How <i>The Civil War Dictionary</i> Came into Being

Abstract

HOW THE CIVIL WAR DICTIONARY CAME INTO BEING Mark M. Boatner III When the head of the Chicago Civil War Round Table phoned about my giving talks to her group and the Milwaukee CWRT, we pulled a subject out of the air: "How The Civil War Dictionary Came Into Being ."1 As soon as this started appearing in the monthly newsletter, which included the complete speakers' schedule for the 1986-87 season, I had misgivings. These increased with each successive issue of thenewsletter. My talk was scheduled as the last of the season for each group, so I had months of leisure to repent an act made in haste. Who really cared how I wrote the book? My subject would keep them away in droves, I suspected. It was not reassuring when the woman who got us into this situation phoned to say that the MilwaukeeCWRT had canceled out. Did I mind? Again taken by surprise, I did not think fast enough to suggest that the Chicago CWRT drop out also. At the eleventh hour, however, reassuring events occurred. Several people wrote to say they were looking forward to the meeting in Chicago . Then the editor of this quarterly asked me to consider making an article out of the talk. "You may recall recent articles in Civil War History on Battles and Leaders and the genesis of the Official Records," his note said. That is heady company! After much organizational turbulence within the David McKay Company , a new president assured me that he intended to go ahead with the long-delayed plans to issue an extensively updated new sixteenth printing. Meanwhile, the competition I had been expecting for thirty years had finally appeared in the form of the Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedh of the Civil War.2 That seemingly uninspired topic suddenly appeared to be a good one. It had become even timely. 1 Mark M. Boatner III, The Civil War Dictionary (New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1969) 2 Patricia Faust, ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1986). Civil War History, Vol. XXXIV, No. 3, © 1988 by The Kent State University Press 198civil war history The Civil War Dictionary (CWD) might well be titled "What ever happened to J. D. Cox?" The book idea came to me soon after I started teaching military history at West Point in 1956. Like most new instructors , I was only a lesson ahead of the students. One day a cadet asked that question. In the Antietam campaign, starting at South Mountain, where he succeeded Jesse L. Reno as corps commander, Cox was a star. His name was not mentioned again during the course. Other instructors frequently got similar "good questions." All we could do was to say we'd find the answer before the class met again. It occurred to me that if instructors wrote a memo-for-record whenever they dug up an answer, these could be posted in loose-leaf books that in due course would make a valuable work of reference. Despite a negative reaction from fellow instructors, I presented the idea officially, in writing. More than the expected disapproval, I got an admonishment evocative of a famous "second endorsement." When a subordinate persisted in resubmitting a third request in writing for a furlough Nathan Bedford Forrest allegedly scribbled on it, "I have tole you twict goddammit No!"3 No-longer-wanted property in the Old Army, including horses and mules, was stamped or branded "I. C," meaning "Inspected and Condemned ." I believed the government had a refusal option on my book because the idea had come to me "in line of duty." Now that my creature bore an official "I. C," it was mine alone. I had three misgivings. First, whether I could hack it, if readers will forgive the pun. Second, whether others were ahead of me. Third, whether the growing public enthusiasm for our Civil War would be sustained long enough to make my labor worthwhile. My Military Customs and Traditions was being published about this time by David McKay.4 When I went to New York and casually sprang the idea for the Civil War book on Kennett L. Rawson, president of this famous old company, he hit...