Shiloh, 1862 (51 page)
Authors: Winston Groom
Likewise, the discovery of the memoir of Elsie Duncan Hurt bears telling. Returning to Memphis after serving as Tennessee’s attorney general, prominent Memphis lawyer Michael Cody bought an old home, and in researching its ownership found that it was built in 1901 by Elsie Duncan Hurt. He also discovered Elsie’s obituary, which said that she had written a memoir of her life during the Civil War. Intrigued, Cody worked for more than a year tracking down a relative, who he finally found living in Birmingham and who still had a copy of the memoir. He gave a copy to Cody, who—serving on the foundation board of the Memphis Public Library—donated it for posterity.
While I have not written extensively about the Battle of Shiloh, all my previous Civil War histories concerned battles in the western theater, and in so doing I have chronicled the careers of some of the
major characters—for example, Grant, Sherman, and Halleck. In this story I uncovered as much fresh and interesting material about them as possible and strove to write about them distinctly, but on occasion it became necessary to weave in some of my earlier depictions. In
Vicksburg, 1863
, for example, I wrote, “The remarkable thing about Grant, was that he was so
unremarkable
.” There is no better or even equal way to express this that I know of, and to my mind the reader deserves the best.
I ask forbearance from the American Historical Association and the MLA Style Sheet, for I have occasionally taken liberty with direct quotations by sometimes eliminating ellipsis marks when they seemed to impede the flow and sense of a sentence or paragraph; likewise I have on occasion fiddled with punctuation where I thought it would lead to confusion. My thinking is that people living 150 years ago spoke a somewhat different language than we do today, and sometimes it needs to be adjusted slightly to make it clear. But never in any instance have I deliberately changed the meaning or sense of any original author or speaker.
I would especially like to thank Len Riedel of the Blue & Gray Education Society for getting this ball rolling in the first place. As a member of the BGES I am proud to help the organization by authorizing a special leather-bound limited edition of this book. I am particularly grateful to Jeanette and Carl Christman; Janet and Bill Riedel; Jim Anderson; Laurie and Corky Lowe; Frank Roberts; Bob Gailbraith; Trish and David Dubose, and Benjamin Brand for their generous support in underwriting the printing of the special volume.
Len had obtained access to a huge amount of historic material on the Battle of Corinth from the collection of Corinth historian Van Hedges, and out of that discussion grew the idea of a
new account of the Battle of Shiloh and his introduction of me to Lisa Thomas, the steady, able senior editor of National Geographic Books, for whose patience, kindness, and solid editorial advice I am profoundly grateful. Also deserving of many thanks at the NGS are Marshall Kiker, illustrations specialist, for locating the images; Carl Mehler, NGS’s director of maps, who oversaw the mapmaking; and Judith Klein, production editor, whose eagle eye stanched errors. Line editor Andrew Carlson deserves a Distinguished Service Cross for unraveling my tongue-twisting prose, while copy editor Don Kennison is entitled at least to a Purple Heart for having his sensibilities constantly assaulted by my obnoxious punctuation and syntax. The readers will certainly thank you, and so do I.
My literary agent, Theron Raines, added his inestimable wisdom and wise counsel by reading and commenting on the entire manuscript. Last, but never least, my wife, Anne-Clinton, and her mother, Dr. Wren Murphy, have as usual expended great time and greater effort in dealing with photographs, permissions, logging in books, manuscripts, and other research materials as well as indexing, organizing, and performing every other task to make this project run smoothly from the beginning. My everlasting thanks to you all.
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These CDs are about $30 to $50. To purchase the entire OR, for instance, would cost anywhere between $1,500 and $5,000, and even then you’d have to find somewhere to put it.
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