Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 25, 2019 10:53:23 GMT -8
I just started reading Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War. I’m well sated on the Shaara historical novels. But while browsing through the non-fiction section of my local online library, this one popped out. Reviews on Amazon were generally good so I check it out. I’ve only just started the second chapter, but despite perhaps having read enough Civil War material to last me for a while, the story is (so far) well written. It just flows. Whether it stays that way or not, we’ll see. But probably for every one book I decide to read, five others are tossed aside, not having made it through even five pages. You wonder sometimes how people can make what seems to be an exciting subject so dense and boring. But people manage to do that quite easily. So, at the end of the day, a good and readable book is probably less about subject matter and more about competent, engaging writing. Let’s face it, the author of a book has had the most time possible to write the first few pages. When those pages are dull, dense, and disjointed, that’s not a good sign. This one jumps write into the thick of things with the story of Belle Boyd known by even her friends in Martinsburg, Virginia as “the fasted girl in Virginia or anywhere else for that matter.” She lives in the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley and, at the tender age of 17, is witness to Colonel Thomas Jackson and his 380 boys facing an invading army of 3500 Yankees. The rebels retreated and Belle had some firsthand experience with some uncouth Yankee soldiers….once of whom she shot for trying to molest her good-looking mother. With no forethought (she’s very impulsive) of what she had done, she suddenly knew it was serious. She then blurted out “Only those who are cowards shoot women….now shoot!” Hell, that intro is like the start of an Indiana Jones movie. Like I said, whether the book remains interesting is to be seen. But the writer clearly knows that her job (Karen Abbott, in this case) is not to bore the reader to death.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 25, 2019 11:42:54 GMT -8
This could be interesting. Many years ago I read Harnett Kane's Spies for the Blue and Gray, which included several women (some from both sides). Belle Boyd was certainly one; other Confederate female spies included Rose O'Neal Greenhow and Antonio Ford, both in Virginia. There was also one further west best known for (allegedly) rejecting Ambrose Burnside at the wedding ceremony. This became a potential problem when she came before him as a spy, pretending to be someone else.
Northern female spies included Elizabeth Van Lew ("Mad Lizzie") and Pauline Cushman. The latter came the closest of any woman to being executed. She had the misfortune of falling into the hands of Braxton Bragg, who didn't share the chivalry of other southerners (even Nathan Bedford Forrest). Fortunately for her, Rosecrans's Tullahoma campaign was just in time to save her from the drop.
Incidentally, Martinsburg is in the far north of the Shenandoah Valley, west of Harper's Ferry and north of Winchester. Of course, that's in the lower valley because the Shenandoah flows south to north.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 25, 2019 15:09:41 GMT -8
That sounds good as well. I often check our two or three books at a time. Makes it easy if one of them is a quick bust. I have George Washington’s Secret Six in the queue. The reviews on this are very strong, 70% five stars out of 3926 ratings. That’s usually a good sign that at least it’s not a dog. But one reviewer says this non-fiction book read in places like a historical novel, making up things that it’s doubtful anyone could know. Also, this reviewer writes: Where do you stand on the subject of Drunk Hessians? Or should I ask, where do you stagger on the subject? Far north? I do remember it is at one end or the other. Oops. Or probably what they said was that it was in the lower part of the valley and I assumed that meant south.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 25, 2019 15:36:15 GMT -8
I figured you just slipped up seeing a reference to the lower end of the valley. I recall that some book on the subject I read as a child (I read many general histories of the War of the Rebellion) mentioned that apparent contradiction (down=north, up=south).
I've read a book on the Culper ring, but it came out before Kilmeade's. It's an interesting story, in any case. I don't exactly recall the title of the one I read, but Washington's Spies by Alexander Rose sounds about right. Wikipedia says it was the main source for AMC's Turn series, which I saw some episodes of.
Washington was certainly able to get all the way into Trenton to surprise the Hessians, and his losses weren't very high. But of course it was also a very cold night, with the Delaware partially iced over (which prevented some of Washington's troops from crossing -- or so they said, anyway). Incidentally, the boats didn't have seats and there inevitably was icy water in the bottoms, so Washington may really have chosen to stand rather than sit. That way only his feet froze, not his rump. Whether the weather or drunkenness or over-confidence and contempt for the colonials enabled Washington to surprise Rall (who was mortally wounded in the battle), it hardly matters. Professionals shouldn't let themselves be surprised.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 26, 2019 11:20:16 GMT -8
That quote from Dalrymple (from another current thread) reminds me of something fairly lame I read in my latest Shaara historical Civil War novel. He had Union (brigadier general at the time, I believe) officer, Chamberlain, musing about the enemy. I think he had come across a captured Confederate soldier or something like that. And Chamberlain thinks something like, “He fought very strongly for a cause he believed in. And isn’t that what America is about?” Yikes. My head almost exploded. I won’t even begin to note what’s wrong with that idea because it’s self-evident to all of you. And in that and previous novels, Chamberlain was most decidedly fighting for an idea, not for “blue uniforms vs. grey uniforms.” But then, in retrospect, these line of books by father-and-son Shaara are meant to be somewhat ecumenical. In my current novel, one of the four "spy" chicks is supposedly one of four hundred women (on both sides) who pretended to be men and fought in the civil war. I don’t remember either of her names offhand (real name and fake man name) but she’s certainly an interesting character. We might even so how much of this gender-fluidity stuff is not only the result of impressionable (and egotistical) minds viewing fads on YouTube but because people who have serious psychological problems. This one chick had an abusive father (her story) who chose a wife like a farmer would chose a prize pig. All he wanted was as many sons as he could get to work a potato farm. But his wife gave him four daughters and a son with a mental handicap. So this girl, who became a soldier, was the last hope. But darned if she didn’t come out as a girl as well. She admits to having tried as hard as she could to be the son her father always wanted…to no avail. Apparently the man was just the epitome of rotten. I may have been roped into a gender-fluidity-friendly you-go-girl type of book. But it does seem to read honestly (the author is not a screeching man-hating feminist in tone). And the stories told about these four women so far are interesting. I’m not sure that this gender-bending Union soldier is a spy, as such (or a spy yet). She plans on never firing her (his) rifle in anger and instead plans on attending to the wounded. And apparently it isn’t as difficult as you’d think to hide your sex. Many slept with their clothes on and many didn’t use the ugly latrine pits dug for that purpose but instead used the bushes and woods. Yes, her (his) fellow soldiers recognized that her skin was sort of smooth and she had a squeaky high voice. But surely it wouldn’t have been the first feminine-looking man they had run across in life. And they easily looked past this. She also did her best to hide her femininity. Some men, for instance, would do sewing for others for a fee. But she shied away from anything like that thinking (probably correctly) that it would threaten her disguise. Getting the geography of the South (for me) is an ongoing task and somewhat of a pleasure. If reading some of these books takes so long it is because I’m constantly referring to Google Maps. I just checked and it would appear that the series, “ Turn: Washington’s Spies,” is streaming on Netflix. I’ll have to check that out. For what it’s worth, IMDB rates it at 8.1
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Post by timothylane on Nov 26, 2019 11:33:13 GMT -8
Women would join for a variety of reasons, including one (who shows up one of Sharyn McCrumb's books on Appalachian tales) who simply accompanied her husband. I've never read anything to indicate that they thought of themselves as men in women's bodies, but it's not a topic that comes up much. I will be interested in finding out about the various stories. I would think "Mad Lizzie" (Elizabeth Van Lew was a very open Unionist in her Richmond home) would be one of them. She actually received some sort of official thanks after the war for her services as a spy.
I liked the episodes of Turn that I saw. There was even one I was looking forward to for its coverage of other events, but that was a few years ago and I don't remember what now.
Consulting maps to place the action can be very desirable, and not always easy. That's one disadvantage of e-books. You can't easily go to where the maps are.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 26, 2019 14:31:31 GMT -8
Indeed. At least that one Shaara book (that included Gettysburg) frequently had small battle maps at the beginning of the chapters. But basically the entire East Coast is pretty much foreign to me. Not that I know the West personally. But it does seem more familiar. If someone says “Nevada” I don’t need to reference a map. But I’m still not 100% sure I could draw in all the state names properly on a blank map. A lot of them in the east could be tricky.
But then there are people who think Alaska is located somewhere in the Pacific Ocean because many maps that show the contiguous United States as the main area have Hawaii and Alaska as insets off to the left.
But I was so impressed with the geography of Tennessee, I really wouldn’t mind visiting there. We’ll see. And parts of the South are outstandingly beautiful. George with the peach trees blossoming must be a site.
And having read so much about Virginia (there wouldn’t have been a proper Civil War at all if that state’s battles were excluded), I would love to see that state as well.
For what it’s worth, my mother’s name was Georgia. Her older sister’s name was Virginia. Had their been a third girl, you suppose she might have been named Carolina? As far as I know, the family on my mother’s side does not come from the South. But then I really don’t know all that much about my family’s history. Anyone who winds up on the West Coast often wasn’t particularly rooted deeply anywhere. A lot of travelers.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 26, 2019 14:52:00 GMT -8
I was born in Virginia (Fort Belvoir) because my father was stationed there. He spent a year there before we went to Greece preparing for the job (having studied Greek for a year at the Army Language School in the Monterey Presidio). We went through in the summer of 1964 on the way to his next station, commanding the 39th Engineer Battalion at Fort Campbell (then and now the home of the 101st Airborne Division). It was on that trip that my mother decided, as we traversed the Richmond battlefield areas, that the reason the North won was that they had insect repellent and the South didn't, so the Confederates were too busy scratching to fight effectively. Elizabeth and I visited it on our way to and from the Baltimore Worldcon in 1998.
The only time we ever lived in Tennessee was at Fort Campbell (it's split between Tennessee and Kentucky, but we were on the southern side of the state border) and nearby Clarksville. I have visited it on a number of occasions. Georgia (where my sister currently lives) I've visited twice to attend conventions there, plus our visit to Chickamauga on the our long 1997 trip to San Antonio. My plane stopped over in Atlanta on the way back from Orlando in 1992, and my sister and mother visited me between flights.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 26, 2019 19:59:23 GMT -8
My older brother was doing a live musical set with a trio in a place tonight. A couple cousins from out of town came in to see it. It was a good opportunity to ask them some questions.
I found out that both my maternal grandmother and grandfather are from the South. It was hard to talk over the music (some other act was playing as well…they were awful) but I found out that they both came from North Carolina and Virginia and that is apparently (somewhere in the region) where they met.
As I said, I know very little of the family history on that side of the family. But I was told that my grandmother’s maiden name was Collins. Her parents had a milk farm just outside of Richmond. One of the cousins told me that it was standard for the army to get half of the production.
Details were sketchy, even sitting across the table from someone. But apparently someone close in the family did a search and found out their father, uncle, cousin, or whatever, was in the Confederate army…and was a deserter. Especially late in the war, I think a lot of Southern men just walked away. But I don’t think it was uncommon.
I’ll have to try to get more of the story. But thus the reason for “Virginia” and “Georgia” for the names of the daughters. I didn’t really figure that was a coincidence but then you never know. My grandparents may have just like the names. But they had gotten married (I know not where) and had wound up at the farthest point northwest you can get in the continent United States and that is where they had their children in Clallam Bay. I guess they wanted to maintain ties to their past or these were also family names.
The brothers (to my ear) had quite neutral names: Ed (presumably Edward), Clyde, Buck (I forget his real name….I think that is a nickname), and Lewis. And was grandmother’s last name of Collins indicative of the heavily Scots-Irish presence in the South? I would assume so.
Who knows. Maybe the reason I’m so attracted to Civil War books (at the moment) is that I am actually related to, say, James Longstreet. Or maybe one day his quartermaster stopped by great-grandmother’s farm and bought some milk.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 26, 2019 21:13:43 GMT -8
There were a lot of significant Lanes during the war on both sides, but I don't know of any connection to them. On my mother's side I'm a first cousin five times removed from Abe Lincoln. My paternal grandfather once told us an ancestor deserted the Union Army after the Emancipation Proclamation to join Morgan's cavalry. Elizabeth's ancestors included Colonel Samuel Shepard (who briefly commanded what was left of Archer's brigade after Gettysburg) and Brigadier Isham W. Garrott (killed during the Vicksburg campaign).
Desertion was indeed a problem for both sides, but late in the war it was especially bad for the Confederates. Freeman noted that one low-morale division lost a few hundred deserters over a single fortnight in early 1865.
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 26, 2019 21:44:13 GMT -8
While your (Tim and Brad) relatives were taking pot shots at each other and only slaughtering a few hundred thousand people, my relatives were taking place in a much larger event and slaughtering millions. Taiping
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Post by timothylane on Nov 26, 2019 21:59:21 GMT -8
I'm most familiar with the Taiping Revolution from Caleb Carr's biography (The Devil Soldier) of Frederick Townsend Ward, the white mandarin who founded the Ever-Victorious Army. (He was killed early on, and the army found its greatest successes under Charles Gordon, which is why he became known as Chinese Gordon.) Flashman also had one of his adventures there.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 27, 2019 8:25:38 GMT -8
Egg on my face. I don’t think I’d ever heard of the Taiping Rebellion. How absolutely ghastly. And this was started by some ersatz version of Christianity?
A link above point to more about the “God Worshipping Society”:
Sounds like Karl Marx in reverse. Another failure who tries to overcome his innate mediocrity by overturning the world and christening oneself as having special knowledge.
Actual Christian saints tended to go out and help the lepers, not start a civil war that kills 30 million people.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 27, 2019 8:55:21 GMT -8
In “Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy,” it can be a little difficult reading because the author is jumping between the four featured women. It’s a little difficult to keep straight.
The most interesting story, by far, is the man-woman Union soldier. Right now she (he) has become friends (very good friends) with another soldier. And this is reading like an episode of Three’s Company. The guy knows something is different about this soldier but feels very intimate with him (her). Some of the things he writes in his own diary are downright hilarious, such as:
Probably firmer than you think, Jerome. And this quote takes the cake:
That reminds me of the hilarious “The Black Adder” episode where a pretty girl dresses up as “Bob” in order to gain employment with Edmund. Edmund (played by Rowan Atkinson) feels strangely attracted to “Bob” but is a little on edge around “him” and doesn’t understand why. I guess when they say “You can’t make this stuff up,” they are correct. Writers of fiction (or comedy) rarely need to make anything up.
Last I left these two, he (she) had told Jerome everything. But then the author immediately moves to the next story so I haven’t found out if Jerome has had a The Crying Game moment or is enlivened and relieved.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 27, 2019 9:29:06 GMT -8
I heard about the Taiping Rebellion in a college course, but it was just a brief reference. I still knew little about it when I read Carr's biography of Ward. Elizabeth got a book on the Taipings, no doubt because of their Christian background. (Come to think of it, now we can understand why a lot of Chinese don't want Christianity getting involved in China again. They have long memories.) I never got around to reading about it.
Incidentally, Poul Anderson had an allusion to it in his story "Kings Who Die". It noted that though China and the US weren't heavily involved in foreign conflicts in the 19th Century, they did have bloody civil wars (and the US also had its Indian wars, though Anderson didn't mention them). He was no more specific than that, and at the time I read the story I'd never heard of the Taiping Rebellion. (In fact, I didn't remember the author's name, for that or numerous other stories in the anthology I found it in, 8th Annual Year's Best SF edited by Judith Merril.
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 27, 2019 10:17:31 GMT -8
Don't feel like the Lone Stranger. I don't believe many Americans have heard of it.
Perhaps the first time I learned of it was after watching Charlton Heston playing China/Chinese Gordon in "Khartoum." I found Gordon a very interesting Gordon so I looked into his history.
Of course, having lived in Asia for 20 years and studying the history of China, I became more familiar with the rebellion. It was the greatest event in 19th-century China and was a major contributing factor to the collapse of the Manchu state. I always found "Jesus' Little Brother" an interesting character. What a nut!
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 27, 2019 10:18:34 GMT -8
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 27, 2019 10:23:39 GMT -8
That reminds me, I've still got to finish "Khartoum." They have that on Amazon Prime so maybe I'll pick it up again. I think I watched about a half hour and then moved on for some reason. I forget.
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 27, 2019 10:24:54 GMT -8
You might find a look at the Hakka people worthwhile. They are generally considered outsiders in most Chinese communities. They appear to have drifted into south China after the country had been settled, thus were not very welcome. They had to build fortified towns in order to protect themselves from the locals who wanted to get rid of them.
The Hakka women wore a particular style of hat which immediately set them apart from other Han groups. When I first moved to Asia, one could still see them working on some building sites in Singapore.
At that time, I also saw an old Chinese woman with bound feet. The little thing was crossing a street wobbling along.
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 27, 2019 10:33:41 GMT -8
In fact, the many Christian missionaries who worked in China generally had a very good reputation, particularly the Protestants. America built up a huge amount of goodwill with the Chinese through their Protestant missionaries.
Christian missionaries had great success in China, unlike in Japan. There were always discussions in the missionary community about dedicating resources where they were most effective. That is one reason fewer and fewer missionaries went to Japan and China overflowed with them. I even know of one case of a Norwegian (I blv) missionary who was murdered by the Japanese in the 1930/40s because he was such a strong supporter of the Chinese people. The Chinese built a monument to him in Tatung, as I recall. I met the man's grandson in the 1990s.
Of course, the ruling class generally suspected Christianity, just as the Roman Empire did. This was because both had no understanding of the creed, but did understand the nature of their dictatorial rule and that the plebs had to be controlled. Giving them hope and a religion other than the officially state-sanctioned belief was dangerous. Divided loyalties and all that.
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