Mount Virtus

If ever there were an occasion in our day for playing the Ashokan Farewell, it would be the funeral of Shelby Foote. The haunting melodic theme of the PBS series “The Civil War” and its most well-recognized face and voice - brought together one last time.

Before Foote achieved national face recognition on the PBS series for his colorful recounting of wartime tales, he was a successful novelist and author of the grand, daunting trilogy “Civil War: A Narrative” (the three volumes in paperback weigh more than 9 pounds combined) - ranked 15th on Modern Library’s Top 100 list of 20th century nonfiction English-language works. I count myself as one of the few who made it through the 2,800+ pages of rich and detailed military history. The fraternity of those of us who have made it through and are under the age of 30 must be very small, indeed. But what a hallmark of dedicated research and writing, a sign of a passion for telling the story behind the subject matter.

The Washington Times reports today that Mr. Foote died Monday night in Memphis, Tenn. He was 88 years old.

Time to bring out the fiddle and guitar for a sentimental replaying of a famous haunting melody.

The homosexual advocacy group Equality Forum is organizing a celebration event at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on the 4th of July that will include commemorations of “gay icons in U.S. history,” a recent news report says.

Among the “outed” figures? You guessed it… Abraham Lincoln.

“[Former N.J.] Governor [James] McGreavey showed mainstream Americans that homophobia has kept those who seek elected office in the closet,” said Malcolm Lazin, executive director of Equality Forum. “These public officials include Abraham Lincoln, who saved the nation, emancipated slaves and founded the modern Republican Party.”

Lazin said he has read The Intimate Life of Abraham Lincoln. “As a gay man and an amateur American historian, I find the evidence indisputable that the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, was a gay man,” he said.

“Anyone not blinded by homophobia will recognize that the president who preserved our republic was gay. It is time that U.S. historical figures be emancipated from the closet,” Lazin added.

Ah, the lofty credentials of Malcolm Lazin, the amateur historian, telling us that all the professional historians who have debunked C.A. Tripp’s shoddy, agenda-driven The Intimate Life of Abraham Lincoln - not to mention the thorough, knowledegeable and reasoned critique from Tripp’s former colleague Philip Nobile - are plagued by homophobia. Welcome to the vast right-wing conspiracy, academia.

Are radical pro-homosexual advocacy groups so insecure about the depraved lifestyle they flaunt that they have to enlist great American historical figures as closet homosexuals on the most dubious, flimsy, and phony of evidence? The answer seems to be ‘yes.’

Right now, I’m probably feeding their insecurity by bringing more attention to the Equality Forum event than it deserves. If I weren’t worried that politically-correct American educational bureaucrats might some day soon decide to include Tripp’s debunked Lincoln thesis in a fourth-grade history curriculum, I’d probably just yawn in pity.

To the radical activists: go on with your agenda, if you must. You are free to do so. But stop lying and distorting history in the process. How about an honest discussion?

Call me ‘homophobic’ and play the ad hominem game all you want, there is NO serious evidence that our 16th president was gay. The more you try to press the point, the sillier you look.

Erratum: The correct title of Tripp’s book is The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, not The Intimate Life of Abraham Lincoln. The title of the book was incorrectly cited in the CNS News article above, and I didn’t catch the fact until later.

It’s been precisely three-and-a-half years since the fateful and tragic day of 9/11. Victor Davis Hanson looks back at the “turning points” since that day and judges American foreign policy successes up to this point. As always, Dr. Hanson is a must-read.

Hugh Hewitt has dangled another Vox Blogoli before us, and I couldn’t resist the temptation for this one…

“Does the Senate GOP Go McClellan or Go Grant if Harry Reid ‘Goes Gingrich?’”

According to the New York Times, Senate Minority Leader Reid has threatened to shut down the business of the Senate if Bill Frist and the Republicans remove the filibuster rule for judicial confirmations.

While awake to the danger of carrying the US Civil War-era historical analogy too far, I decided to address Hugh’s question creatively and analytically. I write as someone who grew up a Civil War buff - voraciously devouring all sorts of literature on the subject by the time I entered college - and later made the transformation to junior Civil War scholar, acquiring a masters degree in 19th century American history from Penn State University. I also write as an active Republican partisan.

The answer to Hugh’s question is simple: the Senate GOP needs to go Grant! The Ohio-born general did indeed resolve in 1864 “to fight it out on this line if it lasts all summer.” The lesson of Grant is that he devised a grand strategy for securing military victory over the Confederacy and stuck to it.

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If any day in February is worthy of an official government holiday, we should be celebrating TODAY. Why? Because George Washington was born on this day 273 years ago: February 22, 1732.

This blog post is neither the time nor the place to extend a full tribute to George Washington, our nation’s first President. Yet “First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen,” Washington is certainly worthy of the honor and commemoration.

No figure in American history deserves more than Washington to have his birthday celebrated by Americans in our time. (And I say this as one of the biggest Lincoln aficionados you’ll find.)

Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young tries to turn the tables on those attacking Ward Churchill by pouring some light on the scholarship of historian Thomas Woods, Jr., author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History” and co-founder of the pro-secession League of the South. (Hat tip: Real Clear Politics)

UNC law professor Eric Muller has been on the case of Woods already at length. Both Muller and Young have raked Woods over the coals, as his controversial book climbs the bestseller charts.

It looks to me as if we may have a new punching bag for the Left. To what extent does the history professor deserve such excoriation? Muller and Young say Woods has received highly insufficient critique from the political and cultural right. I’m not sure about that, but it does not surprise me.

As someone with a graduate degree in American history and a perspective very different from both the liberal academic establishment and the neo-Confederate reactionaries, I plan to investigate the matter over the coming days and report back to my faithful blog readers. I wasn’t familiar at all with Woods until I saw a copy of his book advertised in a conservative book club mailer. I remember scoffing at the cover with healthy skepticism. Let’s see where that leads….

Update and Correction: Thanks to a tip from Joshua,, I can see I’m a bit behind the curve. Glenn Reynolds already debunked the book. And I should have checked out what the folks over at Claremont had to say first. Nevertheless, I plan to offer up some extended remarks this evening.

My prior statement that indicated they said conservatives had given the book unvarnished praise was an overstatement and has been modified. Ms. Young in her article did mention the critiques of Reynolds and Max Boot but made the larger point that the center-right had been mostly silent.

On this important national day of reflection - both gazing back at history and forward into the uncharted future - we celebrate the peaceful transition of power in our Constitutionally-limited republican government. Inauguration Day comes every four years on the American calendar. Many of the most important speeches of our national public life are given on these days. To read and study them is to see not only something of the men who delivered them but also of the times in which they lived and the challenges Americans have faced - and so very often surmounted, as well.

I’m certainly not adding anything new or controversial to the conversation when I say that the best of them all remains Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, given on March 4, 1865. It is wise, prayerful, solemn, hopeful, and much more… all in a speech that could not have been spoken in more than 5 minutes.

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I know it’s late in the day for this, but…

For a day that’s lived “in infamy,” Dec. 7, 1941, has been the inspiration for a lot of films. It’s kind of a quirky way to remember one of the more significant events in American history,
but my brain is fried and I couldn’t think of a better way to commemorate Pearl Harbor Day in the limited time I have.

Pearl Harbor spawned a lot of movies. So here’s a brief trip down memory lane.

The biggies, of course, are the inimitable Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), From Here to Eternity (1953) and its star-studded cast, and In Harms Way (1965) with John Wayne. They’re all good, though I remember some better than others.

I’d be curious to see the depictions in the earliest wartime releases: Secret Agent of Japan (1942) and (the originally named) December 7, 1941 (1943).

Or a couple of cinematic looks at Pearl Harbor from Japan. There’s I Bombed Pearl Harbor (1961), Admiral Yamamoto (1968), and Imperial Navy (1980).

More recent additions include The Final Countdown (1980) - the paranormal alternate history mindbender featuring Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen. I think cable channels conspired to play this movie at least once a week during a long stretch of the 1990s.

Of course, there was the 1983 ABC miniseries Winds of War, based on the Herman Wouk classic. And a 1988 sequel titled War and Remembrance. Can’t say I have much remembrance of either one.

Finally, don’t ask me about the Ben Affleck-infected Pearl Harbor (2001). I took in 30 minutes of the battle sequence but vowed never to watch it from start to finish.

So which is the best? The worst? Which have you seen? Which would you like to see?

Deeper questions to think about when I have more time and brain energy… how have the depictions of that fateful day evolved on the big screen over the decades… and over the generations? Movies can often give a good glimpse into the soul of a culture.

And how will our depictions of 9/11 in film compare to those made of Pearl Harbor? Or can they even be compared? Is it too early to tell? As you can see, my mind is starting to drift off….

Hugh has issued a topic for discussion among the blogosphere:

A modern novel worth reading twice is very hard to come by, at least for a reader like me, pressed for time and inclined to history and current events…. But it seems to me to be a good sign that a serious reader would have reread a modern novel twice, and if any in the blogging community would like to offer those novels they have been through at least twice, I will link those posts here as a handy guide to Christmas book giving and getting.

My first reaction to this was ‘why read a novel twice?’

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