A change of direction?

Here are the most popular posts of the last two months and the top 15 all-time. One post appears on both lists – my brief piece on my backstage encounter with the poet Billy Collins. This came out of an event earlier this month in Concord, N.H.

From time to time I have blogged on non-Civil War subjects. I am considering morphing this blog into one that would combine several interests: the Civil War, current events and issues, books, art – anything I think might engage readers.

I welcome any comments you have on this idea.

Here are the top ten recent posts on the basis of readership:

1. Backstage with Billy Collins

2. Curses to to ‘Old Abe and His gang of cutthroats’

3.  One school’s proud Civil War heritage

4. The yeasty early years of Capt. Edward E.Sturtevant

5. From Fredericksburg to The Crater

6. What came next for Sturtevant and the Fighting Fifth

7. What became of that glorious banner

8. A Gettysburg veteran who knew the battlefield by heart

9. Captain Gordon’s war

10. 'Before this rebellion is crushed'

And here are the top 15 all-time, with a range of 148 to 497 hits. The numbers in parentheses are the entries’ rankings a month ago, if any:

1. Urgent! Telegram from Gettysburg (1)

2. Farewell, my teacher (2)

3. Exeter’s Civil War general (3)

4. Did Abraham Lincoln really free the slaves? (4)

5. The soldier’s story behind the love story, Part I (13)

6. Faces of Fort Wagner, Olustee and Andersonville (5)

7. The Civil War: ‘It was not my fault,’ Buchanan insists (6)

8. Harnessing the power of the telling detail (7)

9. Gallery: Faces of the Fighting Fifth (part one) (8)

10. Unpacking the new ‘Gettysburg’ (11)

11. My friend Chester (9)

12. Kennedy gave FDR too much credit, shortchanged Ike (10)

13. Backstage with Billy Collins (—)

14. The soldier’s story behind the love story, Part II (13)

15. How did Lincoln Republicans morph into Obama Democrats? (12)