Joseph L. Harsh — A Tribute

Dr. Joseph L. Harsh has departed this life to join his daugh­ter Laura, leav­ing behind his wife Trudy, his sons, their wives, and many grand­chil­dren. He was a scholar and long-time Pro­fes­sor of His­tory at George Mason Uni­ver­sity where he touched the lives of thou­sands of stu­dents and dozens of col­leagues. His career and inter­ests ranged from dis­tin­guished aca­d­e­mic research and writ­ing to horse­shoe leagues and base­ball. And for those of us who shared his obses­sion with the Civil War and espe­cially the Mary­land Cam­paign of 1862, Joe was a fount of knowl­edge, an inspi­ra­tional teacher and a source of encour­age­ment to attain new insights, infor­ma­tion and inter­pre­ta­tions. His three-volume study on Con­fed­er­ate strat­egy through the Mary­land Cam­paign remains the best work on the topic, and has earned a place in the hall­mark stud­ies of any mil­i­tary cam­paign. Along with his fam­ily and legacy at GMU, his books are a fit­ting memo­r­ial to Joe’s abil­ity, enthu­si­asm and intel­lect.
My per­sonal expe­ri­ence with Joe, (and by the way so great was my respect for him that it took me 13 years to call him any­thing other than Dr. Harsh) , began in 1990 when my dean per­suaded me to pur­sue a spe­cial­ized pro­gram for doc­toral com­mu­nity col­lege fac­ulty at GMU. My first choice was an edu­ca­tion course, the first I’d ever taken. (Let me point out that Joe never took a course in edu­ca­tion, and was the best pro­fes­sor I ever had.) I thought the edu­ca­tion pro­fes­sor was awful, he will remain unnamed at this time, and I was ready to quit. Luck­ily for me that same sum­mer cat­a­log included a course called Tour­ing Civil War Bat­tle­fields. Well, I thought, I know all about this, here is an easy way to pick up 3 cred­its with­out break­ing a sweat. Among the many mis­takes I’ve made in my life this cer­tainly was not the biggest, but in many ways it was the most pro­found in terms of chang­ing my life. From the minute we first met it was obvi­ous I’d met a kin­dred spirit. It was also obvi­ous that I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. The best part was that Joe was a great “coach.” Instead of arro­gance and pride, Joe demon­strated humil­ity and encour­age­ment. He had a gift for bring­ing out the best in every stu­dent, and his loyal fol­low­ing of stu­dents, affec­tion­ately known as the “Harsh Brigade,” speak to his abil­i­ties and mag­netic per­son­al­ity. Those of you who stud­ied under Joe may recall one of his favorite mantras; the three most impor­tant things in his­tory are chronol­ogy, chronol­ogy and chronol­ogy.
By the end of the class I was “hooked,” I’d become a Harsh Brigade stu­dent for life. It was there­fore a “no-brainer” that I would return for the sec­ond part of the course the fol­low­ing sum­mer. Spend­ing two weeks of non-stop study of bat­tle­fields while cramped into a 15 pas­sen­ger van with lit­tle space for lug­gage and, after a few humid, 90+ degree days, a con­sid­er­able amount of body odor, may seem like tor­ture to many peo­ple. Because of Joe’s giddy excite­ment about what he was doing, the time seemed to fly by and the hard­ships were barely noticed. We were on the go from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. many days. Though phys­i­cally exhaust­ing, I never felt tired until I came home, col­lapsed and mar­veled at the plan­ning he’d done, the unique expe­ri­ences we’d had, the intel­lec­tual chal­lenges he’d offered, and the won­der­ful peo­ple we’d met along the way.
I was truly sad­dened when it was over. I felt like a kid leav­ing Dis­ney­land, I’d had a great time, and didn’t think I’d ever have as great a time again. Thus you can imag­ine my pure joy when Joe called to ask if I could help him re-structure the course for the next sum­mer, and go along as his aide. Plan­ning the tour, talk­ing over the logis­tics, the guides we’d use and the places we’d visit was even more excit­ing than being a stu­dent. I was so excited I didn’t think to ask if I was being paid or not. Even­tu­ally I would make five more trips with him, and it got bet­ter every time. He allowed me to teach a few times, and gave me help­ful cri­tiques about what was use­ful, but never a crit­i­cism from him.
It was dur­ing these sum­mers that Joe was work­ing on his tril­ogy of the Con­fed­er­ate strat­egy in the Mary­land Cam­paign. He sounded out new ideas and inter­pre­ta­tions with me, many of which were so thought­ful and insight­ful that I was awed by his skills. He would often encour­age me, and oth­ers, to stop and think, not just doggedly read and then speak. It was advice that has served me well. I rank among my high­est achieve­ments the fact that I was named in the acknowl­edge­ments of his books. Another proud moment was when he could no longer work and rec­om­mended me to teach his Civil War class at GMU. I was asked to teach the Bat­tle­fields course for a cou­ple sum­mers too, but I made it clear it was Gen­eral Harsh’s Brigade, Col. Clemens in tem­po­rary com­mand. We all stand on the shoul­ders of those gone before us, and Joe’s were very broad.
Joe and I spoke a cou­ple times about the con­ti­nu­ity of his­to­ri­ans of the Mary­land Cam­paign, almost like Anti­etam Creek flow­ing along touch­ing many things, for­ever chang­ing, but so con­stant in many ways. In 1965 when Jim Murfin pub­lished his sem­i­nal “Gleam of Bay­o­nets” he men­tioned two peo­ple most promi­nently in his acknowl­edge­ments. Both were mem­bers of the Hager­stown CWRT; Joe a found­ing mem­ber of that group, and he re-joined it in later years.
The first per­son was Louis Tuck­er­man, Pro­fes­sor of His­tory at Hager­stown Junior Col­lege, who greatly aided Jim in his work. I got to know Louis when I joined the Hager­stown CWRT. I also am a his­tory pro­fes­sor at Hager­stown, now HCC, and use the same office that Louis Tuck­er­man occu­pied over 32 years ago. (With­out any ren­o­va­tion I’d like to add.) And to con­tinue along the stream, I live across the street from where Jim and Nancy Murfin lived when they first mar­ried, met Jim sev­eral times, and got to know Nancy after his death.
The other per­son men­tioned by Jim Murfin was Joe Harsh, whom he described as a promis­ing young grad­u­ate stu­dent at Rice Uni­ver­sity, who was “a likely sub­ject for future Anti­etam hon­ors.” He could not have been more clair­voy­ant. Thus it has been my priv­i­lege to know these men who fig­ured so promi­nently in telling the story of Anti­etam, and Joe’s books have sur­passed the oth­ers to set the high water mark of schol­ar­ship on the sub­ject. And it was Joe who sug­gested my edit­ing of Ezra Carman’s man­u­script as doc­toral dis­ser­ta­tion, and prod­ded me to even­tu­ally fin­ish and pub­lish it. I was so very proud and happy to place a copy of my first vol­ume in his hands a just a few short weeks ago, and to let him know the creek is still flow­ing. Farewell my friend, until we meet again.