Ben Crippen, Sam Peiffer, and the defiant fist

I will be featuring the 143rd Pennsylvania’s monument with it’s own capsule post in June.  I occasionally come across a story behind a monument that’s more in-depth that deserves a longer feature than the more standardized monument entries — each basically designed just to be a capsule about the regiment and it’s memorial.  Anyway when researching to write about the 143rd Pennsylvania’s monument I found the 143rd has a little extra story behind their Gettysburg monument, and so I decided to give the story behind the monument it’s own post separate from the standard entry that will appear later.

Most people familiar with the battle of Gettysburg are aware that the bas relief on the front of the monument to the 143rd Pennsylvania located on the Chambersburg Pike near the intersection with Reynolds Avenue depicts Color Sgt. Ben Crippen.

Most people are not, however, aware that there is some controversy behind the monument.

As Stone’s Brigade retreated from McPherson’s Ridge on July 1 under the onslaught of Daniel’s North Carolina Brigade and Brockenbrough’s Virginia brigade, Lt. Col. Arthur Fremantle, an observer from the British Army with the Confederate troops was watching the progress of the fighting along with General A.P. Hill and other officers. Fremantle kept a diary and later wrote in his diary that:

A Yankee color bearer floated his standard in the field and the regiment fought around it, and when at last it was obliged to retreat, the color bearer retreated last of all, turning around now and then to shake his fist in the face of the advancing Confederates. He was shot. General Hill was sorry when he met his fate.

Fremantle, of course, did not identify the soldier or his unit; no official report mentioned the brave act of the color bearer either. The identity of the brave color sergeant sparked a controversy between two of Stones’ regiments, the 143rd and 150th Pennsylvania regiments.

The 143rd was sure that the color bearer seen by Fremantle was Sgt. Benjamin H. Crippen. The 21 year old color bearer was killed carrying the regimental colors on the first day. Sergent Simon Hubler of the 143rd recalled that ” It was in the field between the Chambersburg Pike and Gettysburg where Crippen our color bearer fell, defying the enemy.”

The 150th Pennsylvania, also of Stones’ brigade, disagreed. They thought that their color bearer, Sgt. Samuel L. Peiffer, had to be the defiant soldier seen by Fremantle. Like Crippen, Peiffer was killed on July 1, 1863. Colonel Huidekoper noted that Peiffer fell “bleeding from a mortal shot, while proudly flaunting the colors in the face of the foe”.

In this case, the fact that the 143rd had staked Crippen’s claim some 20 years before was convincing to the Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association. They approved the 143rd’s monument design — a block of granite with a large bas relief of Crippen, shaking his face defiantly in the face of the on-coming enemy.

Although Crippen’s contribution was honored in stone and Peiffer’s contribution was mostly lost to history, nevertheless it is obvious much valor was expended by the Union troops as they retreated on the afternoon of July 1. They may have been defeated, but they were obviously still very much defiant.

Fluffed.

Running down by Baldwin Lake in Berea yesterday (my second run of the day), I spotted this guy. So of course I had to stop and try and get a picture of him. I think I annoyed him because he fluffed up at me. I also got a picture of him stalking along the water and just standing looking all impressive.

I also went exploring very briefly in an old cemetery and took some pictures of a few graves of Civil War soldiers buried there. For example, Drummer Hiram Vaughn who served with the 65th Ohio Infantry. The 65th Ohio had a fairly impressive combat record. Here is their combat record from Larry Stevens’ fine website Ohio in the Civil War. After the War, Vaughn was prominent with the G.A.R. locally.

As you’ll notice, I’m a member of Flickr.  I use it to store my digital photographs.  Some areas that might be of interest to my Civil War visitors include my best of the Civil War sets, sets from Gettysburg (working on adding more), and two “kitchen sinks” sets — every picture I’ve taken digitally at Sharpsburg and at and around Gettysburg.  Of course, there are “throw away” shots in the kitchen sink collections, but if you dig through there are all sorts of different angles and shots of the battlefields in there, especially at Gettysburg.

(I’m basically trying to distract myself from worrying about a “routine” CT scan on Monday. There never seems to be anything “routine” about my CT scans, hence the anxiety.)

why the interest in A.P. Hill

A question via email that has been asked numerous times.  Why the interest in A.P. Hill? 

One of the first books I read about the Civil War was D.S. Freeman’s classic three volume set Lee’s Lieutenants.  For those not familiar with this masterwork, following his four volume Pulitzer prize winning biography of Robert E. Lee, Freeman set about writing a history of the Army of Northern Virginia’s high command.  The trilogy proceeds in chronological order from the first days of the War all the way to the very end at Appomattox.  Lee’s various generals — from Longstreet to Jackson to Stuart to Gordon — all make appearances and are given roles in the drama.

It is here I first encountered A.P. Hill.  Most of Lee’s generals can be distilled down to a word or a phrase or a nickname.  For example, Longstreet is Lee’s “War Horse” — reliable, dependable, solid.  Jackson can be summed up as the “eccentric genius” — difficult, yet brilliant.  Stuart is the cavalier — the superb horseman, the Knight of the Golden Spurs.

A.P. Hill had a nickname too.  Friends and family referred to him as “Powell” and his nickname during the War was “Little Powell.”  Nevertheless, that nickname only suggests a slightness of stature.  It doesn’t give a clue or key to the man like “Old War Horse” or “Old Blue Light” or “Marble Man” or “Tige.”

Hill came across to me as a sort of shadowy character.  He clearly had a volcanic temper that would erupt when he felt he had been slighted.  His fascinating personal “battle” first with Longstreet, then with Stonewall Jackson reflects that.  On the other hand, Hill was well loved by his men.  A courier remembered that “of all the generals, only A.P. Hill never failed, even during the heat of battle, to have a kindly word and perhaps a little joke for the couriers.”

As a general, Hill could be brilliant.   His career was marked by several successes — the highest among them arriving in the nick of time at Sharpsburg.  Yet to counterbalance those brilliant days, Hill had his share of bad days — the most notable being the disaster at Bristoe Station.

I came to the study of the War in the mid 1990s, one of the many people who had their interest in Civil War history ignited by the movie Gettysburg.  (Gettysburg was, of course,  not one of Hill’s better battles.)  While some people may have found their interest passed quickly, mine didn’t.  The more I read about the Civil War, the more I wanted to know.  I became entranced by the period and wanted to know everything I could.  And it was the people who intrigued me the most.  It was as if the War was a grand tragedy written by a great mind like Shakespeare, with this colorful cast of characters — rouges and villains, heroes and idols.  Yet, it was all real, it had all really happened.  You could even travel to Gettysburg and walk over the same ground that Meade and Lee had ridden over.  You could stand on Cemetery Ridge and even crouch behind the stonewall and imagine what it was like to see Pickett’s and Pettigew’s men emerge from the tree line on July 3.

I had a healthy interest in battlefield tactics, and to this day enjoy poring over maps and trying to figure out which regiment was where, how a brigade ended up where it was, of principles of war.  I like to picture battle lines in my head.  But what really captured my imagination was trying to understand the people.  How did men face fire like that and not run?  What was it really like to be there?

In 1997, I signed on to the internet for the first time and discovered there was much out there already about the Civil War.  By that time, I had developed an interest in A.P. Hill.  For whatever reason, I found that I liked this shadowy character who wore a red shirt into battle, dared to pick fights with Longstreet and Jackson, was unquestionably very brave, yet was also significantly flawed.  While there was quite a bit out on the internet about the War, I found there was precious little about A.P. Hill in the new world.

Back before everyone could have a blog and broadcast their thoughts to the world, we had websites.  Websites were also fairly easy to set up and run (though not as easy as a blog), and like blogs you could pretty much publish anything you wanted about any topic.  That said, most websites weren’t personal thought collections like many blogs or little blurbs about what the author is thinking about at any given time.  Rather, they were topical.  I thought it would be neat to give Hill a big, interesting website.  Maybe he had been forgotten, or mostly forgotten anyway, in the books, but I decided that would not be in the new electronic age.

And so I started reading about Hill and then writing about him.  The more I learned, the more I wanted to know. At first, I was more interested in Hill as a general.  But the more I learned about him, the more I wanted to know him as a person.

I wanted Hill to have a nice looking website.  So I learned first HTML, then XHTML, then CSS so I could have a decent looking website.  I studied web design a little bit.  I scanned in pictures and I kept on reading anything I could find with even just a passing reference to Hill.

My site started out small, then grew into a behemoth.  When my dad bought me a copy of the Official Records on CD-Rom, I painstakingly added the reports of not only Hill, but all his subordinates to my site.  When I received a copy of the Southern Historical Society Papers, I again carefully combed through looking for interesting articles about Hill or the men who served under him.

As an internet subject for someone’s first real history project, Hill turned out to be a good subject.  There is a good amount of information available about him, but not an insurmountable amount.   He also had enough paradoxes about him that even people who might not otherwise be interested in history could find Hill an intriguing and interesting fellow.

By the time I graduated from college in 2002, my website was mainly complete, though I still add to it from time to time when I find something interesting or read something interesting about Hill.

And so in that roundabout way, I return to the question — why A.P. Hill?  I could have picked any character — after all, there was no website about John Sedgwick or John Gordon or even of Winfield Scott Hancock.  I think I picked A.P. Hill because he was an interesting person.  Not because he was the War’s best general.  He was not.  Not because he was the War’s worst general.  He was not.  Not because he was saintly.  Hill was not.  Rather, I picked him because he human.  I liked the balance between good and bad qualities.  Human beings are not all good or all bad.  Well, at least most of us aren’t.  Most of us are a mixture of both flaws and good qualities.  In the words of Nietzsche we are “Human, All Too Human.”

Hill was definitely human.  And, I think that’s why he still interests me even today.

Fog and Gray and Rain

Sorting through pictures today on my hard-drive; a few favorites of the Gettysburg battlefield in the rain and fog.  Seemed appropriate for a very gray February day.

Image of Cowan’s New York Battery near the Angle in the rain.  Taken in December 2007. Visible beyond the cannon is the Codori Barn.

(These are far from my best pictures in most cases, but they have a certain dark and forlorn beauty that I can appreciate and I hope you enjoy them too.  The field takes on a ghostly appearance in the fog and rain.)

Set one, from upper left.  The Codori Farm from the Wheatfield Road, rain beaded like droplets of sweat on the bust of Patrick O’Rourke on Little Round Top, Warren in the fog on Little Round Top, view towards newly cleared Devil’s Den from the 140th New York monument

 

Set two, from upper left. The Bushman farm from Seminary Ridge near the position of the Texas Brigade, Meade at the Angle, the Trostle Barn, view of the Peach Orchard in the rain from the Longstreet tower.

 

Set three from upper left. The 155th Pennsylvania Zouaves on Little Round Top, Culp’s Hill near position of the 123rd New York, the Masonic Monument - Armistead hands his effects to Capt. Bingham of Hancock’s staff, the High Water Mark Monument at the Angle.

Set four from upper left. Personal favorite series — shots of the Bushman and Slyder farms taken from South Confederate Avenue along Seminary Ridge.

Set four from upper left. Detail of the 2nd New York Cavalry horsehead, the Pennsylvania monument from the Emmitsburg Road, the 44th New York castle on Little Round Top, the Peace Light Monument.

The February 6 Triumvirate

In lieu of the usual monument post today (most of which are related to the Army of the Potomac), I decided to take a brief break and turn my attention to the Army of Northern Virginia.

History is full of odd and interesting coincidences. One of the more interesting that you may not be aware of is that three stellar, young Army of Northern Virginia generals were born in successive years on this date in history (February 6th).

Interestingly, this illustrious trio represented four Confederate states (Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia). There was one civilian soldier and two professionals (both graduates of the West Point class of 1854). Two were killed in the Civil War; one rose to become a prominent post-war politician.

They are in order of birth:

General John B. Gordon was born on February 6, 1832 in Upson County, Georgia. He was a lawyer and engaged in mining operations prior to the War. Gordon rose from the colonelcy of an Alabama regiment to eventually command of the illustrious Second Corps. He survived a terrible series of wounds at Sharpsburg and commanded the last attack by the Army of Northern Virginia at Fort Stedman. Ramrod straight and imposing on the field of strife, one of Gordon’s admiring men would exclaim that to see Gordon on the battlefield would put fight into a whipped chicken. Of the illustrious triumvirate, Gordon was the only one to survive the War. He served his state for years as a senator and as a governor. Gordon died in January 1904.

“He was,” Union General John Sedgwick said, “the greatest cavalryman foaled in America.” James Ewell Brown Stuart — “Jeb” — was born on February 6, 1833. He was the quintessential cavalier of the War. A professional soldier, he would rise to command of the Army of Northern Virginia’s cavalry and arguably become the best cavalryman of the Civil War. Even if you don’t think Stuart worthy of that lofty title, it is indisputable that he was one of the most flashy and iconic of all the generals of not only the Confederacy, but of the entire Civil War. Stuart — the eyes and ears of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia — was mortally wounded at the battle of Yellow Tavern in May 1864 and died the following day. Among his last words on the battlefield were the entreaty to his men: “I’d rather die than be whipped.” ¹

When Robert E. Lee ticked off the loss of his “best men” in a letter in the fall of 1863, the name William Dorsey Pender was prominent. Pender was born on February 6, 1834, making him the youngest of the three Army of Northern Virginia generals who celebrated their birthday on February 6th. Pender was a professional soldier (West Point class of 1854 ² — same class as Stuart) with a knack for getting wounded. Rising up through the ranks of A.P. Hill’s storied Light Division, Pender was Hill’s choice to take over that command. Hill even went so far as to make certain Pender received command of the Light Division over Henry Heth, who was technically the senior and one of Hill’s dearest friends. Pious, brave to the point of flaw, and an excellent soldier marked for potential higher command, Pender was mortally wounded in command of the Light Division at Gettysburg. One of his officers summed him up thusly: “He was one of the coolest, most self-possessed and one of the most absolutely fearless men under fire I ever knew.”

(Other famous people born on February 6 include the greatest baseball player of all time, Babe Ruth. I give the Babe the title of the greatest because not only could he hit, he could also pitch. There is no one quite like him in the game.)

There you have it — three stellar young generals of the Army of Northern Virginia, all born in three consecutive years on February 6th.

1. Ironically, Stuart and Sedgwick, the beloved commander of the Union VI Corps, died within days of each other. [↩]
2. The class of 1854 produced 11 generals; of these 11, 6 were killed in battle, including five for the Confederacy. [↩]

understanding history

Harry Smeltzer has a website and blog about Civil War history in general, and the battle of Manassas in particular, called Bull Runnings. The topic of whether history should be presented in narrative format is popular right now and Harry has a good post today about that topic. In the post Harry asks whether “web projects, perhaps, [can] be something more than alternatives to traditional print narratives: can they somehow be more illustrative of the fragmented, chaotic nature of events, military or otherwise, and so provide a better understanding of what happened than traditional narrative?”

I think web projects can be. But even the best web project cannot address the problem of conveying what it was really like to be there.

A web project can go further than the traditional narrative history book in that a web project has at least the potential to be multimedia which in turn appeals to multiple senses; there is also the opportunity to build large archives and collections of different types of descriptions to create a more complete picture of a topic. For example, a website on a battle can include narrative descriptions of the fighting, maps of troop movements, maps depicting topography, photographs of the battlefield past and present. There can be paintings or depictions of art in other form. It can include descriptions from women, old men, children, fighting men, and generals — all each conveying a different part of the experience. Music from the period, the sounds of battle, could also be included. Books cannot convey sound and most are limited in what they can present in the way of photographs and maps. A good website can gather all of these things in one place. Furthermore, there’s more opportunity in a web project to have different authors.

(Not to say books should be replaced by websites. But I do think the electronic medium has a lot of potential to create a more complete version of history.)

But no multimedia presentation and no book no matter how detailed can convey what it was really like. Historians, like it or not, are constrained in part by the medium — the English language can only go so far in it’s descriptiveness. The brain can only absorb and process so much at any given time.

Part of the problem is history is the craft of describing human life and affairs, and life is in and of itself a sensory experience. Words can try to describe things we sense — what a man’s face looks like, what a battlefield smelled like, what a Whitworth projectile heading overhead sounded like, how the ground rises and falls — but unless you experience those things for yourself, you really don’t understand. Further complicating matters is the fact that people perceive things differently. Sure, there is usually a common thread, but reality is different for each of us. Asked to describe the same exact event, we’ll all come up with slightly different ways to do so, maybe even widely divergent ways. How we will describe the event in part is based upon our own past experiences, but probably also has something to do simply with the fact that we’re all biologically wired somewhat differently.

Take the example of chemo for cancer treatment. Most of you out there have not ever experienced first-hand what it is like to do chemo. I can tell you that no matter how much you try to understand what it is like to undergo chemo, you cannot understand unless you’ve been through it yourself. I can try to convey to you what it is like, but my reality and your reality are different. Think of trying to describe to someone who has never heard one what a saxophone sounds like — you have points of reference to use to try and describe it, but until you have experienced it yourself, you cannot say you really know or understand.

I think that is what the chaos of battle is like. We can try to understand it, but really never cannot because we have not experienced it the same way they experienced it. Historians try to describe it, but can only go so far.

The more ways you can sense history — touch it, experience it for yourself — I think the closer you can get. But you never are going to know what it actually was like to be there, unless you were there. Even then, you cannot ever have the full picture.

Since none of us are witnesses, we’re also limited by having to make sense of what we’re given by the historical record. The historical record has it’s problems. Go back to trying to describe the same event and coming up with different stories to describe it. We may sense it differently, but there is more to it than that. Our descriptions also may vary depending on what we’re trying to convey. Do we want sympathy? Do we want someone to believe us and not someone else? Is there something to be gained if our version of what happened is believed over another? This can impact what we emphasize when we tell our own version of what happened. It can lead us to consciously or unconsciously distort the record.

Historians, in the end, are a lot like attorneys, really. I think that’s the reason you find so many lawyers writing history or interested in history. As attorneys, we are given a set of facts — all filtered through the eyes of witnesses with different experiences who may have differing motivations for how they tell the story of what happened. They may all be telling the truth, or at least think they are telling the truth (though of course some will lie and the attorney will have to try and sort fact from fiction which is in and of itself sometimes impossible). An attorney takes these “facts” and then cobbles them together to create a story to be told in a brief, or to the judge, or to the jury. The attorney creates a story to explain reality. In the end, isn’t that really what a historian does — gather evidence and tell a story? Of course, we like to think that historians don’t have reason to give the story a certain “spin,” whereas the lawyer obviously tries to tell the story in a way that most benefits the client. But is there such a thing as a totally unbiased historian? I don’t think there is.

Just some thoughts bouncing in my head, as Harry put it. Although I don’t think there are any answers to some of these problems, I think that mulling over them and understanding that they exist is a good thing.

truly “monstrous fine”

I had a truly monstrous fine couple days. And they did not even involve eating a large watermelon a la Irwin McDowell.

Here is the promised story of how I ended up in Gettysburg on Friday.

One of my friends on a running message board had a husband who was very seriously interested in the War. He recently passed away from lung cancer. Knowing my interest in the War, she offered to give me his print collection of the Official Records. The set is not quite complete, but very close.

Now, I have the OR on CD-Rom, but what Civil War historian out there– pro or amateur — wouldn’t want the actual books to pick up, leaf through, and read?!?

The only catch was she lives about 15 miles outside of Gettysburg. I live in Cleveland. Six hours approximately away. Shipping over 100 books would not have been very practical or affordable. So I talked my folks into driving to Gettysburg. We stayed Friday night, picked up the books on Saturday.

(My own ability to drive is hampered by my darn port right now.)

In addition to having the world’s best parents (I should mention neither of my folks are serious Civil War buffs and they did not even know what the ORs were, let alone their significance), I got a few hours in Gettysburg, I got the chance to meet a good friend from the running forum online that I frequent, and I picked up a set of the OR. I am truly grateful to have them. I feel like I won the Civil War lottery.

This was one of the best couple days of 2007 — a year that has otherwise been marked more for bad stuff than good.

monstrous fine

I am rethinking my prior post where I confessed to devouring an entire bag of potato chips. After all, I do not want to go down in history like Irvin McDowell.¹ A subordinate officer recalled of this rather large Union general:

At dinner he was such a Gargantuan feeder and so absorbed in the dishes before him that he had but little time for conversation. While he drank neither wine nor spirits, he fairly gobbled the larger part of every dish within reach, and wound up with an entire watermelon, which he said was “monstrous fine!”

When Sherman was planing to engage in “total war” against the Confederacy, don’t you just have to wonder if he at least considered just setting a hungry McDowell loose in the Confederate heartland to eat until his heart’s content?

Certainly, that would have quickly starved the Confederacy into submission.²

1. Given my luck, all I would be remembered for is my ability to eat potato chips. Perish the thought. [↩]
2. McDowell’s appetite was so impressive, I even named my favorite angelfish after him. That fish could EASILY eat any other fish under the table. Unfortunately, telling the gender of angelfish is not easy; one day, Irvin laid eggs and became Irvina. [↩]

13 down, 3 to go

I managed to just squeak through treatment number 13. It was the worst treatment since the first, mainly because of severe anticipatory nausea and a terrible attack of acid reflux. And that’s all I am going to say about it.

I thankfully have only three chemo sessions left to go.

And, for those wondering, no, Robert Krick did not mess up my PET scan. Other than a high SUV of 6.2 throughout my skelton, my PET was clean. My chest masses seem to have disappeared. My spleen is still enlarged, although even that is shrinking. Other than the spleen and the high SUV in the marrow which we are near certain is being caused by the marrow being thrown into overdrive by Aransep, Neulasta, and chemo itself, I would be “normal.”

This is all good stuff, I just wish chemo would not be so difficult and that I could get some sort of hold on this crazy anticipatory nausea stuff.

if my PET scan is messed up …

… I am blaming Robert Krick.

This is one of those unusual posts that somehow ends up in both the Hodgkin’s category and the Civil War category. You’re probably wondering how some very high tech nuclear medicine cancer scan relates to the Civil War. Well, I’ll admit, the relationship is tenuous as best. But hey you’ve read this far, so you’re either bored or experiencing insomnia so let me explain further.

As a Civil War whatever (buff? afficanado? amateur historian? webmaster? you pick the term) I am usually reading something about the Civil War. Yesterday, I was at one of those rare points where I am not currently reading anything. Ok, that’s not quite true. I had just finished rereading William Hassler’s biography of A.P. Hill (we won’t go into how many times I have read that). I am still rereading Douglas Southall Freeman’s classic Lee’s Lieutenants (give me a break, it’s three volumes!) but I don’t like to take that one to medical appointments because it attracts stares and inevitably questions. For some reason, people never ask me about what I am reading except when I bring Lee’s Lieutenants. I have concluded it is because the volumes of Lee’s Lieutenants are so fat. I can’t think of any other reason. Anyway. That’s the main reason I am reading two different things at a time. Obviously I spend a lot of time in and out of medical appointments.

Ok, the point of that rather long digression was to say I had to quickly grab something off the shelf to take to the PET scan. Since most of my readers have never had a PET scan or been a cancer patient, let me explain two salient points. First, you never go to outpatient radiology (or that matter any medical appointment) and expect it to be FAST (the exception is if you have something visibly wrong with you: the outpatient radiology department doesn’t want you hurling on their carpet or bleeding everywhere.). If they say 10:15, expect to be called at 12:00. It’s like the Army. Hurry up and wait. Second, a PET scan requires that you sit quietly for at least half an hour while a radioactive glucose tracer circulates in your system. I’ll explain more about that in a minute. The point is if you don’t take something to do, you’ll die of boredom. So I had to find a book and fast.

By the way, the reason I was running late because I couldn’t find my stinking insurance card. I found it, luckily. The lady at the radiology desk knows me by name, (I never thought I’d be known by name by the staff of the radiology department ….) but every time I go, they have to photocopy my insurance card. Medicine is the one profession that likes killing trees, apparently, even more than the judical system.

Anyway, its not hard for me to find something to read; I have quite a little Civil War library. So I had a lot to pick from. I did the shelf scan and for whatever reason my eyes settled on Smoothbore Volley that Doomed the Confederacy. It is a series of essays on the Army of Northern Virginia by, yes, you guessed it, the aforementioned Robert Krick. I figured it was a good choice — essays can easily be interupted if necessary.

(I’ve read it before. I bought this book because it had an essay on one of A.P. Hill’s generals named Maxcy Gregg. But the whole thing is very good.)

At this point I imagine I’ve lost all but my most loyal readers. Either your a loyal reader or you must BE Robert Krick fresh to this blog via the incredible Google search engine and want to know how you messed up some poor girl that you’ve never met’s cancer scan. So let me say if you’re still with me, thanks for being one of my most loyal readers. And if you’re Robert Krick, comment and say hi. I find hearing from real historians really cool. I mean, it wouldn’t be as cool as Grady Sizemore hitting a homerun for me or something, but it is the sort of thing that makes my day. Really.

Now, I really like reading Robert Krick. I don’t always agree with his conclusions, but I like his writing style (I find it easy to read and he has a wonderful, acid wit) . Krick is also one of the leading authorities on the Army of Northern Virginia, which of course is also my big interest (obviously, as an A.P. Hill champion). Even if you don’t like his analysis, he has access to the type of research library (including primary sources) that would make the mouth of anyone interested in the Army of Northern Virginia water excessively. Krick’s stuff is, therefore, filled with fascinating tidbits you probably haven’t heard of or read anywhere else. In terms of research scope and in terms of his “loyalties” think modern day D.S. Freeman.

It wasn’t till I read a study on PET scan today that I realized picking up Krick’s book was a bad choice on my part.

To explain we have to go back to the PET scan for a moment. Basically what happens at a PET scan is the tech injects a small amount of radioactive tracer that is attached to glucose. Then you basically have to sit there quietly while the tracer circulates through the body; how long you sit depends on your body weight and height. Cancer cells are overactive and fast dividing so they love glucose. They eagerly grab onto the glucose — and the tracer. The scan works by showing the areas picking up glucose the fastest — suspected areas of cancer basically “light up” brighter than non-cancerous areas. The actual scan is just like the much more commonly administered CT scan; it just takes longer (again depending on how tall and heavy you are; someone small like me only actually takes 8 minutes to scan).

So you’re now probably completely lost as to how Robert Krick could mess up my PET scan.

The PET scan is incredibly accurate for diagnosing you when you’re negative. It’s big drawback is it is too good. You can get a false positive — a lit area — because of inflammation or a host of other non-maligant conditions. In fact a study on PET scan showed that “any kind of activity, even energetic foot tapping, before a pet scan can alter the results thus making them not so reliable.”

So, I figure if my PET scan lights up in my jaw, it may be because I read Robert Krick’s essay on Robert Rodes beforehand. Here I was supposed to be sitting quietly and I could not help laughing as I read Krick’s characterization of Rodes’ wife as “pyromanical” (she burned all his personal papers). Or Lee’s chief of artillery (a man named William Pendelton) described as “wretchedly inept.” Historians rarely indulge in such language. When they do I find it really entertaining and funny. Particularly when what they are saying is true. Pendelton was woefully incompetent.

But lesson learned. Next time I will pick something duller. Maybe someone’s memoirs. Or I’ll try and think of the most boring Civil War general I have a biography on. (Guess that means I won’t be taking Sickles the Incredible!)

(Fingers crossed please — seriously, a “messed” up PET scan would be expensive, stressful, and probably indicative that something is seriously wrong at this point. Plus, I don’t want to have to explain why it might be wrong to my oncologist. Can you imagine me trying to explain all this to him? Not only is he likely not interested in the least in the Civil War, he’s actually from New Zealand. So he’s really not likely to be interested or to understand any of this!)