David Dixon: Thankful For . . .

As a historian, my greatest pet peeve is not the absence of a bibliography. I understand the financial pressures faced by publishers in these challenging times. It is not the omission of a key secondary work, especially one that was published after the manuscript was complete, but before the author’s own book hit the market. Scholarship evolves and mistakes happen. The gradual diminishment of competent copyediting and proofreading among some university presses do not get my goat. Maddening as it is, they have seen their budgets slashed, forcing many to cut staff or exit the book publishing business altogether. No, my chief complaint concerns the few historians who neglect to include acknowledgments in their work.

Although writing is often perceived as a solitary endeavor, any honest historian will tell you that collaboration with peers is essential in producing first-rate scholarship. Without the help of archivists, curators, librarians, public historians, colleagues, friends, family, and countless others offering guidance, expertise, and acts of kindness, we would have few books worth reading. My greatest fear is not a hostile review, tepid book sales, or even (gasp!) an error found on page 163. No, what keeps me up at night is the thought that I may have forgotten to thank someone who helped me improve my own work.

One of many debts incurred during the production of my biography of Union General August Willich illustrates the necessity of peer review. The first draft of my manuscript was 20,000 words too long; an unkept adolescent needing more than a hot bath, shoeshine, and a new suit to make a respectable debut. Earl Hess’s Civil War Infantry Tactics helped me understand Willich’s use of various formations and techniques, particularly at Shiloh and Chickamauga.[i] I introduced myself to Earl at Gettysburg College’s Civil War Institute Summer Conference to tell him how much I appreciated his work. I then asked if he would be willing to read a chapter so that I might avoid mistakes that a biographer masquerading as military historian might make. He generously offered to read the entire manuscript.

Earl is a kind gentleman, but he is also an accomplished historian and educator. He understands that despite the years we spend gestating, birthing, and raising our literary prodigies, we are not looking for empty platitudes concerning our book rearing efforts. If some limbs of the youngster require cosmetic surgery, brutal honesty is welcomed, not resented. As parent of this paginated papoose, I had fallen in love with a part of him that, to an eminent history pediatrician like Dr. Hess, threatened to make my beautiful baby ugly. That would not stand!

The infatuation in question began with a visit to one of the shrines of the Civil War community: chief historian Jim Ogden’s office at Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park, where untold treasures await the curious archive rat. In Jim’s file on Willich, I found fresh sources I had not encountered in my research, including an 1874 letter from an anonymous Afton, Iowa correspondent to Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.[ii] The writer described an incident during the battle at Chickamauga when General Rosecrans threatened to arrest Willich for insubordination but allowed the old Prussian to talk him out of it. I had corroborating evidence about a dispute Willich had with General Absalom Baird on September 19 and Willich’s heated reactions from several first-hand sources. More compelling was the dialogue attributed to Willich that was very much in character. What a great story! I just had to include it. Here’s a snippet from the letter:

General R: But sir, I can’t let you go into this fight. You are under arrest. I will assign a commander to your brigade.

General W: You send an officer to fight my boys? He can’t do it; they don’t know him. Me they know; I teach them; I fight them, and none of the boys would know how to fight or what to do only when I goes with them. My boys belong to me. Yes, me, General Willich. I command this brigade, and I must fight the brigade.

Not so fast, cautioned Earl Hess. He had serious reservations about the veracity of the anonymous writer’s account, whose identity I was unable to discover. Why had no one else mentioned this event? Earl stressed that Rosecrans had more urgent priorities during the sleepless night of September 19 and doubted that he would use precious time to settle a dispute or remove one of his best brigadiers who had performed so courageously. Deferring to his expertise, I removed the suspect episode and consigned the letter to an end note.

My heartbreak over the deletion of that vivid and dramatic scene did not last long. Experts like Dave Powell and Lee White concurred. As juicy as that quote was, it was mere hearsay. Generous colleagues like Earl Hess, who was willing to read an entire book manuscript from a little-known historian and offer detailed suggestions, while attending to his teaching duties and his own voluminous output of Civil War titles, is typical of this wonderful community of historians who help each other to make history better.

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David T. Dixon is the author of Radical Warrior: August Willich’s Journey from German Revolutionist to Union General (Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2020).

[i] Earl J. Hess, Civil War Infantry Tactics: Training, Combat, and Small Unit Effectiveness (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2015).

[ii] Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 49 (October 1874): 760.