The U.S. Presidential Election of 1864

President Lincoln understood that his chances of reelection in November hinged on military success in a war now in its fourth year. By the summer of 1864, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had settled in for a prolonged siege against the Confederates near Petersburg, Va., and Gen. William T. Sherman was making slow progress toward Atlanta. Confederate Gen. Jubal A. Early, meanwhile, had led his troops to the very gates of Washington, D.C. in July, and had attacked a fort guarding the capital city. The war effort seemed to have stalled for the Union, and the public blamed President Lincoln.

Even getting re-nominated was not a given. We may today think of Lincoln as a god, but in 1864, he appeared to be just another failed politician. We want to think of him as this brilliant man and the best president ever, and he was, but in spring 1864, that is not even how his own party viewed him.

The biggest problem was the Radical Republicans, a hardline faction within the Republican party that held the belief that Lincoln was incompetent and therefore could not be re-elected. They had already formed a party called the Radical Democracy Party, for which a few hundred delegates had convened in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 31, 1864. They had even nominated a presidential candidate in the hope that it would drive the main party to nominate someone else.

In modern politics, we tend to think of a two-term president as standard. But in 1864, the last president to have been re-elected was Andrew Jackson in 1832; after him had been 8 one- term (or less) presidents. And before Jackson, the previous 2-term president was James Monroe, who ran unopposed.  So the odds on that basis alone were stacked against him.

Lloyd W. Klein considers the U.S. presidential election  of 1864.

Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson 1864 campaign poster.

The Republican Party Convention

The Republican Convention was held the first week of June, and the delegates who were loyal to Lincoln were so certain that they could not win election that they made a couple of major decisions about their platform and alliances. Moreover, they witnessed one of Lincoln’s cabinet who tried to get the nomination for himself.

The Republican fringe group demanding a stronger position against slavery split off to form the “Radical Democracy” party and nominated John C. Frémont as their candidate. Frémont supported combat without compromise, believed that Congress should strictly control Southern reconstruction efforts, and urged the confiscation of Confederate property. Fremont had been the first Republican nominee in 1856, just before Lincoln, who had to remove him for incompetence if not corruption early in the war.

Republicans loyal to Lincoln created a new name for their party at the convention in order to accommodate the War Democrats who supported the war and wished to separate themselves from the Copperheads, or Peace Democrats. The convention dropped then-Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, a Radical Republican from the ticket, and chose War Democrat Andrew Johnson as Lincoln's running mate. The National Unionists hoped that the new party and the Lincoln–Johnson ticket would stress the national character of the war. In a modern sense, they went after the “swing vote”.

Salmon Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, tried to use his connections within the Radical Republican group to get the nomination. In early 1864 he began a surreptitious campaign for the nomination but hastily ended it after pamphlets intended for private distribution were leaked to the press. He had threatened to resign 3 times during the 4 years of the first term in an effort to embarrass Lincoln. After the convention, he threatened a fourth time and this time Lincoln accepted the resignation.

President Lincoln ran for a second term but replaced Vice President Hamlin on the ticket with Andrew Johnson, a War Democrat. This critical segment of the Democratic Party supported the war effort and the Republicans sought to gain their support in the 1864 election. Lincoln and his running mate supported a quick end to the war, the abolition of slavery and reconstruction of the southern states following the end of hostilities. Lincoln’s opponent, General George McClellan, ran as the nominee for the Democratic Party, which wanted to end the war and accommodate the Confederacy.

The Blind Memorandum

In August 1864, President Lincoln believed he was facing defeat in the upcoming presidential election.  There were no polls as we have today; politicians had to sense what was happening and talk with local men to understand what was going on. And what Lincoln heard must have been disturbing.

Republican insider Thurlow Weed told Lincoln in mid-August 1864 that “his re-election was an impossibility.” Republican party chairman Henry J. Raymond expressed much the same sentiment to Lincoln on Aug. 22, urging him to consider sending a commission to meet with Confederate President Jefferson Davis to offer peace terms “on the sole condition of acknowledging the supremacy of the Constitution,” leaving the question of slavery to be resolved later.

These are signatures of Lincoln’s cabinet members on the reverse of the “Blind Memorandum” dated August 23,1864.  Abraham Lincoln Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

It was in this context that Abraham Lincoln wrote the following memorandum on Aug. 23, 1864:

“This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.  — A. Lincoln”

Lincoln folded the memorandum and pasted it closed, so that the text inside could not be read. He took it to a cabinet meeting and instructed his cabinet members to sign the outside of the memo, sight unseen, which they did. Historians now refer to this document variously as the “Blind Memo” or “Blind Memorandum” because the cabinet signed it “blind.” In so doing the Lincoln administration pledged itself to accept the verdict of the people in November and to help save the Union should Lincoln not be re-elected.

It would be hard to imagine a more profound document in American history, and the fact that this could be so obscure astounds me, and makes me start to compare our contemporary climate. As much as we today think our upcoming election has significant implications, its hard to even compare it to what Lincoln was experiencing.

The Democratic Party Opposition

The Democratic Party still was a strong political force in the North. In August 1864 there were a lot of northerners who were tired of the war and its inconclusive results. The idea of fighting to end slavery, today taken for granted, wasn’t as popular as we might think.  The Emancipation Proclamation and the recruitment of black troops had changed the country, and not everyone liked it. The Democratic Party was generally unified in its opposition to emancipation.

Many civil war histories suggest that the victories at Atlanta and the Overland Campaign changed public opinion from the summer of 1864, and surely they did. But a good part of the reason Lincoln was re-elected was that the Democratic Party self-destructed in the campaign.

Had the Democrats a unified message the soldiers could support, Lincoln might have had serious trouble. But the Democrats were divided. The war democrats wanted to continue the war but seek peace soon while the peace democrats wanted to stop fighting immediately.  Ending slavery wasn’t a priority. Ending the war was.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party had not yet met to make its nomination. This conflict was resolved by nominating a war democrat McClellan with a peace position plank. The Democratic platform declared the war a failure and urged that “immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities,” which McClellan could not fully support. Moreover, once the Democrats nominated George B. McClellan for president on August 30 they saddled him with a “Copperhead” peace Democrat.

There were two factions that existed among the Peace Democrats. For much of the war the Copperheads, led by Clement Vallandigham, had dominated them. The Copperheads declared the war to be a failure and favored an immediate end to hostilities without securing Union victory, either via re-admitting all the Confederate states with slavery intact and legally protected, or by formally recognizing the Confederacy as a sovereign nation and attempting to re-establish peaceful relationships.

But then the Democratic Party blundered. The convention adopted proposals by Copperheads like Vallandigham and Wood calling for a cease fire and a negotiated settlement to the war; but then they selected George McClellan as their candidate.

In 1863, the Peace Democrats started to splinter between the Copperheads and their more moderate members. Moderate Peace Democrats such as Horatio Seymour proposed a negotiated peace that would secure Union victory. They believed this was the best course of action because an armistice could finish the war without destroying the South. The Copperheads continued to advocate allowing the Confederate states to rejoin with slavery intact, however, believing that to do otherwise would merely lead to another Civil War sooner or later.

Its often said that politics is the art of compromise, and at this moment, that was what was tried, but it didn’t work out at all. McClellan was the front runner, so a compromise was struck On the first day of the convention, a peace platform was adopted. McClellan was personally opposed to a peace platform. McClellan supported the continuation of the war and restoration of the Union, but the party platform, written by Vallandigham, was opposed to this position. He inserted a plank calling for immediate peace negotiations.

This was the essential problem at the convention. General McClellan remained very popular and was the obvious choice for the role. But the Copperheads were against it. They tried to induce Horatio Seymour, the Governor of Ne York, to run. But the day before the convention, Seymour announced he would not run. Vallandigham knew he was too divisive. Several men were sounded out for the role, including former President Pierce, all of whom declined. Thomas Seymour of Connecticut received the most votes in opposition.

Representative George H. Pendleton, was the vice presidential candidate. He ran against 7 others, and won on the second ballot. Pendleton, a congressman from Cincinnati,  was closely associated with Vallandigham. He was known to oppose the 13th Amendment and the concept that a state could be compelled to stay in the Union.

The Candidate McClellan

McClellan ran against Abraham Lincoln, a sitting president, our greatest president, as the war was being won; and garnered 45% of the popular vote. Not only isn’t that pretty under the circumstances of voting against a sitting president in a war (the US has NEVER done this), but the Democratic Party of the 19th century was a fundamentally Southern party.  In other words, McClellan got 9/20 votes in a Northern population, running on a platform of stopping the war and reversing emancipation.

Lincoln thought if elected McClellan would be forced by the Copperheads into an early truce. Once he was nominated McClellan repudiated the Democratic Party platform. As a result, whatever message intended to be sent to separate their views from Lincoln was garbled. McClellan’s campaign flailed as his repudiation of the peace plank in the Democratic platform provoked further tensions within his party.

McClellan had different views about race and southern aristocracy then are accepted in modern society and that Lincoln had then: but he was not a traitor, and he did want to win the war, not lose it. McClellan emphasized the fact that he previously led the Union military effort in the War and that he was and remained committed to "the restoration of the Union in all its integrity" and that the massive sacrifices that the Union endured should not be in vain. His central argument was that he could win the war sooner and with fewer casualties than Lincoln & Grant.

The Campaign

By the summer of 1864, the Civil War had gone on for over three years. Over 250,000 Union soldiers had been killed, with many more injured permanently. Victory was not yet in sight. Democrats knew that many of the policies of Lincoln were not popular, including many of those we take today as the reason for the conflict, such as emancipation, the military draft, the use of black troops, and violations of civil liberties. Democrats further suggested that the Republicans were advocating in favor of miscegenation and trying to destroy the traditional race relations. They believed they could win, and Lincoln thought that too.

As if on cue, Lincoln’s fortunes began to change. General Sherman scored a tremendous victory when Atlanta fell to the Union on September 2. McClellan therefore had an ambiguous message against an articulate potus who suddenly was winning battles.

Had the battlefield events gone against the Union, the election would have been much closer. The capture of Atlanta and Hood's burning of military facilities as he evacuated showed that a successful conclusion of the war was in sight, weakening support for a truce. Without the fall of Atlanta early in September, it’s easy to see how the voters might not have flocked to Lincoln.

Finally northern opinion had come around to freeing the slaves and winning a war that had produced so much destruction so that there needed to be a definitive conclusion and a new beginning. In essence, this is what Lincoln was calling for in his Gettysburg Address, which we today take as almost a divine document, but in its essence, was realistically the start of the 1864 presidential campaign.

As late as August 23, Lincoln considered it “exceedingly probable” that he would not be reelected. He thought the copperheads would force McClellan into accepting a negotiated settlement, so he made his Cabinet secretly promise to cooperate with McClellan if he won the election to win the war by the time that McClellan will be inaugurated.

Election Results

History books gloss over the closeness of the popular vote. They cite that Lincoln received over

90% of the total electoral votes (212 versus 21 for McClellan). But a 10% margin is relatively close under the circumstances. McClellan won 48% of the total vote in a bloc of states stretching from Connecticut to Illinois (Lincoln's home state); Lincoln underperformed in 1864 relative to 1860 in several crucial U.S. states (such as New York, Pennsylvania, and Indiana); and that the Republicans lost the Governorship in his (McClellan's) home state of New Jersey. We might well ask if any fool could have come that close. Which makes me wonder, if he wasn’t that stupid, are the accounts of him as a poor general really accurate?

As it is, the popular vote was split 55%-45%, a good but not landslide victory. President Lincoln defeated General McClellan in the election winning twenty-two states to McClellan’s three. Lincoln easily carried the popular vote and won the greatest share of the electoral vote since James Monroe won re-election unopposed in 1820. Lincoln's win made him the first president to win re-election since Andrew Jackson, and the first two-term President unaffiliated with the Democratic-Republican Party or the Democratic Party since John Adams. The National Union ticket was the first and only winning ticket composed of members of two separate parties.

Had McClellan and the Democrats had a plausible, unified peace position that didn’t appear to be total capitulation, they might have had a better shot. He only lost by 10%, which isn’t really a landslide.

Senators Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson from Massachusetts wanted the Republican Party to advocate constitutional amendments to prohibit slavery and guarantee racial equality before the law. Initially, not all northern Republicans supported such measures. Eventually, these would be passed, but at the time, they were considered radical. The problems Andrew Johnson would face as president were starting in 1864.

Fremont might have been a serious third-party “spoiler”, had the newspaper New York World chosen to champion his candidacy (think: FOX News). But then. Frémont was appalled at the Democratic platform, which he described as a "union with slavery". After three weeks of discussions, Frémont withdrew from the race in September 1864. In his statement, Frémont declared that winning the Civil War was too important to divide the Republican vote. He then struck a bargain with Lincoln to remove Montgomery Blair as postmaster general, so he withdrew from the race. Blair had very conservative views on race and slavery.

The 1864 presidential campaign was bitter. More than for just a candidate, voters cast their ballots to determine questions underpinning the broader fate of the Union: Should the war be continued, or should a peace settlement be negotiated? How would the outcome of the war define the role of blacks in a post-war society?

The bloody conflict between North and South loomed over every aspect of American life. The electorate was so divided that some argued the election should be postponed until the war was over. The fact that there was an election in the midst of a civil war is one of the great achievements our country has ever had. Our commitment to fair and free elections, and that the people decide, is our greatest ideal.

Because of the Democrats’ peace platform, the election became a referendum on the war itself. The election tide turned with Union victories during the autumn of 1864 and the masses of soldiers who cast their ballots for Lincoln. The entire concept of soldiers, in the field, voting for who their leader would be, and even if the should be continued, was entirely revolutionary at the time.

Lincoln was highly popular with soldiers and they in turn recommended him to their families back home. The following states allowed soldiers to cast ballots: California, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. Out of the 40,247 army votes cast, Lincoln received 30,503 (75.8%) and McClellan 9,201 (22.9%), with the rest (543 votes) scattering (1.3%). Only soldiers from Kentucky gave McClellan a majority of their votes, and he carried the army vote in the state by a vote of 2,823 (70.3%) to 1,194 (29.7%).

Suppose McClellan had Won?

Had McClellan won the election, there is lots of speculation as to whether the war would have continued. The traditional argument is that Lincoln would have remained president until the inauguration, and that by March 1865 the war was all but over. McClellan would have had a victory within 4-6 weeks. He was a soldier and would not have let victory elude him.

But just as plausible is that if Lincoln had been defeated it would have been a huge shock. The Confederates would have declared victory. Would Union soldiers continue to die for a cause that would never happen?

McClellan was in an awkward position. He wrote that he was for restoring the Union. But that was after the war with 20-20 hindsight. However, his party's platform called for the cessation of hostilities and a negotiated settlement (meaning that the CSA would continue as a separate country). His VP was a peace candidate. His speeches at the time say he would negotiate an end to the war not fight it.

If elected, would he repudiate his party and continue the war as vigorously as Lincoln? As president, he could have done so. But the price would have been alienating many or most Democrats. Had he gone the route of disregarding Democrats, he'd have been forced to cooperate closely with the Republicans (almost becoming a Republican himself in all but name).

Alternatively, he could have decided to side with his party and stopped (or slowed down) the war effort --presumably during peace negotiations. The result being the CSA would win its independence.

Moreover, for McClellan to have won, Sherman must fail in Atlanta and Grant must have met some disaster. In hypothetical situations, you can’t just drop McClellan into Lincoln’s shoes in March 1865. You have to account for his being there.

So as with most hypotheticals, it’s too complicated to know for sure. I think the traditional view is much too simplistic. I think McClellan would have negotiated with Davis within weeks of an electoral victory.

Reports of conspiracies between Peace Democrats and the Confederate government to manipulate the election abounded—including a plan, financed with a half-million Confederate dollars, to raise an insurrection among Copperheads in the West with an aim toward creating a western confederacy.

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Was George B McClellan the Most Underrated General of the U.S. Civil War?

Here Jeb Smith argues that General George B. McClellan was the most underrated army commander of the Civil War. While he does not consider him to be a great general or military genius, he thinks the common portrayal of him as a terrible commander is unjust. No other Northern general, people say, exemplifies the stereotype of an incompetent and timid leader as McClellan does. The author argues that this is an unwarranted perception.

Abraham Lincoln and George B. McClellan in the general's tent during the Battle of Antietam on October 3, 1862.

“No other general in the war commanded more respect and admiration from his men than George McClellan.”

-John Cannan The Antietam Campaign

“Remember that your only foes are the armed traitors,–and show mercy even to them when they are in your power, for many of them are misguided” and later “Bear in mind that you are in the country of friends, not of enemies,–that you are here to protect, not to destroy.”

-George B McClellan May 26 1861 and June 25 1861

Northern Democrats did not see the South as the spawn of Satan but rather as fellow Americans who, in fact, had produced most of the Union leaders up to that point. General McClellan, a Democrat, held tolerant views of the South and sought to avoid needless bloodshed. These perspectives stand in contrast to those of many modern historians and the Republicans of the time, who shaped the narrative to justify the massacres that would follow, as well as the total warfare of 1864 and 1865.

West Virginia and Promotion

“Harley six weeks had elapsed... and in that time he had actually created an army and began the first campaign.”

-George b McClellan Commanding General U.S army May 26 1861

George B. McClellan, nicknamed “Young Napoleon” or “Little Mac,” graduated second in his class of 59 at the U.S. Military Academy in 1846. His class included 20 future full-rank generals, and he later returned to West Point as an instructor.

After the war began, he excelled at organizing militia from three states into a cohesive fighting force and saw his first action as a commander of Union forces in what is now West Virginia. This was a departure from his later reputation as a slow-moving, timid general. During a successful campaign in the mountainous region he launched aggressive attacks, dislodged Confederate forces, and captured key positions. He forced the retreat of Confederate troops fortified in the mountain terrain, all while taking minimal losses and securing large supply bases and many prisoners. This success helped preserve the future West Virginia for the Union and prevented the destruction of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. President Lincoln was very impressed, which led to McClellan’s appointment to replace McDowell after the latter’s defeat in the Battle of First Manassas[1], and later as the commander of all Union forces.

Organization of the Army of the Potomac

“In a very real sense, McClellan rescued the Union in these early days from dependency and fear. Someone had to rebuild the army and show the country that there was great hope for the future.”

-S.C. Gwynne Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson Simon and Schuster 2014

The nonmilitary press and President Abraham Lincoln, who was pressured for political reasons, wanted quick action and a fast end to the war. Part of what fueled this was the North's inability (even after First Manassas) to see how determined the South was. They thought this would be a quick, easy conflict. They underestimated the South's resolve to fight and ability to wage war. So, while the press and Lincoln called on Mac for fast action, as a military man Mac understood that the demoralized citizen army needed discipline, training, and organization. He provided these, got rid of poorly-performing generals and instilled spirit and pride in the soldiers while increasing their morale. He came to be loved and revered by his men.

One thing even those who are critical of him admit is that he was a first-rate organizer of the army. Mac took a defeated militia force and turned it into a professional army.

“McClellan had started with…a collection of undisciplined, ill-officered, and un-instructed men, who were, as a rule, much demoralized by defeat and ready to run at the first shot. He ended with the finest army ever seen on the North American continent.”

-James V. Murfin Battlefields of the Civil War

Had the North attacked before they were ready, as Lincoln and the press called for, the result would likely have been further defeats and a shattering blow to national morale. As General Sherman stated, Napoléon took three years to build an army, yet “here it's expected in ninety days, and Bull Run is the consequence.”

Mac's offensive plan, as called for by many in the North, was to mass a large army, some said up to 200,000, to march on Richmond and end the war. The Northern people wanted no mistakes after First Manassas. This was Mac's general plan; one that would take time and preparation. Mac also constructed large fortifications around D.C., which had been left almost entirely unguarded by McDowell, including 48 forts and 480 guns. Given that Mac had to train, organize, recruit, and supply a massive citizen army and transform it into a world-class professional army, the time he took to do so was entirely reasonable.

“When I was placed in command of the armies of the United States, I turned my attention to the whole field of operations, regarding the army of the Potomac as only one, while the most important, of the masses under my command.”

-George B. McClellan 1861

Further, Mac was commander of all armies and planned for a simultaneous synchronized attack across the Confederacy, which would take further time to plan and put in motion. On August 4th, 1861, in a letter to Lincoln, he laid out his plan that included the main attack to be against Richmond but also simultaneously pushing into Missouri and down the Mississippi, and after Kentucky joined the Union to push into Tennessee, seizing Nashville, and also begin capturing coastal cities such as New Orleans, Savannah and Mobile, then move on to Montgomery and Pensacola. Mac wanted one massive assault to wipe out the South and not a prolonged war; this would take time to prepare. In February 1862 he wrote to Secretary of War Stanton, saying “I have ever regarded our true policy as being that of fully preparing ourselves and then seeking for the most decisive results; – I do not wish to waste life in useless battles, but prefer to strike at the heart.” He did not want years of bloodshed to wear down the South, but brief, decisive action to end the war quickly.

Demotion by Lincoln

Just when Mac felt his army was ready, winter had started in, and Mac was bedridden for three weeks around Christmas. Lincoln wanted action now despite the impassable roads (he would not demand Grant move this early in ‘64) and Mac was accused of being timid. This offensive action was attempted in the winter of ‘62 by Burnside, and the results were Fredericksburg and the “mud march,” which ended in Burnside's removal. Grant, in ‘64, would start his spring offensive in April, later than Mac would his Peninsula campaign. As Grant said, the roads in Virginia would not allow large movements of troops before then, leading William Swinton in Campaigns of the Army of the Potomacto write, “It was inevitable that the first leaders should be sacrificed to the nation’s ignorance of war.”

So Mac started at the average time for spring offensives. No other Union army was campaigning during this winter. Yet, because of Lincoln's urgency and what he saw as a too-cautious McClellan, he demoted Mac to simply commander of the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln also forced corps commanders he had chosen on the Army of the Potomac. Mac wanted to wait to promote generals until he had seen them in battle. This was not the last time a politician interfered with Mac's plans.

Peninsula Campaign Begins

“Reduced my force by 1/3, after (bless and do not curse) task had been assigned, its operations planned... it frustrated all my plans... it left me incapable of continuing operations which had been begun. It made rapid and brilliant operations impossible.”

-George B McClellan

“Let me tell you that if your government had supported General McClellan in the field as it should have done, your war would have been ended two years sooner than it was.”

-- General Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of Staff of the Prussian Army and one of the leading military experts of the 19th Century

The Peninsula Campaign began with McClellan's strategic plan for an amphibious operation. Leveraging the North's naval superiority to transport and supply his army, he ultimately aimed for Richmond. Mac anticipated having over 150,000 men for the campaign as he set out for the peninsula. However, once he landed, Lincoln would significantly reduce his army with the other troops spread around the valley, D.C., and the Manassas region.

Mac had wanted more men for the offensive, but Lincoln wanted him to hold men back to guard D.C. Lincoln forced Mac to leave McDowell’s I Corps in D.C. along with the garrison already available. Lincoln now had a garrison of around 20,000 in D.C. and up to 74,000 as far as N.Y. that could be shipped/railed/marched to D.C. if it were attacked. Plus, McClellan had set up world-class fortifications. McClellan, McDowell, Winfield Scott, and every corps commander believed this was more than enough men to guard D.C. and supported McClellan's plan to bring more men, but Lincoln would not allow it for fear of D.C. being attacked. Perhaps out of fear of Stonewall Jackson, it was Lincoln, not the general, who, in this instance, was being overly cautious. In Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan (1864), author George Stillman Hillard wrote, “From the moment the Army of the Potomac landed upon the Peninsula an uneasy sense of insecurity took possession of the minds of the President, the Cabinet, and the members of Congress.”

So Mac landed the army, which was slow-moving because it was massive and carried heavy siege equipment. He faced the largest army the South would field during the war, 88,000 (Grant faced 65,000 in ’64, with a more significant force under him than Mac enjoyed). Once his army landed, he was notified that Stanton had closed all the recruiting depots in the Union. His army would now have to do without either replacements or reinforcements during a major campaign.

This was a massive shock to Mac and the generals in the army. He then was told that McDowell's 40,000 men near Manassas could not be used but must help defend against any possible action towards D.C., despite the fact that Confederates showed no signs of attacking and even burned the bridges south of Manassas as they retreated to defend Richmond. McDowell told McClellan this decision (McDowell protested it) was “Intended [as] a blow to you.” Then McClellan was told the garrison of 10,000 men at Fort Monroe would also be withheld. Even critics of McClellan, like General Heintzelman, said it was a “great outrage” to withhold his army from his command. General Wells said it was the Radical Republicans trying to get Mac to resign. Harper’s Weekly stated, “It is impossible to exaggerate the mischief which has been done by division of counsels and civilian interference with military movements.” Once more, Mac was aggressive, Lincoln and the politicians conservative.

“In General McClellan’s opinion, the way to defend Washington was to attack Richmond; and the greater the force thrown against the rebel capital, the greater the security of our own.”

-George Stillman Hillard Life and Campaigns of George B McClellan 1864

Mac was now forced to revise his plans because of Lincoln's caution. In the revised plan, McDowell would advance on Richmond from the north with his 40,000 men and better protect against an attack by Confederate General Joe Johnston if he went north to Washington. However, as Mac argued, the attack on Richmond would force the Confederate army to defend their capital rather than launch a desperate attack on D.C. This disagreement delayed the start of the campaign, with Lincoln getting his way.

“Notwithstanding all that has been said and written upon this subject, I have no hesitation in expressing the opinion, that had not the President and his advisors stood in such ungrounded fear for the safety of Washington, and had not withheld McDowell's forces at a time when their absence was a most serious blow to the plans of General McClellan, the close of the year would have seen the Rebellion crushed, and the war ended.”

-- Allan Pinkerton, chief of the Union Intelligence Service, 1861-1862

Yorktown

Mac moved up the peninsula towards Richmond and was promised McDowell’s men if D.C was free of threat. His army's first encounter was with Confederate General John Magruder and a small Confederate force at Yorktown. Magruder skillfully deceived Mac into believing his force was larger than it actually was. He accomplished this by repositioning the same troops in various locations, acting aggressively, continuously moving small units, using ammunition freely, and setting up dummy defensive positions. This convinced Mac that the Confederate force was more significant than it truly was, prompting him to settle in for a siege while he awaited the arrival of his heavy artillery. Mac was concerned that his inexperienced troops might fail in an assault during the first battle of the campaign, which could damage their morale. Mac eventually captured Yorktown and 80 heavy guns without losses, but the delay gave the Confederates time to organize troops to defend Richmond.

Advance on Richmond

Mac then started to push toward Richmond, and the Confederates gave way. The Union army captured both supply and ordnance during this advance. Mac is criticized for slow movement with a smaller Confederate force in front of him, yet he relied upon his friend and “expert” spy Alan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Whatever the value of Pinkerton’s other information, one area in which he failed was in accurately assessing enemy troop numbers. He gave Confederate force numbers from various agents as 160,000, 123,000, 180,000, and even 200,000 in Richmond. And on August 6, Federal General Halleck gave estimates of 200,000 around Richmond. Some northern newspapers working independently gave even higher estimates than Mac did. Because of this, Mac actually believed he was outnumbered.

This was common during the war, with generals thinking the force opposing them was more extensive than it really was. Since this was his information, he believed he was not being cautious but aggressive and daring to continue the campaign, even if at a slow/careful pace. At the time, the enemy numbers were not certain. Mac also waited for his heavy siege artillery to come up from the back, as it was needed to attack Richmond's prominent forts at the Confederate capital.

But without a doubt, the advance was working. Richmond was preparing to evacuate. It forced the Confederates to scuttle the ironclad Virginia, which caused a loss of morale throughout the Confederacy. Confederate General Joe Johnston called General Ewell from Jackson to help in Richmond. McDowell was advancing unopposed north of Richmond. Mac had achieved better success than McDowell, Burnside, Hooker, or Meade advancing on Richmond.

“It was not until 1864 that another Union army, led by Grant, would get as close to Richmond as McClellan did in the spring of 1862.”

--Great Campaigns: The Peninsula Campaign David G. Martin Combined Books PA 1992

The next time the Federals would get this close was under their top general, U.S. Grant. They also fought against a weakened Southern army in ‘64 with a much larger Federal army.

But this time, three things saved Richmond and stopped Mac from capturing the Confederate capital and being hailed as a hero. All three had to happen to stop Mac; two of them were very unlikely and could not have been foreseen.

1] Jackson in the Valley

“The most significant contrast between the Virginia campaigns of Grant and McClellan is that Early's offensive did not accomplish its ultimate objective–to relieve the pressure on Lee's army at Petersburg, Jackson's campaign in the Shenandoah valley did. Unlike McClellan before him, Grant would not be forced to alter his designs on the James River one iota.

-Thomas Rowland George B. McClellan and Civil War History

Unlike Lincoln, Mac saw Jackson's valley campaign as a diversion by Lee (now in command of the Southern Army) to pull federals away to help protect Richmond. Richmond was saved because of Jackson's brilliance in the valley. He outmaneuvered and outfought a force over three times the size of his own (17,000- 60,000), defeating them in multiple battles while also threatening D.C.

Jackson knew Lincoln was concerned with protecting D.C. Hence, he knew that aggressive maneuvers would pull men from the peninsula and help save Richmond. Jackson kept 71,000 additional men away from the Richmond attack with his victories and aggressive maneuvering. Lincoln was constantly scared by what Jackson might do, and this prevented McDowell and other troops from helping Mac; the withholding of McDowell would prove decisive.

2] Lincoln Recalling Troops to the Valley

“[It was] Jackson's campaign, and the insane terror it inspired in Washington, which was the true cause of the failure on the peninsula.”

-Colonel Ferdinand Lecomte, quoted in George Stillman Hillard Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan 1864

Because of Jackson, Lincoln recalled troops to defend Washington and the valley. He also held back McDowell's 40,000 from the attack on Richmond. This “Changed the whole nature of the confrontation near Richmond,” and “The Confederacy was truly handed an amazing gift.” Mac would have rather left Jackson to clear out the valley and even attack D.C. if he wished. Mac had built massive forts with a large garrison to protect the capital.

“Here is the true defense of Washington, it is here on the banks of the James.”

-McClellan to Halleck August 4th, quoted in George Stillman Hillard Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan 1864

After Pinkerton reported a large number of enemy forces to McClellan, he paused his attack due to McDowell's absence. McDowell was supposed to launch an assault on Richmond from the north to prevent the Confederates from mounting counterattacks. McDowell described his recall to the valley as “a crushing blow to us.” Even Lincoln told McClellan, “If you believe you are not strong enough to take Richmond, just know that I do not ask you to try. Just know.”

3] Lee Replaces Joe Johnston

General Joe Johnston, the commanding Confederate general, was injured and replaced by Robert E. Lee. This would change the entire campaign. Mac had been slowly pushing Johnston back towards Richmond, but Lee would take the initiative and attack Mac.

Lee vs Mac

Lincoln’s maneuvers significantly reduced the Mac forces near Richmond attempting to trap Jackson in the valley. Heavy rains swelled the Chickahominy River and created a split the Potomac army, and Lee saw his opportunity.

Lee, whom many consider not only the premier general of the South but of the war, recalled Jackson from the valley to help in the offensive vs. Mac, now with a force nearly equal to his.

Lee would strike the smaller portion of Mac's army and threaten its supply line under General Porter. Porter was supposed to be supported by McDowell from the north to meet up with his flank coming south from Manassas. Had Mac's plan been allowed, the attack would not have been possible. However, when Lincoln sent McDowell to the valley to trap Jackson, Porter was vulnerable, and Lee pounced, enabling its strategic success.

“General McClellan wished and had advised that reinforcements should be sent him by water, as their arrival would be more certain. Now that the James River was open, they might have been sent by that route... Richmond could have been approached by the James, and we should have escaped the delays and losses incurred by the bridging of the Chickahominy, and should have had the army massed in one body instead of necessarily being divided by that stream... the capture of Richmond could not be carried out because to the president’s distempered fancy Washington was not safe... McClellan was commanded to extend his right wing to the north of Richmond, in order to establish the communication between himself and General McDowell. This was running a great risk in case General McDowell should not come, because it exposed our right in a way no prudent officer would have done; and, as General McDowell did not come, the enemy did not fail to take advantage.”

-George Stillman Hillard Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan 1864

Lee attacked in multiple bloody battles, resulting in high losses on both sides. Mac would cause high casualties to Lee during the campaign, inflicting more losses than he received. However, Mac, going from “expert” information, believed he was outnumbered and was in danger of being cut off without help from the north. With Lincoln recalling so many of his troops, he ordered a retreat off the peninsula. Mac telegraphed D.C., stating, “If I save this army now, I tell you plainly I owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington...you have done your best to sacrifice this army.”

The retreat on the peninsula was dangerous, yet McClellan and Porter skillfully conducted it to save their forces from disaster. Mac would withdraw by night and defend a favorable position by day. It was a major strategic victory for the South yet a tactical victory for the Union. Lincoln called it a “half defeat.” Given the force size and causalities suffered, Mac performed better than the future Union commanders of the Army of the Potomac.

-Peninsula campaign stats

-Union Forces 105,000 Casualties 23,900 approx.

-Confederate Forces (inc. Jackson) 88,500 Casualties 29,600 app.

Antietam/Mac Takes Command

“I must have McClellan to reorganize this army and bring it out of chaos...there is no man in this army who can man these fortifications and lick these troops into shape half as well as he can.”

-Abraham Lincoln

“General McClellan has again assumed the supreme command of the army... His reception by the officers and soldiers was marked by the most unbounded enthusiasm. In every camp his arrival was greeted by hearty and prolonged cheering... Already his... visit to our camps has wrought a remarkable change in the soldiers. His presence seemed to act magically upon them; despondency is replaced by confidence, and all are glad that McClellan will, hereafter direct them.”

-Ellis’s Leaves from the Diary of an Army Surgeon, p. 214, quoted in George Stillman Hillard Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan 1864

Lincoln's selection of the aggressive Republican general John Pope to lead the army led to the embarrassment at Second Manassas. Pope was then exiled to Minnesota to fight Indians, and Lee turned his attention to an invasion of the North. Meanwhile, Mac had to reorganize Pope’s defeated, demoralized army that was integrated into his command and try to restore morale. Mac was reinstated in command of Pope's army and the Army of the Potomac on September 2nd.  The effect was immediate:

“The effect of the news was instantaneous. All of a sudden the federals forgot their defeat, weariness, and hunger and exploded into triumphant hurrahs, multitudes of caps were thrown in the air.”

-John Cannan The Antietam Campaign

Slow to Meet Lee?

A common criticism of McClellan during the Antietam campaign is that he was slow to move the army out to confront Lee's invasion, which allowed Lee to enter Maryland. Lee entered Maryland around September 4-7. Mac had just taken control of a disorganized, defeated army on the 2nd, and “worked a minor miracle in the next few days as he restored the army's morale and organization, and equally significant, its pride and sense of purpose.” No other man in the army could have restored morale and cohesion as quickly as Mac did before the Battle of Antietam. He had reorganized his army and marched to meet Lee by September 9th. Lee had expected a longer time for Mac to prepare, and his fast reaction spoiled Lee's plan to capture Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In his article Showdown on South Mountain historian Dennis Frye wrote, “Pennsylvania was Robert E Lee's target in September 1862. But Maryland and George McClellan got in the way.”

Mac had other reasons to be cautious. General Halleck advised General McClellan to be watchful regarding Washington, D.C., and to wait until General Lee's intentions were fully understood. Halleck believed that Lee was attempting to draw McClellan out, rather than planning a direct attack on D.C. Additionally, McClellan received continual reports from his cavalry regarding enemy troop strength, estimating between 60,000 and 120,000 soldiers. General Porter estimated Lee's army to be 100,000, while General Sumner's assessment was 130,000. This information was accepted by the Union high command, who believed that Lee must have been reinforced in preparation for an invasion.

Mac moved west, forcing Lee to fall back to link with Jackson from Harpers Ferry. Mac helped lead the attack at the Crampton’s Gap, Turner’s Gap and Fox's Gap battles—all victories. At Turner's Gap, CSA losses were 2,300 and USA losses 1,800, even though the attack was up a mountain and through rough terrain. On Sep 16th, Mac trapped Lee by a flank maneuver on Lee's left and captured the road to Hagerstown, forcing Lee's northern invasion to end. Frye wrote, “Lee saw his invasion crumbling. The most important matter now was not Pennsylvania, but preservation of the army.” Mac even took the unpredictable and aggressive General Stonewall Jackson off-guard, causing him to say “I thought I knew McClellan, but this movement puzzles me.”

The Battle of Antietam

The two armies met near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17th. The “cautious” Mac would assault the Confederate lines, leading to the bloodiest day of the war. Mac's plan was to attack both the Confederate left and right simultaneously, followed up with a massive reserve attack in the center.

While not a complete failure the attack failed to destroy Lee, partly due to Burnside's late arrival at the battle. Burnside delayed his assault on the Confederate right, “throwing off the whole plan,” and allowing Lee to shift reinforcements along his line to meet Union forces in the center and left. McClellan sent a half dozen couriers to Burnside to push him to strike more swiftly and threatened to relieve him of command. Yet, Lee's army was nearly breaking in all three sectors.

Mac did not show tactical genius and made some mistakes, but in the end, it was a strategic victory for the North and a tactical draw. He rested on the 18th to resupply (artillery near out of ammo) and gave orders to attack come daylight on the 19th, but the Confederates had left. The battle sent Lee's wounded army back to Virginia and, more importantly, ended any hopes the Confederacy had for European involvement in the war. Thus Frye wrote that “George McClellan saved the union.”

“A man who could take a demoralized army, as McClellan took the combined forces that had been defeated under Pope in front of Washington at the second Bull Run, restore its discipline by the magic of his name and his swift reconstruction of its shattered organizations, and then lead it to victory within fourteen days, after an almost unexampled celerity of movement against the enemy who had crushed it two weeks before--such a man is not to be spoken of or thought of as wanting in the force and vigor of a great general.”

-- George T. Curtis, U.S. Commissioner, historian

Antietam stats

Union Forces 87,000 Casualties 12,401

Confederate Forces 47,000 Casualties 10,316

McClellan Allowed Lee to Escape?

Lincoln heavily criticized Mac for not destroying Lee's army and not following him back into Virginia. However, Mac had sent Porter to harass the enemy retreat, which had initial success, capturing 40 Confederate artillery pieces. However, A.P. Hill counter-attacked, pushing the Union men back across the Potomac. Hill said it was “The most terrible slaughter...a lesson to the enemy, and taught them to know it may sometimes be dangerous to press a retreating army.”

Often, retreating armies fought significant rearguard actions to prevent their own destruction. Civil War battles rarely ended with the destruction of one or other army, only in 1865 when the South was near defeat was an army nearly annihilated. The assumption it could happen in 1862 points more to the expectations of the early-war North than realistic military goals. When the army was criticized for not destroying Lee's forces, a soldier in the Army of the Potomac replied. “Think the rebel army can be bagged? Let them come and bag them. Easy to talk about.” Historian John Cannan said the counter attack showed the federals that the rebels “still had a formidable bite.” Dennis Frye, who studied the Antietam campaign for over 50 years, wrote that ideas that Lee could be easily destroyed were “Myths created by politicians” not accurate judgments based on historical truth.

Further, the Federals were low on supply and had just fought two large-scale engagements. Lee knew where Mac would be unable to supply his army and planned his withdrawal accordingly. Mac was also working off his cavalry’s and Pinkerton's estimates of the Confederate strength. Thinking the Confederates still had equal force, he chose not to push the attack or risk a loss on Maryland soil that would endanger D.C. and the outcome of the war.

Far from defeated, after Lee had fallen back to Virginia he planned to continue the attack again. He sent Stuart’s Cavalry to create a bridgehead at Williamsport, Maryland, to renew the invasion. However, Mac had anticipated this move and sent his own cavalry along with the 6th Corps to prevent such a move. As argued by Dennis Frye, Mac outthought Lee in Maryland.

Later in October, Mac's quick and aggressive move into the Warrenton, Virginia area surprised Lee, splitting Lee's army. Both Lee and Longstreet were concerned. However, Lincoln had given the order two days before, and Mac was removed from command.

Conclusion

“There are strong grounds for believing that he was the best commander the army of the Potomac ever had.”

-Francis Palfrey Antietam, Fredericksburg

While I would not go as far as the above quote does, I would say Mac was the most underrated general of the war. He does not get credit where he should and gets the blame where he should not. I do not see Mac as cautious to a fault as claimed. It was often Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck being over-cautious about protecting D.C. that interfered with Mac's plans. And his military intel let him down, not his over-cautious nature.

“Look at his campaign in Western Virginia in 1861,–a part of his military career conveniently ignored by his enemies. Here he had a separate command, a defined field of action and was not hampered and trammeled by interference from Washington; and do we see any signs of indecision and want of promptness here? On the contrary, we observe the happiest combination of judgement in design and vigor in execution: one skilful and powerful blow was instantly followed by another, and the result was absolute and permanent military success.”

-George Stillman Hillard Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan 1864

Lincoln and the press wanted aggression, and the results were First Manassas, Burnside at Fredericksburg, Pope at Second Manassas, and later Hooker at Chancellorsville. No general of the early war could handle the tandem of Jackson and Lee. Extreme events withheld Mac from the capture of Richmond in ‘62.

A fair critical comparison between Mac and Sherman/Grant is favorable to Mac. Later, when Grant/Sherman gained victories, it was more because of the Confederate armies' reduced capability to offer resistance than their ability to be outgeneral Mac.

I believe the real reason for Lincoln's disappointment with Mac was the North's high expectations. Underestimating the resolve of the South and their leadership, the North desired one battle and one victory in Virginia, which would win the war for them. But it took years for them to realize their error, though doubt began early as Lincoln wrote to his friend Carl Schurz in 1862, “I fear we shall at last find out that the difficulty is in our cause rather than in particular generals.”

“McClellan's relationship with Lincoln is central to any understanding of why historians judge him as a flawed personality...Lincoln has attained a stature that sets him apart from other mortals”

-Thomas J Rowland George B McClellan and Civil Har History: In the Shadow of Grant and Sherman Kent State University Press

Historians may have viewed McClellan negatively because he opposed and disagreed with Lincoln. He committed the “unpardonable sin” of running against Lincoln in the 1864 election on a peace platform aimed at ending the bloodshed. In 1864 George Stillman Hillard wrote, “The real reasons for which General McClellan was removed were political, and not military.” Historian Dennis Frye said “The Republicans could not allow McClellan to be a victor. They could not allow that to happen. They needed to do everything they could to smear McClellan.”

“However patriotic the abolitionist radicals in the north may have been, the very last thing they wanted was for Little Mac to win in the battle for Richmond....the abolitionists would lose their influence.”

-S.C. Gwynne Rebel Yell The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson Simon and Schuster 2014

“There is a political element connected with this war which must not be overlooked.”

-Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War Dec 26 1861 quoted in George Stillman Hillard Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan 1864

Lincoln acknowledged that he made many errors that undermined McClellan's chances for success. After McClellan, Lincoln refrained from becoming directly involved with his generals. It appears that some historians have unfairly attributed Lincoln's military shortcomings to McClellan.

“At this moment a considerable portion of his countrymen have their minds barred against all arguments and considerations in defense of General McClellan, by political prejudice. To deny him all military capacity is part of the creed of a great political party. Most supporters of the present administration hold it to be a point of duty to disparage and decry him.”

-George Stillman Hillard Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan 1864

Jeb Smith is the author of four books, the most recent being Missing Monarchy: Correcting Misconceptions About The Middle Ages, Medieval Kingship, Democracy, And Liberty. Before that, he published The Road Goes Ever On and On: A New Perspective on J. R. R. Tolkien and Middle-earth and also authored Defending Dixie's Land: What Every American Should Know About The South And The Civil War, written under the name Isaac C. Bishop. Smith has authored dozens of articles in numerous publications, including History is Now Magazine, The Postil Magazine, Medieval History, Medieval Magazine, and Fellowship & Fairydust, and has been featured on various podcasts.

Major Battles and Casualties of Union Generals vs Lee

Union commander/ Battle/ Union Losses/ Lee loses/ Union causality per confederate causality

Pope- Second Manassas 13,879 Lee 8,353 1.65 per

Hooker- Chancellorsville 17,100 Lee 12,151 1.43 per

Burnside- Fredericksburg 13,353 Lee 4,576 2.95 per

Grant- Wilderness 18,400 Lee 11,400 1.61 per

Grant- Spotsylvania 18,000 Lee 12,000 1.5 per

Grant- Cold Harbor 12,737 Lee 4,594 2.8 per

Grant- Total 49,100 Lee 27,900 1.75 per

Meade- Gettysburg 23,049 Lee 28,063 .82 per

Meade- Total [above/Grant] 72,049 Lee 55,963 1.29 per

McClellan- Peninsula 15,849 Lee 20,133 .78 per

McClellan - Antietam 12,401 Lee 10,316 1.2 per

McClellan - Total 28,250 Lee 30,449 .92 per

McClellan was the only Union general to give more casualties than taken when faced with Lee. His average over two battles was only bested once by a Union commander, by Meade (who performed worse overall) at Gettysburg. Mac fought against Lee with, if anything, less of a manpower advantage than Grant would have later on. He also faced the Army of Northern Virginia while it had Jackson, was well supplied, and the South had high national morale, unlike what Grant faced.

How many other Union commanders can claim over two battles with Lee to have won a tactical victory on the first and a strategic victory and a tactical draw on the second while inflicting heavy losses? It is no wonder Lee said Mac was the best he faced. And famed Confederate John Mosby, the “gray ghost of the Confederacy,” said that McClellan was the best Union commander “by all odds.”

[1] The two battles at the same site were referred to as First and Second Manassas by the Confederacy, First and Second Bull Run by the Union. I will stick to Manassas throughout, except that where quotations from the Union side refer to Bull Run this will be left unchanged.

A Society Without Women? Sex & Gender in the Wild West

What would a society without women look like? Any conjecture is fanciful and contrived, but there has been a period in American history where an analogous situation prevailed for a sufficient period to provide thoughtful grist – the settlement of the American West. Fewer than one in twenty pioneers to California during the early Gold Rush is female. Even in 1853, only some 8,000 of San Francisco’s 50,000 residents were women. Well into the 1880s, men made up almost two-thirds of California’s pioneer population.

Terry Hamburg explains.

Emigrants Crossing the Plains. Drawn by F.O.C. Darley, engraved by Henry Bryan Hall.

“You have no idea how few women we have here, a San Francisco lawyer writes to his sister back home in 1849,” and if one makes her appearance in the street, all stop, stand, and look. The latest fashion is to carry them in their arms (the streets are incredibly muddy). This we see every day.”

The gender imbalance is a subject of marvel to every observer then and since. The world’s oldest profession thrives in this hormonal tsunami. In the course of 1849, the hamlet of San Francisco’s bolts to 20,000, of which it is estimated 1000 are women - and two-thirds of those work in or manage brothels. Most men pouring into the city are in their raging testosterone twenties and have been deprived of traditional sex for at least six months.

Some of the most successful and powerful women in mid-nineteenth century America live in the frontier where they are vastly outnumbered by men and subject to a more primitive, unfiltered form of masculinity. Madams, in particular, parlay their business into fortune and influence. “The only aristocracy we had here at the time,” remarks Caleb T. Fay, a leading San Francisco politician during the Gold Rush, “were the gamblers and prostitutes.” A brothel proprietress made her money off patriarchy, but that success is a challenge to it as much as an accommodation.

Exporting Virtue

It was a simple proposition. Plenty of California men - most believed rich or soon to be so - without women. Ladies possessing the adventure and pluck to travel to that far-off land might find an ideal situation. “Every man thought every woman in that day a beauty,” a Sacramento woman confesses to her diary. “Even I have had men come forty miles over the mountains, just to look at me, and I was never called a handsome woman, in the best day, even by most ardent admirers.”

The men needed both the carnal and the cultural. Females would deliver a healthy dose of virtue to tame the savage beast. “We do not wish to say, or even imply, that San Francisco is the wickedest and most immoral city in the world,” historian Benjamin E. Lloyd mused in 1876, “but it has not yet overcome the immoral habits contracted in the days when the inhabitants were nearly all males, and had nothing to restrain them from engaging in the most vicious practices; when there were no mothers to chide their waywardness and say in winning tones: “My son go not in the way of evil” and fewer virtuous sisters to welcome brothers home, and by their loving kindness and noble lives, to teach them to cease from sinning.” Readers applauded the sentiment of James Wyld in his 1849 Guide to the Gold Country of California: “Society without woman is like an edifice built on sand. Woman, to society, is like the cement to the stone. The society has no such cement; its elements float to and fro on the excited, turbulent, hurried life of California immigrants.”

There are formal schemes to fill this moral vacuum. The most celebrated is hatched in 1849 by Eliza Farnham, author and former matron of the female section of Sing Sing Prison. She has skin in the California game. Her late husband leaves a large tract of land near Santa Cruz that she is keen to develop. Farnham concocts an ambitious plan: organize a group of well-recommended marriageable women that would “bring their refinement and kindly cares and powers” to the rough-hewn society of male fortune seekers. Ideologically, Farnham goes farther than most feminists of the age, advocating the natural superiority of women. She is prominent, and so are her public supporters, the likes of Horace Greeley and William Cullen Bryant, editors of The New-York Tribune and The New York Evening Post, and Henry Ward Beecher, the renowned clergyman and abolitionist.

Farnham shuttles between cities on the Atlantic coast, addressing meetings, examining applicants, and giving press interviews. Soon, she could announce that more than 130 women had “signified” a desire to join up. The New York Tribune praises her and the “precious cargo . . . on an errand of mercy to the golden land.” Editors on both coasts are captivated by the notion. In California, there is joy. One local mining newspaper reports that “smiles of anticipation wreathed the countenance of every bachelor in town.” However, Farnham is having difficulty finding suitable clients and then closing a deal that yanks young ladies from the comforts of family and friends to trek halfway around the world on a wild speculation, and for a big fee - payable in advance, thank you. No refunds. The ballyhooed April launch is postponed. By June, she is ready to give up the plan and sail with a scant three prospects. Disappointed supporters complain that her personal standards for recruits may have been too high, along with the price tag. TheAlta California accepts the news graciously: “The will is always taken for the deed, and bachelors will unquestionably cherish the liveliest of feelings of regard for the lady who so warmly exerted herself to bring a few spareribs to the market.” Farnham expresses no regrets. After experiencing “the moral and social poverty” of California for six years, she is “grateful that my endeavors failed.”

More women

There are other grand plans to civilize the Wild West by estrogen. A few years later, Sarah Pellet, a noted advocate of temperance, abolition, and woman’s rights pursues a scheme for “amelioration of the condition of Californians.” Again, the plan looks solid on paper: export 5,000 “respectable, marriageable New England girls” to be recommended by the Sons of Temperance as “worthy girls.” The Sons of Temperance in California agrees to serve as guardians upon their arrival. If this initiative works, there are plans to up the contingent to 10,000. Unfortunately, too few worthy girls are willing to be shipped and the plan is abandoned, again breaking miners’ hearts.

The gradual but relentless march of progress will eventually balance the genders in California. 50-50 is the order of nature.

Terry Hamburg is director emeritus of the Cypress Lawn Cemetery Heritage Foundation. His recently published book Land of the Dead: How The West Changed Death In America explores how the demands of survival and adaptation in the Gold Rush western migration changed a multitude of American customs, including the way we bury and grieve for our ancestors. California and San Francisco serve as case studies. Visit his author page: https://www.terryhamburgbooks.com.

General George Armstrong Custer in the U.S. Civil War

George Armstrong Custer is well-known to every American as a Native American fighter following the U.S. Civil War, particularly highlighted by the events of the Last Stand at the Little Bighorn River, which has become a significant part of American folklore. The leadership he exhibited while commanding the 7th Cavalry, often accompanied by the tune of Garryowen, is familiar to many.

Custer's legacy is marked by deep controversy and division, as he has faced severe criticism for his actions against Native Americans, which many view as genocidal. Conversely, he is also regarded by some as a martyr for the cause of American expansionism. Both perspectives hold validity, rendering him a multifaceted and complex historical figure.

Less well known are Custer's military exploits as a young officer during the Civil War. His aggressive tactics, readiness to lead from the front lines, and ability to motivate his troops contributed to his rapid rise in fame and rank, despite the inherent dangers of his approach. However, this same aggressive disposition also resulted in notable failures and precarious situations.

Lloyd W Klein explains.

General George Armstrong Custer. From a photographic negative in Brady's National Portrait Gallery.

West Point

Custer was born in Ohio on December 5, 1839. He spent part of his youth in Michigan, with a half-sister and her husband, and would consider the state his adopted home. Despite his humble background and youthful indiscretions, a Michigan Congressman secured Custer a place at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point when he was 18. Custer entered West Point as a cadet on July 1, 1857, as a member of the class of 1862, which consisted of seventy-nine cadets engaged in a rigorous five-year program. He graduated at the bottom of his class, ranking 34th out of 34, as 23 of his peers had either dropped out due to academic challenges or resigned to join the Confederacy.

Throughout his tenure at West Point, Custer consistently challenged established norms and regulations. Over the course of four years, he accumulated an astonishing 726 demerits, marking one of the most notorious conduct records in the institution's history. Although he possessed considerable intelligence and talent, he largely disregarded the Academy's disciplinary measures and exhibited a lack of diligence in his studies. His behavior nearly led to expulsion on multiple occasions, and he ultimately graduated last in his class, a designation often referred to as the “goat.” With the onset of the American Civil War in 1861, the duration of the course was reduced to four years, allowing Custer and his classmates to graduate on June 24, 1861, a fortuitous moment for an aspiring military leader.

Outbreak of the Civil War

The United States Army faced a critical shortage of officers at the onset of the Civil War. In response to this urgent need, Custer received a commission as a second lieutenant and was assigned to the 2nd U.S. Cavalry Regiment. His initial responsibilities included training volunteers in Washington, D.C., and shortly thereafter, his unit was deployed to the front lines. During the First Battle of Bull Run, Custer served with his regiment, where Army commander Winfield Scott tasked him to deliver messages to Major General Irvin McDowell.

Following the battle, Custer remained engaged in the defense of Washington, D.C., until he fell ill in October 1861, which led to his absence from the unit until February 1862. Upon his return, he participated in the Peninsula Campaign in Virginia with the 2nd Cavalry, remaining active until early April 1862. His involvement during this critical period was significant as the campaign unfolded. 3. On April 5, 1862, Custer transferred to the 5th Cavalry Regiment, which was involved in the Siege of Yorktown from April 5 to May 4, where he served as aide to Major General George B. McClellan. By late May, he was entrusted with a leadership role that he executed with remarkable success, resulting in a promotion to Captain, although he would later face a demotion. Throughout this time, he participated in all the key battles of the Maryland campaign, further solidifying his military reputation.

During the Peninsula Campaign, on May 24, 1862, during the pursuit of General Joseph E Johnston, General George McClellan and his staff were reconnoitering a potential crossing point on the Chickahominy River. Custer overheard General John G. Barnard mutter, "I wish I knew how deep it is." Custer dashed forward on his horse out to the middle of the river, turned to the astonished officers, and shouted triumphantly, "McClellan, that's how deep it is, Genera!".

In his first battle command, He led an attack with four companies of the 4th Michigan Infantry across the Chickahominy River above New Bridge. The attack was successful, resulting in the capture of 50 Confederate soldiers and the seizing of the first Confederate battle flag of the war. McClellan congratulated Custer personally.

Antietam

Custer consistently maintained a positive rapport with his superiors throughout his military career. His collaboration with McClellan marked a significant turning point in his professional development. It is commonly understood that Custer's tenure under McClellan sparked his fascination with personal publicity, a factor that would have lasting implications for both his military engagements and his subsequent life.

During the Battle of Antietam, Custer served on McClellan’s staff, where he was responsible for the strategic placement of troops as directed by the commander. An order issued by McClellan specifically instructed General Sumner to maneuver Sedgwick and French across a creek at fords that "Captain Custer will show you," highlighting Custer's integral role in the operation. (On page 212 of Hartwig’s “I Dread the Thought of the Place”.)

Pennsylvania Campaign

Between Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, there were huge changes in the command structure of the US Cavalry. Stoneman was relieved of his command and sent to Washington DC to become Chief of the Cavalry Bureau, which was a demotion. Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Pleasonton succeeded him as the commander of the Cavalry Corps. Additionally, Brigadier General John Buford and his brigade were reassigned to the 1st Cavalry Division, while Brigadier General Wesley Merritt took charge of the Reserve Brigade. The death of Colonel Benjamin Franklin “Grimes” Davis at Brandy Station led to Colonel William Gamble assuming command of Buford's 1st Brigade. Kilpatrick was promoted to command of the 3rd Cavalry Division on June 13.

On June 9, 1863, Custer was appointed as aide to Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Pleasonton, who was tasked with the critical mission of locating General Robert E. Lee's army as it advanced northward through the Shenandoah Valley at the onset of the Gettysburg Campaign. In preparation for the Battle of Gettysburg, Custer played a pivotal role in the Battle of Aldie on June 17, contributing to the Cavalry Corps' operations in Loudoun Valley. His bold maneuvers were instrumental in delaying the Confederate cavalry, which was tasked with monitoring the movements of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. This engagement served as one of Custer's initial opportunities to demonstrate his capabilities in leading cavalry forces.

The Battle of Aldie on June 17, 1863, marked a pivotal moment in the series of cavalry skirmishes that constituted the Loudoun Valley Campaign, serving as a precursor to the more extensive Battle of Gettysburg. During this engagement, Union and Confederate cavalry forces clashed as General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia advanced northward into Pennsylvania. Custer emerged as a key figure in these confrontations, demonstrating his tactical acumen and leadership abilities.

The conflict commenced when Union cavalry, led by Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick, sought to locate and confront the Confederate cavalry commanded by Colonel Thomas Munford, who was tasked with screening Lee's advancing forces. At this juncture, Custer, a young officer on the rise, was assigned to lead the 5th Michigan Cavalry regiment within Kilpatrick's division. His leadership was crucial as the Union forces aimed to disrupt the Confederate maneuvers.

As the battle progressed, Custer orchestrated several daring charges against the well-entrenched Confederate troops, who had fortified themselves along strategic roads and ridges. His aggressive strategies not only maintained pressure on the enemy but also resulted in significant casualties for his men. Notably, Custer's audacious charge succeeded in breaching a critical Confederate position, leading to the capture of several enemy soldiers and temporarily displacing Confederate forces from the battlefield. Throughout the engagement, Custer's visible presence and fearless leadership galvanized his troops.  The battle ended inconclusively, with both sides holding their ground as night fell. However, Custer’s regiment and the Union cavalry achieved their tactical objective of delaying the Confederate forces. This was important because it slowed Munford's cavalry, preventing them from fully screening Lee’s army, and allowed Union forces to gather more intelligence on Confederate movements.

On June 22, 1863, Pleasanton was elevated to the rank of major general in the U.S. Volunteers. Following a consultation with George Meade, the newly appointed commander of the Army of the Potomac, Pleasanton received directives that would significantly impact the course of the war. He was instructed to replace political generals with leaders who were ready to engage in combat and personally spearhead mounted assaults. Among his aides, he identified three individuals who exemplified the aggressive leadership he sought: Wesley Merritt, Elon J. Farnsworth, both of whom possessed command experience, and George Armstrong Custer. Each of these officers was promptly promoted to brigadier general, with Custer taking command of the Michigan Cavalry Brigade, known as the "Wolverines," which was part of Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick's division. Notably, Custer, at the age of 23, became one of the youngest generals in the Union Army, despite lacking direct command experience. The so-called "Boy Generals" were poised to make significant contributions in the days to come, with Merritt and Custer embarking on distinguished careers, while Farnsworth tragically lost his life shortly thereafter.

On June 30, 1863, Custer and the First and Seventh Michigan Cavalry were advancing through Hanover, Pennsylvania, with the Fifth and Sixth Michigan Cavalry trailing approximately seven miles behind. Upon hearing the sounds of gunfire, Custer redirected his forces toward the source of the commotion. A courier informed him that Farnsworth's Brigade had come under attack from Confederate cavalry in the town's side streets. After regrouping his command, Custer received orders from Kilpatrick to confront the enemy to the northeast of town, near the railway station. He skillfully deployed his troops and initiated an advance. Following a brief exchange of fire, the Confederate forces retreated to the northeast.  This might seem surprising because Lee and his army were somewhere to the west, but Stuart was looking for Early who he thought was still at York; but Early had left that morning.  Early had gone west that morning on exactly the road Stuart was now taking east. Though this skirmish in itself was of little consequence, it was a major part of the reason Stuart.

Following the engagement at Hanover on June 30, Custer advanced through Abbottstown, Pennsylvania, in pursuit of Stuart. By July 1, the sounds of conflict from Gettysburg, located approximately 14 miles to the west and slightly south, began to reach them late that morning. On the same day, Custer encountered Confederate Brigadier General Wade Hampton at Hunterstown, where a skirmish ensued.

The following morning, July 2, Custer received orders to advance toward Culp’s Hill with the objective of disrupting enemy communications. As he neared Hunterstown in the afternoon, he learned that Stuart was in close proximity and had not yet detected his presence. Demonstrating exceptional courage, Custer took the initiative to scout ahead alone, discovering that the Confederate forces were unaware of his troops' arrival, which allowed him to conduct his own reconnaissance.

Upon returning to his command, Custer strategically positioned his forces along both sides of the road, ensuring they remained concealed from the enemy. He placed the First and Fifth Michigan Cavalry, along with his artillery, behind a low rise further down the road. To lure the Confederate cavalry into his trap, he rallied A Troop of the Sixth Michigan Cavalry, boldly declaring, "Come on boys, I'll lead you this time!" He charged directly at the unsuspecting rebels, who, as anticipated, pursued him. Despite suffering significant losses and being left on foot after his horse was shot, Custer was rescued by Private Norvell Francis Churchill. Ultimately, Custer and his remaining troops managed to escape, while the pursuing Confederates were repelled by rifle and artillery fire, leading to a withdrawal from both sides.

East Cavalry Field

Custer spent most of the night in the saddle, and reached Two Taverns, Pennsylvania, approximately five miles southeast of Gettysburg, at around 3:00 a.m. on July 3. The cavalry skirmishes that took place on this day in 1863 are noteworthy, even though they were not the central focus of the Gettysburg battle. At East Cavalry Field, located three miles east of Gettysburg, forces led by J.E.B. Stuart engaged with Gregg's division and Brigadier General George A. Custer's brigade from the 3rd Division. This encounter resulted in an extended mounted conflict, which included intense hand-to-hand combat, with both factions asserting they had emerged victorious.

Custer's involvement in the cavalry confrontations on the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg stands out as one of his most significant contributions during the war. Commanding a brigade of Michigan Cavalry, he fought valiantly at East Cavalry Field, where he played a pivotal role in thwarting Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart's attempts to launch an assault on the Union's rear during Pickett’s Charge. Custer's renowned charge, accompanied by the rallying cry “Come on, you Wolverines!” ignited a fierce battle that ultimately disrupted Stuart’s strategy and aided in securing a Union victory.

J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry finally arrived on the battlefield late on July 2, but the response from General Lee was less than enthusiastic. Lee instructed Stuart to maneuver behind the Union lines to penetrate their rear. By approximately 11 a.m., just three hours before Pickett’s Charge, Stuart had positioned his forces about three miles east of the Union line, intending to flank the Union left at Cress Ridge. However, Custer's troops, equipped with Spencer repeating rifles, held their ground resolutely, reminiscent of Buford’s brigades on the first day of battle. Consequently, at 1 p.m., Stuart ordered a direct assault led by Fitz Hugh Lee’s 1st Virginia Cavalry.

On July 3rd, Custer was reassigned from Kilpatrick's command to serve under the leadership of Gregg’s division. The overall command structure placed Buford at the helm of the 3rd Cavalry Division, with the majority of his forces positioned far from the conflict occurring in Westminster, Maryland. However, Buford's reserve brigade, commanded by Wesley Merritt, was stationed to the south of Gettysburg. At this juncture, David Gregg had two brigades under his command, one led by McIntosh and the other by Colonel J. Irvin Gregg, his cousin, both of which were deployed along the Baltimore Turnpike. Consequently, Gregg temporarily loaned one of his brigade divisions to Custer’s Michigan Brigade, while Kilpatrick and Farnsworth found themselves southwest of Little Round Top, resulting in a fragmented command structure.

The conventional narrative suggests that the Confederate forces were unaware of the Union cavalry's movements until Stuart signaled Lee with four artillery shots. However, this account raises questions, as Gregg had already established the positions for Custer and McIntosh earlier that day. Furthermore, Pleasonton had informed Gregg of Stuart's proximity, yet he still instructed Custer to return to Kilpatrick. Both Gregg and Custer deemed this order imprudent, leading them to disregard it and prepare for engagement instead.

In response to the situation, Gregg directed Custer and the 7th Michigan to launch a counterattack. Custer took the lead, rallying his men with the call, “Come on you Wolverines.” At that moment, the Virginia cavalry was positioned behind a fence, with over 700 horsemen engaged in combat using sabers, pistols, and rifles. Just as Custer appeared poised to force a retreat among the Virginians, Stuart countered by sending Wade Hampton to launch an attack, compelling Custer to withdraw. During the skirmish, Custer's horse was killed, prompting him to borrow his bugler's mount, which also met a similar fate. In response, Gregg ordered his remaining brigade to charge once more, but after approximately 40 minutes of intense fighting, both sides ultimately retreated. Custer's valor was particularly pronounced as he orchestrated a series of audacious cavalry charges against the Stuart. Despite facing overwhelming odds, His decisive actions were instrumental in thwarting Stuart’s cavalry from launching a surprise attack on Union troops, thereby playing a vital role in securing a Union victory.

This assault was conceived as part of a tripartite offensive that was meant to occur simultaneously, with Early and Pickett launching their attacks in a coordinated manner. This reflects the traditional military strategy of the time. However, a more contemporary interpretation suggests that Stuart was expected to approach Culp’s Hill from the south, while Early’s infantry would advance from the north. It is believed that Lee anticipated that if Pickett’s charge succeeded in pushing back the Union line and Stuart managed to penetrate their rear, it would create significant confusion among Union forces. While Lee recognized the necessity of coordinating his forces for a unified attack, there is no substantial evidence to indicate that he envisioned this operation as an envelopment, particularly given the limited size of Stuart’s contingent.

The casualties incurred during the 40 minutes of intense combat at East Cavalry Field were relatively modest, totaling 254 for the Union—of which 219 were from Custer's brigade—and 181 for the Confederates. Some reports indicate that Custer's losses were as high as 257, marking the most significant cavalry brigade loss in the battle. Stuart commanded approximately 6,000 troops, while Custer had 1,200 and McIntosh had 2,400. Although the engagement did not yield a decisive tactical outcome, it represented a strategic setback for both Stuart and Robert E. Lee, whose objective to penetrate the Union's rear were ultimately thwarted.

Williamsport

The Battle of Williamsport, which lasted from July 6–16, 1863, occurred during Lee’s retreat from Gettysburg. Union cavalry forces, including those under George Armstrong Custer, pursued the Confederate army as it retreated toward the Potomac River, attempting to cross back into Virginia. Custer played a notable role in these engagements, especially in harassing Lee's rear guard and attacking Confederate forces protecting their retreat.

After the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, Lee's army began retreating southward toward the Potomac River. Custer, commanding a brigade in General Judson Kilpatrick’s division, was part of the Union cavalry tasked with pursuing the retreating Confederates and disrupting their movement. His orders were to engage the Confederate rear guard, disrupt their wagon trains, and prevent them from crossing the Potomac, buying time for Union infantry to catch up.

Custer and his brigade engaged in several skirmishes with Confederate cavalry near Hagerstown and Williamsport. The Confederate forces were defending their supply trains and attempting to hold off the Union cavalry long enough to repair bridges and establish a crossing point at the Potomac River. Custer led his men in multiple aggressive attacks on Confederate positions, targeting both their cavalry and the wagon trains full of supplies. His boldness was consistent with his typical approach, charging Confederate lines in an effort to force them back.

During one of these engagements near Williamsport on July 6, Custer’s brigade became overextended after a particularly aggressive charge. He advanced too far ahead of supporting Union forces and was nearly encircled by Confederate infantry and cavalry. Custer’s position was briefly precarious, as he faced being surrounded and cut off. Despite this, Custer managed to organize a defense and retreat his brigade to a more secure position, avoiding disaster. His men were able to disengage and hold their ground until Union reinforcements arrived.

Over the course of the next several days, Custer and other Union cavalry units continued to pressure the Confederate forces around Williamsport, making repeated attempts to break through Confederate defenses and prevent Lee’s army from safely crossing the flooded Potomac River. While the Union cavalry, including Custer, succeeded in capturing a number of wagons and prisoners, they were ultimately unable to completely prevent the Confederates from repairing their bridges and making their escape into Virginia.

On the morning of July 14, Kilpatrick's and Buford's cavalry divisions approached from the north and east respectively. Before allowing Buford to gain a position on the flank and rear, Kilpatrick attacked the rearguard division of Maj. Gen. Henry Heth, taking more than 500 prisoners. Confederate Brig. Gen. J. Johnston Pettigrew was mortally wounded in the fight.

On July 16, cavalry approached Shepherdstown where the brigades of Brig. Gens. Fitzhugh Lee and John R. Chambliss, supported by Col. Milton J. Ferguson's brigade, held the Potomac River fords against the Union infantry. Fitzhugh Lee and Chambliss attacked Gregg, who held out against several attacks and sorties, fighting sporadically until nightfall, when he withdrew. Custer was involved in these battles.

The Overland Campaign

When Major General Philip Sheridan moved east, the resulting alliance with Custer as his subordinate would produce huge dividends in many battles. On May 6 at 8 AM, Custer, commanding 1st brigade 1st division received movement orders from a position at a crossroads on Brock Road to attack Longstreet in the flank. But Longstreet wasn’t at that location. A huge battle ensued when it turned out he was moving in the vicinity of Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry. The resulting, really unplanned and surprise firefight at Todd’s Tavern led to Lee’s retreat across the field.

The Battle of Trevilian Station occurred on June 11–12, 1864. It was the largest all-cavalry battle of the Civil War, Trevilian Station saw Custer lead his men in an aggressive attack against Confederate cavalry under Wade Hampton. Although the Union forces were ultimately forced to withdraw, Custer's brigade fought tenaciously.

Over 9000 Union troops faced about 6700 Confederates. It is estimated that the Union had over 1500 casualties including 150 killed, most from Custer’s brigade. The Confederates sustained over 800 casualties.

Custer’s participation at Trevilian shows the danger of his aggressiveness. Custer found himself and his division encircled by Confederate cavalry, yet he chose to stand firm rather than retreat. He inspired his men to maintain their defensive position until reinforcements arrived, allowing his unit to escape a precarious situation.  Sheridan was moving to destroy the Virginia Central Railroad and create a diversion while Grant crossed the James River. But Hampton beat Sheridan to the station, and what ensued was the largest cavalry of the war. Custer’s mission was to circle into Hampton’s rear. Instead, he got trapped and had to fight desperately to get out of it. This action has been called “Custer’s First Last Stand”.

On the first day of the battle), Custer was assigned to lead a brigade in Sheridan’s cavalry corps. As Sheridan’s force moved toward Trevilian Station, Custer launched an aggressive raid ahead of the main Union force. He moved boldly into the Confederate rear, cutting off General Wade Hampton’s Confederate cavalry from their supply trains and capturing over 800 men and Confederate wagons.

However, this aggressive maneuver placed Custer and his men in a precarious position. Once the Confederates realized Custer was isolated, they encircled his brigade. Custer found himself surrounded by Hampton’s cavalry, with no immediate support from the rest of Sheridan's force.

For several hours, Custer and his men were caught in a desperate defensive situation, with their position effectively cut off. His brigade formed a defensive circle to fend off repeated Confederate attacks, using their wagons as makeshift barricades. Despite being outnumbered and surrounded, Custer managed to hold out long enough for reinforcements from Sheridan’s other divisions to arrive and relieve him. During this time, Custer lost his personal battle flag, which was captured by Confederate forces—a symbolic loss, though he managed to avoid the complete destruction of his brigade.

On June 12, the second day of the battle, Custer’s brigade regrouped and continued to fight fiercely as part of the larger Union cavalry force. Sheridan’s troops launched repeated assaults against the entrenched Confederate cavalry at Trevilian Station, but despite their efforts, the Union cavalry failed to break through Hampton’s defenses.

Though Custer and his men fought valiantly, Sheridan’s overall raid did not achieve its primary objectives. Sheridan eventually withdrew, unable to destroy the railroad or link up with Hunter. While the battle was tactically inconclusive, the Confederates held the field, and Custer's performance, though audacious, had mixed results. His initial success in capturing Confederate supplies and disrupting their rear was overshadowed by the fact that his brigade was nearly destroyed during the encirclement.

Overall, Custer’s actions at Trevilian Station were typical of his aggressive, high-risk style of command. Although he narrowly avoided disaster, his ability to lead under fire and maintain discipline in dire circumstances earned him respect, even if the battle itself was a strategic setback for the Union.

Yellow Tavern

In this battle on May 11, 1864, General Philip Sheridan outmaneuvered and outmanned Stuart. In a surprise counterattack, Stuart was mortally wounded by a retreating Union soldier. Custer’s role in this battle was pivotal. During Sheridan’s raid toward Richmond, Custer’s men were heavily involved in the fighting, and the death of Stuart marked a turning point for Confederate cavalry leadership.

Sheridan amassed over 10-12,000 cavalry and 32 artillery pieces, stretching 13 miles long. This provided him with a two-to-one advantage – Stuart had about 4500 men. He had amassed 3 cavalry divisions to fight against 2 brigades. Moreover, Sheridan’s men were armed with rapid-fire Spencer Carbines. Sheridan’s three divisions were commanded by Brig. Gens. Wesley Merritt, David M. Gregg and James H. Wilson. Stuart’s forces included Brig. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee’s division, consisting of brigades under Brig. Gens. Lunsford Lomax and Williams C. Wickham and a brigade of North Carolinians commanded by Brig. Gen. James Gordon from Brig. Gen. William Henry Fitzhugh “Rooney” Lee’s division.

Having arrived just an hour ahead of Sheridan, Stuart chose to defend a low ridgeline bordering the road. Stuart placed his two brigades, under the commanders Lunsford L. Lomax and Williams C. Wickham, in a “Y” formation along the intersection of the two roads. On the Confederate left, Lomax’s men engaged the Union brigades of Thomas C. Devin, Alfred Gibbs, and George Armstrong Custer, and after intense fighting were driven back to the same ridge line occupied by Wickham. The initial Union charge was halted.

Stuart sent Gordon’s brigade to harass Sheridan’s rear. Sheridan wasn’t interested in outracing Stuart, he wanted to give battle. Stuart beat Sheridan to the crossroads of Telegraph Road and Mountain Road, which was necessary for Sheridan to pass through to get to Richmond. At this intersection was an old hotel called Yellow Tavern. He placed Wickham’s brigade on a high ridge and a right angle to Lomax’s brigade to form a pincher movement when Sheridan arrived. As planned, Merritt advanced toward the ridge and Lomax attacked at the flank. But, Merritt had a brigade led by Devin to flank Lomax, forcing a retreat. To protect the retreat, the 5th Virginia regrouped and Devin charged. This led to a stalemate in the area below the ridge.

After a brief lull, Sheridan renewed his attack. His men, both mounted and dismounted, charged amid the roar of a sudden thunderstorm. Custer’s brigade aimed for the center of the Confederate line. Union troops charged across Turner’s Run—a stream that bisected and ran perpendicular to the Telegraph Road—and up the ridge to the Confederate position. Witnessing the devastating break in his line, Stuart immediately galloped to the position of his old command, the 1st Virginia Cavalry. And then the 1st Virginia Cavalry countercharged, driving the Union troops back.

At this moment, at 4 pm, Custer proposed an attack along a small stream called Turner’s Run. Taking the 1st Michigan along with numerous other regiments, he made an initial lodgment in the Rebel line but was overwhelmed when reinforcements came up. In this retreat, a dismounted soldier shot Stuart in the abdomen, passing through him. As the 5th Michigan Cavalry retreated past Stuart, he was shot with a .44 caliber revolver from a distance of 10-30 yards. Stuart was killed by a dismounted Union private in retreat named John A Huff. Huff was a former sharpshooter with Berdan’s sharpshooters. Fitzhugh Lee took command and prevented a disorderly retreat. Meanwhile, Custer sent more men forward, forcing a full retreat.

Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864

Custer played a significant role in Union General Philip Sheridan’s efforts to defeat Confederate forces under General Jubal Early. The campaign's objective was to clear the Shenandoah Valley of Confederate control, as it was a crucial agricultural region and an important supply line for the South.

Third Battle of Winchester. In the Third Battle of Winchester on September 19, 1864, also known as the Battle of Opequon, Custer played a key role as a cavalry commander under Major General Philip Sheridan during the Shenandoah Valley Campaign. Custer was in command of one of Sheridan’s cavalry brigades. Custer performed several daring charges during the battle. His aggressive cavalry tactics helped to drive Early's forces back. Custer's success in leading repeated cavalry assaults allowed the Union forces to capture Confederate positions and force a retreat. Custer’s cavalry played a key role in routing Confederate forces, and his aggressive tactics helped deliver a decisive victory for the Union. His division broke through Confederate lines and captured many soldiers and artillery pieces, contributing to the campaign's overall success. His role was primarily to flank and harass the Confederate forces under Lieutenant General Jubal Early. The Union cavalry was tasked with cutting off Confederate escape routes and striking the enemy from unexpected angles while the Union infantry pressed the Confederate center and left.

Custer’s cavalry was directed to attack the Confederate right flank. This proved to be crucial as the Confederate line was already buckling under pressure from Union infantry assaults. Custer’s aggressive push on their flank contributed to the eventual collapse of Early’s forces.

As the Confederate line broke, Custer’s cavalry was among the first to exploit the breakthrough. He led his men in a vigorous pursuit of the retreating Confederate soldiers, cutting down those who fled and capturing prisoners, artillery pieces, and other valuable supplies. His men played a significant role in turning the Confederate retreat into a rout.

Custer's cavalry captured several artillery pieces during the battle, further demoralizing Early’s troops and preventing them from re-establishing defensive positions. This loss of artillery was a major blow to the Confederate forces, who were already struggling with inferior numbers and resources.

This battle was a decisive Union victory, and Custer’s cavalry, including his aggressive leadership and ability to inspire his men to press the attack, was a key factor. This victory opened the way for further Union advances in the Shenandoah Valley, helping to secure Sheridan's objectives in the region and weakening the Confederate war effort.

Battle of Fisher's Hill. Following Third Winchester, Sheridan’s forces pursued Early’s retreating army to Fisher’s Hill. On September 21-22, 1864, Custer's cavalry helped to flank the Confederate army, contributing to the Union victory. His rapid movements and aggressive use of cavalry were critical in keeping pressure on the retreating Confederate forces.

Battle of Cedar Creek. Custer's most celebrated actions during the Shenandoah Campaign occurred at the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864. Initially, Early’s Confederates launched a surprise pre-dawn attack on the Union army, routing them from their camps and driving them back. Sheridan, who was away from the battlefield at the start of the attack, famously rallied his forces upon his return and began a counterattack in the afternoon.

During the battle, Custer commanded a cavalry division and played a pivotal role in Sheridan’s afternoon counteroffensive. On September 25th, Grant asked Sheridan to send either Torbert or Wilson to Georgia to take over the cavalry there. Sheridan chose Wilson and put Custer in command of Wilson’s 3rd Cavalry Division in time for Cedar Creek.  His leadership helped stabilize Union forces and allowed them to regroup after the initial Confederate assault. As Sheridan’s forces pressed forward, Custer's division launched aggressive cavalry charges that shattered the Confederate flanks. His relentless attacks helped turn the tide of battle, leading to a decisive Union victory. Many historians credit Custer’s bold charges as crucial in breaking Early’s army and turning a near Union disaster into a triumph.

Custer’s role in Sheridan’s Shenandoah Campaign, particularly at Cedar Creek, solidified his reputation as a brave and effective cavalry commander. His aggressive tactics were well-suited to the fast-moving and chaotic nature of cavalry warfare, and his actions contributed significantly to the Union's victory in the Shenandoah Valley, which deprived the Confederacy of a vital region and disrupted their plans to divert Union attention away from General Robert E. Lee's forces around Richmond.

Appomattox

Custer’s cavalry had a key role in blocking the retreat of General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia during the final days of the war. Custer’s men captured Confederate supply trains and were among the first to receive Lee’s flag of truce, leading to the surrender at Appomattox Court House, which effectively ended the war. During the closing days of the war, Custer’s relentless pursuit of the Army of Northern Virginia and Gen. Robert E. Lee helped to hasten their surrender. When Sheridan's troops overran Confederate defenses at Five Forks on Saturday, April 1, 1865, Lee decided to abandon the Petersburg defenses and, in doing so, to vacate Richmond. Once this decision was made, the war was essentially over.

The prelude to Five Forks was the day before, March 31. Recognizing that Five Forks was the key to control of the Southside RR, Union forces moved around the Confederate left flank. Two simultaneous battle movements, resulting in two separate actions, resulted. At the Battle of Dinwoodie Courthouse, Sheridan attempted a flanking maneuver. At the same time, Warren moved west on White Oak Road, where a battle ensued.

Lee anticipated these movements perfectly. He sent Pickett and cavalry under Fitz Hugh Lee to meet Sheridan. Although surprised, both Union attacks prevailed and the Confederate forces suffered 1500 casualties, a huge loss considering their dwindling numbers. They retreated to Five Forks.

After the Battle of Dinwiddie Court House, V Corps infantry began to arrive near the battlefield to reinforce Sheridan's cavalry. Pickett's orders from Lee were to defend Five Forks "at all hazards" because of its strategic importance. On March 30, Warren had occupied a crucial crossroads at Five Forks where Boydton Plank Road crossed Quaker Road.  Sheridan’s cavalry, meanwhile, was rapidly advancing in a left turn aimed at Five Forks.

Lee knew Grant wouldn’t make a frontal assault, and deduced his opponent’s best option. Lee ordered Pickett’s infantry to attack Warren and Fitzhugh Lee to attack Sheridan. These attacks came as a surprise, as the Union did not see these responses. Although Dinwiddie was a tactical victory for Fitzhugh Lee, by that evening, Sheridan and Warren had merged after having caused over 1500 casualties. At Five Forks, Sheridan had defeated Pickett, who famously was not present at the battle, instead being engaged in a shad bake (because of an acoustic shadow, he never heard the fighting).. The Union force inflicted over 1,000 casualties on the Confederates and took up to 4,000 prisoners while seizing Five Forks, a vital supply line and evacuation route. The end was near, and Custer had played a significant role.

During the closing days of the war, Custer’s relentless pursuit of the Army of Northern Virginia and Gen. Robert E. Lee helped to hasten their surrender.  After a truce was arranged, General Custer was escorted through the lines to meet General Longstreet, who described Custer as having flaxen locks flowing over his shoulders. Custer said, “In the name of General Sheridan I demand the unconditional surrender of this army.” Longstreet replied that he was not in command of the army, but if he was, he would not deal with messages from Sheridan. Custer responded it would be a pity to have more blood upon the field, to which Longstreet suggested the truce be respected, and then added “General Lee has gone to meet General Grant, and it is for them to determine the future of the armies.”

Custer was in attendance at the McLean House to witness the surrender. Pictured is the furniture upon which the surrender was signed by Generals Lee and Grant at the McLean House at Appomattox. The White table and wicker chair were those used by Lee. It was purchased by General Ord who donated it to the Chicago Historical Society. it is currently on display at the Chicago Historical Museum. The leather chair and round table were used by Grant. General Sheridan bought Grant’s furniture from the McLeans and presented it to General Custer's wife as a souvenir. She used it for several years in her home, then donated it to the Smithsonian. Sheridan included a note praising Custer's gallantry. Think about how truly awesome that is, and how much Sheridan must have valued his contributions.

On April 15, 1865, Custer was promoted to major general in the U.S. Volunteers, making him the youngest major general in the Union Army at age 25. He would go on to higher glory and a crushing defeat, in the Indian Wars of the 1860s and 1870s. His background with Sherman and Sheridan, who would both go on to become Commanding Generals of the United States Army, positioned him ideally for a leading role in that conflict.

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References

·       Ambrose, Stephen E. (1996). Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors. New York: Anchor Books.

·       "George Armstrong Custer". American Battlefield Trust. November 4, 2009. 

·       Wert, Jeffry D. (1996). Custer: The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer. New York: Simon & Schuster.

·       Wittenberg, Eric J. (2001). Glory Enough for All : Sheridan's Second Raid and the Battle of Trevilian Station. Brassey's Inc.

·       https://www.history.com/topics/early-us/george-armstrong-custer

·       https://www.americancivilwarstory.com/george-armstrong-custer.html

·       https://www.historynet.com/george-custer/

·       https://www.history.com/topics/early-us/george-armstrong-custer

·       https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/custers-first-last-stand

Was the Battle of Gettysburg Really a Major Defeat for the Confederacy?

The Battle of Gettysburg during the U.S. Civil War is usually considered a victory for the North; however, alternative arguments can be made. Here, Jeb Smith considers whether Gettysburg was really a major defeat for the Confederacy.

Bayonet charge by the Union’s 1st Minnesota against Confederate forces on July 2, 1863. By Dan Troiani, available here.

In his lecture series on the U.S. Civil War, renowned historian Gary Gallagher explained that the South in 1863 did not perceive the Battle of Gettysburg as a defeat but rather as a draw. Even though it ultimately fell short of its primary objective, to achieve a significant victory over the Army of the Potomac and thus bring about peace talks, many Southern leaders saw the campaign as a success because it pulled the Federals out of Virginia, providing its war-ravaged farmlands much-needed rest. It also maneuvered the war to the North where Confederates lived off of Northern farms and supplies. Famed cavalry general Jeb Stuart wrote his wife, "Gen Lee maneuvering the Yankees out of Virginia is the grandest piece of strategy ever heard of.”

Gary Gallagher mentioned how the Battle of Gettysburg was not driven from the field for the South; they simply failed to remove the Federals from their positions on Day 3. Since they made an orderly retreat rather than being driven from the battlefield, the engagement was viewed by most at the time as a draw. Some Southern soldiers (and the populace, newspapers, etc.) viewed it as a victory since they won day 1, driving the Federals back, and maintained their positions on days 2 and 3. In Jeb Stuart: The Last Cavalier Burke Davis wrote, “There was not a spirit of defeat in the army this morning; men waited hopefully for Federal attack on their hill.”

Battle

Gallagher described Day 1 as one of the great attacking victories of the war, with Southern forces successfully pushing back two Federal corps and inflicting heavy losses. On Day 2, the outnumbered South launched an attack against Federals who were entrenched on high ground, managing to cause more damage than they sustained. Federal General George Meade was so bloodied after Day 2 that he considered retreating and made plans to do so, but his subordinates persuaded him to stay. As Confederate General James Longstreet was quoted as saying in the Ken Burns Documentary on the Civil War, “When the second day's battle was over General Lee declared it a success.”

By the end of the three-day bloodbath, the Federals had suffered such enormous casualties (the largest of any battle of the war) that they did not mount a significant offensive in Virginia for 10 months.

Many see Gettysburg as a major defeat because Lee never invaded the North again. Yet this had more to do with the cumulative loss of manpower to all Southern armies and a drop in morale coupled with larger, more aggressive Northern armies. At the time, nobody knew Lee would not invade again, and some thought he would. General Jeb Stuart wrote his wife on July 13th “We return without defeat to recuperate and reinforce when no doubt the role will be reenacted."

Further, Confederate General Jubal Early invaded the North in ‘64, at one point threatening Washington D.C., and Lee sent Longstreet and two divisions to Tennessee after Gettysburg, enabling Braxton Bragg to take the offensive there and win the battle of Chickamauga. If Lee had just suffered a significant defeat or thought himself in danger, why would he send his top corps with two veteran divisions to the Western theatre? Why not consolidate defensively? Instead, he was still thinking offensively. And Lee showed the South had plenty of fight left in ‘64.

Loss?

Others say the South lost the war at Gettysburg; I don't see how this is so. Gettysburg, combined with Vicksburg, was a big blow to Southern manpower. However, it could also be argued the South was already finished when Stonewall Jackson died. But still, regardless of Jackson and the results of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Lincoln was not likely to be reelected (Peace Democrats would have triumphed) until General Sherman captured Atlanta and Jubal Early (who was making headlines) was defeated in the Shenandoah Valley. Those events, along with Admiral Farragut’s earlier triumph at Mobile Bay, secured Lincoln's reelection and won the war for the North, not Gettysburg. The high casualties of 1864 and battles like Gettysburg (union losses of 23,000) almost cost the Union the war, and the people of the North desired peace, until new Union victories restored popular morale.

Jeb Smith is the author of four books, the most recent being Missing Monarchy: Correcting Misconceptions About The Middle Ages, Medieval Kingship, Democracy, And Liberty. Before that, he published Defending Dixie’s Land: What Every American Should Know About The South And The Civil War. Smith has authored dozens of articles in various publications, including The Postil Magazine, History is Now Magazine, Medieval History, Medieval Magazine and Fellowship & Fairydust, and featured on various podcasts.

The Salvation Army, Economic Emigration, and The British Empire

The Salvation Army (the Army) is predominantly known as an international charitable organization. For over a million people worldwide, it is an Evangelical church with its own distinctive polity and practice, owing its heritage to British Methodism and American Revivalism. Less well-known is that between 1891 and 1932, the Army supported over 100,000 men, women, and children to travel from Britain to her colonies across the sea. This Evangelical movement and engine for social reform became an emigration agency because they believed that moving the ‘surplus population’ out of Britain into unclaimed land in the colonies would reduce poverty, specifically urban deprivation, in the mother country.

Christopher Button explains.

Salvation Army co-founder William Booth.

Introduction

The Salvation Army began social service work in 1866, with the first food depots providing meals for dockers who had been laid off during the collapse of the Poplar shipyards. By the 1870s, social service work had transformed into social reform work. Early examples included the establishment of rescue homes for female sex workers who were trained to become domestic servants or given jobs such as bookbinders. They also set up sheltered workshops for unemployed or homeless men to enable them to learn a trade and return to work. According to William Booth, the simple principle was that:

Any person who comes to a shelter destitute and starving, will be supplied with sufficient work to enable him to earn the fourpence needed for his bed and board. This is a fundamental feature of the scheme, and which I think will commend it to all those who are anxious to benefit the poor by enabling them to help themselves without the demoralising intervention of charitable relief…There is no compulsion upon anyone to resort to our shelters, but if a penniless man wants food her must, as a rule, do work sufficient to pay for what he has of that and of other accommodation. I say as a rule because, of course, our officers will be allowed to make exceptions in extreme cases.[1]

The Victorian demand that people should lift themselves up by their bootstraps was adopted by the Army. The Army expected and demanded from the customers of its social relief efforts that they engage in hard work, commitment to personal transformation, and, where absolutely necessary, the absolute minimum of charity to allow them to do so.

In Darkest England

In 1890, the Army released the blueprint for a new, totalizing, and universal scheme of social reform that would provide a system of welfare designed to work towards eradicating poverty and destitution and bring about the salvation of the world. This project was called In Darkest England and the Way Out, written principally by William Booth and published in 1890. It sold over 100,000 editions within the first few months. It was, in its way, quite a simple scheme. There were three parts to this scheme. Each was a form of colony, consciously adopting the structures of empire just as the book’s title borrowed from David Livingstone’s book Darkest Africa. The language is telling and is something we will return to.

The first step was the ‘City Colony’ including food depots, shelters, rescue work for women, salvage yards and ‘elevators.’

The ‘Elevator’ was a new concept in social services, combining generous acceptance with patient but unwavering discipline. ‘No one brings a reference here’ explained an officer in charge of one such institution. ‘If a man is willing to work, he stays; if not, he goes.’ No guide line could be simpler for the entrant; none more demanding upon those who were seeking his rehabilitation…The elevator was, in effect, and entry form of ‘sheltered workshop’ – a concept which was little known at the time and consequently less understood.[2]

The elevator was a combination of shelter and workshop or factory. Men could find somewhere to live and work in various trades to pay for their bed and board and gain enough stability to seek work in the trade they were learning. Central to every part of the city colony was regular, often daily, worship for all the residents. None were compelled to attend, but for many, it was an easy source of entertainment. Attendance at salvation meetings in the shelters across 1891 was recorded at 136,579, with 708 recorded as being converted. The work of social reform was undertaken hand in hand with the work of personal reformation with the intent of universal conversion.

For those city colonists who thrived and demonstrated their proper attitude to work, the second stage of the Darkest England scheme beckoned. This was the ‘Farm Colony.’ The Army intended to take select members of the urban poor who had demonstrated their willingness to work and submit to discipline and transplant them to training farms. Sir John Gorst QC MP wrote:

The unemployed is taken away from the town where he competes with a congested mass of workers, too numerous for existing employment opportunities, and brought back to the land, where he produces more than he consumes, where his labour enriches the nation without lessening the earnings of his fellow workmen.[3]

The Army in the UK bought a farm in Hadleigh, Essex, and developed it to receive colonists from the city. Similar farms were purchased in Australia, America, and South Africa. Farm colonists would work for the first month purely for bread and board. Then, if they demonstrated their willingness to learn, work, and behave, they would start to be paid. The farm colonists learned to work the land in small holdings or as tenant farmers. Some were returned to the city as unsuitable for the farm. Others were encouraged to purchase a 5-acre smallholding from the Army at favorable interest rates and become independent. But for others, they would be eligible for the third part of the Darkest England scheme — the Colony Across the Seas.

The Colony Across the Sea

Here, we come to the point at hand. The Darkest England scheme was dependent upon the British Empire. The Darkest England scheme could not have worked without the shared culture, language, infrastructure and transportation links. The fact that the scheme did not live up to its promise has less to do with the Empire and more to do with the incredible amount of funding necessary to make it practicable. Despite the relative failure of the Darkest England scheme beyond the city colony, the limited successes and the plans for the scheme highlight the inherent links between the Army and the Empire. William Booth said:

It Is absurd to speak of the colonies as If they were a foreign land. They are simply pieces of Britain distributed about the world, enabling the Britisher to have access to the richest parts of the earth.[4]

In the same way, the Army intended to send Britain’s poorest, properly trained and equipped, out to the parts of the Empire where land was underutilized. The movement from city to farm to overseas farm or factory was meant to become a new system built into the structure of Britain. By reducing the overall population and upskilling the urban poor, not only would Britain benefit, but the colonies would be developed. Ausubel wrote:

Indeed, one of the purposes of the In Darkest England scheme itself was to bring about structural change, since Booth was one of those Victorian reformers who believed that as population was the root course of the long depression from the early 1870s to the late 1890s and that mass emigration was part of the answer to this problem.[5]

The Army started supporting the emigration of its farm colonists to the colonies over the seas in 1891. Initially, colonists went to New South Wales and Queensland. By November 1891, 95 emigrants had been sent overseas by the Army with letters of recommendation for farms and factories in the receiving territories. The 1907 yearbook reported that since 1905, 15,000 people had emigrated through the Army’s agency. However, problems in the scheme were starting to emerge.

A key example comes from New Zealand, where there was…

Agitation against the scheme by Trades and Labour Councils…On the grounds that living standards of workers would be depressed by this introduction into the Colonies of what they termed ‘undesirable persons the Pauper and criminal scum of the alleys and byways of Great Britain.’[6]

The colonies, especially New Zealand and Australia, did not want to receive people who had been destitute and dwelling in London’s slums until recently. The costs involved in emigration had, until then, helped to ensure that those emigrating from Britain had been able to support themselves on arrival. The Army supported the Salvationist colonists, but they were travelling to improve themselves and did not go with their own resources.

Another issue was that William Booth and the Army had somewhat misunderstood the relationship between Britain and her colonies and dominions. By the early 1900s, the Empire was already starting to decentralize, especially in the self-governing states and dominions. Britain could not simply tell the governments of Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa to give spare land to colonists from The Salvation Army. The Army was not empowered to create new colonies, and the Imperial government could not provide the Army with new land. The Army was not given unused land in the existing colonies. The third stage of the Darkest England scheme seemed to be failing, so the Army had to turn to a broader approach to emigration.[7]

Family Emigration

Colonel David Lamb, the new commander of the emigration department, decided to broaden the project to include families as well as single men. This brought into reality some of William Booth's hopes for Darkest England.

In the Salvation Ship we shall export them all – father, mother, and children. The individuals will be grouped in families, and the families will, on the farm colony, have been for some months part more or less near neighbours, meeting each other in the field, in the workshops, and in the religious services. It will resemble nothing so much as the unmouring of a little piece of England, and towing it across the sea to find a safe anchorage in a sunnier clime. The ship which takes out emigrants will have the produce of the farms, and constant travelling to and from will lead more than ever to the feeling that we and our ocean-sundered brothers are members of one family.[8]

With Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa actively working against William Booth’s scheme of social imperialism, it was up to Canada to rescue Darkest England. The relationship between the Army emigration service and Canada developed until the Army became one of Canada’s leading immigration agencies, accredited and financially sponsored by the Canadian government and funded by direct donations in the UK. Between 1905 and 1907, the Army chartered fourteen ocean liners with a thousand immigrants on each. By the opening of the First World War, over 50,000 settlers had been supported in moving to Canada. By 1932, when the emigration service ended, more than 112,000 people from Britain had moved to Canada.

The system was comprehensive. Corps officers in the UK advertised the scheme and supported families in applying for emigration through the Army’s agency. Social officers helped identify likely candidates from the shelters or Hadleigh Farm and made their applications to the agency. The emigration department also stationed agents in the Army’s labour exchange bureaus, particularly helping domestic servants emigrate. The Army also offered emigration insurance for the settlers. For 10 shillings, the traveler would be insured against loss of belongings and against the risk of not finding employment. Whilst most settlers using the Army’s emigration agency had a position organized on their behalf for when they arrived, some went without work waiting for them in the hope of finding a position. The Army would pay for their return to Britain if they did not find work.

The Army chartered liners to carry the new colonists from the UK to Canada on an alcohol-free trip. They were accompanied on the ships by Salvation Army officers who led worship and prayer meetings, offered counsel, and gave lectures on the culture of the colonist's new home. The Salvationist colonists would then be welcomed by officers at receiving stations and transported to their new homes, where the local officer would make introductions and ensure they were connected to the corps. Then, if they did not join the local corps, they would receive a semi-annual visit from an Army officer to assess their progress. From start to finish, the whole scheme was operated as part of the Army’s international mission.

Conclusion

The Army combined the structures and methods of the British Empire with an Evangelical Zeal for conversion and the belief that salvation was as much about this world as it was about the next. William Booth wrote:

I saw that when the Bible said, ‘He that believeth shall be saved’ it meant not only saved from the miseries of the future world, but from the miseries of this [world] also. Then it came from the promise of Salvation here and now; from hell and sin and vice and crime and idleness and extravagance, and consequently very largely from poverty and disease, and the majority of kindred woes.[9]

The Army's social reform work was grounded In the underlying principle that social transformation would only make a lasting difference to the world if it were combined with individual conversion. Helping the poor through social reformation was at least partially undertaken to remove the obstacles to salvation. A hungry person, a cold person, or a homeless person would not become a Christian. By removing them from their circumstances of poverty, giving them a trade, and moving them to a new land with a place to become independent, the individual would better themselves and society as well.

However, far more critical for the Army was the hope that by transporting saved Salvationists around the world, they would create colonies of salvation which would spread the word of Salvationism. The central doctrine of Salvationism was that its members evangelized to the groups they had been part of. The converted drinker went back to preach to the drinkers. The sex workers told her previous colleagues about the possibility of rescue and redemption. Walker wrote:

One of the most significant features of The Salvation Army was the relationships of its members to the wider community. As soon as people were saved, they were asked to stand before a crowd and relate their experience of conversion…If the Spirit of God pervaded an individual, he or she was ready to preach and testify regardless of previous sinfulness, lack of education, of inexperience.[10]

Without the British Empire, its transportation network, its shared culture and language, and William Booth's implicit assumptions that the Imperial territories were simply an extension of Britain, The Salvation Army would not have been able to grow in the way it did. The British Empire was to be matched by a Salvation Empire, spread around the world, transporting Salvationists in ready-made units to the far reaches of Christendom to go out and grow William Booth’s Christian Imperium and usher in the prophesied Millennium.

Christopher Button writes at Theology Corner (link here).

Bibliography

All The World – Salvation Army Publication

Ausubel, Herman. In Hard Ties: Reformers Among the Late Victorians, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960)

Bradwell, Cyril R. Fight the Good Fight: The Story of The Salvation Army in New Zealand 1883-1983, (Wellington: Reed, 1982)

Bradwell, Cyril R. Fight the Good Fight: The Story of The Salvation Army in New Zealand 1883-1983, (Wellington: Reed, 1982)

Booth, William, In Darkest England and the Way Out, (London: The Salvation Army, 1890)

Coutts, Frederick. Bread for my Neighbour: The Social Influence of William Booth, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1978)

Sandall, Robert The History of The Salvation Army Volume III 1883-1953 Social and Welfare Work, (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd. 1955)

Walker, Pamela J. Pulling the Devil’s Kingdon Down: The Salvation Army in Victorian Britain, (London: University of California, 2001)

White, Arnold, The Great Idea: Notes by an Eye-Witness on Some of the Social Work of the Salvation Army, (London: The Salvation Army, 1910)

[1] William Booth, quoted in Sandall, The History Vol. III, p. 120

[2] Coutts, Bread for my Neighbour, pp. 106-107

[3] John Gorst quoted in Coutts, Bread for my Neighbour, p. 78

[4] William Booth, Darkest England, pp. 143-144

[5] Ausubel, In Hard Times, p. 180

[6] Bradwell, Fight the Good Fight, pp. 53-54

[7] White, The Great Idea, p. 47-49

[8] William Booth, In Darkest England, p. 152

[9] William Booth, “Salvation to Both Worlds” All The World, January 1889 pp. 1-6

[10] Walker, Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down, p. 187

How the North and South Treated Minorities During the U.S. Civil War

During the U.S. Civil War, the North and South treated minority groups in different ways – and some of these may be surprising to readers. Here, Jeb Smith looks at how the North and South treated Catholics, Jews, and Native Americans during the Civil War period.

Brigadier General Stand Watie.

"Their clergy [Catholic]blessed the flags of Confederate regiments, and their opposition to the federal regime in New Orleans was more uncompromising than that of any other group...A Richmond editor wrote, "Catholic Hierarchy of the South… were warm supporters of the Southern cause, and zealous advocates of the justice upon which this war of defense….was conducted."

-E Merton Coulter The Confederate States of America 1861-1865 Baton Rouge: The Louisiana State University Press 1950

Historian Phillip Tucker wrote, "The South in general was actually far more multicultural and more multiethnic than the North in 1860...the South was in general less racist towards ethnic groups, including the Irish and Jews, than the North." Minorities received better treatment in the South than in the North. Catholicism played a more significant role in the South and was more accepted by the population. Like the old South, traditional Catholicism honored hierarchy, aristocracy, chivalry, and other traditional values. Also, like the South, pre-Vatican II Catholics were traditionalists and rejected modernity. Traditional Catholics had more in common culturally and politically with the South than with the progressive North.

Catholics

Historian James McPherson  shows that Catholics under Pope Pius the IX (Pope from 1846-1878) still maintained much of their older traditional identity. Pius was described as a "violent enemy of liberalism and social reform." In his 1864 Syllabus of Errors, he wrote that it was an error to think the Pope should agree with "progress, liberalism, and modern civilization." Pope Pius X commanded "all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries" to take an "oath against modernism." In The Story of Christianity Volume II.  Historian Justo Gonzalez observed "a growing gulf between mainstream modern thought and society on the one hand and Catholicism on the other."

Further, nothing brings groups together like similar enemies. Robert Fogel shows that Republicans viewed "Catholicism and slavery as twin despotisms." They hated Catholics because "The Catholic church was in league with the pro-slavery democratic party to destroy the principles of free government," wrote an 1858 organ of the Republican party in Illinois. James McPherson  wrote, "The Puritan war against popery had gone on for two and a half centuries and was not over yet...hostility to Romanism (as well as rum) remained a subterranean current within Republicanism."

Like the Virginian theologian R.L Dabney, Archbishop John Hughes of N.Y. referred to abolitionists as "Red-republicans." Hughes condemned public schools as godless promoters of "Socialism, Red Republicanism, Universalism, Infidelity, Deism, Atheism, and Pantheism." And while Dabney was no friend of Catholic theology, they were kin in mind when it came to modernity. In Catholics Lost Cause, Adam Tate writes, "Catholics and southern conservatives viewed the North as the locus of American radicalism and took refuge in Jeffersonian conceptions of both the Union and the Constitution."

"Protestants funded Catholic churches, schools, and hospitals, while Catholics also contributed to Protestant causes. Beyond financial support, each group participated in the institutions created by the other. Catholics and Protestants worshipped in each other's churches, studied in each other's schools, and recovered or died in each other's hospitals…Catholic-Protestant cooperation complicates the dominant historiographical view of interreligious animosity and offers a model of religious pluralism in an unexpected place and time."

-Andrew Stern Southern Harmony: Catholic-Protestant Relations in the Antebellum South Cambridge University Press 2018

Kinship

Southerners felt a kinship with Catholics that was absent in the North. According to southern writer Daniel Hundley, "In Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and other portions of the far South, the progenitors of the Southern Gentleman were chiefly Spanish Dons and French Catholics." Compared to the North, Catholics had a much more significant influence on southern society. The Cavalier South was more tolerant and did not seek to conform others to their image as the Puritan North did. As a result, the South was admired by old-time Catholic conservatives like Lord Acton, Hilaire Belloc, and G.K Chesterton, who said: "Old England can still be faintly traced in Old Dixie."

In Catholic Confederates, Gracjan Kraszewski notes that "Catholics made themselves virtually indistinguishable from their Protestant neighbors." He refers to the "Confederatization" of Catholics that occurred to a greater extent in the South than in the North. The South accepted Catholics, and Catholics accepted the South. They became one with each other. Kraszewski writes, "More than one hundred years before Vatican II and JFK, Catholics in the South were fully integrated members of society who, save for their religion, believed the same things and acted similarly to their well-known Protestant neighbors."

When the separation came, southern Bishops almost universally sided with the South. After the fall of Fort Sumter, the local bishop, a rabid secessionist, led Catholics in the celebration by singing a Latin hymn. A number of Confederate generals were Catholics, including James Longstreet and the Confederacy's first general, Pierre Toutant Gustave Beauregard. The secretary of the Navy, Stephen Mallory, was also a Catholic and a member of Jefferson Davis's cabinet.

When federals occupied Natchez, Mississippi, they ordered all pastors and priests to pray for Abraham Lincoln, but Catholic Bishop William Henry Elder refused. He was briefly  imprisoned for his non-conformity and was heralded as a legend across the South. The most popular post-war poem among former Confederates was "The Conquered Banner." This poem -recited in southern schools for generations was composed by Catholic priest and Confederate army chaplain Abram Joseph Ryan.

Catholic priests made devotionals for the soldiers used by all denominations, and nuns served in confederate hospitals. Some Catholic Confederate chaplains could not stay out of the war; despite it being against canon law, John Bannon fired a cannon at the Yankee hordes. The similarities between traditional Catholicism and the South provided an "easy symbiosis" for the thousands of southern Catholic soldiers, writes Kraszewski. When the Confederacy sent Father John Bannon to Ireland, it was his view that devout Catholics of Europe could find in the Confederacy the remnant of Christendom. In the North, Bannon stated, one could only find puritans and anti-Catholic prejudice.

"Roman Catholics and Jews found an accepted place, sometimes a very successful place, in the South when such was unknown in the North....at the time of the war, a high proportion of American Catholics and Jews were found in the South and were loyal confederates. Nearly all Catholics and Jews elected to public office in the U.S. were in the South. The two most famous anti-Catholic incidents in the pre-war period took place in Boston and Philadelphia...no such incidents occurred in the South. The letters of Lincoln supporters are full of anti-Semitic comments, and , notoriously, General Grant was to banish Jews from the Union army lines."

-Clyde Wilson The Yankee Problem An American Dilemma Shotwell publishing 2016

Jews

Jews were clearly more accepted in the Southern states. Robert Rosen, in The Jewish Confederates, tells how the Southern Jewish population were among the most rabid secessionists. They were integrated into Confederate units, and some reached high ranks in the military, such as Col. Abraham C. Myers, quartermaster general of the Confederacy; Maj. Adolph Proskauer of the 12th Alabama; Maj. Alexander Hart of the Louisiana 5th; and Phoebe Levy Pember, chief matron at Richmond's Chimborazo Hospital, are some examples he gives. Judah Benjamin was a Senator from Louisiana before joining President Jefferson Davis' cabinet. He served as Attorney General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State for the Confederacy. Rosen wrote, "the Confederate South was, contrary to popular belief, the exact opposite of the image of the Old South held by most contemporary Americans."

Union General U.S Grant gave General Order No. 11, expelling all Jews from his military district. He had earlier ordered a subordinate to "Refuse all permits to come south of Jackson for the present. The Israelites especially should be kept out." The following day he issued another command to "Give orders to all the conductors on the [rail] road that no Jews are to be permitted to travel on the railroad southward from any point. They may go north and be encouraged in it; but they are such an intolerable nuisance that the department must be purged of them." Grant said the black-market cotton exports were done "mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders." General Sherman wrote to the Union Army adjutant-general that "The country will swarm with dishonest Jews who will smuggle powder, pistols." And as with Jews and Catholics, so it was with Native Americans.

"In the Northern States the Cherokee people saw with alarm a violated Constitution, all civil liberty put in peril, and all the rules of civilized warfare and the dictates of common humanity and decency unhesitatingly disregarded. In States which still adhered to the Union a military despotism has displaced the civil power…Free speech and almost free thought became a crime. The right to the writ of habeas corpus, guaranteed by the Constitution, disappeared at the nod of a Secretary of State or a general of the lowest grade…Foreign mercenaries and the scum of cities and the inmates of prisons were enlisted and organized into regiments and brigades and sent into Southern States to aid in subjugating a people struggling for freedom, to burn, to plunder, and to commit the basest of outrages on women; while the heels of armed tyranny trod upon the necks of Maryland and Missouri, and men of the highest character and position were incarcerated upon suspicion and without process of law in jails, in forts, and in prison-ships, and even women were imprisoned by the arbitrary order of a President and Cabinet ministers; while the press ceased to be free, the publication of newspapers was suspended and their issues seized and destroyed ...The war now raging is a war of Northern cupidity and fanaticism against the institution of African servitude; against the commercial freedom of the South, and against the political freedom of the States, and its objects are to annihilate the sovereignty of those States and utterly change the nature of the General Government...the Cherokees, long divided in opinion, became unanimous, and like their brethren, the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, determined, by the undivided voice of a General Convention of all the people, held at Tahlequah, on the 21st day of August , in the present year, to make common cause with the South and share its fortunes."

-Tahlequah, C. N., October 28, 1861. THOMAS PEGG, President National Committee. JOSHUA ROSS, Clerk National Committee. Concurred. LACY MOUSE, Speaker of Council. THOMAS B. WOLFE, Clerk Council. Approved. J.N.O. ROSS.

Native Americans

The most significant discrepancy in the treatment of minorities is given when we look at Native Americans. The majority of the "civilized" Native American tribes sided with the South during the war. General Stand Watie of the Cherokee was the last Confederate general to surrender on June 23, 1865. He was the only Native American to be promoted to general on either side of the war. Native American tribes sent a higher percentage of their population to war than any state in the Confederacy and lost a higher percentage than any southern state. No one was more devoted to the Southern cause, not South Carolina or Virginia. They sacrificed the greatest and held out the longest.

The Indian Territory mainly sided with the South and sent delegates to Richmond. Richmond sent government officials, food, money, and supplies to the Indian Territory to help and support them. The formation of an Indian State in the Confederacy was offered to the tribes if they desired it. However, the Confederacy gave them complete autonomy for their government and offered a postal service even if they remained autonomous.

"...the several Indian treaties that bound the Indian nations in an alliance with the seceded states, under the authority of the Confederate State Department.. an innovation, in fact, that marked the tremendous importance that the Confederate government attached to the Indian friendship. It was something that stood out in marked contrast to the indifference manifested at the moment by the authorities at Washington...The Confederacy was offering him [the Indian] political integrity and political equality."

-Annie Heloise Abel Ph.D. The American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist an Omitted Chapter in the Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy Arthur H Clark Company Cleveland 1915

The Federals attacked and killed women and children of a neutral tribe during the war, driving even more support for the South. In response, the Confederacy sent financial support to displaced families under Union occupation. In General Stand Watie's Confederate Indians, Frank Cunningham quotes multiple tribal leaders' thankfulness for the treatment of their tribes by Richmond and President Davis.

Historian Annie Heloise Abel tells how it was John Calhoun and other Southern men who desired the entire west to be shut off from whites and to allow the Native Americans self-governance, "Southern politicians, after his time, became the chief advocates of Indian territorial integrity, the ones that pleaded most often and most noisily that guarantees to Indians be faithfully respected." As with Catholics, the tribes had more in common with the South in culture and institutions. As slave owners and planters, they tended to be agrarian. For example, on January 29, 1861, Arkansas governor Henry Rector wrote to John Ross, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, "Our people and yours are natural allies in war and friends in peace."

"On behalf of the Creek people...the cause of the South is our cause, her hopes our hopes, and whatever her misfortunes may be it shall be our pleasure to bear them patiently with her, even unto death. If she falls we fall, and if she prospers we only desire it to be our privilege to enjoy her prosperity….we are enrolling every able-bodied man in service for war."

-Samuel Checote, Creek Nation

Heneha Mekko, "Principal Chief of the Seminoles," said:

"The Confederate States have not deserted us, we have been provided for, our women and children are fed, our soldiers get all they should expect. The Government is engaged in a great war, she cannot do any more for us now then she is doing...assure the President the Seminoles are yet true and loyal. Their treaty stipulations are sacred. The destiny of your government shall be ours. If she falls we will go with her: if she triumphs no rejoicing will be more sincere than ours."

The western "wild" plains Native Americans did not side with the South, but still fought against the North. The North sent General Pope to deal with the "savages' 'like the Sioux. Lincoln signed off on the hanging of 38 Native Americans in 1862 in Minnesota.

Lincoln's attitude towards Native Americans might have been affected by an earlier time in his life. His close friend Ward Lamon tells of the great impact that the murder of Lincoln's grandfather by Native Americans had on the future president. Lincoln said, "The story of his death by the Indians, and of Uncle Mordecai, then fourteen years old, killing one of the Indians, is the legend more strongly than all others imprinted upon my mind and memory." Lincoln's uncle Mordecai "hated Indians ever after" and even was reputed to murder innocent Native Americans when he had the chance. Lamon tells us "Many years afterward, his neighbors believed that he was in the habit of following peaceable Native Americans as they passed through the settlements, to get surreptitious shots at them and it was no secret that he had killed more than one in that way." So it should not surprise us that aged 23, Abraham Lincoln volunteered for a chance to fight Native Americans in the Black Hawk War.

Attacks from the North

The North then attacked and kicked the wild plains Native Americans off their land in pursuit of a transcontinental railroad to bring their territory under the domain of the industrialists and capitalists. In their book The South Was Right!James and Walter Kennedy document numerous cases of northern abuses of minorities. Federal General Pope ordered that the Native Americans "Are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromises can be made." He declared, "It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux." Professor Thomas DiLorenzo quotes Lincoln's friend Grenville Dodge, Union general and railroad icon, who suggested using captive Native Americans as forced labor (I thought Republicans did not like slavery- though perhaps it was only when they were not master) on the railroads.

Republicans did not care for Native American rights. In the Personal Memoirs of U.S Grant, among his ruminations on the consequences of the conflict was "It is probable that the Indians would have had control of these lands [west] for a century yet but for the war. We must conclude, therefore, that wars are not always evils unmixed with some good." So the taking of land from the Native Americans was such an excellent "good" that it helped justify the evils of the civil war to our former Republican President and civil war "hero."

In Nothing Like it in the World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869, Historian Stephen Ambrose quotes the Chicago Tribune newspaper as observing, "The railroad men...have an infallible remedy for the Indian trouble, that remedy is extermination. These men, most of them tender and gentle with the weak of their own race, speak with indifference of the wiping out of thousands of Papoos and Squaws." Ambrose then quotes General Sherman, "The more [Indians] we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed the next war, for the more I see of these Indians the more convinced I am that they all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of Paupers." Dodge said, "We've got to clear the dumb Indians out." Oliver Ames, President of the Union Pacific railroad, said, "I see nothing but extermination to the Indians as a result of their thieving disposition, and we shall probably have to come to this before we can run the [rail] road safely."

Before the war, northern abolitionist Republicans like William Seward had declared the removal of the Native Americans was necessary. Arthur Ferguson, Union Pacific Railroad surveyor, said, "I have no sympathy for the red devils…. May their dwelling places and habitations be destroyed. May the greedy crow hover over their silent corpses. May the coyote feast upon their stiff and festering carcasses." Drunk on industrial power, Sherman told the Native Americans, "We build iron roads, and you can't stop the locomotive any more than you can stop the sun or moon, and you must submit...we now offer you this, choose your homes, and live like white men, and we will help you all you want."

According to DiLorenzo in The Feds versus the Indians, "During an assault," Sherman instructed his troops, "the soldiers cannot pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age." He chillingly referred to this policy in an 1867 letter to Grant as "the final solution to the Indian problem," a phrase Hitler invoked some 70 years later." DiLorenzo said Phil Sheridan and Sherman popularized the phrase "a good Indian is a dead Indian." Sherman's ultimate objective was to eliminate the tribes. "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux," Sherman wrote to Ulysses S. Grant, "even to their extermination, men, women, and children." The Sioux must "feel the superior power of the Government."

The U.S. superintendent of Indian affairs, Clark Thompson, revealed the mindset of Republicans towards Native Americans and how to make them worship the same god [money] as the Yankees do.

"Many plans proposed to bring about a change of their habits, customs, and mode of living...his whole nature must be changed. He must have a white man's ambition, to be like him…to change the disposition of the Indian to one more mercenary and ambitious to obtain riches and teach him to value the position consequent upon the possession of riches."

-Clark W Thompson Superintendent Indian Affairs United States Congressional serial set, Volume 1117

The North could not allow anything or anyone, no matter what race, to get in its way of building an empire in the worship of its true god, progress. So, they would either exterminate or remake such culture that got in its way, either the South or the Native Americans. The South had experienced it from the Union and prophetically warned the Native Americans.

"Another, and perhaps the chief cause, is to get upon your rich lands and settle their squatters, who do not like to settle in slave States. They will settle upon your lands as fast as they choose, and the Northern people will force their Government to allow it. It is true they will allow your people small reserves—they give chiefs pretty large ones—but they will settle among you, overshadow you, and totally destroy the power of your chiefs and your nationality, and then trade your people out of the residue of their lands. Go North among the once powerful tribes of that country and see if you can find Indians living and enjoying power and property and liberty as do your people and the neighboring tribes from the South."

-Quoted in Annie Heloise Abel Ph.D. The American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist An Omitted Chapter in the Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy Arthur H Clark Company Cleveland 1915

Distrust

It should be no wonder that the Native tribes distrusted the North and sided with the South when the war broke out.

"Resolved further.. We shall be left to follow the natural affections, education, institutions, and interests of our people, which indissolubly bind us in every way to the destiny of our neighbors and brethren of the Southern States upon whom we are confident we can rely for the preservation of our rights of life, liberty, and property, and the continuance of many acts of friendship, general counsel, and material support."

-Choctaws Council Resolutions February 7, 1861

The Native Americans, Jews, Catholics, and the South were diverse cultures that held to a live and let live attitude. They did not seek to conform each other to their image but allowed for diversity and self-governance. This was unlike the Yankees, who puritanically thought themselves superior to all and through military force, government coercion, sheer numbers, and forced indoctrination eradicated opposing cultures' ideologies and brought them all under its dominion. There no longer is any such thing as self-governance unless you are a disciple of the Yankee empire in America. This subjugation of opposing cultures and forced conformity seems a perfectly intolerant and discriminatory practice. While Cash is speaking of the South here, it equally applied to all non-conforming societies the Yankee empire came into contact with.

"The Civil War and Reconstruction represent in their primary aspect an attempt on the part of the Yankee to achieve by force what he had failed by political means: first, a free hand in the nation for the thievish aims of the tariff gang, and secondly, and far more fundamentally, the satisfaction of the instinctive urge of men in the mass to put down whatever differs from themselves—the will to make over the South in the prevailing American image and to sweep it into the main current of the nation."

-W. J. Cash The Mind of the South Vintage Books New York 1941

Jeb Smith is the author of Missing Monarchy: What Americans Get Wrong About Monarchy, Democracy, Feudalism, And Liberty (Amazon US | Amazon UK) and Defending Dixie's Land: What Every American Should Know About The South And The Civil War (written under the name Isaac. C. Bishop) - Amazon US | Amazon UK

You can contact Jeb at jackson18611096@gmail.com

Napoleon's First Major Battlefield Defeat

The Battle of Aspern-Essling, fought on May 21nd and 22st, 1809 marked one of the most significant land engagements of the Napoleonic Wars and the first major setback for Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte on the battlefield.

Terry Bailey explains.

The Battle of Essling, May 1809. By Fernand Cormon.

Taking place on the northern bank of the Danube River near Vienna, this confrontation was part of the War of the Fifth Coalition, wherein Austria, under the leadership of Archduke Charles, sought to challenge Napoleon's dominance in Europe. The battle demonstrated the growing capacity of the Austrian military to resist the previously unstoppable French Grande Armée.

Napoleon's strategic goal was to cross the Danube and strike decisively at the Austrian forces, effectively neutralizing their threat and consolidating French control over Central Europe. The crossing of the mighty river presented logistical challenges, requiring the construction of pontoon bridges. Despite the French emperor's reputation for meticulous planning and tactical brilliance, unforeseen complications and the resilience of the Austrian forces thwarted his ambitions.

Archduke Charles, leading the Austrian army, with his subordinate commanders capitalized on the vulnerabilities created by the French reliance on fragile pontoon bridges. The Austrians launched a surprise counteroffensive, targeting Napoleon's forces as they attempted to consolidate their position in the villages of Aspern and Essling.

Over two days, intense combat unfolded, with both sides suffering heavy casualties. While the French initially made gains, the destruction of their supply lines and bridges by Austrian forces turned the tide of the battle, forcing Napoleon to withdraw, a rare occurrence in his military career.

The battle's outcome was a psychological and strategic turning point. For the Austrians, it was a validation of their renewed efforts to oppose French hegemony. For Napoleon, the defeat underscored the risks of overextension and the challenges of managing a vast empire amidst persistent opposition. Aspern-Essling also highlighted the emergence of Archduke Charles as a capable commander and underscored the shifting dynamics of warfare in the Napoleonic era.

The Battle of Aspern-Essling would set the stage for further confrontations, most notably the Battle of Wagram in July 1809, a decisive yet costly victory for Emperor Napoleon's French and allied army. However, its immediate impact resonated as a demonstration of Napoleon's vulnerability and the fierce resistance of a reformed Austrian army.

The political and cultural lead-up to the battle

By 1809, Napoleon's grip on Europe was tightening. After numerous battlefield victories, his dominance was largely unchallenged. However, Austrian dissatisfaction with French hegemony and the territorial rearrangements of the Confederation of the Rhine led to a resurgence of resistance. Austrian reformers under Archduke Charles modernized their army, introducing conscription and improved training. Encouraged by Napoleon's focus on Spain and the perceived overstretch of French forces, Austria declared war in April 1809.

The Fifth Coalition War was characterized by Austria's attempt to rally German-speaking states to their cause and Napoleon's swift counteroffensive. The French Emperor sought to decisively crush Austrian resistance early to discourage other powers from joining the coalition.

Culturally, the war symbolized a clash of national pride. Austria, as an old European power, sought to restore its waning influence, while Napoleon aimed to consolidate his modern empire.

The strategic context

The Danube River was the lifeline of the theatre, serving as a critical supply route and barrier. Napoleon's strategy revolved around rapidly crossing the Danube to bring Archduke Charles to battle, using his signature approach of speed and decisive action to envelop and destroy the Austrian forces.

Archduke Charles, on the other hand, aimed to exploit Napoleon's reliance on rapid maneuvers. He sought to use the Danube as a defensive advantage, forcing Napoleon into a constrained engagement while leveraging Austria's numerical superiority.

The Commanders

Napoleon Bonaparte: The French Emperor's reputation as a military genius was unassailable by 1809. Known for his bold tactics and ability to adapt to battlefield conditions, Napoleon sought to secure yet another victory to maintain his aura of invincibility.

Archduke Charles of Austria: A reformer and tactician, Charles was Austria's most competent commander. Though often overshadowed by Napoleon, he was well-versed in defensive operations and had a deep understanding of the terrain.

The development of the battle

On the 20th of May, Napoleon initiated his plan to cross the Danube using pontoon bridges constructed by his engineers near the villages of Aspern and Essling. His goal was to establish a bridgehead on the northern bank, a vital step toward forcing the Austrians into a pitched battle. However, the Austrian army, aware of his movements, positioned itself strategically to counter this crossing.

Initial French success (May 21st, 1809)

Napoleon's forces crossed the river and established positions near Aspern and Essling. The French vanguard quickly pushed into Aspern, with fierce fighting erupting as Austrian troops counterattacked. By evening, the French had secured a tenuous foothold but faced relentless Austrian pressure.

Austrian resilience (May 22nd, 1809)

Overnight, the Austrians launched a determined assault on both villages, seeking to isolate the French forces. The Austrian artillery targeted the French pontoon bridges, severing Napoleon's critical supply line and reinforcements. This disruption stalled French momentum and left Napoleon unable to fully commit his reserves.

Throughout the day, the battle seesawed, with both sides suffering heavy casualties. Napoleon personally led counterattacks, attempting to retake Aspern and secure the river crossing, but Austrian resistance, bolstered by their superior numbers and entrenched positions, held firm.

By late afternoon, Napoleon realized his precarious situation. With his forces dangerously exposed and his supply line compromised, he ordered a retreat across the Danube, marking the first time he was forced to abandon a battlefield under direct opposition.

The influence and outcome of tactics

French tactics

Napoleon's strategy hinged on rapid crossing and overwhelming force, but his reliance on hastily constructed pontoon bridges proved a critical vulnerability. His characteristic use of concentrated artillery and massed infantry attacks faltered due to supply disruptions and Austrian counter-battery fire.

Austrian tactics

Archduke Charles's decision to engage the French immediately after their river crossing was pivotal. He leveraged his superior numbers and defensive positions to great effect. Austrian engineers and artillery played a crucial role, repeatedly targeting the French bridges and disrupting Napoleon's logistical base.

The Austrian use of flexible defensive lines and coordinated counterattacks demonstrated their improved tactical doctrine and underlined their determination to resist French dominance.

The aftermath

The Battle of Aspern-Essling was a pyrrhic victory for Austria. While they successfully halted Napoleon and inflicted heavy casualties (37,000 combined), they could not capitalize on their success in delivering a decisive blow. For Napoleon, the battle was a sobering experience that exposed vulnerabilities in his strategy and his army's logistical operations.

The immediate aftermath saw both sides preparing for the inevitable rematch. Just six weeks later, Napoleon reorganized his forces and decisively defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Wagram. However, Aspern-Essling tarnished his image of invincibility and emboldened resistance movements across Europe.

In conclusion, the Battle of Aspern-Essling stands as a defining moment in the Napoleonic Wars, a clash that tested the limits of Napoleon's strategic brilliance and Austria's resolve. While not a decisive strategic victory for either side, it marked a significant psychological shift in the war and the perception of Napoleon's invincibility on land.

For Austria, the battle symbolized the fruits of military reform and demonstrated that even Napoleon's formidable forces could be thwarted with preparation, determination, and tactical ingenuity. Archduke Charles's leadership, the precise targeting of French supply lines, and the Austrians' effective use of defensive positions and counterattacks revealed the vulnerabilities in Napoleon's reliance on speed and maneuver.

For Napoleon, Aspern-Essling was a sobering reminder of the risks inherent in overconfidence and the perils of logistical weakness. The loss of pontoon bridges and the resultant supply line collapse illustrated the growing complexity of sustaining a large, modern army in the field. While he would swiftly recover and triumph at Wagram, the psychological and symbolic implications of this defeat reverberated across Europe, inspiring his adversaries and energizing resistance movements.

Strategically, the battle highlighted the increasing role of engineering, logistics, and coordination in early 19th-century warfare. The lessons learned on both sides would shape subsequent engagements, influencing military thought and practices for years to come.

The Battle of Aspern-Essling is not merely a story of tactics and bloodshed but a tale of the evolving nature of war. It serves as a powerful reminder of the interplay between leadership, preparation, and adaptability, a narrative that continues to resonate in military studies and strategic planning to this day.

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U.S. Civil War Hats

The headgear worn by soldiers during the Civil War presents a fascinating topic. Before the adoption of metal helmets for cranial protection, hats played a significant role in denoting rank, indicating branch of service, and serving as a means of personal expression, as exemplified by the distinctive plume worn by JEB Stuart.

Lloyd W Klein explains.

Stonewall Jackson in a forage cap.

Kepi & Forage Cap

The kepi had been the most common headgear in the French Army. Its predecessor originally appeared during the 1830s, in the course of the initial stages of the occupation of Algeria, as a series of various lightweight cane-framed cloth undress caps called casquette d’Afrique. These were intended as alternatives to the heavier, cloth-covered leather French Army shako. As a light and comfortable headdress, it was adopted by the metropolitan (French mainland) infantry regiments for service and daily wear, with the less practical shako being relegated to parade use.

Etymologically, the term is a loanword of French: képi, itself a re-spelled version of the Alemannic German: Käppi, a diminutive form of Kappe, meaning “cap”. Modern-day baseball caps are the direct descendant of kepis.

In 1852, a new soft cloth cap was introduced for the campaign and off-duty. Called bonnet de police à visière, this was the first proper model of the kepi. The visor was generally squarish in shape and oversized and was referred to as bec de canard (duck bill). This kepi had no chinstrap (jugulaire). Subsequent designs reduced the size of the cap and introduced chinstraps and buttons.

The kepi became well known outside France during the Crimean War and was subsequently adopted in various forms by many other armies (including the U.S. and Russia) during the 1860s and 1870s.

The kepi emerged as the quintessential hat associated with Union soldiers, largely due to the superior options available to their Southern counterparts. Characterized by its flat circular crown and a prominent visor, the kepi featured a leather or cloth peak and a chinstrap made of either leather or cord.

Among Union forces, a style often referred to as the McClellan cap, was prevalent, with officers frequently embellishing their caps in accordance with French fashion influences. This style had a flat top and squared visor.

The forage cap, or bummer cap, called the McDowell cap, had a curved top based on the model 1858 forage cap This shapeless design was particularly favored by the eastern Union army, while troops in the West tended to opt for broad-brimmed felt hats. Some southern troops also wore a forage cap, most notably Stonewall Jackson.

Regulations established by the U.S. Army mandated that insignia be affixed to the top of the cap, displaying the branch of service—whether infantry, cavalry, or artillery—at the center, with the company letter positioned above and the regimental number below. In 1863, the Army of the Potomac introduced the corps badge as a means to enhance troop morale, which was subsequently incorporated onto the cap. For infantry soldiers, a bugle horn was placed beneath the disk, featuring the regimental number inscribed within the horn, the company letter situated above it, and the corps badge positioned at the top. However, it was common for soldiers to lack this complete set of insignia, and at times, only the branch of service, company letter, or regimental number insignia was displayed. Additionally, some units opted for colored variations of these insignia.

In the Confederate army, a color-coding system was employed to differentiate between various branches of service. The infantry was represented by blue, the cavalry by yellow, and the artillery by red.

These were later changed to a thin band with the color of the branch wrapped around the base of the cap to identify the area of service. All uniforms regardless of being Union or Confederate had prominent markings on them which identified whether a soldier was an enlisted man or an officer.

Slouch Hat

The slouch hat is one of the most enduring icons of the Confederate soldier, ranking alongside his bedroll, shell jacket and pants cuffs tucked into his socks.  Indeed, the slouch hat came to be the quintessential American military campaign headgear by the end of the Civil War. The Confederate slouch hat was adopted for numerous reasons: it was well-liked, practical and available (when caps were not). Despite the regulation prescribing the French kepi-style cap for wear by all soldiers and officers, many were not able to obtain the cap.  They had to use the common citizen slouch hat. Moreover, the slouch hat was found to be more practical: it was comfortable and provided better protection against the elements.

The slouch hat is a wide-brimmed felt or cloth hat often, although not always, with a chinstrap. The name "slouch hat" refers to the fact that one side droops down as opposed to the other which is pinned against the side of the crown. The style is highly variable and personal, with various types of crowns and crown heights, brim widths and degrees of softness.

This style of hat has been worn for many hundreds of years, especially during the English Civil War during the 17th century when it became associated with the forces of King Charles I, the Cavaliers, but it was also fashionable for the aristocracy throughout Europe.

The slouch hat was introduced to this country by a spirited Hungarian patriot named Louis Kossuth. In 1852, Mr. Kossuth completed a speaking tour of our country where he sought and received a great deal of support for Hungarian liberties after his country had become dominated by the Czar of Russia. Louis Kossuth was described by William Cullen Bryant as a man who is “fearless, eloquent, large of heart and of mind, whose one thought is the salvation of oppressed Hungary, unfortunate, but undiscouraged, struck down in the battle of liberty, but great in defeat, and gathering strength for triumphs to come.” From a banquet in honor of Louis Kossuth with the Press of New York, December 9, 1851.

Hardee Hat

The Hardee hat, also known as the Model 1858 Dress Hat and nicknamed the "Jeff Davis", was the regulation dress hat for enlisted men in the Union Army. The Hardee hat was also worn by Confederate soldiers. However, most soldiers found the black felt hat to be too hot and heavy and preferred a forage cap or slouch hat.  The Hardee hat was worn most often by western Union troops, but also by the Iron Brigade, which were popularly known as "The Black Hats".

The hat was named after William J. Hardee, a career officer in the U.S. Army from 1838 until resigning his commission on January 31, 1861. Hardee was Commandant of Cadets at West Point from 1856 to 1860.

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Images

McClellan cap.

Different hats.

Regimental Lt Colonel kepi.

Charles Darwin’s Life: The Well-Known – and the Not So Well-Known

Charles Darwin’s contribution to science stands virtually without peer.  He was a colossus in the field of evolutionary biology.  He was also a gentleman, a husband, and an invalid.   

Lyn Squire, author of Fatally Inferior (Level Best Books 2024 – Amazon US | Amazon UK), the second book in the Dunston Burnett Trilogy, fills in the gaps.

Charles Darwin with his eldest son William Darwin, circa 1842.

THE WELL-KNOWN

Everyone knows that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution stands as one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of scientific inquiry.  Darwin was a prolific writer completing more than a dozen major books in his seventy-three-year lifetime, but none as famous, revolutionary, impactful and enduring as On the Origin of Species published on November 24, 1859.

Darwin had long known how breeders improved their stock of race horses by the careful mating of their fastest animals.  This process of human selection could be seen in livestock, birds, fruits, vegetables, all designed to develop the most desired traits in each species.  Darwin wanted to know if Mother Nature had a similar mechanism.  The writings of economist Thomas Malthus provided a clue.  He argued that the innate tendency of humans to breed led to populations expanding beyond their means, necessitating a fight for survival.  Darwin had found the springboard for his monumental intellectual leap to the idea of natural selection.  Survival of the fittest!  One general law governing the evolution of all organic beings – multiply; vary; let the strongest live; let the weakest die. 

When it finally appeared in 1859, his theory of evolution was underpinned by a vast array of evidence.  Darwin had spent five years aboard HMS Beagle collecting specimens throughout the Galapagos archipelago, and then another twenty-three years compiling observations from around the world and conducting his own experiments before he felt his life’s work was ready for public scrutiny.   As Darwin said in his autobiography, “science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.”

THE NOT SO WELL-KNOWN

Many of those aware of Darwin’s contribution to our understanding of evolution may know little else about the man.  Other aspects of his life, however, shed light on his research and are of interest in their own right.  The three selected here are: the unsparing criticism of his writings; his marriage; and his chronic illness.

Criticism

Publication of On the Origin of Species caused an uproar throughout England.  Battle lines were quickly drawn between the new breed of fact-based researchers who readily embraced Darwin’s ground-breaking thesis, and the old guard of religious traditionalists with their unshakeable belief in the Bible’s account of God’s creation of man.  This was science pitted against religion in a life and death battle for the minds and souls of mankind.  Darwin was bombarded with scathing reviews in academic journals, blistering editorials in the leading newspapers and crude cartoons in the cheaper broadsheets. 

The Great Debate held in Oxford barely six months after the book’s appearance, illustrates the ugly nature of the clash between firm-in-their-belief theologians and Darwin’s band of truth-seeking scientists.  Both factions behaved in a most unbecoming manner with tasteless taunts and simian slurs from one side answered by childish name-calling and anti-church abuse from the other.  The city of dreaming spires was rocked to the core, buzzing with increasingly far-fetched accounts of the opening salvos in what, from then on, was all-out war.

Darwin, though, was a gentleman and a scholar from his time at Christ’s College, Cambridge to his later years at Down House, his home in Kent, and often chose dignified silence over open warfare in press or person.  In this he was fortunate in having Thomas Huxley, a brash but brilliant comparative anatomist, lead the charge in Darwin’s defense.  Huxley even described himself as Darwin’s “bulldog”.  After an offensive question addressed to him by Bishop Wilberforce at the Oxford debate, he famously replied with words to the effect that he, Huxley, would rather be an ape than a bishop. 

Even mild-mannered Darwin sometimes expressed his displeasure and disappointment with his academic antagonists.  St. George Mivart, a young biologist, was one such.  He thoroughly savaged Darwin’s Descent of Man in the prestigious Quarterly Review.  Worse still, he ruthlessly criticised an innocuous article on divorce by Darwin’s son.  Darwin was furious.  As it happened, Mivart was seeking membership of the famous Athenaeum Club and Darwin and his supporters, all prominent members, scuttled his election.  A petty response, it might seem, but this was an attack on his family.

Marriage

Darwin had a long and happy marriage.  He and his wife, Emma, were, however, first cousins.  They had a common grandfather in the person of Josiah Wedgewood.  In the nineteenth century, the offspring of marriages between such close relatives were thought to suffer loss of vigour and even infertility, their frailties then passed on to future generations, the yet-to-be-born progeny already burdened by their inheritance. 

Darwin was aware from correspondence with stock breeders throughout England that continued inbreeding of domesticated animals affected the general health and fertility of subsequent generations.  But did the same law of nature apply to humans as was commonly thought?  That was what Darwin desperately wanted to know.  It is little wonder, then, that Darwin devoted so much time and effort to studying the effects of crossbreeding and inbreeding in plants and animals, and even canvassed, albeit unsuccessfully, for the inclusion in the 1871 population census of a question on the number of children born to parents who were first cousins.  Far from being just an intriguing line of scientific inquiry, this was, for Charles Darwin, something frighteningly personal.

Sadly, the Darwins lost three of their children – Mary, Anne and little Charles – in infancy.  Death had indeed been an all-too-frequent visitor to the Darwin household, but this was not uncommon for large families in the nineteenth century, and their remaining seven children reached maturity.  Of those, three had offspring, providing the Darwins with ten grandchildren.  Their fears had proven unfounded.

Illness

In youth, Darwin was a vigorous, healthy man.  For the forty years of his adult existence, however, he suffered from bouts of a never-fully-diagnosed, gastro-intestinal illness.  His “accursed stomach” as he called it, caused retching, flatulence, fatigue and vomiting to the point where he was obliged to keep a commode, hidden behind a partition, in his study.  (The visitor to Down House, only an hour and a half’s journey from Central London, can view the scientist’s carefully restored study, including the partition.)

Darwin consulted several different doctors and tried every conceivable treatment, some prescribed by respected professionals, others by practitioners little better than quacks.  He tried the water therapy offered at the Water Cure Establishment at Malvern which involved him being heated by a spirit lamp and then rubbed down with cold wet towels while his feet were immersed in a cold foot bath.  Then he moved on to Dr E.W. Lane’s Moor Park hydropathic establishment which was much closer to Down House.  And after that to the Wells House hydropathic establishment in Ilkley, West Yorkshire.  At best, these treatments provided temporary relief, but whether that was a direct result of the therapies or simply the passage of time and natural recuperation is difficult to say.  Either way, his suffering continued.

His chronic illness weighed on Darwin, as attested by its frequent mention in his autobiography.  It is a measure of the man, however, that towards the end of his personal account of his life, he was able to remark, perhaps wryly, that: “Even ill-health, though it has annihilated several years of my life, has saved me from the distractions of society and amusement.”

Other reading

The above not-so-well-known selections barely skim the surface.  If you wish to learn more about Darwin, an excellent source is the two-volume biography by Janet Browne, Voyaging and The Power of Place, published by Princeton University Press in 1995 and 2002 respectively.  You will find a more personal, fascinating and shorter account of his life in The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, first published by Collins (London) in 1958. 

Lyn Squire is the author of Fatally Inferior (Level Best Books, December 2024 - Amazon US | Amazon UK), a story of revenge set against the uproar that greeted publication of On the Origin of Species. Mr. Squire’s first novel in the Dunston Burnett Trilogy, Immortalised to Death (2023), was a First Place Category Winner in the 2023 Chanticleer International Book Awards.  His next book, The Séance of Murder, scheduled for publication in 2025 will complete the trilogy.