The meeting on 26th of September, 1861 (cont.)

We come now to the text of the memo. Smith explains the meeting behind the memo:

Soon after the author joined the army he learned that Generals Johnston and Beauregard already favored an immediate offensive campaign, beyond the Potomac, provided an adequate force could be concentrated for that purpose: and he urged General Johnston to request President Davis to visit the headquarters of the army with a view to discuss and determine this question. The President came in compliance with General Johnston's invitation.

Here is the full account of the meeting:

“On the 26th of September, 1861, General Joseph E. Johnston addressed a letter to the Secretary of War in regard to the importance of putting this army in condition to assume the offensive, and suggested that the President, Secretary of War, or some one representing them should at an early day come to the headquarters of the army, then at or near Fairfax Court House, for the purpose of deciding whether the army could be reënforced to the extent that the Commanding General deemed necessary for an offensive campaign.

“The President arrived at Fairfax Court House, a few days thereafter, late in the afternoon, and proceeded to the quarters of General Beauregard. On the same evening General Johnston and I called to pay our respects. No official subjects of importance were alluded to in that interview. At eight o'clock the next evening, by appointment of the President, a conference was had between himself, General Johnston, General Beauregard and myself—various matters of detail were introduced by the President, and talked over between himself and the two senior Generals.

“Having but recently arrived, and not being well acquainted with the special subjects referred to, I took little or no part in this conversation. Finally, with perhaps some abruptness, I said, ‘Mr. President, is it not possible to put this army in condition to assume the active offensive?’ Adding that this was a question of vital importance upon which the success or failure of our cause might depend. This question brought on discussion. The precise conversation which followed I do not propose to give—it was not an argument—there seemed to be little difference of opinion between us in regard to general views and principles.

“It was clearly stated, and agreed to, that the military force of the Confederate States was at the highest point it could attain without arms from abroad—that the portion of this particular army present for duty was in the finest fighting condition—that if kept inactive it must retrograde immensely in every respect during the winter, the effect of which was foreseen and dreaded by us all. The enemy were daily increasing in numbers, arms, discipline, and efficiency. We looked forward to a sad state of things at the opening of a Spring campaign.

“These and other points being agreed upon without argument, it was again asked—‘Mr. President, is it not possible to increase the effective strength of this army and put us in condition to cross the Potomac and carry the war into the enemy's country? Can you not by stripping other points to the last they will bear—and even risking defeat at all other places, put us in condition to move forward? Success here at this time saves everything—defeat here loses all.’

“In explanation, and as an illustration of this, the unqualified opinion was advanced, that, if for want of adequate strength on our part in Kentucky, the Federal forces should take military possession of that whole state, and enter and occupy a portion of Tennessee, a victory gained by this army beyond the Potomac would, by threatening the heart of the Northern States, compel their armies to fall back, free Kentucky—and give us the line of the Ohio, within ten days thereafter. On the other hand should our forces in Tennessee and Southern Kentucky be strengthened so as to enable us to take, and to hold, the Ohio River as a boundary, a disastrous defeat of this army would at once be followed by an overwhelming wave of Northern invaders, which would sweep over Kentucky and Tennessee, extending to the Northern part of the Cotton States, if not to New Orleans.

“Similar views were expressed in regard to ultimate results in North-Western Virginia, being dependent upon the success or failure of this army, and various other special illustrations were offered. Showing, in short, that success here was success everywhere—defeat here, defeat everywhere,—and that this was the point upon which all the available forces of the Confederate States should be concentrated.

“It seemed to be conceded by all that our force at that time here was not sufficient for assuming the offensive beyond the Potomac, and that even with a much larger force, an attack upon their army under the guns of their fortifications, on this side the river, was out of the question. The President asked me what number of men was necessary in my opinion to warrant an offensive campaign—to cross the Potomac, cut off the communications of the enemy with their fortified Capitol, and carry the war into their country. I answered ‘Fifty thousand effective seasoned soldiers’—explaining that, by seasoned soldiers, I meant such men as we had here, present for duty. And added that they would have to be drawn from the Peninsula, about Yorktown, Norfolk, Western Virginia, Pensacola, or wherever might be most expedient. General Johnston and General Beauregard both said that a force of sixty thousand such men would be necessary, and that this force would require large additional transportation and munitions of war—the supplies here being entirely inadequate for an active campaign in the enemy's country, even with our present force.

“In this connection there was some discussion of the difficulties to be overcome, and the probabilities of success; but, no one questioned the disastrous results of remaining inactive throughout the winter.

“Notwithstanding the belief that many in the Northern army were opposed on principle to invading the Southern States, and that they would fight better in defending their own homes than in attacking ours, it was believed that the best, if not the only, plan to insure success, was to concentrate our forces and attack the enemy in their own country.

“The President, I think, gave no definite opinion in regard to the number of men necessary for that purpose, and I am sure no one present considered this a question to be finally decided by any other person than the Commanding General of this army. Returning to the question that had been twice asked—the President expressed surprise and regret that the number of surplus arms here was so small—and I thought spoke bitterly of this disappointment. He then stated, that at that time no reinforcements could be furnished to this army of the character asked for—that the most that could be done, would be to furnish recruits to take the surplus arms in store here, (say 2500 stand)—that the whole country was demanding protection at his hands, and praying for arms and troops for defence. He had long been expecting arms from abroad but had been disappointed—he still hoped to get them, but had no positive assurance that they would be received at all. The manufacture of arms in the Confederate States was, as yet, undeveloped to any considerable extent. Want of arms, was the great difficulty; he could not take any troops from the points named, and without arms from abroad could not reinforce this army. He expressed regret, and seemed to feel deeply as did every one pressent.

“When the President had thus clearly and positively stated his inability to put this army in the condition deemed by the Generals necessary before entering upon an active offensive campaign, it was felt that it might be better to run the risk of almost certain destruction fighting upon the other side of the Potomac, rather than see the gradual dying out and deterioration of this army, during a winter, at the end of which the term of enlistment of half the force would expire. The prospect of a spring campaign to be commenced under such discouraging circumstances was rendered all the more gloomy by the daily increasing strength of an enemy already much superior in numbers. On the other hand was the hope and expectation that before the end of winter, arms would be introduced into the country—and all were confident, that we could then not only protect our own country but successfully invade that of the enemy.

“General Johnston said, that he did not feel at liberty to express an opinion as to the practicability of reducing the strength of our forces at points not within the limits of his command. With but few farther remarks from any one, the answer of the President was accepted as final, and it was felt that there was no other course left but to take a defensive position and await the enemy. If they did not advance we had but to await the winter and its results.

“After the main question was dropped the President proposed, that, instead of an active offensive campaign, we should attempt certain partial operations—a sudden blow against Sickles or Banks—or to break the bridge over the Monocacy. This, he thought, besides injuring the enemy, would exert a good influence over our troops, and encourage the people of the Confederate States generally.

“In regard to attacking Sickles, it was stated in reply that, as the enemy controlled the river with their ships of war, it would be necessary for us to occupy two points on the river—one above, and another below the point of crossing—in order that we might, by our batteries, prevent their armed vessels from interfering with the passage of the troops. In any case the difficulty of crossing large bodies over wide rivers, in the vicinity of an enemy, and then recrossing, made such expeditions hazardous. It was agreed, however, that if an opportunity should occur offering reasonable chances of success that the attempt would be made.

“During this Conference or Council which lasted, perhaps, two hours, all was earnest, serious, deliberate. The impression made upon me was deep and lasting; and I am convinced that the foregoing statement is not only correct, as far as it goes, but, in my opinion, it gives a fair idea of all that occurred, at that time, in regard to the question of our crossing the Potomac.

“Gustavus W. Smith, Major-General.”

“My recollection of the above Conference agrees fully with this statement of General G. W. Smith.

“G. T. Beauregard, General C. S. A.

“J. E. Johnston, General.

Signed in triplicate.

“Centreville, Va., January 31, 1862.”

The meeting on 26th of September, 1861 (cont.)

On August 4, 861, in a letter to Beauregard, Jefferson Davis says "I think you are unjust to yourself in putting your failure to pursue the enemy to Washington to the account of short supplies of subsistence and transportation." He follows on August 1, "Some excitement has been created by your letter; the Quartermaster and the Commissary General both feel that they have been unjustly arraigned."

This is the beginning of a critique that presents lost opportunities as being Richmond's failures. In fairly routine back-and-forth, it begins to become hard to tell which requests also hold within accusations under the Richmond failure paradigm:

Mr. PRESIDENT: I have suggested, through the Adjutant and Inspector-General, the importance of increasing our forces of artillery and cavalry - … It is certain to my mind that all of Napoleon's successes in 1813 were due to his large proportion of artillery. … May I remind you that I have more than once mentioned our deficiency in cavalry? We have not half enough for mere outpost duty. (Johnston, HEADQUARTERS, MANASSAS, August 10, 1861.)

On September 5, in response to what I am unsure, Davis answers Johnston, "I have done all that was possible to strengthen you since the date of your glorious victory."

On Spetember 8, Davis is already responding to "invade the north" suggestions defensively:

… We cannot afford to divide our forces unless and until we have two armies able to contend with the enemy's forces at Washington. Two lines of operation are always hazardous. I repeat that we cannot afford to fight without a reasonable assurance of victory or a necessity so imperious as to overrule our general policy. We have no second line of defense, and cannot now provide one. The cause of the Confederacy is staked upon your army, and the natural impatience of the soldier must be curbed by the devotion of the patriot… [I] wish we could strike him in his present condition; but it has seemed to me involved in too much probability of failure to render the movement proper with our present means. Had I the requisite arms the argument would soon be changed… It is true that a successful advance across the Potomac would relieve other places; but, if not successful, ruin would befall us.

On September 26, the day of the meeting, Johnston writes the secretary of war,

… Thus far the numbers and condition of this army have at no time justified our assuming the offensive. To do so would require more men and munitions. We are not now in a strong defensive position either to fight a battle or to hold the enemy in check. The position was occupied for a different purpose. It is now necessary to decide definitely whether we are to advance or fall back to a more defensible line…

This note represents the cards he will deal to Jefferson Davis in their meeting.

p.s. "The position was occupied for a different purpose" - We should note that Johnston has moved his army out of Centreville to an intermediate point from which it could launch an offensive or fall back.

Civil War 150: engine of prosperity

The Washington Post's Civil War 150 section yesterday was 22 pages long with four full pages of advertising, six half-page ads and scads of smaller ads. There's a business model in there somewhere.

Aside from history features, the editorial content was travel/event centered without a single book review (despite lots of book ads).

Dennison-McClellan (cont.)

Some more observations:

(1) In the OR and in the McClellan Papers (LoC), there is no backchannel correspondence between McClellan on one side and Lincoln or the Cabinet on the other. GBM's scant official exchanges with Cameron hold little interest. His correspondence with Scott is actually accusatory; he wants guidance, he wants orders, and he wants federal funds. One has the impression that McClellan is isolated in the grip of his patron, Dennison. He reaches out to Washington but there are no answers.

(2) Once he heads a multi-state department, it seems odd that the other state governors do not step into similar relations as Dennison has with GBM. They work him through Dennison.

(3) Just as McDowell-Franklin is liquidated by virtue of a military offensive, so the invasion of Virginia ends McClellan's career as advisor, organizer, planner, and strategist to the governors.

(4) Scott's refusal to allow GBM to link up with Patterson during Scott's first coordinated offensive could have been the fruit of a tidy mind honoring department borders or it could have been slapped down as an inopportune attempt to escape Dennison's patronage by placing himself under federal control.

(5) With GBM's arrival in DC, all the armies' three month men - the experienced part of the army - have melted away.

The meeting on 26th of September, 1861

The meeting of Jefferson Davis with Joe Johnston on the 26th of September, 1861, is another one of those steep gradient events that seriously overmatches the analytic engine of the modern Civil War historian.

Some talespinners, recognizing themselves as underpowered, keep their narrative jalopies away from such high mountains. Others, committed to the doctrine that Jefferson Davis had no strategy, take care not to ride roads where the signposts mark explicit statements of Davis's strategy.

This is the invade-the-north conference to which G.W. Smith and P.G.T. Beauregard were invited. The initial account of it was created in January, 1862, by G.W. Smith in memo form (signed by Johnston and Beauregard). Davis responded to it years later and Smith responded to Davis.

In the correspondence leading up to the meeting, one sees tendencies. Then, in the meeting, problems come into sharp relief and these are problems that persist in the war.

Apart from the strategic content of the conclave (which is clear, easily diagrammed, and fascinating) there are the respective criticisms Davis makes of the generals and the generals make of Davis. These tend to get reduced to cartoonish summaries in Civil War narrative without a real examination of their merits.

Let's look at some telling correspondence before the meeting.

Dennison-McClellan

Some reflections on the Dennison-McClellan chronology.

McClellan’s rise to the position of ranking major general in the Regular Army (behind Scott) occurs within 31 days: (1) GBM is offered MG, USV on April 14 (and on April 24, GBM offers to resign); (2) on May 3 his commission is foreshortened to 90 days by Lincoln’s assumption of new powers; at the same time he is made commander of the federal Department of the Ohio (3) on May 11, Dennison seeks federal extension of GBM’s USV commission; (4) on May 14, GBM is appointed MG RA.

This occurs without GBM accomplishing anything publicly apart from organizing, planning, conferencing, and advising. The invasion of Western Virginia comes later.

I don’t want to get into the complexities of McClellan’s initial Ohio commissioning except to say (1) by his initial actions, GBM clearly rated this opportunity lower than others and (2) Pinkerton left record of what appears to be a Lincoln intervention in Ohio during GBM’s commission hunt (see Spy of the Rebellion).

Neither Dennison nor Chase knew GBM when his commission hunt began. I don’t have to remind readers of this blog of the hours Lincoln and McClellan spent in each other’s company on railroad business in Illinois or that McClellan was Lincoln’s employer/paymaster before the war. We would be foolish not to consider that Lincoln, operating as usual through cutouts, obtained a result that he wanted for McClellan.

The problem with this is the parallel example of Fremont. Fremont is elevated to the same senior RA grade as GBM at the same time, and Fremont is in no way a Lincoln deal. He is in fact a political threat to Lincoln, being a former Republican Party presidential candidate, now with a major military command in position to win headlines and plaudits. He was the pet project of Montgomery Blair and a tool for levering Gen. Harney out of Missouri.

If Blair could win the necessary evil of Fremont top MG rank without Lincoln’s enthusiasm, Chase could possibly have won McClellan the same rank on the same basis. In fact, given the enmity of Blair and Chase, this dual promotion has the flavor of Lincoln’s peacekeeping within the Cabinet. Except at this point, Chase did not know McClellan except second-hand.

There is a third possibility which I like best. Dennison was a Lincoln admirer; while guarding Lincoln after the inauguration, Pinkerton, well known to Lincoln as another Illinois Central consultant, suggested Lincoln recommend McClellan to Dennison. This is speculation based on what might have been in Lincoln’s coded telegram, referred to by Pinkerton.

After that, matters snowball. The Administration sees military conferences, plans, and a partnership that threatens to re-center the war in Columbus. Dennison, for all his goodwill towards Lincoln, emerges as an hyperactive power center. McClellan is his capable military counterpart and tool. The Dennison-McClellan team, with its electrifying effect on Curtin and the western governors, destabilizes the Administration’s control of the war, moreso even than New York’s Union Committee, with its fleets of blockaders, privateers, and national supply operations.

Hesseltine is decisive on the point that Lincoln’s three-year enlistment proclamation with the asserted right to appoint generals was a political action against the governors and recognized by them as such.

I would go farther: the effect of the act specifically limited the tenure of incumbent USV MGs. Every state USV commander now faced an expiration date by which he had to please Washington or give it up.

For McClellan, there was a doubling down in that on the same day Washington also attempted to take him out of Dennison’s control by making him commander of a new federal department. For his part, McClellan tried to “play ball with D.C.” by engaging Scott and Cameron with queries, reports, and interactions and this fails due to their “apathy.”

On the other hand, as the chronology shows, he continued to be drawn into Dennison’s interstate combinations – presenting the picture of continued collaboration to re-center the war in the west.

The picture Dennison-McClellan offered to those in the know was in shocking contrast to that of Lincoln-Scott (even with the McDowell-Franklin skunkworks thrown in). The promotion of McClellan to MG, RA, is I think, yet another attempt to get McClellan under federal control. But Dennison-McClellan continues to its spectacular conclusion, regardless.

What is that conclusion? With no support or interest from Lincoln, Dennison and Curtin obtain a political separation of Western Virginia from Virginia – Lincoln calls it a secession – at the second Wheeling Convention. McClellan, with state men, money, and supplies, conquers that ephemeral polity that was conjured out of the Second Wheeling Convention. He does it. He delivers them territory for a new state.

At this point, McClellan has infinite federal tenure, a federal department with claims against federal resources, wide backing of the western states, and yet he is still working for Dennison. By enlarging McClellan, Washington accidentally enlarged Dennison and his gubernatorial allies.

I think of Dennison in terms of a paraphrased witticism by Lincoln: “Excuse me Mr. President, but if you are not going to make use of this war, I would like to borrow it for a time.”

McDowell’s defeat and McClellan’s victory make “natural” McClellan being brought to Washington. Unnaturally, this move separates the governor from his military alter ego. It kills the Dennison-McClellan project dead and restores Washington’s control of the war. That was no accident.

Chase claimed to have brought McClellan to Washington. So says Welles diary. If true, perhaps he hoped for a reprise of Dennison-McClellan on the Potomac with himself as Dennison.

In their first meeting after McClellan's arrival, Lincoln told McClellan that he had brought GBM east to take command of Mansfield's and McDowell's departments. So says McClellan's Own Story. If so, Lincoln left out motivations.

But I think I know them.

Dennison-McClellan, chronology

The Dennison-McClellan partnership is unintelligible to many without a contextual timeline. Here, I have interleaved milestones in their rich collaboration with related events in the broader struggle between the governors and Lincoln.

Dennison has his McClellan and New York's Gov. Morgan had his John Wool; as the governors initiate ever more military activity through McClellan and Wool, the Administration resorts to bold strokes to regain control.

First, Lincoln expropriates the right to name state level Volunteer generals with his call for three-year enlistments, retroactively limiting existing commissions, including McClellan's, to just three months.

As the Morgan-Wool-Dix project sputters out under this and other pressures, Dennison, with Pennsylvania's Curtin and the Western governors, rides McClellan from one success after another, culminating in the creation of West Virginia, a result not desired by the Administration.

McClellan's promotion to major general, U.S. Army, then divides his loyalties, subordinating his connection to Dennison. As a final stroke that disables the right arm of the war governors, McClellan is brought east and Dennison loses his irreplaceable military collaborator without the ability to create or sponsor a new one. This move precedes a similar stripping of Wool from Morgan.

April 17 - William Dennison Jr., Governor of Ohio (photo, right), sends State Sen. Thomas Key as peace emissary to Beriah Magoffin, Governor of Kentucky.

April 18 – GBM writes Ohio’s governor that GBM advised Ohio’s ranking militia general that he should withhold a few companies raised for Federal service in Cincinnati to secure it; he tells the governor that thus, “the available power of the state [will be] left free to act in other quarters.” McClellan is perhaps envisaging a war waged by Ohio.

April 20 – Magoffin meets with Key. April 21 – Salmon Chase urges Dennison to defend Cincinnati; says War Department has earmarked four federalized Ohio regiments for its defense.

April 22 – Unionist leaders gather in Clarksburg, VA.

April 23 – GBM accepts offer of the rank of MG, Ohio Volunteers from Dennison. (At his point in the war, state governors are appointing men to these non-militia general ranks)

April 24 - New York’s Union Defense Committee, under retired General John Wool (photo, right), charters privateers to operate in the Chesapeake: Quaker City, Monticello, Yankee, and Kedar. Between May 14 and July 10, Quaker City alone captures eight prizes.

The Ohio legislature passes law enabling GBM to become MG superseding the militia commander.

April 25 - New York’s Union Defense Committee sends Thurlow Weed to meet Lincoln for answers, including which Southern ports should be priorities for New York’s state fleet of 20 blockaders.

Pennsy Gov. Andrew Curtin writes letter introducing his emissary E.C. Biddle of Philadelphia asking Dennison to set up a three-way meeting with Biddle and Gov. Oliver Morton of Indiana.

McClellan offers to resign his position in favor of McDowell if Dennison wants – he has just learned of his Pennsylvania commission.

April 27th – On behalf of New York’s Union Defense Committee, John Dix, an organizer, approves a Kentucky request for arms and their shipment to Louisville.

Dennison’s emissary to Washington writes that Cameron is pleased with Dennison’s appointment of GBM.

Cameron writes to say regiments in excess of the Ohio quota cannot be received.

GBM sends Scott two alternative plans of western operations.

April 28 – Dennison's agent in Pennsylvania reports that Curtin is for “strong work” and he will accompany Curtin to Washington to press their joint case.

April 28-29 – Telegraphs exchanged among governors in preparation for Dennison’s governors’ war council in Cleveland.

McClellan features in the exchanges. Dennison asks Morgan send a confidential agent to the meetings if he cannot attend. GBM writes Patterson that he has not a single regiment ready for field duty - Patterson has asked for Ohio troops.

April 29 – A delegate from New York’s Union Defense Committee returns from Washington reporting that “The Administration were evidently chagrined, and General Scott discontented, by the extent of the authority assumed and exercised by General Wool.”

April 30 – Letter sent to Dennison by T.L. Crittenden on behalf of Magoffin asks Dennison and Morton to arrange a truce between federal government and seceded states.

May – Western governors inundate New York’s Union Defense Committee with requests for arms and equipment.

May 1 – Dennison’s agent reports from Washington that he learned from Chase “no [military] plan had yet been adopted, that the [Dennison/Curtin] plan he brought would probably not be adopted unless there was pressure, that there was much inertia in Washington to overcome…” He notes a rumor that “there had been a proposition from New York to organize a committee of safety to take possession of the federal government.”
(Some quotes are summaries posted at http://www.ohiohistory.org/onlinedoc/civilwar/sa0147/01a_1.cfm)

May 3 – Military conference for governors outside of New England is convened by Dennison in Cleveland. Present in person are Morton (IN), Curtin (PA), Randall (WI), and Blair (MI) with agents representing Morgan (NY) and Yates (IL); all meet with MG McClellan who is part of the conference. Agreed: Lincoln must supply “more men, more efficiency, more enthusiasm, and a concrete plan of campaign” (paraphrase from Hesseltine’s Lincoln and the War Governors). Randall designated to present governors’ demands to Lincoln personally. Cleveland crowds fired up by governors, call on McClellan for speech.

New York’s Union Defense Committee forwards to Lincoln’s War department its compiled report on the number of troops mustered into federal service in each of the loyal states, information not available in Washington. Thirteen governors responded to Committee queries within 24 hours.

Lincoln issues proclamation for more troops, including three-year men. Lincoln nationalizes the appointment of generals, reducing the terms of state appointed generals to the three-month period of soldier enlistments; this is the basis on which Patterson’s commission expires before the end of Scott's second coordinated offensive.

James Garfield, sent as Dennison’s agent to Illinois, reports he successfully secured 5,000 U.S. muskets.

GBM is appointed to federal command – the Department of the Ohio. Ten days later, he has still not received the order.

May 5 – Chase writes Dennison that he is doing all he can to get Dennison arms. Also “that he tried to persuade Scott of the wisdom in taking possession of Alexandria and then advancing a force strong enough to hold Manassas Gap Junction in order to command the main railroad communications in Virginia, that Scott thought it unwise to take such action at present, that Scott intended to fortify Arlington Heights, send a large force into Fortress Monroe and probably retake Harpers Ferry, that he feared Scott underestimated the value of an interior movement like that proposed to capture and hold Manassas Gap Junction, that he believed the success of such a movement would result in an anti-secession majority when Virginia's popular referendum on secession was held on May 23..” (Quoted material is paraphrased from link given above.)

US Ordnance Office replies to arms request telling Dennison that he has received arms in excess of his troop allotment.

May 6 – Secretary of State Seward ask New York’s Union Defense Committee to supply Kentucky’s union men with five thousand stand of arms. Some arms dispatched to Cincinnati.

May 7 – Dennison writes Washington to have GBM’s department expanded to include western Virginia.

May 8 – W. Va added to the Dept of the Ohio.

May 9 – Chase writes Dennison to say Lincoln will authorize three more Ohio regiments and possibly two regiments will be ordered east. “[H]e thought the remainder of the Western force would be employed on the Ohio and the Mississippi, that Colonel Anderson would organize the volunteers in western Virginia and Kentucky in place of the governors, that he trusted Major General George B. McClellan would look out for western Virginia and Cairo… and that he was sending copies of his plans of organization for the three years volunteers and the regular troops” (These are the McDowell-Franklin plans; note this highly decentralized war policy.)

GBM writes Scott for officers to organize his department. He says he has not received a dollar in federal aid not any instructions from Scott.

May 10 - New York’s Union Defense Committee receives a report from its agent on conferring with Lincoln’s Cabinet on sending New York’s Commodore Stringham (photo, right) to take command of New York’s Chesapeake Bay war fleet.

Dennison asks McClellan to intervene in Virginia. McClellan answers he has previously asked Scott for guidance and is still organizing.

Nathaniel Lyon captures Missouri militia in St. Louis.

May 11 – Dennison telegraphs Chase to get McClellan a three-year Volunteer commission, one dated to give seniority over other Voluteer generals because “Ohio must lead.”

May 13 – GBM writes Dennison that his primary cause for delay in invading Virginia is “I am in daily expectation of hearing from Washington the policy of the Govt…” which suffers from “singular & very discouraging” apathy.

Unionist Virginians gather in Wheeling to plot political strategy.

May 14 – Chase writes Dennison “We have today McClellan appointed a Major General in the regular army.”

New York’s Union Defense Committee travels to D.C. to meet with Lincoln and communicate its discontent over troop issues and other matters.

May 15 – John McClernand, acting for Gov. Yates, requests from Lincoln personally the authority for Yates to mount an Illinois military operation against Missouri secessionists.

May 19 – GBM shares his thoughts on the riverine defense of Cairo with Commander John Rodgers. “I am not yet in possession of the views of the administration, with respect to ulterior offensive operations sufficiently to express my opinion…”

May 20 – Dennison reports rebel movements around Grafton to Scott; Scott answers that he should refer the matter to McClellan.

Magoffin proclaims Kentucky neutral.

May 21 – McClellan acknowledges to the War Department acceptance of his federal rank of MG, the appointment being made May 14.

May 23 – Virginia secedes.

May 24 – Governors of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois aided by McClellan, formulate war policy in a conference in Indianapolis. This is to occupy four points in Kentucky after securing Kentucky politically for the Union. GBM should be authorized to execute this concept and his forces should be increased; their state legislatures would raise additional war funds. Yates of Illinois is sent to Washington to present a memorandum on the issue.

Cameron asks GBM if he cannot act to protect Grafton.

May 25 – GBM asks Dennison to tell Yates “in carrying out … his mission … not to use my name in such a way as to disturb the sensitive complexion” of Scott’s mind.

May 26 – GBM issues proclamation/order crossing into Virginia.

May 27 – Border state convention, with Missouri and Kentucky meets in Frankfort. Kentucky declares its Unionism at this conclave.

May 29 – Dennison receives letter from Connecticut state house that “knapsacks and equipments for one thousand infantry had been sent by express.” The same day Morgan writes Dennison that New York cannot spare any more kit for Ohio.

June 2 – Dennison agent finds Ohio troops in Washington deplorably equipped and a laughingstock. (This sets off a back-and-forth between Dennison and Chase, with Chase on the defensive).

June 8 – Simon Buckner visits McClellan on behalf of Magoffin.

June 10 – Simon Buckner reports on an agreement with GBM to Magoffin. The agreement, as recapitulated in Buckner’s memo, has to do with United States (not Ohio) actions and contingencies. (The flavor of the content is Dennison’s but the stipulations are federal.)

June 11-25 - Second Wheeling Convention of Virginia Unionists meets.

June 18 – Missouri added to GBM’s department.

June 19 and 20 – Chase sends letters to GBM prompting the response, “Gov Dennison has in no way interfered with my control of the troops mustered into the U.S. service … In addition to this Gov D. has exerted himself to the fullest extent in providing equipment for the troops … There has been in no respect any conflict between Gov Dennison & myself."

June 19 - Second Wheeling Convention approves formation of West Virginia, a Dennison-Curtin project.

June 20 – New representatives of the Virginia government are selected by the Second Wheeling Convention.

(Compiled from Reid's Ohio in the War, Hesseltine's Lincoln and the War Governors, McClellan's Own Story, Dennison's correspondence on the Ohio State History website linked above, and Sears' collection of McClellan's war papers)

The evolution of the McDowell-Franklin model

At that point at which McClellan is summoned from Western Virginia to serve in the East, Winfield Scott is a walking inflammation, tender all over from the abuses suffered by the McDowell-Franklin bypass operation and by the brutal power plays that installed McDowell and compelled the advance towards Manassas Junction.

These are not the only abuses Scott suffers, but they are emblematic. For example, as Chase was pushing forward the fortunes of McDowell (and Franklin), a parallel sponsorship featured Montgomery Blair's patronage of Ben Butler, also at Scott's expense, with a Scott-Butler feud erupting after Butler's assumption of command at Ft. Monroe. The private Butler-Blair correspondence is possibly the most vibrant, offensive, and shocking Civil War correspondence I myself have seen and I commend it highly to those who have shielded themselves from the political aspects of the ACW.*

The tendencies inherent in the McDowell-Franklin collaboration leave Scott angry enough that when McClellan arrives on the 26th of July and confers with him on the 27th, Scott famously contrives to detain GBM so that he cannot attend a Cabinet meeting to which Lincoln has invited GBM (but not Scott); this is followed by Scott ordering McClellan to ride through the city and collect stragglers, thus keeping him clear of "browsing presidents" and visiting Cabinet secretaries.

Scott, in his way, is asserting lawful command to head off any repeat of McDowell-Franklin. Scott is also attempting to imprint the relationship.

He wins small success at least, for in the weeks after his arrival, as Lincoln and the Cabinet continue to bypass Scott, McClellan repeatedly does the decent, correct thing by engaging Scott on questions of organization, strategy, and operations.

These exchanges end badly, as at least some readers should know. The ACW author who paints Scott's retirement as the result of GBM's personal ambition is clearly unfamiliar with the doctrinal and organizational struggles between the two men and the tenor with which Scott fought his cases. Likewise, the author who implies McClellan's complaint to the conclave of radical congressmen was empty, that Scott was in the way, a hindrance to him, that author has clearly kept himself innocent of the many deep disagreements between McClellan and Scott.

There does come a point in the period before Scott's retirement where GBM stops talking to him entirely but it is a big mistake to view this end state as the steady state.

In reprising and improving McDowell-Franklin, McClellan begins by trying to split the difference between Lincoln's penchant for chaos coupled with the Cabinet's lawless ad hockery and Scott's desire for total (lawful) control of his own sphere.

McClellan had developed a working style under Ohio Governor William Dennison Jr. that combined the best that McDowell-Franklin had to offer civilian leadership but within an orderly military and legal framework. In Ohio, McClellan was both Scott and at the same time he was the anti-Scott - i.e. McDowell-Franklin. In Washington, he could not implement this Dennison style of management until occupying Scott's chair.

Until then, McClellan would inevitably work on the side of the divide McDowell and Franklin created, to the detriment of Scott, though with some advantage to the larger cause.

* These private letters used to be online but I have not seen them on the Web anytime in the last five years. They are not to be confused with these mellow letters. Pointers appreciated.

Notes on McDowell-Franklin from Whitelaw Reid

The closest thing to a military McDowell bio that we have, to the infinite shame of Civil War history, is the extended essay found in Whitelaw Reid's Ohio in the Civil War. This is a sourcebook to many (myself, obviously, and others) but it lacks detailed notes on sources; McDowell's kinship to Governor Dennison is stated as a given, for example, and some of the sources cited are unknown to us. Take this excerpt from a letter to Dennison by McDowell written on 14 May 1861 (according to Reid):

If I am placed in any reasonable position here, I wish you would write to your friend the Postmaster-General - whom I know but slightly - of the friendship you bear me, that I may also look to him for the support of anyone leading a body of raw men into a hostile State, with an excited country, expecting some positive and immediate success, must daily need [sic].

Have you seen that one before? If the Centennialist allowed it the light of day, he'd have to park his bullet train of a narrative in order to play whack-a-mole in front of a distracted and uncomforatble ridership: Why wasn't Lincoln's support good enough for a general? What has the postmaster to do with military operations? Why is a general seeking help from a governor and cabinet member? Isn't this playing politics? Reid rationalizes:

It is evident that at the very outset the General was placed in the false position of having to look to civil officers, rather than to his military superior, for support.

This lame rationale captures McDowell-Franklin in a nutshell. Note the tautology, though. McDowell-Franklin are looking to civil officers for support against their military superiors while they execute the plans and directives of ad hoc civilian leadership bent on bypassing the same military leadership. Reid paints the McDowell-Scott relationship in lurid colors that today's historians have washed away: "It was understood that the promotion [McDowell to general] was secured by the Cabinet." "It excited the displeasure ... aroused the hostility of Winfield Scott." "For General Scott, hostile originally to McDowell's promotion, was now found to be hostile to his assignment to duty in Virginia..." Reid gives an account of one of the ugly cat-and-mouse games McDowell and Scott play:

At first he [Scott] proposed to leave the occupation of the Virginia side to a volunteer officer whom he wanted to get out of Washington. The [War] Department told him he must send over a regular - either Mansfield of McDowell. Then, wishing to keep Mansfield in the city, he named McDowell, but made secret efforts to thwart the wishes of the Department by inducing him to prefer a personal request not to be sent across the Potomac. Twice he [Scott] sent his aide de camp and military secretary to McDowell, urging him to make this request. The young general was not blind to the consequences of again arousing the displeasure of his chief, but he recoiled ... from the proposition.

There is much more here on Scott's retaliations and withholdings vice the Virginia advance but we don't need that material to understand that this clandestine struggle began with Chase's formation of the McDowell-Franklin unit and it continued through McDowell's relief. This following summary nicely sets up the hornet's nest McClellan walked into:

The baleful effects of the anger thus aroused were destined long to oppress the country. In three or four ways [on the promotion and Virginia matter], General Scott had been overruled and disappointed. [...] He yielded indeed to the authority of the Cabinet, which settled every one of those questions over his head; but he yielded with bad grace, and petulantly threw obstacles in the way of operations he could not forbid.

McDowell-Franklin (conclusion)

And so, in 1861 the McDowell-Franklin skunkworks died from the natural cause of being integrated into the chain of command to execute orders lawfully issued by appointed superiors.

Lincoln's revival of McDowell-Franklin in January 1862 did not recall to council two individual advisors but rather the old team to work as it had worked previously.

Confronted with this pair in a high profile 1862 setting, the conventional historian, deeply polluted with late war biases, either passes over them in baffled silence or pawns them off as random military experts with bit roles in a political crisis. McPherson, in Tried by War, embodies this confusion and aversion when he refers to them as an unlikely duo to sit on a war council.

To those without a grasp of the early war, or Lincoln's management style, they appear unlikely indeed. By now, the reader of this blog should see them as the most likely of all to be invited to into conference after their replacement (GBM) falls ill.

The details of how GBM supplanted them functionally, how he implemented McDowell-Franklin 2.0 must be saved for later. McDowell-Franklin's revival in January '62 was Lincoln's rebooting of serviceable 1.0 software.

Consider the full spectrum of assignments given them in January. These offer a cameo of the team in harness (from Snell):

(1) They are asked in an ad hoc Council of War to describe their favored concept of operations for the eastern Virginia theatre.

(2) They are tasked with meeting bureau chiefs to determine the timing and feasibility of AoP movement on different lines and then report back.

(3) They conduct this research out of offices in the Treasury building!

(4) They return to the Council of War and read a white paper they jointly prepared. They present a joint conclusion: for immediate movement, the land offensive via Manassas is more feasible than a water movement. Blair strenuously objects and...

(5) Lincoln sends them to the bureaus to research water transport.

(6) They present their research jointly to an ad hoc group including cabinet members.

(7) They then present their views and research to a Cabinet meeting that includes McClellan.

McClellan reasserts control, puts paid to their plans, and McDowell and Franklin return to their camps.

McDowell-Franklin was not intended to be a replacement for the general-in-chief (Lincoln was then acting as such); it was again a planning unit under civilian control (this time Lincoln, not Chase) rendering specially directed staff support.

Speculating, I think that without GBM's intervention this would have ended up as did Scott's second coordinated offensive, with McDowell in command of an army advancing on Manassas Junction according to a detailed plan developed by McDowell and Franklin.

(Worth noting: there is on record about this time, Lincoln's idea of having the AoP in front of Washington fixing the enemy while a mobile column, following the line of the Potomac, decamps into the enemy's rear to fight the decisive battle. IIRC, McPherson mentions it in Tried by War. Recall that in Scott's second coordinated offensive, he directed Patterson to implement this scheme after Patterson's regiments began standing down. McPherson credits Lincoln with this operational concept, but the credit is all Scott's, as seen in the series posted here late last year.)

The fascinating thing about McDowell's and Franklin's accounts of this episode is the twinge of propriety that runs through them. This team got religion in 1861 out there in the camps! After their '62 recall by Lincoln, Franklin questions McDowell about their bypassing the general-in-chief, that is, doing to McClellan as they had done to Scott. McDowell troubles himself to give a legalistic rationale but later loses his nerve when presenting to McClellan in cabinet, returning to Franklin's question with self-conscious rigamarole on how such a delicate situation came to be.

McClellan's suppression of McDowell-Franklin redux also marks the political end to his own superior implementation of the Franklin-McDowell paradigm. January 1862 marks the demise of both McDowell-Franklin 1.0 and 2.0. Lincoln here starts to search out 3.0.

But this gets us ahead of the story. We need to see how McClellan improved on the model in the summer of 1861.

With your indulgence, we'll work backwards to that point by first examining the timeline of Lincoln's bottom-out-of-the-tub crisis of January 1862.

(McDowell and McClellan are shown topside in '62; at this point, Hitchcock is being groomed for a third iteration of McDowell-Franklin)

The Sesquicentennial has begun

'Tis the season, I suppose, March 2011. The privatization of the Sesquicentennial proceeds apace, with Turner Classic Movies devoting April to ACW films. Meanwhile, Colonial Williamsburg has started tours I had assumed were long-standing. I shudder to think how that battle is being presented to the public, BTW.

Meanwhile,

Last Wednesday, U.S. Senators Jim Webb (D-VA) and Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA) reintroduced the Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission Act, legislation many Americans had hoped to see passed long before now.

I'll call that one DOA.

Public history strikes again

The public historians, who think no travesty is beyond the pale if even one child develops a passing interest in what they imagine to be history, have outdone themselves again. They are tweeting the Civil War, passing the anguish and heartbreak of real people through the frivolous medium of 140-character gossip technology.

Don't be afraid of history kids! It's intuitively obvious to the most casual of users!

How can we convince these people to stop evangelizing until they come to terms with history within themselves? They are avid apostles of some cargo-cult version of a deep and complex discipline, one demanding introspection, self-correction, and cultivated discernment.

In a similar vein, PBS is Internet-streaming "The Civil War" in a sacrifice invoking the technology gods for a ratings boost. Maybe they could just do fresher, better programming?

What is it with Pulitzer winners?

"There are no mitigating circumstances for plagiarism."

McDowell-Franklin (cont.)

Amidst the hatreds, the envy, the gossip, the vituperation, the self-pity, and the curdling contempt for fellow officers, one single light that shines through Phil Kearny's letters to his wife is William Franklin: his capacity; his potential; his intelligence; his raw talent. I have long used Kearny as my window into the Franklin phenomenon during the ACW.

Grant, in 1864, made an issue of restoring Franklin to command because, I believe, Franklin had the gift of impressing people, new acquaintances as well as those who knew him for years. He eventually disappointed Kearny as he would McClellan, Banks, and Grant. All seemed to agree though, that Franklin was special, and in a strange ageing of his West Point social scene, Franklin remained "at the top of his class" long after graduation through most of his prewar career.

On some level, Franklin impressed Chase. McDowell would be the senior partner of this Treasury Department duo, but Franklin was not unwilling or unloved. McDowell and Franklin were not a shotgun marriage - they had chemistry and accomplished major military tasks together under Chase.

My hunch is that Franklin affected McClellan's decision to retain McDowell after Bull Run. We also have McClellan preserving McDowell-Franklin as a team in spring of 1862 (corps commander/division commander) and McClellan giving McDowell the largest corps and the most decisive mission in the 1862 Richmond campaign. Again, my hunch is that this is partly Franklin's doing. When the I Corps was withheld from his command and McClellan suspected McDowell of intriguing for an independent role, we have documentation showing Franklin intervening with McClellan to defend McDowell.

When Lincoln forced McDowell onto the unwilling Scott as deputy and department commander, hiatus arrived for the McDowell-Franklin skunkworks, which was then planning an advance on Centreville. The plan went public, and legit, with both men assuming proper military roles within a defined, legal military hierarchy. Lincoln thus made honest men of them and Chase lost his military advisors.

The best known McDowell-Franklin incident comes later and is of little moment to their partnership but of major significance to McClellan. I speak of that famous Cabinet meeting in January '62, the bottom falling out of the tub, etc. To the garden variety ACW historian, McDowell and Franklin have been summoned to a cabinet meeting to help decide what to do during McClellan's sickness. This kind of historian sees no special point in such a choice of advisors. It's as if two random officers were chosen by lot to give an opinion and go home. But no one steeped in the early war can miss the overpowering significance of this pair in these circumstances and this setting advising the president and cabinet following an invitation from Chase.

You have to be obtuse to miss the point, but obtuse is something ACW historians do especially well.

McClellan was not so himself. McDowell-Franklin, lately just a couple of blocks in a military org chart, were suddenly on the point of revival as an ad hoc, defacto military high command reprised to offset the shortcomings of yet another general-in-chief. This time it wouldn't be Scott they routinely bypassed. GBM evacuated his sick tent to attend the meeting.

Historians have a hard time understanding McClellan's behavior at that meeting. Again, the deep reader of early war history sees easily what McClellan is doing. He is re-establishing himself with Chase as the principal Ohioan military asset in Chase's orbit; he is publicly displaying confidence in the wisdom and judgement of his political patron (Chase) by vouchsafing unique information not available to Lincoln and the chain of command; he is displaying loyalty and fealty to the man aiming the two gun barrels of McDowell and Franklin at his position and future. He is giving Chase - publicly - leverage over Lincoln and the rest of the cabinet. What baffles historians is actually a bravura performance that sends the dual menace back to the dusty blocks of a static organization chart.

Given the threat that McDowell-Franklin posed to GBM, it is another tribute to Franklin's occult charm that as 1862 developed, McClellan turned on McDowell but not Franklin.

The reprise of McDowell-Franklin in 1862 casts light on their earlier role and is worth a brief look.

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.