The Battle of Monocacy took place on July 9, 1864. A scratch force of about six thousand Union soldiers hastily gathered by General Lew Wallace (most famous for being the author of Ben Hur) fought against the Confederate Army of the Valley, fourteen thousand strong, under the command of the colorful and irascible General Jubal Early. The Confederate force was marching on Washington D.C., whose defenses had been stripped of troops to reinforce the Army of the Potomac. The possibility of the Southern forces capturing the United States capital city was very real. Had they succeeded, the course of the history would have been very different.

A peaceful part of the Monocacy Battlefield

Wallace knew he was terribly outnumbered. Even worse, half of his small force was made up of poorly trained militia, while Early's men were some of the finest infantry in the world. Knowing that he could not hope to win the battle, Wallace's objective was simply to delay Early's advance long enough for reinforcements to arrive in the defenses of Washington. Wallace knew that he was engaged in a life-or-death struggle that might determine the fate of the nation.

All day, the two armies battered one another. Using his superior numbers, Early was able to outflank Wallace to the south and roll up the Union line. On the field between the Worthington Farm and Thomas Farm, a Confederate force led by General John C. Breckinridge (the major character of my novella Blessed Are The Peacemakers) engaged in an epic struggle with the Union division under General James Ricketts. Hundreds of men were slaughtered under the hot summer sun. Breckinridge eventually drove off the Union force, but only after they had delayed the Confederate advance for a few precious hours.

The Worthington Farm House

Jubal Early won the Battle of Monocacy. Yet it amounted to a defeat. When Early and his army formed up for an attack on Washington on the morning of July 12, they were too late. The defenses bristled with the rifles and bayonets of the VI Corps of the Army of the Potomac, which had arrived just a few hours beforehand. The courageous stand made by Wallace's small force at Monocacy had won the Union the time it desperately needed to reinforce the capital. Had the Battle of Monocacy not delayed Early's advance, he could have captured Washington on July 11. Years later, speaking of his men who had fallen at Monocacy, Wallace wrote, "These men died to save the National Capital, and they did save it."

On October 16, I walked for hours across the fields in and around the Worthington and Thomas Farms at Monocacy National Battlefield, thinking about the brutal battle that took place there, trying to imagine what it had been like, remembering the courage and heroism displayed by the men on both sides of the awful struggle. So many men experienced their last moments of life at this place. Some were killed instantly, others suffered terribly from grievous wounds before dying on the field or in the nightmare that was a Civil War hospital. How many thought of their wives and their children before they gave their last breath?

It was not easy for my mind to focus on such thoughts, however, as there were thousands of cars and trucks roaring past me at 70 mph, only a few hundred yards away.

Highway 270 carves through the core of Monocacy National Battlefield, right across the fields where the crucial fight between Breckinridge and Ricketts took place. It is a major thoroughfare leading from Washington D.C. to the northwest and is clogged with heavy amounts of traffic. Walking the battlefield, it was impossible to ignore the roaring of the tires and engines, the honking horns of frustrated drivers, or the smell of car and truck exhaust. The highway was like a smallpox scar on the face of the battlefield.

I'm sure that, for some topographical reason determined by some Department of Transportation bureaucrat in some Washington office, it made perfect sense to run Highway 270 right through the heart of the Monocacy battlefield. It probably saved money and a fraction of a second off the driving time of people using the highway. Yet I'm equally sure that the Department of Transportation bureaucrat never considered, even for a moment, what damage he was doing to the country and our collective historical memory when he drew the line on the map that crossed over the Monocacy battlefield. In all likelihood, he didn't even know what had transpired on the piece of ground.

Monocacy is far from the only battlefield scarred by roads and highways. During my trip, I visited the battlefields at New Market and Cedar Creek in Virginia; both battlefields are cleaved in half by Highway 81. Manassas Battlefield has constantly been threatened by highway construction as the suburbs of Washington D.C. expand ever outward, as have the cluster of battlefields around Richmond. The same can be said for literally dozens of other battlefields around the country, including some from conflicts other than the Civil War.

These bits of land, were so many men gave what Lincoln called "the last full measure of devotion", are hallowed ground. They deserve to be protected. Of the multitude of threats facing historical battlefields across the country, rerouting highways away from them would seem to be the most easily solved, for the politicians in Congress or in the state legislatures can simply decree that the highways not run across the land in question.

I don't like cars. I do like preserving the historical memory of our nation and remembering deeds of great courage. I don't think I'm saying anything radical when I end this blog entry with a simple assertion: highways should not be run through battlefields. That's all.

The Annoying Ubiquity of Television

Not long ago, just after church, I took my wife and daughter out to lunch at a local Mexican restaurant. We have often gone to this particular place in the past and have always enjoyed the good quality of the food, the decent prices, and the friendly staff. But today, my lunch was disturbed by the looming presence of a large, flat-screen television hanging menacingly from the ceiling just a few feet from our table.

The lunch itself was very nice (I had a beef chimichanga, in case anyone cares) and the staff was delighted by the cuteness of my eighteen-month-old daughter Evelyn. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not avoid the grim stare of the television, which seemed like some electronic beast from George Orwell's worst nightmare.

For some reason, the television was tuned to a station featuring nothing but infomercials. The first one apparently was advertising some kind of new dog leash that doesn't choke the animals during walks. The second was for an apparently revolutionary bra design, though its exact virtues were completely lost on me. The two infomercials repeated several times throughout the course of our lunch. Mercifully, the sound was off, though someone had unhelpfully turned the closed captioning on.

Another television was hanging in a different part of the restaurant, tuned to the same infomercial station. None of the patrons appeared to be watching, which led me to wonder exactly why the televisions were on in the first place. More importantly, why were the televisions even there at all? I can understand why a sports bar would need televisions in order to show games, but why would an ordinary Mexican restaurant need one? I eat out to enjoy good food and good conversation; if I wanted to watch television, I would have stayed at home.

I am reminded of the opening scene in Blade Runner, featuring gigantic blimp-like aircraft hovering over a dystopian Los Angeles as they pummeled the people with advertising using blaring speakers and beaming lights. Television is ubiquitous and increasingly difficult to avoid. Restaurants, airports, the waiting rooms of doctor's offices, even in elevators. Wherever people are, someone seems to want to deploy a television, turn it on, and crank up the volume.

This makes no sense to me at all. It's as if we have collectively decided as a society to position gas generators in every room designed to release nasty and rotten odors every few minutes. One would hope that we wouldn't put up with that. Perhaps one day we'll learn not to tolerate the unwilling ubiquity of televisions, either.

Scotland Made The Right Decision

The big news of the past week has been the independence referendum in Scotland, in which the voters got to decide whether to remain in the United Kingdom or secede and become an independent nation. By the hefty margin of 55% to 45%, the people of Scotland rejected independence. It was the right decision.

I love Scotland. My maternal ancestors arrived in America from Scotland in 1906. I have visited Scotland many times. I've hosted Burns Night. I listen to Scottish music, eat Scottish food, drink Scottish beer, and read Scottish literature. Far too many Scottish-Americans think that they take their heritage seriously just by watching Braveheart, but I like to think that I'm at least a little more genuine.

It's also easy for me to understand the emotional desire that any proud people might have for independence. History is largely the story of people fighting to free themselves from others, as Americans can attest. Looking over the globe today, we can still see how the striving for independence continues to drive much of what happens in the world. The Kurds in Iraq are perhaps the most obvious example.

Yet Scotland was correct in rejecting independence. Had they voted to secede, the United Kingdom as we know it would have effectively ceased to exist. And a world without the United Kingdom would have been a much lesser place.

The United Kingdom is probably the most successful political entity that has ever existed, exerting an enormous and beneficial influence on the rest of the world. It was the United Kingdom that played the crucial role in defeating the imperial ambitions of Louis XIV and Napoleon and, in the 20th Century, played critical roles in defeated fascism in Nazi Germany and containing communism in Russia until it collapsed. Through the expansion and eventual independence of the British Empire, the United Kingdom spread over the whole world the concepts of parliamentary democracy, free market economics, the rule of law, and (not to be underrated) association football.

But aside from preserving the United Kingdom, Scotland was right in rejecting independence because being part of the United Kingdom is part of what makes Scotland what it is. For too many people, Scotland means William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. It should mean James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine; Adam Smith, the founder of modern economics; James Clerk Maxwell, the discoverer of electromagnetism; Robert Burns, the poet; David Hume, the philosopher; Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin; Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone; Patrick Geddes, the father of modern city planning; David Livingstone, the explorer of Africa. With a tiny fraction of a percent of the world's population, Scotland has produced some of the most important and influential thinkers of the modern age. Being part of the United Kingdom has allowed Scotland to punch far, far above its historical weight.

(Readers interested in the contributions Scots have made to the wider world should read Arthur Herman's outstanding book How the Scots Invented the Modern World.)

It's important to note that William Wallace and Robert the Bruce are warriors from the semi-barbaric medieval age. The truly great Scots are made their mark on the world after the 1707 Union between England and Scotland. It was through the United Kingdom that Scotland prospered and flourished. Walking away from that glorious historical legacy would have been a mistake.

So, to the voters of Scotland, I say thank you. Thank you for saving the United Kingdom and thank you for respecting the brilliant heritage of your nation.

Announcing Publication of Blessed are the Peacemakers

I am very proud to announce that my second book, Blessed are the Peacemakers: A Shattered Nation Novella, has been published. It's available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats. It tells the story of the peace conference between the Union and Confederacy following the events of Shattered Nation. The story is seen through the eyes of John C. Breckinridge, former Vice President of the United States and Confederate major general, now serving as a Confederate delegate to the peace talks.

The unexpected success of Shattered Nation: An Alternate History Novel of the American Civil War has been a source of enormous satisfaction for me.  Blessed are the Peacemakers is the first of what I expect will be several novellas that follow on from Shattered Nation. It is intended to serve as a bridge between Shattered Nation and its sequel, House of the Proud, which I hope to publish in late 2015 or early 2016. I'm also doing preliminary work on a novel detailing what happened in the Shenandoah Valley during the events of Shattered Nation. It's becoming increasingly clear to me that the literary adventure I embarked upon when I started work on Shattered Nation some years ago will be a lifelong project.

Yet it won't be the only project. Although I find the American Civil War utterly fascinating and absorbing, it is far from my only historical interest. Indeed, I am one of those unfortunate people who are interested in so many different things that they find it difficult to focus on any one subject for a long amount of time.  When confronted with occasional writer's block with Shattered Nation or Blessed are the Peacemakers, I have distracted myself by doing preliminary work, mostly researching and outlining, on alternate history novels that have nothing to do with the Shattered Nation timeline. My long term plans include alternate history novels dealing with the Second World War, the United States during the 1790s, the reign of Henry VIII, and the last years of the Roman Republic. Alternate history fiction is an immense and surprisingly untapped source of literary possibilities. Though I am still comparatively young, the sad truth is that I doubt I will live long enough to write all the books I want to write.

Writing Blessed are the Peacemakers has been an interesting intellectual adventure.  As with any excursion into the realm of alternate history, it's fascinating to look at the events of the past from a different perspective.  The outcome of the American Civil War and the subsequent course of American history, like most other major historical events, has the whiff of inevitability about it.  But nothing in history was inevitable.  Had events of the American Civil War unfolded as depicted in Shattered Nation, the situation in 1865 would have obviously been vastly different than what it was in the history with which we are familiar.  Trying to map out the course history might have taken, while being careful not to be carried away by flights of fancy, is a tremendously difficult yet strangely satisfying task.

Composing the actual text of the peace treaty, which appears at the end of the novella, was especially challenging and enjoyable.  I spent many hours scouring through the texts of eighteenth and nineteenth century treaties of peace and commerce in order to master the proper language.  This might strike some people as unimaginably boring, but I personally found it to be quite fun.

Anyway, for those who choose to read this little volume, I hope you enjoy it and I hope you look forward to what's coming in the future.

One Hundreth Anniversary Of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's Assassination

It was one hundred years ago today that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated in Sarajevo by the Serbian terrorist Gavrilo Princip. This single act was one of the great disasters in world history. Not only did it lead directly to the outbreak of the First World War, which killed tens of millions of people and left Europe in utter ruins, but it also led indirectly to the rise of fascism and communism and an even worse world war two decades later.

Before the summer of 1914, Europe had generally been at peace for almost half a century. Trade and cultural exchanges between nations had never been greater. Art, architecture, literature, and theater had flourished. The motion picture industry was being born. The Orient Express had made its regular runs from Paris to Constantinople. Luxury goods and travel, previously available only to the wealthy, were becoming accessible to the rising middle class. It's no surprise that the French referred to these decades as the Belle Époque.

There were problems, to be sure. Conflicts like the Spanish-American War and the Russo-Japanese War caused turbulence on the global scene. The Balkans, that always volatile tinderbox, had caught on fire in the years just before 1914. Irrational violent action by anarchists occasionally took place. The Dreyfus Affair revealed the depths of anti-Semitism in France. These troubles, though, might have been managed and the overall peace and prosperity of the time might have continued, but for those fatal shots fired by Princip on that dark June day and the stupidity of the national leaders of Austria-Hungry, Germany, Russia, France, and Britain.

The First World War was a nightmare that left between fifteen million and twenty million people dead. For the first time, industrialization was combined with warfare on a grand scale. Horrific things like chemical weapons, unrestricted submarine warfare, terror bombings by aircraft, and unpredicted concentrations of mass artillery fire were introduced. To read about battles such as Ypres, Verdun, the Somme, Gallipoli, Isonzo, the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, the Brusilov Offensive, Passchendaele, and the Chemin des Dames is to read about events that chill the blood and make one retch. Amidst all this carnage, the worst of human nature was revealed in the Armenian Genocide, in which over a million defenseless Armenians were slaughtered by Turkish bullets and bayonets.

The First World War shattered the old order, giving rise to ideologies like fascism and communism. Had there been no First World War, the blood-drenched tyrannies of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao would never have existed. There would have been no Nazi Germany, no SS, no Gestapo. There would have been no slaughter of millions of Jews and other "undesirables" in the concentration camps of the Holocaust. There would have been no Bolshevik Revolution, no Soviet Union, no Cheka or NKVD, no Gulag Archipelago. There would have been no Maoist China, no Red Guards, no Great Famine.

In sweeping away the old order, the First World War also brought down the Ottoman Empire. As corrupt and decrepit an imperial regime as that was, its destruction let loose a series of events in the Middle East that are still inflicting pain upon the world today. The forces of nationalism that were unleashed tore the region apart, set Arab against Jew in Palestine in a conflict that continues to this day, and brought forth forces of religious extremism that eventually led to Al Qaeda and Isis.

Adding another layer onto the tragedy, the First World War only led to an even more destructive war twenty years later. Had there been no First World War, there obviously would have been no Second World War. There would have been no mass genocide in Eastern Europe, no millions of lives lost in bloody battles in North Africa, Italy, the Western Front, the Eastern Front, and the Pacific. There would have been no area bombing of cities like Rotterdam, London, Hamburg, and Dresden. There would have been no atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; in fact, it's entirely possible that nuclear weapons might never have been invented.

One can only wonder, perhaps with bitter tears, how different the world would have been had Gavrilo Princip not fired those shots on the streets of Sarajevo a hundred years ago today.

The True Greatness Of A Nation

The crisis in the Ukraine has dominated the headlines of late, which is not surprising as it is the most serious confrontation between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. President Vladimir Putin seems determined to make the world see that Russia is again a major world power and a nation to be reckoned with. He's like the loudest guy in the bar, thumping his chest to make sure that everyone else knows just how tough he is.

This was on display today as the Russian military held its annual parade in Moscow to celebrate Victory Day, the commemoration of Russia's victory over Nazi Germany. Tanks, artillery pieces, rocket launchers, and even ballistic missiles rolled through Red Square, thousands of soldiers marched in perfect order, and fighter jets screamed overhead in an impressive display. For those who watched, it must have been hard not to be impressed.

Yet what did the parade really demonstrate about Russia that was all that impressive? They have a lot of tanks and soldiers, but who cares? Does the true greatness of a nation lie in the amount of military firepower it might be able to bring to bear? I don't think so at all, and the fact that any of us think so should be a source of disquiet.

You know what impresses me more about Russia than its T-80 tanks and MiG-31 fighters? The writing of Tolstoy, Pushkin, and Dostoyevsky. The music of Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky. The scientific achievements of Lomonosov and the engineering genius of Tsiolkovsky. What these brilliant Russians achieved will still be spoken of long after the name of Vladimir Putin has been forgotten.

Russia is a great nation, but we don't need Vladimir Putin to tell us that. Rather than push the world towards conflict and show off the war-potential of his country, he would have saved everyone a lot of trouble if he had simply organized a tour of the Hermitage Museum.

Trying To Be Civilized In 21st Century America

I like to think of myself as a fairly civilized person. I speak with proper grammar, use good table manners, and make an effort to keep my kitchen clean. I've been known to read works of classic literature that weren't assigned to me by a professor and I've occasionally been spotted in art museums. Sometimes, if you listen carefully, you might even hear Mozart or Bach playing at my house.

But I'm not nearly as civilized as I would like to be. I partly blame lack of money, as teachers in Texas don't exactly rake in the dough. I also blame simply lack of time and energy, as raising a year-old daughter takes a great deal of both. For all that, though, the real reason I am not as civilized as I would like to be is that it's very difficult to live a civilized life in 21st Century America.

For all its wonderful advances in the fields of medicine, science and technology, the age in which we live is a very uncivilized one. It is an age of ubiquitous, unavoidable advertising, which plays on our worst fears and insecurities to manipulate us into buying useless and even demeaning products. It is an age of frivolous popular culture, which focuses more on the personal lives on untalented people rather than the actual artistry of serious actors and musicians. It is an age that celebrates crass people acting out in order to gain fifteen minutes of fame, rather than people of genuine virtue or achievement.

I can think of no better demonstration of how uncivilized America is in the early 21st Century than what one sees while checking out at a typical grocery store. On one side is a magazine rack stuffed with celebrity gossip rags, their covers proclaiming which untalented singers and movie stars are pregnant, getting married, getting divorced, or whatnot. On the other side are rows and rows of candy bars, bubble gum packs, and other assorted collections of chemicals. It's as if someone is trying to simultaneously rot my brain and make me fat. When I finally pay for my groceries and escape out the other end, I always feel a desperate need to wash my hands.

Another case in point in scanning the programs available for viewing on cable every night. Finding even a single program that is not crass, vulgar, demeaning, or just plain stupid can be a difficult task. Almost everything on television these days is either hyper-sexualized or unnecessarily violent. Comedy is usually uncouth and simply gross, with little of the crisp, witty humor that is the hallmark of a refined sensibility. Then FCC chairman Newton Minow proclaimed television "a vast wasteland" more than half a century ago; it is worse today by several orders of magnitude.

Feel free to call me a snob if you wish. I shall take that as your acknowledgement that my standards are higher than yours.

What can an individual who wishes to be refined and civilized do in this day and age? There is a military tactic known as the "hedgehog defense", in which the defending force essentially creates a series of small fortified positions that face outwards in every direction. The attacking force may succeed in penetrating between them, but so long as each individual position remains intact and continues fighting, the defense as a whole will not fail. In 21st Century America, anyone who wants to live a civilized life must make themselves into a hedgehog, keeping at bay the inanity and triviality that characterizes so much of modern society.

It's simple. To live a civilized life in the 21st Century, you need to build a shield around yourself and keep out the unwholesome, demeaning, and vulgar trash that is swamping our society. Avoid the bad movies and watch the more refined films instead. Turn off the television and open a book. Cook something at home rather than running through the fast food drive through. It's not that difficult. It doesn't require any organization. It's just a choice each of us needs to make.