Scott's operational art (cont.)

Scott's second coordinated offensive was launched without regard to regimental-level expirations of enlistment terms.

The force structure provided to Patterson to wage his part in two offensives was allocated from War Department resources by Scott himself. He knew what he was doling out and his principal staff officer, Townsend - as an assistant adjutant - should have been especially concerned with personnel matters. The idea that the make-up of Patterson's command could have surprised Scott or Townsend boggles the modern mind.

Regiments of variable shelf-life, having been assigned to Patterson's command by Scott, Patterson himself seems to have lost track of his own enlistment expirations. I find no mention of this issue by him in his correspondence until he is well into the second offensive. He discovers his problem in mid-operation and raises the alarm in shocked tones after unsatisfactory exchanges with Scott over his (Patterson's) aims and orders.

Patterson thus conveys a sudden ignorance of his assets in the midst of an already equivocal performance. His apparent surprise is as stunning as Scott's own primitive error, and making it weirder (as with Scott), Patterson's principal staff officer is an assistant adjutant (Fitz John Porter) whose main concern as a staff officer is men, pay and enlistments.

Patterson's operational lead, MG George Cadwalader (right), had a unique state/federal commission, the federal part of which was due to expire immanently. Again, there is no correspondence showing Patterson aware of the fact or seeking clarification of his subordinate's status.

Cadwalader's federal commission expired before the end of operations. After some days operating as a federal commander without legal authority, he and Patterson learned second hand that Cadwalader's commission had been allowed to lapse. With no provision made for a replacement and with Cadwalader's boss unable to plan for a rational reassignment of duties (out of ignorance, personal and induced), Scott himself incurred this serious risk ... needlessly.

The same news regarding Cadwalader - not orders, not a letter - informed Patterson that he himself had some days previously been relieved in favor of Nathaniel Banks. The news seems to have come with Banks' arrival at Harpers Ferry. This is a remarkable turn of management that is never commented on in discussing what has devolved historiographically into a shriveled prune misnamed The Bull Run Campaign.

Scott's first offensive against Harpers Ferry flourished under complexity and attention to many moving parts. It was executed by Patterson and Cadwalader, with support from Stone, and cinched by McClellan's threat to Johnston, an event outside the scope of Scott's original conception.

Scott's second offensive collapsed under the combined weight of plodding simplicity and terrible staff work. Had McDowell won his battle, it would not have erased the stain from Scott's management of the Valley force.

It may be worth picking through the relevant chronology and correspondence in a wrap-up post.

We should also follow up with a brief recitation of all the bad - tragic actually - lessons Lincoln appears to have learned watching Scott at work.

Perhaps, continuing analysis of Scott's military art, we can also amuse ourselves in the course of a few posts looking at the myth of that much-ballyhood Anaconda Plan (a choice piece of vaporware ardently promoted by clueless pop historians).

More to come, then.

New York's Sesquicentennial

New York's Sesquicentennial can be summed up in a quote: "It's a shame."

Meanwhile, do you see the pattern emerging in entertainment news (including the WaPo with its Sesquicentennial section)? The Sesquicentennial is being privatized and as a for-profit venture.

"Lincoln" stirs

The film project "Lincoln" has bestirred itself. The movie was originally slated to appear in the Bicentennial of 2009 based on a long-forgotten work by the notorious plagiarist D.K. Goodwin.

The absurd choice of Irishman Liam Neeson to play Lincoln was resolved in classic Hollywood management style, the actor being set aside like a can of beans (read past this headline). No word on the genius pick of Sally Field to play Mrs. Lincoln.

The script seems done. No mention of the screenwriter's debt to the underlying book by D.K.G. - instead, it appears he compiled 18 notebooks of his own to get a grip on the material.

This screenwriter uses "messianic" in connection with "Lincoln." Do you think it will be preachy?

The Sesquicentennial as a top 10, how-to, what's hot-and-what's-not, sexiest man alive, Oscar winning occasion

Harry says "Wa-Po Historians Declare How the Sesquicentennial 'Should' Be Observed." That pretty much sums up these pieces.

Note that these WaPo-styled Civil War "bloggers" (unlike actual bloggers) get writing assignments from an editor.

The people who were asked this question (how to conduct the Sesquicentennial) by their editor have been positioned for a long time to answer the question in their own way and on their own hook without goading; to volunteer their names and labor and money; and to pitch in (a la Eric Wittenberg) to advance Sesquicentennial organizing and events. It's odd to see this WaPo set of "bloggers" so late in the game stepping off the train to cast into our benighted Civil War circle a few coins of advice.

Even for the most pompous hacks bedeviling Civil War literature, the pose is unnatural because the question of how should a thing be done is much more common in the world of the Washington Post than in the fractious world of Civil War history. The WaPo's business model is to tell its readers right from wrong, salad fork from dessert spoon, jazz from blues. This manifests itself in endless lists (best this, best that), countless recitations of expert opinion on any topic under the sun, and a firm, guiding editorial hand to keep readers from ever reaching stray conclusions. This is what people buy the paper for, how they use it.

I had asked earlier, rhetorically, for whom this new Sesquicentennial feature is intended, and I wonder if it is especially aimed at the non-ACW reader (the WaPo consumer) who feels the need to have authoritative (if second-hand) opinions upon the august occasion of a Sesquicentennial.

Marszalek has spoken

As long as the new WaPo Civil War section trots out the name-brand hacks, we'll have no shortage of blog fodder here.

For instance, see this piece by Marszalek, in which he instructs us on how to correctly hold a Sesquicentennial. It's worth a quick Fisking.

What then can the Sesquicentennial do?

Note: The Sesquicentennial is not an agent, actor, corporation. Is this a literary device?

Those organizing it ...

Note: Who or what is organizing "the Sesquicentennial"? Is this another literary device?

Those organizing it can let it be known that they want everyone included. "Lost Cause" interpretations must be put aside...

Note: Isn't that a contradiction?

... and the true history of the four year event and the Reconstruction period which came from it must be presented.

Note: The true history! Everyone will be included in celebrating "the true history." What kind of mind works this way?

If there is a reenactment, it must include black and white soldiers and civil populace.

Note: This is quite a rulebook emerging. He should number the rules so statute breakers can be cited by paragraph. I like the contingency "If there is a re-enactment" during the Sesquicentennial. Wonder if there will be any?

Conversely, African Americans can take control of their central destiny in the Civil War.

Note: Past and present seem to be mixed up here. Anyway, this sentence is followed by a series of directives that African Americans are to execute during the Sesquicentennial. This beloved genius concludes,

It is about time that truth shine forth.

Whew! About time!

Thank heavens for pop history writers who can settle the truth for us and then issue the relevant commands.

You might like Mike Musick's piece better: he calls for "Renewed support for scholarly editions of significant documents" and "some observations that will not be welcomed by my friends in academia. Military history, for all its problematic aspects, ought not to be banished from our remembrance of what was after all a war."

Have coffin, will travel

Public history struggles to convey what it does not understand, and the results are always grotesque.

Shiloh: The Reality of War!

Coming to a pipe near you.

The Washington Post's Sesquicentennial

The Washington Post has started a major, recurring advertising supplement to its newspaper called Civil War 150 with an associated website. The paper copy is different from the electronic version in a number of ways, especially in being richer in advertising and poorer in content.

Yesterday a kind of man-in-the-street question was asked of six "expert panelists" in the print edition; today a seventh opinion appears online.

Also, the online edition collects and aggregates Civil War news on an ongoing basis.

The "names" and "opinions" featured are those of the inevitables - writers and teachers without historical sensibility, without a feel for new work, and without curiosity. That being the case, I was intrigued to see four out of the six panelists say that Lincoln's election started the war; a fifth went further saying actually many more contingencies than that were at play; a sixth waffled. Is the beloved Centennial theme of the inevitability of war dead now?

The paper edition featured prominently a piece about Edward Ayers (buried in the online edition) and tried to convey, in a few hundred words, Ayers' respect for complexity and the underlying data. Recognizing this to be the inverse of Centennialism, they set Centennialist-in-chief James McPherson on him and McPherson's comment speaks volumes - about McPherson:

"I was never able to grasp what he was driving at there," McPherson says. What else is history but the imposition of pattern, order - in short, a story - on a universe of seemingly random and interconnected events? McPherson asks.

This is quite a good mission statement for hamfisted hackery and when you consider that the "order" referred to here is being surmised from secondary sources, you have a vivid picture of this genre of "historian" at work.

The WaPo's normal audience is a frivolous bunch, skimming the topics of the day, revelling in "what's hot," collecting restaurant recommendations, and investing great credit in whatever approved authority tells them about the events of the day. It helps to think of the WaPo roughly as the newspaper equivalent of a Ken Burns documentary and I expect the two share the same audience.

Therefore, I'm curious as to whom the editors think (and you think) comprises the audience for a section like this. My guess is buffs rather than WaPo regulars. Civil War 150 hangs on the answer, and it will be interesting to see this section evolve.

Barton museum

An unknown derelict D.C. building is reclaimed for history and a Clara Barton museum is planned.

Reminds me of a few decades ago, when the state government of New Jersey planned the demolition of Dorothea Dix's apartment in the State Hospital's Main Building in Trenton. My father was able to rescue a few period doorknobs before the wrecking ball struck.

Stanton lives

Compare and contrast with the ACW.

Scott's operational art (cont.)

In his first coordinated offensive, Scott gave leave to McDowell to move south in terms of orders, objectives, timing etc., just as he did Patterson in the second offensive.

The correct orders to McDowell and Patterson in their supporting roles should not have been to make a demonstration or attack (on their own terms, opportunity permitting) but rather for the supporter to interpose his forces between Beauregard and Johnston. This would have put Patterson on ground east of Johnston and McDowell west of Beauregard in the two early war offensives.

Geography and history make hash of this ideal because the Manassas Gap railroad ran behind the two Confederate positions. The road to mutual reinforcement ran due south, then east or west, not due east or west from the respective defensive positions. To practically interpose between the positions, the Union army would need to go way way south first, a logistic and tactical impossibility, given the starting positions.

This is a way of saving that the correct, textbook solution was not available to McDowell or Patterson's armies. Interposition due east or west of the enemy, which was within their means, had no effect on rail use for reinforcement.

Now, follow this. Unless I am in error (Harry can correct me), Johnston's use of the railroad was a surprise. Proof: in an exchange with Patterson (in the OR), Scott gives him the condition during McDowell's offensive, that should Johnston move towards Beauregard, Patterson is to follow along the Virginia side of the Potomac, using the canal to supply his forces.

This is not a contingency that envisions Johnston moving along the way southerly Manassas Gap railroad by steam or sinew, is it? It seems to suggest Scott envisioned Rebel forces joining by northerly roads such that following the river would be following Johnston's army en route to Beauregard's positions. Scott envisions Johnston moving more or less due east of his defenses.

So, Scott's orders in the two offensives to the "distractors" are in both cases theoretically wrong even though, had right orders been issued, it would not have availed him due to the railroad's location. The orders were wrong in terms not just of the ideal but in terms of the land movement options Scott envisioned for the Confederates.

Johnston's assumption of the defense in Winchester put him in marching distance of a railroad connection. It was a far enough away march that it obscured the potential connection to Union analysis. It was southerly enough that interposition by Patterson was impossible, had Johnston's railway ride been suspected or envisioned.

Hattaway and Jones took some trouble to explain why Civil War armies could not be destroyed, or even seriously hurt during a retreat after battle. Johnston was not retreating after battle; he was evacuating a position. To stop an evacuation through offensive action seems both theoretically and practically impossible in a Civil War context.

This makes nonsense of the contemporary criticism of Patterson that he "could have" [fill in the missing accomplishment of your choice]. He had the wrong orders from Scott based on a false concept of the enemy's options and potential - no basis for a plan or a result. Contemporary people were down on Patterson because they did not know you can't fix an enemy army in place that is evacuating (not with ACW means and methods); and these critics willfully disregard that Johnston's rail movement occurred far beyond the reach of Union forces. (Look at the map at the distance of Winchester to the railroad and picture the options for a wagon-bound enemy.)

It seems sad that so many modern historians have never moved beyond the limited, in fact asinine, opinions of that day and moment but here we are. Welcome to Civil War history!

There is an indubitable point to be made that Patterson set himself some goals or objectives and failed to meet them (and later characterized them as mere contingencies, not ends). As was said of a friend of mine in a performance review, "He failed to meet even the low standards he sets for himself." I think Patterson might have met some of those modest goals he set for himself, if not for two pre-emptive blunders he committed in mid-campaign.

These are nearly inconceivable in scale, yet never mentioned as errors in Civil War histories or held against Patterson; both tie into Scott's failure in the second offensive end game, at which point we'll conclude this thread.

The ACW controversy du jour

You won't want to miss it. (Yawn.)

Into the Sesquicentennial

Tennessee's Sesquicentennial Committee has unveiled a Sesquicentennial license plate. They say proceeds will go to counties to fund Civil War Trails signage. Can the state really earmark funds this way? Or is this the typically careless talk of a professional journalist?

In my previous experience, the only way this could be done is if the general budget today contains a line item for Trails signage based on projected income from estimated license plate sales. Otherwise, the money goes into the general fund with the potential for future allocation.

Besides which, why commit all the funding from your sole Sesquicentennial revenue source to a single project unless you're expecting just a dribble in funds?

In other state news, Pennsylvania continues to impress.

The Sesquicentennial at Charleston

Of all possible Sesquicentennial sites, Charleston's events require the most thought and care. Are we celebrating secession? The bombardment of a puny federal garrison? The role ancestors played in precipitating a national tragedy?

Do we delight in revolution or counterrevolution?

Which side represents which part of that?

Here is what passes for an answer:

South Carolina can claim a huge chunk of the Civil War anniversary tourism dollars if it is first out of the blocks in December and does it right, state leaders were told Monday. [...] "We better, because Virginia will," said Eric Emerson, director of the S.C. Department of Archives and History.

We expect state historians to grapple with the big questions and Emerson has apparently given this one a lot of thought. It is good for governments to have their house historians, is it not?

Emerson also (fortunately) speaks a language that today's press release driven one- and two-syllable communications professionals can well understand, because they aptly headlined their Emerson-related news article "Civil War can bring big bucks." We don't need to wait 150 years to celebrate directness and clarity, so thanks for that.

Meanwhile, the locals are out in front of the state with their own plans [emphasis added]:

Some of the other efforts being promoted locally include concerts around the Fort Sumter 1861 bombardment anniversary in April, and a "star shell" flare being shot over the fort timed to the attack.

Will there be cheering? Why? Symbolizing what?

Emerson said it is important for all corners of the state to begin pressing its story of how the war affected men and women, white and black, young and old. "Start focusing on 'that' thing that can draw people to 'that' town," he said.

What do you have when you have "pressed the story" of how people were affected?

This is shaping up to be another exercise in government-backed nihilism, dominated once again by a certain ideology of nihilism called heritage tourism.

The lack of financial support is the silver lining in all this.

Scott's operational art (cont.)

In his first coordinated offensive, Scott deployed a machine of many parts and the enemy was duly confused. It helped, too, that the enemy had sought to evacuate Scott’s main objective as the offensive unrolled.

Now, in his second offensive, Scott was simplifying. Stone and Wallace were joined to Patterson. Butler kept quiet. McClellan was rendered irrelevant by orders keeping him from joining Patterson. The overachievers – Butler, McClellan, Wallace, and Stone, were thus sidelined. There would be only two pistons in this machine, Patterson’s and McDowell’s.

McDowell had completely failed to occupy or “amuse” Beauregard in the first offensive. There was no inquiry or reprimand for McDowell: after all, Harpers Ferry fell and there was a healthy “redundancy” in the number of distractions presented the foe.

Now, in this offensive, there would be no distractions and both columns had to succeed. They were given difficult tasks. Each would have to fight a battle and win (Patterson’s was optional but always immanent).

No good plan requires 100% success from two underachievers, yet here was Scott boxing himself in.

The mark of this campaign is that Patterson’s mission was both incorrectly formulated by Scott and incorrectly understood by Patterson. I don’t mean this in the conventional sense conveyed by pop history (here we have arrived at another early war surprise gleaned by reading the sources). Patterson’s failing to occupy Johnston is of secondary importance at most. More on this in another post.

A second mark of this campaign is given in two planning failures of catastrophic and immediate effect. These are never discussed in Civil War histories and their stunning effects are glossed over by authors as if they were simple matters of everyday campaigning.

Scott’s failure to correctly conceive and frame Patterson’s role in the campaign and his improper reaction to two monumental staff blunders recast his offensive from a coordinated one at start - with leeway to adjust to circumstances - into a simultaneous one in which his underachievers had to overdeliver with exquisite timing.

More on this soon.

Perspective

Those whose Civil War reading makes them exceedingly wrathful towards Banks, Bragg, Butler, Fremont, Hunter, Johnston, Polk, Pope, McClellan, McDowell, etc., would do well to study the modern generals (every one of them) as depicted in Woodward's new book Obama's War.

A modern perspective might mellow some of that Civil War harshness.

Scott's operational art (cont.)

In his first coordinated offensive, Scott showed a Jominian streak that would take quite a long thread to explore. There was also visible a level of daring and complexity reaped from long experience. Here, in late spring of 1861, Scott makes the overland campaigns of later years look stupid by comparison.

At the end of his first offensive, the main point had been gained with the threat of a combination against inferior forces. Dangerous movements on multiple axes had compelled the enemy's decision to evacuate. Some movements succeeded, some failed; enough were put into motion that the failures might not influence a positive outcome.

Scott had stocked his main column with extra forces to enable it to fight a major battle to gain Harpers Ferry. Another force fought its way across what is now Western Virginia near to the decision point. Another force fought through Maryland to the crossing for Leesburg, Virginia. Alexandria was occupied. A push out of Ft. Monroe was defeated while a push from Washington fizzled.

The campaign might make a nice example in Jominian study, with forces operating on exterior lines for military advantage. Perhaps a misunderstanding of this campaign "inspired" Lincoln's misguided 2/22/62 order.

Let's try now to pass from the Jominian to the Clausewitzian. Scott did not know Clausewitz but we can still do some analysis. What political objective or purpose did the campaign serve?

The taking of Harpers Ferry closed off the Cumberland Valley, securing Patterson's Department of Pennsylvania, making Harrisburg safe, Gov. Curtin calmer, and gaining control of high profile federal property at a railroad chokepoint. It also opened the possibility of additional major military developments.

But politically, it was "low yield."

Let's consider the other potential objectives in this campaign from the political standpoint.

Grafton - The fall of Grafton unlocks western Virginia for the establishment of a loyal Virginia, dealing serious political damage to the secessionist state and general Rebel government.

Suffolk - The defeat at Big Bethel forestalls this. Its total potential, politically, might have been to spread fear and demorilization in the enemy capital. This would have been the maximum political upside.

Centreville - McDowell could not organize his demonstration toward Centreville in time to help Patterson. Had Centreville fallen in the course of that or had it been abandoned without a battle, the benefit would have been to force retirement of the provocatively named enemy "Army of the Potomac," transforming it into an army of the Rapahannock.

Edward's Ferry - The political effect of Stone's victories was to secure another state government - Maryland - from embarassment by roving Confederate forces.

As mentioned yesterday, Beatie discusses in some detail the next steps considered by Scott and Patterson after this first campaign, especially their idea of advancing far enough down the Valley to place an army behind (under, south of) Richmond, thereby forcing evacuation of the South's Potomac positions.

Place yourself in Scott's shoes, considering your next land offensive. The highest value project available, politically, is the forcing of an evacuation of the Potomac line. Defensively, the highest political priority is protection of the capital which implies the collection of all available forces there, rather than at HF or Ft. Monroe.

The means available to gain the largest political prize are indirect - a Valley approach by Patterson, McClellan, and maybe Stone - or direct - an assault on Centreville from Washington, Centreville being the nexus for supply and reinforcement of the Potomac line.

The table has been set by political (Clausewitzian) priority; Jominian principles then dictate that the force collected around Washington should be applied against the foe closer to home on shorter (exterior) lines with less distance (less risk) from the Union base of operations (DC).

And so, thanks to theory, there is a cetain predictability to Centreville becoming the principal target in Scott's second coordinated offensive of 1861.

Scott's operational art

Looking over the summary account of Scott's first coordinated campaign, given in the last few posts especially, there are some aspects of Scott's operational art worth considering.

He puts McClellan into play vis a vis Grafton the same day he orders Patterson to take three key locations in Maryland (May 24). Long also dates Mansfield's taking of Alexandria to this day. From Joe Johnston's position in Harpers Ferry, there is now going to be a flurry of activity to his front, east and west. As McClellan's columns approach Grafton, Patterson approaches HF, and Butler (apparently on his own initiative) seizes Newport News with an amphibious landing. (This last is out of Johnston's area but a good damper on Richmond forces that might be sent to Alexandria or HF.)

This light show is intended to dazzle an uncertain opponent occupying the single point Scott wishes to take; its antecedents are in his conquest of Mexico, where Patterson, McClellan, Scott, and Cadwalader last combined. In the next pulse, Scott, the chess player* orders Patterson to HF, Stone to Edward's Ferry, and Butler to Suffolk. The orders are nearly "simultaneous" but the timing is left open. More noise to overload the defenders. More opportunism, too.

Three days later, Wallace, detached from McClellan's column at Grafton, is sent by McClellan and/or Kelley to Cumberland to occupy that objective on Patterson's behalf. Wallace, on his own initiative, attacks and occupies Romney VA en route. Opportunism in spades.

Wallace becomes nervous in Cumberland, however, repeating requests for reinforcements. Patterson declines to help him but reports McClellan as sending a second regiment there. This Cumberland business may be the decisive act of the entire campaign. The critical element is McClellan's occupation of the place, for if Patterson had taken it as ordered, it would simply be part of Patterson's advance.

But Johnston gives his rationale for abandoning HF as fear of McClellan joining Patterson - a fear only Wallace's arrival could have incited. Advance guard? McClellan on the way? Makes military sense and represnts the worst case scenario. Scott has put things in motion in order to make your own luck - and here the payoff is rich. We see this in Mexico as well.

It is possible that Johnston is lying about his motive (Cliff Dowdey makes him a remarkable liar), and that he used McClellan as a rationale for abandoning a position he simply did not want to defend, as would later happen on the Potomac and Yorktown lines. The effect is the same, though.

Moreover, Johnston's scenario could have played out; the door is not closed on this outcome until McClellan asks Scott to join Patterson on June 16th and Scott answers "no need." This is the day after the evacuation, so we can say Joe J anticipated a different answer from Scott.

By the way, why did Scott say that? Given that McClellan had in hand no urgent tasks directed by the chief, why? I have some possibilities in mind.

(1) Scott had another operation/combination in mind in the near future and needed McClellan where he was.

(2) Scott had given Patterson enough forces and support to accomplish his mission and would join Stone to Patterson if needed.

(3) Scott was self-consciously limiting his span of control to reduce "noise" on himself such that the forces integral to his plan were the ones he communicated with frequently. (Scott did not direct Butler after Big Bethel or McClellan after Grafton.)

If this third point is true it suggests Scott appreciated the idea of what we now call a theater of operations (I like "theatre" better but this spelling may annoy you). If we consider that the geographical space in which operational objectives are realized represents a theater of operations, then Scott may have viewed Butler and McClellan as peripheral to that theatre where McDowell, Stone, and Patterson were central.

And if this is accurate, Scott shares the credit Clayton Newell bestows on McClellan, that of inventing the concept of theater of operations during his western Virginia campaign.

So much for (3). If you want to explore point (1) above, give Beatie's Army of the Potomac Volume 1 a read. It's fascinating and reports that Scott and Patterson envisaged the follow-on to HF as being a thrust down the Valley to a position behind Richmond that would forceBeauregard's evacuation of the Potomac line in favor of a Rappahannock line or worse. I infer Scott may have seen McClellan as more useful for that potential plan if he stayed where he was.

Patterson's Valley objective was, of course, displaced by the Centreville objective in the planning of Scott's second coordinated offensive, which may be worth a few posts as well.

The Harpers Ferry offensive presented Lincoln with a number of seriously misleading indicators, to the great detriment of the Union cause. He saw a major campaign controlled, actually well run, by telegraph and mail. He saw subordinate commanders coordinating, helping each other, and acting in harmony. He saw initiative, promptness, aggressiveness, and luck pay off. What he did not understand is that these dividends were reaped because the entire command structure (minus Butler and McDowell) dated from the Mexican War and/or had strong personal relations. Once this team broke up results would change.

Furthermore it seems that Lincoln could think himself able to control the war by telegraph by watching the example set by Scott. The genesis of this Lincolnian conceit came early and I blame Scott for it.

* Scott once played legendary chess prodigy Paul Morphy, lost, and made a scene. Morphy was then a child and unknown.

Post-heroic Warfare

It's a seminar.

...the idea of the post-heroic condition of contemporary western societies has had and continues to have a large impact on both strategic thinking and operational practice.

"Concentration in time" and the ACW (cont.)

It might appear that I am picking on Archer Jones because of my focus on his leading example of "concentration in time" - Lincoln's idiotic order directing simultaneous advances on all fronts on 2/22/61. Consider, however, Jones' pairings that serve as follow-up examples:

Banks moved in late March [1862] just as Buell moved to reinforce Grant at Pittsburg Landing, McClellan's siege of Yorktown began two days before Shiloh, the fall of Corinth occurred two days before the Battle of Fair Oaks, and Buell's advance and Bragg and Kirby Smith's Kentucky campaigns took place simultaneously with the summer operations in Virginia.

Oddly - and honestly enough - Jones recites the pairings and then disavows them as unplanned - they "occurred fortuitously and not as a result of any plan," a phrase McPherson missed when he blindly cribbed Jones' Civil War Command and Strategy to write a couple of bad books in which he assigned Lincoln (and himself) the credit for the Jonesian construct of "concentration in time."

Nevertheless, after the disavowal, in his own book, Jones continues to explore this principle at some length theoretically and he uses it - as theory - in the rest of Command and Strategy as a conceptual yardstick for operational effectiveness.

On this basis we can hold him accountable for the error of prizing simultaneity over coordination.

"Concentration in time" and the ACW (cont.)

The theme of this post is that coordination is a superior principle to simultaneity and thus the idea that the coordinated offensive serves a Jominian purpose better than simultaneous offensives.

The temptation is to go off on a tangent on Scott's operational art, demonstrated in these first and second offensives, but I am not going to do that here. Will let the first offensive timeline speak for itself and hope its message is audible to the late war reader.

Scott's management is highlighted in bold. The effects of Scott's management are show in italics. Comments are [in brackets]. The rest is interesting noise and context.

May 23. Virginia votes for secession. (The CW Day by Day, Long)

May 24. Scott asks McClellan, in Ohio, if he can move against Grafton. (OR)

May 24. Butler reports his arrival at Ft. Monroe. (OR)

May 24. Scott orders Patterson to push into Hagerstown, Frederick, and Cumberland. He then modifies the order making Cumberland's taking optional. (OR)

May 26. McClellan sends three column into Virginia. (Long)

May 27. The Dept. of NE Va. is created under McDowell. (OR)

May 27. McDowell seizes Alexandria. (OR)

May 27. Butler seizes Newport News in an amphibious attack.

May 30. McClellan's column under Kelley takes Grafton. (Long)

June 1. Scott orders Patterson to advance on Harpers Ferry. He says, "I will make a demonstration beyond Alexandria." There is no deadline.

McDowell's cavalry probes Fairfax County. (Long)

June 3. McClellan's victory triggers the "Phillippi races" in Virginia. (Long)

June 3. AG Townsend asks McDowell to estimate the composition of a column "to be pushed toward Manassas" "say in four or five days to favor Patterson's attack on Harpers Ferry." (OR) [Note the flexibility!]

June 4. The Union navy shells Pig Point on the James River.(Long)

June 4. McDowell answers Townsend proposing 12,000 infantry, two batteries and 6-8 "companies" [sic] of cavalry advance on Manassas. (OR)

June 6. McClellan asks Scott for permission to muster in Virginia regiments. (OR)

June 6. Butler proposes to attack toward Norfolk. (OR)

June 7. The Union navy blockades Apalachicola, Fl. (Long)

June 8. Tennessee votes for secession. (Long)

June 8. Scott orders Patterson to Harpers Ferry without specifying a date. Scott orders Stone to Edward's Ferry opposite Leesburg as a "diversion" that "may be turned into an effective cooperation, without specifying a date. (OR)

June 9. Butler undertakes a night march against Big Bethel. (Long)

June 10. AG Townsend, on Scott's behalf, directs Butler to attack Suffolk - without specifying a date. Butler attacks Big Bethel in daylight. (OR)

June 10. Stone fights his first battle en route to Edwards Ferry (Long).

June 13. Townsend advises Scott that Stone is on the march and that on the 17th or 18th, McDowell will start his advance against Manassas. (OR)

June 13. Lew Wallace drives Rebels out of Romney, Va., with a regiment of Zouaves detached from McClellan's command and attached to Patterson. He then continues his march to Cumberland, his objective. (OR)

June 13. Johnston communicates his lack of confidence in holding HF for the CSA. (Long)

June 14. Fitz John Porter, Patterson's senior staff officer, coordinates Stone's movements with Patterson's. (OR)

June 14. AP Hill captures Romney as Wallace leaves to complete his march from Western Va. to Cumberland, Md. (Wiki)

June 14. Stone fights another battle at Seneca Mills, Md., en route to Edwards Ferry. (Long)

June 15. Patterson's forces advance on Williamsport and Martinsburg. Patterson says he cannot cross the river to take HF until the 19th. (OR)

June 15. Johnston evacuates HF. He says he fears a union of Patterson and McClellan. (Long)

June 15. Stone fights another battle at Conrad's Ferry en route to Edwards Ferry. He takes Edwards Ferry. (Long)

June 16. McClellan tells Scott he hears Patterson is "checked" at the Potomac in front of HF and offers to advance from western Virginia to join Patterson. Scott tells him there is "no need." (OR) [We will explore this interaction in a future thread on the concept of theatres of war.]

June 16. Patterson (actually his combatant commander, Cadwalader) takes HF, which has been evacuated. (OR)

June 16. Patterson reports to Scott that McClellan has sent a regiment to aid Wallace at Cumberland. (OR)

June 17. Stone fights yet another action at Conrad's Ferry.

June 19. Pierpont named governor of (loyal) Virginia. (Long)

"Concentration in time" and the ACW (cont.)

Archer Jones, whom we've been discussing, follows ACW writing conventions in treating Bull Run as a singular major event - in all its splendid isolation - that follows the fall of Sumter. It is but an element of Scott's second coordinated offensive of 1861.

The general plan for ACW authors seems to be cover Sumter's capture, mention some fooling around, and then describe the first really big battle, Bull Run; after Bull Run, place the reader in a quiet antechamber to await the next really big battle while waterboarding him with page after page of McClellan's time-wasting preparations until the reader comes to hate GBM as deeply as the author does.

This convention is terribly unjust to the hitory of the early war.

In Scott's first coordinated offensive, in June of 1861 (before Bull Run), the intention of which was to capture Harper's Ferry, he conceived of a successful plan in which Patterson would advance on the main point after being reinforced, while McDowell threatened Centreville with an advance of 12,000 infantry, while Stone advanced on Edward's Ferry menacing Leesburg. This personally directed triple threat was markedly enhanced by peripatetic, undirected activity on the periphery by McClellan in western Virginia and Butler in easter Virginia around Fort Monroe.

Scott commanded and coordinated Stone, Patterson, and McDowell in the offensive - the OR is rich with this material - but we have no orders or correspondence to show whether he issued offensive-related instructions to Butler and McClellan. On the contrary; nevertheless, as mentioned, they played a lucky supporting role, as will be seen.

Here's the point, though: Scott's management of this first offensive exactly satisfies the underlying Jominian dynamic of Archer Jones' "concentration in time" without lapsing into Lincoln's jejeune simultaneity.

There's no common start time for the three columns. There doesn't need to be. Scott's attacks and demonstrations are specifically designed to offset the reinforcing advantage offered by the defenders' interior lines while their timing is left flexible as long as a distraction effect is achieved. We'll look at some orders to see how Scott did this.

We'll also look at a timeline surrounding the first offensive to see how much noise was generated to overload enemy analysis. Stone, did spectacularly well in the noise department while McDowell's demonstration fizzled completely. In the second coordinated offensive, the situation reversed, with Patterson fizzling, McDowell achieving lift off, and Stone static.

The Scott experience shows us that offsetting the advantage of interior lines is a function of offensive coordination NOT simultaneous movement.

"Concentration in time" as reformulated by Jones is therefore the false solution to a Jominian (not Clausewitzian) problem.

For those unfamiliar with the early war, the intense chronology around these offensives should be an eye opener. I'll run the chronology in the next post.

"Concentration in time" and the ACW (cont.)

Outside of Civil War studies, the term and idea “concentration in time” is credited to Clausewitz. Within Civil War studies, “concentration in time” has been deeply colored by Archer Jones’ formulation.

In Clausewitz’s Vereinigung chapter, the illustration is given of Napoleon’s Russian invasion. Napoleon deploys all of his strategic assets in one stroke: he does not stage an invasion in phases nor as piecemeal forces become available over time. And he has one aim: by advancing on Moscow, he will force a battle in his favor such that peace can be dictated from the occupied capital.

Jones’ first example of concentration in time is Lincoln’s order for simultaneous advances on February 22, 1862. This entails multiple forces, moving on multiple axes, in pursuit of multiple objectives, none of them decisive, none of them “politics by other means.” This is almost the opposite of what Clausewitz envisions by Vereinigung.

Jones makes the purpose of this simultaneity the negating of the defender’s advantage of interior lines. The defender enjoys an economy of movement when shifting force from point to point on interior lines of defense (to offset any attacker’s local superiority). Simultaneous attacks (“concentrations in time”) can prevent a shift by creating multiple challenges at once to the entire line of defense.

The deep reader recognizes interior and exterior lines as Jominian conceptions that have nothing whatever to do with Clausewitz. Simultaneous attacks on local objectives made by divided forces to offset the advantage of interior lines for purely military gain have nothing to do with Clausewitz on any level whatever.
What Jones has mistakenly done is taken the clarity of Clausewitz’s writing on concentration in space and then distilled, through Jones’ own dialectic and some inference, a unique parallel concept regarding time based on just one Clausewitzian nugget: the “at once,” the simultaneity.

The result is so highly idiosyncratic, to say the least, as to make ludicrous James McPherson’s claiming this formulation as his own, as he has done in two recent books and an article. McPherson, as he did so often in Battle Cry, misunderstands the sources he reads, so that in his new work, Archer Jones’s genesis of “concentration in time” with Lincoln’s 2/22 order becomes a full-blown Lincoln dictum, a veritable hallmark of Lincoln’s ongoing management of the war. Jones, in giving more examples after February 22, 1862, cites pairs of events that happen close in time without actually giving Lincoln any credit for orchestrating them; indeed, how could he? Their synchronicity is interesting but he wisely ascribes them generically to the Union. (This seems too much, BTW, if you consider the paper trail linking, or not linking, these pairs of events.)

Jones credits Clausewitz when introducing “concentration in time,” at the high concept level, but then develops his discussion without further reference to him. Thus, it’s possible that Jones is presenting his own riff on the germ of an attributed idea without intending to represent these as Clausewitz’s own.

If we take this Jonesian formula for simultaneity in a Jominian framework, we need not credit Lincoln for first use, but rather (with caveats), Scott.

I keep promising discussion of Scott’s coordinated offensives and will finally arrive at these next.

"Concentration in time" and the ACW

I don’t know the German etymology of Konzentration, but Clausewitz does not use the word in his 1832 expositions on what we now call “concentration in space” and “concentration in time.”

The third book of On War has two chapters that interest us here, Sammlung der Kräfte im Raum and Vereinigung der Kräfte in der Zeit. I would render these “Assembly of forces in space” and “Unification of forces in time.” Note that the modern German would use Konzentration in the sense we use it ourselves to render the chapter titles Konzentration der Kräfte im Raum, etc. Clausewitz seems not only to be making a distinction between his two “concentrations” but also among concentration, assembly, and unification.

“Concentration in time” is a somewhat new English rendering, possibly early 20th Century, possibly via Jean Colin (though this Frenchman would have given the term its Gallic form not an English coinage.)

After the chapter on “Space,” what Clausewitz discusses in "Time" is mainly its comparative effects on force (esp. via attrition) at both the tactical and strategic levels. He labors through many words to bring forth three germane points:

… in Strategy we can never employ too many forces, and consequently also that they must be applied simultaneously to the immediate purpose …

… it cannot be an object to make time an ally on its own account by bringing troops [at the strategic level] successively into action …

… all forces which are available and destined for a strategic object should be simultaneously applied to it; and this application will be so much the more complete the more everything is compressed into one act and into one movement.

Clausewitz appears to have had in mind here the invasion of Russia by Napoleon, i.e. the application of all strategic forces to a single theatre, rather than the simultaneous application of force in multiple theatres.

This latter appears to be derived, not original with On War, and Archer Jones’ analysis operates within that derivation.

Next: Theatres and Scott’s application of Clausewitz’s Sammlung.

Joseph Harsh, historian

"Woe to you if he considered you a member of what he referred to as the 'American Heritage' school of Civil War history!" - Ethan Rafuse

Joseph Harsh's death was reported while I was offline. You know how I feel about his work.

His death notices appear in a perfunctory, minimalist Washington Post obit; in a Centreville community paper; in Harry's Bull Runnings; in Tom Clemens' blog here and here; and in Civil Warriors under Ehan Rafuse's signature here. Harry has some recent photos on his site.

The scarcity of obituaries is ridiculous and a good index of the low, corrupt standards of Civil War history and the broader ACW readership. Harsh's Maryland campaign trilogy self-conciously sets a standard for campaign histories that very few books will ever reach, even over infinite time, no matter how many monkeys find publishers, grab typewriters, and begin flailing.

Over the decades, I noticed that no book touching substantively upon McClellan failed to cite Harsh's essential essay, "On the McClellan-Go-Round," which probably earned him more recognition than his opus.

He died at a chronologically young age (in his sixties). That is a warning to us all to complete our projects. His planned telling of the Maryland Campaign from McClellan's perspective, thus, is not done to my (selfish) regret. Perhaps, given the paucity of obits, it would have made no difference historiographically at this point, although it would have delighted the "real audience" of deep readers.

This was an author who respected the deepest readers and showed it in his research, insights, and prose. I wish that audience were larger than it is so that he could have his due.

The vandals

There are books in your library in the category "what would you do without it"?

Rowena Reed's Combined Operations in the Civil War is irreplaceable to me. It's deep; it's scholarly; its opinions are pervasive, rich and pungent; it's a powerful invitation to change one's whole view of the war. It's re-readable and referenceable. It's everything I want from a classic.

So what kind of person would assemble a potluck collection of forgettable essays on the same subject and then title it Union Combined Operations in the Civil War? On April 10 such a book was issued. Shame on Fordham University Press.

It's amazing to me the contempt in which Civil War readers are held.

Here's a hack who cranks out at least one naval retelling a year who assumes he can steal the title of Reed's famous book, then wave it in the face of his own reading public with no one the wiser.

What the hell do they know beyond what I tell 'em?

Meanwhile, over there is Dave Eicher in Longest Night who thinks he can take Thomas Livermore's numbers and losses, decimal for decimal, and none of his readers will notice.

Over yonder is Jean Smith in Grant cribbing great long passages of Grant narrative from blockbuster books without expecting the ghost of a chance of the reading public noticing the duplication.

And most glorious in his always eminent prize-worthiness, here is the greatest living McPherson lifting whole sentences out of Archer Jones without a citation for his portrait of Lincoln as commander, then taking key concepts from Clausewitz, spotlighted by Jones and Hattaway, without mentioning Clausewitz. And indeed, what McPherson reader ever on his life would have read Clausewitz or Jones or Hattaway and Jones?

Do you see the pattern here, BTW? It is the Centennialist who seems most likely to defame and insult his own readers. It is the consolidator, the summarizer, the repackager "at work."

And we continue to reward them.

How is this different than knocking over Civil War gravestones?

"Concentrations in time"

In his 1992 classic, Civil War Command & Strategy: The Process of Victory & Defeat, Archer Brown explored (the properly credited) Clausewitzian idea of "concentrations in time" as it developed in the Civil War*.

Brown says there,

Concentration in time early became a firm principle of Union strategy... The first attempt at concentration in time came in the winter of 1862, when Lincoln issued his order for all armies to advance on the same day.

I want to explore this mistake at length, particularly as it pertains to Winfield Scott's first and second coordinated offensives of June 1861. Will post the first installment this weekend.

*James McPherson's taking of this material from Brown and Clausewitz without credit was explored in an earlier series of posts.

Federal strength at Gaine's Mills

Looking through my notes made years ago, I found this letter from Randolph Marcy to his son-in-law dated July 5, 1865 (from reel 36 of the microfilmed Papers of GBM.) They address each other, BTW, as "My Dear Marcy" and "My Dear McClellan," which is endearing, don't you think?
Marcy, of course, was chief of staff of the AoP and this exchange is private, after the war, and meant for no one's eyes but their own:

I have just read Lee's report of the seven days fighting in which he speaks well of you but makes several misstatements. For instance he says that we had greatly superior numbers on the East side of the Chickahominy at Gaines Mill when one of their own writers admits that they had 67,000 after Jackson came up, while we only had, if I remember right, about 35,000.

This is one of those odd instances where memory roughly corresponds with ACW "common knowledge."

Wikipedia gives the number of Federals engaged as 34,214 and Rebels as 57,018: David Eicher's Longest Night is given as the source. If you go to Longest Night, the numbers are unsourced and appear on page 288 of the hardback. You would think, readers would want to know where numbers come from but his notes address other matters than strengths and casualties.

But the deep reader recognizes these as exact matches for Livermore's estimates (Eicher gives them as facts) from the Numbers and Losses. Oddly, Livermore is not mentioned in this work except as the author of the memoir, Days and Events, without reference to Numbers and Losses - and Eicher repeatedly uses Numbers and Losses throughout his work without crediting Livermore. The result is what we have here: some chump posts them to Wiki as if they were Eicher's own calculations, none the wiser. Welcome to Civil War history, a brilliant field of scintillating scholarship!

Without digressing into Eicher's gross misconduct, it seems more interesting to speculate how Marcy's memory could line up so closely with Livermore's figuring.

I think we have to understand that as chief of staff, Marcy's was a muster roll view of data, just as Livermore tweaked that same data to come up with his own totals.

I think the federal number here is high unless absentees and shirkers are accounted for, but that is hard to do on a rule of thumb or estimate basis. For that, anecdotal evidence is needed and anecdotal evidence does not always filter up to HQ.

Well worth a ponder.

Listen to the speakers

Russell Bonds is coming to the Gettysburg-Sharpsburg area this weekend but I lack details. Tom Clemens is speaking on Ezra Carman on October 10 in Hagerstown (details here). James McPherson, whom some of you love (tragically), will be guiding tours around Richmond in fall, though again, I lack details.

Is this not the sorriest event post ever?

Update: RB says, "I'm speaking at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Lancaster/Strasburg PA on Saturday night. Details here."

Northern Sesquicentennial boards

My (not very thorough) count of Northern Sesquicentennial commissions yields four - one each for New Jersey, Pennsy, Indiana, and Ohio. The North is lagging the South, as might be expected.

The commissions as formed may have different roles which are defined by legislatures or perhaps gubernatorial fiat. Advisory? Event organization? Fundraising?

As a former long-time arts organizer and festival producer, I can tell you that we of that ilk have only one criteria, one role, one function in mind for boards, commissions, and advisors. We expect money from them, a lot of money, fast, with as few strings as possible.

The idea of stocking a board with friends, family, politicians, colleagues, impoverished authors, etc. is nonsense from this standpoint and thus, to me, every Southern Sesquicentennial board so far formed seems to have failed my little arts test. I don't know anyone from my arts days who would not laugh at these boards and the amateurs who assembled them.

New Jersey

New Jersey seems to have opted for that now well-trodden Southern Sesquicentennial path. The best thing about their committee is Joe Bilby, whom his fellows have deigned to make webmaster of their site. Hey Joe: there's a picture that seems to be out of alignment. Fix it and thank you for your contribution to ACW history.

The committee chief is the chairman of the board of the state historical society. This is an inevitable appointment BUT seating him at the very head of the table is the surest sign of political neglect and ACW activist truancy. A vibrant ACW scene would never tolerate such a thing past the first meeting.

On the other hand, this whole effort has the smell of a self-organized unfunded project put together by the committee itself, in which case good luck to them. Sincerely! As an expression of official state interest, this board fails; as a private intitiative it deserves sympathy and support.

Ohio

I have been following the Ohio Sesquicentennial through Eric Wittenberg's blog, with again, the best thing about that body being Eric. The group appears to be formed without state funding which puts more pressure, I think, on forming a board of fundraisers.

Indiana

I give you the official website and ask you the favor of finding the board members on this url. In fact, write me and tell me this is not the most inert placeholder of an organization you have ever seen.

Pennsylvania

The governor of Pennsylvania appoints a heavyweight fundraiser to the Gettysburg Foundation and his Sesquicentennial effort, though coordinated and led by historical societies, has funding too: from the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The planning partners, as they are called, include several funded entities. This is not optimal but it is good, even if its key project seems underachieving.

p.s. Allen Guelzo has his own roundup of Sesquicentennial committee news here. He concludes (no laughing, please)

But the greatest challenge of the Sesquicentennial will be how to synthesize the Civil War's "old" story of battles-and-reunion with the Civil War's "new" story of race and gender.

One of the comments on this piece notes the creation of an ad hoc national "Coalition for the Civil War Sesquicentennial." Apparently it

... now includes fourteen institutional members, drafted a statement of purpose and management plan and recruited a supporting Council of Scholars (the nation’s pre-eminent Civil War historian James McPherson is one of three co-chairs). Our aim is to urge the Obama administration to create a presidential commission on the Sesquicentennial (to review the Coalition proposal visit http://www.aaslh.org/documents/CivilWarCoalition.pdf).

The map - what is it doing there?

Nothing dresses up a Civil War book like a gorgeous map or two but I often ask myself, what is it doing there? Is it functioning as a sketch, a diagram, or a true statement of dispositions, times, and routes?

A sketch - a rough visual display of information to help the reader locate the narrative in a spatial framework.

A diagram - an abstract statement of relative positions at relative times conveying an abstract sense of progress made over time.

A true statement - an accurate record of location, frontage, and movement across a map accurately representing roads, woodlines, streams as of that date.

The more detailed the map, the more uneasy I become. The responsible historian has footnoted in his narrative every odd fact, statement, or quotation needing support, but here I am in front of a visual display of hundreds, even thousands of pieces of information lacking a single note or explanation.

How did we arrive at that depiction of Cheatham's front line as of 2:00 pm?

As the editor of an ACW battle book, I would not have the guts to venture beyond diagram, as defined above. If I ran maps, I would run disclaimers where I decided the limits of information were.

On the other hand, a painstaking mapmaker could write quite an interesting book entirely about his maps and how they came together. Why hasn't that ben done?

The decisive battle doctrine

The advanced reader knows that you can get quite a good history book, in terms of research, new revelations, presentation, historic sensibility, and the thing can be completely wretched in terms of its military science.

This is a given in Civil War history where the reader must make such allowances or dial down the number of readable books to a very low total.

One of the easiest tipoffs that we are dealing with a naif is jacket copy that proclaims the decisiveness of a battle in a book covering that battle. I don't mind being argued into the position that a battle was decisive, but I cannot remember an instance where the author makes the effort. The author tends to make a few strong claims and then moves on as if case closed.

Author Russell Bonds is bothered by decisiveness run amok and wrote recently,

I started thinking--is there a more overused term than "decisive" for Civil War battles? You can Google the name of just about any CW battle along with "most decisive" and come up with a bunch of hits where people call a battle "the most decisive battle of the war." Often it's done, ahem, for book marketing purposes. . . .

Gettysburg? Of course. Too many to quote.

Antietam? Yep. (Castel: "probably the most decisive battle of the Civil War from a political standpoint.")

Champion Hill? Yes. (Foote, Vol. II, p. 372) ("there was fought what one western-minded historian called 'the most decisive battle of the Civil War.'")

Chickamauga? Yep. ("One of the bloodiest and most decisive campaigns of the Civil War." Cozzens)

Nashville? Yes (Stanley F. Horn, "Nashville--The Most Decisive Battle of the Civil War" - Civil War Times, 1964)

Sabine Pass? You got it! Decisive!

It may depend on your definition of "decisive" - do you mean that it decided the strategic outcome of the campaign? (Vicksburg). Or that it was really, really lopsided? (Nashville). Or some other criteria?

Article discussing the various definitions of "decisive" here . . .

We could excuse the authors if their book pitches got translated into dust jacket copy but there is generally continuity between the inside and outside.

As children, we were taught the significance of the Battle of Trenton in very precise terms: it restored the morale of the army and Congress; it enabled additional fund raising and recruiting.

The modern Civil War author by and large does not deliver that clarity. He has usually ingested, through pop culture, a deep and abiding belief in the (militarily) decisive battle and his writing is colored by this unexamined prejudice.

A second kind of error, influencing the first or standing alone, is that of making military evaluations exclusively through contemporary eyes. In this mistake, the author gives full credit to the military science and utterances of of the participants, as if history did not actually happen and we have nothing to learn from it. In Northern histories, this can take the shape of getting swept up in Lincoln's ignorant, barely intelligible opinions. In Southern histories, it can take the form of crediting Bragg's or Davis's critics.

The really useful thing to know about the Civil War is how it ended. It ended (a) because Davis could not establish a new capital and (b) because his cabinet could not get to Texas or Cuba set up a government. That puts contraints on "decisive," like it or not.

The question of decisiveness then, whenever it occurs before June 1865, is what outcome could possibly have brought our known war-ending events to occur ahead of their time.

Infantry doctrine

Have been immersed in infantry doctrine again for the first time in 40 years.

Civil War officers compensated for the lack of American doctrine by reading Jomini, McClellan's Delafield Report (Grant notably ordered it upon his colonelship), and Hardee's Tactics. This was not enough, for even where there are uniform, nationally approved and taught principles, consistency of views, aims, and results are difficult to obtain.

I was reminded of the fruit of American doctrinal poverty in the 1860s while reading about American infantry doctrines circa 1917. I think this little polemic about WWI era doctrine matches Civil War circumstances perfectly. It comes from a PhD dissertaion:

It produced infantry that attacked in linear formations of the decades gone by. It produced infantry that only knew how to attack straight ahead.It produced infantry unfamiliar with its normal supporting arms. It produced infantry willing to be killed in straight-ahead attacks because it knew no better.

This helps explain something to that tourist at Antietam who asked a tour guide (was it Mannie? I forget) "Were these people [the fallen] stupid or what?"

I can help here, because I myself was stupid and instinctively prefer stupidity in all things infantry.

In this recent reading, there was a shudder that went up my spine on recognizing my own training in the 1917 material. The gist of it is, at squad or platoon level, we were taught, doughboy style, ACW style, that job one was to achieve local fire superiority by bringing more rifles on line bearing down on the opposition faster than the enemy could bring his rifle fire down upon us. This was flavored in my day by including organic weaponry beyond just rifles, but it was the same principle. It was rooted in self-reliance, the weapons at hand, and any "easy access" auxiliary firepower that might be not too difficult to arrange; hence, the pervasiveness of this simplicity in the ACW, WWI, and Vietnam.

The imperative of (organic) firepower superiority is like a building block upon which other edifices can be built. It is linear. It is limited.

If the training and doctrine do not go far enough, then the basic doctrine of fire superiority is all that infantry is left with. They will be "stupid or what."

The human element, too is worth mentioning. I joined the Army to avoid the technical services (USAF, Navy). I joined the infantry to avoid the technical branches (artillery, armor, signal, etc.). My ideal was leg infantry and I was deeply annoyed at being assigned to a mechanized unit. Hated radios, codebooks, motor pools, etc. This is the human factor in infantry. We were, as a friend put it, "a proud but simple people."

Petain's immortal formulation, which Pershing so hated, is America's current Army infantry doctrine: Artillery conquers, infantry occupies. "Artillery" now refers to all centrally controlled and applied firepower. Fire superiority is a network-dependent orchestration of an insane number of external assets applied via GPS to positions satellite spotted, White House approved, and politically palatable.

I read about these kids calling in air strikes on snipers a block away and cannot relate. They call on surgically applied artillery: no part of my world. Drone aircraft: you're joking? "Force protection" - what the hell is that?

Mine was the stupid infantry, which helps me with my ACW reading. I feel an affinity.

Let's see, where were we

Ah, yes...

Amusing the children

Here's a stark sample of ACW event reporting we see all too often:

Civil War buffs receive treat at library

Local Civil War buffs are in for quite a treat next week. Cary author Martin Husk and historian Kent McCoury will both speak Wednesday...

The "adults" will amuse the "children." The children consider it a "treat" to be spoken to by authors and historians. (Never mind that they may be authors and historians.)

"Cute."

Do it for Purdy

Odd that we can save a battlefield but not a battleship. Or if you prefer, cruiser.

Where are all those optimistic, tourist-magnet heritage bonanza studies when you need them?

By Edward Colimore
Inquirer Staff Writer

The old warship has been part of Philadelphia's waterfront for 50 years and left lasting impressions on thousands of visitors who heard gripping stories of its role in the Spanish-American War.

Now the Olympia - the last surviving vessel from that 1898 conflict - could face an ignoble end as an artificial reef off Cape May if a new benefactor cannot be found.
The Independence Seaport Museum and the Navy have already checked with officials of New Jersey's Artificial Reef Program on the possibility of sinking the ship, once a source of national pride.

"Another option would be scrapping Olympia," said James McLane, interim president of the museum, which owns the ship and is adjacent to it at Penn's Landing. "But the Navy has told us that 'reefing' is better because it would allow divers to go down on it and would preserve Olympia."

The museum can no longer afford the ship's upkeep, McLane said. At least $20 million is needed to tow, restore, interpret, and endow the deteriorating vessel.
"We have a couple people we're talking to who might take the ship," McLane said, "but these things don't move with great speed."

The ship will be open until the end of September, then closed while its future is determined, McLane said.

"This may be the last summer for people to visit," he said. "They should come to see it while they can."

Another former Navy warship, the Arthur W. Radford, a 563-foot-long Spruance class destroyer, will be sunk by the fall to create a reef about 30 miles southeast of Cape May.

As for the Olympia, "we recognize the historic significance of the ship," said Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection. "It's not our call. It was an inquiry. The DEP is not endorsing this."

Countless tons of vessels, military tanks, railroad cars, and other materials have been reefed since the state's Bureau of Marine Fisheries began the program in 1984. The purpose is to provide a habitat for marine life, fishing grounds, and points of interest for scuba divers.

Talk of making the Olympia part of New Jersey's reef network disappoints ship supporters such as Harry Burkhardt, a merchant marine captain and steam-engine expert who is a volunteer on the vessel.

Burkhardt is president of Friends of the Cruiser Olympia (www.fotco.org), which is trying to raise money for preservation of the ship. The group got its nonprofit status this month and has begun receiving pledges and interest from individuals and corporations, Burkhardt said.

"We want to take over its ownership and operation," he said. "We have a long list of ideas, but we have to save the ship to implement them."

Burkhardt, 53, of South Philadelphia, said he would turn the Olympia into a self-sustaining museum with a living-history crew and education programs for inner-city children.

"I think what's happening is a total disgrace," he said. "The Liberty Bell has a crack in it, but we don't melt it down. The Statue of Liberty turned green with corrosion, but we don't throw it away."

The Olympia "was a symbol of America's might and freedom," Burkhardt said. "Now she's a symbol of negligence."

Concerned about the condition of the Olympia, the Navy sent a letter to the museum last May asking about plans to dry-dock the vessel for the necessary maintenance.
On the water line, small portions of the Olympia's half-inch steel hull have corroded to an eighth of an inch and must be monitored continually. Water leaks through the deck into the interior, causing further rust.

"We have cared for Olympia lovingly," McLane said. "We have put $5.5 million into it and spend money on it every day."

The Olympia was authorized in 1888 and commissioned in 1895. The state-of-the-art vessel led five other U.S. warships into Manila Bay in the Philippines on May 1, 1898, and fired shots in a battle to wrest control of that country from the Spanish.

Navy Commodore George Dewey stood on the bridge of the ship and uttered the famous words: "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley."

Under Dewey's command, the U.S. fleet destroyed 10 Spanish cruisers and gunboats in hours without losing an American life.

The Olympia spent World War I in the Atlantic Ocean, and brought remains of the Unknown Soldier home from France in 1921.

It was docked at the Philadelphia Navy Yard from 1922 to 1959, and was on display at Pier 11 at the Benjamin Franklin Bridge through the 1960s until 1976, when it was moved to Penn's Landing. Today, the vessel is the world's oldest floating steel warship.

"The Navy has been in discussions with the museum to come up with a disposition plan if they can no longer operate it," said Patricia Dolan, a Navy spokeswoman. "Any plan for disposal of the vessel - scrapping or reefing - will have to be approved by the Navy."

The thought of scuttling the naval time capsule - filled with paintings, photos, and artifacts - has raised the ire of historians.

"It will be a national disgrace and major embarrassment for Philadelphia and Pennsylvania if Olympia is disposed of by scrapping or being sunk off the coast of New Jersey," said naval historian Lawrence Burr, who has produced documentaries and written four books, including U.S. Cruisers 1883-1904: The Birth of the Steel Navy.

"Neither the Spanish navy in 1898 nor the German navy in 1917-18 was able to sink Olympia," he said. "It will be ironic if the State of New Jersey is able to sink this unique historic warship that has been in the care of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania for over 50 years, and who have benefited from its role as a tourist attraction. . . .

"If sunk, she will only be seen by a small elite who are able to dive, with the risk that she will be plundered for souvenirs," he said.

Also expressing disappointment was the nonprofit Theodore Roosevelt Association in Oyster Bay, N.Y. Congress chartered the group in 1920 to perpetuate the legacy of Roosevelt, who was assistant secretary of the Navy before the Spanish-American War and ordered the Olympia furnished with extra coal so it could be sent to the Philippines. Roosevelt resigned from his office and served as a colonel in the Rough Riders during the invasion of Cuba.

The possible sinking of the Olympia "is an outrage," said Howard Ehrlich, executive director of the association. "You would think veterans groups would get together and lobby the Navy to save the ship."

Even sinking the 5,600-ton ship would be costly. Because of the ship's 211/2-foot draft, the basin where it is berthed would have to be dredged so the vessel could be moved to dry dock. There, it would be structurally reinforced so it could be safely towed down the Delaware River to the reef location.

"No decision has been made," McLane said. "This is not what we want to do. In these tough economic times, everybody is forced to make tough decisions."

Tough economic times - but the $20 million needed to rehab the Olympia is exactly the amount allocated in the new state budget for an Arlen Specter library and a John Murtha "Center for Public Policy." And check out this roster of multimillion dollar heritage and development projects. Tastycake factory - yeah, sure.

What we have here, son, is a failure of heritage tourism.

The Olympia was enough of an attraction to draw me in the past, first visit in '72 or '73. And I hadn't even known of Gilbert H. Purdy:

Seaman Gilbert H. Purdy was a fixture in the U. S. Navy. He served in the navy before the Civil War, left the service only to fight in the artillery at the Civil War battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. He rejoined the navy in time to be manning the guns of the KEARSARGE against the Confederate cruiser ALABAMA. He again left the service, only to return to serve aboard OLYMPIA at the Battle of Manila Bay.

Adm. George Dewey - was he on the Kearsarge with Purdy?

During the period 26 April 1861, until 30 August 1867, he [Dewey] had consecutive service on USS Mississippi, USS Brooklyn, USS Agawam, USS Colorado, USS Kearsarge, USS Canadiagua, and again USS Colorado. [...] Took prominent part in the operations of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, under Admiral Farragut. First Lieutenant of USS Mississippi in attacks on Forts Jackson and St. Philip, capture of New Orleans, and Battle of Port Hudson. Commended for gallantry, judgment and skill in action between Mississippi and enemy's forts at Port Hudson, and the rescue of the crew from the burning ship when set on fire by the enemy's shot. Participated in attacks on Fort Fisher, 24-25 December 1864 and 13-15 January 1865.

Dewey and Purdy make quite a pair. They were stellar Civil War veterans with remarkable records. If we're not going to do this for Dewey, can we do this for Purdy?

Or shall we celebrate the Sesquicentennial with a reef?

Painting top: Purdy, standing, talking to salts on the SS Mohican, 1888. Purdy here is 60 and it's 10 years to go before his (and Dewey's) battle at Manila Bay.

(Hat tip to honorable Mishiko San.)

Collecting images

If the Lincoln business is history, this makes no sense.

If the Lincoln business is a cult, this makes plenty of sense.

People interested in familial images have lost the thread. They are in reliquary territory.

Shown: reliquary of Charlemagne. He was historical and he was cultic.

They didn't have photographs back then but they did the best they could.

Rufus Barringer

General, brother-in-law to the famous (x2), Republican, ostracized Presbyterian: who remembers Gen. Barringer?

Heritage tourism for realtors

Mitch Hagmaier writes from Pennsylvania:

I had a guy try to sell me a house by claiming that the space under his detached garage might have been an Underground Railroad hidey-hole. I told him that somebody across town had already gotten ahead of him & put up a plaque on their alleged UR station-house. I didn't buy the house in the end, but it had more to do with the disastrous state of its foundation than the root cellar he was on about.

As every school child in America knows, slaves often stole the master's automobile and then hid under free state garages. A recent study shows master preferred Packards where slave ownership was 100 souls or fewer. On the really large plantations, master drove the Duesenberg.

p.s. I think the guy with the plaque risked scaring buyers with potential historical property restrictions.

It's official: he's a "rock star"

Aside from Larry Tagg, rock stars have little to do with history. The columnist may be doing Bearss a disservice here.

Stand by for bad history - or not

The McChrystal affair had me quaking in my ACW boots. Expected that hack newspaper writers would lie in wait behind every bush to whack me, an innocent newspaper reader, with their half-baked McClellan firing memes.

Surprisingly, the cop who kept order was none other than Goodwin, driving the NYT patrol car. She's not an honest cop, but her baton seems to have kept the riffraff in line.

AP juiced her stuff up:

Abraham Lincoln swallowed the preening and nasty behavior of the North’s top general, George McClellan, which historian Doris Kearns Goodwin pointed out included references to Lincoln as “the original gorilla.”

ABC chose a pensive, biblical image, the ghost writer for Stephanopolous blogging thus:

But my hunch is that Doris Kearns Goodwin has the most influential take of the day. She asks “what would Lincoln do?” The answer? Turn the other cheek to McChrystal’s “insolence” and focus on the task at hand: fighting this war.

The analogy at hand now becomes that of Truman/MacArthur, "the firing of McClellan" having been taken off the table by this "eminent historian."

Don't buy stock in the "trials of Lincoln" meme; you would never want to work for the man. This is, however a step up from the super-compressed GBM firing image most Americans seem to carry around with them.

A couple of words are also in order about the NYT piece. Forgive me, if you know this already:

(1) There were no "breaches of protocol." As Tom Rowland pointed out 15 years ago, the only evidence we have that Lincoln was once snubbed by a retiring McClellan is John Hay's word - nothing else.

(2) The term "original gorilla" was a Stanton catchphrase for Lincoln. It's use, if ever it was used by McClellan, would be an ironic allusion to Stanton's measure of the man. Trouble is, there is no evidence McClellan ever used the term publicly or in correspondence with his wife. It is scrawled in a notebook.

(3) All of Goodwin's "bad behavior" examples relate not to behavior but to sentiments discovered in a notebook. "McClellan's behavior" is a durable construct fabricated to serve wartime political purposes.

I don't think a prizewinning author could understand such distinctions but I hope the readers of this blog do.

Take a stand against co-mingling!

James McPherson makes the case against a Gettysburg-area casino using language from his early career as a race relations historian:

What we think of when we think of Gettysburg is that it is part of a great trauma in the United States that ought to be respected, not contaminated, by this kind of business ... Those people coming to the area to see the battlefield will be commingled with those engaged in the mindless jerking of handles of slot machines. It's bizarre and wrong.

Give Freud some credit, people.

Richard F. Miller

Was browsing at lunch in Borders and saw Harvard's Civil War had been released in paperback and was selling out at a Virginia store. Good for author Richard F. Miller!

Afternoon toil was followed by a drive home, coincidentally listening to the audiobook The Education of Henry Adams, marvelling at the Harvardian Adams' review of the British intervention threat of September - November 1862, comparing his memories in the U.S. legation with the documentation that emerged postwar. ACW historiography at its very best.

Got home, got an email tip that Richard has a blog, saw that he had a post on Petraeus.

As Shakespeare or Milton or Chaucer once noted, How 'bout them apples?

My view of Petraeus differs from Richard's - I see him as the captive of a corrupt, bloated, broken system, one that he did not try to reform by leveraging the prestige of his Iraq service. This could be a harsh read - after all, his deadliest arch-enemy, Gen. Casey, still runs the army and is his boss. (Bumper sticker idea: "Ask me about my deadly, arch-enemy boss!")

Daily Beast had an excerpt today on Petraeus's commissioning which helped me focus a long-simmering general resentment. Thank you, Beast.

After my commissioning in the infantry, my rank was backdated by the Army so that I would not outrank a certain West Point cohort, matriculating a week or two later. Petraeus was in that cohort. Not to pull a Joe Johnston or anything, but these matters have a strange power to irk. Good to have a specific face to associate with that irksome backdating. (Insert Chaucerian expletive here.)

Petraeus did an admirable thing before commissioning. He chose Infantry as his branch. This is a point that counts for much with me. Further, we, in that day as newly commissioned infantry officers, had the illusory and futile option of volunteering for Vietnam assignment ... to later be told that they didn't want infantry there any more. If he so volunteered for that then, even better.

I'll set aside my pettiness to pull for him.

Meanwhile, hooray for Richard Miller and for Richard's new book. And for compound coincidences like these.

Generals who faint

General David Petraeus was in the news in mid-month when he fainted during a CCW-type of hearing.

The thin, youthful-looking general is a documented fitness buff, doing multiple runs per day and other strenuous exercise. (Bumper sticker seen on the car of a marathon runner today: "My sport is punishment in your sport.")

General Petraeus will be 58 in November. General Mansfield was 58 when he was killed in battle. Mansfield, shown right, had not fainted up to that point, at least not on the record. He is the oldest looking general I have ever seen. The Civil War reader, first encountering Mansfield, asks, "What the hell?" The newspaper reader, encountering Petraeus, thinks "How youthful and fit."

Petraeus and Mansfield. One slogs around all day in Maryland or Virginia mud, heat, and frost in heavy boots and wool clothing as a kind of daily fitness program; the other mans a desk in Floridian air conditioned comfort between inspections, briefings, and rounds of self-imposed exercise.

None of this is intended to slight Petraeus but to make the point that one can run, jump, exercise, whatever, and it will not change that one is 58 years old. Fainting or worse are possible. Forget about 60 being the new 40. Mansfield was remarkable - exceptional - and no basis for broad army policy.

Joe Hooker was our fainingest ACW general but his faints were accompanied by blood loss and concussion. Remember how you thought he was a geezer in the summer of 1862 at 47 years of age? That's 11 years younger than Petraeus, 11 years older than McClellan.

And speaking of older generals, how old do you make Lee in the summer of 1862? He was 55, three years younger than Petraeus. Lee - another exception and no basis for policy.

In J.F.C. Fuller's book Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure, he names three pillars of generalship: courage, creative intelligence, and physical fitness and he attributes all three to "the attributes of youth rather than middle age." He does not find courage and creative intelligence among middle aged officers as a rule, and he would be dismayed at the current leadership of the U.S. military.

Under Petraeus, directing the Iraq war, we find Ray Odierno, 56. Under Petraeus, directing the Afghanistan war, we find Stanley McChrystal, 55. At the top, this is an army of Mansfields. We love Mansfield but is this a good thing?

If we look at the ages of Union field generals that we once considered "old," a comparison is interesting (all summer of 1862):

Hooker - 47
Sickles 42
Meade - 46
Kearny - 47
Butler - 43
Grant - 40

On the Rebel side:

J Johnston - 55
Jackson - 38
Beauregard - 44
Longstreet - 41

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, turns 64 in October. Army Chief of Staff Casey is 62 next month.

BTW, General George Washington wrapped up his war at Yorktown at the ripe old age of 49.

Old Union generals: now think of the oldest you can.

Scott was 75 before retirement. He got out of the way relatively fast. Mullen is not going to reach that standard, fortunately, nor John Wool's 77 (in the summer of 1861). Wool stayed around and, as Beatie shows in livid colors, spent the spring and summer of 1862 old man style scheming and fussing at McClellan.

Mullen is the age of Edwin Vose Sumner in '62. Whatever you think of Sumner now, your first reaction to him was that he was a freak of circumstances from whom little might be expected.

Mullen is a year older than the sedentary John Dix was in summer, 1862. Dix was valued as a political general who also commanded volatile military jurisdictions (Baltimore, New York). He was an exception by definition.

Fuller made allowances for age in peacetime leadership, suggesting some sort of organized transition to young generals in time of war. If that were even feasible, it could not happen because at the highest levels, this modern army leadership will never willingly leave peacetime cultural norms.

Fuller: "In war, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the evil effects of age upon generalship, and through generalship on the spirit of the army."

(Petraeus picture from an unidentified UK newspaper. They give out fewer medals there and seem intrigued by ours.)