Civil Warriors

Rice University is home to the Papers of Jefferson Davis project, which has now published eleven volumes of JD’s extant correspondence through May 1865, with another volume in production and three more projected to cover the remainder of his life. During a recent visit to Rice, I had a chance to visit the project’s offices, meet the staff — particularly Lynda Crist, who has ably served as editor and project director for over a quarter century — and sit in the chair in which Davis planted his utterly Anglo Saxon ass during his tenure as U.S. Secretary of War, prior to betraying his country, plunging it into civil war, and worst of all, offending the dignity of Joe Johnston.

Anyway, that’s me, sitting in the chair — or perhaps more accurately, obscuring your view of the chair.  But take my word for it, it’s nicely restored and reasonably comfortable.

Academic historians have an uncertain relationship with reenactors.  Some reenactors, such as the late Brian Pohanka, are historians in their own right; others wear that label of “living historian” perhaps a bit too loudly for their own good, and it did not help when Tony Horwitz (unintentionally, I’d argue) offered up Robert Lee Hodge as a target for people who just couldn’t wait to tell me about how reenactors were wackos and part of the larger world of what they sniffed passed for Civil War scholarship.  I know of a handful of historians who have donned uniforms themselves and even place those pictures on dustjackets or websites.  I’ve met folks such as Joel Craig who are quite dedicated to learning as much as they can about a unit, and they are welcome sources of information; through my friend Jeff Davis (no, not that Jeff Davis, and not that Jeff Davis) I met Larry and Constance Clowers, who appear as Ulysses and Julia Grant (Constance is so authentic that she refuses to look straight into a camera, just like Julia, who did that to conceal her strabismus). 

However, there are some reenactments I’d like to see.  In some cases, I may have missed them (my apologies):

1. William McKinley bringing coffee to the boys at Antietam (this event could be sponsored by Starbucks).
2. Mary Todd Lincoln throwing a fit at City Point.
3. Floyd, Pillow, and Buckner at Fort Donelson on the night of February 15, 1862.
4. Judson Kilpatrick running away in his nightshirt (this might have to be an adults-only event).
5. Earl van Dorn meeting his maker.
6. Bull Nelson meeting his maker (yes, that Jeff Davis).
7. Ulysses S. Grant, head throbbing, listening to piano music on the evening of April 8, 1865.
8. William S. Rosecrans suddenly recalling he left the stove on back in Chattanooga on September 20, 1863.
9. John McClernand being relieved during the Vicksburg campaign.
10. Edward Everett searching for a port-a-potty at Gettysburg.
11.   The Jefferson Davis fashion show, May 10, 1865.
12.   Nathan Bedford Forrest and Braxton Bragg exchange pleasantries.

So … Ethan wants to play Seinfeld scripts?  Well …

GEORGE: look at this guy. Does he have to stretch in here?

JERRY: You know who that is? That’s

GEORGE: Keith Hernandez? The baseball player?

JERRY: Yeah, that’s him.

GEORGE: Are you sure?

JERRY: Positive.

GEORGE: Wow, Keith Hernandez. He’s such a great player.

JERRY: Yeah, he’s a real smart guy too. He’s a Civil War buff.

GEORGE: I’d love to be a Civil War buff. … What do you have to do to be a buff?

JERRY: So Biff wants to be a buff? … Well sleeping less than 18 hours a day
would be a start.

Not everyone feels so positive about that avocation, as we see here.

. . . on Civil Warriors?  While you make some interesting connections, Brooks, between Lincoln and Big Stein (you did miss, though, one parallel: Lincoln had the ability to grant pardons; Steinbrenner had the ability to accept one) there are important differences. 

First, whatever else might be said of Lincoln, there has never been any indication that he ever had a subordinate as valuable as Bodysuit Man or that he would have been willing to trade that subordinate to Tyler Chicken for a break on chicken snacks and fermented chicken drinks.  

And while Lincoln had respect for history, Big Stein once proclaimed: “We wanna look to the future, we gotta tear down the past. Babe Ruth was nothing more than a fat old man, with little-girl legs. And here’s something I just found out recently. He wasn’t really a sultan. Ah, what d’you make of that? Hey, check this out: Lou Gehrig’s pants. Not a bad fit. Hey, you don’t think that nerve disease of his was contagious, do you? Uh, I better take ‘em off. I’m too important to this team!”

There is no evidence that Lincoln ever developed a particular fondness for calzones from Paisano’s.

And I don’t think there is any record of Lincoln musing something along the lines of: “You know as painful as it is I had to let a few people go over the years. Yogi Berra, Lou Pinella, Bucky Dent, Billy Martin, Dallas Green, Dick Houser, Bill Virdon, Billy Martin, Scott Marrow, Billy Martin, Bob Lemmon, Billy Martin, Gene Michael, Buck Showalter, … uh, tut!, . . . Gideon, you didn’t hear that from me!”

(Speaking of Martin, I can’t help but think of that great line from one of those Miller Lite ex-jock commercials—does anyone know why they stopped making them; they were great, a lot better than the stupid commissioner of taste junk they are running now—when he was goofing around at a photo shoot and the guy next to him growled: “knock it off, Billy; you need this job.”)

And let’s not forget the contrast between Lincoln’s remark that he had been controlled by events and Big Stein’s proclamation that: “CHAOS . . . DOES . . . NOT . . . WORK . . . FOR THE NEW YORK YANKEES! Not as long as I’m running the show!” 

Excuse me, Ethan, what does this have to do with anything?  Besides demonstrating that all you know about the Yankees comes from Seinfeld?

Nothing.

After two weeks of posting nothing, this is the best you can come up with, Seinfeld references and ripping off the audience question method from Kornheiser and Couch Slouch?  Pretty pathetic.

Yes it is, and yes I am.

BUT did anyone catch the movie that played on (I think) Independent Film Channel last night entitled The Confederate States of America?  I only saw snatches of it (there was something better on another channel).  But what I caught of this “fictional documentary” seemed to suggest the Confederate States not only preserved their independence but conquered the North as well—I think Lincoln fled to Canada after the South won at Gettysburg—with high level meetings between CSA officials and Hitler taking place in New York.  These led to a neutrality agreement between the CSA and Nazis, but with Confederate officials taking Hitler to task for his treatment of the Jews and suggesting he would be better served enslaving them instead of killing them.  Then to underline their point, they took an approving Hitler around to the various slave labor enterprises in the CSA.  With good relations with the European fascists secured, the CSA then proceeded to launch a sneak attack on the Japanese.  This was all I saw.  Can anyone out there clue me in on what I missed????

I found this courtesy of Dimitri Rotov’s blog, Civil War Bookshelf. 

Now, sometimes Dimitri Rotov provokes people with his thoughts about the world of Civil War scholarship, especially as it appears to affect the reputation of George B. McClellan.  Usually he doesn’t bother me, even when he smacks around one of my associates who happen to be my friend.  When it comes to his interest in McClellan, I find it far more reasoned than the obsession of some people with George H. Thomas.

This clip suggests that the problem child of the Civil War is not George B. McClellan, or even Dimitri.  It’s a mindset that allows authors to rehash long-recited themes, complete with predictable punch lines, and pass off the final result as scholarship.  The clip’s almost a gift to Dimitri’s critique of some forms of Civil War writing.

This lecture could have been given almost intact in 1965, or 1988.  Yes, there’s the mention of Edwin Fishel’s scholarship on intelligence gathering, but elsewhere Mr. Bonekemper apparently failed to incorporate Stephen Sears’s attack on the long-honored notion of McClellan as superior organizer.  Somehow I’m shocked.

I’m not the first blogger to grumble about this book.  Kevin Levin did so some time ago.  But the appearance of this clip allows readers to decide for themselves.

Mr. Bonekemper has made a career of repackaging the work of others to advance a thesis in the style of his legal training.  That practice has its uses.  I wonder why a publisher would represent it as anything else, or why an audience would lap it up with knowing nods, winks, giggles, and smiles.  Is it just that some people want to hear the same story over and over again?

Happy Cedar Creek Day.

During the past ten days we who inhabit the Evil Empire have returned once more to the manager watch, in which a Yankee manager is held accountable for the shortcomings of his team and finds his ultimate fate dangling in the air.  My first experience with this process was following the 1973 baseball season, when Ralph Houk left as Yankee skipper because he could not put up with the meddling of the new “managing partner,” principal owner George Steinbrenner.  I recall this with some pain because, for me, Houk had always been my team’s manager.  Twenty-two years later, Bucky Showalter left of his own accord: he was replaced by someone with an up-and-down record, Joe Torre.  Between those two departures, Steinbrenner had hired and fired manager after manager, notably Billy Martin (the two men turned the love-hate relationship into a commercial and a rather funny press conference, although, as the ESPN show The Bronx is Burning suggests, beneath it all was something far nastier).

Even as I type, Torre’s fate still hangs in the balance.  But this most recent episode comes as I have been thinking about how Abraham Lincoln went through general after general in an effort to find someone who would lead his Yankees to victory.  Nor should this game be restricted to the musical chairs contest that was the top spot in the Army of the Potomac:  Lincoln made changes elsewhere, and at times refrained from making changes that, had they been made, would have been astonishing (my favorite being Lincoln’s interest in sending Ben Butler to take over in the Vicksburg area in February 1863). 

Lincoln had an interesting notion of timing in making removals.  Yes, Irvin McDowell found himself displaced as commander of the Union’s primary field army immediately after First Manassas, but after that Lincoln tended to give his generals what looked to be the beginning of a second chance.  Burnside was not sacked immediately after Fredericksburg; Hooker retained his command after Chancellorsville; Rosecrans was not removed right after he lost at Chickamauga.  Lincoln was also aware of the political environment: after George Thomas stayed an attempt to remove Don Carlos Buell prior to Perryville, the president waited for the October 1862 elections to fire Buell, timed McClellan’s removal so that it would not affect the November 1862 contests, and after the November 1864 elections he had no interest in restoring Nathaniel Banks to field command or in getting rid of Butler. 

Nor did Lincoln discourage efforts by subordinates to undermine their military superiors.  He tolerated a great deal in this regard when it came to Hooker, and only somewhat less when John McClernand badmouthed Grant.  And that’s only touching the surface: I think Lincoln’s behavior in this regard had a great deal to do with poisoning the environment surrounding the Army of the Potomac.  By the time Meade took over at the end of June 1863, one gets the sense that he was always exercising command with one eye cast back over his shoulder to see what was going on.

It’s also very clear to me that the notion that Lincoln’s search for a general somehow inevitably led him to the entrance to Ulysses S. Grant’s tent is in need of serious revision.  While Lincoln moved to stop Henry W. Halleck’s jealous backstabbing of Grant after the fall of Fort Donelson, it was none other than Halleck who shielded Grant from a presidential inquiry about Grant’s behavior after Shiloh (so much for the claim of “I can’t spare this man …”).  McClernand’s quest to lead an independent expedition against Vicksburg came at Grant’s expense, and in the first months of 1863 Lincoln considered sending Butler to Vicksburg and fielded recommendations to reinforce Rosecrans at Grant’s expense.  At the same time he sent envoys (some would call them spies) to check up on Grant, something he would do again that fall.  Grant’s Vicksburg triumph was significant not least because it gave him job security. 

Grant appears to have understood what was going on.  He timed his removal of McClernand for a point in the Vicksburg campaign where the outcome seemed certain, and made sure to send his chief of staff, John A. Rawlins, to Washington in the aftermath of Vicksburg’s surrender to set forth the case for McClernand’s removal.  In August 1863 Grant made it clear that he did not want to replace Meade, who was already on the hot seat (apparently Gettysburg wasn’t good enough): he held out for a better offer, and that offer came in early 1864.  That offer came with strings attached, of course, and it was one of Grant’s achievements that he worked within the restraints imposed by Lincoln (so much for the “free hand” thesis, which claims that Lincoln simply left Grant alone).

And then there’s George McClellan.  I’ve saved him for last simply because most discussions of Lincoln and his generals have focused on this particularly dysfunctional relationship.  People cite McClellan’s nasty comments about Lincoln, but what of Lincoln’s equally nasty comments about McClellan?  What of Lincoln’s appointing McClellan’s corps commanders (akin to an owner picking a manager’s coaching staff)?  It does seem to me that we accept rather uncritically the standard line about this relationship, and while I would not care to flip it 180 degrees, I think it is worth rethinking.  Prior to Gettysburg, after all, who was Lincoln’s most successful general in the east? 

There is something about the Lincoln-McClellan relationship which reminds me of Steinbrenner-Martin, including the debate over whether to restore McClellan to a command in 1864.  Grant, for one, thought it wasn’t such a bad idea, and years later his reflections on McClellan showed a generosity of spirit that is not always echoed by historians.  Perhaps McClellan was not simply “the problem child” some still persist in claiming he was.  McClellan may have had his faults, but somehow, in light of Lincoln’s relationships with other generals, I don’t think it was all Little Mac’s fault.          

People tend to absolve Abraham Lincoln for displaying the very characteristics they complain about in George Steinbrenner.  We might want to rethink that.       

Update: Torre turned down the Yankees’ offer.       

There are many ways to reenact the Civil War.  Some people see reenactors in terms of people who portray historical figures or scenes, and that’s the most popular version of this practice.  But there are other ways to reenact past events, sometimes with the explicit desire to link the past to the present. 

The current “secession movement” would be one of those instances.

It would be unfortunate if we did not allow these people to introduce themselves. 

Here’s Kilpatrick Sale asking what secession means … and the answer from Michael Hill.  So much for Shelby’s Foote’s claim that the Civil War changed things from “the United States are” to “the United States is.” 

As you’ll see, there are divisions within this movement, and there is not a unifying agenda.  Different groups have different reasons for leaving (a marked contrast to what happened in 1860-61).  An exploration of other YouTube videos from the observer who provided these videos is useful in discovering more about this movement. 

… try, try again!

I am especially amused to find out that this group is none too happy with the League of the South.  To find out why, click “C.S.A. Documents” and then “Confederate Intelligence Bureau.”

(Hat tip to Cash at StudyoftheCivilWar, a Yahoo discussion group)

Somehow I never heard this when it came out twenty years ago.

The essay below by Professor Bacevich has been circulating among some of my students at the staff college.  A lot of interesting arguments–and more devastating for its sophistication than the ”Betray Us” foolishness. 

Of course, there is much here that is debatable to say the least.  The assertion that “Grant achieved his victories through brute force rather than finesse” is certainly off the mark a bit and Bacevich apparantly doesn’t understand that only weenies like McClellan ask for more troops (while truly great leaders close recruiting offices in the midst of potentially decisive campaigns)! 

October 8, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative 

Sycophant Savior 

General Petraeus wins a battle in Washington—if not in Baghdad. 

by Andrew J. Bacevich 

In common parlance, the phrase “political general” is an epithet, the inverse of the warrior or frontline soldier. In any serious war, with big issues at stake, to assign command to a political general is to court disaster—so at least most Americans believe. But in fact, at the highest levels, successful command requires a sophisticated grasp of politics. At the summit, war and politics merge and become inextricably intertwined. A general in chief not fully attuned to the latter will not master the former. 

http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_09_24/article2.html

Of course, if history is any guide on these matters, “always one step ahead” Mark has already referenced this on Blog them Out of the Stone Age!