With Lincoln's election in 1860, South Carolina made good on the threat they had been making since 1830: they pulled out of the Union. Followed quickly by Mississippi (the only other state to have a majority slave population) and then by Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, the US had lost a great deal of territory, but little manufacturing power. None of these states contained major iron foundries (though Alabama would develop some capacity during the war), and a relatively small white population. The other slave states, while remaining in the Union, opposed "coercion" of the Deep South. One particular stick in the craw of what was to be the CSA was Fort Sumter. While the South mostly took over Federal forts and armories, grabbing the guns, rifles, and ammo for the coming conflict (which would be crucial, since they couldn't make or import many of their own), a few were stocked with Federal troops loyal to Washington. Fort Sumter, overlooking Charleston Harbor in South Carolina, was an affront to the state which had led secession.
The trick for Lincoln was to get the South to shoot first. Originally planning to reinforce the fort with provisions, guns, and troops, the South claimed that this would be an act of aggression. Eventually, Lincoln announced that the North would ship only food and water to the troops already there, not altering the status quo. While this was hard to bill as "aggression", this was unacceptable to the South, since they had banked on starving out the fort. They fired on, and stormed, Fort Sumter in April 1861, and Lincoln called for volunteers of war. As I mentioned in the last post, this call for troops produced secession in Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and most painfully of all, Virginia, with its massive ironworks at Richmond (the new capitol), stable of outstanding generals, proximity to Washington, and prestige. However, the situation was ambiguous enough to hold Kentucky from secession, which was to have a critical impact on the war.
For several months (actually, the rest of 1861), both sides largely tooled around, doing nothing. This was mostly a result of not having armies to work with, not having rifles enough to pass around, and needing training. Rifles would become critical to the fight. A rifle is a gun with grooves (rifling) in the barrel which cause the bullet to spin, giving it stability (like a gyroscope), and allowing it to fire much farther than from a smoothbore musket. The switch from smoothbore to rifle largely occurred in 1861, and at least quadrupled the range of gunfire. Since the standard infantry tactic of the time was to charge the enemy across open field, the fact that the enemy could shoot at you for 4-6 times as long meant that the attack was to be far more deadly in the Civil War than it had been in the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of the 19th Century. In this respect, the rifles of 1862 prefigured the machine guns of 1914.
There were a couple of notable battles in 1861, the most famous of which was First Bull Run or First Manassas (starting the trend of Confederates and Federals giving different names to the same battle), which blunted an inept attempt by the Union to charge into the Confederate capitol of Richmond in July 1861. To put it bluntly, the Union got whupped, and ran back to Washington with its tail between its legs (though the battle was closer than it looked). Several key things emerged in that first real battle of the war, despite its small size.
-Both sides figured out the other would fight. This was going to be a real war. Since strategic thinking on neither side had developed anything more coherent than "On to Richmond!" and "On to Washington!", this forced everyone to go back to the drawing board and determine exactly how one was supposed to go about taking the enemy capitol. Amazingly, charging at the other side, guns blazing, seemed not to yield easy victory.
-The Confederates, mirroring the thinking of Mycenaean warrior cultures throughout history, had convinced themselves that the effete Northerners were a nation of shopkeepers who would not and could not fight. While Manassas convinced them the Union would, it bred in the South the feeling that Johnny Reb could whup any number of Federals, armed with his warrior's elan, rebel yell, and his smuggled-in British Enfield rifle. Throughout the war, both Confederate generals and Confederate privates would underestimate the fighting capacity of Union soldiers, with the result that aggressive Confederate attacks in the face of rifle fire would bleed the South badly in a war of attrition in which they were already badly outnumbered.
-The Federals got a permanent case of the slows. Convinced that the Confederates had better generals, better soldiers, and more soldiers than they actually did, Union generals (especially the glacial McClellan) would never seriously exploit their superior numbers of troops or cannon in Virginia until 1864. While it's difficult to know for sure whether a more aggressive use of overwhelming force by the Union could have won the war in Virginia much more quickly, it is hard to argue that this would not be the case.
Meanwhile, the other critical event of 1861 was the formation of the blockade. This was Lincoln's invisible army. It manifested itself as the cannon which was never cast, the regiment never raised, the heartiness and resistance to disease not actualized. To strengthen the blockade, the Union used the guns of their ships and amphibious assaults to establish naval bases within the South which could not be easily counterattacked by land:
Cape Hatteras, NC (August)
Ship Island, MS (September)
Port Royal, SC (November)
These gave coverage over the VA/NC, LA/MS/AL, and SC/GA coasts, respectively. The blockade would further improve in the coming year (in another post), but this gave enough of a skeleton to make the blockade credible. Crucially, Queen Victoria and Lord Palmerston of Britain took a very neutral stance toward the South. France, not wanting to end up in a war with Britain over some damned fool thing in the Americas, became a "me, too" power, taking their cues from London in a policy of "coordination". The British attitude was, therefore, crucial. British recognition could mean the end of the blockade, as British naval vessels could convoy Confederate and British merchant ships. The South would, therefore, go to great lengths in 1861-1863 to try to gain British recognition in order to break the blockade which was persistently squeezing the war effort.
Lastly, in the West, the strategic contours were becoming clear. The Union had two points of strength-the Army of the Ohio (the armies of the Union would be named after rivers, perhaps unintentionally telegraphing the degree to which they were strategically maintained by control of and supply by riverine systems, while the Confederate Armies were named after States, reflecting their States' Rights views and landward orientation) under Buell, up in Lexington, KY, and the Department of the Missouri under Halleck at Cairo, IL, where the Ohio and Mississippi meet. Moving down the Mississippi from Cairo was impossible, because the magnificently named Confederate general, Leonidas Polk, has built a huge gun battery on the heights of Columbus, KY, just down the river. The Ohio, on the other hand, was open to Union passage. The Confederate main force, under Albert Sidney Johnston, was based in Nashville, TN, but Confederate strong points ran from Columbus, KY to Fort Henry where the Tennessee flowed into the Ohio, to Fort Donelson, where the Cumberland flows into the Ohio, to Bowling Green, KY, to Mill Springs, KY.
In order to advance into the Confederacy, someone would have to break through that line, and the one who did it had a career that would eventually result in command of all Union Forces, the Presidency, and a spot on the $50 bill of today: Ulysses S. Grant.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Dateline: Martinsburg, WV, A Navalist's Perverse Civil War History, Part 1a-the Border States
Yesterday was a lovely drive through Western Virginia (NOT West Virginia, for obvious reasons...), along I-81, through the Shenandoah Valley. As I drove through the Valley, I was struck by how broad and wide it is-it's not a V-shaped river valley, it's a U-shaped glacial valley, like the one where I grew up. It was also surprising to me to see how agricultural it was. I sort of remembered that it had been a breadbasket, but I had no idea. The barns and silos looked exactly like the ones I remember back home in Western Washington.
This helps me understand why there was so much Civil War fighting here, in addition to the obvious-if you have troops in the Shenandoah Valley, not only can they live off the land pretty easily, but they are both (a) protected from any attack from the east and (b) poised to strike easily at Washington, DC. Hence any Union drive toward Richmond had to worry about a threat from their right flank or, worse, being cut off from Washington, D.C.
I'm actually in West Virginia, now, which has kind of a crazy shape on account of how it was split off from Virginia during the Civil War. To begin with, Maryland has this crazy "hook" which wraps around the northern edge of West Virginia, and the counties that form Eastern West Virginia also form a bit of a hook into Virginia.
This seems as good a time as any to talk about the Border States in the Civil War, even if I get a little ahead of the game. In all of the slave-holding states, there were some who favored secession and some who favored union. In fact, there was a little known, but temporarily very serious, movement in New York City to secede and become a Free City. Nothing could better exemplify New York's commercial, cantankerous, and Dutch heritage than to become a Free City, open to ships of both sides in the conflict. However, the city leaders had clearly taken leave of their senses-such secession would only be viable or wise for New York City if the North was unwilling to fight-Manhattan certainly would not have held out against Federal troops nor a Federal blockade of New York Harbor.
With the remarkable exception of New York, secessionist sentiment tract very clearly with slave population. First to secede was South Carolina, 59% slave, followed by six other states (from Mississippi at 52% to Texas at 30%). This left a band of states with 25-29% slaves (AK, TN, NC, VA), all of which stayed in the Union until Lincoln called for volunteers to raise an Army after the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter. Once it became clear that a fight was brewing, these states preferred to fight with rather than against the other Southern states. Here is a great irony. It might have been possible to hold the Upper South in the Union by letting the Deep South go in peace-trying to subdue the South enlarged it-but secession of more states would have threatened at every turn.
Ironically, in three of these states of the Middle South, TN, VA, and NC, there was one region that was strongly Unionist: the Appalachians. The hill folk were not, with few exceptions, slavers, and slave populations in these counties were exceptionally low. They weren't interested in fighting for slavery, and had no particular fear of emancipation. Ironically, to many Yankees in the late 20th century, the hillbilly redneck is considered to be the last refuge of Confederate sentiment. While there is a grain of truth to this, given how slowly change comes to the hills, it's interesting how the Jacksonian Scots-Irish wanted nothing to do with Jeff Davis' war for the Slave Power. Unfortunately for the Union, Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina were simply out of reach-Union armies could not backstop Union sentiment in these regions (though in the case of Tennessee, Lincoln tried to push his generals to obtain control of the region-it was simply too difficult for the Union to pull off). In the case of Virginia, however, local Union sentiment paired up with the presence of Union troops to produce...a secession from seceded Virginia to form West Virginia. Since WV is an agglomeration of counties, its shape is a little goofy out where I'm at.
But back to the other border states. Much of the tiptoeing by Lincoln in coming months had to do with trying to hold onto the last four slave states, which had not declared for the CSA after raising a Federal Army following the fall of Fort Sumter in April 1861: KY (20% slave), MO(15%), MD(13%), and DE(2%). There was never any fear that Delaware would go Confederate, though the other three gave quite a scare to Lincoln. Maryland's Unionists seem to have benefited greatly from the presence of large numbers of Union troops-some of Lincoln's most controversial acts, such as the suspension of habeas corpus in MD, were attempts to secure the state for the Union. In both MD and MO, Union sympathy seems to have been in a strong majority, but sizable numbers of Confederate sympathizers were a worry throughout the war. In Missouri, this took the form of lawless raiders. While the populations centers of Missouri were fairly firmly under US Army control (except in the southern part of the state until 1862), the wide stretches of backwoods were the province of anarchy and raiders, like the notorious Jessee James. Missouri continued to be plagued by lawlessness in the decades after the Civil War. While I've never heard it argued, it wouldn't surprise me if many of the outlaws and outlaw dynamics that typify the Old West in the decades after the Civil War didn't just radiate out from Missouri's Civil War anarchy, advancing in a westward band at the edge of strong governmental control from 1865 to the end of the frontier in 1890.
Kentucky was the most evenly split state, with 2/5 of Kentuckians who fought in the war wearing grey and 3/5 wearing blue. This was the sate where the "brother on brother" meme was actually very true. KY was initially neutral, with strong sentiment going both ways. KY declared for the Union after the CSA "invaded" Columbus, KY, but throughout 1861, the presence of CS troops in KY and Confederate sentiment made the state a true battleground in reality. In both Missouri and Kentucky, Confederate troops held much of the southern parts of the state, but in the long run these were fairly untenable positions. A Confederacy that firmly held all of Kentucky, and could defend the state along the entirety of the Ohio River, or one that firmly held Missouri all the way up the Mississippi to St. Louis, would have been in a much stronger strategic position, but unlike in Virginia, these states simply did not have the Confederate sympathy (or slaves) to make this a reality. If one is to search for counterfactuals, one can certainly imagine a less deft diplomat than Abraham Lincoln driving these slave states into the Confederacy in 1861.
This helps me understand why there was so much Civil War fighting here, in addition to the obvious-if you have troops in the Shenandoah Valley, not only can they live off the land pretty easily, but they are both (a) protected from any attack from the east and (b) poised to strike easily at Washington, DC. Hence any Union drive toward Richmond had to worry about a threat from their right flank or, worse, being cut off from Washington, D.C.
I'm actually in West Virginia, now, which has kind of a crazy shape on account of how it was split off from Virginia during the Civil War. To begin with, Maryland has this crazy "hook" which wraps around the northern edge of West Virginia, and the counties that form Eastern West Virginia also form a bit of a hook into Virginia.
This seems as good a time as any to talk about the Border States in the Civil War, even if I get a little ahead of the game. In all of the slave-holding states, there were some who favored secession and some who favored union. In fact, there was a little known, but temporarily very serious, movement in New York City to secede and become a Free City. Nothing could better exemplify New York's commercial, cantankerous, and Dutch heritage than to become a Free City, open to ships of both sides in the conflict. However, the city leaders had clearly taken leave of their senses-such secession would only be viable or wise for New York City if the North was unwilling to fight-Manhattan certainly would not have held out against Federal troops nor a Federal blockade of New York Harbor.
With the remarkable exception of New York, secessionist sentiment tract very clearly with slave population. First to secede was South Carolina, 59% slave, followed by six other states (from Mississippi at 52% to Texas at 30%). This left a band of states with 25-29% slaves (AK, TN, NC, VA), all of which stayed in the Union until Lincoln called for volunteers to raise an Army after the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter. Once it became clear that a fight was brewing, these states preferred to fight with rather than against the other Southern states. Here is a great irony. It might have been possible to hold the Upper South in the Union by letting the Deep South go in peace-trying to subdue the South enlarged it-but secession of more states would have threatened at every turn.
Ironically, in three of these states of the Middle South, TN, VA, and NC, there was one region that was strongly Unionist: the Appalachians. The hill folk were not, with few exceptions, slavers, and slave populations in these counties were exceptionally low. They weren't interested in fighting for slavery, and had no particular fear of emancipation. Ironically, to many Yankees in the late 20th century, the hillbilly redneck is considered to be the last refuge of Confederate sentiment. While there is a grain of truth to this, given how slowly change comes to the hills, it's interesting how the Jacksonian Scots-Irish wanted nothing to do with Jeff Davis' war for the Slave Power. Unfortunately for the Union, Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina were simply out of reach-Union armies could not backstop Union sentiment in these regions (though in the case of Tennessee, Lincoln tried to push his generals to obtain control of the region-it was simply too difficult for the Union to pull off). In the case of Virginia, however, local Union sentiment paired up with the presence of Union troops to produce...a secession from seceded Virginia to form West Virginia. Since WV is an agglomeration of counties, its shape is a little goofy out where I'm at.
But back to the other border states. Much of the tiptoeing by Lincoln in coming months had to do with trying to hold onto the last four slave states, which had not declared for the CSA after raising a Federal Army following the fall of Fort Sumter in April 1861: KY (20% slave), MO(15%), MD(13%), and DE(2%). There was never any fear that Delaware would go Confederate, though the other three gave quite a scare to Lincoln. Maryland's Unionists seem to have benefited greatly from the presence of large numbers of Union troops-some of Lincoln's most controversial acts, such as the suspension of habeas corpus in MD, were attempts to secure the state for the Union. In both MD and MO, Union sympathy seems to have been in a strong majority, but sizable numbers of Confederate sympathizers were a worry throughout the war. In Missouri, this took the form of lawless raiders. While the populations centers of Missouri were fairly firmly under US Army control (except in the southern part of the state until 1862), the wide stretches of backwoods were the province of anarchy and raiders, like the notorious Jessee James. Missouri continued to be plagued by lawlessness in the decades after the Civil War. While I've never heard it argued, it wouldn't surprise me if many of the outlaws and outlaw dynamics that typify the Old West in the decades after the Civil War didn't just radiate out from Missouri's Civil War anarchy, advancing in a westward band at the edge of strong governmental control from 1865 to the end of the frontier in 1890.
Kentucky was the most evenly split state, with 2/5 of Kentuckians who fought in the war wearing grey and 3/5 wearing blue. This was the sate where the "brother on brother" meme was actually very true. KY was initially neutral, with strong sentiment going both ways. KY declared for the Union after the CSA "invaded" Columbus, KY, but throughout 1861, the presence of CS troops in KY and Confederate sentiment made the state a true battleground in reality. In both Missouri and Kentucky, Confederate troops held much of the southern parts of the state, but in the long run these were fairly untenable positions. A Confederacy that firmly held all of Kentucky, and could defend the state along the entirety of the Ohio River, or one that firmly held Missouri all the way up the Mississippi to St. Louis, would have been in a much stronger strategic position, but unlike in Virginia, these states simply did not have the Confederate sympathy (or slaves) to make this a reality. If one is to search for counterfactuals, one can certainly imagine a less deft diplomat than Abraham Lincoln driving these slave states into the Confederacy in 1861.
Monday, June 29, 2009
A Navalist's Perverse Civil War History, Part 0-addendum: Five Assertions about the War
There's no good way to put this, but here are five major propositions that I think are simultaneously (1) true, (2) counterintuitive on at least one level, and (3) critical to understanding the Civil War.
1. Nobody planned for this war, and nobody had any idea how to fight it.
This seems strange to us in 2009, in which I'm sure the US Army has a plan for invading France. However, not only did nobody know prior to April 1861 even which states would be on which side, nobody seemed to have given any thought at all about how the war would be waged. The USA had a tiny army which had not fought a technological peer since the war of 1812, and those veterans were all dead. There was no general staff. The army was designed to fight Indians and Mexicans, and was scattered in western forts. The USA didn't have a navy at all; it had a Coast Guard with gold braid and holystones. The CSA has even less. No army, no navy, and no guns or ships save what they could grab from federal armies and shipyards. But more than that, nobody had any real strategy. The generals made up this war as they went along.
2. It's all about the rivers and the railroads.
Everyone knows this in their head, but until you learn to think in terms of rail and river lines, your eyes will play tricks on you. When looking at maps to understand the war, you need a map that doesn't have a lot of extraneous crap, and has the rivers and railroads clearly marked. Remember the maxim, "Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics."
3. In this era, ironclad gunboats are floating fortresses.
In the Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815), Admiral Nelson could rightly say, "A man's a fool who fights a fort [with a fleet of warships]," but by 1861, this had changed. The great "Industrial Revolution" at sea (and, in the Civil War, on the rivers) had three parts: steam, shell, and iron, which replaced sail, shot, and oak. Steam gave ships the maneuverability in fighting forts such that they were harder to hit, shells (which explode as opposed to shot, which is just an iron ball) do more damage to fortification, and iron hulls made them much less fragile. This didn't mean that ironclads could easily take on forts without help and win in the Civil War (as far as I know, this only happened at Fort Henry in Tennessee)-a gunboat-only-victory in the 1860s is like an air-only-victory in 2000, but gunboats could *massively* soften up fortified positions in the way that air power does today in 1860. This wasn't true in 1812. One more thing-if gunboats could sail up a river, all railroads crossing that river could be cut. This will become important at a couple of points during the war, where controlling a river will give the Union the ability to cut Confederate lines well to the rear of the front.
4. When you don't have naval supremacy, a river is a wall. When you do have naval supremacy, a river is a super-railroad. Corollary: because the South had almost no iron-making capacity, their strategic imperative in the West was to keep the rivers as walls by denying naval supremacy to the Union.
Kind of a variation above, but it's so important on its own, I made it its own point. The South had only two ironworks to speak of, a large one in its capitol at Richmond, VA (Tregedar), and a smaller one at Nashville, TN which was lost in the first year of war. It was all the South could do to produce rifles, cannon, and ammunition in the amounts they did-shipbuilding was very much a last priority for a South that could neither make iron nor buy it. The South's defense in the West really had to be the Ohio and Mississippi. Unfortunately for the CSA, they lacked the manpower to defend the whole line, and Kentucky's neutrality meant they never even really had an intact line to begin with. The story of the Western war is largely one of (1) the North gaining naval supremacy in a stretch of the rivers and either (2a) using this control to concentrate troops and firepower to defeat the Confederates at a weak point, or (2b) using this control to make huge swaths of the Confederacy impossible to defend.
5. The Mississippi is the hinge of the West.
As long as the South held the Mississippi, the Old Southwest was a vital part of their war effort. The agricultural output of Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana were essential to keeping the blockaded South fed, and their populations were sources of troops. Without it, the South would be reduced to eating grass and acorns by war's end.
The flip side is that as long as the South held the Mississippi, the Old Northwest couldn't bring its full weight to bear on the war effort. All of the states from Ohio on west had tremendous economic output which was stifled by Confederate blockage of the Mississippi. This region was also home to most of the Democratic "Copperhead" anti-war sentiment that undermined Lincoln, and threatened to vote him out of office in 1864. When control of the Mississippi fell to the Union on July 4, 1863, most people concentrated on what the South lost, but equally important is what the North gained-the Old Northwest could become a full partner in the war effort, and anti-war sentiment was weakened by increased western prosperity.
1. Nobody planned for this war, and nobody had any idea how to fight it.
This seems strange to us in 2009, in which I'm sure the US Army has a plan for invading France. However, not only did nobody know prior to April 1861 even which states would be on which side, nobody seemed to have given any thought at all about how the war would be waged. The USA had a tiny army which had not fought a technological peer since the war of 1812, and those veterans were all dead. There was no general staff. The army was designed to fight Indians and Mexicans, and was scattered in western forts. The USA didn't have a navy at all; it had a Coast Guard with gold braid and holystones. The CSA has even less. No army, no navy, and no guns or ships save what they could grab from federal armies and shipyards. But more than that, nobody had any real strategy. The generals made up this war as they went along.
2. It's all about the rivers and the railroads.
Everyone knows this in their head, but until you learn to think in terms of rail and river lines, your eyes will play tricks on you. When looking at maps to understand the war, you need a map that doesn't have a lot of extraneous crap, and has the rivers and railroads clearly marked. Remember the maxim, "Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics."
3. In this era, ironclad gunboats are floating fortresses.
In the Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815), Admiral Nelson could rightly say, "A man's a fool who fights a fort [with a fleet of warships]," but by 1861, this had changed. The great "Industrial Revolution" at sea (and, in the Civil War, on the rivers) had three parts: steam, shell, and iron, which replaced sail, shot, and oak. Steam gave ships the maneuverability in fighting forts such that they were harder to hit, shells (which explode as opposed to shot, which is just an iron ball) do more damage to fortification, and iron hulls made them much less fragile. This didn't mean that ironclads could easily take on forts without help and win in the Civil War (as far as I know, this only happened at Fort Henry in Tennessee)-a gunboat-only-victory in the 1860s is like an air-only-victory in 2000, but gunboats could *massively* soften up fortified positions in the way that air power does today in 1860. This wasn't true in 1812. One more thing-if gunboats could sail up a river, all railroads crossing that river could be cut. This will become important at a couple of points during the war, where controlling a river will give the Union the ability to cut Confederate lines well to the rear of the front.
4. When you don't have naval supremacy, a river is a wall. When you do have naval supremacy, a river is a super-railroad. Corollary: because the South had almost no iron-making capacity, their strategic imperative in the West was to keep the rivers as walls by denying naval supremacy to the Union.
Kind of a variation above, but it's so important on its own, I made it its own point. The South had only two ironworks to speak of, a large one in its capitol at Richmond, VA (Tregedar), and a smaller one at Nashville, TN which was lost in the first year of war. It was all the South could do to produce rifles, cannon, and ammunition in the amounts they did-shipbuilding was very much a last priority for a South that could neither make iron nor buy it. The South's defense in the West really had to be the Ohio and Mississippi. Unfortunately for the CSA, they lacked the manpower to defend the whole line, and Kentucky's neutrality meant they never even really had an intact line to begin with. The story of the Western war is largely one of (1) the North gaining naval supremacy in a stretch of the rivers and either (2a) using this control to concentrate troops and firepower to defeat the Confederates at a weak point, or (2b) using this control to make huge swaths of the Confederacy impossible to defend.
5. The Mississippi is the hinge of the West.
As long as the South held the Mississippi, the Old Southwest was a vital part of their war effort. The agricultural output of Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana were essential to keeping the blockaded South fed, and their populations were sources of troops. Without it, the South would be reduced to eating grass and acorns by war's end.
The flip side is that as long as the South held the Mississippi, the Old Northwest couldn't bring its full weight to bear on the war effort. All of the states from Ohio on west had tremendous economic output which was stifled by Confederate blockage of the Mississippi. This region was also home to most of the Democratic "Copperhead" anti-war sentiment that undermined Lincoln, and threatened to vote him out of office in 1864. When control of the Mississippi fell to the Union on July 4, 1863, most people concentrated on what the South lost, but equally important is what the North gained-the Old Northwest could become a full partner in the war effort, and anti-war sentiment was weakened by increased western prosperity.
A Navalist's Perverse Civil War History, Part 0: The Background
OK, here goes with installment one. I'll say from the outset that this will be a very weird and perverse history. I'm a Hamiltonian, a navalist, a Yankee, and a grand strategist, writing about a war I don't know all that well, which has been overwhelmingly described by Jeffersonians, militarists, Southrons, and tacticians.
So, from the get-go, this will be odd. Here's my goal-to describe the places and battles I've been to, while paying as much attention as possible to the way the war actually unfolded. This is, of course, not the only, or even the best way to understand an historical event, because the "what ifs" tell you a lot about why things are important-I'll delve into some of that (e.g., had Grant been defeated at Shiloh, the Federals probably would have lost West Tennessee for the remainder of 1862, and would have had to spend the rest of the year in a hard slog over the Cumberland and Tennessee valley between Johnston and Bueller).
The reason this is so different is that I mean to ignore Virginia as much as possible. I know, it's like ignoring the Western Front in WWI. It is, except for one thing. The CSA threw the best of what they had at Virginia, and managed to achieve parity there. The story of how the war ended the way it did is therefore only indirectly about Virginia, which was fought to a four-year-long draw. Why is this different from the Western Front? In WWI, the war was actually won on the Western Front once the Americans, tanks, planes, and effects of the blockade overwhelmed the Germans in 1918. By the time Grant and Sherman were driving to Appomattox, the war's outcome had long since been a foregone conclusion. The Civil War was primarily won in Tennessee, on the Mississippi, and along the coasts, so that's what I'll describe. Maybe after I learn more about the war in Virginia over the next year, I'll change my tune.
Why is this not so much the way it's often described? For one thing, much of the early Civil War history was written by veterans, and most of them had fought in Virginia. Most of the readership was in the East, since most of the population was in the East, and the Western War was fought by small numbers of frontiersmen. The inconclusive war in Virginia is the war most Americans knew. A second, darker reason, is that Virginia provided the only real hope for the South, and much of early Civil War history was either written by Southrons "haunted by the idea that history could be changed," as Orwell said of all nationalists, or by Federals who, in the post-war spirit of reconciliation, wanted to give due weight to the successes of the Confederacy. Honoring one's worthy opponent is a long-standing tradition, and magnifies one's own accomplishment in defeating a worthy foe. Third, understanding Virginia is key to understanding why the South failed to win, which is a different matter than how (i.e., the actual mechanics of the process by which) the North did win. Fourth, being a navalist and grand strategist, I think the tacticians who are fascinated by the movements of divisions and placement of batteries have an insufficient appreciation for the ghosts of the battlefield: the troops, guns, food, and morale that never made it to the battlefield because of the blockade, because they were diverted elsewhere, because the strategic picture of the war caused a Texan blacksmith to make plowshares instead of swords. More on the war's grand strategy below, but the old general, Winfield Scott, who devised the "Anaconda Plan" of surrounding the south by water and squeezing the life out of it, had the grand strategy of the war down to a 'T'.
The Southern cavalryman Nathan Bedford Forest is said to have quipped that his strategy for winning battles was to "Be there firstest with the mostest." The South's only hope from the beginning was to get the mostest into a key place firstest-namely, to concentrate everything they had to overwhelm the Union at a critical place. But as the war went on, and the still-globalized Union used control of rail and river (firstest) to bring its economic, industrial, and demographic weight to bear (mostest) on the cut-off-from-globalization South, it became increasingly hard for the South to be firstest with the mostest anywhere, least of all anywhere that really mattered. When the North is selling captured Southern cotton to finance its war effort, cotton that the South couldn't ship to support its own troops, and the South can't finance its war any way but running the printing presses in a hyperinflationary way, the latter country is being squeezed as if by an invisible hand...a pressure that can't be measured in divisions.
So, from the get-go, this will be odd. Here's my goal-to describe the places and battles I've been to, while paying as much attention as possible to the way the war actually unfolded. This is, of course, not the only, or even the best way to understand an historical event, because the "what ifs" tell you a lot about why things are important-I'll delve into some of that (e.g., had Grant been defeated at Shiloh, the Federals probably would have lost West Tennessee for the remainder of 1862, and would have had to spend the rest of the year in a hard slog over the Cumberland and Tennessee valley between Johnston and Bueller).
The reason this is so different is that I mean to ignore Virginia as much as possible. I know, it's like ignoring the Western Front in WWI. It is, except for one thing. The CSA threw the best of what they had at Virginia, and managed to achieve parity there. The story of how the war ended the way it did is therefore only indirectly about Virginia, which was fought to a four-year-long draw. Why is this different from the Western Front? In WWI, the war was actually won on the Western Front once the Americans, tanks, planes, and effects of the blockade overwhelmed the Germans in 1918. By the time Grant and Sherman were driving to Appomattox, the war's outcome had long since been a foregone conclusion. The Civil War was primarily won in Tennessee, on the Mississippi, and along the coasts, so that's what I'll describe. Maybe after I learn more about the war in Virginia over the next year, I'll change my tune.
Why is this not so much the way it's often described? For one thing, much of the early Civil War history was written by veterans, and most of them had fought in Virginia. Most of the readership was in the East, since most of the population was in the East, and the Western War was fought by small numbers of frontiersmen. The inconclusive war in Virginia is the war most Americans knew. A second, darker reason, is that Virginia provided the only real hope for the South, and much of early Civil War history was either written by Southrons "haunted by the idea that history could be changed," as Orwell said of all nationalists, or by Federals who, in the post-war spirit of reconciliation, wanted to give due weight to the successes of the Confederacy. Honoring one's worthy opponent is a long-standing tradition, and magnifies one's own accomplishment in defeating a worthy foe. Third, understanding Virginia is key to understanding why the South failed to win, which is a different matter than how (i.e., the actual mechanics of the process by which) the North did win. Fourth, being a navalist and grand strategist, I think the tacticians who are fascinated by the movements of divisions and placement of batteries have an insufficient appreciation for the ghosts of the battlefield: the troops, guns, food, and morale that never made it to the battlefield because of the blockade, because they were diverted elsewhere, because the strategic picture of the war caused a Texan blacksmith to make plowshares instead of swords. More on the war's grand strategy below, but the old general, Winfield Scott, who devised the "Anaconda Plan" of surrounding the south by water and squeezing the life out of it, had the grand strategy of the war down to a 'T'.
The Southern cavalryman Nathan Bedford Forest is said to have quipped that his strategy for winning battles was to "Be there firstest with the mostest." The South's only hope from the beginning was to get the mostest into a key place firstest-namely, to concentrate everything they had to overwhelm the Union at a critical place. But as the war went on, and the still-globalized Union used control of rail and river (firstest) to bring its economic, industrial, and demographic weight to bear (mostest) on the cut-off-from-globalization South, it became increasingly hard for the South to be firstest with the mostest anywhere, least of all anywhere that really mattered. When the North is selling captured Southern cotton to finance its war effort, cotton that the South couldn't ship to support its own troops, and the South can't finance its war any way but running the printing presses in a hyperinflationary way, the latter country is being squeezed as if by an invisible hand...a pressure that can't be measured in divisions.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Leaving the land of gospel on the radio
I think....
Assuming that's true, a couple tributes to that wonderful gospel quartet, The Cathedral Quartet:
Ah, the joys of solfege.
And boogie gospel (love George Younce, the bass on this):
And for some good old fashioned sprituals, one by a Romanian choir:
and
Finally
Amazing Grace
by
the Scots Dragoons
Assuming that's true, a couple tributes to that wonderful gospel quartet, The Cathedral Quartet:
Ah, the joys of solfege.
And boogie gospel (love George Younce, the bass on this):
And for some good old fashioned sprituals, one by a Romanian choir:
and
Finally
Amazing Grace
by
the Scots Dragoons
Dateline: Bristol, VA (VA/TN state line)
Well, it's been an eventful couple of days. Most of it has been visiting battlefields, which will necessitate that Civil War History I mentioned in my last post.
The morning 2 days ago was spent in Corinth, MS, a major rail junction of the Confederacy (though I also came through Tupelo, which had a minor skirmish), and the afternoon was spent at the battlefield of Shiloh in TN.
From Shiloh, I came north, and overnighted in Paris, TN, and in the morning went to Fort Donelson (only to discover that Fort Henry is currently underwater, and therefore cannot be easily toured), and then southeast all the way to Chattanooga.
I take back everything I said about Tennessee being mild in weather. Yesterday was hell. Unbelievably hot and humid. But as you get close to Tennessee, you enter the Cumberland Mountains, a series of SW-NE ridges, and it's sooooo much cooler and windier. Chattanooga is really beautiful, actually, lying in the mountains on the winding curves of the Tennessee River.
Chattanooga is in the "mountains", but it's actually a relatively low area, and provides a natural crossroads, where the Tennessee plain connects to northern Georgia and Alabama.
This morning, I went to Lookout Mountain above Chattanooga, and had a great educational morning at the hands of a very knowledgeable ranger, who really made the battles of Chattanooga all make sense, then went down to Chicamauga battlefield just over the state line in Georgia. Then I went for lunch, and looked at the clock. 3:30. My plans for Roanoke, VA, were clearly on the fritz (and got more so after being caught in the traffic jam from hell outside Knoxville, TN), and on the advice of the Chicamauga rangers, I decided to skip the Cumberland Gap on this trip-instead, I just powered on to the state line.
The morning 2 days ago was spent in Corinth, MS, a major rail junction of the Confederacy (though I also came through Tupelo, which had a minor skirmish), and the afternoon was spent at the battlefield of Shiloh in TN.
From Shiloh, I came north, and overnighted in Paris, TN, and in the morning went to Fort Donelson (only to discover that Fort Henry is currently underwater, and therefore cannot be easily toured), and then southeast all the way to Chattanooga.
I take back everything I said about Tennessee being mild in weather. Yesterday was hell. Unbelievably hot and humid. But as you get close to Tennessee, you enter the Cumberland Mountains, a series of SW-NE ridges, and it's sooooo much cooler and windier. Chattanooga is really beautiful, actually, lying in the mountains on the winding curves of the Tennessee River.
Chattanooga is in the "mountains", but it's actually a relatively low area, and provides a natural crossroads, where the Tennessee plain connects to northern Georgia and Alabama.
This morning, I went to Lookout Mountain above Chattanooga, and had a great educational morning at the hands of a very knowledgeable ranger, who really made the battles of Chattanooga all make sense, then went down to Chicamauga battlefield just over the state line in Georgia. Then I went for lunch, and looked at the clock. 3:30. My plans for Roanoke, VA, were clearly on the fritz (and got more so after being caught in the traffic jam from hell outside Knoxville, TN), and on the advice of the Chicamauga rangers, I decided to skip the Cumberland Gap on this trip-instead, I just powered on to the state line.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Delta Blues-now in Corinth, MS
Wow is all I can say. I had the distinct pleasure today of driving through the Mississippi Delta from Vicksburg to Clarksville, Mississippi. The Delta is a roughly oval shaped piece of land between the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers, terminating at Vicksburg in the south and Memphis, Tennessee in the north. that opened up to settlement after the Civil War, and was populated almost exclusively by black sharecroppers (by the way, the Delta looked funny but familiar...I couldn't place it...then I realized it's all polder land...). It was in the Delta from about 1900-1930 that The Blues as we know it was born, with a major offshoot at that time jumping to Chicago. Chicago and Delta blues continued to mutually reinforce each other to this day. At Clarksville is a wonderful little museum, a few miles off the beaten track-the Delta Blues Museum.
The many bluesmen of the Delta are featured there (including but not limited to Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, B. B. King, Muddy Waters, and many many others), with the centerpiece being a big display on the life and music of Muddy Waters. I don't know as much about the blues as I'd like, but the mid-day was spent reading bios, remarking, "He was from the Delta too?", and generally blissing out to blues music and atmosphere. A couple of personal discoveries that the people in the know already know well, but, um, I'm not one of them.
Muddy Waters' pianist, Otis Spann, who was an amazing musician as a lead or in solo as well:
His voice reminds me of Big Joe Turner, so here's one he does that Big Joe also did (note the um...pale complexion of the applauding audience...the cosmopolitan city of Chicago allowed the Blues to jump to a national scene):
Here's one of him in the Muddy Waters Band:
Not a find, but as I sit here sipping Tennessee Whiskey in honor of the state I'll be spending the next couple of days in, this seems apropos:
Another I did find, though, was Charlie Musselwhite, a great blues harmonica player:
This Lightnin' Hopkins version is great:
But Big Joe Williams, who made it famous, is hard to top:
Finally, I should say that this museum was "discovered" by the three musicians of ZZ Top, who undertook it as a project, raising major funds for the place, making it what it is today, honoring what they saw as their own roots. Thanks Mr. Beard and Mr.s with beards! (And, yes, I drove by La Grange, Texas, and, no, I didn't visit the place...)
From there, I went to the Ground Zero Blues Cafe' and had a great fried catfish BLT with fried green tomatoes (yes, everything is fried in the South).....YUM! Alas, no live blues at lunch.
From there I drove through Oxford and Tupalo to Corinth, Mississippi, just across the state line from Shiloh National Park and Tennessee. Man, is the Middle South more forgiving in terms of weather than the Deep South. Only about 4 degrees different, but a lot less humid, and the combination of those reliefs means for the first day in a week, I didn't feel like I was going to die from the heat.
The many bluesmen of the Delta are featured there (including but not limited to Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, B. B. King, Muddy Waters, and many many others), with the centerpiece being a big display on the life and music of Muddy Waters. I don't know as much about the blues as I'd like, but the mid-day was spent reading bios, remarking, "He was from the Delta too?", and generally blissing out to blues music and atmosphere. A couple of personal discoveries that the people in the know already know well, but, um, I'm not one of them.
Muddy Waters' pianist, Otis Spann, who was an amazing musician as a lead or in solo as well:
His voice reminds me of Big Joe Turner, so here's one he does that Big Joe also did (note the um...pale complexion of the applauding audience...the cosmopolitan city of Chicago allowed the Blues to jump to a national scene):
Here's one of him in the Muddy Waters Band:
Not a find, but as I sit here sipping Tennessee Whiskey in honor of the state I'll be spending the next couple of days in, this seems apropos:
Another I did find, though, was Charlie Musselwhite, a great blues harmonica player:
This Lightnin' Hopkins version is great:
But Big Joe Williams, who made it famous, is hard to top:
Finally, I should say that this museum was "discovered" by the three musicians of ZZ Top, who undertook it as a project, raising major funds for the place, making it what it is today, honoring what they saw as their own roots. Thanks Mr. Beard and Mr.s with beards! (And, yes, I drove by La Grange, Texas, and, no, I didn't visit the place...)
From there, I went to the Ground Zero Blues Cafe' and had a great fried catfish BLT with fried green tomatoes (yes, everything is fried in the South).....YUM! Alas, no live blues at lunch.
From there I drove through Oxford and Tupalo to Corinth, Mississippi, just across the state line from Shiloh National Park and Tennessee. Man, is the Middle South more forgiving in terms of weather than the Deep South. Only about 4 degrees different, but a lot less humid, and the combination of those reliefs means for the first day in a week, I didn't feel like I was going to die from the heat.
Phase II in Iran
It seems that things are entering a "slow burn" phase in Iran. It looks like this will not be a matter of days, but as Barnett points out here (and see his blog in general for some good links and posts). I'm ambivalent on the question of which Cleric I'd rather have as a sparring partner, but I really want the Mullahs scared and discredited. Really scared. I think the discredited has happened. he nightly shouts of "Death to the Great Leader" and "God is Greater" from the rooftops seem to be increasing in intensity as the numbers on the street fade to zero. The protest crowds in Eastern Europe and Iran 1973 burned for months, this may last a long time. Just so that we don't forget what monstrosities this regime is capable of, I give you this from Eric Raymond (Note that I disagree with ESR-I don't think military intervention will help-it's the wrong tool. His NedaNet is much more what the Iranian people need right now. When the Godfather of Open Source takes an active interest in your cause, good things can happen.):
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Dateline: Vicksbug, MS
I've slowed down a bit, spending two whole nights in one place. Partly, it's because I needed a rest, and this is the halfway point. Partly, it's because Vicksburg was supposed to be the hinge of the whole trip, around which everything else was pretty much built, and the battlefield is huge.
I even splurged and got a nice (OK, decent) hotel room for two nights. I figured, if I was going to spend a lot of time in a hotel room, it would be nice if it were civilized. I've spent a lot of time reading over the last couple of days, really trying to understand the Civil War in general, the Western Theater in particular, and especially the Vicksburg campaign, battles, and siege. I plan on doing a series of posts (then again, I plan a lot of things) distilling what I've learned under the tag, "Civil War", but here's the short version.
Vicksburg, more than any other battle (though Antietam/Sharpsburg and Gettysburg come close...and Gettysburg and Vicksburg were only a day apart) was the turning point of the war. Lincoln claimed that it was worth "forty Richmonds" (Richmond being the Confederate capitol), and that it was the "key" to winning the war. William Tecumseh Sherman was characteristically more blunt and less flowery:
"Vicksburg should have ended the war; but the rebel leaders were mad."
At it turns out, the war (almost exactly four years long, from April 1861-April 1865) is split in half by Vicksburg (July 4th, 1863). The war went on for quite some time, but things got progressively bleaker for the South. Why so important? Vicksburg was the last stronghold (The "Gibraltar of the West") on the Mississippi for the Confederacy (actually, Port Hudson was the last, but it was much more weakly defended-without Vicksburg it surrendered 5 days later...I stopped there on the way up, too-it's in Louisiana on Old 61 as you come north). As long as the CSA held Vicksburg, two things were true:
1. The South had access to the west of the Mississippi, namely Arkansas and Texas. Lincoln called this, "hogs and hominy without limit, fresh troops from all the states of the far South." Cutting that off cut the South in two, and made the oceanic blockade all the more painful. It brought Winfield Scott's "Anaconda Plan" to its logical conclusion, and the big snake squeezed the CSA harder and harder over the next two years.
2. The Mississippi was blocked to the North. This was especially important to the Old Northwest: MI, WI MN, IA, IL, IN, OH. Their outlet to the world was the Mississippi River, and the guns of Vicksburg meant that they had no alternative but the Erie Canal.
The Battle of Vicksburg was a failure. General Grant tried poking and prodding at the defenses, but they were too strong. So he set in for a siege, and over two months, he starved the denizens and defenders out. They were running out of horses, mules, cats, dogs, and rats to eat when the surrender came on July 4, 1863. In contrast to the Battle, the Siege of Vicksburg was a success. "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea," quipped Lincoln.
So what have I been up to? Well, the drive up Old 61 from Baton Rouge to Vicksburg is lovely, up a country highway that gradually goes from swamp to forest. You can actually hear the occasional song in cajun creole on the radio (!), and as you come up to Vicksburg, you start climbing in a way that makes you realize you haven't seen a hill like that since San Antonio, Texas. It's not a giant hill by any stretch of the imagination, but you get what this whole "Gibraltar of the West" thing is about. The city is atop high cliffs far above the Mississippi: a commanding fort to be sure.
Did I mention the South is really hot and humid? It is. I got me a place for two nights, right outside the battlefield, and tried driving in. I was so hot, I could only do the brief drive-through and pay a visit to the USS Cairo (pronounced Cay-row, rimes with Pharaoh), named after Cairo, Illinois, which lies at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. It is an ironclad that lay on the Mississippi bed for a century before being salvaged. It's pretty impressive, from the steam engines to the huge paddle wheels to the armor and guns, to the massive boiler-works. I have to give props to this museum and Port Hudson's. Both acknowledged the existence of black people in the South. Vicksburg's was frank in confronting the slavery issue (perhaps cushioned by the fact that Vicksburg, and mercantile trading town, was pro-Union), and both featured the role of African American units in the respective campaigns. It was these actions that answered the question "Will they fight?" and caused the US Army to expand the Colored Regiments.
I realized among other things that I didn't have nearly enough of a mental picture of the battle to understand what I was seeing on most of the battle site itself, so I resolved to go back to the hotel room and do a lot of reading before the park opened at 7:30 AM.
Well, I got a lovely dinner at a riverfront restaurant, not far from the gambling riverboats. And I read, and read, and read. I don't think I have a command of the Battle of Vicksburg, but I feel like I got an outline. But plenty didn't make sense (why attack there and not there, too?!?) until I drove through today (oooooh....there's a *ridge* along that advance, and that other one is a deep ravine...). I took the afternoon off to plan the next week, rest, and catch up on some overdue chores (well, partially catch up...there's more to do) and got a very mediocre dinner downtown, a letdown after the great meal the night before.
Here's a rough itinerary:
Thu: Vicksburg, MS; to Shiloh Battleground, TN; via the Mississippi Delta and Clarksdale, MS (housing the Delta Blue Museum!).
Fri: Shiloh, TN; to Columbus, KY; via Fort Pillow, TN; New Madrid, MO.
Sat: Columbia, KY; to Chattanooga, TN; via Forts Henry and Donelson, TN; Nashville, TN; Murfreesboro, TN.
Sun: Chattanooga, TN; to Roanoke, VA; via the Cumberland Gap and Shenandoah Valley.
Mon: Roanoke, VA; to Sharpsburg, MD; and the Antietam/Sharpsburg battlefield.
Tue: Sharpsburg, MD; to Gettysburg, PA; and the Gettysburg battlefield.
Wed: Gettysburg, PA; to Rutgers and my new home in New Jersey.
I even splurged and got a nice (OK, decent) hotel room for two nights. I figured, if I was going to spend a lot of time in a hotel room, it would be nice if it were civilized. I've spent a lot of time reading over the last couple of days, really trying to understand the Civil War in general, the Western Theater in particular, and especially the Vicksburg campaign, battles, and siege. I plan on doing a series of posts (then again, I plan a lot of things) distilling what I've learned under the tag, "Civil War", but here's the short version.
Vicksburg, more than any other battle (though Antietam/Sharpsburg and Gettysburg come close...and Gettysburg and Vicksburg were only a day apart) was the turning point of the war. Lincoln claimed that it was worth "forty Richmonds" (Richmond being the Confederate capitol), and that it was the "key" to winning the war. William Tecumseh Sherman was characteristically more blunt and less flowery:
"Vicksburg should have ended the war; but the rebel leaders were mad."
At it turns out, the war (almost exactly four years long, from April 1861-April 1865) is split in half by Vicksburg (July 4th, 1863). The war went on for quite some time, but things got progressively bleaker for the South. Why so important? Vicksburg was the last stronghold (The "Gibraltar of the West") on the Mississippi for the Confederacy (actually, Port Hudson was the last, but it was much more weakly defended-without Vicksburg it surrendered 5 days later...I stopped there on the way up, too-it's in Louisiana on Old 61 as you come north). As long as the CSA held Vicksburg, two things were true:
1. The South had access to the west of the Mississippi, namely Arkansas and Texas. Lincoln called this, "hogs and hominy without limit, fresh troops from all the states of the far South." Cutting that off cut the South in two, and made the oceanic blockade all the more painful. It brought Winfield Scott's "Anaconda Plan" to its logical conclusion, and the big snake squeezed the CSA harder and harder over the next two years.
2. The Mississippi was blocked to the North. This was especially important to the Old Northwest: MI, WI MN, IA, IL, IN, OH. Their outlet to the world was the Mississippi River, and the guns of Vicksburg meant that they had no alternative but the Erie Canal.
The Battle of Vicksburg was a failure. General Grant tried poking and prodding at the defenses, but they were too strong. So he set in for a siege, and over two months, he starved the denizens and defenders out. They were running out of horses, mules, cats, dogs, and rats to eat when the surrender came on July 4, 1863. In contrast to the Battle, the Siege of Vicksburg was a success. "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea," quipped Lincoln.
So what have I been up to? Well, the drive up Old 61 from Baton Rouge to Vicksburg is lovely, up a country highway that gradually goes from swamp to forest. You can actually hear the occasional song in cajun creole on the radio (!), and as you come up to Vicksburg, you start climbing in a way that makes you realize you haven't seen a hill like that since San Antonio, Texas. It's not a giant hill by any stretch of the imagination, but you get what this whole "Gibraltar of the West" thing is about. The city is atop high cliffs far above the Mississippi: a commanding fort to be sure.
Did I mention the South is really hot and humid? It is. I got me a place for two nights, right outside the battlefield, and tried driving in. I was so hot, I could only do the brief drive-through and pay a visit to the USS Cairo (pronounced Cay-row, rimes with Pharaoh), named after Cairo, Illinois, which lies at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. It is an ironclad that lay on the Mississippi bed for a century before being salvaged. It's pretty impressive, from the steam engines to the huge paddle wheels to the armor and guns, to the massive boiler-works. I have to give props to this museum and Port Hudson's. Both acknowledged the existence of black people in the South. Vicksburg's was frank in confronting the slavery issue (perhaps cushioned by the fact that Vicksburg, and mercantile trading town, was pro-Union), and both featured the role of African American units in the respective campaigns. It was these actions that answered the question "Will they fight?" and caused the US Army to expand the Colored Regiments.
I realized among other things that I didn't have nearly enough of a mental picture of the battle to understand what I was seeing on most of the battle site itself, so I resolved to go back to the hotel room and do a lot of reading before the park opened at 7:30 AM.
Well, I got a lovely dinner at a riverfront restaurant, not far from the gambling riverboats. And I read, and read, and read. I don't think I have a command of the Battle of Vicksburg, but I feel like I got an outline. But plenty didn't make sense (why attack there and not there, too?!?) until I drove through today (oooooh....there's a *ridge* along that advance, and that other one is a deep ravine...). I took the afternoon off to plan the next week, rest, and catch up on some overdue chores (well, partially catch up...there's more to do) and got a very mediocre dinner downtown, a letdown after the great meal the night before.
Here's a rough itinerary:
Thu: Vicksburg, MS; to Shiloh Battleground, TN; via the Mississippi Delta and Clarksdale, MS (housing the Delta Blue Museum!).
Fri: Shiloh, TN; to Columbus, KY; via Fort Pillow, TN; New Madrid, MO.
Sat: Columbia, KY; to Chattanooga, TN; via Forts Henry and Donelson, TN; Nashville, TN; Murfreesboro, TN.
Sun: Chattanooga, TN; to Roanoke, VA; via the Cumberland Gap and Shenandoah Valley.
Mon: Roanoke, VA; to Sharpsburg, MD; and the Antietam/Sharpsburg battlefield.
Tue: Sharpsburg, MD; to Gettysburg, PA; and the Gettysburg battlefield.
Wed: Gettysburg, PA; to Rutgers and my new home in New Jersey.
Monday, June 22, 2009
The State and the Protester
William Farley of Lawyers, Guns, and Money has a cracking good post on the topic on his blog.
Dateline: Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Well, it's been a hot, humid couple of days. One of the best things about this trip is all of the tips I've got from people along the way. The first was from the colleague I was visiting in San Diego, who had recommended Silver City, NM. In Arizona, a man came up at a rest stop, asked where I was bound, looked at my car, and suggested, given the length of my car's legs, a series of towns in which I should tank up for the cheapest gas. Several people have recommended restaurants. One volunteer at the Lordsburg, NM Chamber of Commerce suggested I overnight in Fredericksburg, TX.
Fredericksburg is a neat little tourist town just outside of San Antonio (or, if you believe the T-shirt I saw there, it's a nice little drinking town with a tourist problem). What makes it such an interesting place is that it was settled by Germans, a people I more frequently associate with the Upper Midwest and Mexico, but who did settle central Texas in the mid 19th century as well. The town gets so full up on weekends, that I stayed in one of the 300+ B&B's in town rather than a duller, cheaper chain. The woman who hosted myself and the other patrons grew up with German as a first language, in a small house (one of the two B&B's now) with 10 siblings. The town is also famed for being the birthplace of Admiral Nimitz, US Commander of the Pacific Theater in WWII. Of course there is a museum. Of course, I went...alas, most of it was closed, and it wasn't a very good museum (or, at least, the parts I saw weren't), but I'm enough of a naval history buff that I enjoyed it anyway. LBJ and his ranch were born and are nearby, respectively as well. For a Germantown, the beer could have been better, but it was the first brewpub I've seen since I left the coast, so I wasn't going to complain. Their red was actually quite tasty. The sausages, on the other hand, were not too shabby!
As you approach Fredericksburg, Texas begins to redeem itself. The Southwest "Big Bend" area is a total wasteland, as my last post suggested, but central TX is much more wooded, and, if it weren't so hot, would be almost nice. Unfortunately, it is. Hot. And, with the rain coming through, reasonably humid. From there, yesterday I headed out to San Antonio to see the Alamo. The Alamo (actually, what's left of it...most of it was ripped out by the Spaniards to keep the Americans from using it as a later base) is *right smack dab* in the middle of San Antonio. It's kinda cool, I suppose...I loved the story of The Alamo as a kid (my parents have one of these illustrated book series, and one of them is on Frontier Locations...one of the volumes being The Alamo). So, it was really cool to see it for that reason alone, even if I already knew the story a lot better than the guidebooks could provide. But man it's hot there.
I have to say, the religious manner in which the Texans revere The Alamo is a little...what's the word I'm looking for....kooky. The center part of the Alamo (which was, after all a church) is "The Shrine". You're not allowed to touch it (OK, prolly a good idea). Gentlemen must remove their hats (OK, given how crowded it is, and the size of Texan hats, also practical). They refer to it as sacred ground. Look. I'm all for honoring the fallen. But I've been to a lot of battlefields and military ceremonies, and, in comparison, this is over the top. Yes, they died kinda brutally, but not spectacularly so for 19th century frontier warfare.
It was a battle. They lost. When that happens, you get a lot of dead people. Yes, it was important to Texan independence, but we don't treat Bunker Hill as if it's the Hill of Calvary. Most wars have their martyrs, and they should be treated with respect, but, generally speaking, we don't treat those martyrs as if each of them is Jesus Christ, who, in addition to defending this fort, absolved Texans of their immortal sins.
Ok, . Headed down that night to Houston. Houston...well, let's just say that Houston's a part of The Deep South in a way that the rest of Texas didn't seem to be. First off, it's incredibly humid. Second of all, most of Texas just seems sparse...the Gulf Coast seems run down...rusty and industrial-abandoned. It smells of sulfur, as does much of Texas (I've gotten very good at sniffing out an oil well-you can smell the thiols, thioethers, and thiophenes from the highway-it's vaguely like skunk musk). And, to top it off, you get the seriously bat-shit crazy talk show hosts. I'm not talking Limbaugh, who I consider to be a blowhard, but one firmly in the mainstream. I mean people like Alex Jones. That guy just creeps me out. I mean, I like me a nice game of Illuminati as much as the next person, but people who actually believe this $#!^...
So, before leaving the great....very GREAT, in the literal sense of the word (The 880 mile marker just before the Sabine River scared me...), a few distinguishing Texasisms, which I'll call, "You might be in Texas if....":
1. The gas station attendant insists upon calling you "Luv" even after she's seen your driver's license, and has direct evidence that this is not, in fact, your given name.
2. You see billboards for megastores for boots and hats more often than consumer electronics.
3. You drive through long stretches of road where you cannot even get Rush Limbaugh (or, often, any station at all).
4. "Refer" is used to describe a home appliance, not a form of madness or drug delivery method.
5. People really are wearing cowboy boots and hats, and show no external evidence of being some kind of pretentious wannabe tools.
6. 80% of the vehicles on the road are pickups, semis, or SUVs.
7. All of the State Troopers look exactly like Sherrif Buford T. Justice from "Smokey and the Bandit (1977)".
But seriously, folks, Southeast Texas seems more like Louisiana to me than it does to Central Texas. That said, Louisiana is...something apart. The bayous and swamps are pretty striking...the whole place is a flooded malarial river delta...very green, humid, wet, and with epically bad roads. Baton Rouge itself seems to have the worst traffic of any city I've ever seen. Believe me, as someone from LA, LA has nothing on Baton Rouge.
I went downtown (by which time, sweat was pouring from my brow) to visit the Old Statehouse, which, in honor of The Kingfish, Huey P. Long, Governor of Louisiana who was assassinated in the '30s, has been converted to a museum of political history. Or, to be more accurate, a whitewash of history. The bits on the Louisiana Purchase, and several uncontroversial eras in Louisiana history are pretty good. But here's what it has to say about Louisiana's reasons for secession:
"The election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in 1860 convinced many Southerners that states' rights would soon be subordinated to Northern demands and Federal power."
What rights? What demands? What power?
On this, the museum is silent. The rights in question were the rights to hold slaves, and to take them into the Territories. The demands were that slavery not be expanded to new Territories. The power was the power to legislate that new states and territory would be free soil on which slavery was prohibited by the state constitutions.
They also do quite the job of whitewashing Huey Long. Now, here's a place in which genuine difference of opinion can exist. Me, I think of him as the moral equivalent of Benito Mussolini. A fascist, but a relatively harmless one. That he was pretty socialist is not in question. Violent? Check. Crooked? Check. Bribed and intimidated people to get what he wanted? Check. Ruthless demagogue? Check. Well, I guess you can see I don't like the man. The charge of "fascist" has always stuck me as excessive...but not entirely wrong. So to see him presented as a 50/50 controversial figure, with his good and bad points displayed with equal weight, to me, looks like a monstrous distortion of history. This is someone who was 95% bad, 5% good, so to give a "fair and balanced" accounting to me seems like a travesty, but some of my much more lefty friends might disagree. I find him to be a thug, a cheat, and a liar, and I don't actually think the New Deal should have gone three times as far, so for me there's not much upside to the man.
Tomorrow-off to Vicksburg.
Fredericksburg is a neat little tourist town just outside of San Antonio (or, if you believe the T-shirt I saw there, it's a nice little drinking town with a tourist problem). What makes it such an interesting place is that it was settled by Germans, a people I more frequently associate with the Upper Midwest and Mexico, but who did settle central Texas in the mid 19th century as well. The town gets so full up on weekends, that I stayed in one of the 300+ B&B's in town rather than a duller, cheaper chain. The woman who hosted myself and the other patrons grew up with German as a first language, in a small house (one of the two B&B's now) with 10 siblings. The town is also famed for being the birthplace of Admiral Nimitz, US Commander of the Pacific Theater in WWII. Of course there is a museum. Of course, I went...alas, most of it was closed, and it wasn't a very good museum (or, at least, the parts I saw weren't), but I'm enough of a naval history buff that I enjoyed it anyway. LBJ and his ranch were born and are nearby, respectively as well. For a Germantown, the beer could have been better, but it was the first brewpub I've seen since I left the coast, so I wasn't going to complain. Their red was actually quite tasty. The sausages, on the other hand, were not too shabby!
As you approach Fredericksburg, Texas begins to redeem itself. The Southwest "Big Bend" area is a total wasteland, as my last post suggested, but central TX is much more wooded, and, if it weren't so hot, would be almost nice. Unfortunately, it is. Hot. And, with the rain coming through, reasonably humid. From there, yesterday I headed out to San Antonio to see the Alamo. The Alamo (actually, what's left of it...most of it was ripped out by the Spaniards to keep the Americans from using it as a later base) is *right smack dab* in the middle of San Antonio. It's kinda cool, I suppose...I loved the story of The Alamo as a kid (my parents have one of these illustrated book series, and one of them is on Frontier Locations...one of the volumes being The Alamo). So, it was really cool to see it for that reason alone, even if I already knew the story a lot better than the guidebooks could provide. But man it's hot there.
I have to say, the religious manner in which the Texans revere The Alamo is a little...what's the word I'm looking for....kooky. The center part of the Alamo (which was, after all a church) is "The Shrine". You're not allowed to touch it (OK, prolly a good idea). Gentlemen must remove their hats (OK, given how crowded it is, and the size of Texan hats, also practical). They refer to it as sacred ground. Look. I'm all for honoring the fallen. But I've been to a lot of battlefields and military ceremonies, and, in comparison, this is over the top. Yes, they died kinda brutally, but not spectacularly so for 19th century frontier warfare.
It was a battle. They lost. When that happens, you get a lot of dead people. Yes, it was important to Texan independence, but we don't treat Bunker Hill as if it's the Hill of Calvary. Most wars have their martyrs, and they should be treated with respect, but, generally speaking, we don't treat those martyrs as if each of them is Jesus Christ, who, in addition to defending this fort, absolved Texans of their immortal sins.
Ok, . Headed down that night to Houston. Houston...well, let's just say that Houston's a part of The Deep South in a way that the rest of Texas didn't seem to be. First off, it's incredibly humid. Second of all, most of Texas just seems sparse...the Gulf Coast seems run down...rusty and industrial-abandoned. It smells of sulfur, as does much of Texas (I've gotten very good at sniffing out an oil well-you can smell the thiols, thioethers, and thiophenes from the highway-it's vaguely like skunk musk). And, to top it off, you get the seriously bat-shit crazy talk show hosts. I'm not talking Limbaugh, who I consider to be a blowhard, but one firmly in the mainstream. I mean people like Alex Jones. That guy just creeps me out. I mean, I like me a nice game of Illuminati as much as the next person, but people who actually believe this $#!^...
So, before leaving the great....very GREAT, in the literal sense of the word (The 880 mile marker just before the Sabine River scared me...), a few distinguishing Texasisms, which I'll call, "You might be in Texas if....":
1. The gas station attendant insists upon calling you "Luv" even after she's seen your driver's license, and has direct evidence that this is not, in fact, your given name.
2. You see billboards for megastores for boots and hats more often than consumer electronics.
3. You drive through long stretches of road where you cannot even get Rush Limbaugh (or, often, any station at all).
4. "Refer" is used to describe a home appliance, not a form of madness or drug delivery method.
5. People really are wearing cowboy boots and hats, and show no external evidence of being some kind of pretentious wannabe tools.
6. 80% of the vehicles on the road are pickups, semis, or SUVs.
7. All of the State Troopers look exactly like Sherrif Buford T. Justice from "Smokey and the Bandit (1977)".
But seriously, folks, Southeast Texas seems more like Louisiana to me than it does to Central Texas. That said, Louisiana is...something apart. The bayous and swamps are pretty striking...the whole place is a flooded malarial river delta...very green, humid, wet, and with epically bad roads. Baton Rouge itself seems to have the worst traffic of any city I've ever seen. Believe me, as someone from LA, LA has nothing on Baton Rouge.
I went downtown (by which time, sweat was pouring from my brow) to visit the Old Statehouse, which, in honor of The Kingfish, Huey P. Long, Governor of Louisiana who was assassinated in the '30s, has been converted to a museum of political history. Or, to be more accurate, a whitewash of history. The bits on the Louisiana Purchase, and several uncontroversial eras in Louisiana history are pretty good. But here's what it has to say about Louisiana's reasons for secession:
"The election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in 1860 convinced many Southerners that states' rights would soon be subordinated to Northern demands and Federal power."
What rights? What demands? What power?
On this, the museum is silent. The rights in question were the rights to hold slaves, and to take them into the Territories. The demands were that slavery not be expanded to new Territories. The power was the power to legislate that new states and territory would be free soil on which slavery was prohibited by the state constitutions.
They also do quite the job of whitewashing Huey Long. Now, here's a place in which genuine difference of opinion can exist. Me, I think of him as the moral equivalent of Benito Mussolini. A fascist, but a relatively harmless one. That he was pretty socialist is not in question. Violent? Check. Crooked? Check. Bribed and intimidated people to get what he wanted? Check. Ruthless demagogue? Check. Well, I guess you can see I don't like the man. The charge of "fascist" has always stuck me as excessive...but not entirely wrong. So to see him presented as a 50/50 controversial figure, with his good and bad points displayed with equal weight, to me, looks like a monstrous distortion of history. This is someone who was 95% bad, 5% good, so to give a "fair and balanced" accounting to me seems like a travesty, but some of my much more lefty friends might disagree. I find him to be a thug, a cheat, and a liar, and I don't actually think the New Deal should have gone three times as far, so for me there's not much upside to the man.
Tomorrow-off to Vicksburg.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Happy Falker Satherhood to all Dads
In case you missed it on the first round, this gem of the internet needs to become to Father's Day what "It's a Wonderful Life" is to Christmas:
Ashley J. had two male coworkers each expecting a child, so the office decided to get them a cake. They wanted it to say, "Happy Fatherhood Shawn and Glenn".
Instead, they got this:
Contrast the dude behind the counter with the manager.
Some people just don't have the Falker Satherhood Spirit.
Happy Dad's Day.
Ashley J. had two male coworkers each expecting a child, so the office decided to get them a cake. They wanted it to say, "Happy Fatherhood Shawn and Glenn".
Instead, they got this:
Contrast the dude behind the counter with the manager.
Some people just don't have the Falker Satherhood Spirit.
Happy Dad's Day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)