R.I.P. Blue & Gray

In my estimation, Blue & Gray for most of its run and early North & South sit together at the pinnacle of popular Civil War magazines. While N&S had fallen to such depths for so long that I was indifferent to its ultimate demise, I truly regretted Dave Roth's May 31 announcement that B&G was shutting down the presses.

I was moving seemingly every year or two in the 1990s (changing your mailing address with magazines was a nightmare in the pre-internet age), so I picked up all the issues at bookstores that decade and have been a faithful subscriber since the beginning of the millennium. I think the magazine really came into its own when the decision was made to concentrate each issue on a feature historical article and General's Tour (when that exactly came to be, I don't recall). Happily, the quality of both also steadily increased over time. The maps in each issue were often better than anything found in published books and were often worth the cover price alone.

In his post, Roth cites declining subscriber base numbers post-Sesquicentennial as one of the driving forces behind the decision to close shop, but I can't have been the only person to notice that the magazine itself was regularly slipping up on its own obligations. For some time, I suspected that we weren't getting the promised six issues per year. Going back only two years, I found that I received five issues during calendar year 2015 and only four in 2016. It became instantly apparent that no catch up was in the offing, and this year was projecting out even worse, so the end did not shock me. But enough of that. This moment should be more celebration than post-mortem.

Really, we shouldn't feel sorry for the Roths. They got to experience, for more than three decades (and make a living out of it), the kind of Civil War dream that many of us might only fantasize about. That is a remarkable run. They, along with Robin, created an utterly unique niche-within-a-niche print magazine that will undoubtedly never be replicated. Hopefully, Dave and Jason won't feel bitter. One would think that, over time, feelings of pride over their legacy will surely replace the sadness. For me, as one of those 'who still hears the guns,' I will hold onto my B&G issues forever.