In the beginning, William Marvel tried to write historical fiction. But he aimed for accuracy in everything he wrote, and he became a historian.
How did you become interested in the Civil War?
I have no idea. It’s been a particular interest since I was at least five.
Your books demonstrate a willingness to thoughtfully challenge the “conventional wisdom” about motives for enlistment; the process of vilification of Henry Wirz of Andersonville Prison; and President Abraham Lincoln’s executive actions (e.g., regarding civil liberties and his decisions leading up to Fort Sumter). When you were a young boy and then a teenager, did you question or challenge authorities or the conventional wisdom?
Perhaps a little more than some, but less from intellectual or philosophical disagreement than from pure willfulness and impulses of personal gratification. It wasn’t that I thought I had a better way, but simply that I didn’t like being told what to do.
When you study a topic, what questions are you trying to answer?
If it’s an obscure topic, I want to know what happened. If it’s already well known, I’m curious whether the accepted narrative is correct. In either case, I’m also always looking for missed connections and overlooked details, especially if they lend themselves to interpretational revisions.
Your book Lincoln’s Mercenaries found that many Northerners wanted a paycheck, and this was a significant motive for enlisting. They may also have had a patriotic or principled motive for service.
Your findings are echoed in my research into 76 Iowa residents who entered the Confederate service. Many of those men had left Iowa during the lingering financial Panic of 1857 and went South, looking for a job. As the nation erupted in war, they still wanted a paycheck, and they enlisted in the Confederate Army. Opportunism, often related to earning a living –with little regard for principles or consequences — was the largest discernible motive for Iowa Confederates. How can a historian determine a soldier’s motivation?
Surviving comments by the soldiers themselves seldom offer a reliable picture of their motivation, since the most common personal explanation is pure patriotism. Those sentiments certainly have an effect, especially regarding the impulse to enlist, but there are almost always other ingredients. It’s more useful to examine their social and economic circumstances and monitor the issues that they seemed interested in writing about.
Northerners who found themselves in the South in 1861 and enlisted in the Confederate army experienced a unique element of suspicion fostered by their origins, but I’ve encountered plenty of men from Maine, Vermont, and Pennsylvania who joined the Confederate army and served faithfully. I’ve noticed that some Northern women who were merely teaching in the South, or acting as governesses, adopted the Southern cause wholeheartedly, so it wasn’t necessarily because of money or social pressure.
What factors into your decision to write a book?
Primarily how much it interests me, how much it might interest readers, and how much reliable source material is available.
When I research Iowa Confederates, I am delighted when I find enough documentation to tell a soldier’s story. I identify with novelist Hilary Mantel (author of Wolf Hall) who tries to bring the dead to life. When you research and write a book, are you trying to achieve a personal goal?
I suppose so, but it’s a slightly different goal than I originally envisioned. I’ve always been an avid reader and an ardent admirer of certain authors, and I was determined to be a writer, but I aspired to historical fiction. I found that I wasn’t very good at plot or character development, however, and I was so obsessed with accuracy that before I knew it the fiction filtered out of my writing, and what was left was history.
How do you keep organized? For example, my wife created an Access database, into which I transcribed and/or took notes on hundreds of primary and secondary sources. What system do you use?
Between 1980 and about 2002, I took all my notes on steno pads, or on whatever paper the various manuscript repositories insisted on using, and then I transferred those notes to the index cards I used in the writing process. Since then I’ve taken all my notes on a laptop, which I print out before transferring them to the same index cards.
What books do you read, or movies do you watch, to help you remain fresh in your thinking – and stay motivated to keep writing?
Our movie tastes tend to mild entertainment rather than intellectual stimulation or rejuvenation, but I read voraciously and widely in American, English, French, and Russian literature from the 1850s to the 1960s. In nonfiction I prefer American biography and American and European history between the 1840s and 1920s.
I consume a lot of Civil War soldiers’ published letters and diaries, of course, but not as pleasure reading. Sometimes I read the same novels that were popular among soldiers, to get a flavor for the world as they imagined it should be, but that usually isn’t for pleasure, either.
What are your three favorite books (aside from your own titles)?
My favorites wax and wane over time, but my earliest favorites are probably most worthy because of their enduring nature.
- Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
- The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
- The Twentieth Maine, by John Pullen (who I knew, for the last ten years of his life)
What has been the biggest surprise in your years of research?
My greatest particular, spontaneous surprise was finding two previously unknown deeds in the Beinecke Library at Yale that Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1836.
My greatest surprise in a more general sense was only realized over several years, when I began to recognize how much of our understanding of Civil War history was based on myth and misrepresentation.
What is the most frustrating or challenging part of being a historian and/or a writer?
Trying to overcome the aforementioned myth and misrepresentation.
What aspect of being a historian and/or a writer gives you the most satisfaction?
The collegiality of those who share my passion for history.
In your endeavors, what have you learned about the human condition?
That it never changes, as a collective consideration.
What advice would you give to up-and-coming historians?
Rely on secondary sources at your peril, for that is the fastest and surest path to error.
What intriguing questions about the Civil War remain to be answered?
- Could it have been avoided, and would it have been better if it had been?
- Was there ever a credible “Copperhead” conspiracy against the government?
- Beneath the deific veneer, what was Abraham Lincoln’s real character?
What is your next project, and how far advanced is it?
A manuscript about the military situation in the Confederacy early in 1864 is out for reader comments now. That should be my next book. An earlier project was scuttled at least temporarily by the pandemic. I had spent most of 2019 accumulating considerable research on Northern opposition to Lincoln and the war. I may resume that project, if I can revive my enthusiasm. Beyond that, I may write a book about an aspect of the war beyond the big river.
Biographical sketch
I live in South Conway, New Hampshire, in the same house where I grew up. That house is now crowded with file cabinets crammed with notes on manuscripts, and it bulges with books that began accumulating around 1960, the majority of which are somehow related to the American Civil War.
For half my adult life I followed a wide assortment of occupations while pursuing history as a sideline, but after 1995 that sideline became my primary occupation. Eschewing the academic path has made research less inconvenient and more expensive, besides requiring far more spartan personal economy, but it has allowed me abundant time for my own work. I’ve just completed what I expect to be my twentieth book on various aspects of Civil War history.
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