Here’s an interesting article:
THERE ARE three things that historians do, according to Craig Symonds, professor emeritus of history at the U.S. Naval Academy, now chief historian of the USS Monitor Center at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News.
First, said Symonds, historians “research deeply,” getting at the past with raw data.
Second, they “make sense and synthesize” that data.
Third, they “present [their findings], using moving and poetic language.
“Good historians do one of these things. Great historians manage two of these. Truly exceptional historians do all three, and [tonight's speaker] is one of these,” Symonds said as he introduced a speaker, James M. McPherson, Princeton University’s George Henry Davis ’86 professor emeritus of history, at the Mariners’ Museum.
McPherson, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his Civil War masterpiece, “Battle Cry of Freedom,” gave the keynote lecture on the Civil War navies during the museum’s fourth annual Battle of Hampton Roads Weekend.
The three tasks of the Union navy, as McPherson explained it, were (1) maintaining the Union blockade of Confederate ports; (2) conducting combined operations with the Union army in coastal and river areas; and (3) engaging in fleet or single-ship actions with Confederate ships, especially ships raiding Union commerce on the high seas, such as the CSS Alabama.
