behind AotW

I’m reminded to opine by an article in yesterday’s Washington Post which looks at Google’s program to digitize millions of books. There’s been a lot of excitement about this; many people adamantly pro or con.

As a digital historian I’m all for it.

I do the bulk of my initial research on line, followed by work in books, collections, and archives I find from online references. I find both sources and pointers to sources online. A vast collection of books searchable by browser sounds like Nirvana to me.

Beyond simple reference, I can only faintly imagine the amazing things that could be done with this new corpus literae googlius (apologies to Dr Turkel).

Google would/will make money doing this, of course. Perhaps they’re the Devil.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my favorite Internet-friends, Andrew Vande Moere*, mentioned the Simile Timeline API in a post on his information aesthetics blog. Timeline is described by its creators as …

… a DHTML-based AJAXy widget for visualizing time-based events. It is like Google Maps for time-based information … Pan the timeline by dragging it horizontally … like Google Maps, you can populate Timeline with data by pointing it to an XML file …

This weekend I finally had a little time to see what it can do, and found it’s great fun.

It is one of those rare, beautiful little software gems with a clear purpose and excellent execution.

The documentation is crap–beyond the basic installation–but that’s just a quibble. Perhaps I can help improve the docs later. It’s also a bit slow in loading events and misbehaves sometimes in IE. Another quibble. For now, I’ll have fun discovering all the controls and features by dint of ‘reverse engineering’ or trial and error. And I prefer Firefox anyway.

So, perhaps obviously, I’ve made use of this fine tool for a new Campaign Timeline on AotW. Give it a spin, won’t you, and provide some constructive criticism? I think it has huge potential.

AotW timeline screenshot

I’ve seeded my timeline with content from the 200-odd battlefield historical tablets. I used those events because I’d already transcribed them in the database, and had serendipitously included time stamps for each as I did the data entry. The timeline application reads events from an xml file, so it wasn’t too difficult to write some php code to extract and write the xml from a tailored Events table in my database.

Now, un/fortunately, I can hear hundreds of other 1862 events calling out to me.

Add me! Add me!

Yet another hungry project mouth to feed.
_________________

* Vande Moere finds people using the most incredibly creative and useful ways to display information and pops them up on his blog. As a closet Tuftean, I’m a big fan. Usually, however cool, I can see no good way to use these amazing techniques. Until now. Thank you Andrew.

In Googling keywords mit, simile, and timeline, looking for other people using the Timeline API (hoping for clues to customizing it) I found about 200 unique references. Only about 10 of these are actual users. Everybody else is just talking about how cool it is. I wonder when/if web timelines built on this will be common?

As many others have observed, one of the best things about the Web is the great range it covers, and new contacts it brings. What ever else it is, AotW is a honeytrap – drawing people worldwide with interest in the battle. A small but impressive minority of these visitors have something to contribute. It’s always a thrill to hear from them.

Once such Internet-friend, Mr John Jackson, has been doing marvelous work in researching and documenting Kansans and Kansas in the Civil War. He has twice now suggested obituaries for Antietam soldiers from among his boys, both also Medal of Honor holders.

A great huzzah for Mr Jackson!

Last month he pointed me to the musically named Orpheus Saeger Woodward. This week he’s introduced me to Henry Seymour Hall.

Lt. Col. H.S. Hall, c. 1864

Hall was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1891 for bravery on two occasions during the War: for continuing to lead his company in the attack while wounded at Gaines’ Mill (June 1862) and for service in rallying troops at Rappahannock Station (November 1863).

From a farming family in east-central New York state, he was 25 years old and in his final year at Genesee College (later Syracuse University) when War began in 1861. He organized a Company of fellow students–later Co. G–and enlisted with them in the new 27th New York Infantry as Private in April that year. He was almost immediately appointed 2nd Lieutenant and served with the 27th on the Peninsular Campaign. He was promoted to Captain in command of the Company to date from April 1862. It was at that rank that he fought at Crampton’s Gap, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville.

He was honorably mustered out as the 27th Infantry’s term of service expired on 31 May 1863, but was back in service just over two weeks later, appointed Captain in the 121st New York Volunteers on 16 June.

In May 1864 he left to accept a commission as Lieutenant Colonel of the new 43rd Regiment, United States Colored Troops. He was severely wounded in action at the Crater, near Petersburg, on 30 July, losing his right arm.

While recuperating, he served as a mustering officer in Washington, but was back with the 43rd at Richmond by 3 April 1865. He was also with them at Brownsville, Texas under Sheridan, then on independent duty at Galveston until returning to Washington and mustering out of the Army on 13 February 1866.

He had been honored, in March 1865, by brevet to Colonel and Brigadier General of Volunteers for his exceptional War service.

Immediately after the War he returned briefly to New York, but soon moved to a farm he’d bought in Carroll County, Missouri, where he was also active in local politics. Some time later he was in Lincoln, Nebraska, and in 1888 he moved for the last time to Lawrence, Kansas where he lived his last 20 years.

______________

Information above from the (Lawrence) Daily Gazette obituary posted by Mr Johnson, Heitman’s Register, pg. 489, and Hall’s MoH citation. The photograph is from Generals of the Civil War.

I’m having a magnificent time with stacks of books I’ve just found rendered online. They’re in a (new?) collection of 19th Century American works transcribed and posted as part of the Perseus project at Tufts, and from the University of Georgia library’s collection of Facsimile Books.

I came upon these while looking into a relatively obscure artillery unit, the 6-months 8th Massachusetts Battery and their commander Asa M. Cook.

The first information I’ve found on the battery is in a capsule history written, on behalf of the State, by T.H. Higginson, late of the 51st Massachusetts and Colonel, First South Carolina, USCT. His two volume Massachusetts in the Army and Navy during the war of 1861-1865 (1895-96) is transcribed and posted at Perseus.

The battery’s commander at Antietam was Captain Cook, whose image I found in the Photographic History of the Civil War (1911-12) by Francis T. Miller. This is in the Facimile collection as searchable (uncorrected OCR) text and as full page images. You may have this 10 volume set at your local library, we do, but it’s a delight to find it digital.

But wait, there’s more.

Let me tempt you with some highlights …