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7/19/2004
7/17/2004
McClellan campaign lyrics by a pop superstar
SATURDAY Last week we looked at some anonymous McClellan campaign doggerel from 1864; this week I'd like to spend a little time with campaign lyrics written by the equivalent of a pop music superstar.
As I mentioned last week, these political pieces contain a lot of "issue themes" that are far beyond the understanding of modern ACW readers, since any loyal critique of Lincoln's Administration has long beeen lost to the common discourse.
The central Democratic Party issue can be compressed into Clement Vallandigham's famous fighting slogan, "The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was." McClellan was perceived to embody that slogan, although I believe from reviewing his correspondence and speeches that he was against "the Union as it was" by 1864 - McClellan had fully accepted emancipation by the time of his run for the presidency (I'll leave that discovery to future scholarship).
Some of the other persistent themes of the Democratic press centered on mismanagement of the war and profiteering by Republican contractors. These themes were developed in the campaign verse presented last week. (The idea that a Republican administration could mismanage a war of survival while its corporate friends profited from the struggle is so completely unimaginable to us today - isn't it? - that we disregard this strain of Democratic criticism and exclude it from accounts of the election of 1864).
What makes this week's piece so interesting to me is the 1864 Party peace plank that it takes seriously and affixes to McClellan even after he publicly repudiated it.
Let's heal dissentions and unite,
Then, stronger than before,
We'll bear our banner through the world,
The flag our fathers bore.
The composer of this piece was a Kentuckian revelling in the name of William Shakespeare Hays. He had a life we would expect of a western man of the arts, one involved in captaining riverboats, writing for newspapers, and penning hit music (his Molly Darling achieved three million pieces of sheet music in print - which means there is nothing in music sales in our lifetimes that we can compare that to).
This McClellan piece was written in Hays' twenties, before he peaked commercially, and it is very hymnodic (to hear the campaign music click on the upper left notation on this page). Hays has modern followers who keep his music alive, although I don't know if they get many requests for McCLELLAN IS THE MAN.
Well, we don't need to put out a request: we have the music and here's the lyric.
McCLELLAN IS THE MAN
Words and music by William Shakespeare Hays
(1837-1907)
The cruel war must have an end;
I'll tell you what we'll do;
We'll cast our votes for "Little Mac,"
We're bound to put him through.
The widow's wails and orphan's tears
Prevailing o'er the land
Pray heaven to send a rare relief--
McClellan is the man.
CHORUS: Shout! boys, shout!
and rally all you can,
We'll have another Washington--
McClellan is the man!
Corruption sits in places high,
And Shoddy rules the roost;
"Fight on!" is still Corruption's cry,
"More spoils!" is Shoddy's boast.
But we, the people, sov'reigns all,
Declare our righteous cause;
"The Constitution as it is, The Union as it was."
CHORUS
This cruel war will never cease
Until the South comes back;
The only man to do the work
Is glorious "Little Mac.
"Then let us put him in the chair,
And he will give us peace;
For "Peace in Union" is his sin,
And war's alarms will cease.
CHORUS
Let's heal dissentions and unite,
Then, stronger than before,
We'll bear our banner through the world,
The flag our fathers bore.
In many stripes and golden stars
Shall give the people ease;
And all th'opressed of every clime
Will hail our happy peace.
CHORUS
The hot-heads South cried
"Let's secede,"
But find it doesn't pay;
The hot-heads North cried "Confiscate,
And then we'll have our way. "
But both have failed and always will;
There is a better plan:
We'll choose a righteous President--
McClellan is the man!
As I mentioned last week, these political pieces contain a lot of "issue themes" that are far beyond the understanding of modern ACW readers, since any loyal critique of Lincoln's Administration has long beeen lost to the common discourse.
The central Democratic Party issue can be compressed into Clement Vallandigham's famous fighting slogan, "The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was." McClellan was perceived to embody that slogan, although I believe from reviewing his correspondence and speeches that he was against "the Union as it was" by 1864 - McClellan had fully accepted emancipation by the time of his run for the presidency (I'll leave that discovery to future scholarship).
Some of the other persistent themes of the Democratic press centered on mismanagement of the war and profiteering by Republican contractors. These themes were developed in the campaign verse presented last week. (The idea that a Republican administration could mismanage a war of survival while its corporate friends profited from the struggle is so completely unimaginable to us today - isn't it? - that we disregard this strain of Democratic criticism and exclude it from accounts of the election of 1864).
What makes this week's piece so interesting to me is the 1864 Party peace plank that it takes seriously and affixes to McClellan even after he publicly repudiated it.
Let's heal dissentions and unite,
Then, stronger than before,
We'll bear our banner through the world,
The flag our fathers bore.
The composer of this piece was a Kentuckian revelling in the name of William Shakespeare Hays. He had a life we would expect of a western man of the arts, one involved in captaining riverboats, writing for newspapers, and penning hit music (his Molly Darling achieved three million pieces of sheet music in print - which means there is nothing in music sales in our lifetimes that we can compare that to).
This McClellan piece was written in Hays' twenties, before he peaked commercially, and it is very hymnodic (to hear the campaign music click on the upper left notation on this page). Hays has modern followers who keep his music alive, although I don't know if they get many requests for McCLELLAN IS THE MAN.
Well, we don't need to put out a request: we have the music and here's the lyric.
McCLELLAN IS THE MAN
Words and music by William Shakespeare Hays
(1837-1907)
The cruel war must have an end;
I'll tell you what we'll do;
We'll cast our votes for "Little Mac,"
We're bound to put him through.
The widow's wails and orphan's tears
Prevailing o'er the land
Pray heaven to send a rare relief--
McClellan is the man.
CHORUS: Shout! boys, shout!
and rally all you can,
We'll have another Washington--
McClellan is the man!
Corruption sits in places high,
And Shoddy rules the roost;
"Fight on!" is still Corruption's cry,
"More spoils!" is Shoddy's boast.
But we, the people, sov'reigns all,
Declare our righteous cause;
"The Constitution as it is, The Union as it was."
CHORUS
This cruel war will never cease
Until the South comes back;
The only man to do the work
Is glorious "Little Mac.
"Then let us put him in the chair,
And he will give us peace;
For "Peace in Union" is his sin,
And war's alarms will cease.
CHORUS
Let's heal dissentions and unite,
Then, stronger than before,
We'll bear our banner through the world,
The flag our fathers bore.
In many stripes and golden stars
Shall give the people ease;
And all th'opressed of every clime
Will hail our happy peace.
CHORUS
The hot-heads South cried
"Let's secede,"
But find it doesn't pay;
The hot-heads North cried "Confiscate,
And then we'll have our way. "
But both have failed and always will;
There is a better plan:
We'll choose a righteous President--
McClellan is the man!
7/16/2004
Puzzle for the Lincoln Library: buy robots or rare letters?
I have to laugh at this passage from a story about an important, newly discovered Lincoln letter:
Chris Schnell, an assistant editor at the Papers of Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, read a copy of the letter at The Abraham Lincoln Book Shop. [...] Schnell said "the state of Illinois can't even come close to buying something like that, and our project is not in the business of buying Lincoln items."
The state of Illinois has spent its Lincoln budget on animatronics, 3-D special effects, a Lincoln "ghost show," and other neat stuff for the Lincoln Library and Museum. And they did it from their pure love of the heritage tourist.
Meanwhile, Schell says he hopes the buyer will allow a copy of the message to be made.
Chris Schnell, an assistant editor at the Papers of Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, read a copy of the letter at The Abraham Lincoln Book Shop. [...] Schnell said "the state of Illinois can't even come close to buying something like that, and our project is not in the business of buying Lincoln items."
The state of Illinois has spent its Lincoln budget on animatronics, 3-D special effects, a Lincoln "ghost show," and other neat stuff for the Lincoln Library and Museum. And they did it from their pure love of the heritage tourist.
Meanwhile, Schell says he hopes the buyer will allow a copy of the message to be made.
High-Water Mark, part two
I had written a little earlier this week about Timothy Reese's new book, High-Water Mark: The 1862 Maryland Campaign in Strategic Perspective.
In his previous book, Sealed With Their Lives, The Battle for Crampton's Gap, Burkittsville, Maryland, September 14, 1862, Reese developed in detail the importance of Crampton's Gap to the Maryland Campaign - a project of about 424 pages.
Where Sealed With Their Lives dealt with the place of Crampton's Gap in the Maryland campaign, High-Water Mark considers the centrality of that campaign to the war itself. And it does so without collapsing into the banality of a painful, McPherson-like recapitulation of currently approved thinking.
There is a summary here of the findings of Sealed, but most chapters in the new work peel away the onion rings of the Maryland campaign to reach the core of events - a Confederate point of irretrievable loss. I will examine some of the most interesting research and analysis in separate posts beginning on Tuesday with Reese's look at British intervention in the Civil War.
On a personal note, I should say that I know this author through email correspondence only. I had developed an admiration for Sealed With Their Lives when it came out and consider it among my top three favorite Civil War books. Reese is an author Civil War writers can model should they ever wish to leave the storybook business.
In his previous book, Sealed With Their Lives, The Battle for Crampton's Gap, Burkittsville, Maryland, September 14, 1862, Reese developed in detail the importance of Crampton's Gap to the Maryland Campaign - a project of about 424 pages.
Where Sealed With Their Lives dealt with the place of Crampton's Gap in the Maryland campaign, High-Water Mark considers the centrality of that campaign to the war itself. And it does so without collapsing into the banality of a painful, McPherson-like recapitulation of currently approved thinking.
There is a summary here of the findings of Sealed, but most chapters in the new work peel away the onion rings of the Maryland campaign to reach the core of events - a Confederate point of irretrievable loss. I will examine some of the most interesting research and analysis in separate posts beginning on Tuesday with Reese's look at British intervention in the Civil War.
On a personal note, I should say that I know this author through email correspondence only. I had developed an admiration for Sealed With Their Lives when it came out and consider it among my top three favorite Civil War books. Reese is an author Civil War writers can model should they ever wish to leave the storybook business.
7/15/2004
With friends like this...
This is a disturbing preservation story on a lot of levels.
Forest Glen Commonwealth, a Kensington, Md.-based group, was considering buying a piece of land off Gapland Road in southern Washington County that includes a farmhouse and barn that once served as a Civil War field hospital.
The group had a change of heart and has instead decided to
purchase a former schoolhouse in Cearfoss at the intersection of Greencastle and Cearfoss pikes. The[ir] proposed Cearfoss Heritage Education Center would be on the trail where Confederate Gen. John Imboden led 13,000 wounded soldiers retreating from Gettysburg, Pa., in July 1863, Chairwoman Rebecca L. Rush said.
Whatever you think about private initiative versus the heavy hand of regional tourism planning, this is so free and easy it gives a thorough sense of that Wild West show we call Maryland's Civil War battlefield preservation.
The Gapland Road field hospital (barn) is logically part of a battlefield - a battlefield that exists on paper and in plans but is not managed. It is a property that could have been bought by Civil War Preservation Trust, a local organization, if that group were on the ball. Instead, this scratch team of general educators, marginally interested in the ACW, almost bought it and put it to their own purposes - they were, in fact, going to make a generic ACW hospital site out of it, which is part blessing, part curse, since that use divorces the hosrpital from its historic context. Now they are on another part of South Mountain planning Imboden/Gettysburg tours and more general educational activities from a center there.
A battlefield is a specific place, with a specific history that needs specific protections. It has no special value as a generic representation. Multipurpose-minded well-wishers are as dangerous to heritage as developers.
Close call.
Forest Glen Commonwealth, a Kensington, Md.-based group, was considering buying a piece of land off Gapland Road in southern Washington County that includes a farmhouse and barn that once served as a Civil War field hospital.
The group had a change of heart and has instead decided to
purchase a former schoolhouse in Cearfoss at the intersection of Greencastle and Cearfoss pikes. The[ir] proposed Cearfoss Heritage Education Center would be on the trail where Confederate Gen. John Imboden led 13,000 wounded soldiers retreating from Gettysburg, Pa., in July 1863, Chairwoman Rebecca L. Rush said.
Whatever you think about private initiative versus the heavy hand of regional tourism planning, this is so free and easy it gives a thorough sense of that Wild West show we call Maryland's Civil War battlefield preservation.
The Gapland Road field hospital (barn) is logically part of a battlefield - a battlefield that exists on paper and in plans but is not managed. It is a property that could have been bought by Civil War Preservation Trust, a local organization, if that group were on the ball. Instead, this scratch team of general educators, marginally interested in the ACW, almost bought it and put it to their own purposes - they were, in fact, going to make a generic ACW hospital site out of it, which is part blessing, part curse, since that use divorces the hosrpital from its historic context. Now they are on another part of South Mountain planning Imboden/Gettysburg tours and more general educational activities from a center there.
A battlefield is a specific place, with a specific history that needs specific protections. It has no special value as a generic representation. Multipurpose-minded well-wishers are as dangerous to heritage as developers.
Close call.
7/14/2004
High-Water Mark, part one
"Great battles beget great results."
Timothy Reese invokes this shibboleth in the introduction to his new book, High-Water Mark: The 1862 Maryland Campaign in Strategic Perspective.
You recall the Bible story where one party chose a password particularly difficult for others to pronounce. Infiltrators would give themselves away in saying "shibboleth."
If, in the midst of Reese's intro, you are nodding in agreement with the idea that "Great battles beget great results," you are not going to pass through Reese's lines. Take his gently expressed contempt for this notion not just as a curiousity, but as a personal token to take home to Philistinia.
Civil War nonfiction is choked with reader assumptions that are not only wrong but have nothing to do with the events of the war per se. "Great battles beget great results" is a marvelous example and a fine early test of any reader's sensibilities.
It is Reese's strength that he understands how degraded Civil War history is; it's his strength that he wants to share important insights despite the double burden of explaining and unexplaining at once; and it is the reader's great burden to attempt Reese's work with the highest levels of alertness and flexibility.
I want to spend a little space on our foibles as ACW readers.
Goss's War within the Union High Command has this insight: "... the need for popular support for the war drove a tendency to measure the mood of public opinion on questions of the war's conduct." In other words, the crudest understanding of military progress and strategy conveyed by newspapers often drove military perceptions and actions. (Goss was explaining why Lincoln failed to live up to his analytic potential in army affairs.)
In How the North Won, Hattaway and his co-authors proposed that a politician's view of an optimized Civil War schedule would translate into a series of small victories incrementing into larger ones culminating in a final battle of annihilation. This pattern would generate the greatest amount of political capital for the winner. (Hattaway and company were explaining the odd ideas and behavior of certain ardent public figures of the time.)
Hattaway, Goss, Reese, and others can look past the nonsense but the run-of-the-mill Civil War reader cannot. He thrives in a publishing space where the crudest popular "military" ideas of 140 years ago drive all analysis today.
For example, no vintage fantasy has been more thoroughly debunked in the last 25 years than the possibility of a battle of annihilation between Civil War armies (thanks to Jones, Hattaway, Griffin, and many others); but the failure to annihilate still remains a keystone in reader evaluations of military capacity.
And for the many readers who buy into the most simplistic 1860s attrition theories, no battle is ever wasted because every battle changes the manpower pool calculations, hence the balance of power, thus bringing victory closer to one side or the other. For such readers, tactics is whatever produces the most casualties for the enemy; the concept of strategy has almost no meaning whatever. As one intelligent Civil war author told me a few years ago, "Strategy is anything a general does with an army."
Stanton's amazing tirades against strategy resonate with the reading public today. The spittle he once spent denouncing "cowards" and "imbeciles" was not wasted. Success is a body count. Don't attack a strategic point, attack the enemy army!
Across this muddy current of easy assumptions and impoverished, time-honored groupthink, Reese has to launch little models of insight, in directions non-linear, and non-intuitive; gently nuged, they form large, inescapably beautiful patterns despite waves of reader prejudice, ignorance, and doubt.
You see my difficulty in explaining this book.
Here is his full quote from the introduction:
A combat pecking order evolved within the Maryland campaign, arrayed according to size, in descending order - Antietam, Harper's Ferry, South Mountain, Crampton's Gap, Shepherdstown Ford - all arranged according to number of troops engaged and losses sustained. The prevailing perception is that great battles beget great results. By extrapolation, small engagements are therefore reckoned of little account.
Within this tangled forest scholars passively stunted the growth of those lying beneath Antietam, each in its turn diminished by the one preceding.
Thus, "it became nearly impossible to discuss that Crampton's Gap was, in the eyes of Robert E. Lee and George B. McClellan, the pivotal event of this, the pivotal campaign of the war."
Another shibboleth: are we, as readers, willing to take the testimony of McClellan and Lee on matters of importance? The honest mainstream reader will answer no immediately, "no" flatly or "no" cloaked in rationalizations about what the generals' testimony "really" means and how it cannot be admitted if it contradicts the "common sense" of the broad reading public.
Locked into the 1860s newsmonger's concept of tactics and strategy, we cannot hear the testimony of Lee or McClellan; should we hear it, we can make no sense of it. Because absolutely everyone agrees that
"Great battles beget great results."
More about this new book on Friday.
Timothy Reese invokes this shibboleth in the introduction to his new book, High-Water Mark: The 1862 Maryland Campaign in Strategic Perspective.
You recall the Bible story where one party chose a password particularly difficult for others to pronounce. Infiltrators would give themselves away in saying "shibboleth."
If, in the midst of Reese's intro, you are nodding in agreement with the idea that "Great battles beget great results," you are not going to pass through Reese's lines. Take his gently expressed contempt for this notion not just as a curiousity, but as a personal token to take home to Philistinia.
Civil War nonfiction is choked with reader assumptions that are not only wrong but have nothing to do with the events of the war per se. "Great battles beget great results" is a marvelous example and a fine early test of any reader's sensibilities.
It is Reese's strength that he understands how degraded Civil War history is; it's his strength that he wants to share important insights despite the double burden of explaining and unexplaining at once; and it is the reader's great burden to attempt Reese's work with the highest levels of alertness and flexibility.
I want to spend a little space on our foibles as ACW readers.
Goss's War within the Union High Command has this insight: "... the need for popular support for the war drove a tendency to measure the mood of public opinion on questions of the war's conduct." In other words, the crudest understanding of military progress and strategy conveyed by newspapers often drove military perceptions and actions. (Goss was explaining why Lincoln failed to live up to his analytic potential in army affairs.)
In How the North Won, Hattaway and his co-authors proposed that a politician's view of an optimized Civil War schedule would translate into a series of small victories incrementing into larger ones culminating in a final battle of annihilation. This pattern would generate the greatest amount of political capital for the winner. (Hattaway and company were explaining the odd ideas and behavior of certain ardent public figures of the time.)
Hattaway, Goss, Reese, and others can look past the nonsense but the run-of-the-mill Civil War reader cannot. He thrives in a publishing space where the crudest popular "military" ideas of 140 years ago drive all analysis today.
For example, no vintage fantasy has been more thoroughly debunked in the last 25 years than the possibility of a battle of annihilation between Civil War armies (thanks to Jones, Hattaway, Griffin, and many others); but the failure to annihilate still remains a keystone in reader evaluations of military capacity.
And for the many readers who buy into the most simplistic 1860s attrition theories, no battle is ever wasted because every battle changes the manpower pool calculations, hence the balance of power, thus bringing victory closer to one side or the other. For such readers, tactics is whatever produces the most casualties for the enemy; the concept of strategy has almost no meaning whatever. As one intelligent Civil war author told me a few years ago, "Strategy is anything a general does with an army."
Stanton's amazing tirades against strategy resonate with the reading public today. The spittle he once spent denouncing "cowards" and "imbeciles" was not wasted. Success is a body count. Don't attack a strategic point, attack the enemy army!
Across this muddy current of easy assumptions and impoverished, time-honored groupthink, Reese has to launch little models of insight, in directions non-linear, and non-intuitive; gently nuged, they form large, inescapably beautiful patterns despite waves of reader prejudice, ignorance, and doubt.
You see my difficulty in explaining this book.
Here is his full quote from the introduction:
A combat pecking order evolved within the Maryland campaign, arrayed according to size, in descending order - Antietam, Harper's Ferry, South Mountain, Crampton's Gap, Shepherdstown Ford - all arranged according to number of troops engaged and losses sustained. The prevailing perception is that great battles beget great results. By extrapolation, small engagements are therefore reckoned of little account.
Within this tangled forest scholars passively stunted the growth of those lying beneath Antietam, each in its turn diminished by the one preceding.
Thus, "it became nearly impossible to discuss that Crampton's Gap was, in the eyes of Robert E. Lee and George B. McClellan, the pivotal event of this, the pivotal campaign of the war."
Another shibboleth: are we, as readers, willing to take the testimony of McClellan and Lee on matters of importance? The honest mainstream reader will answer no immediately, "no" flatly or "no" cloaked in rationalizations about what the generals' testimony "really" means and how it cannot be admitted if it contradicts the "common sense" of the broad reading public.
Locked into the 1860s newsmonger's concept of tactics and strategy, we cannot hear the testimony of Lee or McClellan; should we hear it, we can make no sense of it. Because absolutely everyone agrees that
"Great battles beget great results."
More about this new book on Friday.
7/13/2004
Fleming on writing
Thomas Fleming has this interesting observation on ebooks:
One of the dirty secrets of the publishing world is how many good books get (and have gotten) mutilated over the last twenty five years, as costs of paper and labor drove book prices out of sight. Writers are told bluntly, coldly, that fifty or a hundred or even two hundred pages have to come out of a manuscript so the book can be published at a saleable price. This is a painful process, which leaves many writers bleeding psychologically for a long time. E-books will put an end to this barbarism. I can't wait to see them go mainstream.
He has some advice for Newt Gingrich:
Generally speaking, I think using real people in fiction should be done sparingly.
And he has this caution for ACW and other authors:
One day, [my agent] decided I should get to know some publishers. He set up a lunch with Alfred Knopf and George Brockway of W.W. Norton. Toward the end of the lunch, Malcolm turned to Reynolds, Knopf and Brockway and said, "I bet the three of you have a 100 years of experience in the publishing world, which do you think is more necessary for a writer, talent or luck?" In unison, in a bellowing chorus that almost blew all the dishes off the table, they exclaimed, "Luck." "See, I told you," Malcolm said to me. It's a moment I never forgot.
Here's the whole article.
One of the dirty secrets of the publishing world is how many good books get (and have gotten) mutilated over the last twenty five years, as costs of paper and labor drove book prices out of sight. Writers are told bluntly, coldly, that fifty or a hundred or even two hundred pages have to come out of a manuscript so the book can be published at a saleable price. This is a painful process, which leaves many writers bleeding psychologically for a long time. E-books will put an end to this barbarism. I can't wait to see them go mainstream.
He has some advice for Newt Gingrich:
Generally speaking, I think using real people in fiction should be done sparingly.
And he has this caution for ACW and other authors:
One day, [my agent] decided I should get to know some publishers. He set up a lunch with Alfred Knopf and George Brockway of W.W. Norton. Toward the end of the lunch, Malcolm turned to Reynolds, Knopf and Brockway and said, "I bet the three of you have a 100 years of experience in the publishing world, which do you think is more necessary for a writer, talent or luck?" In unison, in a bellowing chorus that almost blew all the dishes off the table, they exclaimed, "Luck." "See, I told you," Malcolm said to me. It's a moment I never forgot.
Here's the whole article.
7/12/2004
The search for Lincoln's voice
California particle physicists have figured out how to retrieve voices from 19th Century wax recordings, it seems. There are a lot of these old cylinders around, the technology has been used since at least 1857, and people are especially interested in finding a certain 1863 Lincoln track - if there is such. The voice of Florence Nightingale may provide a consolation prize.
Kitsch fix
If you need a Civil War kitsch fix, you're in luck. I had these cards:
* Observation baloons shot down in flames.
* Sharks eating sailors in Mobile Bay.
* Cavalry charging through a mess tent with seated diners.
* A "Train of doom" plunging over a cliff.
* Union troops bayonetting alligators en route to Rebel positions.
For 10-year-olds, they were like a pop history starter kit. Classic Comics were literature in comparison.
* Observation baloons shot down in flames.
* Sharks eating sailors in Mobile Bay.
* Cavalry charging through a mess tent with seated diners.
* A "Train of doom" plunging over a cliff.
* Union troops bayonetting alligators en route to Rebel positions.
For 10-year-olds, they were like a pop history starter kit. Classic Comics were literature in comparison.
7/10/2004
McClellan poetry: more campaign doggerel
SATURDAY | Whaterver its failures as poetry, campaign doggerel ususally provides a useful condensation of Democratic Party campaign themes. These themes are interesting because they present popular views of Lincoln and his Administration which are far beyond our understanding today.
This byline-free piece, "McClellan's Coming," refers to Lincoln's "thieving shoddy crew," their contracts and their "plunder." Lincoln is the "Joker," and will be sent up the river with Seward "and his bell." (This means Seward's quote about rininging a little bell on his desk to have any American he pleased put in jail was well known by 1864.)
The responsibility for the war seems also to rest with Lincoln: "he made us trouble/And he split us up for a spell..."
Here it is whole, with all its novelties:
McClellan’s Coming
Say, brothers, have you seen Abe Lincoln,
With a sour look on his face,
Go down the road towards Salt River,
Like a man who’s lost a race?
He heard a sound through all the nation,
Where the Union-lovers stay;
And he says to Hannibal, Let’s leave sudden,
While we can get away.
Abe may be smart, but Mac is smarter,
And the people think so too;
And on the eighth day of November,
I’ll tell you what we’ll do.
We’ll fix the flint of Old Abe Lincoln,
And his thieving shoddy crew;
We’ll have the Union back again,
And the Constitution too!
The shoddyites will feel so mournful,
When contracts come no more;
They can put their plunder on the Salt River steamer,
Where the Joker goes before.
We have two Georges and the Union,
And the old flag tried and true;
And it shall wave o’er all the nation,
From Maine to Mexico.
Old Abraham he made us trouble,
And he split us up for a spell;
But we will send him up Salt River,
With Seward and his bell.
The country’s saved, the word is spoken,
And McClellan leads us on;
So give three rousing cheers for the Union,
And Mac and Pendleton.
This byline-free piece, "McClellan's Coming," refers to Lincoln's "thieving shoddy crew," their contracts and their "plunder." Lincoln is the "Joker," and will be sent up the river with Seward "and his bell." (This means Seward's quote about rininging a little bell on his desk to have any American he pleased put in jail was well known by 1864.)
The responsibility for the war seems also to rest with Lincoln: "he made us trouble/And he split us up for a spell..."
Here it is whole, with all its novelties:
McClellan’s Coming
Say, brothers, have you seen Abe Lincoln,
With a sour look on his face,
Go down the road towards Salt River,
Like a man who’s lost a race?
He heard a sound through all the nation,
Where the Union-lovers stay;
And he says to Hannibal, Let’s leave sudden,
While we can get away.
Abe may be smart, but Mac is smarter,
And the people think so too;
And on the eighth day of November,
I’ll tell you what we’ll do.
We’ll fix the flint of Old Abe Lincoln,
And his thieving shoddy crew;
We’ll have the Union back again,
And the Constitution too!
The shoddyites will feel so mournful,
When contracts come no more;
They can put their plunder on the Salt River steamer,
Where the Joker goes before.
We have two Georges and the Union,
And the old flag tried and true;
And it shall wave o’er all the nation,
From Maine to Mexico.
Old Abraham he made us trouble,
And he split us up for a spell;
But we will send him up Salt River,
With Seward and his bell.
The country’s saved, the word is spoken,
And McClellan leads us on;
So give three rousing cheers for the Union,
And Mac and Pendleton.
7/09/2004
South Mountain tower opponents lose big
The Federal Communications Commission has approved construction of a 180-foot telecommunications tower on South Mountain that critics say would ruin the history-rich rural landscape.
The tower is planned for Lamb's Knoll, a 1,758-foot peak on the Washington-Frederick county line.
I have mixed feelings about this. The really important point is this, however:
The knoll, along the federally protected Appalachian Trail, is part of the state-managed South Mountain Civil War battlefield.
Read that again. Then note that opposition to the tower came from a private organization, the Harpers Ferry Conservancy. Not from Civil War Preservation Trust, another private group that has repeatedly claimed credit for "saving" this battlefield, nor from the state of Maryland, which is erroneously believed to manage some mythical place called "South Mountain Civil War battlefield."
There is no such state battlefield park - it is a paperwork patch-up of easement deals; there is no protection for the mythical state park; and nothing has been saved.
And when mailing in your next check to the CWPT, you might want to bring the fact of the tower to their attention before they print another press release bragging about having saved South Mountain's battlefields.
The tower is planned for Lamb's Knoll, a 1,758-foot peak on the Washington-Frederick county line.
I have mixed feelings about this. The really important point is this, however:
The knoll, along the federally protected Appalachian Trail, is part of the state-managed South Mountain Civil War battlefield.
Read that again. Then note that opposition to the tower came from a private organization, the Harpers Ferry Conservancy. Not from Civil War Preservation Trust, another private group that has repeatedly claimed credit for "saving" this battlefield, nor from the state of Maryland, which is erroneously believed to manage some mythical place called "South Mountain Civil War battlefield."
There is no such state battlefield park - it is a paperwork patch-up of easement deals; there is no protection for the mythical state park; and nothing has been saved.
And when mailing in your next check to the CWPT, you might want to bring the fact of the tower to their attention before they print another press release bragging about having saved South Mountain's battlefields.
SCV battles change of name for Lee Highway
"Lee Highway is basically a monument to a loved Virginian," said Robert Brown, commander of the Frank Stringfellow Camp. "By changing that name, you're removing that monument."
The Fairfax council vote to change the name on part of the highway had been unanimous.
The Fairfax council vote to change the name on part of the highway had been unanimous.
7/08/2004
July's best bet: High-Water Mark by Reese
I want to do justice to the most important work published this year, High-Water Mark: The 1862 Maryland Campaign in Strategic Perspective by Timothy J. Reese. It's out this month from Butternut and Blue.
Reese's analysis of the Maryland Campaign is the major contribution to understanding the subject in our lifetimes; there is nothing like it. In Sealed with Their Lives, he explained why and how the attack through Crampton's Gap was the master key to understanding events that followed. In High-Water Mark, he zooms out from the plan, the battle, and its aftermath to set material in a broader context, again with unique insights derived from his deep analytic powers.
I am taking my conclusions too far, perhaps, by saying that placing Antietam at the center of the Maryland campaign has stupefied Civil War historians and readers. Issues boiling under the surface of Sealed with Their Lives and High-Water Mark have to do with our bad habits as ACW readers and thinkers - matters Reese handles wonderfully.
High-Water Mark is going to be a difficult book to explain or justly summarize in this blog format. I want to spend some time with it. Until I work through that challenge, have a look at this.
Reese's analysis of the Maryland Campaign is the major contribution to understanding the subject in our lifetimes; there is nothing like it. In Sealed with Their Lives, he explained why and how the attack through Crampton's Gap was the master key to understanding events that followed. In High-Water Mark, he zooms out from the plan, the battle, and its aftermath to set material in a broader context, again with unique insights derived from his deep analytic powers.
I am taking my conclusions too far, perhaps, by saying that placing Antietam at the center of the Maryland campaign has stupefied Civil War historians and readers. Issues boiling under the surface of Sealed with Their Lives and High-Water Mark have to do with our bad habits as ACW readers and thinkers - matters Reese handles wonderfully.
High-Water Mark is going to be a difficult book to explain or justly summarize in this blog format. I want to spend some time with it. Until I work through that challenge, have a look at this.
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