I hope you can hear me over the sound of all these guns and canon, and see through all this smoke. Tonight, the Cave of the Moonbat is cluttered with the detritus of war, as the armies of the Confederacy and the Union fight over
10,000 engagements in the space of about four years, and around
620,000 soldiers die in the violence and accompanying pestilence.
It's come to this: civil war in the land of the free. The nation's leaders see no other way to solve Constitutional questions about state's rights - not to mention humanitarian concerns over the treatment of others - than to order an entire generation to sacrifice itself on an altar of ideology. Join me, if you will, as your resident historiorantologist takes a look at a fratricidal war thoroughly and completely different from the one in which we currently find our troops engaged - which, of course, has a lot to do with the principles of the people in charge...
Cross-posted at Never In Our Names and Progressive Historians
One of the most surprising things about the Decider, given his generally laughable (if it didn't have such tragic ramifications) level of comprehension about things historical, is his concern for his legacy. Certainly by this point in the disaster that has been the Bush Administration, it has occurred to the Preznit that he might just be the worst we've ever had. Now, I'm not saying that he's taken this realization to heart, or that he even believed it for a nanosecond - but of late, he has responded to prognostications of his looming damnation with that last argument of historically doomed: "I shall be vindicated!"
To prop up this absurd claim, apologists for the Neoconian Dark Age point to past Presidents who have been better treated by historians than they were their contemporaries. Truman has come up with a fair degree of frequency, but his name (like FDR's, Kennedy's, and Wilson's) carries with it the uncomfortable - to dittohead revisionists, anyway - addendum of a parenthetical "D." To their further dismay, it turns out that most Republican Presidents have tilted far more toward the "that dude sucked" (a la Hoover) end of the spectrum than did the other way - and those that weren't wholly abominable (like Teddy Roosevelt) have an annoying habit of being the same ones noted for the non-Republicanness of at least parts of their presidencies. The aforementioned T.R., for example, might've had a foreign policy straight out of BushCo's (newly-revealed Executive VP for Losing Wars: Henry Kissinger) dream world of US supremacy over all the little brown people everywhere - but back home, he created National Parks, fought against monopolies, and supported labor unions. Just like a commie.
In the end, those who would defend Compassionate Conservatism as heir to Save-the-Union Republicanism generally wind up going clear back to the first Republican to sit in the White House for their example of the Platonic ideal of a GOP leader. What they tend to forget (and this is unfortunate, since it's the really critical part) is that while Abraham Lincoln faced times immeasurably more challenging to our nation than the current resident of the White House ever will, he was also a man of deep character and profound intellect - which Furious George most decidedly is not. Lincoln was wholly unlike our Dear Leader, who is notable only for his uncanny ability to channel the worst aspects of the Jacksonian Democrats and wigged-out Whigs of the first half of the 19th century: in his miserable tenure, Bush has managed to combine the bullheadedness of an Andrew Jackson, the aloof ignorance of a James Buchanan, the unprincipled malleability of a Millard Fillmore, the bullying condescension of a James Polk, and the predilections toward aggressive expansionist follies of a Franklin Pierce.
The Politics of Soldiery
After the initial flurry of middle-finger-flipping that was the month of April, 1861, both sides moved to organize their forces for what they hoped would be a quick war. The South's strategy was to play defense - repel the Yanks long enough, and they'll lose interest and go away. To fend off any Yankee incursions toward Richmond - which lay only 100 miles from Washington - Confederate generals like P.G.T. Beauregard (of Fort Sumter fame) and Thomas "not Stonewall yet" Jackson moved the bulk of their forces northward.
Meanwhile, Lincoln's call for volunteers had been quite successful, based at least in part on the limited nature of the enlistment: 90 days. Thousands of green recruits poured into Washington, confident that they would both teach the South a lesson and be back home by the end of the summer. So it was that as that as May and June passed, and July wore on, Congress (which had reconvened on Independence Day) and the President alike were getting a little antsy about seeing their huge army doing nothing but marching around the capitol while the expirations of their contracts loomed ever closer. Together, they began to twist the arm of Winfield Scott, commanding general of the Union Army (and a guy so long in the tooth that he'd been a general in the war against Santa Anna, thirteen years before) to get him to do something.
Lincoln had tried to find someone better, but Robert E. Lee turned him down. Like most of the best of the American army's antebellum leadership corps, Lee resigned a few days after his home state (in his case, Virginia) seceded. For the time being, Lee goes off to organize defenses in northwestern Virginia - we'll meet up with him again in 1862, when a fortuitous bullet finds General Johnston at Seven Pines, and General Lee finds himself in the right place at the right time.
Historiorant: He never did recant his belief that Virginia's secession was not an act of treason, nor that his own taking up of arms against an Army to which he had sworn an allegiance was an act of mutiny.
The First of Ten Thousand Commas
Still a little stressed about the untested nature of his troops, General Irwin McDowell and his army were hurried out of Washington on July 16. By the 18th, his troops were encountering Confederate lines along Bull Run Creek, near the town of Manassas, Virginia.
Weird Historical Sidenote: Following ages-old custom, the South referred to battle sites by referencing the town nearest them; in a devious plot designed to frustrate future high school students everywhere, the North opted to name battles after the nearest creek or stream. Seriously, though - anybody know why?
McDowell tried to flank the Confederates, but his own experience with battlefield command (which was largely theoretical), the bickering of his officers (which was a huge problem on both sides, especially at the start of the war), and the greenness of his troops all combined to slow his advance. Meanwhile, Joe Johnston, over in the Shenandoah Valley, recognized the nature of the problem - i.e. around 30,000 Federal troops vs. about 22,000 Confederate - and hurried his troops onto trains that rushed them to the battlefield. From Washington streamed the wealthy elite, eager to set up on good vantage points so they could picnic while the boys in blue stomped some Confederate butt. Historiorant: One is reminded of the pizza-and-popcorn party that is almost certain to have been held in the White House during the first day of the "shock and awe" campaign...
Weird Historical Sidenote: Trekkers and aerial war buffs might be interested to note that a flying craft named Enterprise was present at the Battle of Bull Run. A few days earlier, Professor Thaddeus Lowe of Cincinnati (discoverer of the jet stream, btw) proved how useful an observation balloon might be to the Union cause when he ascended to 500 feet above the White House trailing a telegraph line. He sent this message:
Balloon Enterprise in the Air
To His Excellency, Abraham Lincoln
President of the United States
Dear Sir:
From this point of observation we command an extent of our country nearly fifty miles in diameter. I have the pleasure of sending you this first telegram ever dispatched from an aerial station, and acknowledging indebtedness to your encouragement for the opportunity of demonstrating the availability of the science of aeronautics in the service of the country.
I am, Your Excellency's obedient servant,
T.S.C. Lowe
wikipedia
And so became the first AWACS pilot in our nation's history - and, one might say, the grandfather of the Air Force.
Leadership, and the Cost of a Lack Thereof
At first, things went according to McDowell's plan. Overwhelming numbers of Federals broke the Confederate lines on the left flank, and the Rebel Yell got played in reverse - at least until the fleeing men got to the vicinity of Henry House Hill, where General Thomas Jackson had drawn up his Virginians:
The field officers of the more than 2,000 routed men of the commands of Evans and Bee, among whom Federal shot and shell from the batteries of Griffin and Ricketts were raining, were making desperate efforts to rally their men and reorganize them, but to no purpose, although Johnston and Beauregard both joined in the effort. Strong masses of Federal infantry were rapidly advancing, and disaster seemed imminent, when the heroic Bee, exhausted in his fruitless effort to rally his men, rode up to Jackson, who was steadily holding his brigade in a full fronting position, notwithstanding the approaching attack of the enemy, the artillery fire that was thinning his ranks, and the nearby confusion, and cried out in a tone of despair: "General, they are beating us back!" The reply came, prompt and curt, but calm, "Then we will give them the bayonet." The blazing and defiant look of Jackson, his bold and prompt determination, and the steady line of brave men that supported him, gave new life to Bee. Galloping back to the disorganized masses of his command, he shouted, waving his hand to the left: "Look! There is Jackson, standing like a stone wall. Rally behind the Virginians! Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer. Follow me!" Obedient to this clarion call to duty and the example of soldierly bearing to which their attention had been called, a number of Bee's men rallied and followed him in a charge to the left against the advancing enemy, in which this heroic leader fell dead. From that time forward, through all the ages of history, Jackson became, and will continue to be, "Stonewall" Jackson, and his brigade the "Stonewall brigade."
Confederate Military History, Vol. III, Chapter VIII, via civilwarhome.com (emphasis mine - u.m.)
The Confederate troops, no doubt experiencing inspiration and shame in equal measure, reversed the rout, and the resulting Yankee retreat became known as "The Great Skeedaddle." Wagons were overturned and weapons cast aside as frightened troops crowded onto the roads heading back to Washington. They were quickly joined by the picnicking D.C. social class, whose carriages jammed those same roads with self-important buffoons consumed by an overwhelming desire to save themselves.
Bull Run had important political ramifications on both sides, and not all of them were what one might expect. Southern enlistment dropped off sharply, for example, as folks across the South reckoned that the C.S.A. already had all the soldiers it needed to whip the Yankees. Likewise, logistical preparations for a protracted war slowed in South, even as the North finally perceived the full scale of the task before it.
"Young Napoleon" or "Tardy George"?: We Report, You Decide
Honest Abe quickly hung the scapegoat label on General McDowell, whom he subsequently replaced with General George McClellan, a brilliant organizer, morale-builder, and drillmaster. So far, of course, this doesn't make him sound much like our current Secretary of Defense - though for differing reasons, they're still near equals in terms of ineptitude. Here's a rare, side-by-side comparison of two of the worst military leaders ever to encumber the mission of our men at arms:
Age and Education: McClellan - 34 years old; 2nd in West Point's graduating class of 1846. Rummy - 68 when Bush dubbed him SecDef; A.B. from Princeton, 1954
Military Service: McClellan - promoted for valor under fire at Chapultepec; semi-retired into railroad biz in late 1850s, recalled to service as commander of Ohio militia (1861). Rummy - active duty as US Navy flight instructor, 1954-1957, reserve officer until being appointed SecDef under Gerald Ford (1975), holds retired rank of Captain
Resume: McClellan - served (poorly) as a railroad surveyor in Washington and Texas; performed various intelligence gigs; translated from the French a book on bayoneting people; did a decent job as a railroad company president in Illinois. Rummy - worked in investment banking for a couple of years, then elected to US House from Illinois 13th (1962-1969), held various posts in and out of government (some quite powerful) during the blighted years of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and George I; rammed approval for dangerous products (e.g. aspartame) through the FDA, and served as a corporate raider and hatchet man during the Carter and Clinton terms.
Foreign Dealings: McClellan - at the behest of SecWar Jeff Davis, was sent to spy on the Dominican Republic with an eye toward hostile takeover (1854, though the plans were dusted off and reconsidered in 1870); as a result of being and official observer of the Crimean War, met and dealt with European leaders, personally witnessed the siege of Sevastopol, and later developed a saddle that was standard Army issue until the 1940s (though he failed to recognize the importance of seeing rifled muskets in action). Rummy - NATO ambassador during the U.S. retreat from Vietnam; was partly responsible for the bungled response to swine flu outbreak (in which tainted vaccines killed 52 people, while the disease itself sickened a little over 600) in 1975-76; awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977); sat on board of ABB, a corporation that sold light-water nuclear reactors to North Korea (2000) and as a member of the first Bush regime, famously concluded the poison-gas deal that would provide Saddam Hussein with a final solution to his Kurdish problem.
Miltary Philospophy: McClellan - obsessed with idea of going to war only once the army achieves the unachievable goal of being perfectly trained and ready; cautious to a fault. Rummy - obsessed with the idea of going to war, even if he has to "go to war with the army you have, not the army you want"; reckless far beyond a fault.
Morale: McClellan - loved by his troops because of his hesitancy to place them in harm's way. Rummy - despised by his troops for his callous willingness to put them in harm's way
Use of Intelligence: McClellan - always thought he was badly outnumbered, based largely upon faulty intel coming from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Rummy - always thought there were WMD in Iraq, based largely upon faulty intel coming from the chickenhawk war propaganda machine.
Relative Level of Arrogance: McClellan - extreme. Here's a note he wrote to his wife in late July, 1861:
I find myself in a new and strange position here--Presdt, Cabinet, Genl Scott & all deferring to me--by some strange operation of magic I seem to have become the power of the land. ... I almost think that were I to win some small success now I could become Dictator or anything else that might please me--but nothing of that kind would please me--therefore I won't be Dictator. Admirable self-denial!
--George B. McClellan
wikipedia
Rummy - supreme; displays no such self-denial. In fact, he displays all the preening arrogance of a politically-promoted-but-utterly-skill-less kung fu master.
Things Named After: McClellan - Fort McClellan, Alabama (Spanish-American War-1995); a butte in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest; a couple of streets and schools here and there. Rummy - agathidium rumsfeldi, a species of slime-mold beetle (2005).
Newsflash: Failed Invasions Lead to Longer Wars and Stronger Enemies
As McClellan dithered, the jokesters started emerging. "All Quiet on the Potomac" was the theme of the day, and a song entitled "Tardy George (McClennan)" started making the rounds. Through it all, the General firmly stuck to his conviction that he was always right, even after he jumped the gun and threw Washington into a lockdown (August 8, 1861) based on the erroneous idea that the Southern Army had grown by 70,000 men in the weeks since Bull Run. In actuality, the Confederates likely never fielded more than 60,000 men total, which made McClennan (who was sitting on nearly 200,000 troops by the end of 1861) look a little yellow, but that didn't stop him from blaming others for his lack of action. In a private correspondence to his wife on August 10th, McClellan wrote of his superior:
"Genl Scott is the great obstacle--he will not comprehend the danger & is either a traitor, or an incompetent. I have to fight my way against him."
wikipedia
In October, the inability to get anything done moved Lincoln to accept Winfield Scott's resignation "for health reasons" - he'd already declined the offer once before - and on November 1, McClellan assumed overall command of the entire Union Army. Despite having all the authority he needed, he still did nothing. In the end, the President himself was moved to famously inquire if he might borrow the army for a time, if McClellan wasn't going to be using it.
A Real War President
Congress was not in session when the first shots of the war were fired, and since the secession of states and the advent of hostilities didn't rise to the level of, say, a Terry Schiavo case, Lincoln operated without Congressional backing until that august body reconvened in July. Some of what he did was later deemed to be okay, like the blockading of Southern ports, but as described in our last episode, there was considerably more consternation about his suspension of habeus corpus and, later, "supervised" elections in noncompliant areas of border states like Ohio and Kentucky.
The tone of his December 3, 1861 address to Congress, however, makes it quite clear that Lincoln had both considered and accepted the potential ramifications of actions he knew to be treading at the very edge of the Rule of Law, and fully understood where the true power in our governmental system lay:
Under these circumstances I have been urgently solicited to establish, by military power, courts to administer summary justice in such cases. I have thus far declined to do it, not because I had any doubt that the end proposed--the collection of the debts--was just and right in itself, but because I have been unwilling to go beyond the pressure of necessity in the unusual exercise of power. But the powers of Congress, I suppose, are equal to the anomalous occasion, and therefore I refer the whole matter to Congress, with the hope that a plan maybe devised for the administration of justice in all such parts of the insurgent States and Territories as may be under the control of this government, whether by a voluntary return to allegiance and order or by the power of our arms; this, however, not to be a permanent institution, but a temporary substitute, and to cease as soon as the ordinary courts can be reestablished in peace.
xmission
and, just for good measure:
The war continues. In considering the policy to be adopted for suppressing the insurrection I have been anxious and careful that the inevitable conflict for this purpose shall not degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle. I have therefore in every case thought it proper to keep the integrity of the Union prominent as the primary object of the contest on our part, leaving all questions which are not of vital military importance to the more deliberate action of the Legislature.
ibid.
By Valentine's Day, 1862, Lincoln was ready to own up to some of the more egregious actions of the previous year, and to try to right them where prudent. Just imagine George Bush putting his imperator on something like this:
EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 1, RELATING TO POLITICAL
PRISONERS.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, February 14,1862.
In this emergency the President felt it his duty to employ with energy the extraordinary powers which the Constitution confides to him in cases of insurrection. He called into the field such military and naval forces, unauthorized by the existing laws, as seemed necessary. He directed measures to prevent the use of the post-office for treasonable correspondence. He subjected passengers to and from foreign countries to new passport regulations, and he instituted a blockade, suspended the writ of habeas corpus in various places, and caused persons who were represented to him as being or about to engage in disloyal and treasonable practices to be arrested by special civil as well as military agencies and detained in military custody when necessary to prevent them and deter others from such practices. Examinations of such cases were instituted, and some of the persons so arrested have been discharged from time to time under circumstances or upon conditions compatible, as was thought, with the public safety.
Meantime a favorable change of public opinion has occurred. The line between loyalty and disloyalty is plainly defined. The whole structure of the government is firm and stable. Apprehension of public danger and facilities for treasonable practices have diminished with the passions which prompted heedless persons to adopt them. The insurrection is believed to have culminated and to be declining.
The President, in view of these facts, and anxious to favor a return to the normal course of the administration as far as regard for the public welfare will allow, directs that all political prisoners or state prisoners now held in military custody be released on their subscribing to a parole engaging them to render no aid or comfort to the enemies in hostility to the United States.
By order of the President
EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.
Operation Iraqi Freedom The Peninsular Campaign
In the Spring of 1862, McClellan took his army on a U.S. History field trip, moving down the Potomac and western shores of the Chesapeake, then spending nearly as much time taking Yorktown as Washington had fourscore and a year before. From there, he moved on to Colonial Williamsburg, where though victorious, he showed himself unable to recognize a developing advantage and failed to press the attack, allowing the Confederated army to slip away and tighten the defenses around Richmond.
Weird Historical Sidenote: Here's an odd coincidence: this ad appeared in Harper's Weekly only two days before "Little Mac's" army set out:
The Soldiers' Bullet Proof Vest
Harper's Weekly, March 15, 1862, Page 175
Funny how things come full circle sometimes.
In the Shenandoah Valley, Stonewall Jackson began launching furious cross-border raids that made Lincoln so nervous that he diverted critical reinforcements meant for the attack on Richmond to the defense of Washington. This lack of troops and the political meddling their absence represented, combined with a bout of malaria, bad intel, and a natural tendency toward battlefield timidity, caused McClellan to approach to within sight of Richmond, then halt before attacking, something for which Lincoln excoriated him.
General Joseph Johnston was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines, which led to Robert E. Lee's assumption of command of the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee had been even better than Tardy George at impressing Winfield Scott way back in the days when the three of them served together as engineers and artillerymen in Mexico; now he began counterattacking with all the ferocity of an old rival. Soon McClellan was seeking out a broader, Baghdad-from-Washington-type perspective on the deck of the U.S.S. Galena, a gunboat located about 10 miles away from the gunfire. He paid for this cowardice in the 1864 presidential election, when supporters of Lincoln drew up cartoons like this:
Though rightfully accused of dereliction of duty in leaving the retreat from Northern Virginia in the hands of subordinates to whom he had issued no orders, McClellan displayed a Cheney-esque ability to rationalize and deflect. He's probably fortunate that this cable to SecWar Stanton was edited by a telegraph interpreter:
"If I save this army now, I tell you plainly I owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army."
Behind the Blame Game
For all its damage to the general's reputation, the failure of the Peninsular Campaign had much greater ramifications than the ones affecting George McClellan's political career. Had Richmond fallen in mid-1862, it seems pretty likely the war would have ended with the South being re-admitted to the Union under some sort of compromise deal that would've kicked the slavery question down the road another generation or two. Now, with proven McClellan-beater Robert E. Lee in command, the war was certain to drag on long enough that Lincoln would have to add to it a much greater moral imperative than salvation of the republic in order to compel his fellow Northerners to take up arms and play along with his dictatorial directives.
Sighing heavily, he sat down in the very office in which torture has recently been made an instrument of our nation's foreign policy. Contemplating the true nature of the things for which Americans are willing to fight and die, he began drafting the document that would become the Emancipation Proclamation...
Historiorant
It may have taken humiliating defeats and insubordinate generals to get him to realize it, but Lincoln finally found a way to make the Civil War one about righting injustice, as opposed to enforcing compliance. Would that our President were a man of such vision...(le sigh)
Thankfully, all is not lost for we of these most un-Lincolnish times, and through the magic of the Tubes of the Internets, places do exist for people willing to stand up for human rights to speak out. In fact, some folks you know - like Avila, Buhdydharma, kraant, mikk0, and a host of other concerned people - have recently set up just such a site. Please check out Never In Our Names for an ongoing discussion of what's worth fighting for.