Ed Bearss On Understanding Battlefields

Illinois regiments played a very prominent role at the Siege of Vicksburg.  Every regiment there has a marker.

Ed did his masters degree thesis on Confederate General Patrick Cleburne.

One thing Mr. Bearss really believes in is that the only way to understand a battlefield is to walk it and note the vegetation cover and landscape.

As he continued to drift toward what became his lifelong occupation he said that he knew battlefields and their Smokey Bear rangers, but not historians.  The eastern U.S. battlefields were more prestigious, but there were no openings there, but there was one at Vicksburg and this is where he went to work in 1966.

One of the first things he did was walk the military park to study the vegetation and landscape.  He said of himself that he was a Big Fish in a Little Pond at Vicksburg.  He later became a Big Fish in a Big Pond.

--Old Secesh