Author Tom Nanzig to Speak Wednesday at Civil War Round Table
Attendees Urged to Contribute Items for Book Raffle, New Feature of Meeting
December 9, 2007
By: Dave Rogers
Cover of Civil War book edited by Tom Nanzig, of Ann Arbor, slated to speak Wednesday night in Bay City.
Author Tom Nanzig of Ann Arbor will speak at a 7th Michigan Cavalry Civil War Round Table meeting on Wednesday,December 12, at 7 p.m. in the Stein Haus, 1108 N. Water St.
Mr. Nanzig, President of the Ann Arbor Civil War Round Table, will tell about editing and publishing a Civil War book about a man in the 3rd Virginia Cavalry. This unit fought in the Eastern theater of the war, often opposing men from Michigan.
Members and other attendees are asked to bring a book/magazine for the raffle, said Dee Dee Wacksman, chair of the local group. The meetings now feature a raffle of Civil War and related books designed to recycle various pieces of literature to those interested in different aspects of the field. It has proven to be a popular feature of the meetings.
Thomas P. Nanzig is an editor with ProQuest in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and author of four other books about the Civil War.
Mr. Nanzig is considered to be a leading scholar on the Virginia Cavalry, having published many works on the subject including a unit history in the Virginia Regimental History Series entitled the 3rd Virginia Cavalry.
A review of Mr. Nanzig's book by h-net.org states: "The Civil War Memoirs of a Virginia Cavalryman is an important addition to the ever-expanding list of the conflict's first-hand accounts.
"In publishing this work, Nanzig has discovered a valuable manuscript in rough form and has delivered to the public, in turn, a polished gem."
The memoir has been published by the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.
Another review explains the focus and importance of Nanzig's work:
"A witness who brings remarkable life and color to the Civil War in the East. Robert Hubard was an enlisted man and officer of the 3rd Virginia Cavalry in the Army of Northern Virginia (CSA) from 1861 through 1865. He wrote his memoir during an extended convalescence spent at his father?s Virginia plantation after being wounded at the battle of Five Forks on April 1, 1865.
"Hubard served under such Confederate luminaries as Jeb Stuart, Fitz Lee, Wade Hampton, and Thomas L. Rosser. He and his unit fought at the battles of Antietam, on the Chambersburg Raid, in the Shenandoah Valley, at Fredericksburg, Kelly?s Ford, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Bristoe Station, and down into Virginia from the Wilderness to nearly the end of the war at Five Forks.
"Hubard was like many of his class and station a son of privilege and may have felt that his service was an act of noblesse oblige. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, he was a keen observer and a writer of unusual grace, clarity, humor, and intelligence.
"The editor has fleshed out his memoir by judicious use of Hubard?s own wartime letters, which not only fill in gaps but permit the reader to see developments in the writer?s thinking after the passage of time. Because he was a participant in events of high drama and endured the quotidian life of a soldier, Hubard?s memoir should be of value to both scholars and avocational readers."
Another review states: "Hubard's memoir offers insightful remarks about religion and tensions in the ranks, Southern honor, the problems of conscription, and Confederate depredations against its own civilians. However, the document?s strength is the military narrative, particularly the 1864 cavalry operations in central Virginia. There are few other memoir/letter collections from one of Jeb Stuart?s troopers." --Peter S. Carmichael, author of "Lee's Young Artillerist: William R. J. Pegram."
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