{"id":10470,"date":"2024-02-07T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T17:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yorkblog.com\/cannonball\/?p=10470"},"modified":"2024-02-07T12:01:33","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T17:01:33","slug":"townsend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yorkblog.com\/cannonball\/townsend\/","title":{"rendered":"Reprinting a classic: the Civil War stories of George A. Townsend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10471\" src=\"https:\/\/yorkblog.com\/cannonball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/02\/Picture1-e1707323317968.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"296\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>George Alfred Townsend is not widely known today outside of hardcore Civil War circles, but in his day, he was one of the most talented and best-known newspaper correspondents and journalists in North America, with several novels also to his credit. Townsend was born in Delaware in January 1841 and went to work for a newspaper in Philadelphia. He then moved to the <em>New York Herald<\/em> in 1861, where he worked as a field correspondent. He is considered to be the youngest correspondent in the Civil War.\u00a0 After the war, he wrote extensively on a variety of topics and constructed a spacious home, Gathland, on the Crampton&#8217;s Gap portion of the South Mountain battlefield. He also commissioned the War Correspondents Memorial Arch, which still stands on the battlefield along the wartime pike.<\/p>\n<p>Of particular interest to Civil War buffs is his 1866 memoir titled <em>Campaigns of a Non-combatant and His Romaunt Abroad During the War<\/em>. Long out of print, for many decades scholars and researchers could only access the book through special collection libraries or inter-library loan programs. With the advent of the Internet, digitized transcripts became available. What the original book and the subsequent Internet versions lacked was context, footnotes, clarifications, and an editor&#8217;s touch. That has now been resolved.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Jeff Biggs has completed work on an abridged, deftly annotated version of Townsend&#8217;s classic work. Published in 2024 through <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hardtackbooks.com\/\">Hardtack Books<\/a>, this new version is highly readable and informative. The editor has skillfully interwoven most of Townsend&#8217;s original verbiage with slight revisions to clarify the text (replacing obsolete or outdated words, for example) and make it appealing to modern readers who may be unfamiliar with young Townsend&#8217;s writings. Footnotes offer additional background and occasionally note errors or misconceptions by Townsend. Biggs&#8217; work is strong, and makes the original text come alive. The use of carefully selected photographs (not present in the 1886 version) further enhances this volume.<\/p>\n<p>Cannonball blogger&#8217;s rating: Two thumbs up!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-10473\" src=\"https:\/\/yorkblog.com\/cannonball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/02\/Picture1-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"588\" height=\"369\" srcset=\"https:\/\/yorkblog.com\/cannonball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/02\/Picture1-1.png 1128w, https:\/\/yorkblog.com\/cannonball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/02\/Picture1-1-300x188.png 300w, https:\/\/yorkblog.com\/cannonball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/02\/Picture1-1-1024x643.png 1024w, https:\/\/yorkblog.com\/cannonball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/02\/Picture1-1-768x482.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 588px) 100vw, 588px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Editor Jeffrey Biggs has brought a fascinating, out-of-print Civil War classic back to life with a new, vibrant, annotated modern version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[565,596],"class_list":["post-10470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-civil-war","tag-civil-war-books","tag-newspapers"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Reprinting a classic: the Civil War stories of George A. 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