Guest Post: Maurice D’Aoust responds to Stephen Sears on McClellan's telegram

Maurice D’Aoust has written to respond to this guest post:

Before I address Mr. Sears's comments (guest post 3/25/2014,) I think it would be worthwhile pointing out a few facts. As I’ve previously mentioned, by itself, Lincoln’s 12 Midnight copy of McClellan’s telegram proved nothing other than the fact there were two versions of the September 13, 1862 communication. Hence why I sought out supporting evidence which I knew would be necessary if Lincoln’s copy was to have any hope of taking precedence over the War Department's (Official Records) 12M version.

Ultimately, three very strong pieces of evidence were uncovered that, in combination, went far in disproving the notion McClellan was (1) aware of the Lost Order just before noon that day or (2) that he could possibly have sent that telegram to Lincoln at "12M". First there were the two primary source accounts, one being furnished by Dr. Tom Clemens, confirming that Barton Mitchell, the Lost Order’s discoverer, did not even reach Frederick with his regiment until noon on the 13th. When considering all of the steps that would have had to take place after Mitchell broke ranks (making his way to the recently abandoned Rebel encampment, finding Lee’s Lost Order, the time it would have then taken for the document to make its way through the various headquarters etc., etc.) it becomes clear that it would have been impossible for the Lost Order to have reached McClellan anywhere near noon. It simply does not make any logical sense. The second piece of evidence negating the 12M or noon version of the telegram was contained within the message itself when McClellan states, “we have possession of Catoctin. By “Catoctin,” the General was referring to the mountain pass over the Catoctin range, west of Frederick. According to all accounts, that defile was not taken until 2 p.m. on the 13th, a full two hours past “12m” [noon]. At this point, it becomes quite clear that the time-stamp on the Official Records version is wrong.

The above evidence was presented in my “McClellan Did Not Dawdle” article (Civil War Times, October, 2012 issue.) Mr. Sears forwarded a rebuttal to Civil War Times and this together with my own response, were published in the December issue. Never, either in his Civil War Times response nor in this latest rebuttal, has Mr. Sears ever addressed or even acknowledged that evidence. This only leads me to conclude that he simply has no answer. In truth, there is no answer other than to concede that the Lost Order could not have reached McClellan before noon and neither could that message to Lincoln have been written at "12M [noon]."

Of course, all of this alters the timeline of events on September 13th. According to Sears, the clock had, by virtue of a supposed “12M” message, started ticking at noon. In light of the 12 Midnight document and the strong evidence supporting it, that starting time must now be shifted to 3 p.m., when McClellan makes his first written reference to the Lost Order in his communication to Alfred Pleasonton. On that note, if a supposed 12M reference was good enough for Sears and others to prove that the Lost Order was in McClellan’s hands shortly before noon, why should an alternate 3 p.m. reference not be sufficient in proving it must have reached him shortly before 3 p.m.? When viewed in that context it can no longer be argued that McClellan sat on the information for over six hours before acting on it. Quite to the contrary, it is now clear that he acted with due diligence by promptly sending his cavalry forward to confirm its contents. What time it was when Pleasonton returned is unknown. Some say six p.m. but it's safe to imagine that the reconnaissance would have taken anywhere between one and a half to three hours. By 6:20 p.m. McClellan had formulated his plan and issued his first formal orders to Franklin. Contrary to what Mr. Sears would have us believe, McClellan had not allowed those afternoon hours of September 13th to slip away. In fact, including preparations for the very crucial action on Catoctin Mountain, assessing the information on the Lost Order, ordering Pleasonton forward, devising his plan, drafting his orders to Franklin and a variety of other military concerns, McClellan had things well in hand that afternoon.

For ease of reference, I’ve addressed each of Mr. Sears’s points individually.

THE DEBATE

SEARS: The issue: Did McClellan send his telegram at noon or at midnight on Sept. 13?

D'AOUST: The evidence presented is overwhelming in proving it was sent at Midnight.

SEARS: The point of it all: How and when and in what form did McClellan respond to the remarkable discovery of Lee’s campaign plan?

D'AOUST: The point of my Civil War Times article was (1) to prove that McClellan's telegram to Lincoln was sent at Midnight (2) that it was nowhere near noon when McClellan came into possession of Lee's Lost Order and (3) that he did not allow any time, let alone some six-plus hours, to slip away that afternoon. As such, my comments in this debate will be restricted to those aspects only.

SEARS: Here are all the facts relating to this telegram that I have been able to verify.
(1) The sending copy, important enough to be certainly in McClellan’s hand, sent from Frederick, Md. to Lincoln in Washington on Sept. 13, is not on record.

D'AOUST: Acknowledged, but it appears we may now have the next best thing. See 7 below and Appendix A in this regard.

SEARS: (2) The primary copy of McClellan’s telegram is therefore the copy made by the operator at the War Department telegraph office. It is dated Sept. 13 and time-marked 12M. It is in the National Archives, Record Group 107, Microcopy 473, Roll 50. It bears the stamp of the Official Records compilers. Call it the Archives Copy.

D'AOUST: Mr. Sears chooses to believe that the War Department or Archives Copy was the primary or first transcription of the message after it was deciphered by the telegrapher. In fact, it makes considerably more sense that Lincoln’s copy would have been the first to be transcribed. After all, the communication was addressed to the President who was then anxiously awaiting news from McClellan and the telegrapher would certainly have been aware of the importance in getting the message to Lincoln post haste. For all we know, Lincoln was standing beside the telegrapher when the message came in, he being known to frequent the telegraph room into the late hours of the night in such high drama situations. In any event, it simply doesn’t make sense that the telegraph office employee would have delayed getting the message to an anxious Lincoln by first performing a clerical function such as making a copy for the War Department files. Finally, just because a document is in the National Archives does not mean it is factual. There are many examples of erroneous documents in the National Archives, McClellan’s September 11, 1862 "12M" telegram (yes, another one) to Henry W. Halleck being a prime case in point. Again, see 7 and Appendix A below in this regard.

SEARS: (3) The manifold, or carbon copy of the Archives Copy is in the Seward Papers, University of Rochester. It is of course identical to the Archives Copy (including the 12M time-mark) except no Official Records stamp. This carbon is important because it identifies which of the operator’s copies is the primary copy (above). Call it the Seward Copy.

D'AOUST: Clearly the Archives’ copy is erroneous, as are all other copies made from it, including Seward's. An “Official Records stamp” does nothing to alter the fact a document is invalid. Again, please refer to the McClellan/Halleck message in 7 and Appendix A below.

SEARS: (4) Having made an original and carbon, the War Department telegraph operator made a copy for Mr. Lincoln, the addressee. It is a fair copy, careful written, in a slightly different format. It is time-marked 12M in the telegrapher’s hand. In another hand, 12M is altered to 12 Midnight, i.e., 12M + idnight. (This alteration is clearly seen on the microfilm and clear enough on the digitized version.) This copy is in the Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress. Call it the Lincoln Copy.

D'AOUST: Again, why would the telegrapher have taken the time to perform a clerical function (making an "original and carbon" copy for the War Dept. files) before getting such an urgent message to Lincoln? It does not make any sense. As for the “idnight” aspect, I believe the more proper term would be “amended,” that is to say, "corrected to reflect the true facts of the matter."

SEARS: (5) The Sept. 13 telegram was first printed a year later, in 1863, in the Report of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, copied from the Archive Copy supplied by the War Department and marked 12M. It was published in the Official Records (19.2:281) in 1887, from the OR- stamped Archives Copy and marked 12M. It is published in my The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan (1989) p. 453, transcribed from the Archives Copy and marked 12M.

D'AOUST: How does all of this, in any way, alter the fact the 12M "Archive Copy" as well as any reproductions or printings thereof are all incorrect? Do ten, twenty or one hundred “wrongs” make a right? Obviously, no one was aware of Lincoln’s copy and the fact it stipulated 12 Midnight. Until recently at least, only a few thought to question or look into the matter.

SEARS: (6) The Lincoln Copy of the telegram was sequestered for 95 years, in the president’s papers until 1865, then held by Robert Todd Lincoln and donated to the Library of Congress, and opened to the public in 1947. (I came upon the Lincoln Copy—surely not the first to do so—on Lincoln Papers microfilm about 30 years ago when researching my McClellan biography and McClellan Papers. It posed a puzzle. I applied to it the same tests I’ve outlined here and concluded it was an anomaly, not historically viable.)

D'AOUST: It’s that part about this whole issue that really bothers me. If Mr. Sears did come across the document some thirty years ago, what gave him the sole right to conclude it was “an anomaly not historically viable” and then suppress it? At the very least, he should have disclosed its existence if only to allow others to apply their own "tests" in determining the document’s validity. Had he done so, I’m certain someone would have solved this "puzzle" long ago.

SEARS: (7) 12M is the abbreviation for 12 Meridian, or noon, standard in Civil War telegraphy. 12M is not a standard abbreviation for midnight in Civil War telegraphy or anywhere else. (I have 22 examples of McClellan 12M telegrams, nearly all in his hand; 14 by content or received time are explicitly noon. The rest are neutral as to time; none implies midnight.) When McClellan meant noon on a telegram he marked it 12M. Always. McClellan never time-marked 12 Midnight on a telegram.

D'AOUST: And here is where Mr. Sears has made his greatest mistake. Gene Thorp of the Washington Post and Tom Clemens (Editor, Ezra Carman Papers,) recently uncovered a sent copy of a telegram from McClellan to Henry W. Halleck dated September 11, 1862 and time-marked 12 Midnight. So much for McClellan never time-marking 12 Midnight on a telegram. But things get considerably better. Thorp and Clemens then compared that sent copy to the National Archives’s “received” copy (yes, the “primary” War Department copy on which that “Official Records” stamp was affixed and yes, the same copy that we see today in the Official Records.) And what time-stamp does this Official Records copy stipulate? 12M! The details surrounding Thorp's and Clemens's amazing piece of historical research is described in Appendix A below.

SEARS: (8) Who altered 12M into 12 Midnight on the Lincoln Copy? (Somebody did!) I’ve concluded it had to be Mr. Lincoln himself. The handwriting is not inconsistent with Lincoln’s. This telegram, and others that day, were much delayed by wire-cutting Confederates in Maryland. It is marked received 2:35 a.m. Sept. 14, or 14:35 hours late. Seeing it early on Sept. 14 with that received time, unaware of the telegraphic delay, Lincoln decided it must have been sent at midnight and so marked it. There is no reason to think Lincoln was especially familiar with telegraphy protocols. We forget that generals (except McClellan) did not telegraph the president from the battlefield—they followed the rules and sent to the War Dept. or Army HQ.

D'AOUST: We can postulate all day long regarding who may have “amended” the time stamp but in the final analysis, whoever did add the “idnight” obviously did so because they knew that 12 Midnight was the correct time designation and the evidence proves that they were correct.

SEARS: (9) For this telegram to have been sent at midnight on Sept. 13 requires a scenario like this: a) McClellan time-marked the sending copy 12 Midnight, something he had never done on a telegram and knew better than to do. b) The War Department operator, instead of time-marking his copy (with carbon) 12 Midnight as he was supposed to do, instead wrote 12 M—which c) was the dead-wrong abbreviation for midnight. d) Then “somebody” else—who could it be?—“corrected” the copy for the president by adding “idnight,” but e) did not “correct” the file copy and carbon. Theater of the absurd.

D'AOUST: At this point I think it best to refer Mr. Sears to Gene Thorp's description of events in Appendix A below. The bottom line is, there are no theatrics involved here but rather sound reasoning supported by overwhelming evidence.

SEARS: (10) In sum, the documentation is unassailable for a noon telegram, non-existent for a midnight telegram. No effort to argue that somehow it was physically impossible for McClellan to write this telegram at noon meets evidentiary standards. The three documents in and of themselves trump any and all alternate theories. Mr. D’Aoust and compatriots start with this supposed midnight telegram, then bend and twist and warp trying to make it fit the documented facts. It doesn’t and can’t. They are left with an anomaly.

D'AOUST: By documentation, I'm assuming Mr. Sears is referring to the War Department copy on which that "Official Records" stamp has been affixed, the same stamp as was placed on the War Department copy of that September 11th message to Halleck, which we now know for certain to be incorrect. Or is he referring to the various carbon copies on which the error is repeated over and over again? Are these also the "documents" that supposedly trump all alternate theories? I don't mean to be flippant but the idea that some officious stamp would automatically render a document more valid than another truly is “theatre of the absurd.” As for "evidentiary standards," Mr. Sears seems bent on ignoring the conclusive evidence surrounding the 27th Indiana's arrival time and that surrounding the Catoctin aspect. Will he also ignore Thorp's and Clemens's corroborating, albeit circumstantial, evidence surrounding the September 11th message to Halleck? With all due respect to Mr. Sears, it is he who is warping the facts to fit with the clearly flawed "12M" telegram.

SEARS: (11) Finally, and as important as anything else, simply read McClellan’s exuberant, almost giddy noon telegram in the context of Sept. 13’s events. See especially his 11 p.m. telegram to Halleck (OR 19.2:281-82; McClellan Papers, 456-57). No exuberance now, much worry, he is outnumbered, etc. He would never have sent his Lincoln telegram an hour later; that’s a sequence that simply makes no sense. (In this 11 o’clock telegram McClellan says he was handed the Lost Order “this evening.” What he meant by that is that cavalryman Pleasonton, who was sent a copy of the Lost Order at 3:00 p.m. [OR 51.1:829], had that evening confirmed that the find was authentic.)

D'AOUST: As for the variance between Halleck's and Lincoln's telegrams, upon reading Halleck's communication in its entirety it becomes evident that McClellan's intent was to communicate the critical nature of the situation and thus prompt Halleck, his immediate superior, into releasing the two corps that were still sitting idle in the Washington area. McClellan likely surmised that Halleck would communicate this to Lincoln. Although less gloomy, McClellan's message to Lincoln still conveys the critical nature of things. Mr. Sears is reading way too much into these two communications and this to the extent of making himself appear to be grasping at straws which he does yet again in his "this evening" theory. In that regard, as pointed out in my opening commentary, having discounted the 12M version, McClellan's message to Pleasonton now becomes his first written allusion to the Lost Order thus implying that the order fell into his hands shortly before 3 p.m. As I pointed out to Mr. Sears in our Civil War Times exchange, Websters' Dictionary defines "evening" as "the entire late afternoon" or "the latter part of the afternoon and the earlier part of the night." It would seem McClellan considered the 3 p.m. as falling within Webster's definition and he wouldn't have been far off.

SEARS: Certainly, absolutely, there is room for discussion and debate as to McClellan and the Lost Order. What action did he take? When? What should/could/ought he have done? What could he not do? And so on. For General McClellan, the clock on all those matters began ticking at noon on Sept. 13. I would suggest that anyone interested in the topic start their own clock ticking at noon.

D'AOUST: I won't cloud the issue by entering into a discussion on would'a could'a or shoulda's. On the other hand, I do urge any who read this exchange to look at the evidence, both Mr. Sears's and mine, objectively in determining whether a) McClellan's telegram to Lincoln was sent at 12M [noon] or 12 Midnight b) whether it was anywhere near noon when McClellan came into possession of the Lost Order and c) whether McClellan allowed any time, let alone some six-plus hours, to slip away that afternoon. I'm confident that the majority will, after weighing the evidence, conclude that the telegram was sent at midnight, that McClellan did not learn of the Lost Order until well after noon, likely closer to 3 p.m. and that he wasted no time that afternoon.

***

Appendix A: The September 11, 1862, 12 Midnight telegram from McClellan to Halleck

[Editor's note: Italicized text by Gene Thorp: editorial text by Maurice D’Aoust. The first image is figure 1, the lower image is figure 2.]

Although Dr. Clemens deserves to share in the credit for the following discovery, he insists that Gene Thorp deserves the bulk of that credit, having conducted most of the groundwork. Here now are the details surrounding Gene Thorp’s and Tom Clemens’s discovery, as described by Thorp:

In short, when the Sept. 13 telegram came out of cipher at the War Department, an operator misinterpreted 12 Midnight as Noon. Although [we don’t] have McClellan's original Sept. 13 telegram, I can prove conclusively that this exact same mistake was made two days earlier (Sept. 11) by the exact same War Department operator.

Here's what happened.

1. On Sept. 11, McClellan telegraphed [Henry W.] Halleck from his headquarters in Middleburg, MD at 12 Midnight. [See McClellan’s “sent” copy, figure 1, right. Click to enlarge.]

2. At the War Department, an operator deciphered the message, and in the process, misinterpreted the time-stamp writing 12M instead of 12 Midnight on the decipher worksheet. (The deciphered worksheet is not found.)

3. The same operator then made a copy from the worksheet, on War Department heading, and sent it to the recipient, Gen. Henry Halleck. This copy was incorrectly time-stamped 12M. [See Figure 2, below.]

4. Later an operator, or transcriber, used the misinterpreted decipher worksheet to make War Department file copies. One was in original handwriting, the rest were carbon copies. All of these copies were incorrectly time-stamped 12M.

5. Years after the war, officials compiling the Official Records located one of these War Department file copy carbon copies. Not having access to McClellan's papers, the officials transcribed the information from the [incorrectly time-stamped] War Department file copy carbon copy. They then stamped it with the red "War Records copied" stamp and wrote in green pencil "Printed [that is, printed in the Official Records]."

6. The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion were printed and in every single instance, the time-stamp of 12 M was used even though the original message [McClellan’s sent copy] said "12 Midnight".

And so it remains incorrect today. Any historian consulting the Official Records without consulting McClellan's original Sept. 11 telegram first will inadvertently duplicate this error. They will write that McClellan sent the telegram at noon and it was received at the War Department 13:45 hours later, when if fact it was actually sent at midnight and received only 3:45 hours later.

This exact same sequence, with the exact same War Department operator, happened two days later on Sept 13. The only difference is that someone caught the mistake on Lincoln's received copy and corrected it, thus the odd handwriting for "idnight."

Rinse and repeat

1. At 12 Midnight on Sept. 13, after writing marching orders to all his different Corps for the next day and informing General-in-Chief Halleck of everything that had transpired, McClellan sent a telegram to Lincoln announcing he had possession of Lee's plans. McClellan was responding to a query from Lincoln earlier in the evening that had been sent via telegram to Point of Rocks and then transmitted by signal to his headquarters north of Frederick. (The Signal Corps OR report states this. Neither the Lincoln or McClellan original has yet been found.)

2. At the War Department, the same operator as two days before deciphered the message, and in the process, misinterpreted the time-stamp writing 12M instead of 12 Midnight on the decipher worksheet. (The deciphered worksheet is not found.)

3a. The same operator then made a copy from the worksheet, on War Department heading, and sent it to the recipient, President Lincoln. This copy was initially incorrectly time-stamped 12M. Note [that]the handwriting is of the same operator that wrote Halleck's recipient copy.

3b. Unlike Sept. 11, either the operator, his manager, or perhaps even Lincoln himself corrected the time-stamp to read "12 Midnight." The operator or his manager could have seen it was deciphered incorrectly or Lincoln may have known because he was waiting for a response to the telegram he had sent McClellan earlier in the evening as is recorded in the Official Records.

4. An operator or transcriber used the misinterpreted decipher worksheet to make War Department file copies. One was in original handwriting, the rest were carbon copies. All of these copies were incorrectly time-stamped 12M.

5. Years after the war, officials compiling the Official Records located one of these War Department file copies. Not having access to McClellan's papers or Lincoln's papers, the officials transcribed the information from the War Department file copy carbon copy. They then stamped it with the red "War Records copied" stamp and wrote in green pencil "Printed.”

6. The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion were printed. In every single instance, the incorrect time-stamp of 12 M was used.”

Since the discovery of Lincoln's 12 Midnight version of the telegram and the overwhelming evidence supporting it, historians such as Tim Reese, Tom Clemens and Scott Hartwig have, via their respective publications, been chipping away at the long standing myth wherein McClellan wasted six hours after coming into possession of Lee's Lost Order. It's hoped that Clemens's and Thorp’s amazing piece of historical research will encourage even more historians to join in and that eventually, the 12M myth will be completely dispelled.

Guest Post: McClellan’s famous telegram—Stephen Sears offers a rebuttal

I respectfully beg to differ from Maurice D’Aoust’s interpretation (guest post 3/20/14) of General McClellan’s Sept. 13, 1862 telegram to Lincoln announcing the finding of the Lost Order.

The issue: Did McClellan send his telegram at noon or at midnight on Sept. 13?

The point of it all: How and when and in what form did McClellan respond to the remarkable discovery of Lee’s campaign plan?

Here are all the facts relating to this telegram that I have been able to verify.

1.  The sending copy, important enough to be certainly in McClellan’s hand, sent from Frederick, Md. to Lincoln in Washington on Sept. 13, is not on record.

2.  The primary copy of McClellan’s telegram is therefore the copy made by the operator at the War Department telegraph office. It is dated Sept. 13 and time-marked 12M. It is in the National Archives, Record Group 107, Microcopy 473, Roll 50. It bears the stamp of the Official Records compilers. Call it the Archives Copy.

 

3.  The manifold, or carbon copy of the Archives Copy is in the Seward Papers, University of Rochester. It is of course identical to the Archives Copy (including the 12M time-mark) except no Official Records stamp. This carbon is important because it identifies which of the operator’s copies is the primary copy (above). Call it the Seward Copy.

4.  Having made an original and carbon, the War Department telegraph operator made a copy for Mr. Lincoln, the addressee. It is a fair copy, careful written, in a slightly different format. It is time-marked 12M in the telegrapher’s hand. In another hand, 12M is altered to 12 Midnight, i.e., 12M + idnight. (This alteration is clearly seen on the microfilm and clear enough on the digitized version.) This copy is in the Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress. Call it the Lincoln Copy.

5.  The Sept. 13 telegram was first printed a year later, in 1863, in the Report of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, copied from the Archive Copy supplied by the War Department and marked 12M. It was published in the Official Records (19.2:281) in 1887, from the OR- stamped Archives Copy and marked 12M. It is published in my The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan (1989) p. 453, transcribed from the Archives Copy and marked 12M.

6. The Lincoln Copy of the telegram was sequestered for 95 years, in the president’s papers until 1865, then held by Robert Todd Lincoln and donated to the Library of Congress, and opened to the public in 1947. (I came upon the Lincoln Copy—surely not the first to do so—on Lincoln Papers microfilm about 30 years ago when researching my McClellan biography and McClellan Papers. It posed a puzzle. I applied to it the same tests I’ve outlined here and concluded it was an anomaly, not historically viable.)

7.  12M is the abbreviation for 12 Meridian, or noon, standard in Civil War telegraphy. 12M is not a standard abbreviation for midnight in Civil War telegraphy or anywhere else. (I have 22 examples of McClellan 12M telegrams, nearly all in his hand; 14 by content or received time are explicitly noon. The rest are neutral as to time; none implies midnight.) When McClellan meant noon on a telegram he marked it 12M. Always. McClellan never time-marked 12 Midnight on a telegram.

8.  Who altered 12M into 12 Midnight on the Lincoln Copy?  (Somebody did!) I’ve concluded it had to be Mr. Lincoln himself. The handwriting is not inconsistent with Lincoln’s. This telegram, and others that day, were much delayed by wire-cutting Confederates in Maryland. It is marked received 2:35 a.m. Sept. 14, or 14:35 hours late. Seeing it early on Sept. 14 with that received time, unaware of the telegraphic delay, Lincoln decided it must have been sent at midnight and so marked it. There is no reason to think Lincoln was especially familiar with telegraphy protocols. We forget that generals (except McClellan) did not telegraph the president from the battlefield—they followed the rules and sent to the War Dept. or Army HQ.

9. For this telegram to have been sent at midnight on Sept. 13 requires a scenario like this:  a) McClellan time-marked the sending copy 12 Midnight, something he had never done on a telegram and knew better than to do. b) The War Department operator, instead of time-marking his copy (with carbon) 12 Midnight as he was supposed to do, instead wrote 12 M—which c) was the dead-wrong abbreviation for midnight. d) Then “somebody” else—who could it be?—“corrected” the copy for the president by adding “idnight,” but e) did not “correct” the file copy and carbon. Theater of the absurd.

10. In sum, the documentation is unassailable for a noon telegram,  non-existent for a midnight telegram. No effort to argue that somehow it was physically impossible for McClellan to write this telegram at noon meets evidentiary standards. The three documents in and of themselves trump any and all alternate theories. Mr. D’Aoust and compatriots start with this supposed midnight telegram, then bend and twist and warp trying to make it fit the documented facts. It doesn’t and can’t. They are left with an anomaly.

11.  Finally, and as important as anything else, simply read McClellan’s exuberant, almost giddy noon telegram in the context of Sept. 13’s events. See especially his 11 p.m. telegram to Halleck (OR 19.2:281-82; McClellan Papers, 456-57). No exuberance now, much worry, he is outnumbered, etc. He would never have sent his Lincoln telegram an hour later; that’s a sequence that simply makes no sense. (In this 11 o’clock telegram McClellan says he was handed the Lost Order “this evening.” What he meant by that is that cavalryman Pleasonton, who was sent a copy of the Lost Order at 3:00 p.m. [OR 51.1:829], had that evening confirmed that the find was authentic.)

Certainly, absolutely, there is room for discussion and debate as to McClellan and the Lost Order. What action did he take? When? What should/could/ought he have done? What could he not do? And so on. For General McClellan, the clock on all those matters began ticking at noon on Sept. 13. I would suggest that anyone interested in the topic start their own clock ticking at noon.

Comments, questions, puzzlements, objections? I don’t blog, and I don’t want to wear out Dimitri’s welcome. But I do answer e-mails. swsears@aol.com.

- Stephen Sears 

Another reason...

Why you should never, ever allow commenters on your blog.

Recycling the Centennial

You never cease to wonder about people who enter a public forum in order to "educate" the public on Grant by truncating and recapping Catton material from 50 years ago. Here's a political magazine whose editors surrendered their judgement to an author blowing past every controversy in a rocky career, an author celebrating the sesquicentennial as if the last half century never happened.

Ambrose Bierce admired Grant but was able to inject a level of maturity and ambiguity into his appreciation:

The Death of Grant

FATHER! whose hard and cruel law

    Is part of thy compassion’s plan,

    Thy works presumptuously we scan

For what the prophets say they saw.

Unbidden still, the awful slope         

    Walling us in, we climb to gain

    Assurance of the shining plain

That faith has certified to hope.

In vain: beyond the circling hill

    The shadow and the cloud abide;        

    Subdue the doubt, our spirits guide

To trust the Record and be still;

To trust it loyally as he

    Who, heedful of his high design,

    Ne’er raised a seeking eye to thine,       

But wrought thy will unconsciously,

Disputing not of chance or fate,

    Nor questioning of cause or creed:

    For anything but duty’s deed

Too simply wise, too humbly great.        

The cannon syllabled his name;

    His shadow shifted o’er the land,

    Portentous, as at his command

Successive cities sprang to flame!

He fringed the continent with fire,        

    The rivers ran in lines of light!

    Thy will be done on earth—if right

Or wrong he cared not to inquire.

His was the heavy hand, and his

    The service of the despot blade;       

    His the soft answer that allayed

War’s giant animosities.

Let us have peace: our clouded eyes

    Fill, Father, with another light,

    That we may see with clearer sight       

Thy servant’s soul in Paradise.

Guest Post: Maurice D’Aoust’on a famous telegram

Will ease back into blogging soon. In the meantime, here is a guest post from "Moe" D'Aoust’, a close student of the McClellan controversies.

***
For nearly 150 years historians maintained that Lee's Special Orders No. 191 (the Lost Order) must have been in McClellan’s hands shortly before noon on September 13, 1862.  To support this premise, they had relied exclusively on a telegram from McClellan to President Abraham Lincoln in which the general alludes to the Lost Order when he writes, “I have all the plans of the rebels . . . .” According to the Official Records, the telegram is dated “September 13, 1862, 12m” which in contemporary terms would have stood for 12 meridian or noon.  When citing the telegram, historians have consistently referred to the OR which does, indeed, set out "12M." 

On the basis that it was just before noon when McClellan became aware of the order, the popular theory had been that he then frittered away more than six hours before acting on the find, having ordered no related movements until 6:20 p.m.  To myself and many others, this simply never made any sense. 

In 2002, while perusing the Library of Congress's newly digitized online collection of Lincoln's papers I decided to search for Lincoln's received copy of the message. Having pulled the document up, it was with some astonishment that I read the time designation: “12 Midnight.”

Over the course of the next couple of months I wrote an article of sorts on my discovery and sent it to North & South Magazine, if only to bring the "12 Midnight" document's existence  to the forefront.  North & South promptly turned it down.  A few months later they published Stephen W. Sears's "The Twisted Tale of the Lost Order."  In that article, Sears stood by the Official Records "12M" version of the message and made absolutely no mention of Lincoln's copy.  Neither has he ever made an mention of it in any of his other writings. 

In truth, by itself, the "12 Midnight" document proved nothing except for the fact there were two versions of the message and I knew that I would have to come up with some very strong supporting evidence if the latter had any hope of taking precedence over the OR version.  And so I set out on my search for that evidence. 

Somewhere along the way, I informed my friend Dimitri Rotov of my discovery.  One day, he and South Mountain historian Tim Reese were having a discussion on McClellan when Tim began bemoaning how it simply didn't make sense that McClellan would have sent that telegram to Lincoln at noon that day.  Upon this, Dimitri informed Tim of my discovery.  Long story short, Tim published the document in his High-Water Mark: The 1862 Maryland Campaign in Strategic Perspective and was gracious enough to credit me with its discovery in the book.

I eventually found that much needed supporting evidence and the results of my research were published in Civil War Times's October 2012 issue.  Entitled "McClellan Did Not Dawdle" the article proves conclusively that the time designation on Lincoln's copy is correct and moreover, that it couldn't possibly have been 12 noon when McClellan sent that telegram.  As for the OR version, it's now clear that one of the telegraph office transcribers erred when stipulating "12M" on the War Department's copy.

Civil War Times's December, 2012 issue contains an exchange between Stephen W. Sears and I, Sears arguing against the "12 Midnight" version.  According to many and much to my relief, Sears lost that debate.  I should also mention that, subsequent to my article, Gene Thorp of The Washington Post came up with an additional piece of evidence which, as I like to put it, is the next best thing to finding McClellan's "sent" copy of the message.  I'm anxiously waiting for Gene to publish that evidence.

Over the years, I've come across  a couple of instances where Tim Reese is credited with discovering the "12 Midnight" document and this, of course, is due to its publication in his "High Water Mark" book.  Apparently, few have bothered to read the footnote in which Tim points out that I, in fact, was the discoverer.  In retrospect, I wish he had set this out in the body of the work rather than in a footnote.

Recently I learned that, in his To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of 1862, Scott Hartwig gives Tim credit for discovering the document in 2004.  Obviously, Hartwig was referring to "High Water Mark" which was published in that year.  I've informed Scott of the error and am certain he will see to it that future editions of his book will reflect the true facts of the matter.

Knowing how popular Dimitri's blog is, I thought it might be worthwhile if this could be published on his site as a means of setting the facts straight as to exactly who it was that discovered the "12 Midnight" document.  Hopefully, those who read this will spread the word.

John Wilkes Booth

"He was the DiCaprio of his day" - Harold Holzer, "The Real Abraham Lincoln," NTGEO

Books received

Some books bought or received. These have not been read yet and what follows are not reviews.

Robert E. Lee in War and Peace: The Photographic History of a Confederate and American Icon. Donald A. Hopkins presents a new study of Lee photographs in part to update and correct Roy Meredith's 1947 Robert E. Lee in Life and Legend. This is nice scholarship that presents, sources and discusses all surviving Lee imagery. At 216 pages, I have already spent at least two hours with it and have not started reading it yet. It's engrossing.

A Confederate Englishman: The Civil War Letters of Henry Wemyss Feilden. Early in his Confederate career (which starts in March, 1863), Henry Feilden notes that foreign volunteers like himself are often posted to staffs to see how they work out and if they are suited for more responsibility. He turns out to be condemned by his own insight, remaining in Charleston for the duration, left behind by Beauregard when the latter takes command at Petersburg. This is odd because Feilden is an experienced officer having served in the Black Watch during the Indian Mutiny and in an Indian regiment during the Second Opium War with China. His letters contain glimpses of Beauregard ("five minutes with him would make the crankiest person cheerful") and a long anecdote about Jackson but not much else that is military, not even sketches of HQ and the personalities passing through there. The abundance here is in descriptions of places (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida) and impressions of local people.

The Gettysburg Campaign in Numbers and Losses. Petruzzi and Stanley have produced a beautiful book to linger over. This is not a compendium of tables such Fox or Livermore compiled, but rather a color-rich collection of fascinating maps and pictures. It contains a difficulty, however: the numbers are based on David Petruzzi's personal research. They are given without further annotation or description. If the reader is comfortable with that, he is free to enjoy a beautiful example of the bookmaker's art.

A Field Guide to Gettysburg: Experiencing the Battlefield through Its History, Places, and People. Hard to know which co-author is the brains of the operation, Carol Reardon or Army historian Col. Tom Vossler, but this guidebook has averaged five stars over 25 reviews on Amazon. The geography of the tour is organized chronologically (as the battle unfolds). That's not new but the material is posted under headings that repeat in each section: who fought here, who commanded here, who lived here, etc. The linchpin is the opening "what happened here" accompanied by a colored map. Perhaps the "what happened" element has to be very specific but I found these sections to be wanting in context (the context of the development of the battle and the engagement's tactical rationale). In other words, the "why happened" is missing. The other shortcoming, it seems to me, lies in the directions. One part of the self-tour starts at Gen. Wadsworth's statue. Why am I expected to know where that is? Why are all the maps battle maps rather than tour charts or walking maps? But I am probably the least equipped to review tour guides, taking so few tours, and the evidence is in the warmth with which this has been received on Amazon.

Divided Loyalties: Kentucky's Struggle for Armed Neutrality in the Civil War. This book is so obviously necessary that author James Finck gets five stars just for writing it and I very much look forward to studying it. Perhaps he has restricted the scope too much (to "one state, one issue, and one year"), in which case this becomes a single part of a three-layer cake comprised of Hesseltine's "governor's war," CSA-USA diplomacy, and the national-Kentucky maneuvering. We shall see.

William Gilmore Simms's Unfinished Civil War: Consequences for a Southern Man of Letters. This is a collection of essays about Simms's work which causes me to wish I was more familiar with it. This book is not the place to start, as it assumes a level of knowledge which in my case is absent. Intriguing but perhaps too specialized.

The Civil War Lover's Guide to New York City. This is the kind of book against which you match your personal experiences of place against their Civil War significance. Very interesting if you know NYC, especially downtown. Have you been to McSorley's Old Ale House - founded before the war, the owner enlisting in the 69th NYV? The houses of Scott, Sickles, Sherman, McClellan, et al - all here. Ft. Totten Officer's Club - designed by Robert E. Lee - yes, I had a drink there too. You get the idea; this, to me, is more an exercise in personal connections than a guidebook to uncover major ACW attractions. Enjoyable for ex- and current New Yorkers, well illustrated.

Lincoln's Political Generals by Work and Lincoln, the Cabinet, and the Generals by Hearn. I have long intended to carefully read these and review them in tandem but the level of effort does not seem equal to any reward. David Work proposes that Lincoln's political generals paid off overall, that they were worth the trouble. His unforgivable sin (you see this in specialist histories one after the other) is to accept the general pop history framework of the war as his foundational context. Thus, for instance, there is the usual ignorant moaning and groaning about a lack of junior ex-West Point officers to go around at a time when the New York state militia alone outnumbers the entire United States Army. Chester Hearn, for his part, has a negative take on political generals, as pop history understands them, and he does the low information reader the good deed of suggesting that key Northern generals had important Cabinet patrons who influenced their careers. Here Mr. Hearn has bit off more than he can chew, topically, and given Hearn's constricted and conventional views, the book spoils an important piece of ACW history.

Battle of Big Bethel: Crucial Clash in Civil War Virginia. This is a tidy little history and with three authors, they nearly outnumber the casualty list. The significance of Big Bethel, to me, was the validation of the division of authority between department commanders and military commanders of the department (recall that Butler's military commander at Bethel was tried for incompetence). Cobbs, Hicks and Holt don't deal in such conceptual matters but their material looks quite inviting.

The Verdict of Battle: The Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War. This is a big think piece arguing that battle was once a trial, the verdict of which was binding on both parties. At first glance, this appears an overreach but the volume promises many hours of reflection. There is going to be additional interest in comparing its ideas to Victor Davis Hanson's The Western Way of War, in which we find complementary themes, as well as Grenier's The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607-1814, which interests itself entirely in wars of annihilation.

Calamity at Chancellorsville: The Wounding and Death of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. Author Mathew Lively is an M.D. dealing with the last days of Jackson and if you read the Amazon reviews (five stars on average from 10 reviewers) this appears to be a rollicking narrative about the general's wounding and death. The extensive notes, on the other hand, tell us that there is historiography at work as well as dealings in the questions, Why do we think we know that? and How do we know that? I'm not conversant enough in this incident to tell if the material is given its due, but there is (at least) a complete appendix on the controversies surrounding Jackson's death.

Pope validating McClellan

We have all read of Pope's arrival in the east. The standout anecdote involves his message to the troops about "lines of retreat" and the "enemy's backs," etc. In some of the deeper histories, we encounter snippets of his July testimony to the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War (CCW), in parts of which he denigrated McClellan before Congress well in advance of their mandated cooperation.

But this same testimony (7/8/62) holds more interest than these two bits. In describing his initial plan of operations for the Army of Virginia (Pope was appointed June 26), Pope accidentally touches on the forces-defending-Washington controversy, the correct overland line of advance (McClellan's second Richmond campaign would take Pope's line), and the logic of interposing an army between the ANV and D.C. Have a look.

1. Pope's concept of McClellan's position
Pope tells the CCW (p. 106) that he initially intended to march the Army of Virginia (AOV) down the Valley and attack Richmond from the W/SW, cooperating with the Army of the Potomac (AOP) in the East. Given McClellan's recent change of position, Pope says, Lee could now "interpos[e] the whole body of the enemy between them [AOP] and Washington ... perhaps, endanger[ing] the safety of the capital..." This suggests that Pope perceived the defense of Washington to be the AOP's job while he would be free to move out of position (the front of Washington) in a strategic maneuver down the Valley. Events near Richmond, Pope seems to suggest, limit the AOP's defense-of-Washington capability. This causes Pope to revise his first plan of campaign.

2. Pope's concept of the operation
Pope says,

I am, therefore, now assembling them [his units] at points on the east side of the Blue Ridge, and at the outlets of the passes into the Shenandoah valley, and at points on the east side of the Blne Ridge, some twenty-five or thirty miles south of Front Royal, and immediately in front of the passes leading through the Blue Ridge into the Shenandoah valley, occupying Culpeper Courthouse with cavalry, and at a point 20 miles in front, in the direction of Richmond, so that, in case any of the enemy's troops succeed in penetrating into the valley of the Shenandoah I occupy such a position that, by marching upon Gordonsville, I have a shorter distance to march than they will have in turning back, and shall be able to cut them off completely.

Pope envisions sealing the Rebels out of the Valley in the same way McClellan sealed Jackson in during his second attempt on Richmond. But isn't a march along the Blue Ridge leaving D.C. open to attack? Emphasis added:

I shall be in such position that in case the enemy advance in any considerable force towards Washington, I shall be able to concentrate all my forces for the defence of this place, which I propose to defend, not by standing on the defensive at all, or confronting the enemy and intrenching myself, but I propose to do it by laying off on his flanks and attacking him from the moment that he crosses the Rappahannock, day and night, until his forces are destroyed, or mine. I have no apprehension, with my troops stationed in that position, although I have but forty-three thousand men, that even eighty thousand of the enemy would be able to get to Washington at all.

Notice that the Rappahannock is made a test of intentions for an attack on Washington, oddly enough; that he mentions the possibility of the destruction of his army; and he proposes that in the worst case, Rebels would get through him to attack the capital if they number over 80,000. He is telling this to the people outraged by McClellan's plan for the defense of Washington and it is a wonder that hearing this they did not recall McClellan from the Peninsula immediately. He continues:

...my whole command is being now concentrated, and is now in the immediate neighborhood of the points I have designated. They have all been marching for the last four or five days, and some of them are now encamped where I intend to place them, and the bulk of them will be in the places assigned by them to-morrow.

The CCW asks how far he will be from Richmond when done moving. The answer is 90 miles away.

Question. The position you are now taking is the one which you deem the best to occupy for the time being, for the defence of Washington and the whole valley of the Shenandoah?

Pope answers yes. He views it as too risky to approach Richmond any closer.

3. The defense of D.C.
The CCW gets to a favorite topic:

Question. What will be the number of troops left in the intrenchments about Washington?

Answer. In numbers they will be about twelve thousand; in condition they are very poor, indeed. They consist of new regiments, perfectly raw, and broken fragments of old regiments sent here to recruit. The force is not an effective one by any means.

Breathtaking honesty. Pope will march along the Blue Ridge with an "ineffective" garrison in Washington and a guarantee that it will take more than 80,000 Rebels to get past him to attack the ineffectives. Recall that McClellan left Banks in the Valley with a Washington defense mission in addition to 20,500 troops in the capital (Wadsworth complained that he could only find 19,000 present for duty).

Pope's testimony suggests that the defense of Washington lies outside Washington.

... if they should come this way with a very large force, it seems to me that the only sort of defence of Washington I can afford, with the force I have, is to lie off upon the flanks of their army and attack them day and night at unexpected times and places, so as to prevent them from advancing. It will be· hard work, but I do not see anything else so likely to prevail against them.

The committee responds,

Question. Would you not in all these movements feel embarrassed with the knowledge that while you are moving forward on the enemy you are looked upon as the protector of the capital here?

Answer. No, sir; for I am fully convinced I am doing the best I know to effect that object. It is not necessary, in my opinion, in order to protect the capital, that I should interpose myself between the enemy and the place itself; in fact, it would be the very worst policy to do so now, for wherever I could put myself, they could place themselves between me and the capital by attacking my flanks. By laying off on their flanks, if they should have only forty thousand or fifty thousand men, I could whip them. If they should have seventy thousand or eighty thousand men, I would attack their flanks and force them, in order to get rid of me, to follow me out into the mountains, which would be what you would want, I should suppose. They could not march on Washington with me lying with such a force as that on their flanks. I should feel perfectly satisfied that I was doing the best I could with my force, to dispose of them in that way. There is a sufficient force in the intrenchments here to protect the city against any sudden dash upon it, even of a considerable force.

Interesting that Pope thinks he could bottle up Confederates in the mountains but it does not occur to him they could to do the same to him. He does well, however, in the prophecy that "for wherever [before D.C.] I could put myself, they could place themselves between me and the capital by attacking my flanks."

Where pop history is concerned, "the science is settled" and Lincoln is right where Pope and Mac are wrong; and yet, with regard to the defense of Washington, both generals were free to act on their conviction, Pope being even freer than McClellan in this...

ACW history and culture

The deep reader in Civil War history is on a cultural journey. His "cultural IQ" will be defined by reactions to subjects met on the way: 19th Century law and politics, military science, biography, religion, literature, society, music. The ACW signals an intellectual curiosity that is not limited to an interest in the ACW.

On the other hand, attendees at the go-getter vocational schools tend to focus, focus, focus and the focus is culturally fatal producing an outcome the Russians call "NYE KULTURNYE". These highly credentialed nye kulturny types have loads of degrees, contacts, and publications, but they completely lack in cultural curiosity or a general cultural development after college.

They are not people you would spend any time with. How well I recall my mother's contempt for the society of medical doctors (for instance) into which she had been condemned for life.

Ordinary Americans generally confuse credentials, branding, presentation, and prestige for what they call "smarts." The word "smart" here (stateside) covers everything from intelligence to learning to cleverness. The thing it does not cover is something Civil War readers immerse themselves in: culture.

If the MD and JD tend to be philistines, imagine what you have when you travel down the professional credential chain to the world of hotshot MBA candidates and wannabe investment bankers.

Here is what you have. Harvard students responding to "What [city] is the capital of Canada?" Gasp away.



More in a similar vein, on Lincoln.



The hits keep coming. The interviewer himself substitutes "gave to us" for "brought forth on this continent." We grammar schools students, living in the impoverished desert of the pine barrens, had to learn it by heart.



As this seems to be a dog-bites-man story, I'll desist from further updates.

Recycling the Grant craze of 2004

When Michael Korda's Grant biography popped out of the Grant publishing geyser of 2004, chances seemed remote that it would ever make it to paperback.

Sales were lackluster. Reviews were crippling. Mistakes abounded. It was derived entirely from two previous pop histories. Even the title was lifted.

It seemed a Christmas stocking stuffer cranked out by a Simon & Schuster lifer in the context of corporate  revenue targets.

Not paying much heed, the paperback edition slipped by me in 2009. S&S had unloaded the rights to Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins where it became a "bargain book" under the Perennial marque as part of a bio series. If you look at the positive reviews on Amazon, they are quite naive, smacking of the innocent and ignorant. Veteran readers are more inclined to comment, "the book reads, as another reviewer said, like a high school term paper."

Author Russel Bonds was recently browsing a B&N when he encountered this display of a new edition of Korda's Unlikely Hero. This is an illustrated edition, again put out by HarperCollins. As with the first edition, this is just in time for Christmas.

The venue for the display piqued my interest because the book you see displayed here is not for sale on Amazon, nearly as I can tell (Amazon carries only the old bargain book and that is only offered through third parties). Amazon tends not to carry the books of the publisher known as Barnes & Noble (search for them - I find only third parties selling B&N titles on Amazon). A little rivalry, etc., etc. But this embargo is not applied across the board to HarperCollins.

One wonders if the Korda reissue is hampered from being on Amazon by some sort of tie-in with B&N. Perhaps S&S sold the rights to HC with a B&N distribution caveat based on who knows what corporate machinations. In any case, the brief book is expensive ($35 list) and Korda's author page on S&S makes no mention of it, so it's not a joint publishing deal.*

The B&N reviewers seem of the same mix as Amazonians, with kudos coming from naifs ("It was interesting to learn about the essence of US Grant in a mere 176 pages rather than having to wade through a much larger book") and brickbats coming from veteran readers ("I would recommend this as an introductory biography of GEN Grant for middle school readers").

Before taking our leave of Unlikely, let's check in on the in-print/out-of-print status of the rest of the Grant books circulating in 2004.

Bonekemper, A Victor, Not a Butcher (Regnery, 4/04)
HB out of print (no reissue after 2004). PB issued 2010, out of print.

Bunting, Ulysses S. Grant (Times/Henry Holt, 8/04)
HB still in print, still 2004 edition. No pb.

Smith, Grant (S&S PB 4/02)
HB out of print. PB issued in 2002 still in print.

Perry, Grant and Twain (Random House, 5/04)
HB out of print. PB issued in 2005, still in print.

McFeely, U.S. Grant: An Album (Norton 11/03)
HB out of print. No PB.

McFeely, Grant (revised PB, Norton, 8/02)
Out of print.

Note: The out-of-prints are available from third party sellers, of course.

Afterthought: You look at this list and you wonder how the similar Chamberlain craze played out.
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* This author page is remarkable. Consider that this man worked for decades at S&S and this is what they gave him.

The Whig Party returns

... to Pennsylvania, at least.

That would make three modern parties trying to out-Whig each other in every election: the Democrats, the Republicans and the Whigs (per se). Infrastructure! Education! Public works! Not to mention Banking! Banking! and more Banking!

p.s. Speaking of Pennsy revivals, as late as the 1970s, Henry George's political party lived on in PA. Used to see their bumper stickers in the middle and western sections.

Called forth

The image above shows engineers of the 8th New York State Militia in 1861 in federal service sometime after April 25th, when they mustered in. They were discharged August 2nd of that year, their national service finished. Here, they look fabulous for brand spanking new recruits, which, of course, they are not, despite their April enrollment.

Some other things they are not:

• They are not random strangers thrown together in a hastily organized regiment
• They are not equipped with strange or shoddy gear
• They are not unfamiliar with the requirements of camp life, hygiene, organization, or drill. 

They are an abandoned resource of war.

 The North's tragic misuse and abuse of its militia hinged on three external (or structural) constraints.

The first was legal. The calling forth of the militia in 1861 was bound by rules set in the Militia Act of 1795. The militia could be called up for only three months and the states fulfilled the first call for federal volunteers by offering militia units. Their war was over in 90 days. In 1862, a new law allowed for nine-month militia call-ups, meat for a separate post.

The second constraint was precedent. The Mexican War had established a 1-1 parity ratio of federal volunteers to federal regulars in service for army efficiency. Winfield Scott in 1861 asked for an amount of volunteers equal to the expansion of Regular Army rolls he had planned. Lincoln gave this to him (and I think this was one of several Scott suggestions that cost him Lincoln's support). Instead of mobilizing the entire militia strength of the North, states were allocated slivers of the 75,000 quota.

A third constraint was in the strength levels of the militias. States had the tendency to liquidate companies of fewer than X strength but at irregular intervals. This irregularity resulted in many seriously understrength units being overwhelmed by new men rushing to enlist at the outbreak of war and diluting the experience, competency levels and professionalism of the units they joined. Add to this the problem of entirely new militia units with no experienced men formed out of the "thin air" of war fever for the sole purpose of being mustered into federal service as part of a Volunteer regiment.

Minnesota's federal quota was 780 men.At the time of Lincoln's call, "Minnesota could count on the services of one hundred and forty-seven officers, and about two hundred men" in various militia units. This is a small nucleus but entirely sufficient to create an efficient regiment. Instead of a consolidation around this core, the state saw a flurry of new companies of utterly green men formed and put into service. The state's adjutant general picked "ten lucky [new] companies ... to form the First Minnesota [Volunteers]," a military tragedy that would repeat itself throughout the North.

However the rush to the colors did not overwhelm all militia units or result inevitably in scratch (phony) militia organizations. In New York, the active militia outnumbered the Regular Army of the United States, totalling 19,189, including 36 general officers. New York's quota was for 17 regiments; on April 16, the state mobilized 11 of its regiments with an aggregate manpower of 7,334 officers and men. If we take a regimental strength standard of around 800-900, this is not at all bad for a peacetime organization. These units had insufficient billets for the many volunteers who wanted to join up in the first flush of war but they also had shortages in equipment that delayed their deployments. The thought of the entire "New York Army" being equipped, mobilized and deployed gives pause. Likewise, the effect of 19,189 experienced instructors being distributed across a large national army is worth a ponder.

It's astonishing to think of these regiments returning to New York to muster out after Bull Run. Some re-enlisted into the new federal structure, but the militia, as a system, as an organized military force, even as a reservoir of potential, seems to have been frittered away.

---

p.s. Speaking of reservoirs of potential, consider the enrolled militia. The enrolled were men required by federal law to enlist in the state militia - their counterparts were men who actually drilled, marched, etc., known as the "active militia." The 1853 ratio of enrolled/active in Massachusetts, for instance, is 116,546 / 5,809. The enrolled militia appears to have been a manpower pool neglected by Washington and by the states.

Competence and culture

My brigade commander had gotten into a rumination and had a hard time getting out again.

I was sitting in front of the colonel's desk staring at this framed photo of himself inside a body bag, soldiers standing around the bag crying as they waited for his corpse to be airlifted from some Vietnamese field. Through some great blessing he did not remain a corpse for  long. No doubt, mementos like these will drive you to reflection.

This colonel was old for that day with white hair and a long memory. The topic of the moment was lost competence. In Korea, i.e. the world outside our brigade HQ, the Communists had known how to use heavy machineguns while the U.S. Army in that day had less than a sliver of its WWI expertise still on the books. The colonel described Chinese ingenuity in using their Maxims. He rattled off one U.S. WWI heavy machinegun concept after another, wistful that we had lost them all and challenging me to imagine how useful they could be to my weapons platoon stationed near the DMZ all these years after the Korean War and the Great War itself.

But the culture had moved on. And though each of my mortar carriers had a heavy machinegun mounted on top,  the shooters would have been mortarmen, indifferent to the charms of direct fire and schooled under current doctrine (with minimal training) to do just four simple things, at most. The same condition afflicted our mechanized rifle platoons, oddly enough, who were more invested in training  with light weapons than with the powerful heavy weapons assigned to them.

How could this be? The WWI knowledge was still available to the Korean War generation, with veterans then in their 50s within easy reach. Even to us, in later days, we could access much through old manuals, memoirs, articles and such.

The culture, however, prohibited a resurrection of the old expertise. Our time and money were restricted, our doctrine did not permit what WWI crews were wont to do, and no one was going to watch, grade or praise us for doing what they could not understand and did not ask for.

This brings us back to the Civil War of course. The war starts with a major militia establishment on both sides. In the South, militia units are mobilized into the national army where they are ensnared by Davis's extension of every volunteer's term of service. (This may have more to do with CSA effectiveness than the proportion of West Point officers who went south.)

In the North, two things happened to the militia.

First, much militia got drawn into the early short term enlistments and then went home to sit out the war. The calling up and discharge of the rank-and-file volunteers was an artifact of the political culture, one that lost many experienced militiamen. Those militiamen arrived for duty capable of drilling, taking commands, organizing camps, managing bivouac life, taking orders, caring for equipment, and performing as soldiers. They represented a wasted training cadre, or even an NCO pool.

Second, experienced militia officers were left on the shelf. This is material for a very long post that boils down to a bottom line. Officers who could train, lead, organize, and drill were largely neglected. We all know the great scramble to resurrect the careers of junior federal officers, of Scott's refusal to spare Regular Army officers, and the desperate pleas of political generals for experienced soldiers and advisers.

One must add to this the situation of Mexican War officers who had served in U.S. Volunteer formations. As many of these, such as Robert Patterson, wound up in militia organizations, their fates were sealed by the fates of their various state militias. I do not know of any effort to recruit such men. The most prominent of them, Gideon Pillow, served in the South along with some contemporaries: was there a Northern equivalent to Pillow?

The Mexican War veterans were men who knew how to do. They had at least some grasp of the right maneuver for the right situation; the correct march formation for expected contact with the enemy; the disposition of the trains on the march and in camp; reconnoitering, picketing, etc.

They had the "technology" on hand that thousands would have to intuit, guess, or learn by doing. They were like the WWI machinegunners forgotten by the Army in Korea but with broader competencies that could have affected so much more. I saw this blog post published last week:

Competence is the real modernity and it has very little to do with the empty trappings of design that surround it. In some ways the America of a few generations ago was a far more modern place because it was a more competent place. For all our nice toys, we look like primitive savages compared to men who could build skyscrapers and fleets within a year... and build them well.

Those aren't things we can do anymore. Not because the knowledge and skills don't exist, but because the culture no longer allows it. We can't do them for the same reason that Third World countries can't do what we do. It's not that the knowledge is inaccessible, but that the culture gets in the way.

In that sense, the end of the Mexican War could be considered more modern that the beginning of the North's Civil War.
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(Shown above, Joseph Johnson in 1852. He was company commander in the 55th N.Y. State Militia Regiment. The 55th! What if there were 54 more New York militia regiments at the outbreak of the war? Imagine the wasted knowledge and skills.)

Civil War postmodernism

For at least a decade, regimental histories, diaries, memoirs, and letter collections have dominated the titles published in Civil War history, joined lately by "memory" books. These were originally sold on their own merits - the light they shed on events.

Someone got the idea that in their specificity these kinds of books cannot appeal to the general audience. They need a broader, new "angle." This someone tends to work in marketing departments.

Now there is a framing of works in pomo terms of market: race, class, gender, etc. When you pick up one of these titles, heavily promoted for contemporary relevance, you are always surprised (possibly disappointed) to see that the book is the same thing it would have been if no marketers had ever existed and no postmodernism had ever been evoked.

It is as if the authors wrote the books they wanted to and the marketers dressed them up as something else.

Postmodernism is entirely analytic. The amount of analysis in these Civil War works hovers just above zero. But a pomo work takes the record as a starting point and then elaborates interpretations. Those elaborations are the gist of the book. But in our Civil War diaries, letters and memoirs, the diaries, letters and memoirs tend to be the whole story and are left to interpret themselves.

Get past the dust jackets and Civil War readers are in comfortable, familiar territory. It appears that the authors write the books they want to write in the way they want to write them with the publisher layering on some spin after the fact.

I have at hand two randomly chosen examples, both from university presses.

The first is A New Southern Woman: The Correspondence of Eliza Lucy Irion Neilson 1871-1883. This is edited Giselle Roberts and her being credited as an editor is a tipoff that she subordinates herself to the underlying material. We have a second clue as to the editor's historical (not pomo) intentions in the title A New Southern Woman as it alludes to the New South, a named historical period. Here, it seems, we will meet a woman representing her era. Standard stuff.

Now let's look at the dust cover, back blurb: "... it provides new insights into the effects of the Civil War on the lives of elite white southern women..." From the inside jacket: "... by celebrating both the traditional and nondependent ideals of womanhood, they [the Irion women] made a dynamic contribution to the creation of a New South." From the Introduction:

With their exclusive claims to political power in tatters, defeated Confederate soldiers redefined their masculinity and racial supremacy around domestic virtue and governance. Without slavery, marriage became the legal crucible of the postwar household and the lifeline available to white men in their struggle to regain their independence and public prowess. [...] To rebuild demoralized soldiers ... southern women subordinated themselves within the domestic sphere to become the last legitimate terrain of domination for their men.

Whatever you think of the foregoing, it disappears into the smoke of Mrs. Neilson's long, frivolous, personal, chatty letters without so much as a pomo footnote or analytic editorial aside to disturb any experience of a conventional collection of letters. Here's a random example (emphasis in the original):

Are you alarmed at this mammoth sheet of paper?; & do your eyes hurt in anticipation of the task of perusing its many lines? Well! I don't wonder if neither of the two feelings should fill your breast - but this I will promise, - not to write any more than I can possibly help, & to write it "werry loud," so that your poor eyes won't suffer any more than absolutely necessary! - I could find no other paper about the house, & so was obliged to content myself with some of Mr. Neilson's account-book; for I could not postpone answering that precious letter of yours, so much wished for, & so eagerly devoured!

And so on for another three pages. The notes to this chapter give "werry loud" as a Dickensian allusion. There is no pomo content in the letter of the dozen or so endnotes. The whole book is a mass of nerve-wracking prattle. And yet this is womens' studies somehow.

A second example comes through the mail as Nature's Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia. This is an interesting short work, perhaps the length of a long New Yorker article, and part of the interest is in its peculiar organization.

Young author Kathryn Shively Meier wrote it as a contribution to "environmental history" - she calls this the lens through which she viewed her historical work. She credits teacher Gary Gallagher for getting her original manuscript and ideas into this final form.

This lens of environmental history blocks out essential light. Meier addresses soldier health and how the environment affected that health with an entirely self-conscious purpose of excluding all medical history from her writing (although she does resort to medical data here and there). This is a contortion that keeps you reading. You expect she will have to acknowledge some standard works here or there but it never happens, generating quite some suspense.

In considering the effects of nature and the shaping of nature in camp life, if you wanted to limit yourself to that, there would be much to say nevertheless. But here we have just five short chapters, some topically peripheral: "Health and the American Population before 1862," "At War with Nature," Soldiers and Official Military Health Care," "Becoming a Seasoned Soldier," "Straggling and the Limits of Self-Care," and a conclusion.

The contents of these chapters is light, very much easy reading, and the effect on the reader is one of having a read a sort-of-interesting magazine article.

Ms. Meier wrote the book she wanted to write and then she and Gallagher formed its pieces into "environmental history." Which is not history at all but historicism, just as womens' studies is historicism.

But then neither is it "environmental history." It is an idiosyncratic book that has its own merits and demerits but one which has been dressed up as something it's not.

If you promise pomo, give me my pomo.

Consider the contrast drawn by Marx between "naive socialists" and "scientific socialists." There seem to be rigorous pomo writers and then a great flock of vague, loosey-goosey types. Our Civil War contingent seems to fall between the loosey-gooseys and the outright fakes.

Shepherdstown battlefield and Gettysburg Magazine updates

A nice local piece summarizes progress in collecting bits of Shepherdstown land. Scroll down for the significance of the battle (cute).

In other news, Gateway Press announced via email today that University of Nebraska Press is picking up Gettysburg Magazine. Check out their want ad for an editor-in-chief.

Gettysburg remains open for hide and seek

Tourists are playing "catch us if you can" as Gettysburg park rangers are out in force to prevent park visits. A poster to a discussion board says, They

are rousting people and if they catch them more than once, they are citing them. Like it or not, it's trespassing.

Sounds like more work than leading a leisurely tour.

The official blog of the Gettysburg National Military Park has officially stopped posting as that could also be considered labor.

At Kennesaw,

Chief Park Ranger Anthony Winegar stood guard at the entrance of the parking lot all day Tuesday, trying to keep park attendees from driving into the parking lot.

He was being paid that day to be an anti-park ranger. One imagines they'll send in the drones next.

In Mississippi,

It’s the one hundred and fifty-first anniversary of the Battle of Corinth and National Park Service employees were supposed to hold educational programs for visitors at The Crossroads Museum ... But we don’t have that right now...

Meanwhile, Manny offers compensatory photos for would-be Antietam visitors while Kevin feels for the NPS employees.

Folks, we have to get all hallowed ground out of the hands of the federal government. That's a no-brainer.

Unusual gallery of historical photos

No previous photograph of Lincoln with a cat has been found.

The drama of Yalta apparently had many lighter moments.

Patton was rarely photographed with whiskers.

These unusual artifacts were curated here.

Don't fake your Amazon reviews

The New York Attorney General's office has made it their business to prosecute people who post fake reviews. And this is no chickenfeed operation: investigators "snag[ged] 19 companies writing phony reviews on Yelp and other websites ... a year-long sting operation ... fined each [perp] between $2,500 and $100,000 ..."

Amazing.

OT: AJP Taylor remembered

For those of us studying central European history in the '60s and '70s, AJP Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper were inescapable in exactly the same way that McPherson would be inescapable to a Civil War student today.

This piece is an overlong but occasionally interesting appreciation of Taylor. Both Taylor and Trevor-Roper became media stars, opining on certain topics and they were used in electronic media in the same historical-color way as Doris Kearns Goodwin is used on the Imus show and similar god-awful venues.

In my sixteen years of annual summering in Scotland, they became familiar faces to me, very much corrupted by punditry. Taylor had a tendency to cut to the quick, which TV liked, and which showed him well against more reflective counterparts.

Taylor's quippery reminds our author of a very fine Evelyn Waugh observation:

We remember the false judgments of Voltaire and Gibbon and Lytton Strachey long after they have been corrected, because of their sharp, polished form and because of the sensual pleasure of dwelling on them.

That covers a lot of ACW pop history as well.

"... even at his worst he warranted public attention ..."

That is the epitaph of a public intellectual, not of an historian.

Civil War 150, a going concern

The Washington Post's Sunday supplement "Civil War 150" continues, with "Chapter VII" appearing Sunday. The "chapters" label suggests odd time intervals, but the advertising is robust. Let me therefore be the first to predict that this supplement will continue after the Sesquicentennial (Bezos permitting).

It's not just the WaPo's advertising that makes my case: ACW books are well advertised elsewhere, even in such incongruous places as the NYRB and the Claremont Review.

One problem with publishing history in a newspaper, however, is that the material is corrupted by newspaper values. One article this weekend had a sidebar with pictures of real human beings, who had suffered and endured, headlined "Cast of Supporting Characters." Characters!

In the same way, other headlines were overly dramatic; stories were heavy laden with human interest and cute little bits; emphasis was skewed for story payoffs; the whole sickening panoply of infotainment is here regularly applied to what deserves more respect. Emphasis has to be on what is most interesting or amusing.

Why be surprised though? American Heritage magazine, journalism to its innermost core, pioneered this way of dispensing history and was rewarded for it over several decades.

American Heritage was everywhere. This, at least, is contained.

Creative anachronisms

In 2008, an airline executive named John Adams published a book, If Mahan Ran the Geat Pacific War, Alfred Thayer Mahan being the great naval strategist (and son of the teacher of Civil War generals, Dennis Hart Mahan). In this thought experiment, Adams applied extracts from Alfred Thayer Mahan's work to the decisions and ad hockery of the U.S. war against Japan. He proposed Mahan's doctrines as substitutes to the then current doctrines of naval warfare.

There is merit in this kind of anachronism.

Previously in this blog, we have asked readers to consider the modern (but now superseded) doctrine of "effects based operations" as a rationale for Jefferson Davis's strategy. We have mentioned Rowena Reed's wonderful Combined Operations in the Civil War, which borrows implicitly from the WWII era doctrine of the same name and which the reading public in her day was generally familiar with.

Often the Civil War reader is exposed to the 20th Century doctrine of "total war" (although ACW authors give this lip service rather than the full treatment). Personally, I have toyed with ideas for a number of posts addressing the relevance of several interesting modern doctrines, especially the interwar "industrial web" theory and the "double effect" doctrine, among others.

The problem may be one of interest. Over the last 60 years, at least, military science has been the missing ingredient in military history. Readers are not used to it and it can be jarring where the bookbuyer expects a low-intensity cozy.

The point in Civil War publishing often seems to be to write a book that will read as easy as a detective novel. The narrative is paramount. There is a story arc and loads of human interest. Villains and heroes contend. No matter what the struggle, micro or macro, the outcome advances us to a dramatic resolution.

Of course, there are those few books that are dense with military science and resemble publisher excretions of completely indigestible matter. Or maybe they are atonements for all the talespinning pushed out into the marketspace, rather like the odd "highbrow novel" published by a trade house.

Brent Nosworthy authored two works specifically to address the military science deficit. Archer Jones tried to tackle the strategic level issues. Clayton Newell, like Adams another moonlighter, wrote about the evolution of operational theory in the early western Virginia offensive. There are some more examples of course.

Some readers, way into battle data, may protest that they are neck deep in military content. But this is not theory or doctrine. Battle books may have a reference to contemporary tactical doctrine, esp. regulations, but mainly address who stood where and in what formation and maybe, in a really good book (rare), what some movement formation might have been, who ordered it, and by what reason (in this, see especially Edward Steere on Longstreet in the Wilderness for a model exposition).

Adams did not write his Mahan book to punish naval history readers and he did not enroll them in an tough military science course. He attempted to enrich them by opening vistas of thought, analysis, and imagination. He tried to provide a deeper reading experience. Certainly, Civil War history needs the same.

A case study in Lincolnology

I had a chance to work through all of the McClellan references in Abraham Lincoln, Esq.: The Legal Career of America's Greatest President by Roger Billings and Frank Williams. The volume presents 12 chapters on different topics by different authors.

No one chapter deals with his railroad career. Four mention his railroad lawyering in passing, typically referring to the Illinois Central case of 1852 as an example of his billing ethos. And that's it - Lincoln the railroad lawyer is nearly expunged from a book about Lincoln the lawyer.

Needless to say, none of these authors seems to have the slightest idea that Lincoln worked for McClellan. That tells us about the low standards in Lincolnology.

There is a little good news, however, in that the authors avoided retelling or even paraphrasing Herndon's account of the imaginary billing showdown between GBM and AL. From Herndon's biography:

Probably the most important lawsuit Lincoln and I conducted was one in which we defended the Illinois Central Railroad in an action brought by McLean County, Illinois, in August, 1853, to recover taxes alleged to be due the county from the road. The road sent a retainer fee of $250. In the lower court the case was decided in favor of the railroad. An appeal to the Supreme Court followed, and there it was argued twice and finally decided in our favor. This last decision was rendered some time in 1855. Mr. Lincoln soon went to Chicago and presented our bill for legal services. We only asked for $2,000 more. The official to whom he was referred was supposed to have been the Superintendent, George B. McClellan, who afterwards became the eminent General. Looking at the bill he expressed great surprise. "Why, sir," he exclaimed, "this is as much as Daniel Webster himself would have charged. We cannot allow such a claim." Stung by the rebuff, Lincoln withdrew his bill, and started for home.

That's not the end of the story but enough.

Now Lincolnology is "sophisticated" enough not to mix McClellan up the matter because he was not at the railroad in the relevant timeframe and Herndon told variants of the story without McClellan. (See here, p7-8 for more.) Herndon got the story second hand from AL and recounted it later in life, so this anecdote is not one to take to the bank. He has this colorful quote embedded in a second-hand story which he misremembers.

And yet the story survives intact with McClellan excised in favor of "an official." Being wrong on the detail of McClellan rejecting the bill, the Dan Webster quote was too cute to let go. Look for it in your favorite pop history Lincoln biographies.

General Grant and the Rewriting of History

General Grant and the Rewriting of History is the first of a series of books by Frank P. Varney. This one deals with Grant vs. Rosecrans, the next one with Grant vs. Warren. Author Varney builds solid cases, controversy by controversy, for a "pattern of deceit" in Grant's records of events. He examines primary sources to show how deeply committed modern historians are to Grant's late-life memoirs for their "authoritative" accounts of events.

The work is analytical but uses an episodic narrative structure to anchor the reader in events and timelines. Each chapter addresses a discrete military episode. This allows readers to dip into topical chapters in the order of what interests them most.

A typical chapter divides into sections: (1) the context, (2) the controversies, (3) what the historians say, (4) charges, (5) evaluation, (6) historiography.

(1) “The context” is a brief overview of events, including a high level timeline.

(2) “The controversies” lays out the Grant position.

(3) “What the historians say” is a smattering of statements representing the common wisdom. These tend to mirror the Grant position, often to the embarrassment of quoted historians.

(4) “The charges” takes the assertions of Grant and the historians, frames them as charges against Rosecrans, and then examines them against the evidence. This is the exciting part.

(5) “The evaluation” is the author’s summary of the examination of the charges.

(6) “Historiography” recapitulates selected primary source quotes. This section is fun to read but intrinsically weak. It needed to be a listing of all known sources touching on a given controversy and where the support of such sources fell.

The episodes covered are Iuka, Corinth, Stones River, Tullahoma, Chickamauga, and Missouri.

Additionally, Varney covers the relief of Rosecrans after Chickamauga and he has a chapter on Shiloh which absents Rosecrans but represents a paradigm for Grant’s “pattern of deceit” in dealing with matters of record. His first and last chapters are bookends: “What We Think We Know” and “What We Know.” If you are like me, when challenged you ask yourself, "Why do I think that? What's my source?"

Mr. Varney makes hay with a problem we have bemoaned in this blog from day one. Historians, mainly pop historians, summarize historical problems in a single statement attached to a single source. (For this sin against history, see especially anything by McPherson or Goodwin). Not to flog a dead horse, but an event shrouded in controversy is resolved by “that’s the way it is” and a note citing a single source that summarizes the author’s position. This is terribly offensive to the deep reader and what Varney has found is that Grant’s memoirs are single sourced repeatedly to put paid to messy history.

In this work Brooks Simpson comes out well (chided for judgments, not evidence handling) and Steve Woodworth quite poorly (chided for sole sourcing his controversies). Our friend Wiley Sword is up to his Hood-y tricks and Perret, Catton, Fuller and many others provide cannon fodder for Varney’s analysis. I think Varney cheapened his arguments by wasting time on plagiarist Jean Smith and polemicist Edward Bonekemper as if they were worth correcting.

I am all for historiography and this is that good thing. My weakness is a limited familiarity with the primary sources in these matters and I am forced to yield to the strength of Varney’s presentation and (provisionally) trust him in his evidence handling. If this seems extravagant, consider that Varney has written a book about evidence handling (this one) and seems unlikely to commit the sins of Grant authors as he castigates them for their bad behavior.

Those of you who read Lamers’ biography were certainly struck, as I was, by the case for Rosecrans and especially Grant’s “participation” in the battles of Iuka and Corinth.* We Lamers readers have been puzzled by Civil War history for some time and Varney helps us directly with our confusion.

General Grant and the Rewriting of History is dual purposed. It presents a critical review of the Grant literature, much needed, much desired; and it presents a rehabilitation of Rosecrans, who is denigrated in the ubiquitous Grant literature. I believe that this is too much for one book. It undermines the literature review by allowing the unhappy targets of Varney’s analysis to claim he is a Rosecrans partisan, not an honest broker, etc.

In Civil War game design, if one can use that as a proxy for pop culture, one constant seems to be the high quality ratings assigned to the General Rosecrans tokens. I think the bad opinion of Rosecrans is limited to the ranks of Grant authors rather than the reading public. In other words, Varney may have compromised an important lit crit with a defense that needn’t be made. But the author gets to pick his fights, whether or not the reader approves.

Now to quote extensively from this work would explode the length of this post. Let me ration myself to one issue. I would have liked to post Varney’s debunking of the myth of the “cracker line,” but he has at it from so many directions using so many sources that it would take many posts to cover the ground he does. More manageable is the report that Rosecrans broke down and wept at Chickamauga.

Most historians simply report Rosecrans as a weeping wreck and cite [Captain Alfred] Hough [of Negley’s command]. [Author] Glenn Tucker, however, says that Hough cited an unnamed eyewitness, which would greatly lessen the reliability of the story. However, it is even worse than that. Hough’s letters make no mention whatsoever of the supposed episode of Rosecrans sobbing to his confessor. That entire account owes its existence to a margin note in the manuscript of Hough’s autobiography - a margin note written by his son. It was he [the son] who gave the undignified scene to us, that Rosecrans was so distraught that he was unable to even give orders to Hough - which directly contradicts the eyewitness account of his father. Alfred Hough made no mention - in his letters or autobiography - of the episode. The only reason we have it is because [of] his son - who said that he heard it “only once” from his father ... [In] the written accounts Hough did leave us ... Hough said that Rosecrans gave him orders for Negley and Thomas.

[Emphasis in original]

I may have overstated my reservations in the sense that I recommend this book without reservation. Varney’s is the kind of work we need: deliberate, analytic, corrective. Anyone with Grant books on the shelf needs to go through this in order to get the full sense of a critical alternative view, not just of Grant but of the entire war in the west.

I look forward to the response of Grant authors and to the volume on Warren.

*In 2001, there was a book published on acoustical shadows which devoted a chapter to explain Grant’s failure to assist Rosecrans at Iuka as due to this phenomenon. Another chapter explained McClellan’s failure to assist Rosey at Rich Mountain due to the same effect. An interesting book with Rosey twice victimized by nature, as it were.