Behind the Lines

By William C. Davis · Originally published March-April 2025 · pp. 6

Behind the Lines By William C. Davis

Afew fortunate people can look back on working careers spent doing what they gladly would have done for nothing. I have been one of those lucky ones. The job and I came together by an accident so improbable that it almost seemed pre-ordained. As a teenager I got interested in family history and learned that I had a Confederate great-great-grandfather in the 45th Virginia Infantry. Living in rural Northern California in the 1960s, about as far from Virginia as one could get, it was not easy to find out what that ancestor and his regiment did in the war. Then I saw my first set of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. Its four volumes were packed with firstperson accounts and battle statistics, and there I learned that the 45th fought in that bloody May 15, 1864, battle in the thunder and lightning at New Market, in an army commanded by General John C. Breckinridge, a former vice president of the United States. Breckinridge is a fascinating character, and I then began studying his career. In 1967, as a college sophomore, I submitted a biographical profile of him to the magazine Civil War Times Illustrated, and to my wonder the editor paid me $50 and published it. Thus began my writing career. Better yet, two years later, when I was packing for graduate school, the magazine offered me a summer internship. I took the temporary job and embarked on a “summer” that eventually lasted 21 years, during which I went from intern to editor and then publisher of CWTI and a sizeable stable of other historical and lifestyle publications. Publishing a Civil War magazine was such great fun. I can truthfully say that every day I looked forward to the first mail to see what came in. Readers shared hundreds of things from their family treasures—photographs, diaries, memoirs, and more. One day in came General William Mahone’s memoir of the Appomattox Campaign. Another day brought to my desk the diary of the Union officer who had the unenviable task of overseeing the execution of Confederate patriot and spy Sam Davis. Then came the diary and memoir of a midshipman aboard the CSS Virginia covering its epic duel with the USS Monitor. Previously unknown photographs of generals great and small often appeared, as did unexpected rarities like the images taken of Confederates marching through Maryland on their way to Antietam. After-action reports that never made their way into the official publications cast whole new light on some battles and campaigns, while the letters and diaries of common soldiers and civilians constantly offered eyeopening perspectives on the war and its women and men. Then there were friendships that grew up with the men and women who wrote articles for us. Looking back from the vantage of more than thirty years, it seems like a time of giants. Allan Nevins, Bell I. Wiley, James I. Robertson Jr., T. Harry Williams, Charles P. Roland, Mary Elizabeth Massey, Thomas L. Connelly … the roster of great historians who wrote for us included everyone who was anyone in Civil War studies. At the same time, every day submissions came in over the transom from men and women then destined to become the scholars of tomorrow. Today’s “who’s who” of Civil War historians includes a score or more who got their first publication in our magazine—Gary Gallagher, David Blight, Joseph Glatthaar, John Marszalek, Craig Symonds, Richard McMurry, and more. The chance to work with all of them, and to form lifelong friendships with many, was something that a college boy in California back in 1967 would never have imagined possible. Some dreams do come true, however, and it is heartening to see that the publishers of Civil War News are imagining and realizing dreams of their own. They work in an environment radically changed from that of my earlier days, but they are still doing the same things—opening doors onto the past for a new generation of readers, bringing to print the writing of a cadre of young new historians, and brushing the cobwebs from yet more first person accounts and captivating images and illustrations that three dimensions to the imagery in our minds as we read about the past. It must be every bit as exciting for them as it was for me back in those long-ago days when the technological marvel of the times was still the electric typewriter. Oh, yes. Back to the 45th Virginia, and my great-greatgrandfather. The fact is, they were 150 miles away from New Market at the time of the battle. As I later learned, there is a great deal in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War that is unreliable, despite its still-deserved status as a classic in the literature. I have no idea how that mistake got into its pages, but I shall be eternally grateful for its appearance there. It led me to Breckinridge, which led to my first article, which led to my publishing career, and a lifetime of enjoyment, excitement, and fulfillment. And I owe it all to an editorial error. May Civil War News profit from many such mistakes. William C. Davis was managing editor, then editor, then publisher of Civil War Times Illustrated from 1969

to 1990. He is the author or editor of more than 50 books in Civil War and Southern history, and former director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia

Tech, where he served as professor of history until 2013. His most recent book is The Whartons’ War: The Civil War Correspondence of General Gabriel C. Wharton and Anne Radford Wharton, 1863–1865, co-edited with Sue Heth Bell.