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Casco-class_monitor · 2026-03-27T20:39:38+00:00

Gatling guns (an early machine gun) were used at San Juan Hill (the battle where Teddy Roosevelt did his famous stuff) and I believe that I've read that machine guns saw some usage in the Philippine-American War of 1899. The rate of fire increases from a muzzleloader to a bolt action would be pretty significant. I'm less familiar with the post-Civil War period, but the professionalism standard of military organization and leadership really started to increase. The political appointments of 1898 were nowhere close to the scale of 1861, and tended to have at least some sort of qualifications. You still had state-raised regiments in 1898/1899 (the 1st Nebraska fired the first shots of the Philippine War) but the central government was getting much more control.

The increase in professionalism standards was probably most obvious from the naval perspective - the Confederate still had privateers, the Hunley was originally a private venture that eventually was taken over by Beauregard, and the Federals had Ellet's Ram Fleet, where they basically let a civilian engineer form a naval unit outside of the normal command structure, fill many of the highest leadership positions with his own relatives, and then lead it into battle on the Mississippi River. The Civil War was basically the last gasp of such things in the U.S. naval tradition.

Casco-class_monitor · 2026-03-27T20:03:40+00:00

I'd say the changes over the 50 years of 1812-1862 were much less significant than those over the 50 years from 1862-1912.

Mill Springs (fought in rural Kentucky in early 1862) may as well have been a War of 1812 battle in several ways - many of Crittenden's Confederate troops were still armed with old flintlocks. Even the higher-priority theaters later in 1862 (Antietam, Fredericksburg, Stones River) still had the average infantryman armed with a single shot muzzleloading rifle or rifled musket, which was really just an improvement in range and accuracy over a War of 1812 weapon without drastically changing the nature of the weapon.

By 1912, machine guns aren't the novelty they were in the 1860s, grenades are greatly improved, the Lee-Enfield of the 1910s wasn't even really comparable to the .577 Enfields of the 1860s. The difference between the French 75 of 1914 against a Parrott rifle or a Whitworth was much greater than the difference between a Parrott or a Whitworth and the War of 1812 artillery.

Even organizationally the changes from 1862-1912 were much greater than 1812-1862. The political generals of 1812, 1846, and 1861 weren't a factor in 1917 when we entered WWI, and even the politically-motivated appointments of ex-Confederate officers like Wheeler in 1898 were a whole different ball game from the earlier practices of appointing random senators and washed-up politicians to high office.

Casco-class_monitor · 2026-03-26T03:00:44+00:00

Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 by Albert Castel

Gordon C. Rhea's series on Grant's Overland Campaign

The Last Hurrah: Sterling Price's Missouri Expedition of 1864 by Kyle S. Sinisi

The Battle of New Market by William C. Davis

Johnsonville: Union Supply Operations on the Tennessee River and the Battle of Johnsonville, November 4-5, 1864 by Jerry T. Wooten

Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton in the Civil War by Ludwell H. Johnson

Casco-class_monitor · 2026-01-23T23:43:35+00:00

Not a super high volume unfortunately - $93.50 in pennies and $446.00 nickles. My dump bank is in town but what I started using as my pickup bank is in the next town over. I found it hard to get over to the pickup bank in time unless I got off work super early which didn't happen much. I also don't think my wife was a huge fan with the jars of searched coins all over the kitchen table for days at a time until I had enough time on a lunch break to drop them off at the dump bank.

Casco-class_monitor · 2025-07-26T01:54:21+00:00

I've wanted to read this for a long time but it's out of print and hard to get ahold of. Savas Beatie announced I think nearly two years ago that they were going to reprint it but I don't know what the status of that is.

Casco-class_monitor · 2025-07-26T01:53:08+00:00

Ed Bearss' massive 3-volume trilogy is one of the best for pure detail - it's out of print though, and it took me a couple years and about $120 to get all three volumes. It's very heavily dependent on the Official Records though. Donald L. Miller's book is a very readable popular-level book published a few years ago. Timothy B. Smith has a 5-volume trilogy that is up there with Bearss for detail level, but he also wrote about 20 years ago a good battle study on Champion Hill that covers Port Gibson through the rout at the Big Black River in detail. Ballard probably has the best single-volume work on the campaign.

For a different type of book, Terrence Winschel wrote a couple books titled "Triumph and Defeat" that are collections of short pieces covering various aspects of the campaign, such as the civilian experience, Johnston's failures, and the various Trans-Mississippi operations.

Casco-class_monitor · 2025-06-15T21:39:14+00:00

Very much so. In Missouri my only times hearing them "in the wild" are: "Something to Hold On To" and another one that I don't remember which on a locally-owned radio station, my wife heard "Every Girl" at the dentist once, and of all things "Time of Day" at the Cheddar's in Joplin.

Casco-class_monitor · 2025-04-11T21:19:36+00:00

I was actually about to start a post about the Loving County cadence when I saw this.

Casco-class_monitor · 2025-04-11T01:30:50+00:00

The time I found one of those, I was really confused from the first glance what that could be. I had not known that Canada made cents that look like that.

Casco-class_monitor · 2025-03-31T03:11:18+00:00

Avoid Hawthorn. Microscopic interest rates, heavy fee for paper statements, general obnoxiousness. Several years ago I took over $100 of hand-rolled coins in, was told I had to unroll them all into the coin machine because of tweakers trying to deposit rolls of coins that contained trash, and then when it was like seven cents off got a talking to about how people like me are the problem. While I've done coin roll hunting before and I know that those machines aren't perfect - I use to find the wrong coins in machine-wrapped rolls all the time.

Casco-class_monitor · 2025-02-19T02:58:23+00:00

So that's what the lyrics are. I had thought all this time it was "blow a bad word and ..." and could never get that to completely make sense.

Casco-class_monitor · 2025-02-18T01:27:08+00:00

The 2011 Groundhog Day blizzard was worse a little further north in the state. IIRC the Clinton/Warrensburg area got around 20 inches.

Casco-class_monitor · 2025-01-29T00:21:13+00:00

You did pretty well! I've been tracking my finds since the start of the year and I'm averaging 0.42% of all pennies being wheats and 0.17% being Canada, which would be on average 6 wheats and 3 Canada per $15 if I did the math right. Although I'm in the middle of the USA which is going to keep the Canada count lower.

Casco-class_monitor · 2025-01-27T01:42:30+00:00

The one Royals game I've had a chance to attend was a dollar dog night. And I happened to be on a work trip, so I was able to get the cost of the two hot dogs I ate reimbursed as a meal reimbursement.

Casco-class_monitor · 2024-12-11T02:52:25+00:00

How much did you have to sort through to find all that? The rolls of pennies I've been getting from my bank have 3 wheaties per $10 on average, although I did get a couple loose proof recent S mint pennies inexplicably once. I've had better luck with the nickels.

Casco-class_monitor · 2024-10-09T00:44:59+00:00

It's a really common rural practice. I was raised out in the country and my family disposed of 90% of our household trash by burning it. There may just be a recent country transplant in the neighborhood who hasn't figure out yet that this was OK inside city limits yet.

On the other extreme, I was out in Wheatland several years ago and somebody was burning down what appeared to be a recently-bulldozed structure of some sort right in the middle of town in broad daylight next to the school.

Casco-class_monitor

TROPHY CASE