It was I who originally came up with the idea for a supplement to the OR. I pitched the idea to Gary Gallagher at U of NC Press at one point. Problem was I was not famous enough to be the editor.

When Noah Trudeau - one of my clients - took an interest, Tom Broadfoot approached us. He asked us how many volumes we projected. We were on the spot. We said ten.

I did the research at the National Archives and found thousand sof pages of lovely stuff. But when the selection began Trudeau rejected most of it.

I recall one example vividly. I found that one officer had not filed an official report so I suggested we use the correspondence I'd found in lieu of an official report. I even cited a precedent, the fact that the in Vol. 34 Part 1 Gen. Carr did not furnish a report, so they used correspondence instead.

Over my dead body" he said.

I recall finding a log showing the number of rounds each union battery fired every day during the siege of Vicksburg. I told Trudeau - "So what if this didn't get into the OR. We can put it in now." But it was "over my dead body" again.

Finally we were finished and guess what? Broadfoot didn't have ten volumes worth of material. For the first seven volumes he included newspaper accounts and post-war reminiscences and he made the print as big as possible. For the last three volumes he crammed in two courts of inquiry.

I suggested volumes of correspondence - but Broadfoot and I weren't speaking to each other any longer. In the end he furnished 5 pathetic little volumes. I could have furnished him with thousands of pagess.

I felt and still feel the supplement is a bloody travesty.

Bryce A. Suderow

p.s. The OR folks noticed lots of officers had not filed official reports for this or that battle so they contacted these officers and asked (1) do you have your official report? (2) if you don't, will you write one now?

They accepted the reports in the first category. But if the reports were written after a certain date they did not accept them. Those rejected reports in category two we used in the supplement. Unfortunately they were available for only half the war. There was a rumor that Dallas Irvine, Mike Musick's predecessor - pulled them and lost them. So for half the war we lack those late reports.