Ed Bearss tells his own war story

…and it’s as captivating and vivid as his narration of battles from 150 years ago.

Ed Bearss, 1923-2020

It seems like we’ve lost so many towering, venerable historians over the past year or two.  On September 15, the eminent Civil War authority Ed Bearss passed away at the age of ninety-seven.

Bearss began his career with the National Park Service at Vicksburg in the 1950s, where he helped discover the wreck of the gunboat Cairo.  In 1981 he became the NPS chief historian and occupied that position until 1994.  He was the author of a number of books on the Civil War (particularly the war in Mississippi) and received nearly every accolade there is for battlefield interpretation and preservation, including the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Battlefield Trust.

His battlefield tours were legendary.  Over the course of his career, he guided thousands of visitors across the ground where the Union endured its ordeal by blood and fire, and continued to do so at an age when most public historians are decades into retirement.  His vivid, dramatic, and eloquent style of narration brought these landscapes to life, and made him one of the most memorable commentators from Ken Burns’ Civil War series.

Bearss was not only a student and interpreter of military history, but a combat veteran himself.  He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1942 and fought in the Pacific Theater, where he was badly wounded by machine gun fire.

He inspired and influenced generations of students, scholars, and enthusiasts, and I doubt we will see his like again.