New Trivia Game Preview/Question

[rivrrat]

I found the question complex enough that I didn't think I could answer it with out more resherch than I felit I had time for.

[samgrant]

Answer: Samuel McGowan

Just for your information, there were 4 correct answers, one incorrect answer, and 3 that said they could not find the answer. We have no idea how many folks may have tried, but never posted. Thanks to each of you who did respond, as it is important to me to know what you think.

Here's a few sources:

http://www.aztecclub.com/bios/mcgowan.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_McGowan_(general)

http://aphillcsa.com/mcgowan.html

http://www.geocities.com/scvcamp40samuelmcgowan/

http://www.researchonline.net/sccw/bios/biosm2.htm



Now let's consider the question:

This South Carolinian, who had served in the Mexican American War, was wounded at Bull Run, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. He was promoted to Brigadier-General as of January 1863. Post-war he returned to his native state and was elected to Congress in 1865 and later served on his state Supreme Court. Name him.


First, this is a little (or a lot) different than most of the 'straightforward' questions you may be accustomed to.

So while not all my questions will be of this nature, several may be.

This type of question contains several clues, no one of which, in itself, would likely lead directly to the answer. Instead the player needs to put some combination of the clues together in order to find the answer.

Another thing I did with this question was to include in the clues, something I'll refer to as 'curveballs'. A curveball is a clue which is entirely valid, but which is somewhat deceptive in that it may suggest something other than what it really means. In the above question I included several curveballs purposely in order to make this point. In bold, above you see some of them. Some are blatant than others:

Bull Run - This is a rather benign one. Most of us know there were 2 Bull Run battles and also that these were named Manassas in the South. So this clue doesn't specify at which of those battles he was wounded. Knowing the subject of the question was a South Carolinian, might, and probably should have suggested one use the term "Manassas' in your search for the answer.

Cold Harbor - This was was meant to be deceiving. Most folks think of "Cold Harbor" as the 1864 battle in which Union assaults were disasterously repelled. Did you know that sometimes that battle is referred to as Second Cold Harbor? First Cold Harbor is more commonly known as Gaines' Mill, one of the Seven days Battles of the Peninsula Campaign of 1862.

Another curveball was combining these two clues in a series of battles "Bull Run, Spotsylvania, Chancellorsville, Cold Harbor" in an order which does suggest the 1864 Cold Harbor.

(I'll try not to be quite so devious once we get the game going.)

"elected to Congress in 1865" - entirely true, and perhaps helpful in finding the answer, but somewhat misleading in what it did not say: that he was refused his seat so never served. So if you went looking for Congressmen from South Carolina who were elected in 1865, McGowan would not be one of them.

(There are other things which may not mean what they at first appear to mean: If I use "White House", is that the one in Washington D.C. or the one in Richmond, Virginia, or White House Landing, also in Virginia? You can be reasonably certain that I would not be referring the Presidential Palace of the Kyrgyz Republic!)

OK, enough about curveballs. I expect to use them sparingly, and not to combine them as I did above.

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Now I still consider this a very difficult question on the imaginary scale, and congratulate those who found the correct answer. (I was shocked when less than an hour after I posted the question the first answer came in and it was correct! I thought maybe it's not as difficult as I had expected!) Those of you who could not find the answer should not be much discouraged.

As a matter of fact, during the week, pretending I did not know the answer, I attempted to find it by putting various of the clues together and Googling them to get to the answer. And I had a devil of a time! After one session I just had to stop and put it aside for a while.
Then on my way home from work one day, something out of my subconscious suggested a solution to me. (I guess those clues were up there rolling around and colliding, making associations all by them selves.)

So here is how I manged to find the answer:

I had the date of his promotion to Brigadier, and I had some battles which, curveballs aside, I could find dates for. So, I asked myself, what was the first battle he was wounded in, after his promotion? That was Chancellorsville. So, how to find all the Confederate BGs who were wounded there.

Do I go to http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/generals.html
and go through all the generals where it says "Chancellorsville(w)"? Naw.

What about the Order of Battle for Chancellorsville? That should work. (For those who are not familiar with OOBs, they are organized lists of most all high officers, usually all generals down thru colonels or lt. colonels, also usually designating who was killed (k) or wounded (w) or mortally wounded (mw), etc. And they are an excellent source for some questions involving officers and battles.) So I went to Wikipedia (there are plenty of other sites where Orders of Battle can be found) and searched the Chancellorsville Confederate Order of Battle for those little '(w)'s. I found 5 BGs who were wounded.

Now I could have Googled each of those 5 names separately to see if that guy fitted any of the other clues, but that's still too much work. I left my Chancellorsville OOB window open and opened a new window to search the Spotsylvania Court House Order of Battle for those '(w)'s. If I could find a match on any of the 5 names from Chancellorsville with the wounded generals at Spotsylvania, I might have my man. Sure enough, I found one match, "BG Samuel McGowan". Finally I Googled McGowan to verify that he fit all the other clues, and Bingo!

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I just want to stress a few points about my account above.
First - If you find yourself spending an inordinate time on a question thats confounds you, skip it, answer the other questions and 'sleep on' the tough one. Then come back to it later.
Second - There are many ways to skin a cat. Try to look at the question in a different way from when you first looked at it. Considered what sources you can use to best put the clues together.
Third - Remember that it's just a game. Don't start pulling your hair out! Use it as a learning opportunity. Try to enjoy the challenge, and if you are persistent but patient with yourself you will enjoy that "Bingo" moment when all that uncertainty and confusion fall away and suddenly it all begins to become very clear.