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The Civil War in 10,000 Words (maybe)
Feb. 24th, 2006 09:38 amI was talking to Col about a month ago about some research he's doing, and in the course of that conversation he said that he was hopeless with dates. It's funny, because I am good with dates sometimes (as I am about to attempt to demonstrate) and hopeless other times (when was the Hundred Years War again?), and I think the difference is context. I had been talking over on Diary-X before the big crash - maybe someday you'll be able to read that again - about how I used to read about the Civil War all the time, and I can still pretty much tell you approximate dates for all the major battles, and the reason why is because I have read so much that I'm pretty damn familiar with the context in which a battle was fought, so I'm not operating in a vacuum. With the example of the Hundred Years War, even though we're talking about a war that went on for a good chunk of a century, I can't remember for sure which century that was, because I can't ever remember anything specific like who was king at the time, things like that that would give me a clue about the dates. With the Civil War, if I forget when an event was - a battle or anything else - well, I probably know it happened right around the same time as something else, so I can usually figure it out. And so to prove it, the brain-dump. The weekend of the marathon I was sitting around the hotel with nothing to do and I started writing a short "summary" of the Civil War. (I did it without looking anything up whatsoever, so it's possible there are errors. Hopefully nothing major.) And here's part 1, which covers approximately the first year of the war. I make no promises about when or if the rest will get done, although the next couple of major battles - the Seven Days and 2nd Manassas - are already written. Also, it's occurred to me that if I can just get through 1863, the rest ought to go pretty fast. (Because how much do you really need to say about a siege? 1864 was fairly boring, comparatively speaking.)
(This was the entry that I started typing up once before, and the power went out and it got lost. So cross your fingers. Although I do have the text saved as a back-up this time.)
(This was the entry that I started typing up once before, and the power went out and it got lost. So cross your fingers. Although I do have the text saved as a back-up this time.)
