Tag Archives: war

May 16, 2014 · 10:40 pm

Bloody May: Grant’s 1864 Campaign Against Lee

This month marks the 150th anniversary of Union General U.S. Grant’s campaign to destroy Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

Portrait of General Meade (Source: SmithsonianAssociates.org)

Portrait of General Meade (Source: SmithsonianAssociates.org)

As Virginia’s many rivers go, the Rapidan receives scant notice. Its headwaters begin 4,000 feet above sea level near the Big Meadows in the Blue Ridge. From there, the river descends east, gradually widening until it flows into the Rappahannock River northwest of Charlottesville and Fredericksburg. During the winter of 1863-1864, every American identified the river as the boundary line between General Meade’s Army of the Potomac and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

On Wednesday, May 4, 1864, Grant sent Meade’s 120,000 soldiers across the Rapidan on pontoon bridges constructed by the army’s engineers at two points: Ely’s Ford and Germanna Ford. Grant was determined to destroy Lee’s 60,000-man army and capture Richmond in the process.

Throughout the month of May, Grant and Lee danced their deadly Tarantella, suffering losses in proportion to their numbers. In the Battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House, the Union army suffered casualties – killed, wounded, or captured – of 36,000 men while the Confederate casualties totaled 24,000. To put the losses in perspective, one has to remember that the United States population today is ten times that of 1864 (taking into account populations both north and south).

Battle of the Wilderness, Attack at Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia, 1865; Painting by Alonzo Chappel (Source: 1stArtGallery.com)

Battle of the Wilderness, Attack at Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia, 1865; Painting by Alonzo Chappel (Source: 1stArtGallery.com)

Despite the heavy losses, Grant continued forward, unlike the Union commanders who preceded him. He made “turn the left flank” the order of the day, and by Thursday, June 2, Union troops had fought their way within ten air miles of Richmond. Both commanders replenished their losses. Grant received 40,000 fresh troops in the second half of May, most from the “heavy artillery” units in and around Washington, who previously had seen action only on Washington’s parade grounds. Lee had to move Confederate troops south of Richmond and in North Carolina to bring his troop strength back to his original 60,000. By doing so, Lee risked a rout from the rear.

June would open with a shocking loss for the Union troops. I will address that in another article.

Most of this brief account is taken from my Civil War era novel, New Garden (pages 275-276), available on line from Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Dog Ear Publishing. The novel is also available in Greensboro, NC, at the Greensboro Historical Museum and Scuppernong Books.

For historical sources about Grant’s campaign, I recommend the following:

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May 2, 2014 · 9:37 pm

Adlai Stevenson II: Intellectual, Graceful Loser to Eisenhower

TIME Magazine from October 1952 cover featuring Adlai Stevenson II (Source: TakeMeBackTo.com)

TIME magazine cover from October 1952 featuring Adlai Stevenson II (Source: TakeMeBackTo.com)

Continuing last week’s theme, this article addresses the 1952 and 1956 Presidential elections, when Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II suffered resounding defeats at the hands of General Dwight Eisenhower, commander of the western allied forces in Europe in World War II.

In an earlier article on the 1960 Presidential election, I discussed the states of the largely “solid South” which, with several exceptions, cast their votes for the candidate from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Stevenson largely enjoyed the same support in 1952, when he carried West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. In 1956, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Louisiana threw their support to Eisenhower, while Stevenson won a majority of Missouri’s voters. Eisenhower won over 80 percent of the electoral vote in both elections, 442-89 in 1952 and 457-73 in 1956. (One Alabama elector cast his 1956 vote for an Alabama politician, Walter B. Jones.)

In the absence of a scandal, Eisenhower, like U.S. Grant 88 years earlier, was a shoo-in whether he ran as a Republican or a Democrat. With great justification Stevenson reluctantly accepted his party’s nomination in 1952. Having been bitten by the bug, however, he successfully pursued the nomination again in 1956 and was swamped by John Kennedy in 1960. His ambition irritated the Kennedy team and cost him the position of Secretary of State in 1960. Instead, he was relegated to serve as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, where he served with great distinction until his death in 1965.

Stevenson campaign button (Source: AntiquesNavigator.com)

Stevenson campaign button (Source: AntiquesNavigator.com)

The Bushes and Clintons are not the first American political dynasties. They were preceded by the Kennedys and the Roosevelts (and, of course much earlier, the Adamses). Adlai Stevenson II also was part of a political dynasty. His namesake grandfather served as Vice President under Grover Cleveland. His maternal great-grandfather was one of the founders of the Republican Party, counting Abraham Lincoln among his friends. Adlai II’s father served as secretary of state in Illinois and his son, Adlai Stevenson III, served as a United States Senator.

Adlai Stevenson II is remembered best for his grace in defeat and his intellectual wit. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from him:

“It is said that a wise man who stands firm is a statesman, and a foolish man who stands firm is a catastrophe.” [Fools and Foolishness Quotes]

“An independent is a guy who wants to take the politics out of politics.” [Politics Quotes]

“Some people approach every problem with an open mouth.” [Quips and Comments Quotes]

For more about Adlai Stevenson II, please see the following sources:

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April 25, 2014 · 9:26 pm

Running for President against a War Hero

Horatio Seymour (Source: Dickinson College)

Horatio Seymour (Source: Dickinson College)

For much of this country’s history, America’s voters have elected Presidents with some history of military service. Until President Clinton’s election in 1992, every successful candidate for the White House since World War II had worn a military uniform. But for a down-cycle economy in 1992 and a thriving economy in 1996, it is unlikely Mr. Clinton would have broken the trend.

Of our 44 Presidents, twelve have held the rank of general, with ten having seen battle action: Washington, Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Taylor, Pierce, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and Eisenhower.

Imagine two of the unsuccessful candidates who ran against the heroes of their day, former New York governor Horatio Seymour, who ran against General Ulysses S. Grant in 1868, and Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson, who challenged General Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. This article is limited to a discussion of Seymour. I will talk about Stevenson in my next article.

Seymour had served two terms as governor of New York. In 1863, he had questioned the constitutionality of the Union’s conscription laws, largely because he believed they were tilted in favor of Republican congressional districts. During the New York City draft riots in July, 1863, he had addressed some demonstrators as “my friends.” The riots ultimately were extinguished by veterans of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Adlai Stevenson (Source: Wikipedia.org)

Adlai Stevenson (Source: Wikipedia.org)

At the 1868 Democratic Convention, Seymour reluctantly accepted the nomination on the 22nd ballot. In the election campaign that followed, Seymour and his Vice-Presidential running mate, former former Union General Francis Blair, pursued a “white man’s” platform, arguing that the Republicans’ reconstruction policies should be nullified. President Johnson had narrowly escaped conviction in his impeachment trial only a few months earlier. His impeachment had been due in large part to his resistance to reconstruction legislation (although the principal pretext for impeachment had been Johnson’s non-compliance with the highly controversial, and certainly unconstitutional, Tenure of Office Act). Americans had just suffered through four years of civil war and three years of Johnson and the Congress at one another’s throats. And Seymour thought they wanted more of the same?

Grant, in contrast, followed the tradition of the age, not campaigning at all (Can you imagine?), but instead spending much of his time either in his hometown of Galena, Illinois, or on vacation on the Great Plains. Rather than stirring the pot, he avoided making speeches. His campaign managers exhorted the populace to “[l]et us have peace.”

Seymour did win over 47 percent of the popular vote, but Grant won the electoral-college vote in a 214-80 landslide. Seymour won New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Oregon, Louisiana and Georgia. Three Southern states – Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas – had not been readmitted to the Union, and therefore did not participate in the election.

As I stated earlier, Grant was the hero of his age. He had “conquered the peace,” bringing an end to four bloody years of conflict. It is unlikely any Democratic candidate could have beaten Grant, particularly when many Americans believed the Democratic Party had brought on the war with their contentious 1860 Presidential nominating conventions in Charleston, South Carolina, and Baltimore, Maryland. Republicans waved the “bloody shirt.” Americans were not going to turn the White House over to the party they deemed responsible for over 600,000 American lives.

Sources:

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March 14, 2014 · 3:01 am

The Fugitive Slave Law and Runaways

Printed in 1851, this flier was circulated around Boston and warned African-Americans of the Fugitive Slave acts, which legalized the capture and return of any runaway slaves (Source: Harvard Square Library)

This poster was distributed around Boston and warned African-Americans of the Fugitive Slave acts, which legalized the capture and return of runaway slaves. (Source: Harvard Square Library)

In 1850, Congressional leaders made their last valiant efforts to forestall conflict between the North and the South. However, in their attempts to reach some form of compromise, they unwittingly set the stage for the Civil War.

Some might say that civil war was the price the United States paid for orchestrating war with Mexico in 1848. By invading Mexico, or at least by sending troops to contested territory, the United States ultimately gained a huge swath of land that included modern day California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. Like Thomas Jefferson before them when he negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, most American leaders probably believed it would take generations before much of the new territory would be ripe for statehood. But history is full of unforeseen consequences, and James Marshall’s gold discovery in Coloma, California, accelerated the process by attracting sufficient numbers of Americans who wanted statehood. More importantly, California’s citizens had enacted a constitution that prohibited slavery.

For years, Southern leaders had sought to maintain balance in the United States Senate, admitting a free state to the union only while admitting a slave state at the same time. In 1850, they had many demands on the table: carving up Texas into a number of states in an effort to maintain equal representation in the Senate; continued legality of slavery in the nation’s capital, anathema to antislavery Northerners; and a stricter fugitive slave law to insure recovery of runaway slaves.

Anti-slavery forces in the North also had an agenda: admission of California and other future states acquired from the Mexican War as free states and abolition of the slave trade in the nation’s capital.

1850 also saw the last great stand of the Senate’s most famous orators: Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, John Calhoun of South Carolina, and Henry Clay of Kentucky. Clay sought to ease tensions by proposing a series of resolutions. Each resolution offered something to the North, balanced with an inducement to the South. His strategy failed, but Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, Lincoln’s chief opponent for the presidency ten years later, succeeded by gathering enough votes from Upper South and Midwest representatives, who approved the package as a whole.

Painting titled "Effects of the Fugitive-Slave Law" (Source: Library of Congress)

Painting titled “Effects of the Fugitive-Slave Law” (Source: Library of Congress)

Before the Compromise of 1850, a 1793 federal statute authorized Southerners to enter free states to capture runaway slaves, but state authorities were not obligated to enforce the law. Prigg v. Pennsylvania (United States Supreme Court 1842). One of the compromise’s components, the Fugitive Slave Law, sought to remedy Southerners’ dissatisfaction with existing law by creating a category of federal commissioners empowered to arrest and return runaways to their owners. The law also gave the commissioners authority to deputize any citizen to assist in enforcement of the law.

While many Northerners did not object to slavery where it lawfully existed, they took great exception to playing any role in its enforcement. Southern slave owners, who thought they finally had obtained a meaningful process for retrieving their fugitive property, fumed about Northerners’ resistance to the law’s enforcement and Northern states’ passage of personal liberty laws designed to thwart the enforcement of the law. Within a year of the law’s enactment, it became clear that enacting a law is considerably less difficult than executing it. After 1851, few runaways were returned to their owners under the auspices of the Fugitive Slave Law.

For a fictional but faithful account of a runaway slave’s stop at an Underground Railroad station, please see the “Runaway” chapter in my historical novel, New Garden, available on line from Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Dog Ear Publishing. The novel’s “Charleston” chapter about the Democratic Convention of 1860 also depicts Southern politicians’ dissatisfaction with Northerners’ resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law.

For a more detailed historical account of the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law, see Professor James McPherson’s Ordeal by Fire, pages 70-89 (3rd Edition, McGraw Hill 2001).

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January 16, 2014 · 1:54 am

Civil War Personalities – Simon Cameron

Cameron LOC

Simon Cameron (Source: Library of Congress)

One of the more colorful politicians of the Civil War era was Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, once accused of being so corrupt that the only thing he would not steal was a red hot stove.

Another politician, Edwin Stanton, served as Lincoln’s Secretary of War during most of the Civil War, but before assuming that position in February, 1862, he served as legal adviser to his predecessor, Simon Cameron.

When Lincoln’s political managers worked for his nomination at the 1860 Republican Convention in Chicago, they made many promises, some overt and others subtle, to secure the delegates needed for the nomination. They desperately needed Pennsylvania’s delegates, and no one questioned U.S. Senator Cameron’s ability to deliver them, with the understanding that Pennsylvania would cast its votes for favorite-son Cameron on the first ballot and for Lincoln on subsequent ballots.

Stanton Library of Congress

Edwin Stanton (Source: Library of Congress)

The leading contender, Senator William Seward, thought he had secured Cameron’s support in a visit to the Pennsylvanian’s home in the spring of 1860, trusting the quote often attributed to Cameron that “an honest politician is one who, when he is bought, stays bought.” [Goodwin, Team of Rivals, p. 217]. But when the Republicans convened in May, many Pennsylvania delegates thought Seward was not electable.

While Seward waited at his Auburn, New York estate for word of his nomination, the anti-Seward forces were hard at work in Chicago. In exchange for Pennsylvania’s support, Cameron wanted Lincoln to give him the Treasury post and sole control of all political patronage in Pennsylvania. [Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury, pp. 60-61 (1961) (2009 edition).] Cameron was known as the “Winnebago chief” for purportedly swindling the Winnebago tribe in a supply contract [McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 260 (1988)], and any suggestion that Lincoln would agree to give a reputed crook control of the government’s purse strings is disingenuous. But Lincoln’s men at least gave a wink and a nod of some sort assuring Cameron of a position in the Cabinet. Pennsylvania delivered its support and Seward would have to be satisfied with the State Department rather than the White House.

Interestingly, during the first year of the war, many military contracts went to manufacturers in Cameron’s home state of Pennsylvania. In addition, military supplies traveled inordinate distances on Pennsylvania railroads. There were also many complaints about the quality of materials furnished to the troops. The war added new words to the vernacular, including “shoddy,” charges of pressed scraps of wool used to make uniforms that fell apart after a few weeks’ wear. [McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, p. 183 (Third Edition, 2001)]

Because he received intense criticism for his poor management of the War Department, Cameron sought to secure his fragile position by kowtowing to the Radical Republicans in Congress. In the War Department’s December 1861 annual report, he advocated freeing and arming slaves who escaped into Union army lines. [Ordeal by Fire, p. 291] This early in the war, Lincoln was struggling to keep the slaveholding border states in the Union. Cameron’s report did not help.

In January, 1862, Lincoln let Cameron know his services in Washington were no longer needed. The President ultimately accepted Cameron’s letter of resignation and appointed him as Minister to Russia, thereby sending him where he could do no further harm to the war effort. [Team of Rivals, pp. 410-412]

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