- Joined
- Jan 7, 2013
- Location
- Long Island, NY
The comment of Brooks Simpson on Megan Kate Nelson's blog:
I don’t think this is about one subfield versus another subfield, or that it fits very well into the recent debate about military history. Stauffer used Douglass’s remark as not only political speech but as accurate reporting, and in the process made other errors, some of which have nothing to do with fields or subfields but simply remind us of the need to follow sound research practices (see Andy Hall’s http://deadconfederates.com/2015/01/20/frederick-douglass-time-traveler/). Stauffer offers other assertions without support, and he managed to mangle the state of the discussion in the first place: nothing he said is new (unless it was also wrong).
I don’t think this is a question of gatekeepers and boundaries, especially when we are trying for cross-fertilization and the need to bring to bear many perspectives in an effort to understand something better. But (for example) it would have been easy to check an order of battle listing participating regiments or any standard account of First Manassas to understand that there were no such thing as three black regiments at the battle. That’s simply good research practice. I’m sure that if I were to venture into cultural or literary studies that someone would remind me that there are some basic things to understand as well. As for the rest of the squabble about Civil War military history, I’m sorry, but I don’t really get it, at least as it has been presented to me. I don’t care about Stauffer’s field: what I cared about was that he misrepresented the current discussion, bungled the handling of evidence, and offered unsupported assertions as if they were explanations. I’ve seen nothing so far challenging any of those objections.
I don’t think this is about one subfield versus another subfield, or that it fits very well into the recent debate about military history. Stauffer used Douglass’s remark as not only political speech but as accurate reporting, and in the process made other errors, some of which have nothing to do with fields or subfields but simply remind us of the need to follow sound research practices (see Andy Hall’s http://deadconfederates.com/2015/01/20/frederick-douglass-time-traveler/). Stauffer offers other assertions without support, and he managed to mangle the state of the discussion in the first place: nothing he said is new (unless it was also wrong).
I don’t think this is a question of gatekeepers and boundaries, especially when we are trying for cross-fertilization and the need to bring to bear many perspectives in an effort to understand something better. But (for example) it would have been easy to check an order of battle listing participating regiments or any standard account of First Manassas to understand that there were no such thing as three black regiments at the battle. That’s simply good research practice. I’m sure that if I were to venture into cultural or literary studies that someone would remind me that there are some basic things to understand as well. As for the rest of the squabble about Civil War military history, I’m sorry, but I don’t really get it, at least as it has been presented to me. I don’t care about Stauffer’s field: what I cared about was that he misrepresented the current discussion, bungled the handling of evidence, and offered unsupported assertions as if they were explanations. I’ve seen nothing so far challenging any of those objections.