McDowell-Franklin (cont.)

At the very end of President Buchanan's term, Montgomery Meigs made a political effort to have William Franklin replaced by himself as engineer for the Capitol dome. Meigs succeeded and Franklin was moved to oversee Treasury Department construction. This completed a cycle in which Franklin had earlier replaced Meigs.

Franklin's political lineage begins with his recommendation to West Point by neighbor (and Congressman) James Buchanan. He had a high level of political visibility working on the dome during the Buchanan Administration but seems not to have been at all politically active.

With the departure of Buchanan from government, Franklin seamlessly acquired a new, more active patron and collaborator in Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase. Franklin was always at hand while supervising construction at Treasury and in his vast assumption of military responsibility, Chase needed germane advice.

In his biography of Franklin, Mark Snell paraphrases our old friend Timothy Reese: "...within days after Sumter's capitulation, President Lincoln personally appointed the three man committee ... Lorenzo Thomas, Major McDowell, and Captain Franklin." This committee was to design a "new organizational structure" for the army. Lincoln put Chase in charge of this matter. This is the formal beginning of McDowell-Franklin, which would in no way be limited by a single task or charter.

Lincoln's patented outside-the-chain-of-command shenanigans appear here to be on full display and are worth a couple of quick remarks. Recall that the War Department was divided by Calhoun's reforms between an operational side, headed by the senior general, and a bureau side, headed by individual bureau chiefs. Army organizational design is here a bureau matter and by putting Lorenzo Thomas in the mix, Lincoln ratifies that publicly. Rather than another example of Lincoln's anarchy, this is a piece of good order, except for Chase's involvement. The anarchy follows the order, however, when Thomas absents himself from most or all of the meetings and when McDowell-Franklin becomes an operational planning center used by Salmon Chase for all sorts of activity "owned" by Winfield Scott.

There is a sketch of McDowell in Whitelaw Reid's Ohio in the War that includes a summary of the full-bore chaos in a nutshell. Where it says "McDowell" or "the major," substitute McDowell-Franklin:

The major was consulted about almost everything - about the calls for troops, the assignment of regular officers, the number of generals needed for the new troops, the organization, pay - in a word, about the multifarious details of a complex military organization ...McDowell had for a time, perhaps, the most potent influence exercised by any of our military men.

Reid unconvincingly states that McDowell had the full support of Scott in this. This is true only insofar as the orderly appointments go, such as Lincoln's committee. Scott was a stickler for good order, chain of command, frequent communication from his subordinates as to what was going on, and acting within charter. In the wildly informal hurly-burly of the Lincoln Administration, McDowell, in his ever-shifting activities, should have been sending a stream of updates back to Scott and/or Cameron. There are none in the record and their possible existence is not hinted at by what is in the record.

McDowell-Franklin was a rogue unit taking on ad hoc assignments that belonged in military channels. It was an extra-legal, extra-military action team under the control of Salmon Chase occasionally consulted by Abraham Lincoln. McDowell-Franklin prototyped the long-term bypassing of General Scott and the Secretary of War in planning and executing military projects. If the secret plan to relieve Fort Pickens was the one-off prototype for this kind of subversion, McDowell-Franklin offered an institutional model.

Of McDowell's political origins we have written earlier. In sum, he was the relative of Republican Ohio Gov. Dennison, who wanted him to command Ohio's troops; he was a known Republican abolitionist; he was sought out by Chase from the moment of Chase's arrival in DC (Reid says); his general's rank was made by Chase. He was also a member in good standing of Scott's staff, unlike Erasmus Keyes who had fallen afoul of the old general.

Scott was a deeply committed Whig who surrounded himself with Whig or Republican officers like McDowell and Keyes. According to Reid, McDowell served on Scott's staff from 49-51, 53-56, 57-58, 59-60, again in 60, and in the War Department under Scott in 1861 until the time of McDowell's army command in Scott's second coordinated offensive. Scott, bypassed, showed a higher tolerance for the McDowell-Franklin circumventions than for McClellan's.

We come now to the question of the larger picture, the political context.

Lincoln, for reasons I do not understand, assembled a cabinet hostile to William Seward. Let's put that another way: his cabinet displayed the very odd characteristic of having no politicians (except Cameron) who benefitted from the money or support of the Seward-Weed machine and it included people hostile to Seward such as Blair and Chase. You have heard it said that Seward aspired to be chief of cabinet. This aspiration could not have survived the period of cabinet appointments when the writing appeared on the wall of Seward's future influence.

Gideon Welles recounts Montgomery Blair's assertion that Cameron owed his place in the Cabinet to Seward's intrigues and that shortly after appointment, Cameron switched allegiance to Seward's archenemy Chase. This would explain Cameron's willingly sharing workload with Treasury.

Seward began his period as Secretary of State with indirect control of the War Department, through Cameron; with control of military operations through his political protege Winfield Scott (Weed and Seward made the Scott candidacy for President on the Whig line); and control of the bureau system of the War Department through his military proteges Thomas and Meigs, who would make their wartime rank through Seward.

McDowell-Franklin represents the creation of an alternative military center outside of Seward's influence. The War Department bureaus are under divided influence: Chase's friend Cameron formally controls them but Seward indirectly controls them through military patronage. On the operations side, Seward's protege Scott formally controls military movements but Chase has set up an alternative to Scott, the McDowell-Franklin team to propose and eventually control movements. It is serves political ends through military work.

McDowell-Franklin

The McDowell-Franklin partnership is a major piece of Civil War history in which Civil War historians, rather predictably, have no interest. It is really too much to expect historians to analyze McDowell-Franklin when the field cannot produce even a single McDowell biography after 150 years.

As simple as it is to understand on the surface, the dynamic behind McDowell-Franklin poses a threat to Centennial history on many levels, as we shall see.

The team was assembled by Salmon Chase ostensibly to help him with duties he assumed from War Secretary Simon Cameron in 1861. (If you didn't know that Chase assumed War Department duties, please fire your favorite authors immediately, flag whatever they told you for further study, and stigmatize them as indignation may dictate).

We'll look at Franklin's and McDowell's respective roles in the team tomorrow; then, how they served Chase and Lincoln to the detriment of Scott and Seward; then, how they prototyped the McClellan-Lincoln relationship; finally, how and why Stanton's attempt to revive McDowell-Franklin on a new pattern in 1862 failed.

I would propose the natural point at which to divide the early war from the middle war is the point of death of the McDowell-Franklin system in high command.

More to come.

Please read about the Cameron-Seward-Chase nexus here as background.

Sketches of the McDowell-Franklin collaboration appear here.

The ahistorical and daily life

We all well understand "ahistorical' and the need to avoid projecting the modern into past motivations, actions, and analysis. This has natural limits: in Civil War readers you either see those limits where they don't belong or no limits at all.

How many readers who are politically self-conscious Democrats, for instance, read Civil War history with a personal bloodlust for absolute war and a curdling contempt for commanders who restrict military and civilian casualties and damage to property? Isn't that kind of separation within the personal very odd?

I found the same attitude in modern military men with whom I once served - they were Lee, Grant, or Patton in their reading time but meeker than Samuel Cooper day-to-day. On a visit in Germany once, I was stopped in a brigade HQ convoy for 45 minutes during a winter deployment because neither the commandant nor any of the staff could be bothered to leave the warmth of their cabs to walk up the line of vehicles to see what the hold up was (it was a sliding truck, easily parked at the side of the road for later retrieval). These fellows drank Civil War history from the golden spoon of Centennialism and venerated all the approved saints - none of whom seemed to have anything to offer anyone in modern circumstances.

The most public disconnect is in the effort to stigmatize vs. honor the Confederate historical legacy. The legacy folks seem to have one of those Civil War walls between past and present that allows one mindset here and one there. This drives the stigmatizers crazy. They have the opposite of a wall at work, with past and present all mixed up.

The stigmatizers are adamantly committed to the paradigm that the war was about one thing only, slavery, as was the South, and that any dissent from this view is immoral or ignorant. The good part about this package is that at root is an unwillingness to disengage from the original debate AND from personal moral convictions held in the present. The bad part is that a personal moral/political position has been disguised as an historical argument and injected into history discussions by people too agitated and confused to simply say "I cannot relate to a slave state," or "I would be embarassed to claim the history of a slave state, whatever the facts of the matter about secession, be they free trade, northern tyrrany, or what have you."

There was a film about Thermopylae a few years ago. I skipped it. I can't relate to Spartans. I know too much about them. People ask me if I have read Dostoevsky. I's not going to happen. He was a monster.

Those on the other side of the stigmatizers fool themselves when they say "Those times were different and values were different." Of course they were - and we're different and we cannot honestly assume the values of a past generation whom we never met. The legacy crowd is quite correct, however, whenever it says, "We are looking for ways to relate to this," or "You cannot characterize the motivations of secessionists with a single paradigm." Our legacy friends should likewise not disguise personal interest with historical rationalizations.

People round on me when told I will never read Dostoevsky. They give me all sorts of things I am going miss and why this person must be separated from his work. Good for them; I do listen. Let the CSA legacy crowd tell us the "why and what" of honoring in terms that do not require us to settle the cause of the war or the meaning of the CSA.

p.s. You see this same dichotomy in discussions of whether Lincoln was a tyrant or not. On one side, personal moral outrage is brought to bear on the actions and circumstances of this president; on the other side an eerie, amoral disinterest is deployed to defend Lincoln on historical grounds against what is patently personal revulsion.

p.p.s. Suspect I will regret this post soonest.

OT: A formula for winning wars?

The professionalism institutionalized by Grant, Schofield, and Sherman postwar is now positioned to take its next step into the future. From the Navy Times:

The U.S. military is too white and too male at the top and needs to change recruiting and promotion policies and lift its ban on women in combat, an independent report for Congress said Monday.

Shades of Spoons Butler and Dan Sickles:

Having military brass that better mirrors the nation can inspire future recruits and help create trust among the general population, the commission said.

This next passage is written as if civilians have never been appointed to rank:

... the report also said the military must harness people with a greater range of skills and backgrounds in, for instance, cyber systems, languages and cultural knowledge to be able to operate in an era of new threats and to collaborate with international partners and others.

Food for thought.

You die and they sell your stuff

And total strangers discover that secret room in your house:

Army of buyers anticipated at Shelby Foote's estate sale in Midtown Memphis

Pictures of stash here, with visitor guidance.

(H/T to Russell Bonds)

Citational virtue and vices: The Grand Design

Like most of you, I browse a book starting with the notes, evaluating sources. Donald Stoker's sources surprised me in The Grand Design. He's an industrious citer and that makes for a high level of reader discomfort as I'll explain shortly.

Lately, we've been concerned with phony citations. Really bad practice involves reading a secondary source, strip mining the secondary source's primary references, and then citing those underlying primary references as if they were the fruits of one's own labor or expertise. Can you name an author who does that? Two really big names come to my mind immediately.

In the blogosphere we deal with the problem of underlying sources through the hat tip. "Hey, have you seen this story?" (Hat tip to secondary source here.)

Donald Stoker's problem is the opposite; conscientious citation, well done in the narrative, with a thorough loyalty to secondary sources.

Many of the secondary sources make sense. He opens the book with Lincoln's departure from Springfield recapitulated from Shelby Foote and cites Foote. Well, okay, if you're going to do that but it's not Randall of Donald. The first three chapters of the book are also littered - densely - with all sorts of non-negotiable, imperious summations: :...none could see beyond their theatre," "Their education had not prepared Civil War officers to think strategically." This kind of sewer water is consistently cited to the secondary source through whose pen it first flowed. The author is saying, "I believe this too and here's where I got it from." Good. But there's too much of it by far.

Now, when we get into citing issues of facts, events, we do well to follow Sherman Kent's advice to Yale history students of yore: don't cite known or easily checked facts, cite little known or controversial ones. Stoker does not follow this rule and in attributing certain known facts, it is disconcerting to find these given as secondary sources in in the first three (set up) chapters.

For instance, McClellan dividing the western departments between Halleck and Buell - an unnecessary citation anyway - is credited to T. Harry Williams! Here is the entire passage being noted:

McClellan answered with reorganization. He broke the Western Theatre into two departments, placing the Deaprtment of the West under Henry Wager Halleck. The new Department of the Ohio went to Don Carlos Buell.

Amazing.

What was/is the author thinking?

Getting away from the background material starting with chapter four there is a blossoming of primary citations with secondary sources becoming rare. The fault here is perhaps overkill. I believe every single quote is cited and whatever else the author deems to be factual. Having adopted an overkill position on citations for the meat of his book, Stoker probably decided to apply the same draconian rule to the soft underbelly of his first three analytic chapters.

Or is this possible: that Stoker does not know what is important or not, what is interesting or not, what is controversial or not? Is it possible that Stoker is a relative newby to the field who came by everything he knows through McPherson, Williams, Catton, etc., and that he plunged into primary sources from their launching pads.

There are surprising gaps in both his knowledge and the sources given.

Here's an example of pointless excess in later chapters: "Grand Gulf became Grant's base of supply as he moved inland." That is the entire passage being cited. What reader is thirsting to know the source of this non-controversial bit? Does the author even know that the selection of this base generated a controversy between Grant and Sherman? He dives down to a letter in the Grant Papers that Grant wrote McClernand to prove that "Grand Gulf became Grant's base of supply as he moved inland." What's going on here?

This does not appear to me to be the action of a man in command of his material.

And speaking of references, a comical ignorance of or flippancy towards primary sources is on display in referring to Sears' published book of McClellan's wartime correspondence as "McClellan Papers" throughout. The McClellan Papers are stored at the Library of Congress. Sears' book could better be tagged "Wartime Correspondence" or some such.

There is also the matter of strength estimates, which are presented as specific numbers with an insouciance that is maddening. At the battle of Grand Gulf, "They [Rebels] numbered about 6,000. Grant had 23,000 and more coming..." This throwaway line is attributed to Bruce Catton! In the dense thicket of primary sources given in later chapters, secondary sources are revived to give battle strengths with lots of zeroes! (Nor are these secondary sources Fox or Livermore.)

The early chapters of the Grand Design tell us we are in for a rough ride, generous helpings of bombast, a dated and irrelevant narrative framework and more conclusions than Carter has liver pills, to coin a phrase.

Maybe it will be worth going through, nonetheless.

Fakelore from the National Archives

You were probably wondering how Joe Hooker became the all-knowing, all-seeing master of the battlefield that he was.

Or perhaps not.
Sorry to report that the National Archives has caught the spirit of public history/edutainment. This piece of nonsense is way too lighthearted for an archives blog and although it links to a source, the source is as preposterous as the story. The final touch, a nice piece of public history indeed, is the spurious picture caption: "It's possible Dabney contributed details to this map, completed in the days before the Battle of Chancellorsville."

It's possible Paul Bunyan contributed as well.

If the record itself does not offer enough drama and excitement, the public historian is free to just make stuff up, using artifacts as props to help legitimize fictional points. If just one child becomes interested in history as a result of this professional misbehavior, it will all have been worth it!

Public history is posing a real problem to our culture.

McDowell's headgear, revived

The improvised headgear of the Egyptian revolution (above) reminded me of our old series on McDowell's eskimo canoe. Seeing this Egyptian headgear is inspiring. McDowell's toppers, on the other hand, enraged people.

First glimplses here (please reread for the Franklin-McDowell content which we'll explore shortly).

Interesting speculation from Tim Reese here.

Case closed on McD's hat?

Topping off the series.

We used to have fun on this blog. What the hell ever happened to us?

The strategy of Jefferson Davis (cont.)

Having gone through the top level of Jefferson Davis's strategy, we need to look at the second level.

Joe Johnston can help us with that.

The advanced reader is well aware of Davis's toleration of Johnston's withdrawals. Johnston is not the only general who gives ground in this war but will suffice to illuminate a proposition. With Davis: military necessity trumps potential political gain. Davis generally will not override conditions on the ground in order to score political benefits, despite his overwhelmingly political orientation. But the exceptions test the rule.

We might argue a another principle for Davis: preservation of the force trumps political gain.

So, to Johnston - I have in mind the early war. His army has the incendiary political name of "Army of the Potomac." But Davis allows him to pull back from that same Potomac - losing political points - based on military considerations. Later, on the same basis, Johnston's evacuation of Centreville is tolerated (though the manner of it, with loss of stores, is not). In each case, Johnston's rationale is that McClellan can turn his position.

Recall also that Johnston abandoned Harpers Ferry to Patterson based on McClellan reinforcing Lew Wallace at Cumberland and then potentially turning his position.

If Davis had an issue with these military rationales for giving up forward (political) positions, he did not manifest these through public criticism or punishment of JJ.

At the Warwick line, we get closer to data that might allow us insight into Davis's political calculations. Davis believed Johnston must honor Magruder's prep work with a defense. But there were two sound military reasons to abandon the Warwick line.

(1) Johnston claimed the works were defective - the layout and engineering were wrong.

(2) Johnston and G.W. Smith argued McClellan could turn this line using the USN.

Here, Davis (supported by Lee) rejected (1) as if it were a matter of opinion while failing to recognize (2) at all. This is out of alignment with previous decisions.

Lee had weighed in for Magruder's works as good engineering. Davis - oddly - gave more weight to the Lee/Magruder view than to the views of the men charged to defend the works. He completely ignored the more critical (almost irrefutable) point made by Smith and Johnston that to defend Richmond, you had to get off the Peninsula.

To restate the Smith/Johnston argument: you could lose an army defending Richmond on the Peninsula. I cannot believe that Davis failed to grasp this point. Davis calculated that the political cost of further withdrawal was higher than the potential loss of an army. I believe that the Davis-Johnston-Smith-Lee dialog on the Peninsula certifies Davis's primacy of political considerations in strategy.

BTW, despite egregious Navy failures, McClellan made honest men out of Smith and Johnston on this question.

So, in the early war at least, Davis was unwilling to allow the enemy to approach Richmond beyond a certain point regardless of military cost. In other words, there was a tipping point in the tradeoff between political and military considerations whereby the political again became supreme.

The signals given to Johnston near Richmond were read by Union commanders who then and later overvalued Richmond's significance. Their mistake was to value it as Davis did in 1862. By April 1865, Davis understood that he did not need Richmond.

Just some food for thought...

Authority seeking

How much Civil War "consumption" is driven by authority seeking?

Audience member William Moore called Gallagher one of the best authorities on the Civil War.

“He gives a very balanced position based on his long study and research,” Moore said. “He’s nationally known as an authority on the subject and he speaks with great authority and enthusiasm.”

Civil War music - the doodah marches on

The attempt to reduce Civil War music to the abysmal level of 21st Century tastes continues. In this report from the Camptown Races, there's no trace of the music enlisted men paid to enjoy, North or South.

The strategy of Jefferson Davis

June 18, 1861, and Jefferson Davis writes his brother,

Troops are daily arriving from the South and I hope before long to be able to change from the defensive to an offensive attitude. It will be thus only that we can hope to check the progress of the war.

We'll return to that in a moment.

Our comedians, the punchline writers of Civil War history say Davis had no strategy. In a new book, The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War, Donald Stoker repeats one of these jokes out of the mouth of toastmaster T. Harry Williams:

...there is no evidence in all the literature that Davis ever at any one time gave extended consideration to the basic question of what the South would have to do to win the war.

This is 100 proof Williams with hyperbole in the service of polemic: "no evidence," "in all the literature," "ever," "at any one time." A man would have to be drunk to write a line like that - or perhaps be a blogger or a Usenet troll.

It is now 2011 and we need to be done with T. Harry Williams.

Unfortunately, Professor Stoker opens and closes the case for Confederate strategy with that one liner. This clarifies the subtitle, "Strategy and the U.S. Civil War" which must truly be read as "Strategy and the Union's Civil War."

A professor (even at the Navy's War College) might treat his readers as freshmen, but a book on Civil War strategy is designed for advanced readers who deserve better than wisecracks and a slamming of doors on deep subjects.

As much as he borrowed from the Centennial generation of pop historians, even James McPherson could not make a mistake on this scale. McPherson said, to paraphrase, that Davis had a strategy that was Washingtonian. By that he meant Fabian in the manner of Barclay de Tolly, trading space for time. He also called it an attrition strategy focusing on the material cost to the attacker.

As in so many things, McPherson was/is flamboyantly wrong. The credit to him is that he perceived a strategy at work. The only possible credit to Williams is that if you read his statement a certain way it can mean that whether or not he had a strategy, Davis left no record of a complete statement of it. McPherson has constructed a strategy inferentially and erred.

But this is to give more credit to Williams than the objects of his criticism ever received. Williams meant that Davis had no strategy and that is wrong.

The advanced reader does not need me to construct a summary statement of Davis's strategy. We all know that Davis was going to defend the polity as far forward as feasible (the opposite of a Fabian strategy); he was not going to trade space for anything but blood; and he regarded the defensive as a temporary expedient until resolution could be obtained by offensive acts.

In the letter to his brother, Davis laments Virginia's lack of unity compared to the cotton states and muses that with a resolute Virginia, "Perhaps we might now have been contending for the bank of the Susquehanna instead of retiring from the Potomac."

Davis defends far forward. He looks for circumstances allowing "an offensive attitude." His calculations are Clausewitzian: political, political, political.

His forward defense is to stablize polities and local resources while minimizing political damage. His opportunistic offensives are to inflict polictical damage. Read his writings - they harp on teaching the North [political] lessons.

Everywhere the North gathers a force, the South gathers a counterforce. This is no accident. This is not trial and error. This is design. The opportunity to adopt an "offensive attitude" requires a force and the force must be forward.

Until Bull Run, Davis has no yardstick by which to measure political damage to the North. After that and the Trent affair and Ball's Bluff, Davis may have misjudged the strength of political effects. His main source of information would have been the press. The Republican press reaction to this or that failure was often out of proportion to the military significance, presenting the illusion of inflated political bonuses to the peace account.

The Rebel president - or anyone, even Lincoln - could easily be misled by this feedback loop. If the nonsense of Ball's Bluff can trigger a CCW, imprisonment of Stone, a witchhunt against McClellan, a Congressional vetting of the officer corps, imagine what contending for the Susquehanna might produce!

The Maryland Campaign is the first testing of the political basis of Davis's strategy. It comes in mid-war. The invasion of Pennsylvania comes a year later. The basis of Davis's strategy is in both cases invalidated. He is able to psychologically sustain the basis of his strategy only by investing in a hypothetical outcome to the 1864 elections, misled again in the same way Lincoln is misled by Northern newspapers.

The object was to hurt the enemy politically as opportunity arose. The object was to prevent political hurt on the CSA while awaiting those opportunities. This is not a sophisticated strategy but it is strategy.

This would have made the basis of an interesting study. We got a cheap laugh instead.

Take my Williams. Please, take my Williams.

Army ethos

A staple in Civil War reading is the author's attempt to rouse reader indignation against the professional ethic of this or that general.

The historical fact not generally known is that the U.S. Army did not and does not have a stated professional ethos.

Matthew Moten, who wrote a necessary book on the Delafield Commission here urges the Army to finally sit down and develop one.

That Lincoln crowd is a smart crowd

Come walk with intellectual giants. Help honor the memory.

The controversy du jour: Lincoln, colonizer

Better wrangling fodder than black Confederates...

Rosie catches a break

Equestrian statue planned for Rosecrans. Meanwhile, his re-enactor looks more like George Thomas.

Entropy flows downhill

As the USA lacks a national Sesquicentennial organization, Georgia lacks a state Sesquicentennial organization

No thank you, Harold Holzer

Update: Added NO to the post title. Picked up the book in B&N tonight. It's a complete mess. Content is chronological, editorials are mixed in with reports, bewildering typography, no editing whatsoever. The dross is overwhelming.

** Start original post **

Holzer's unstoppable repackaging instincts led to the issue (in October) of contemporary NYT Civil War coverage in book form under his name.

This is hugely important for the Civil War readers still unaware that every mainstream "scholarly" insight currently in play in the field of ACW history originates in the partisan Republican press of the war. Every one.

If you want a Pulitzer today, regurgitate Republican editorials from that time.

The only question is whether this is the best single source to demonstratethat point. I'll pick one up and let you know. We'll do a tour of stolen memes.

A token plan (conclusion)

In this post, you saw what historians are linking to when they cite an Anaconda plan or strategy.

In the first Anaconda artifact, Scott refers to an operation involving seaboard blockade and a Mississippi blockade made up of naval posts. He alludes cryptically to waterborne transport of armies without elaboration.

In the second artifact, Scott he says the river and seabord blockade can be supplemented with an army movement on steam transports to clear the Mississippi down to the sea. He asks for input on details for this projected operation.

In the third artifact, Scott adds a modification to his idea, that of having a clearing force divided between riverborne and roadbound columns and the columns originating on the Ohio.

These represent three different concepts. To those who believe in an Anaconda plan or strategy, I say, you have three if you have any. To use a single source to footnote your reference to an Anaconda plan or strategy is to say THIS is the Anaconda. But at different points in time, Scott entertained different operational schemes.

Scott himself refers to the third incomplete sketch using the word "plan" and the newspapers and historians have followed suit. Even the most basic operational elements have not yet been defined making this (in fact) a non-plan.

Just as careless, hurried historians could be misled by Scott's own use of "plan," so they could also be misled into thinking there is a strategy through the presence of what looks like a strategy statement in the second artifact:

... so as to envelop the insurgent States and bring them to terms with less bloodshed than by any other plan.

This is an ill-defined operation proposed against a speculative end state to gain bargaining chips in a future negotiation. This is not a strategy, not even an operational objective.

Here is a strategy statement: Displace, destroy or capture the rebel government. Here is a statement of operational objectives: Capture Richmond. Another strategy statement: Prevent communication with the outside world. Statement of operational objectives: Occupy these X points on the rivers and coasts.

What Scott gives out is a non-strategy statement: Establish a blockade to [experience a possible political outcome].

Remember the context. On April 27, McClellan proposes a violent operation to overthrow the seat of Confederate government. Scott responds with a counterproposal to mount an operation to strengthen future negotiating positions. Scott forwards both items to Lincoln in a way that presumes Lincoln's favor. In a separate letter he tempts McClellan with leadership of the hypothetical river operation. He tries to entangle McClellan in the planning for such an operation. Out of these gossamer threads, history spins a complete plan and a famous strategy.

What is unsaid in Scott's statement is the presumption of future negotiations. Whence this faith? From his political mentor and patron William Seward, chief of Cabinet, a believer in negotiations. Why might Scott presume Lincoln's favor for his views? He might be getting Lincoln second hand through Seward's filter.

Scott is in fact developing a "product" for Seward, who sees himself leading peace negotiations; Scott is selling goods designed for Seward to Lincoln (and McClellan). That is the "Anaconda plan" or "Anaconda strategy" in a nutshell. Chips and tokens for sale or trade with no plan or strategy in sight.

A token plan (cont.)

This post lays out the scraps of information cited by historians in their references to an Anaconda Plan or strategy. When you see Anaconda plan or strategy footnoted, is this what you expect to see in the look-up? Or has the author fobbed off a token of his "respect" for you as a reader?

[1] This first item is occasionally cited in conjunction with either of the next two. The letter on which this endorsement appears was sent two days after McClellan assumed command in Ohio. Scott is calling Lincoln's attention to McClellan's incompetence as a planner. The last two sentences contain material construed to be Anaconda related.

[Indorsement.]

MAY 2, 1861.

As at the date of this letter General McClellan knew nothing of the intended call for two years' volunteers, he must have had the idea of composing his enormous columns of three-months' men for operating against Nashville and Richmond-that is, of men whose term of service would expire by the time he had collected and organized them. That such was his idea appears from a prior letter, in which, although, the Ohio quota is but about 10,000 men the general speaks, I think of having 30,000 and wants arms, &c., for 80,000. Second. A march upon Richmond from the Ohio would probably insure the revolt of Western Virginia, which if left alone will soon be five out of seven for the Union. Third. The general eschews water transportation by the Ohio and Mississippi in favor of long, tedious and break-down (of men, horses, and wagons) marches. Fourth. His plan is to subdue the seceded States by piece-meal instead of enveloping them all (nearly) at once by a cordon of posts on the Mississippi to its mouth from its junction with the Ohio, and by blockading ships of war on the sea-board. For the cordon a number of men equal to one of the general's columns would probably suffice, and the transportation of men and all supplies by water is about a fifth of the land cost, besides the immense saving in time.
Respectfully submitted to the President.

- WINFIELD SCOTT

[2] This second item is referenced by itself or in conjunction with another of these three when the Anaconda is mentioned. The relevant content is in the third paragraph only.

HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY,
Washington, May 3, 1861.
Major General GEORGE B. McCLELLAN,
Commanding Ohio Volunteers, Cincinnati, Ohio:

SIR: I have read and carefully considered your plan for a campaign, and now send you confidentially my own views, supported by certain facts of which you should be advised.

First. It is the design of the Government to raise 25,000 additional regular troops, and 60,000 volunteers for three years. It will be inexpedient either to rely on the three-months' volunteers for extensive operations or to put in their hands the best class of arms we have in store. The term of service would expire by the commencement of a regular campaign and the [items?] not lost be returned mostly in a damaged condition. Hence I must stronly urge upon you to confine yourself strictly to the quota of three-months' men called for by the War Department.

Second. We rely greatly on the sure operation of a complete blockade of the Atlantic and Gulf ports soon to commence. In connection with such blockade we propose a powerful movement down the Mississippi to the ocean, with a cordon of posts at proper points and capture of Forts Jackson and Saint Philip; the object being to clear out and keep open this great line of communication in connection with the strict blockade of the sea-board, so as to envelop the insurgent States and bring them to terms with less bloodshed thany be any other plan. I suppose there will be needed from twelve to twenty steam gun-boats, and a sufficient number of steam transports (say forty) to carry all the personnel (say 60,000 men) and material of the expedition; most of the gun-boats to be in advance to open the way, and the remainder to follow and protect the rear of the expedition, &c. This army, in which it is not improbable you may be invited to take an important part, should be composed of our best regulars for the advance and of three-years' volunteers, all well officered, and with four months and a half of instruction in camps prior to (say) November 10. In the progress down the river all the enemy's batteries on its banks we of course would turn and capture, leaving a sufficient number of posts with complete garrisons to keep the river open behind the expedition. Finally, it will be necessary that New Orleans should be strongly occupied and securely held until the present difficulties are composed.

Third. A word now as to the greatest obstacle in the way of this plan- the great danger now pressing upon us-the impatience of our patriotic and loyal Union friends. They will urge instant vigorous action, regardless, I fear, of consequences-that is, unwilling to wait for the slow instruction of (say) twelve or fifteen camps, for the rise of rivers, and the return of frosts to kill the virus of malighant fevers below Memphis. I fer this; but impress right views, on every proper occasion, upon the brave men who are hastering to the support of their Government. Lose no time, while necessary preparations for the great expedition are in progress, in organizing, drilling, and disciplining your three-months' men, many of whom, it is hoped, will be ultimately found enrolled under the call for three-years' volunteers. Should an urgent and immediate occasion arise meantime for their services, they will be the more effective. I commend these views to your consideration, and shall be happy to hear the result.

With great respect, your, truly,
WINFIELD SCOTT.

[3] This last item is referenced independently or in tandem with one of the others above. Anaconda content appears in the last paragraph.

HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY,
Washington, May 21, 1861.
Major General GEORGE B. McCLELLAN, U. S. Army,
Commanding, &c.:

SIR: Considering that Cumberland, in Maryland, is not withing your command, and is under the immediate consideration of Major-General Patterson and the authorities here (all of us men nearer at hand), we are surprised at your repeated admonitions to the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of War, and myself to occupy that point, and I am still more surprised at your complaint to the Secretary of War against me that you are without instructions or authority and with your hands tied up. In reply, I refer to the communications sent you at the following dates, some of which, at any rate, you have acknowledged:

First. Letter of April 30, on learning you were the major-general of Ohio Volunteers. Second. Copy of letters of commanding officer at Cairo, of May 2, instructing him not to detain provisions. Third. Letter of May 3, giving plan of a campaign. Fourth. Telegram of May 6, in relation to regular officers of your staff. Fifth. Telegram of May 8, order to stop provisions at Cairo, &c. Sixth. Telegramof May 8, in relation to camp at Cairo and intercepting regular companies from Fort Randall. Seventh. Telegram of May 10, in relation to re-enforcing Cairo. Eighth. Copy of letter to Colonel Robert Anderson, May 15, in relation to volunteers in Western Virginia and Kentucky. Ninth. Letter of May 15, sent by Lieutenant L. A. Williams. Tenth. Telegram of May 20, stating that you authority was ample within your military department. Eleventh. General Orders, Nos. 14 and 19, defining the limits of your department, adding thereto Western Pennsylvania and Virginia. Besides which, your communications on the subject of ordnance supplies have been promptly referred to the Ordnance Department and attended to.

It is not conceived what other instructions could have been needed by you. Placed in the command of a wide department, with the quotas of three-months' men under you of several States, it surely was unnecessary to say that you were expected to defend it against all enemies of the United States, and it was not intended that you should make expeditions much beyond its borders without some great object of interest to the Federal Union to be suggested by you and approved here. Indeed, the thee-months' men were called into service mainly for defensive purposes, but permission would readily have been given to you to march into a neighboring State to countenance or to protect the friends of the Union, if you had presented a reasonable case for such interference. It is otherwise in respect to the greater of the long-term volunteers of your department when received, but as yet I am not aware that a single regiment has been presented or organized in your department. Out of these troops you will at the proper time replace the defensive posts occupied by the three-months' men, and hold the remainder in convenient camps of instruction-that is, near to wood, water, and cheap supplies, and to transportation by rail, canal, or river. It is suggested that these rendezvous or camps of instruction should consist of four or eight regiments each, and on ground either porous or slightly rolling. Larger camps soon exhaust the smaller supplies and comforts for too many miles around them. As a greater part of these troops are not expected to take the field much before the return of frost, they will, under good instructors, have ample time for the acquisition of tactical instruction and habits of discipline (obedience), without which they will not be equal to the expedition for which they are intended.
After desiring you to consult freely with the Governors of the States within your department on the best sites for these camps, I will here add a modifications of the expedition toward the Gulf of Mexico, alluded to in a former letter. I propose to organize an amry of regulars and volunteers on the Ohio River of, say 80,000 men, to be divided into two unequal columns, the smaller to proceed by water on the first autumnal swell in the rivers, headed and flanked by gun-boats (propellers of great speed and strength), and the other column to proceed as nearly abreast as practicable by land- of course without the benefit of rail transportation-and receiving at certain points on the river its heavier articles of consumption from the freight boats of the first column. By this means the wagon train the of the land column may no doubt be much diminished, but would still remain, I fear, so large as to constitute a great impediment to the movement. Would 80,000 men be sufficient to conquer its way to New Orleans and clear out the Mississippi to the Gulf? What should be the relative numbers of the two columns, and at how many points besides Louisville, Paducah, Columbus, Hickman, Memphis, Vicksburg, and New Orleans would the two columns be able to hold a close communication with each other? Of course much would depend upon the relations to the United States of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri. I ask your views not only on the foregoing points, but also as to the form, draft, tonnage, and armament of the gun-boats or tugs. Cincinnati abounds in the best information on all these heads. Again assuring you that you are likely to bear an important if not be principal part in this great expedition, and of my great confidence in your intelligence, zeal, sciene, and energy, I remain, very truly, yours,

WINFIELD SCOTT.

P. S. - Without waiting for the formal order of Secretary of War extending the limits of your department across the Ohio and the Mississippi, you will not hesitate to give any reasonable support (without comprosing your detachments) in your power to the friends of the Union in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri.

A token plan (cont.)

A propos of our strategy discussion, you might find Jomini's definition interesting. Mahan, who postdates Scott's education (BTW) gave his students the short and sweet version of Jomini: "Strategy decides where to act." This well suits our lazy historians and readers and one finds this often. However, the full Jomini appears below in all its elaboration. From the Art of War:

Strategy embraces the following points, viz.:—

1. The selection of the theater of war, and the discussion of the different combinations of which it admits.

2. The determination of the decisive points in these combinations, and the most favorable direction for operations.

3. The selection and establishment of the fixed base and of the zone of operations.

4. The selection of the objective point, whether offensive or defensive.

5. The strategic fronts, lines of defense, and fronts of operations.

6. The choice of lines of operations leading to the objective point or strategic front.

7. For a given operation, the best strategic line, and the different maneuvers necessary to embrace all possible cases.

8. The eventual bases of operations and the strategic reserves.

9. The marches of armies, considered as maneuvers.

10. The relation between the position of depots and the marches of the army.

11. Fortresses regarded as strategical means, as a refuge for an army, as an obstacle to its progress: the sieges to be made and to be covered.

12. Points for intrenched camps, tétes de pont, &c.

13. The diversions to be made, and the large detachments necessary.

This is not my litmus test for the Anaconda, it is offered here mainly to show how inadequate is the usage "Anaconda strategy" in a contemporary context.

A token plan (cont.)

The "Anaconda plan" does not refer to a document, as we have seen in the previous post. Nor does it exist embodied in orders or other artifacts that take shape during a planning process.

This "plan," whenever referred to, is just a concept, a couple of talking points. A military plan, written or unwritten, has operational and other elements that are missing here. To the newspapermen of the 19th Century, random thought experiments could platonically be composited by some invisible hand into a notional "plan" that exists hypothetically on its own plane, complete, perfect, or at least good enough for their readers then. It's not good enough for us now, and I would strongly caution writers and teachers in military schools especially to examine their consciences before referring to an "Anaconda Plan." This term has even less substance to it than the nonsense referred to as "McClellan's letters to his wife."

Again, I make the caveat that it is possible Scott had a plan per se and he presented this to newspapermen and that a story with proper plan elements exists in some archive undiscovered, just as McClellan's letters to his wife may yet someday be discovered. Meanwhile, let's follow the data we have.

This leaves us with the term "Anaconda strategy." Again, a strategy contains elements that are missing from our Anaconda record, the most important of which is aim or purpose. Scott's statements represent proposed operations to achieve unstated goals and effects. They are operational ideas lacking any kind of strategic framework. Example of an effective statement of strategy: we will end the rebellion by capturing Richmond and the CSA government there. Some will argue that this is not a strategy since it has left out the means, but I would accept this from defenders of the Anaconda as a strategy if the Anaconda reached that level of clarity. It doesn't. The Anaconda is the antithesis of strategy.

I will post the three most popular Anaconda citational texts in full late tonight so you can judge for yourself.

Assume Anaconda really is a strategy for a moment and ask yourself the next logical question: if a "strategy" is not implemented, is it a strategy at all? On a comedy record, Mony Python once asked, "Can a bee be half a bee, or must it* ipso facto half not be?"

Many Civil War historians vote for the bee equalling half a bee when they say the Anaconda was implemented over time as part of the unfolding war. I am on the *not* side. Strategy needs an actor, an implementor consciously applying it. Outcomes that resemble elements of earlier concepts are not strategies, nor are they vindications.

Most late war historians seem to take great pains to exclude analogies between McClellan's waterborne Richmond campaign and Grant's 1864 efforts - to the reader's detriment, I think, but that is neither here nor there. The point is outside of a contemporary report filed with the Prussian General Staff, no historian has suggested that Grant's activity in 1864 was a fulfillment of McClellan's plans. Some historians even take pains to distinguish overt correlations, such as the attack on Petersburg proposed by GBM in '62 from the attack made in '64.

The same reasoning should apply where there is a temptation to say that the Anaconda was fulfilled as the war progressed. The Anaconda was not a strategy, it was not a plan, and it was not fulfilled. Scott envisioned certain operations independent of specific outcomes and some of these were undertaken independently of his thinking to achieve results he never specified.

*it = the half bee

A token plan (cont.)

Let’s have some more fun with history. Please pull down any suitable ACW history you have and look up “Anaconda.” It tends to be indexed under Scott.

Go to the first reference and follow the end note (or footnote). You’ll find one reference given – at most, two. Collection permitting, pull another work and repeat the experiment. This is the neat part: you’ll again have just one reference (at most, two) but it/they may be different! My first three pulls yielded three separate single sources! Civil War history is a carnival fun house, for sure.

In this post, you’re going to get six references to the Anaconda, more, I think, than have ever appeared in one place in any work of Civil War history. At the end of this, you’ll be loaded for Anaconda.

Now, why would an author footnote this Anaconda business at all? This use of notation is out of line with historical practice (see addendum after the post). It baffles me why McPherson, Eicher, et al, were noting Anaconda and then, of all things, linking it to a single source.

Perhaps the author is telling the reader, “I am recapping information from this one source only.” Well, why would you embarrass yourself this way when the subject must be composited from multiple sources? Why call attention to lousy research?

If you want to footnote Anaconda, do as D.S. Freeman did on so many occasions; name all the sources, say how they differ or agree, and add whatever historiographic comment is appropriate.

On to the references:

(1) A recent history of Bull Run mentions the initial trace of the Anaconda taking form in Scott’s letter to Seward of March 3, 1861. If you look at the letter, it has a single remark about blockading ports if duties are not collected. This is not enough to mark the genesis of a more complex idea.

(2) A letter sent by McClellan to Scott on April 27 contains elements of a national strategy. Scott passes GBM’s missive on to Lincoln with marginalia critical of McClellan’s ideas. Scott’s comments run a mere 13 lines when printed out on 8.5x11” paper. The last two sentences propose a cordon of ships on the Mississippi and a seaboard blockade in lieu of McClellan’s proposals. This skimpy bit is cited by some authors as their second Anaconda reference given in addition to one of the substantive notes below. People who mention this source, however, miss an opportunity to observe that Scott’s last two sentences are abrupt in a way that suggests this topic was already known to Lincoln. The whole act of passing McClellan’s ideas on to Lincoln this way implies the rounding out of an earlier Scott-Lincoln discussion.

(3) Some authors cite Scott’s letter to McClellan of May 2, 1861 as their principal source. This letter runs to a total of four paragraphs. Just one paragraph outlines Scott’s broad conception of an advance down the Mississippi while the seaboard is blockaded. It lacks details or substance.

(4) Scott’s letter to McClellan dated May 21, 1861 is a favorite citation. This again is four paragraphs in length and only one paragraph contains elements of his strategic thinking. Scott here makes some suggestions and asks McClellan to (a) comment on the ideas and (b) offer specific details to round out the conception. Rather than representing a plan, this letter invites a discussion that could lead to a plan someday.

(5) Some mention that Scott shared his plans with newspapermen and that Anaconda was described in the press. A news report would seem to me to offer a more complete picture of this “plan” than the fragments of Scott’s own writings that are currently used. I have yet to see a specific newspaper reference cited by authors, however.

(6) Nicolay and Hay left an account of the Cabinet meeting of June 29, 1861, which is linked to Scott’s defense of the Anaconda by Detzer and the compilation Lincoln Day by Day. I don’t have N&H available as I write this, but it seems from the summaries that in the meeting, Scott proposed to start an army down the Mississippi while delaying McDowell’s advance into Virginia.

And there we have it; the skinny historiographical sticks on which pop history spins the china plates of its engrossing infotainment. Oddly enough, there is no plan on file, no memorandum in Lincoln’s or Seward’s papers, no preliminary orders, nor anything tangible to promote these scraps above the rank of concepts.

Even stone soup needs some ingredients.

On to the ideas next. Some correspondence will be posted separately.

Addendum
Sherman Kent’s Writing History was published in 1941, during the great Lincoln revival that presaged the great ACW book boom, and Kent, then a Yale historian, said this about the use of citations:

Many of the statements made in the text demand validation. The reader has the right to ask, “Where did he get that?” and the writer has an obligation to answer. The reader however will not question all the statements. The parts of the essay he will especially wish to have footnoted are these: (1) all direct quotations, unless obviously familiar; (2) quotations and paraphrases of documents or passages from sources, monographs, and other secondary work; (3) statistical material … (4) iconoclastic remarks … statements which at first blush seem improbable; (5) new ideas from the sources not found in the texts and monographs; (6) specific statements from newspapers… Facts of common knowledge … need no citation..

The closest match to our Anaconda citers might be (2) in which the author is telling us he is paraphrasing a single source and inviting us to compare the paraphrase with the source. This is still bad citation and bad history as the Anaconda does not sit neatly summarized in a single source (again, with the possible exception of an undiscovered newspaper article somewhere).

A token plan

The simplest matters in Civil War history are obscured. How was McClellan commissioned? How did Lee come to command the Army of the Potomac? When was Pope relieved of the Army of Virginia?

There is a miasma surrounding so much in ACW history and at the same time such a high demand for authoritative narrative that the result is a kind of compressed representation of knowledge. To go back to Baudrillard, we are fed symbols, simulations that do duty in lieu of underlying facts (whose reality is unknown to the general reader). Let me call these “tokens,” which is shorter than “pop history’s wooden nickels.”

Token: Lincoln restored McClellan to command after Second Manassas. Token: Halleck restored McClellan to command after Second Manassas. These two misrepresentations easily coexist in Civil War literature because the underlying truth is of less than passing interest.

“The Anaconda Plan” is this type of symbol – a representation of something that is not but which is agreed upon as a necessary fiction to advance the narrative. Hitchcock called certain story elements “Maguffins,” creations that served no intrinsic purpose but to advance the plot. The Anaconda advances the plot.

The tale of the Union’s Civil War needs an early war strategy. If there is one, it can then pass through a character-like arc: it can fail; be revived; triumph. Or it can provide literary continuity through reference to its elements at different points in the chronology. Or it can pour a nice draft of “what-if” into the reader’s cup.

To find a strategy, we must find something simple enough for the laziest, most ill-informed reader to understand. A military plan per se would be to complex, with too many moving parts: motives, means, ends, actionability. What we need instead are some thought experiments, notions sketched in letters, exploratory “high concepts” with nothing to them except the power to excite the reader’s imagination. This is good token material. This is “the Anaconda Plan.”

“Plan” and “strategy” are military words with common meanings, just as some medical jargon has common meanings. Reading a medical history, we don’t want to see “fever,” “psycho,” etc., used in a street sense; and yet Civil War history is rife with references to “strategy” and “plans” in the same sense that I have a “strategy” or “plan” to stop off for milk on the way home from work. This too is the “Anaconda Plan.”

The “Anaconda Plan” is less egregious than many other Civil War tokens, but it is misleading and annoying and worth exploring further .

G. W. Smith, biz book punching bag

"As Smith discovered, being a boss is not the same as being a leader."

"When faced with consequential decisions, most people would prefer to be more like Lee than Smith, but the reality for many can be just the opposite".

"Davis was lucky [at Seven Pines] to have Lee close at hand (Lee was his advisor) but what would have happened if Lee had not been in the role he was in?"

Is this the same Lee that let Smith fight Lee's own Seven Pines battle for him? The Lee who was mysteriously absent after his urgent appointment to command the Army of the Potomac? The Lee who interpreted Davis's take command immediately as "take command sometime in the next 24 hours after you have some quality time off"? Is that the Lee managers should emulate?

People well read in Lee material, help me out here. Is this not the ultimate hands-off manager, the delegator par excellence, the you-handle-this-even-if-it-leads-to-Gettysburg-Malvern Hill-Antietam-the-loss-of-west-Virginia, etc.?

On the other hand, Lee's Lost Order is a masterpiece in micromanagement.

How do we split the difference?

Let us not deny the management students their teachable moments. We can do better than to bash Smith.

Lee and Smith at Vera Cruz

In 1896, GW Smith recounted two anecdotes from the Mexican War involving interactions with RE Lee. Offered for "what they're worth," I personally find them rich, especially in light of Lee's "hanging around" behavior at Seven Pines and Smith's interpersonal "tone."

After the work upon the army gun battery, the mortar battery and the trenches had been fairly commenced, I was transferred to the naval battery and took my regular turn, with Captain R.E. Lee, and Lieutenant Z.B. Tower, in superintending its construction. I was in charge of the work the day it opened its guns upon the fortifications of the city, having relieved Captain Lee that morning. Seeing him still at the battery, about the time the firing commenced, I asked him if he intended to continue in control adding, "If so, I report to you for instructions and orders." He replied, "No, I am not in charge. I have remained only to see my brother, Lieutenant Sydney Smith Lee of the Navy who is with one of the heavy guns. My tour of service is over. You are in control; and, if I can be of any service to you whilst I remain here, please let me know.

There had previously been a difference of opinion between Captain Lee and myself in regard to the dimensions that should be given to the embrasures. The Chief Engineer [Totten] decided in favor of Captain Lee and the embrasures were changed and made to conform to his views. In a very short time after the firing began one of the embrasures became so badly choked that it could not be used until the debris could be removed. [...] Just after that incident, I asked Captain Lee what he now thought in regard to the proper dimensions for the embrasures. He replied "They must be made greater when the battery is repaired tonight."

- From Company "A" Corps of Engineers, USA, 1846-1848, in the Mexican War by Gustavus W. Smith

Did Lincoln become McClellan?

The current historiography depends heavily on depicting McClellan as a failed model corrected in the later war. In this historiography, Centennialism, the corrections are incremental, culminating in Grant's selection to top command. Centennialism then posits Grant's excellence in terms of his service to Lincoln; Grant's staying out of politics, Grant's alignment with Lincoln's military aims, Grant's doggedness, etc. If we add in the standard claims about Lincoln in the late war, a picture of oneness appears: Lincoln stayed out of Grant's business, Lincoln implictly trusted Grant, Lincoln was loyal to Grant.

From his first book, his PhD thesis in fact, Brooks Simpson has attempted to correct the Centennial view of the Lincoln-Grant relationship. I won't characterize his views: read for yourself. A lot of interesting Civil War history can be discovered and enjoyed once we realize the Lincoln-Grant partnership was not the cliche the Centennial made of it.

Recently, Harold Holzer imagined Grant's hardest hard war views and projected these onto Lincoln as Lincoln's own. Simpson objects:

In truth, Lincoln’s feelings about Grant’s losses in the campaigns of 1864 were mixed. As he told the general during a visit to the front in June 1864: “I cannot pretend to advise, but I do sincerely hope that all may be accomplished with as little bloodshed as possible.” The following month, he telegraphed his commander: “I do hope you may find a way that the effort shall not be desperate in the sense of great loss of life.” The next year, in a conference with Grant and Sherman, Lincoln again expressed the hope that the war could be ended without one more major battle. True, after the battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862 the president commented that fighting such a battle every week would eventually destroy the Army of Northern Virginia, showing that he understood the grim attrition of war. Yet he also had mixed feelings about the destructiveness of the conflict. On August 14, 1864, he called upon Grant to meet with Robert E. Lee to try to arrange “for a mutual discontinuance of house-burning and other destruction of private property.”

These remarks in condensed form encapsulate in reverse McClellan's perceived faults. Did Lincoln become McClellan over time?

Is it possible that the closer affinity or similitude was between McClellan and Lincoln?

Your daily Lowry digest, condensed

Harry Smeltzer notices that the book with Lowry's claim in it was endorsed by certain esteemed personages.

Brooks Simpson notices that said personages are outraged that historians other than their blurbing selves failed to check Lowry. This is a post not to be missed.

Morningside books on sale

Here's a link to their clearance sale.

Brooks Simpson's blog

Brooks Simpson has launched his own blog; good move, overdue.

A good use of Ford's

The idea of doing ACW and Reconstruction plays at Ford's feels right, doesn't it?

Lowry: Compare and contrast

The news is out, See:
Kevin Levin
New York
Brooks Simpson

Lowry was interviewed on Civil War Talk Radio in its early days; he uttered one of George Carlin's forbidden words IIRC, irking Gerald. I found him overconfident of his achievment, evasive, and without historiographic sense.

I read at least three of his books (see here, here, here). He was an author who consistently went farther than the material allowed.

It's not that he stretched the material, it's that he would pick his premise first - always from a dramatic marketing angle - then marshal the supporting data which would fail to measure up to marketing's promise. We're talking undergraduate history papers.

Lowry is an enthusiast with focus on the wrong things. He is a sensationalist. I think he could make himself useful as a compiler of information rather than as a narrative historian. That would be a better use of his energy, if he has any left after this scandal, and if anyone will trust such compilations.

Retroactive preservationism

The Army has ordered a halt to the resale of precious artifacts now in private hands that it junked some years ago. (By what authority they do so, I cannot understand.)

These now retroactively preserved artifacts - whose history the Army was uniquely qualified to appreciate before it scrapped them as unwanted trash - gained instant bureaucratic value this week when they were repriced by the howls of scandalized outsiders. Decibels of embarassment were converted into units of measurable historic significance for those custodians who had earlier behaved as vandals.

Again, as with the Walter Reed fiasco, the Army acted after a WaPo expose embarassed the brass.

To anyone who ever watched or read a Lovejoy mystery, the underlying operation is as basic as A-B-C:

...the company performing the renovation replaced the urns with modern replicas and was allowed to take away the originals...

If you know the value of things, renovation can be more than just a business: in the right situation, it's a racket.

I once had charge of a unique collection of high value paintings owned by the Army; the president of a certain republic imagined our Army high command appreciated presents of rare art and made many such. How dealers knew that these pieces were then in my custody I still wonder.

The most memorable offer I received was that in exchange for one of the paintings in my care, I could have any painting of my choice from the national museum. This immediately told me that any piece I might name was already a copy, or at least that copies were circulating of the whole national catalog as if they were the originals. Nice business, antiques and art.

Another example. The 9th Infantry does not exist as a regiment anymore and its artifacts were in the hands of the Second Division some decades ago; these included astonishingly elaborate dragon-draped silver punchbowls and cups worked by Chinese craftsmen at the time of the Boxer Rebellion. I drank from these a few times (my 1/17th Bn was brigaded with the 2/9th). I wonder if these heirlooms were replaced with replicas by now. A few weeks ago at a Christmas party, an antiques dealer amused me by standing back 10 feet from place settings calling out which items were plate and which were sterling. There's a punchbowl half a world away I wished he could have surveyed as well. The big threat to antique silver right now, he said, was meltdown for cash.

The inventory of its treasures is (or was) fragmented in the Army, with nothing like the property/inventory safeguards surrounding, say, firearms. The idea of the defense budget going to preserve these things - and they are not nearly all in military museums - is weird and their custody is spotty.

We need an inventory of the armed forces' historical and cultural artifacts; we need ownership of these to pass out of the hands of the armed forces. We will be astonished at the holdings disclosed, I promise.

Wharton's take on G.W. Smith

As we fogeys like to say, it's unbelievable what they're teaching kids these days.

BTW, has anyone ever seen or heard this one before:

Davis returned to the battlefield. The Union Army was rumbling in the distance.

Again, he asked Smith for his plan.

"Sir, I have no plan to defend the Confederacy," Smith infamously replied. "Do you have any good ideas?"

The "madness" of G.W. Smith, cont.

The question arises whether Davis knew he was employing a relapsing paralytic. The answer is in Jefferson Davis's papers:

Private
Nashville Tennessee, September 3rd. 1861

My Dear Sir,

I write to inform you that I arrived at this place last night from Lexington Ky. by private conveyance. I have resigned my appointment as Street Commissioner of the City of New York to take effect on the 8th. of this month. My object in fixing that day was to give time to Capt. Mansfield Lovell to get here before the fact of my resignation is known. [Lovell was Smith's deputy in NYC.] My wife is in Ky. and will join me here in a few days. I have left the North for the purpose of connecting myself with the South and sharing her destiny - On and after the 8th. of this month I shall be entirely free from all trammels, and will take an early opportunity to offer my services to the Confederate States in whatever capacity or position they may be most useful. I am glad to be able to say that I have entirely and perfectly recovered from my recent illness, at one time it was feared that perfect recovery would not take place for a year, if ever. But thank God I am now "all right."

The guns at Sumter would have brought me South at once if I had been in condition to do anything -

Please present my respectful compliments to Mrs. Davis and accept assurances of regards friendship and admiration for yourself from Yours Very Truly,

G W Smith

I have no doubt that Mansfield Lovell will be here in a short time. He has been like a caged lion.

Smith marked this letter in 1865 saying actually his acquaintance with Davis antebellum was "very slight." The editor of these papers notes that Smith had learned of federal arrest orders while on his way to Hot Springs, AR, for treatment of his paralysis.

It is interesting that Smith was a combat commander again within six months of Seven Pines.

The curious absence of Robert E. Lee, cont.

Scott Smart was moved to rummage through some books at hand and he posted his findings to the comments section of Harry's blog. I want to run his comments without interjections except to emphasize nothing in what follows contradicts Smith's account of how Lee took up his duties so long after he was ordered to take immediate command:

I looked at the WC Davis bio of J Davis, and he provides some info re Smith’s problems, but on first reading at least it seemed a little like the “Davis must have known” sort of thing. There were some notes so I looked at J Davis’ “Rise and Fall of the Confederate Govt v2″ and Davis lays out the timeline pretty clearly: Afternoon of 31 May he was riding along the lines with Lee and learned Johnston was out of action. He told Lee that he was to take command of the army and to make plans that evening (31 May/1 Jun). The next day (1 Jun) Davis returned to the lines and found Gen Whiting who pointed out he location of Smith’s HQ. Davis writes that he rode up to Smith to tell him he would not take command prior to Lee’s arrival to spare both embarrassment. It isn’t clear the exact embarrassment, but I guess subsequently Smith being next in seniority to Johnston, assumed he would be appointed commander and came to dislike Davis on account of this apparent slight. At any rate, Davis says Lee arrived some time later and met with Smith after Davis had left, eventually catching up with Davis and they rode together to Longstreet. Davis is clear that Lee is in command at this point. Davis makes no mention of the reason for bypassing Smith, but gives the impression that he had determined on Lee from before Johnston was wounded.

Postmaster Gen John Reagan “Memoirs” also was cited, and Reagan generally substantiates J Davis’ account. Reagan writes that when Davis (who Reagan had met) saw Johnston go by on a stretcher, he “at once gave General Lee verbal direction to take command of the army”. He then goes on to write that archives of the Dept of War show that Smith had command of the army for three days, but states this was in error and reflects the date of the written orders.

Now WC Davis gives some material on the supposed unfitness of Smith, and says that it was discussed by J Davis, W Preston Johnston and Ives the evening of the 31st which I imagine could have happened as after-the-fact of Davis’ order to Lee to take command. WC Davis references Preston Johnston’s letters to his wife which might be the place to look for comments on Smith’s mental or physical condition. At least what I could find showed no concern about Smith up to the point that Johnston was wounded, and if the timeline of J Davis and Reagan is correct, the decision was made before Smith could react to Johnston’s wounding. I have no idea of the reliability of J Davis or Reagan’s post-war writings though.

The "madness" of G.W. Smith, cont.

Russell Bonds mailed in some neat finds indeed:

Jefferson Davis to Winnie, June 2: (Papers of Jefferson Davis, 1862, p. 209)

:. . . Gen'l. Lee is in the field comdg. Genl. G.W. Smith has come in this morning sick, his old disease it is said."

OR, Vol. 11, p. 686-86, Smith's adjutant to Lee:

HEADQUARTERS,
Hughes' House, June 2, 1862
General R. E. LEE, Commanding, &c:

GENERAL: I regret to inform you that General Smith finds himself utterly unable to endure the mental excitement incident to his actual presence with the army. Nothing but duty under fire could possibly keep him up, and there is danger of his entire prostration. He goes to town to-day to gain a few days' respite. All business and all exciting questions must be kept from him for awhile. Major Melton will accompany him to prevent, while it is necessary, all such intrusion.

Since writing the above, I have again seen the general, and am pained to learn that partial paralysis has already, commenced. The case is critical and the danger imminent. I will add a line in a few moments in reference to general condition of affairs I am, general, with high regard, your most obedient servant,

JASPER S. WHITING,
Major and Assistant Adjutant-General, Acting Engineer

Whiting did his boss no favors with this report! "Utterly unable to endure the mental excitement!" Note please, the progressive nature of this thing. Gullain-Barre is progressive in the same way.

Russell adds: "Welsh's Medical Histories of Confederate Generals (pp. 199-200) might shed some light or give some leads as well. Or not . . ." Not - Google Books won't allow a peek at the Smith entry.

In any case, it looks like we have additional confirmation of the malady starting on the morning of June 2nd. This makes mayhem with a lot of ACW narratives.

The curious absence of Robert E. Lee

Let's refer again to the transition in command at Seven Pines and ponder what we are reading:

About 1:30 pm. [June 1st] President Davis rode up and asked for General Lee. On being told that I [G.W. Smith, commanding the battle] had not seen General Lee during the day, the President expressed so much surprise that I asked him if he had any special reason for supposing General Lee would be there. To this he replied ; Yes; and added that early in the morning he had ordered General Lee to take command of the army at once. [...] General Lee arrived at about 2:00 p.m. and at once took command of the army.

If you are familiar with Seven Pines (in other words Fair Oaks from the viewpoint of the Southern commanders), day one (5/31/62) features Davis and Lee riding about the battlefield trying to get information plus Lee also waiting at Johnston's HQ to learn what he was doing, while Johnston avoided the pair of them with complete success.

From Davis's and Lee's POV, the battle must have seemed a muddle, the commander not to be found, no one sure of the plan, no communication. Smith - Johnston's second in command - was at HQ also long out of touch with his commander.

Now move to evening. I want to suggest the following sequence of events for the night of the 31st: (1) Johnston wounded (2) Smith takes command (3) Smith confers with subordinates, develops plan, issues orders (4) Smith shares plan with Lee (5) Lee writes letter after midnight praising battle plan (6) Davis appoints Lee to command after midnight.

It's not clear to me where in this sequence to put "Davis learns Johnston is incapacitated." Smith says Davis told him the Lee appointment was "early" on the 1st of June. Meanwhile, Lee writes Smith a letter approving the battle plan for the 1st, dates it the 1st, and nothing in the letter conveys his new status as commander of Smith's army.

You see that I give Lee the benefit of the doubt that he wrote Smith the approving letter BEFORE Davis put him in command. If Lee had written the letter AFTER appointment without reference to the new relationship it would have been a very dishonest distancing act.

There was, nevertheless, a distancing act.

Davis is shocked by Lee's absence from the battlefield as late as 1:30 p.m. on the 1st. When Lee appeared at 2:00 in the afternoon and "took command," he did not issue any orders, deferring to Smith. When Lee and Smith encounter Longstreet between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. on the 1st, Lee lets Longstreet report to Smith, offending Smith's sense of order to the point where Smith orders Longstreet to report to Lee.

It's easy to see what Lee is up to: he is letting the battle play out without him, without putting his name on it. The question is why?

Again, I have some possibilities:

(1) Lee sensed the battle was a mess, whether or not Smith's plans were good. He did not want to own it.

(2) Lee rated Smith's chances of retrieving the battle on day two higher than his own.

(3) Lee rejected the command structure but could not reasonably change it until after the battle; he did not want to fight a battle with Johnston's (now Smith's) commanders and dispositions.

(4) Lee did not understand Davis's intent and imagined he had more latitude in the timing of his assumption of command than he actually had.

(5) Lee spent the morning getting lost, or falling asleep, or enmeshed in some confusion or foul-up.

(6) Lee merely carried on in the widespread early war tradition of letting his number two (Smith) function as operational army commander.

More on (6) in another post. Note that Johnston, as commander of the Army of the Potomac, wrote Davis in late 1861 that he could not release Smith from his organization because as his number two, Smith was the operational commander of the army.

Whatever Lee's motives, Smith seems to be our sole source for a detailed description of the change of command, and in Smith's account, Lee's absence was unexcused.

For a different view, see Mort Kunstler's account of the command change here.

G.W. Smith, meet Guillain-Barre

[M]uscles cannot be used at all ... the patient becomes nearly paralyzed ...

The madness of G.W. Smith (cont.)

G.W. Smith said in Century magazine that he was stricken on the second of June but recovered eighteen hours "after Lee relieved me of command of the Army."

In his book, The Battle of Seven Pines, Smith says "The next morning (June 2), I was compelled by illness to leave the field." Morning is not very specific.

Govan and Livingwood in their Johnston biography, A Different Valor, put Lee's assumption of command at 2:00 pm June 1, the latest time I've seen from pop historians. This 18 hour remark would move out to an 8 a.m. June 2 recovery. Their time is not sourced. However...

In the Battle of Seven Pines, Smith talks of Lee's assumption of command this way:

About 1:30 pm. [June 1st] President Davis rode up and asked for General Lee. On being told that I had not seen General Lee during the day, the President expressed so much surprise that I asked him if he had any special reason for supposing General Lee would be there. To this he replied ; Yes; and added that early in the morning he had ordered General Lee to take command of the army at once. [...] General Lee arrived at about 2:00 p.m. and at once took command of the army.

What he means is formal command, for he adds, "General Lee made no adverse comment on my management of the army and gave me no orders then or any other time that day."

Between 4:00 pm and 5:00 p.m., Smith and Lee are riding on the Williamsburg Road. They encounter Longstreet who renders a report to Smith; Smith redirects the report to Lee. At 6:00 p.m. they return to Smith's HQ and Smith issues orders recalling troops sent to Longstreet's aid. Smith is fully himself into the evening.

So a June 2nd recovery is consistent with a June 2nd affliction, but the details are difficult.

One of Harry Smeltzer's readers wrote him to say:

“Glatthaar, OTOH, says Smith had suffered the 'paralysis' before the war, when he was street commissioner in New York City." “A bout with paralysis forced him south for treatment. The Federal government misconstrued his intentions and deemed him an enemy, so Smith offered his services to the Confederacy.”

It is dangerous to rely on Glatthaar for anything. Only the paralysis matches Smith's obituary which puts it this way:

After the election he continued attending to the duties of Commissioner, and served out the term for which he had been elected. His administration of the office had been very able and honest, and had given great satisfaction. He held over, awaiting with anxiety the appointment of a successor. Owing to overwork, about two weeks before active hostilities actually began at Fort Sumter, Charleston, Captain Smith was struck down by paralysis and confined closely to his room for some months. When recovered sufficiently, he went to his friends in Kentucky. At a later day he learned it was the intention of the U. S. authorities at Washington to arrest and imprison him, and he proceeded to Richmond, Va., in September. About this time he resigned the office of Street Commissioner of New York City.

Steven Newton in Joseph E. Johnston and the Defense of Richmond, writes of the famous Richmond war conference involving Davis, Lee, Johnston, Longstreet, Smith, and Randolph,

Smith he finally located at the Spottswood Hotel only thirty minutes before the appointed time. There, his second in command had nearly collapsed from the exertions of the previous few days and his chronic nervous malady. Smith told Johnston that he felt entirely too ill to participate...

The citation for this vingnette is excellent, an unpublished account of a conversation between Smith and Bevery Bohnston (Joe's brother) in 1863.

Worth looking into: conversion disorder and Jean-Martin Charcot.

The madness of G.W. Smith

Common knowledge is the curse of Civil War history. Among the commonest knowledge is how Lee came to command the Rebel Army of the Potomac.

Please pause a moment to collect your own thoughts on how it happened.

Ready?

If you had asked me, I would have said that Gustavus W. Smith suffered some sort of breakdown and Davis then assigned Lee to take over from Smith (who had taken over from Johnston). Was that your recollection too?

I never looked deeply into this. The record gets very thin when addressing what the malady was and how it was manifested. It is most odd for our beloved storytellers to pass up juicy gossip or vivid anecdotes in constructing their tales.

I gave one formulation of the legend but there are variations. Consider these:

Wiki: ... he suffered what was likely a nervous breakdown upon taking command and Jefferson Davis replaced him with Robert E. Lee the following day, June 1."

Comment: Wiki speculates about nervous breakdown ("likely") and gives the malady date as May 31 (working backward from June 1, the "following day"). It presents in one sentence, breakdown > replacement. It does not source the breakdown.

In The Civil War: a History, Harry Hansen, Gary Gallagher, and Richard S. Wheeler take a crack at it: "... command devolved on Major General G.W. Smith. But Smith, who was near a nervous breakdown, made a poor start ... On this Sunday morning, June 1 ... At noon President Davis appointed General Robert E. Lee to the command of Johnston's army."

Comment: At noon on June 1, 1862, Davis appointed Lee to the command; this is quite a distinction from Lee taking command subsequent to an appointment. Please note it. This follows "a poor start" by Smith with the reader invited to draw a causal inference. Smith is "near a nervous breakdown," something the reader cannot picture without help, and no details are given.

Now The Seven Days by Cliff Dowdey: "When on June 1 the army devolved on Gustavus Smith ... [he] suffered a total collapse of his faculties. Smith was removed from the field in a state he called paralysis, and which today would probably be diagnosed as traumatic shock."

Comment: Note Dowdey makes the odd point that the army did not devolve on him on May 31, when Johnston left the field wounded, but the next day. Note also the sequence: assumes command on the 1st, suffers immediate collapse.

Let's work backwards from Dowdey, for despite the lack of notes, he gives Smith as his source and in his bibliography he has only one of Smith's books, the Battle of Seven Pines. So Smith is his source.

I have not yet found any other source on the malady aside from Smith himself. If you have one please advise.

Here is what Smith says in his Century article, "Two Days of Battle at Seven Pines":

I was completely prostrated on the 2nd of June by an attack of paralysis, no symptom of which was manifested within eighteen hours after Lee relieved me of command of the Army.

Smith is stricken on June 2nd! He uses a specific word in two sources: paralysis. No nervous breakdown, no "collapse of faculties" or "trauma." If Smith is the sole source on this, the judicious historian cannot swap out the word paralysis for another of his own choosing. He has recovered by the night of the 2nd (within eighteen hours after Lee assumed command).

Elsewhere, Smith wrote that Lee was promised command of the army by Davis the night of the 31st when Johnston was wounded. This separates Smith's performance and health from the command decision. It also separates the appointment to command from the assumption of command.

These are matters that should interest the Civil War historian but apparently do not.

Moreover, in the Century piece Smith quotes a letter from Lee approving of Smith's own attack plans for June 1st. In the afternoon of the 1st, after the change of command, he says Lee gave him no orders. Smith directed the fight all day. Smith's postwar writings detail how he fought Seven Pines on June 1 and refute Longstreet's and Johnston's criticism of his conduct of the battle on June 1.

Smith (1) fought the battle and then (2) suffered "paralysis." If Smith is the sole source of our knowledge of the affliction, that has to be the sequence.

Meanwhile, have some medical fun:

Paralysis: "A general term most often used to describe severe or complete loss of muscle strength due to motor system disease from the level of the cerebral cortex to the muscle fiber. This term may also occasionally refer to a loss of sensory function."

Nervous breakdown: "...a popular term - it is not a clinical term - that is often used to describe a mental disorder that a person experiences. It is used for a number of reasons, including: to hide a diagnosis; to avoid the stigma of a diagnosis; not understanding the reasons for certain loss of function..."

So "nervous breakdown" takes us away from the specific - "paralysis" - to the nonspecific. It interjects ambiguity into the record where there was specificity.

Psychological trauma/shock: "Psychological shock can occur after a physically or emotionally traumatic experience but it effects [sic] your state of mind (although this can give you symptoms such as palpitations and feeling faint, it doesn’t usually lead to serious physical collapse)."

The matter of the "madness" of G.W. Smith is again one of many signs of the quality of love our ACW writers have for their readers.