GDG- Bachelder's Papers

[James Cameron]

<< I received my set yesterday and it looks fantastic.  I also notice that
Morningside Books has a Bachelder History of the Battle of Gettysburg.  It
is out of print right now but they will reprint it if they have 50 confirmed
orders.  Is this worth getting also?  >>

Bill,

I wrote a review of Bachelder's History a few years ago, for the GDG site, 
but I don't think it's there any more.  Maybe it got lost in a crash 
somewhere along the way.

Is it worth it?  I'd have to give it a firm, "it depends."

Bachelder's original manuscript ran to something like 2,500 pages, and was 
never published.  David and Audrey Ladd edited that down to just under 800 
pages for the Morningside edition.

Bachelder's History is almost entirely comprised of the OR reports of the 
various commander.  There is only minimal comment by Bachelder, generally 
just a brief descriptive lead-in from one report to the next, and almost 
nothing in the sense of elevlation or interpretation.  There's also very 
little from all the other research and correspondence Bachelder had amassed 
over the years.

There some benefit to reading the OR reports in the manner Bachelder 
presents them, in the sequence of the action, rather than the order of 
battle sequence in which they appear in the OR's.  It's almost like reading 
reports as they come in from the front, giving them a more immediate, less 
disjointed feel.  But this is still a very dry piece of work.  I suspect 
that however many Morningside sold, far fewer have actually been read.  I 
wouldn't go so far as to say it's unreadable, but, it comes close. 
Bachelder was no Harry Pfanz.  If you want to buy it to read, as you might a 
modern overview, I would say no, it isn't worth it.  Invest in a set of the 
Gettysburg OR volumes.  If you want to buy it as you might an historical 
artifact, in terms of an example of early Gettysburg historiography or just 
to have an example of Bachelder's approach to the subject, than it may be. 
For what it's worth, I bought a copy for that reason, but have yet to 
actually do more than read a few isolated pages here and there.  I doubt I 
ever will.

People have often wondered, over the years (and probably always will) why 
Bachelder, when he came to write his History, looked away form so much of 
the first hand accounts he had gathered from the veterans.  It's often 
speculated that he came to despair of ever reconciling all the 
inconsistancies they contained, threw up ins hands, and decided to go with 
the original OR reports as the most reliable.  And, there may be some truth 
to that.  But I think part of it is simply that Bachelder was not, first and 
foremost a historial.  He was an artist and map maker.  In most modern 
histories, the maps are included to support the text.  I see Bachelder's 
History as, in some ways, as the other way around.  In many ways, 
Bachelder's history was meant to support and prove the validity of his map 
depictions.  In that respect, its readability as a work of history was 
almost secondary.  It was the maps that really mattered.

Jim Cameron