If Only I’d Known at the Start, How Simple It Would Have Been: KindleGen

I think I’ve figured out KindleGen, the Amazon-approved creator of .mobi books for its Kindle devices. As it turns out, KindleGen is, in my opinion, simple. Simpler, in fact, than MobiPocket Creator. I wouldn’t have said that when I started, but my difficulties were the result of “mechanics” and not the program itself.

I began my effort trying to use KindleGen’s “command prompt” feature and after two days of failure, used what some bloggers consider the easier process of uploading the book files into Amazon’s Kindle Previewer. After an hour or so of trying to figure out how to use the Kindle Previewer in this capacity, I did build my book. After sleeping on what I’d done and considering the files used during my success with the Previewer, I returned to the “command prompt” screen and tried that method again. It worked, too.

I’m gonna briefly describe my ordeal, then show you the steps I used to create my book using both the Previewer and the “command prompt” line in my computer. Keep in mind, this post isn’t meant for those who understand the workings of computers and command prompts or even the placement of files in folders, though you folks might enjoy a good laugh from the read. Any helpful comments from that audience are appreciated, too. No, this post is intended for folks like me who are “clueless” when they read a blog or forum post that takes for granted the reader understands what the writer is talking about, without step by step instructions. I hope my new-found discoveries prove helpful to some of you out there. I use the term “discoveries” on purpose, because I do not necessarily understand what I have done.

KindleGen is a free download from Amazon (more on that below) and uses a “command prompt”. You may remember the “command prompt” from the dawn of personal computers, when the owner had to boot-up the computer on a black screen using letters and symbols (i.e., < > : \ \). Despite the fact that computers now magically boot-up themselves without the help of the computer helpless, command prompts are still in vogue with those who know how to use them (not to mention know where to go to find that black screen). I’m told the “command prompt” is a powerful feature in the right hands. As regards, myself, however, I spent the better part of two days  struggling with the guidance provided by the ebook formatting company eBook Pioneers in its March 2013 blog  and could not get Camellia Creek to build. I did attempt the methodology used by a couple of other bloggers, similar to, but different from that of eBook Pioneers. The results were no better.  

I had created five files to “build” my book: the .html of my book; its .opf; its toc.ncx; cover graphic; and logo graphic, and I figured they all needed to be in the “prompt” line. I considered with each fail that I was not listing my files in the “command prompt” correctly or I was placing them incorrectly in folders. I also thought the problem might be Windows 7. I swear, as many times and as many permutations I completed trying to make that “command prompt” work I was sure I had to have the “prompt” line right at least once. As stated in my last post, I finally zipped up Camellia Creek’s five files and uploaded that to the Kindle Direct Publishing’s digital text platform (DTP). Hardly mastery of KindleGen and most unsatisfactory for one who considers herself a serious publisher, albeit of only my own stuff. Misfortune offered me an opportunity to redeem myself. 

While uploading Camellia Creek to the DTP, I noticed on my publishing page that Epico Bayou (which had gone “live” over a year before when I uploaded the MobiPocket-created .prc), for some inexplicable reason, had fallen into a “draft” status. Like my recent experience with Camellia Creek, I could not get that original MobiPocket Creator-crafted .prc to re-upload and when I zipped up Epico Bayou, replicating what I’d done with Camellia Creek, Epico Bayou’s navigational table of contents (the .ncx file) didn’t work. I wanted to sit down and squall. Instead, I resolved to master KindleGen and at the same time fix Epico Bayou’s shortcoming.

My effort to build Epico Bayou using the KindleGen “command prompt” mirrored that of Camellia Creek two weeks earlier. Nothing I did worked. The “command prompt” window couldn’t “find a file” (always the last one in the list—I know because I switched them around). I now know there should not have been a “list” of files, which brings me back on point. I didn’t know how to write a command prompt.

At the beginning and the end of that eBookPioneer blog referenced above, the author suggested the easiest thing to do was to forgo the “command prompt” evolution and upload the files, along with the KindleGen execute file, kindlegen.exe, in the Kindle Previewer. I’d seen this sentiment expressed by others on the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) forum.  So, I opened the Previewer.

Where? Where, when I open the Previewer, was I supposed to load the darn files? There was nothing that said “build book.” Nobody had explained how or where to drag and drop those files into the Previewer, and it took a little guessing for me to finally figure it out.

I clicked on “open kindle book,” primarily because there wasn’t much else to click on. What opened, of course, was the library listing the books that are already in my Previewer. I went one folder up: Local>Amazon>Kindle Previewer and it is that window into which I dragged my book file—that is the “Kindle Previewer window,” right? Clear as mud! Then I clicked my book file to open. Low and behold, the .html file and the .opf file appear in the folder. The others aren’t there.

Now, I already suspected from other vague comments in the forums that the .opf file was the key, so I clicked on it and, much to my amazement, a window opened up and said the Previewer was compiling a book. Sure enough, seconds later the window changed, said a book had been created and to view it, click here [not a live link]. I clicked and was taken to a window that showed me Epico Bayou as a .mobi book, and when I opened it—now in the Previewer—not only was my old, familiar Epico Bayou there, its .ncx worked.

I wasn’t completely out of the woods. Though I had Epico Bayou in the Kindle Previewer, I still had to find that file in my browser so I could upload it to Amazon’s DTP, and the address given in my browser showed that it was residing down a long link of folders, some of which were unfamiliar to me, so I couldn’t follow them back to find where the book was stored. That meant a search. I did find it, quickly as it turned out, in My Kindle Content folder. In one forum, a fellow stated he found his in My Publications. I have a My Publications file, too, but as I said, Epico Bayou.mobi was in My Kindle Content folder. Obviously, where a Previewer-created book resides is not set in stone. Just to see if the Previewer method would work a second time, I made Camellia Creek into a .mobi using the same methodology. It took seconds. Previewer stored that baby away in My Kindle Content, too.

Realizing the .opf file is key to building the book compelled me to try the “command prompt” again—hey, I’m slow, not stupid. This time, I put my five files (.html, .opf, .ncx, cover, and logo graphic) into one file and added the kindlegen.exe to it. Here’s the prompt I used: 

      C:\users\Charlsie>c:\KindleGen\kindlegen.exe C:\KindleGen\EBWord.opf  

I hit “enter” and the screen filled with line after line of data and at the end it said “book built successfully.” I blinked in astonishment, then looked over at the open window displaying my book’s files. Sure as shootin’ there sat EpicoBayou.mobi in the folder with a little blue book symbol on its left. I opened it in Previewer, and its .ncx worked, too. 

Now, I think the “command prompt” window is simplest. 

Okay, let’s go through both methods step by step, but before I start, I’m making the assumption you are building an ebook for uploading to the Kindle Direct Publishing’s DTP and have created the required files needed to work on all Kindle devices—that is your goal, right? If you have only a book file, you probably won’t encounter the problems I did, anyway.

The files I’m referring to are your book itself (mine is in .html format); your book’s .opf file; your toc.ncx file (this is a table of contents that makes navigation through the book easy for the reader and creates the “tick” marks at the bottom of the kindle screen so the reader knows where he is in the book); and all graphics saved as .gifs (Kindle wants .gifs, not jpgs). If you need further reference regarding creation of the ancillary files, see my old blogs dated 1 December 2011-3 February 2012. 

Previewer Method: 

1. Create your book files and put them together in one folder:

    a. All graphics, saved as .gifs

    b. The book itself (I do mine in .html)

    c. Your .opf file

    d. Your .ncx file 

2. Download your free KindleGen at: 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765211 

 

KindleGen is a .zip file. Unzip it and copy and paste the kindlegen.exe file to the book folder you made above. While you’re at it, make several copies of that .exe file and store ’em for future Kindle books. 

3. If the KindleGen Previewer didn’t come with the KindleGen download, find it here: 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765261  

4. Open Kindle Previewer. 

5. Go to “open kindle book” on homepage of Previewer.  

    a. You should now be in your library. 

    b. Go one folder up. The browser at the top of the window should read something to the effect: Local>Amazon>Kindle Previewer. No matter what comes before it, you want the window for the “Kindle Previewer”. 

6. Drag and drop/copy and paste your book folder into this screen of the Kindle Previewer. 

7. Click on your book to open it. You’ll see the .html (or whatever format you have your book in) and the .opf. 

8. Click on the .opf file. A window will open telling you Previewer is compiling the book. 

9. When the compilation is done (seconds), a window will come up and tell you the book has been created and to click here to review it. Go ahead, feast your eyes on your new baby. 

 10. Back in the book folder, you’ll see that another file has been created called book’s name converted.opf. That’s your book.

Command Prompt Method

1. Download KindleGen here: 

     http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765211

2. Make sure you have the Previewer and if not, download it from here: 

     http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765261

3. Go to Computer or My Computer by clicking the Start button at the bottom left of your computer screen (or you can use the icon on the Desktop). 

4. Amongst that list of program files and users, make a new folder and call it KindleGen. 

5. Return to your KindleGen download and open the folder (it’s zipped). 

6. You only need one file out of this folder—kindlegen.exe. 

7. Copy it, then go back to your KindleGen folder in your “Computer” folder and paste kindlegen.exe there. 

8. Find all your book files: .html, .epub, whatever you’ve called it; .opf; .ncx; graphics; and anything else you have associated with your book. Copy and paste each into the KindleGen folder with the kindlegen.exe.

9. Go to All Programs/Accessories and open Command Prompt 

 10. A black screen will appear with a starting line something to the effect of : 

        C:\Users\Charlsie>

                          ↑ This name is probably you or whoever owns the computer you’re on 

 11.  Now add the highlighted section: 

  C:\Users\Charlsie>C:\KindleGen\kindlegen.exe  C:\KindleGen\EBWord.opf

                                                substitute the name of your .opf file, of course ↑

 12. Hit enter and the book should build and will, within seconds, appear in your KindleGen folder as title of your book.mobi. 

 13. Click on it, and it will open in the Previewer

I chose to put my KindleGen folder in Computer because that’s where eBook Pioneers suggested I put it way back when I started this evolution, but you can put it wherever you want. And you should probably be more specific with the name of the KindleGen folder so you will one day be able to distinguish one book folder from another (i.e., KindleGenEpicoBayou, KindleGenCamelliaCreek, and so forth); just remember to type it as such in the “command prompt” line when you build the book.

New Adventures in Mobi Creation

No, not the whale, but the program that creates the digital book for Amazon’s Kindle (though at the moment I’m ready to put the great white whale’s last name to the whole evolution and refer to it by the crude vernacular). Since readers have their accounts set up and click a button to download their Kindle Book to their Kindle device all in a matter of seconds, an author needs her book in the Kindle Store. To get it there, she must create her masterpiece in .mobi format.

Getting my latest novel, Camellia Creek, a gothic mystery/suspense set against the backdrop of  Presidential Reconstruction at the end of the War for Southern Independence, into mobipocket, .azw format, took days, untold hours I wish I’d actually recorded so you could more clearly understand how absolutely anal I am. For those of you who have looked at my blog for “technical” advice, no matter how unintentionally spurious, you know that over a year ago I blogged extensively about my creation of the files required by MobiPocket Creator to build a mobi book. With those files—sitting in the folder for each individual book in the “My Publications” folder associated with MobiPocket Creator—I managed in 2011-2012 to upload my first four books and get them in the Amazon Kindle Store. Camellia Creek, thought I, will be a piece of cake.

Wrong. Oh, I created the files easily enough based on templates I’d created from my first four books—the .html version of my book, the .ncx file, a proper version of the .opf (MobiPocket Creator creates an .opf file automatically from whatever data one feeds it—if one feeds it no extra data, it creates it from the .html file itself and it always overrides whatever .opf file you place in the folder so you have to keep checking and cutting and pasting your good one over the one it makes. Suffice it to say, that evolution is time consuming and frustrating.). Then I added my only two graphics—the cover and my logo.

For four days I tried to get MobiPocket Creator to build my book. Now, I didn’t sit in front of my computer uploading and re-uploading the same files over and over during that time with the expectation of one time getting a winning result. That folks, is the definition of stupid. I’m just sorta stupid for sticking with it all that time. I’d make changes to the .opf and tried different renditions; I checked and rechecked all my files, my headers, my content, my “#$!%” html. I even removed MobiPocket Creator and reinstalled it—on both the computers I own with access to the internet. One thing I did discover was that every time I took the “failed” build and removed the .ncx from the mix, the book built. I knew the problem was with the .ncx or the .opf (which references the .ncx). I went to the online forums and studied and tried to replicate individual methods of inserting files into MobiPocket Creator and overcoming the Creator’s frustrating habit of messing up my .opf. At one point I created a .zip file of Camellia Creek’s files and attempted to insert that into the My Publications folder. That didn’t work either—works for epub, but not mobi. I kept the .zip file anyway.

Finally, on the fifth day, I removed the publisher version of  MobiPocket Creator and downloaded the “Home/Family” version. The MobiPocket Creator website said it was simpler to use. Personally, I didn’t see much difference from the “use” angle, but one thing that simple little sucker did when it, too, failed to build on my first try was point out one tiny error in the spelling in the “content src” for chapter seventy-four in my .ncx. I’d spelled “seventy” “seveenty”. I fixed it and Camellia Creek build on the next try, .opf, .ncx and all.

I don’t know that the misspelling caused all those wasted hours, not to mention stress, but the results rendered after its fixing indicates that was the problem. So why didn’t the “publisher” version point it out to me when the “simpleton’s” version was so quick to do so? Maybe the publisher’s version thinks publishers should know how to spell or are such thorough proof readers there is no way they’d let a screwball thing like three “e”s in seventy get by—this in a work of 79 chapters and an epilogue (Camellia Creek is twice the length of my previous books).

Oh, and now comes the really, really good part. I start uploading to Amazon—I get to Part 5 at the “Upload Your Book” window. The little pinwheel is purring, there’s a window there that says “uploading your book, this may take a few minutes” and wahlah—the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) platform rejects it. The window says, simply, that I used software other than that approved by Amazon. I’m confused—I sent them the .prc. KDP didn’t need to build my .prc. I SENT it one already done, darn it! And fifteen months earlier the KDP platform had accepted four of my .prc books built the same way—ok, this one was built with the “simpleton’s” Creator, but what the heck.

I go to the “formatting guide” offered in the rejection window. Sure enough, .prc’s aren’t listed. I go to the Amazon “techies”. “Yes they are,” the “techies” say. Two day’s later the “techies” have it figured out—I needed to use KindleGen to build my .prc, not MobiPocket Creator.

During that two-day interim, I went back to that “zipped” file I’d fortuitously saved during my nightmare of working with the publishers version of MobiPocket Creator and uploaded it at Part 5 of the Upload Your Book window. It uploaded fine. Camellia Creek is at the Kindle Store.

Next, my pathetic adventures using KindleGen.

And Which “Big E” Was the First To Have “N” Associated With Her “CV” Designation?

The USS ENTERPRISE (CVN-65) completed her final voyage last fall. She will end her fifty-plus-year career as scrap. Outside the rather dubious end of being lost at sea, I’m not sure of an appropriate fate for an outmoded platform short of making a museum out of her. That would require a sponsor, and she would certainly be expensive to maintain. Using tax-payers’ dollars would, in this Tea-Partier’s mind, be inappropriate. Me? I would happily make annual donations to that cause, but it’s something I’d do on my own—and it would take a lot of “me’s”. Still, it’s a sad day for the United States Navy and for the Americans who know their nation’s history and the history of its military. Though indirect, the ENTERPRISE (CVN-65) played an important role in my life. 

I first learned of her near the end of my third-grade school year. There was an article about her in my Weekly Reader (do elementary schools still have those things?). Anyway, that should have been 1959. In the article she was under construction and would be, at completion, three football fields long. Now I didn’t know do-diddly-squat about aircraft carriers, or any ships for that matter, but I did know a little about football and a football field was long—and we were talking “three” football fields! The first thing I, Weekly Reader in hand, told my daddy when he came home that night was about that ship—he knew about football fields, too—I was a daddy’s girl, and we loved Ole Miss together. 

He acknowledged the name ENTERPRISE and immediately took control of the conversation. Once, he told me, he’d served on an ENTERPRISE. I can still remember my disappointment that my massive ship had been overshadowed by his knowledge of another ENTERPRISE. I asked, “But was it three football fields long?” 

“No,” he answered, “but she was big in other ways. Let me tell you about her.” 

And being daddy’s girl, I listened.  

I didn’t stop with his war stories. I augmented what he told me with research of my own. By the time I began high school, I knew the entire history of the war in the Pacific from studying the exploits of his ENTERPRISE (CV-6) from her fortuitous late arrival at Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941 (she’d been due at 0730 on the morning of the 7^th) until she returned to Bremerton in 1945 after Tomi Zai flew his Japanese Zero down her number one elevator shaft at Okinawa. In earlier battles, in a war made for aircraft carriers and a Navy with dwindling numbers of the crucial platform, her damage control crews patched worse damage while evading Japanese bombers so she could recover her returning aircraft, and those of her sunken sisters. Aircraft is the carrier’s primary weapon, its purpose. The seasoned pilots, even if one is able to set the human aspect aside, are equally valuable. The loss of aircraft and pilots, after completing their sorties, due to the lack of a flight deck to land on, means the devastating loss of an offensive weapon system. But when Tomi Zai hit ENTERPRISE in 1945 she wasn’t just one of one or one of two carriers in the Pacific. The industrial might of the United States, which she’d played a critical role in defending, had by then put other carriers to sea and damaged ladies such as she could go home for repair. The war ended with her in the repair docks in Bremerton and my father home in Braxton, Mississippi on leave. 

From the age of seventeen when he’d hunkered down on a seaplane ramp on Ford Island that fateful Sunday morning in 1941 (he didn’t transfer to ENTERPRISE until February 1942) until the age of twenty-one when the ENTERPRISE was knocked out of the war in August 1945, Charles Russell fought in twenty of twenty-two major Pacific battles. With the end of the war, (mirroring the future history of her namesake) CV-6, too, became outmoded. Back-fitting a flight deck meant for F-4s, F-6s, Dauntlesses and Devastators to take jet aircraft was impractical and unnecessary. I can remember reading the end of Admiral Stafford’s book The Big E when she was being cut up for scrap and crying as bitterly as I had when Jack the dog died at the beginning of the second Little House on the Prairie novel (Hey! I was eight). I never read another word of any Little House book after that. 

Despite my youthful grief, I didn’t “shut the book” on the United States Navy, because, after all, there was a bittersweet epilogue. At the same time chunks of the old ENTERPRISE were being hauled away as scrap in New Jersey, the United States’ first nuclear carrier was being built in Newport News, Virginia—the same yard where CV-6 had been built over thirty years before. The pride of the fleet, she was christened with its most decorated name.  

I joined my daddy’s Navy out of college. I was an officer, he’d been a boatswain. I stayed for twenty, he for seven. But I never fought in the first damn battle, much less twenty, and that’s not counting Pearl Harbor.  

And now I’m all teary-eyed again. When I read in the Patriot Post last fall ENTERPRISE (CVN-65) was making her last deployment, the news momentarily took my breath away. No, I didn’t break down in tears, not yet, but I haven’t read anything about trucks carrying great chunks of her away to the scrap heap, either—but this time there’s no bittersweet epilogue. 

My Navy without an ENTERPRISE is as strange to me as a president who tells the Navy brass that its requirement for 315 ships will be met with 285 and informs his opponent (in front of the nation) that those numbers will work because we now have submarines and aircraft carriers, which makes how the Navy does things different. Right, if he intends to leave defense of the Pacific Rim to his new friends in Moscow and Beijing.

I fear, given his lack of historical reference and disrespect for all things military, President Obama will foolishly sacrifice our strategic advantage in pursuit of delusional ideas vis-à-vis ruthless opponents who do not suffer anything in the way of delusion. What they do suffer is the lack of strategic advantage, which past generations of Americans have denied them at great sacrifice to themselves. These disadvantages our leader is purposefully eradicating for…. Gee, I’m not sure why a “leader” would do anything so foolish to his people, and I’m not convinced ours knows. The only thing more pathetic than Romney not challenging the man’s flippant remark about carriers (been around since the 1920s) and submarines (made the scene during the War Between the States and came into their own during World War I) is the fact that Obama said something so ignorant to begin with.  

Oh, and in answer to the question asked in my title—it was the old ENTERPRISE. In December 1944 she set sail as the first carrier certified for night operations, dubbed USS ENTERPRISE, CV(N)-6.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

Southern Mom, Southern Blood, and “Southern by the Grace of God”

I lost my mother on the 1st of November 2012. She’d recently turned 88 and though I’d given thought to her not making it to another Christmas after the one coming up, I still figured she’d be here for this one. I was debating how to handle the upcoming holiday, believing it might be her last (she used to love Christmas so). I brought her home from the nursing home last Christmas eve, and I guess it went fairly well, but other than making me feel good, I’m not sure the visit did anything at all for her. Certainly she didn’t remember being with her family after walking out my front door when we headed back to her nursing home.

Mama suffered from Alzheimer’s, and though she still remembered me—and things from the long ago—she knew or cared little about what was going on around her in the present. That included food. Never a big eater, she’d recently stopped eating completely. I was in the process of getting hold of my brother (who lives out of town) to discuss whether or not we wanted to go with a feeding tube, but the morning after consulting with the nursing home regarding that option, I was wakened with a call from that facility and told Mama had been rushed to the hospital. She’d gone to sleep, and there in her dreams she’d gone away. She had no intention of coming back.

Lola Mignon Gibson (Nonnie to her family) was born on the 29th of October 1924 in Rye, Arkansas, the youngest child of Fed Gibson and Sarah Wooldridge. She had three older sisters.

Unfortunately, and I think this is true of many of us, I did not develop a real interest in my ancestry until all the people who could talk to me about it were gone, but I have done a little research into where I came from.

Grandma Gibson, Mama’s paternal grandmother, named her. Dubbing her granddaughter “Mignon” indicates a French origin—it means “small” or “petite” just like the steak. Now I know enough history to know France is a Catholic country and there’s not a hint of Catholicism in our family history. But in a conversation dealing with the orgin of her name, Mama said her people (and she was talking Grandma Sally’s) were French by decent. When I questioned Wooldridge not sounding very French she said it had been Anglicized. If either one of us had given it much thought at the time—and this was a lifetime ago—we’d have realized that Grandma Gibson was not a Wooldridge.

Wooldridge is actually a prolific English surname. Gibson, I have learned in my research of not only the family, but of the South and Mississippi, is a very good French Huguenot surname. The Huguenots were French Protestants primarily from Normandy, descended from the Vikings and linked to the Scots-Irish Protestants like blue eyes are linked genetically to red hair.

The Huguenots came early to the South—primarily to escape France, which was, as I stated earlier, full of Catholics—and they (in tandem with like minds among the Scots-Irish) often allied with Mother England—meaning the Brits footed the bill—in attempts to infringe on those “Catholic” Frenchmen, eyeing the lower Mississippi Valley for protection of its lucrative fur trade in the upper valley. English interest in the lower Mississippi is what drove French expansion into what is now Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. I don’t know when the Gibsons arrived in Arkansas, but I do know roughly when Grandma Sally’s “distaff” side got there. This latter line, as it turns out, is particularly special to me, made all the more precious for its Mississippi link.

All my life I’ve been the consummate “daddy’s girl”, but a few years ago I was on a quest for a Confederate ancestor. From word of mouth I knew he was back there (actually they were back there), but I had no concrete info as to who and where. I was searching the web one night for my ephemeral Confederate in Georgia where Charles Russell’s (Hip I called him, and he was my daddy) people hailed from. The Russell’s had come to the Georgia Up Country from “the Carolinas” and were characterized as happy, red-headed, blue-eyed Scotsmen. My great-grandfather, Hugh Henry (illiterate) wed Mary Price (who could read and write) in 1870 or 1871. She was quarter-blood Creek, though I have one cousin who seems to think she was Cherokee. The family passed through east Tennessee and with the Carolina connection, I wouldn’t rule Cherokee out at this point, but the “Creek” information came from an aunt, which makes it one generation closer to the mix—pun intended.

My father’s mother was a “King”—her father being James Albert King. The Kings were septs (branch) of the clan McGregor, which was one of the first Highland clans removed during the Scottish clearances. Georgia was a penal colony and many Highlanders settled (or were settled) there. I’m only speculating here—this branch of the family is murky, and there’s little information on my branch of the Russell and King families documented on Ancestry or RootsWeb.com, but to make a long story short, on the night in question, I found hundreds of Russells and Kings in Georgia’s Confederate rolls, but I couldn’t confirm my relationship to any one of those fine young men. Before turning off the computer for the night, I decided to take a quick look at Mama’s side.

As it turned out, someone on her side had done quite a bit of research on the family (Ancestry.com). I found Sally Wooldridge and her father Hugh—I found his first wife, Grandma Sally’s mother, Nancy Young—a name I had heard before. Turns out she’d been born in Mississippi in 1870. Now that I hadn’t heard, and as far as I know, Mama didn’t know it either.

Then I found Nancy’s father, my great-great-grandfather, Phillip Sherrod Young, who had been born in Chester County South Carolina in November of 1840. His family immigrated to Pontotoc County Mississippi (along with a number of other Chester County residents) as pioneers in 1842 after Indian lands were opened to white settlers. He was two. In January of 1861 he wed Sarah Alabama McKeown the daughter of another such family. The Scots-Irish McKeowns had immigrated to South Carolina from County Antrim in Ulster, Northern Ireland in the early 18^th century.

Sarah and Phillip’s first baby was born in December of 1861. Their second baby didn’t arrive until March 1866—eleven months after Appomattox. Seven more babies arrived over the next 14 years—births in the case of babies number 3 and 4 occurred only 10 months after babies two and three. From that evidence, I deduced two things—there was a virile daddy and a fertile mama and they seemed to like each other. And the lack of babies between 1861 and 1866? I’m sure you’ve jumped to the same conclusion I did. Daddy wasn’t there.

I knew I had my Confederate, I just needed to confirm him in the rolls—which I did many weeks later, in the roster of Company G, Pontotoc County Volunteers, Third Battalion, Mississippi Infantry, Confederate States Army.

Phillip and Sarah’s baby following my great grandmother was born in Arkansas in 1873. That period encompassing 1870-1873 comprises three of the darkest years of Reconstruction in Mississippi. I do not know that adverse conditions drove the family from the state, but I do know the Youngs appear to have thrived in Arkansas.

My “reputedly” handsome French Huguenot-descended granddaddy (Mama’s father) disappeared during the 1927 flood, apparently hoping everyone would believe him drowned—a ruse that did not fool Grandma Sally or her daddy, Hugh Wooldridge. Fed Gibson had abandoned his wife and four daughters for another woman. Mama was three. With the help of her family—both the Wooldridges and the Gibsons, devastated by their son’s betrayal—Sally Gibson raised her four daughters alone.

Despite Granddaddy Gibson’s perfidy, Mignon Gibson Russell came from great stock. Combine her blood lines with those of my dad’s and, it turns out a microcosm of the Southern populace flows through my veins.

I am very proud of those credentials.

The Confederacy and the Roots of American Progressivism.

This past week I began Hillsdale College's second course series on the U.S. Constitution titled "The Progressive Rejection of the Founding and the Rise of Bureaucratic Despotism" also known as Constitution 201. I have a great deal of respect for Hillsdale College, an independent liberal arts college located in rural Michigan. My admiration stems from the school's rejection of all federal monies, thereby refusing to compromise its values and principles, which mirror my own. Founded in 1844, Hillsdale is an old school with, from what I've been able to ascertain from photographs, a beautiful, quaint campus and small student body. If I were to find fault, the only one I could muster to date is its admiration for Abraham Lincoln, which apparently extends back, well, to the days of Lincoln.

But I don't fault Hillsdale for that, the school is, afterall, located in Michigan; and if I displayed malice toward everyone who admired Lincoln, I'd spend my life bent out of shape. For the most part, if I can't come up with a good reason for arguing a point regarding the man (by that I mean, if I think I might actually accomplish something), I keep my mouth shut. But some injustices I simply can't ignore.

One such occurred in Hillsdale President Dr. Larry Arnn's introduction to Constitution 201. Dr. Arnn alluded to the seeds (at least some of them) of progressivism in the United States as having been sown in the Confederacy. He based this thought on two tenants of American progressivism: rejection of the nation's founding principles and the use of science as a liberal tool for the "betterment" of all mankind.

To support the argument, Dr. Arnn referenced the speech made by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens on March 21, 1861 in Savannah, Georgia citing the subordination of the Negro race as a corner-stone of Confederate society. Vice President Stephens stated modern science "proved" the Negro genetically inferior to the white man. I'm certainly not agreeing with Vice President Stephens or any of the other hundreds of thousands of people who agreed with that "finding" at the time. What I find umbrage with is the use of Stephens' speech defending slavery as indicative of "progressive" thought in the South.

For two hundred years before Stephens made that speech, slavery had thrived in the British colonies and had been justified using the same opinion Stephens espoused even without the "proof" of science.
More disturbing to me is the challenge that Stevens was speaking "in opposition to the equality principle of the American founding." Based on the evidence presented, opposition to the "founding" existed from the start. To add insult to injury, Dr. Arnn made no reference to the Republican Party's gross disregard for the Constitution in its subjegation of the South and its subsequent, purposeful destruction of the checks and balances critical to the survival of the Federal Republic established by our founders under said Constitution.

Now, I don't consider myself a sophisticated person. I'm not particularly well versed in political terminology, but for me the term "liberal" (synonomous with "progressive") conjurs up an individual who believes everyone should be equally successful and that government should ensure that success through regulation and wasteful expenditure of other people's money. My money. Hillsdale's introduction to Frank Goodnow's (American Political Sciences Association) paper titled "The American Conception of Liberty" echoes this concept of a liberal. The intro states, "Progressive political science was based on the assumption that society could be organized in such a way that social ills would disappear."

Now, let's think back. What is considered the great social ill on the day Vice President Stephens made that speech? Oh yes, slavery. At least it was to those not in the South. Personally, I think the "liberal" Republicans would have done well to focus that energy relieving society's ills on the North's factories, orphanages, and sweatshops, but then I don't buy the Civil War having been about slavery, either.

The equality principle referenced, of course, is found in the Declaration of Independence—"...all Men are created equal,..." It didn't matter that the clause was written by a Southerner and slave owner and that the Declaration was signed by a number of slaveowners who risked their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor so that our nation would win its independence. It doesn't take a genius to figure out there's a disconnect here and there always will be. The point I want to make is this particular "equality" principle was missing in the Constitution, and it is the Republicans'/Lincoln's bizarre adherence to the Declaration of Independence's taking precedence over the Constitution as this nation's founding document that excuses the Republicans' subsequest violations of the Constitution and destruction of the republic that to this day they are credited with saving.

I argue, as the South has for, gosh, two centuries now, that The Declaration is the document by which we informed King George we were opting out of his empire. The Constitution, written eleven years later, with the Articles of Confederation sandwiched in between, is the document, ratified by thirteen sovereign states, that formed the Federal Republic of the United States of America —under a limited central govenment, its powers granted by the consent of the governed through powers delegated by their sovereign states. It is the document our founders designed specifically to keep in check the anticipated growth of what would become, by its very nature, a large, all-powerful central government. Note that it is a large, all-powerful govenment that is critical for carrying out a liberal agenda. Equality, validated in the Declaration, formed one of the tenants of the Republican Party —not because it cared about each individual, but because representative government wasn't working for it. Sovereign states, which could counter the overreach of the central government, got in the way of its "liberal" agenda.

I've always heard it argued that the concessions made to the slave states during the writing of the Constitution were done so the Southern states would ratify it. Darn right—, we played a major role in writing the thing. If the Northern, non-slave holding states did not agree with the Constitution, they shouldn't have ratified it. They could have written their own Constitution, instead of desecrating ours. It was a bad marriage from the start with one partner, in bad faith, determined to change the other.
For eighty years the South was the bulwark against the proponents of strong central government and the tyranny of democracy over representative govenment. The most damaging attack made against the republic was that made to representative government 150 years ago by Lincoln's Republican Party. That's where the seeds of liberalism were sown, not in the Confederacy. That group of Republican tyrants created a fertile field, which continues to put forth its ever-increasing bounty of crop-choking weeds to this day. The party doesn't matter. What matters is the restraints are gone.
You want to promote the South for laying the foundation for "liberal progressivism"? Well, maybe we do deserve the blame. We lost the War.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

Northern Resolve? Really?

This past week, I picked up a copy of the July 2012 edition of the Civil War Society’s bi-monthly magazine North & South. One of the articles drew analogies between coaching mistakes in football and Confederate blunders in the Western theater that cost the Confederacy the war, the argument being the United States didn’t actually win the war, the Confederacy lost it. It’s not my purpose here to argue the merit’s of the South’s strategy, or lack thereof, to wage the war it did. I just did research on the battle of Shiloh for my next book, Camellia Creek, and anyone who has made even cursory study of the battles in that war (or any war for that matter) knows egregious errors were made by commanders on both sides, the crux being one side had unlimited assets with time on its side and could afford to squander both, and the other did not. It’s my humble opinion that the South had a brief window of opportunity to—maybe—win its independence. But I digress. What gave me pause to write this post was the argument put forth by a couple of the contributors to that North & South article that the war would have/could have continued if the South had been willing to keep up the fight vis-à-vis the resolve of the North’s population to continue the effort until the South was defeated. Resolve? From my corporate memory, passed to me from generation to generation, which my research builds on—the latter so I can site documented specifics vice depending on the emotional diatribes of my ancestors (mostly the womenfolk, who are passionate about their men, and yes, I am proud to say that I am one such female), I do not give much credence to the “resolve” of the Northern populace. In Claiborne County, the setting of Camellia Creek, Grant spared the town of Port Gibson as “too beautiful to burn.” [The town at the time was inhabited by women, children, the old and the sick—the men being at war. Now, I’m not going into why General Pemberton remained holed in right up the road in Vicksburg with an army of 30,000 when he could have moved out and made Grant pay dearly for every inch of Mississippi soil he violated. My purpose here is the “people’s resolve.”] Though Port Gibson was not burned, it did endure raids from Federal forces stationed in the area. Soldiers came in to the town on several occasions from 1863 until the end of the conflict and plundered it. Not just thievery of every item of food, clothing, bed linens, etc., but wanton, purposeful destruction of furniture, mirrors, windows and doors, the gardens, wells, sheds, etc. so that the means of replacing food, caring for the sick, and so forth could not easily be replaced. On at least one occasion, the white troops came in one day, but left their colored troops (USCT) outside town. After the whites plundered what they wanted, they camped outside town. The next day they let loose their colored troops to take/destroy whatever was left. In Jackson, one has simply to dig a few feet into the ground to find the phosphorous Grant used to firebomb the city that same summer of 1863. Sherman razed Meridian—that was before his march through Georgia and the burning of Atlanta, and he continued that wanton destruction against the civilians of the South all the way to the sea. And let’s not forget Phil Sheridan’s laying waste to the Shenandoah Valley. And when I turn to page 46 of my copy of The Civil War Catalog (Anthony Shaw, editor), I see an ancient photo of Richmond after its surrender—it looks like Berlin in May of 1945. Humpf, wonder why the Germans didn’t keep fighting? And oh my gosh, those wimpy Japanese! Surely they could have held out for a couple more nukes on their heads! Forced us to invade the homeland. This was not a case of rogue officers and undisciplined soldiers. This was a matter of policy made in Washington. The American way of war didn’t start in the 1940s it started in the 1860s, and the South fought until it didn’t make sense to fight anymore. The only thing gained would have been more suffering and death—oh, yeah, and getting to kill a few more Yankees. [And had they known what was to follow, they might have kept up the fight a bit longer.] Hey, I’m not faulting total war; I understand the concept all too clearly, and I’ve been on the winning end of it ever since, but I do have trouble pitting the Northern populace’s “resolve” against that of the Southern people. Moreover, this attack on all things Southern is a more recent aberration that has evolved over the past fifty years and made all the more odious in that it’s all too often perpetrated by Southerners. (Wait, I think I’ll refer to that particular segment as southerners, or as apologists who happen to live in the South). Why? Even if the allegations were true—and so much of this is conjecture as we move farther and farther from the suffering of our ancestors, why would one piss on his/her ancestors’ graves? The South was not wrong. As regards the Constitution, the law of the land, the secession, and defense of its homeland, we are on solid ground and we remained on solid ground through the tyranny and despotism of Reconstruction, which undermines to this day one of the basic tenants of this Federal Republic—state rights vis-à-vis what should be a co-equal and limited central government. What exactly tested the “resolve” of the Northern populace? Given their grand strategy, their unhindered line of communication, and the ruthless determination of their leaders, the only way they could have lost that war was to roll over and play dead—and early on they might very well have if the South had pressed harder—maybe. They were “resolved” all right, but the truth is the aforementioned “resolve” refers to a populace, virtually untouched by war’s destruction, willing to employ unlimited assets to wage unrestricted warfare against a populace which was not—and in the beginning the South could have, and looking back, should have. But to paraphrase the man who set our strategy to destruction: We simply wanted to be left alone.

The Republicans, the Taxpayer, Suffrage, and History

I’ve recently pulled out my fifth novel set in Mississippi, a historical mystery/suspense set during Presidential Reconstruction (1865-1866) in Claiborne County. I completed the first draft and a series of tweaks to Camellia Creek before Katrina crashed into the Gulf Coast back in 2005, and I hadn’t looked at it since. In the interim, I established Loblolly Writer’s House and published my first four novels in all formats. I continue my struggle for effective marketing. This blog is a recent aberration of the latter; another is Twitter, which I hope will direct interested readers to my blog and my novels.

Regarding Twitter (the blog looms before you), I’m growing followers. Mostly I attract and am attracted to “Twitterers of a like mind.” Just the other day, one such follower mentioned we should be following the opposition if we want to start a dialogue. I think she made a good point, and I’m for enlightening discussion (140 characters a quip, however, does require some innovation), but I don’t think I want to give up people of like minds either.

My work is decidedly pro-South and therefore politically incorrect. I believe the South was right for all the right reasons, and to point out those reasons, I don’t have to look farther than the Constitution, the soul of this Federal Republic. The South’s losing the War Between the States proved a devastating blow, not only to the region, but to the Republic itself.

This brings me to the provocation that sparked this blog post. I’ve noted, and replied to, more than one of my fellow Tea Party followers regarding their 140-character tweets meant to, I think, malign the Democratic Party and its “racist history” while praising the Republicans for championing equality—hence, vote Republican against Obama in November. I can come up with lots of reasons to vote against Obama, and the Republicans are my only real alternative; I don’t need naïve and/or revisionist history to sway me.

The Tea Party champions the rights of the taxpayer within the framework of the Constitution; at least that’s how this Tea Party supporter interprets its purpose. References supportive of the Republicans of Lincoln’s day (and the administrations immediately following his death) while blatantly maligning the Democrats of that same time period miss the point, not to mention those tidbits of history tossed out in tweets are usually taken out of context or confused with later history, and when challenged, the tweeter can offer no valid reference. Okay, maybe he can cite what he’s seen on contemporary television or read on Wikipedia. Not one offered me even those.

I take issue with offenses cited between 1865 and 1876. This period is the setting for more than one of my books, and it’s one about which I have a good layman’s knowledge. I won’t try to mislead you; I look at that most disgraceful period in our nation’s history from the Southern taxpayer’s point of view. That was a time when the defeated Southerner across the war-ravaged South, couldn’t fight his way through mobs of non-taxpayers to the polling booth, assuming there was a candidate worthy of his vote even allowed on the ballot. That was true even if he had sworn allegiance to the United States and regained his vote (the ex post facto deprivation of which was unconstitutional to begin with). For years—over a decade in some states and Mississippi was one—the downtrodden taxpayer was not represented in his legislature or in Washington, and puppet governments squandered the revenues critical to the South’s recovery.

For those who delve back in time, and Tea Partiers do, look at Reconstruction not necessarily from a Southerner’s point of view, but as an American through the prism of the Constitution, because that’s the period when States touting loyalty to the Union abrogated their responsibility to not only the Constitution but also themselves by ceding unprecedented power to a Federal government flush with victory, drunk on power, and poisoned by the hate-filled greed of the Radical Republicans. Power never recovered by the States, freedom forever lost. For Tea Partiers to tacitly extol the virtues of the Republicans by maligning the Democrats of that period is oxymoronic.

Personally, if the objective is to represent the contemporary Republican Party as supportive of the taxpayer and the Tea Party, it would be prudent, in my opinion, to leave the Republicans’ dubious rise to power one-hundred and fifty years ago out of the justification.