Not a Civil War Army

Not even close. The go along/get along Army culture on full display.

Music is seasonal

Music is seasonal. Before Easter, Parsifal. After Easter, Hindemith's When Lilacs Last in the Doorway Bloomd." As natural as the spring.

Whitman's elegy to Lincoln has more music settings than Hindemith's. There is Dobrogosz's, McGrath's, Crumb's, and Session's. These are better tributes than any historian could pen.

Sadly, there is no good reading of the poem itself, apart from this grotesque curiosity. Avert your eyes and listen.

Loathing Lincoln

Harry makes good use of some of Larry Tagg's stuff to put Lincoln's reputation in perspective. The material is from The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln.

If I were Larry, I'd be more than slightly annoyed at LSU Press for publishing Loathing Lincoln: An American Tradition from the Civil War to the Present. I guess the editors there don't read other publisher's booklists. Their author even cites The Unpopular in his biblio. What is the point of this work?

And why can't book reviewers be bothered to learn what books preceded the tome they review?

Civil War history is discouraging enough but the Lincoln people, with a few exceptions like Tagg and Jaffa, are the worst of the worst.

OT - Tales of a Volunteer Army

I happened across a Russian site that was mocking the U.S. military for evacuating itself from Yemen ahead of 4,000 American civilians because to save civilians would have been "too dangerous" for the U.S. military. Sounds like a joke about the services' absurd "force protection" mission.

The joke is on us. Apparently, this is no prank info: Russia, China, Pakistan and India have been evacuating their own and ours since the U.S. Army, Air Force and Navy pulled out of Yemen.

Item: "On Thursday, 59 American citizens, and 40 relatives, were among 400 passengers evacuated from the Red Sea port of Hodeidah by the Indian navy ship the Sumitra."

Item: "U.S. officials have said they believe it is too dangerous for U.S. military assets to enter Yemeni waters and air space...That, however, has left Americans largely on their own to find a way out of the country."

Item: "A few dozen Americans have made it aboard U.N.-organized evacuation flights from Sanaa to Khartoum, Sudan, and others have made it out aboard Russian ships..."

Item: A State Department official [reiterated] ... it is too dangerous to risk a military operation to rescue Americans.

Too dangerous for whom?

Item: "The US government has been sued over abandoning its citizens in Yemen, where up to 4,000 Americans are feared stranded. Pentagon officials claim an evacuation would be too dangerous for military personnel to carry out."

Item: "US citizens stuck in Yemen have lashed out at Washington for ignoring their pleas for help as they try to leave the war-torn country."

Item: India has wrapped up a successful evacuation of 4,640 of its own citizens as well as 960 foreigners.

Meanwhile, the Army, reacting to publicity about collapsed morale, has changed the formulas that measure morale to improve results.

As history readers we make a huge mistake if we conflate the military of old with the military of now.

Historians: dying like flies

R.I.P.
Victim of Grove Avenue crash identified as author, historian Elizabeth Pryor

NC historian William S. Powell dies at 95

Tom Buecker, prominent Nebraska historian, dies while shoveling snow

Harry Jaffa in Remembrance

Pulitzer Prize-winning slavery historian Carl Degler dies at 93

Lord Dacre 'Hitler diaries' historian dies

Not to mention
Stan Freberg, notable in history comedy

Dunning-Kruger: we're all guilty but some more than others

We used to say, "He knows just enough to be dangerous." Now we say, "This is a Dunning-Kruger case."

Dunning-Kruger is/be/are all over the Internet these days, and discussants do not dress in sackcloth. They are very concerned about those other idiots over there who don't know how foolish they are.

Now, Civil War discussions have a lot of pejoratives, many absolutes and all sorts of "common knowledge" backed by adamant posturing. OK, so here I am pointing my finger at those folks over there, but I avoid calling generals names and do not assume greater knowledge than the man who was there and on the spot.

How many of us presume to substitute our own judgement for a field commander's? How many do so with a caveat that the commander did not have information as good as ours ... and yet we don't analyze our own information? How many realize it's not entirely about the information?

Dunning himself has recently published an Internet piece justly called, "We are all confident idiots." He does not cite an ACW example but does mention pop culture evolutionary theory, a bugbear of mine. Dunning:

... purpose-driven misconception wreaks particular havoc on attempts to teach one of the most important concepts in modern science: evolutionary theory. Even laypeople who endorse the theory often believe a false version of it. They ascribe a level of agency and organization to evolution that is just not there.

"False" is a little harsh. "Outdated" or non-Darwinian is better. BTW, don't we ACW readers ascribe an agency and organization to the battlefield that is not there? Don't we know about the coordination and editing of battle reports?

But back to Dunning: check out your local public school and educational TV programming, especially. You'll learn that dinosaurs could not adapt (a Lamarckian formulation) but that successful mammals inherited those environmental adaptations forced upon them (Lysenko). Remarkable stuff and nothing remotely to do with Darwin and yet preached today as "settled science" by people who don't know the history of competing evolutionary theories. And Dunning falls into this by suggesting there is one "evolutionary theory." There are many evolutionary theories and some are discredited.

Our own little world is a simpler one. Nothing is discredited because there is only one master narrative of the ACW. The game is in retelling the story because there is nothing writers can say that did not already appear in Republican newspaper editorials during the war. The alternate Democrat analysis and commentary have faded yellow and crumbled to dust with the broadsheets of that era. Any new analysis is but a novelty that passes with any given publishing season.

Meanwhile this idiot general missed that glorious opportunity to end the war in a single bold stroke because of his [insert failing here].

Military virtues of the lazy

Lucy Kellaway was talking about a lazy executive and mentioned Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord's formula. I had heard it before attributed to Frederick the Great.

The idea is that you classify your officers as either clever or dull and then again as either industrious or lazy. The clever lazies are assigned the highest field commands; the clever industrious are put on staff; the dull lazies are left to follow orders; and the dull industrious you isolate and keep a watch over them.

I worked for an industrious fool long ago in Saudi Arabia. When we last heard from this blustery whirlwind of a man, he was taking a taxicab from Riyadh to Beirut.

Interesting to sort the Civil War generals into these bins. What's your sort look like?

The Quote Investigator has a nice piece on this slippery attribution.

Savior generals

It's not an adequate rebuttal to counterinsurgency doctrine but Col. Gian Gentile's polemic Wrong Turn has three very interesting memes relevant to our little world: "the bad general," "the better general," and "the savior general." His method of debunking these pop culture archetypes is to document the underlying and pervasive continuity (in policy and practice) between the "bad," the "better," and the "savior."

One wonders if the germ of this idea came from Civil War readings.

Update (3/29): A reader alerts us that Victor D. Hanson had a book out called The Savior Generals. Gentile quotes Hanson on other matters but does not attribute "savior generals".

Atlanta's numbers (cont.)

Andrew Wagenhoffer wrote in to mention that Steve Newton wrote about Johnston's retreat numbers in North & South ages ago. "I found some talk on the article on the Armchair General." Here's a snip from that board:

There was an excellent article in the April 2000 (Vol 3, No.4) North/South magazine that did just that. The name of the article was "Formidable Only in Flight: Casualties, Attrition, & Morale in Georgia" by Steve Newton. Steve does an excellent job of breaking down battlefield casualties, missing soldiers, losses to sickness, & readmissions amongst both Federal & Confederate armies. "Under Johnston's leadership the average daily casualty rate was 195 casualties per day for 73 days; under Hood this average increased to 375 casualties per day for 47 days. Although daily averages only show general trends over weeks & months, it is evident that the Army of Tennessee suffered signficantly more casualties over a much shorter period under Hood than Johnston."

Where things break down for the Confederates is in the hospital & recovery phase. The Federals were MUCH better at getting men back to the battlefield than their Confederate counterparts. For the Confederates, the really telling part is not casualties TAKEN, but in casualties INFLICTED. While Johnston in 73 days of combat generates nearly the casualties that Hood does in 47, the Yanks take 20,000 LESS casualties due to the battlefield & sickness under Hood than Johnston. Hood takes greater casualties faster & inflicts less damage than Johnston.

These numbers need more scrutiny; one may have to repair to eBay to get a copy of the issue in question.

How to communicate

Just came back from a company meeting in which we were urged to begin communicating with each other at a (lower) level such that "even a New York Times reader could understand." Seriously. It was a comment on reading levels made without malice.

I often think on these same lines when I see discussion of complex issues reduced to one syllable words.

Atlanta's numbers

Crimes against numbers, being the special mark of the Civil War historian, always catch my eye.

The question of Johnston's strength during the Atlanta campaign and at the point of relinquishing command to J.B. Hood is a controversy of which I have been innocent until drawn in by an aside in Stephen M. Hood's new book The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood:

...Johnston had declared that during his May and June operations in North Georgia his army had lost 9,972 men, killed and wounded, in his infantry and artillery. Many subsequent writers had contented themselves with simply repeating what Johnston had written and even had ignored the restricted nature of the general's own statement ("killed and wounded," "infantry and artillery," "May and June"). In fact, if one adds other known losses and makes reasonable estimates of deserters, stragglers, men lost as prisoners, men lost to sickness, casualties in the cavalry, and losses in the 1-17 July period, one gets a different picture. Johnston's losses then total about 25,000.

Russell Bonds has a comment on Johnston's tallies in his War Like the Thunderbolt:

Johnston only counted enlisted men armed on the front lines as "effectives," while adding every orderly, cook, staff officer, and teamster west of the Appalachians to the Federal total ... In short, Johnston's reports compared apples to oranges - Confederate "effectives" versus Union "aggregate present" - and then compounded the problem by undercounting the apples and overcounting the oranges.

This useful criticism does not get us to a larger picture of relative strengths, so I turned to another new book, Robert Jenkins' To the Gates of Atlanta: From Kennesaw Mountain to Peach Tree Creek. Its Appendix C, "Estimated Strength of Hood's Army," puts the handover at 44,400. The unit breakdowns show figures such as 4,00, 2,000, 1,000 and, not surprisingly, they come from the OR. The OR does not say who made this estimate, why or how, nor the  excessive resort to zeroes. This is not to single out Jenkins because we often see historians who cite the early information of the OR in preference to the refined data and analysis that come later.

Have a look at this article from Battles and Leaders published lifetimes ago to see the kind of rigor that would be useful if we could ever train historians to take an interest in figures. Note that the authors say "between April 30th and June 10th, [Johnston must account] for at least the following men available for battle," namely 84,328. Subtracting Stephen Hood's estimate of 25,000 lost en route to Atlanta and we come somewhat near to the Battle and Leaders authors' reckoning for Gen. Hood's new command: 65,032.

"Somewhat near" because contemporary accounts also feature an abundance of zeroes. Among the Lost Papers is another estimate made by a Kentucky regimental surgeon who writes to Gen. Hood that "... it was estimated, from despondency and our retrograde movement, the army had lost between 17,000 and 20,000 men by desertion ..." [Emphasis added.]

There is a lot of work to be done here.

Stephen Hood's book opens another door to a related matter, of which I had not heard. Bragg writes Hood on December 17, 1865:

My recollection is perfectly clear ... In addition to the Army of Tennessee, then at Dalton, the General Commanding was offered for an offensive campaign, Polk's Corps from Mississippi & Ala., Longstreet's Corps from East Tennessee, and a sufficient number from Beauregard's command in S. Carolina & Georgia to make up 75,000 effective infantry. The Cavalry with these commands numbered at least 10,000 and the artillery 6,000, total 91,000. Besides the effectives so reported there were not less than 15,000 able bodied men bearing arms but reported on extra duty such as clerks, cooks, mechanics, laborers, teamsters &c, &c. One half at least could at any time be placed in battle without impairing the efficiency of the army.

I have always considered it a great misfortune that the generous offer of President Davis was not promptly accepted, and the campaign energetically undertaken. To furnish the means all other armies were for the time being to be subordinated to the Army of Tennessee.

This is gist for an alternative history and suggests the outnumbered JJ may have been outnumbered by his own choice.

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p.s. Johnston was no stranger to spin. For details on how Johnston falsified his report on Fair Oaks, see Cliff Dowdey's The Seven Days.

The Comte de Paris on the climax of McClellan's second Richmond campaign

During a recent stay at the Union League Club in New York, I found an original edition (are there newer ones?) of the Comte de Paris' History of the Civil War in America. There is a digital edition somewhere, no doubt, and perhaps I could have read read it on a tablet in a dirty taxicab, but better to browse in a beautiful setting (shown above).

McClellan's second Richmond campaign promised a solid win. The largest-ever AOP had concentrated against Longstreet in the Piedmont near Culpeper-Warrenton, while Jackson's isolated, distant, scattered command scrounged Valley supplies beyond the mountains (the passes of which had been blocked by commands posted by GBM).

While acknowledging the advantage McClellan developed, the Comte speculates on alternative outcomes:

Jackson and Lee, who had a thorough knowledge of the situation, had certainly projected some bold movement upon McClellan's rear similar to that which had proved so successful against Pope ... but they were playing a very dangerous game.*

Strong statements but History lacks notes. Why did the author think Lee had thorough knowledge and a certain plan?

Russel Beatie, perhaps alone among ACW historians, used the Comte's unpublished papers in writing his Army of the Potomac series. Is the answer in those papers?

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* Vol 2, 554-555

ALPLM hits the wall

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, the management of which has long been derided in this blog, now faces reorganization driven by the Illinois legislature. A new report makes interesting points:

* "The library has been unable to maintain its professional staff and to make necessary investments in digital technology"

* "The museum’s famously innovative exhibitions, created a decade ago, are in need of a major reinvestment"

* "The lack of a professional culture is acutely evident at the State Historical Library"

* "... maintaining the status quo for ALPLM governance is untenable."

The place has been a patronage sink made ludicrous by its pretensions. Will separation from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency fix that?

James McPherson's favorite books and authors

In a New York Times interview, James McPherson recently identified some of his favorite authors and books. I thought I'd add some fun links to the names below.

Best ACW book ever: Allan Nevins' Ordeal of the Union. (Scroll down to the sixth para where Nevins plagiarism is discussed.)

Favorite ACW biography: "Jean Edward Smith, Grant. (See my posts, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).*

"Most important military history ever written": John Keegan's Face of Battle.

One of "the best historians writing today": Eric Foner.

In the "first rank of military historians": Craig Symonds, Gary Gallagher, Joseph Glatthar.

Happy reading!

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* Smith and McPherson make beautiful music together:

McPherson: "He may have been an alcoholic in the medical meaning of that term. He was a binge drinker." [BCOF P 588]
Smith: "Grant was a binge drinker. In a clinical sense, he may have been an alcoholic." [Grant P. 231]

McPherson: "For months he could go without liquor, but if he once imbibed it was hard for him to stop." [P 588]
Smith: "He could go for months without a drink, but once he started it was difficult for him to stop." [P. 231]

McPherson: "His wife and his chief of staff John A. Rawlins were his best protectors." [P 588]
Smith: "For the most part, Grant remained sober, protected from alcohol by his adjutant, Colonel John Rawlins, and especially by Julia." [P. 231]

Smith can also make Catton's dead prose come alive!

Catton (Grant Takes Command): "Grant saw more of the fighting here than he did in the Wilderness because the country was more open."
Smith (Grant): "Grant was able to witness more of the fighting at Spotsylvania than in the Wilderness because the terrain was more open."

Catton: "During the afternoon he saddled up and rode out to several points where he could watch the fight for the tip of the salient."
Smith: "During the afternoon he ordered his reliable pony Jeff Davis saddled and rode out to several points where he could observe Hancock's troops fighting at the tip of the mule shoe and Wright's assault on the west angle."

Catton: "It seemed to him that on balance things had gone well and that evening back at headquarters he sent Halleck a wire summing up his impression [quotes wire]."
Smith: "On balance, Grant thought things were going well. Back at headquarters that evening he wired Halleck [quotes and paraphrases wire]."

Catton: "On the evening of May 11 Grant had sent Julia an optimistic message [quotes message]."
Smith: "Later he wrote Julia he was well and full of hope [quotes message]."

The passing (cont.)

I shared some thoughts with Brooks Simpson and his readers on how the old guard's views will be carried on into the future (see comments).

My, how history rhymes

"If he lacked the flexibility to suffer fools gladly..."
The Papers of Jefferson Davis: 1808-1840, page vii
Lynda Lasswell Crist 1971

"One of the adjectives that is usually applied to President Davis is the word 'austere'..."
The Papers of Jefferson Davis: 1808-1840, page vii
Lynda Lasswell Crist 1971

"He appears humorless..."
The Papers of Jefferson Davis: July 1846--December 1848, p vii
Lynda L. Crist, Mary S. Dix, 1982

"Austere and humorless, Davis did not suffer fools gladly."
Battle Cry of Freedom, p 429
James McPherson, 1988

"Austere and humorless, Davis did not suffer fools gladly."
The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom : The Civil War Era, p 363
James McPherson, 2003

"He did not suffer fools gladly ... Davis could be austere, humorless and tediously argumentative."
Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief quoted in reviews
James McPherson, 2014

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(p.s. If anyone knows who these fools are whom Davis did not suffer, please drop a line.)

Low Davis content in "Jefferson Davis"

Began reading Jefferson Davis, Confederate President by Hattaway and Beringer, which came out in 2002.

Reading and reading, I got angrier and angrier. The book is really a general history of Confederate military operations, many of these operations undertaken with no Davis input. No Davis strategy, no Davis decision trees, no Davis work habits, no Davis routine interactions, no business style, not even superficial analysis of this presidency: this is what the authors deliver. They supply 5-10% Davis content at most and no more than 15-20% presidency content.

Expect a handsomely bound Civil War primer that treats its real subject, operations, hurriedly and it's pretend topic, the Davis presidency, not at all.

The passing

A friend writes,

Just saw news of Pfanz’s death, and was thinking about Civil War history and generations of historians:

I guess you saw Harry W. Pfanz just died (age 93). Albert Castel died in November (age 86).

Stephen Sears is 82. McPherson is 78. James I. “Bud” Robertson is 84 or 85. Ed Bearss is 91. William C. Davis is a spritely 68, but just retired.

Are we now, fully and finally, in the age of Simpson, Rafuse, Grimsley, Symonds, Woodworth, Carmichael, Hess, et al.? And if so, what will they do as they seize the wheel? With their power to shape history? Will we see new and powerful analyses of battles and leaders and logistics and politics, or just blog posts about social history and latter-day “controversies” like the Confederate flag? How many of those guys are working on major books at this point? Do we have anything to look forward to?

(Then there’s the threat of Michael Korda and the like. Don’t get me started.)

Your thoughts, dear reader?

New Lincoln resettlement document

This undated blog posting refers to a new find: a resettlement agreement signed by Lincoln that puts freed slaves in what is modern Belize. I had heard of these plans but had no idea they reached the point of government-to-government agreements.

History is full of messy details which writers take pains to eliminate.

World plagiarism study

At first this article surprised me with the benign estimate of America's scientific plagiarism. You could be forgiven for mistaking the USA for a beacon of integrity if you did not notice this bit of methodology:

The final check is a computer program that compares the paper's text with the text of every other paper already published on arXiv.

Emphasis added. Excluded: books, paywalled papers, unpublished papers, lectures. The limits of this check are so obvious, that it's a wonder any significant cheating was discovered at all. But is this kind of thing at least useful for a snapshot?

We need much more such policing in Civil War history and social science generally. There is the problem of plagiarizing others and then of plagiarizing one's own work.

Academics have the luxury of blaming graduate assistants for their crimes but others are not so lucky.

And although an Allan Nevins could confidently steal Fremont research from an unpublished paper, one wonders at the mentality of a pop culture celebrity who thinks his theft from a recent issue of the New Yorker would go unnoticed. Hell, who among his TV fans reads at all?

Thieves. A friends' house was burgled in the night and the next day, he found the stolen stuff scattered around the garden, under bushes and in the driveway. It made no sense. He asked the police, "Why?" He received a look of scorn. "These aren't rocket scientists, you know."

Plagiarists: not rocket scientists. Not even garden variety scientists, really.