The End of the Endnotes

The manuscript contains 619 endnotes, all of which were added as each profile was written. I’ve spent the last nine mornings reviewing each one for accuracy and style. From these entries I prepared the bibliography. It includes:
— 132 books and unpublished manuscripts
— 15 articles
— Materials from 30 manuscript collections
— References from 35 newspapers
— Materials from 37 Web sites

Although some may think that this is a tedious and boring exercise, I found it quite the opposite! The process-oriented fact checking and reviewing consistency of style was a nice break from the writing of the preface, which required intense focus and creativity. Some of the endnotes caused me to revisit, and in some cases, revise text in the preface and profiles. For example, an endnote for a photographic history book reminded me that I forgot to mention in the preface that some of the cartes were copies of portraits made in other formats. I was also reminded of all the helpful people around the country who gave freely of their time to provide all kinds of details.

The number of endnotes and bibliographic entries is double that of Union Faces. The main reason for this is that I relied on U.S. government pension files, which include in-depth detail about each Union volunteer. I did not have this resource for the Confederates (the federal government did not grant them pensions) and so consulted a myriad of other sources for information. This will make, by my estimate, the Confederate book 35 pages longer (286 to 251 pages). I wonder if this will trigger concerns about consistency.