What were the Biggest Scams and Scandals of the Roaring Twenties in America?

The economy boomed during the Roaring Twenties and rising incomes gave ordinary Americans access to enticing new conveniences, including washing machines, refrigerators, cars and other luxuries that would have once seemed unattainable. For a number of people, the idea of owning a car wasn’t enough. Such eagerness played right into the hands of the Roaring Twenties’ legions of fast-talking promoters, charlatans and outright swindlers, who enticed the would-be wealthy with scores of seemingly foolproof schemes—from stock companies that didn’t really exist, to speculation in Florida real estate or California oilfields. 

In this article Richard Bluttal will examine the get rich quick schemes of the 1920s - which laid the foundation for the more elaborate ones of the 21st century.

Charles Ponzi.

Charles Ponzi

Many people lacked the financial literacy to understand the difference between investing in a legitimate company and a scheme such as the one operated by Ponzi, an Italian immigrant who claimed to have become a wealthy man through sheer ingenuity and hard work. 

Charles Ponzi was a dapper, five-foot-two-inch rogue who in 1920 raked in an estimated $15 million in eight months by persuading tens of thousands of Bostonians that he had unlocked the secret to easy wealth. Charles Ponzi was born Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi on March 3, 1882, in the town of Lugo in northern Italy. His parents, Oreste and Imelda Ponzi, Ponzi later said, were part of a wealthy Italian family that had become borderline poor by the time he was born. Ponzi is said to have expressed criminal tendencies early on, stealing from his parents and even parish priests.

As a young man, he attended Sapienza University in Rome, where, by his own account, he was less than a model student. As a result, after four years, Ponzi was forced to leave with no money and no degree. During his university years, he had heard stories of other Italians who went off to America to find fame and fortune and decided that this was the only course left open for him.

In 1919, after having set himself up in a small export-import business, Ponzi received a letter from a Spanish company requesting an advertising catalog. Inside the envelope, he found an iinternational reply coupon (IRC), a type of voucher accepted in various other countries in exchange for local postage stamps. Ponzi quickly realized the moneymaking potential of taking advantage of exchange-rate differences to buy IRCs in one country and redeem them in another.

In 1920, Ponzi organized a company called Securities Exchange Co. in which he sold stock (promissory notes) advertising 50% interest after 90 days. The funds obtained from investors were supposed to be used to buy IRCs to redeem in the U.S. Instead, Ponzi used funds obtained from new investors to pay off old investors. It was a big idea—one that Ponzi managed to sell to thousands of people. He claimed to have elaborate networks of agents throughout Europe who were making bulk purchases of postal reply coupons on his behalf. In the United States, Ponzi asserted, he worked his financial wizardry to turn those piles of paper coupons into larger piles of greenbacks. Pressed for details on how this transformation was achieved, he politely explained that he had to keep such information secret for competitive reasons.

By way of explaining why he did this, Ponzi blamed the Universal Postal Union for suspending the sale of IRCs once it learned about his coupon redemption scheme. After attempting to get around the suspension, Ponzi shifted to his “Rob Peter to pay Paul” scheme. For a while, it worked. He raked in $15 million ($220 million in 2022 dollars) in the first eight months of 1920. He kept the scheme going by telling investors he had created an elaborate network of agents buying IRCs for him overseas that he could redeem in the U.S. for a tidy profit. In fact, there was no elaborate network of coupon buyers; he was using new investments to pay off old investors.

In July 1920, the Boston Post ran a flattering front-page feature on Ponzi pegging his net worth at $8.5 million. Less than a week later, the U.S. Post Office Department announced new conversion rates for international postal reply coupons, though officials said the rate change had nothing to do with Ponzi.

Investigations of Ponzi ensued but made little progress until the Boston Post launched its own investigation, which generated bad press, causing Ponzi to decline to accept new investments. This caused a run by current investors, and Ponzi reportedly paid out more than $1 million.

More bad press from the Post ultimately sealed Ponzi’s fate. He was eventually convicted on federal charges of mail fraud and served 3½ years in prison. Upon parole, he was convicted of state charges, jumped bail, was caught, and went to prison again, getting out in 1934. At that time, he was deported to his native Italy, having never become a U.S. citizen. His history in Italy and Brazil is not well documented, though it is known that he died on Jan. 18, 1949, in a charity hospital in Rio de Janeiro, leaving just $75 to pay for his burial.

Florida land boom speculators

By 1920, Florida had a population of 968,470 people. Just five years later, the population had grown to 1,263,540. Advertised as “heaven on earth,” Florida became the number one destination spot for upwardly mobile American families during the Roaring Twenties. In just five years, more than 200,000 Americans flocked south. What had caused such a rise in the population?

Following World War I, large numbers of Americans finally had the time and money to travel to Florida and to invest in real estate. Educated and skilled workers were receiving paid vacations, pensions, and fringe benefits, which made it easier for them to travel and to purchase real estate. The automobile was also becoming an indispensable way for families to travel, and Florida was the perfect destination. Many of the people who migrated into Florida were middle class Americans with families. Unlike visitors of the past, these newer arrivals wanted homes and land rather than resorts and hotels. Moguls bought up cheap land, advertising accommodations-to-come through bold announcements across the country. Developers rushed to transform Everglade swamps into resort towns, like Miami Beach and Tampa Bay. 

During this boom, however, most people who bought and sold land in Florida had never even set foot in the state. Instead, they hired young, ambitious men and women to stand in the hot sun to show the land to prospective buyers and accept a "binder" on the sale. The binder was a non-refundable down payment that required the rest of the money to be paid in 30 days. Many people got rich quickly from the commission they made from these sales. With land prices rising rapidly, many of the buyers planned to sell the land at a profit before the real land payments were due. Sometimes land buyers didn't even have enough money to pay for the land; instead, they had just enough money for the binder. They were depending on the prices to continually rise.

It was during this time that many vacation spots were created and some of our most popular cities were developed. Dave Davis, the son of a steamboat captain, built Davis Island in the Tampa Bay area. Barron Collier started Naples and Marco Island as winter resorts. There were so many characters and stories of the boom times. There’s D. P. Davis, who in 1924 sold 300 building lots in Tampa Bay in three hours — while they were still underwater — and who remarried his first wife because, his brother said, he wanted to make his mistress jealous. There’s Barron Collier, who developed 1.2 million acres of southwest Florida that made him, if you could believe the price tags he put on them (and many thousands did), richer than John D. Rockefeller. The society architect Addison Mizner spun a fairyland of neo-Spanish castles in Palm Beach. His con man brother Wilson prophetically said, “Easy street is a blind alley,” and not much later the two of them found themselves stumbling along its darkened length.

Unfortunately, this land boom did not exist without problems. The demand for housing was so high that the cost of rent soared. Because the speculators had inflated the economy, many Americans who had migrated to Florida could no longer afford to live here. They began to write back home and tell people about their problems. Newspapers began writing stories that advised prospective residents to stay away from Florida.

At the same time, the demand for building materials overwhelmed the railway systems that transported them here. Railroads could not keep up with the needs and began to shut down. This acted as a brake on many developments, slowing down or stopping the boom's momentum. Once land prices stopped going up, many speculators couldn't sell at the high prices. There were suddenly thousands of acres of overpriced land without any buyers.

The boom stopped as suddenly as it had started. An unusually cold winter in 1925 followed by an extremely hot summer frightened away many potential buyers. It also cast doubts on the state's reputation as "heaven on earth." What was to follow was a series of natural disasters (freezes, hurricanes) that would send Florida into a tailspin, causing it to enter a Florida Depression four years before the 1929 stock market crash brought the whole country's economy down in the Great Depression.

Chauncey C. Julian

In the Roaring Twenties, this oil stock swindler dressed to the nines while boasting to small investors that his sham oil-drilling operations would yield easy 30-to-1 returns. His specialty was writing newspaper sales pitches that used folksy, plainspoken language. Julian became a millionaire, chiefly by selling more shares in his worthless syndicates than existed. When his empire began to crumble, Julian fled to Shanghai. One night in 1934, he arranged a banquet in his own honor, excused himself, and went upstairs to his hotel room to drink a suicidal dose of poison.

Charles A. Stoneham

The inveterate gambler was known in the 1920s for allegedly winning against the New York Giants baseball team in a game of poker. On Wall Street, he specialized in “bucket shops,” cut-rate brokerage houses that dangled low commissions as means to obtain money the firm almost never invested or repaid. Individual stock orders would be entered into the books but not filled on the open market. Instead, they would be “bucketed,” or combined into larger blocks that would be traded only if prices favored the brokerage. Despite his close association with Arnold Rothstein, the gambler who reportedly fixed the 1919 World Series, Stoneham was never sanctioned by Major League Baseball. The only time he was ever brought up on stock fraud charges, he was acquitted amid allegations of jury tampering.

Radio Pool

 The 1920’s was the last decade before the onset of the Securities and Exchange Commission.  As a result, stock manipulation was virtually legal, and was performed by pools of investors who traded large blocks back and forth in consortium with each other to drive the price of certain stocks up substantially.  One such group, the Radio Pool, traded Radio Corporation of America (RCA) stock until the price rose from $100 per share in 1928 to over $500 per share just before the big crash.  The pool then sold out and left the vast number of smaller shareholders with huge losses just in time for the stock market to crash in October 1929.  With the advent of the depression and ensuing regulations, the investor pool collaboration was among those activities that were outlawed.

Joseph “Yellow Kid” Weil

Long before Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o said he was duped by an imaginary Internet girlfriend, Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil was plucking the gullible. A regular entry on Chicago police blotters in the first half of the 20th century, Weil was dubbed the "king of the con men" by reporters who eagerly chronicled his nefarious schemes. He brought out the poet in headline writers. A 1924 Tribune story was titled: "Weil Loses His Sangfroid as Accuser Glares."

The lead paragraph wasn't too bad either. He was described as a "debonair fast talker who plants in the provinces and reaps in the cities" — a reference to Weil being an equal-opportunity swindler who fleeced country bumpkins and city slickers alike. In his later years, he worked the local, off-beat lecture circuit, claiming to have taken suckers for a total of more than $8 million. Yet when he died in 1976 at the age of 100, the Kid was virtually a pauper, leaving an estate of $195 in the form of a credit at the Sheridan Road nursing home that was his final address.

When the Lake Front Convalescent Center threw a party for Weil's 99th party, he told a Tribune reporter he had no regrets about what he had done with his life. "I'd do it the same way again," he said. Sometimes he claimed to be not a victimizer but a victim of reporters giving free rein to their imaginations in order to sell papers.

According to the Tribune, he told one judge: "The dastardly fabrications of the metropolitan newspapers, the reprehensible conduct of journalists to surround me with a nimbus — er — a numbus of guilt, is astonishing." Yet in his "Autobiography of a Master Swindler," he acknowledged his chosen profession, even as he bemoaned its decline. "There are no good confidence men anymore," he wrote, "because they do not have the necessary knowledge of foreign affairs, domestic problems, and human nature." 

He certainly demonstrated more than a smattering of knowledge of those fields. He characterized the psychology underlying his working methods much as a judo wrestler explains how he turns his opponent's strength against him. He said: "A chap who wants something for nothing usually winds up with nothing for something." On other occasions, he defended his swindles with a Robin Hood twist. "He said he 'never took a dollar from a man who didn't deserve to lose it' because of greed," the Tribune recalled in Weil's obituary.

During World War I, Weil and his longtime confederate Frederick Buckminster swindled a Kokomo, Ind., banker out of more than $100,000, duping him "into purchasing fake stock in an Indiana steel mill by posing as representatives of German interests at a time when German ownership of American securities was embarrassing," the Trib noted.

Bankers were a favorite target of Weil, who took a Fort Wayne, Ind., banker for $15,000 in a 1917 scheme in which a confederate posed as an Englishman. A year later, Weil had no less than six phony brokerage offices up and running, their supposed bona fides supported by fake letters on counterfeit stationery of J.P. Morgan & Co. "We have learned of several letters bearing the supposed signature of Mr. Morgan," an assistant state's attorney told a Tribune reporter.

But Weil was not above fleecing at the other end of the economic ladder. Under a 1949 headline: "The Yellow Kid Beats $3 Case by Technicality," the Tribune reported he pocketed a $3 check solicited on behalf of the Little Sisters of the Poor. Weil told the judge he'd be happy to give the nuns the money. "And I would have been happy to give you a year in the Bridewell (a nickname for jail) if the case had been submitted to me on the proper charge," the judge told Weil.

Like many other areas of his life, the story of Weil's nickname had several versions. It was attributed to his fancy-dan attire, a supposed taste for yellow gloves, spats and vests, an etymology Weil denied in his autobiography. Others credit it to "Bathhouse John" Coughlin, a turn-of-the-20th century alderman and protector of vice operations in Chicago's red-light district. Apparently "The Bath" hung the moniker on Weil in 1901, borrowing it from a comic strip of the day, "Hogan's Alley and the Yellow Kid."

Weil was, in his own way, civic minded. In 1928, doing time in the Leavenworth, Kan., federal prison, he sent letters to Chicagoans appealing for funds so fellow inmates might properly celebrate Passover. He signed the letter: "Joseph Weil, president Jewish congregation."

He also felt strongly that there was a pecking order among gentlemen thieves, and Weil had nothing but contempt for one peer. In 1949, one Sigmund Engel, called "Chicago's marrying swindler" for defrauding women over a five-decade career, finally was being charged. As Weil commented, his "neatly trimmed mustache and parted beard fairly bristled," the Tribune noted. "There isn't a day that someone doesn't abscond with a woman's money," Weil said. "Preying on the love of women for money is one of the most despicable ways of making a livelihood I ever heard of."

Though he could be proud, he wasn't above taking a blow to the ego — if it might save him from a stint in the clink. When Weil was charged in 1925 with writing a bum check, a court-appointed doctor from the "psychopathic laboratory" found the Kid had the intelligence of a 16-year-old. "He is foppish to the last degree, a moral imbecile, possessed of a busy brain that is eternally plotting against somebody but unaware that injury is being done to others," the psychiatrist told the judge.

Weill seconded the motion. "I can't defend myself," he told the judge. "Why the very learned Dr. Hickson says I have the mentality of a child of sixteen." He was sentenced to 30 days in jail.

And he could wax philosophically on the vagaries of human existence, as in 1925, when he lost a Sheridan Road hotel, he owned for failing to make his loan payments.

"Life is a funny proposition, after all," he told a Trib reporter. "We are born, we live a while, and then someone forecloses the mortgage."

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The 1973 Yom Kippur War - And its Effect on the Middle East Today

The movement of civilizations has characterized the Levant. Most places are stagnant with similar people. The Levant always has cultures moving, from the Egyptian conquests, the Christianity’s dawn, the Crusades to the Modern Era. People who would not move caused the Yom Kippur War of 1973. After the 1967’s Six-Day War, the Israeli parliament voted to return relinquished territories to Egypt, however, they took no action. Also, Egypt and the Arab alliance remained firm in their convictions: no negotiation with Israel.

Ayrton Avery explains.

Israeli soldiers during the Battle of Ismailia, part of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

War’s Course

Israel could have made concessions to Egypt after the bloody Six-Day War. This angered the U.S., though, and Israel refused the peace treaty that Egypt offered. Egypt’s president, Anwar El-Sadat, began purchasing weapons from the U.S.S.R and also organizing military exercises. By Yom Kippur (which coincided with Ramadan), war had begun. Though such conflicts were common, this war was unusual because Israel started the previous wars to maintain military superiority in the Levant. Now, Egypt fired the first shots, taking direct revenge. At the war’s beginning, Egypt and Syria entered the disputed territories, sparking an Israeli counteroffensive. Soon Israel pushed into Syria and Egypt, encircling Cairo in a few days after a bloody march. Then Jordan entered the war, and the Soviet Union considered involvement. After three weeks of fighting, there was a standoff between the Soviet and U.S. navies, escalating fears of a nuclear war and worsening global geopolitical tensions between two major powers. It was perhaps this that led the U.S. and the Soviet Union to broker a ceasefire.

The Effect

At the beginning of the war, the Israeli forces faced a series of surprising defeats, shocking their forces from their lethargy. After several failed counterattacks, affairs became in favor of the Israeli army. But the trauma of their defeats remained, and also the sheer luck that allowed the forces to defeat Egypt. Israel only invaded Egypt because of last minute American support (operation Nickel Grass), which was itself pulled up only because it could use a Portuguese airbase. The Arab coalition had become so powerful it could start an energy crisis in the West, and the Soviet Union probably gave Egypt nuclear weapons. Never had the Middle East been a major economic and social rival in modern times. The Middle East snapped free from both the influence of the Ottoman empire and also from dependence on Europe for its political ideals. This newfound independence, unknown since ancient times, pressured the Israelis to accept the terms of peace.

It is not clear why Sadat took part in the peace talks. He immediately got snubbed by the rest of the Arab countries for it. Of course, the war had been bloody on Egypt’s side, however; it seems more likely Sadat was perhaps a radical, and he also had Western sympathies, as he also seemed to dislike his country’s relation with the Soviet Union. Perhaps because of these same reasons, he ignored Palestine. He was trying to lead the Middle East on a path towards peace with Israel. But his former allies defected, preferring to support the Palestinian alliance, even though Palestinians had hardly fought in this war, unlike the previous confrontations with Israeli. However, the rest of the Levant was, like always, shifting. No longer allied to Palestine for ideological and military reasons, now they supported them for political attachments to Syria and Jordan, as well as possibly an anti-American sentiment. Indeed, the oppression of Palestinians in the Middle East and the entire world increased after the war, and this was because a new foreign policy, tailored to powerful and wealthy nations, had arrived in the region.

Legacy

The Yom Kippur War also successfully divided up the Middle East, largely into Western and Soviet camps. It was this disjunction that was a major cause for the Iranian Revolution, among other future conflicts. By trying to set peace, Sadat in fact, by siding with the West, setting the stage for more wars. It also divided the Middle East based on minor ideological differences, rather than united against Israel. If Sadat assumed this would end the conflict, he was wrong. Instead, it began an endless cycle of civil war and foreign intervention, and besides, the Palestine issue remained.

However, the actual result of the Yom Kippur War was that it forced the West to exert greater, forceful influence on the Middle East, whose peoples consequently retaliated. It is curious to note perhaps it was Egypt falling from Soviet control that started the Soviet-Afghan war, as it forced the U.S.S.R to find some new way to control the region. And it was this which eventually led to the creation of the Taliban. It is interesting how scholars have considered Palestine’s role in the Yom Kippur War as psychological. In fact, this war shifted Palestine from the hero of the Middle East to a stage for other conflicts. They forced Palestinians, subsequently, to go to more lengths to attract attention from their own former allies, in particular with the Second Intifada (2000-2005) and the subsequent uprisings.

Change is both a blessing and a curse for the geopolitics of this region. The only thing that is stagnant is the peace process, chaperoned by the West. Also, that division in the Arab world that the Yom Kippur War ushered in still exists today. Now the Middle East comprises ideological partners, some real allies, and some enemies for Palestine. This arrangement, meant to quell tensions, in fact has excited all the countries’ thirst for revenge and power. It is a drama of nations willing to die for their allies and emboldened by flimsy promises. There is a faint hypocrisy as well. It allows countries to provide support for Palestine and yet refuses to accept its refugees. Clearly, the region is still too tense to handle this much movement. However, movement (of refugees, armies, and cultures) is its nature, and it will continue, war, or no war.

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References

Bartal, Shaul. "Yom Kippur War Influence at the PLO Recognition and the Palestinian Problem." History 5.4 (2015): 255-267.

Begum, Imrana. "The Arab Uprising: Russian Disquiet on Western Involvement." journal of European studies (2013).

Farr, Warner D. The third temple's holy of holies: Israel's nuclear weapons. No. 2. USAF Counterproliferation Center, Air University, 1999. (p. 9)

Hamzawy, Amr, and Dina Bishara. "Islamist movements in the Arab World and the 2006 Lebanon War." (2006).

Kumaraswamy, P. R. "Revisiting the Yom Kippur War: Introduction." Israel Affairs 6.1 (1999): 1-10.

Robbins, Elizabeth. “Egypt, Jordan, and Other Arab Governments Reject Gazan Refugees.” FDD, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 17 Oct. 2023, https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/10/17/egypt-jordan-and-other-arab-governments-reject-gazan-refugees/.

Singh, K. R. "Anwar El Sadat: Man with a Mission." (1977): 281-283.

The Sullivan-Clinton Expedition Against the Iroquois in 1779

The Sullivan-Clinton Expedition Against the Iroquois took place in the summer of 1779 in New York and Pennsylvania. The attack came via a decision of George Washington as the Iroquois Native Americans were Allied with the British during the American Revolutionary War. Brian Hughes explains.

A woodcut print of the Burning of Newtown in 1779.

In the summer of 1779, a large serpentine column of American Forces under the command of Major General John Sullivan departed their camp in Easton Pennsylvania and proceeded northwest up the Wyoming Valley. Theirdestination, the large and fertile stretch of land comprising most of present-day Western New York State and home to the powerful Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy, one of the most powerful tribes in North America and allied to Great Britain. Working in conjunction with Sullivan’s force was a smaller array of soldiers led by Brigadier General James Clinton who at the same time proceeded down the Mohawk Valley of New York State. The objective was the total devastation of the war making capabilities of the Iroquois-British alliance legitimized in response to the persistent raids launched on the New York and Pennsylvania frontiers by the Iroquois and their British/Loyalist allies. The campaign was launched in particular in retribution for the Iroquois-Loyalist raids into Pennsylvania and The Cherry Valley Massacre in New York the previous year. The result would be a catastrophe for the Iroquois leading to their ultimate demise thus forever changing American history.

Following the outbreak of hostilities in 1775 the Iroquois constituting the six nations of the Seneca, Cayuga, Tuscarora, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk remained divided and confused by what they viewed as a civil war between Great Britain and her colonies. Neutrality could not be maintained indefinitely as increasing pressure fractured the cohesion of the confederacy as certain tribes began to take sides with the powerful Seneca and Mohawk choosing the British whom they were convinced had the best chance of success. Only the Oneida and some Tuscarora would fight for the Americans as the majority of the Iroquois became increasingly concerned with colonial encroachment on their ancestral land. A problem that the British at least attempted to delay. Raids and counterraids would ensue throughout the northern frontiers of New York and Pennsylvania in addition to pitched battles such as the appalling Battle of Oriskany in the Mohawk Valley of New York State where combined Tory and Patriot militias fought a gruesome battle with their respective Seneca and Oneida allies. The brutal clashes along the frontier would continue even as the major fronts of the war shifted from north to south. In 1778 a joint Iroquois-Loyalist raiding party attacked settlements in Cherry Valley New York and the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania killing combatants and noncombatants alike. The ferocity was appalling and cleverly propagandized. For American forces this was the final straw, the Iroquois Confederacy and their British enablers had to be dealt with.

Before the war

Before the war George Washington worked as a land surveyor in addition to being a planter and officer in the colonial militia. Like many other colonials Washington longed for the day in which the vast fertile lands of the Ohio country west of the Appalachian Mountains could be cultivated and settled. The Iroquois maintained a powerful position in regards to this region as swift and vicious wars of conquest enabled them to control virtual monopoly on the fur trade from Canada to the Mississippi River. It is widely speculated that desire to shift the power dynamics in this territory would be an additional impetus for the coming military enterprise. Washington devised a plan to invade the Iroquois homeland via a two-pronged invasion to advance on Fort Niagara, a strategic focal point between Western New York and Canada. As the dual columns advanced, they were instructed by Washington to devastate the lands, crops, and villages as a means to intimidate and nullify the total war making capabilities of the tribes deemed hostile to the United States. It is speculated that these tribes had upwards to three thousand warriors but this can’t be wholly substantiated. 

Command

Command of the expedition had initially been offered to Horatio Gates, victor of the Battles of Saratoga. Gates would decline on account of his age. Instead, command was given to Major General John Sullivan of New Hampshire who would operate in conjunction with Brigadier General James Clinton. Sullivan assembled his army at Easton, Pennsylvania departing up the Wyoming Valley in July 1779. Clinton advanced a month earlier in June, his initial objective being the town of Canajoharie on the Mohawk River. The American force disguised their intentions well, for an invasion of the Iroquois homeland seemed inconceivable given the size, terrain, and martial reputation of their people. The British speculated that the Americans would attempt another invasion of Canada as they had previously done in late 1775.  In August Sullivan arrived at the mixed white/indigenous settlement of Chemung, destroying the village in the process. The British forces were led by loyalist Colonel John Butler. Butler could muster no more than six hundred Indians and Loyalists to oppose the nearly five thousand man combined force of Sullivan and Clinton who had now linked up. Butler worked with renowned Mohawk war chief Joseph Brant and assembled a motley force of Loyalists, Rangers and Iroquois loyal to Great Britain to confront the American force at Newtown, present day Elmira New York. A fierce pitched battle ensued on the 29th of August as the combined application of infantry and artillery of the Americans rapidly overran Butler and Brant’s detachment. Following the battle Newtown was burned by the Americans. 

Newtown

Newtown would be the only large-scale pitched battle of the campaign. It is interesting that the outnumbered allied force of Loyalists and Iroquois deviated from traditional guerilla tactics and instead offered open battle. Sullivan and Clinton now possessed the tactical flexibility to systematically burn towns and settlements spanning the area around the Finger Lakes, the heartland of Iroquoia. Sullivan did however overextend his supply lines forcing his men to halt constantly and granting valuable time for refugees to flee. The devastation was enormous. It is estimated that up to forty towns and dwellings had been destroyed not to mention innumerable bushels of corn and other crops. The psychological toll in which the expedition took was even more significant passing into the collective memory of Iroquois descendants to this day. By launching such an unprecedented attack, the American did however unintentionally better solidify the British/Iroquois alliance. The Sullivan Expedition did not completely eradicate the especially hostile Seneca and Mohawk Nations and indiscriminately wreaked havoc on the more neutral leaning Onondaga and Cayuga. Even at the objections of their Oneida allies. But it would be the beginning of the end of Iroquois hegemony in northern regions of North America. The final nail in the coffin indeed would be the ultimate defeat of Great Britain a few years later.

In perspective

The Sullivan Expedition in many ways was a precursor to William Tecumseh Sherman’s March through Georgia during the American Civil War. Although not as entirely successful, it demonstrated the willingness of a lethal and well-coordinated mobile force to invade an immense swathe of land, ravishing it along with its inhabitants all while taking relatively few casualties. It remains a pivotal and often overlooked chapter of the American Revolution.

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Why was the French Monarchy so Overwhelmed by the French Revolution in 1789?

The French Revolution made huge impacts around the world, especially with it being not many years after the American Revolution. Here, Bilal Junejo considers how the long-standing French monarchy was deposed during the 1789 French Revolution.

1777 portrait of King Louis XVI of France.

The revolution which broke out in 1789 was against what the annals of mankind have confirmed to be the surest instigator of all revolutionary sentiment — a decrepit, effete, and increasingly invidious regime. Unlike England’s Glorious Revolution a century earlier, the entire ambition of which had lain in the overthrow of a particular monarch (rather than the monarchy per se), the French Revolution did not commence as a revolt against Louis XVI personally, but against the whole polity over which he presided, and which had been established by his forebear, Louis XIV, in the seventeenth century — the ancien régime, the hallmarks of which included outdated agricultural methods, feudal traditions of land tenure, and uncontrolled inflation. The abolition of the monarchy — which was eventually decreed in September 1792, and confirmed in January 1793 with the execution of Louis XVI — was in no way the inspiration behind the insurrection in 1789, but merely the inevitable outcome of it — much as had been the case in the English Civil War, when the intransigence of Charles I, anticipating that of Louis XVI, had eventuated in the decapitation of that proud but not hypocritical Stuart in 1649. Another similarity was the fact that both of them had married foreign princesses. Charles was the ominously faithful husband of France’s Henrietta Maria, an early Bourbon (as well as a Catholic) whose influence upon him endeared neither of them to a Protestant parliament. The pride of a Stuart, coupled with the advice of a Bourbon, did not make for the alleviation of domestic rancour, and proved not surprisingly to be Charles’s undoing. In a similar fashion, Louis XVI, who had been married to the equally perverse Marie Antoinette of Austria, was also in thrall to the peremptory politics of his unpopular wife. Every monarch is a human being, and all human beings have their faults. It was the fault of both Charles and Louis that they were endowed with absolute authority at what, in retrospect, was a critical time for their respective states, and that they exercised that authority under the not inconsiderable influence of the least desirable of advisors — their foreign spouses, who had by definition almost nothing to lose in the event of an upheaval. Myopic monarchs acting at the behest of individuals with no stake in the fate of the nation cannot but court disaster, and nothing settled Louis’s fate more decisively than his choice to side with the very status quo which was responsible for having created the problems that ushered in the Revolution.

Bankruptcy

In 1789, France was upon the verge of bankruptcy. A century of wars waged without her borders had accumulated vast debts without corresponding victories with which to justify them. The War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13), the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48), and the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) had all humbled Bourbon pretensions — and bestowed a raft of burdens upon their treasury into the bargain, in the discharge of which the wealthiest classes of French society, the nobility and the clergy, were not obliged to assist. In return for this magnificent concession, these classes refrained from interfering in the monarch’s policies. France’s frivolous equivalent of the British Parliament, the Estates-General (which had not been summoned by the monarch since 1614), was dominated by these two Estates, to the detriment of the third — the bourgeoisie, which, along with the peasantry, had to fulfil all the fiscal demands of the state. The class which provided the money required for the execution of state policies had no say in the formulation of those policies, and one of the reasons for never summoning the Estates-General was to ensure that so sorry a state of affairs should continue without hindrance. But this was a century of the Enlightenment, some of whose greatest luminaries — Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and Montesquieu — were French. Their increasingly popular writings helped to ensure that royal absolutism would no longer be accorded medieval deference. Worse still, French arms had only recently crowned with victory the struggle of George Washington against the perverse autocracy of George III and his ministers; and French soldiers returning across the Atlantic were imbued with the hope of rejuvenating their languishing country after the American fashion. It was not so much that Louis would not compromise with the Third Estate, as that his wife and the other two Estates would not allow him to even think of doing so.

Reforms

But necessity is the mother not only of invention, but also aberration. Ambitious financial reforms devised by the likes of Calonne, Necker and Turgot in 1787 and 1788 were at the court’s disposal. All that remained to be mustered was the courage to execute them, and the first step towards achieving that was the summoning of the Estates-General. This, the King eventually did in May 1789, his decision having been endorsed by the clergy and the nobility, who believed that they would be able to exact budgetary obedience from the commoners; but for the first time, the Third Estate’s opponents received more than they had bargained for. The commoners, elated by the unexpected reappearance of a crucial forum for concerted opposition, refused to grant money over the expenditure of which they would have no control, echoing the Short Parliament’s refusal to accede to Charles’s request for funds in 1629. But Charles, no less than his people, had yet to learn, in the succeeding decade, that kings could no longer govern on their own in an era of diminishing regard for the divine right of kings. Louis, on the other hand, was already aware of that unpalatable truth, at the behest of which he had summoned the Estates-General; and he could only yield when the Third Estate, led by the energetic Abbé Sieyès, declared itself a National Assembly and seceded from the Estates-General. Subsequent events like the fall of the Bastille and the advent of the Great Fear were significant not so much in themselves as in their indication of the King’s inability to prevent them. And when he could not resist even the form of revolution, there was no way in which he could deny the substance thereof. By August, feudalism had been formally abolished, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was promulgated to circumscribe the more self-serving aspects of royal policy. Inflation, however, remained an incubus; and when the persistently rising cost of bread refused to evince any sign of coming down, ensuing demonstrations in Paris culminated in the famous “Bread March of the Women” to Versailles in October to demand — most successfully, it should be noted — the royal family’s return to Paris. The young Assembly followed them soon after, and thenceforth Parisian control of the Revolution was never seriously contested.

The end

The inability of King Louis XVI to stave off the radical and speedy overhaul of the status quo within a matter of months was indicative of the unprecedented extent to which the monarchy, as the direct result of its own insolvency, had been overwhelmed by the people. As the next eighteen months were devoted to long constitutional debates and internal reform (principally through the promulgation of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790, and the sale of royal and ecclesiastical lands to small shareholders for fiscal purposes), the only brake on the speed of the overhaul was the presence not of the King, but of the moderate constitutionalist, Mirabeau, whose death in April 1791 widened the breach between the Assembly and the court, and precipitated the Flight to Varennes but a few months later. The Flight signaled the King’s acceptance of his inability to reverse the tide, to undo anything that had been accomplished in the last two years. The monarchy had been fatally undermined — or, in other words, completely overwhelmed.

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Bibliography

Kenyon, J. (1994) The Wordsworth Dictionary of British History. Wordsworth Editions Limited.

Oxford Dictionary of Word History (3rd edition, 2015).

Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics (3rd edition, 2009).

Palmer, A. (1964) A Dictionary of Modern History 1789-1945. Penguin Reference Books.

The Reconstruction Era in America

In their novel, The Gilded Age, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner noted that the Civil War and its immediate aftermath, ‘uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, and wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations.’ In the hope of rebuilding the broken pieces together, every aspect of society, from urban life to class system to agriculture and industry had to be touched upon. The process of institutional transformation came to be known as the Reconstruction (1865-1877).

Aarushi Anand gives her take on the Reconstruction era.

A Visit from the Old Mistress. Winslow Homer, 1876.

The task of reconstructing the union initiated the transition from conflict to peace by targeting fundamental components of the rebuilding framework.  Restoration of "physical infrastructure," a traditional area of strength, involved expensive maintenance services like rebuilding rail and road networks, reconnection of interrupted water supply and racial desegregation of schools and hospitals. The process of social and emotional reintegration becomes more difficult when conflicts, especially those that last for a long period, damage the fabric of society and render a return to the past impossible or undesirable. Slavery was formally outlawed in the entire United States through the 13th amendment (1865). In order to determine what kind of reconstruction policies to implement, the nation had to first decide whether the Confederacy be treated with leniency or as a conquered foe?

President Abraham Lincoln was of the lenient persuasion as is evident from his second inaugural address “with malice toward none; with charity for all...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.” He started off the Ten-Percent Plan (1865–87) which imposed a minimum requirement of political loyalty for southern states to rejoin the Union. Following President Lincoln's assassination, his successor Andrew Johnson and his administration drafted what is now known as Presidential Reconstruction. Johnson, a former enslaver, was deeply racist and recreated conditions in the South which were largely the same as they were before the war. Case in point, he set up all-white government and appointed a trust-worthy provisional governor in the South. During his administration, a number of draconian laws known as the Black Codes (1865–1866) were passed, limiting the civil and political rights of blacks in the South. Since most freed blacks had only the skills to work on plantations the black code stipulated that black workers would be legally bound to the plantation owner. Each year blacks were required to sign a labor contract to work for a white employer and if they did not do so they'd be arrested for vagrancy and then sold off. According to several historians’ Black codes marked the continuation of ‘slavery in all but name.’

The Radical Republicans, who at the time-controlled Congress, were opposed to Johnson's clemency or his role in the South's resegregation. To this end, they passed 2 pieces of law that granted black citizenship rights while also calling for the racial integration of workplaces, neighborhoods, schools, and universities. First, the Freedmen's Bureau, a coalition of Northern officials and Union Soldiers, was set up all over the South. Its goal was to help reunite families separated by slavery which over the course of 250 years had split apart millions of people. In one of its main roles, securing fair labor contracts, the Bureau proved to be redundant.  The Bureau was crucial in helping Black Americans pursue formal education. According to historian James McPherson, there were over 1,000 schools in existence by 1870. Second, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 granted Black Americans citizenship and guaranteed their equal civil rights, including the ability to enter into agreements, acquire property, and give testimony in court. Republicans sought the 14th constitutional amendment (1868) to bolster these rights and prevent overturning of the central government's directions out of a fear that the Civil Rights Act would be struck down. For nearly a century, the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized. African Americans in Southern states were successfully denied the right to vote through the imposition of poll taxes, literacy tests, and other techniques (e.g. permitting only registered voters since the 1860s to vote).

CARPETBAGGERS

Despite being eligible to run in elections, it was a harsh reality that an all-black government would not succeed and would require white allies to form an inter-racial coalition.  This raises the issue of whether white people are willing to participate in the reconstruction of government in conjunction with African-American voters. The carpetbaggers come first for the purpose. Carpetbagger is a political term used to describe a northerner who united with blacks and the Republican Party and advocated the new constitutional rights of African-Americans. During the Civil War, Union soldiers and commanders who chose to remain in the South after the army were demobilized made up the majority of the northerners who traveled there. In office, the performance of the carpetbaggers was mixed. While some were dishonest, others, “were economy-minded and strictly honest.” For instance, carpetbag lawyer Albion W. Tourgee contributed to the drafting of the North Carolina Constitution (1868), opposed the Ku Klux Klan (1869–1870) and fought for blacks in Louisiana against a law requiring segregation in railroad cars (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896).

SCALAWAGS

Although the carpetbaggers managed to occupy positions of authority, they were insufficient to form a voting bloc. So, in terms of voting power, the other real group is the so-called scalawags. The majority of them were Whigs, lower-class whites, and Southern unionists who opposed secession.  James Lusk Alcorn, one of Mississippi's wealthiest planters, a large slaveholder, and a Whig opposed to secession, popularized the term "harnessed revolution," which refers to the period of time when White people like himself would lead the Reconstruction process. By far less affluent white people in the upcountry made up the greatest number of scalawags. The number of white Republicans in states like Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, and Georgia was sizable. These Republicans did not want the planters to regain power and felt that the only option is black suffrage.  Internal conflict also plagued these regions

KU KLUX KLAN

It is crucial to remember that white supremacist opposition to the Radical Republicans' agenda manifested itself as covert organizations. The Ku Klux Klan was one such group that fostered homegrown terrorism in the United States. Members of the Klan rode across the nation in white sheets throughout the night to conceal themselves and use violence for political purposes. Violence was used to frighten black and white Republicans to keep them from casting ballots. Additionally, it was done to unite white people under the idea that race was the main concern. The glorification of the Ku Klux Klan in the movie "Birth of a Nation" is based in part on the notion that the group was merely exploiting people's superstitions.

The ferociousness of Ku Klux Klan attacks in 1870 and 1871 convinced many that additional laws, either state or federal, along with a vigorous enforcement, were essential to the security of the new order. Carpetbagger Amos Lovering, a former Indiana judge, contends that "universal education in morals and mind" is the only effective way to permanently quell the Klan's brutality. Many of these measures failed. In the South, most white people continued to own weapons. The government was unwilling to deploy armed blacks after the white knight riders since such a move would only intensify racial tensions.

W.E.B Du Bois, described the Reconstruction period as a moment where "...the slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery." By the end of the 19th century, 2,500 Black people would be lynched across the South. Occasionally people say that Reconstruction failed, but it would be more accurate to say that it was violently overthrown. It did not fail to succeed because Black people were incapable of governance but because white Southerners did everything in their power to obstruct Black mobility and opportunity.

CIVIL RIGHTS

In a variety of ways, reconstruction prepared the way for future struggle. The 1960s Civil Rights Movement was frequently referred to as the second reconstruction, the country's second attempt to face the issue of racial equality in the law, politics, and society. The movement was a nonviolent social movement and campaign to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United States.  Reconstruction also opened discussion on how to deal with domestic terrorism. Racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan thrived throughout reconstruction and made its imprint on American society via racial bloodshed. The Black Power movement emphasized how little tangible progress had been made since the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and how African-Americans continued to experience discrimination in jobs, housing, education, and politics. Reconstruction is still relevant today because it raises fundamental questions about   American society that are still being debated, such as who is eligible to become a citizen, how the federal government interacts with the states, who is in charge of defending  citizens' fundamental rights, and how one deals with homegrown terrorism.

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References

1.     Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty! An American History: Seagull Fourth Edition. Vol. WW Norton & Company, 2013.

2.     Foner, Eric. "The new view of reconstruction." American Heritage 34, no. 6 (1983).

3.     Grob, Gerald N., and George Athan Billias. "Interpretations of American History Patterns and Perspectives." (1972).

4.     Harris, William C. "The Creed of the Carpetbaggers: The Case of Mississippi." The Journal of Southern History 40, no. 2 (1974): 199-224.

5.     Trelease, Allen W. "Who were the Scalawags?" The Journal of Southern History 29, no. 4 (1963): 445-468.

The Forgotten African-American Regiments of World War 1

Over 380,000 African-American troops served in World War One according to the US National Archives. Here, Chris Fray looks at the role the Black Americans played in the war in the context of the time.

The ‘Hellfighters’ - Soldiers of the 369th (15th N.Y.), 1919. They were awarded the Croix de Guerre for gallantry in action.

Most African-American troops were deployed to labor divisions within the US providing manual labor for the war effort.[1] Even the Black soldiers who were deployed to France were first put to work unloading supplies from ships, joining the supply troops known as ‘Stevedores.’ These battalions did not fight but aided by building bridges, repairing roads and ensuring the fighting troops were constantly supplied.

The uncomfortable truth of the matter is that the US high command were unsure whether White US troops would mix with Black troops and fight alongside them. Although slavery had been abolished in 1865 with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, over half a decade later the rights of Black Americans had progressed very little. Attacks and racial violence were common, especially in the Southern states. At this time, US society was fully segregated and would remain so until 1948. The concept of ‘separate but equal’ had been adopted across the country, prohibiting Blacks to use White facilities such as bathrooms, schools and railcars by Law.

At the time when war broke out, thousands of Black-Americans were moving from the country to industrial centers in what is known as the Great Migration.[2] As the US economy grew, many more opportunities became available in cities, especially with labor shortages due to the War. Organizations such as the NAACP were formed, campaigning for the advancement of Black people, consolidating more confidence and power than before. One of the first mass protests in US history took place on the eve of the First World War in 1917, New York, known as The Silent Parade. Led by NAACP, 10,000 African Americans marched down 5th Avenue, New York in protest to a recent racist attack in East St. Louis where perhaps up to 200 African Americans were killed and 6,000 were made homeless due to racially motivated arson.[3] With this new Black organization came increased resentment and anxiety from Whites and especially the Police, leading to more and more violence.

Action in the war

Although very few in comparison to White soldiers, there were a number of African-Americans who did see action in the First World War. The most celebrated were the 15th New York “colored” Infantry Regiment, renamed US 369thInfantry Regiment but also, and much more dramatically known as the ‘Harlem Hellfighters.’ Harlem was home to 50,000 of the 60,000 African-Americans living in New York’s Manhatten in the 1910s.[4] After deciding that Regiments were better led and filled by soldiers of the same race, the 369th Infantry were assigned by the US army to the French army who, as a body were much more open to integration in their forces. French colonial troops had been integrated into the French army for decades.

The ‘Hellfighters’ quickly became renowned for their bravery and ferocity on the battlefield, in particular by the German troops they were fighting- who originally coined the term ‘Hellfighters.’ Their motto, “Don't Tread On Me, God Damn, Let's Go," sums up their determination and resilience very well. It was their resilience which they became famous for- The 369th Regiment spent more time in continual combat than any other US division of its size, with a staggering 191 days in the front line trenches.[5] One particular episode on 15th May 1918 shows the fortitude and strength of the soldiers of the Regiment. When on watch duty, Private Henry Johnson and Private Needham Robert’s position was attacked by German troops. The two soldiers fought off 12 Germans in brutal hand to hand combat, saving the position but Johnson receiving 21 wounds in the fight.[6] After the war, the Regiment as a whole were awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French Army and returned to America as heroes.

Legacy

The irony of fighting for freedom abroad when you don’t have the benefit of it at home, can’t have been lost on these soldiers. However the success and bravery of the ‘Harlem Hellfighters’ saw the first serious calls for desegregation of the US army. Although desegregation was not signed until 1948 by President Harry Truman, the ‘Hellfighters’ paved an important way for recognition and opportunity for Black soldiers to come.

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[1] US Department of Defense - https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/1429624/african-american-troops-fought-to-fight-in-world-war-i/#:~:text=More%20than%20380%2C000%20African%2DAmericans,to%20labor%20and%20stevedore%20battalions.

[2] US Library of Congress - https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/segregation-era.html

[3] https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/1917NAACPSilentProtestParade

[4] Smithsonian Magazine - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/one-hundred-years-ago-harlem-hellfighters-bravely-led-us-wwi-180968977/

[5] National Museum of African American History & Culture - https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/remembering-harlem-hellfighters#:~:text=Some%20members%20of%20the%20Harlem,to%20the%20369th%20Infantry%20Regiment.

[6] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Harlem-Hellfighters

Poker and the US Presidency

Surprisingly, card playing and other games had a great impact on the U.S. presidents, from George Washington to Joe Biden. Card games, played by a majority of the presidents, especially were a respite from the overwhelming pressures of the presidency. These games, mainly poker, honed the presidents’ ability to take calculated risks and enhanced the Chief Executives’ ability to bluff and read their opponents.

Several presidents used poker, specifically, to start their political careers. Here, Ralph Crosby, author of Poker, Politics and Presidents (Amazon US | Amazon UK), tells how poker playing helped put three presidents in office.

Theodore Roosevelt in 1898.

TR at the Poker Table

In the fall of 1880, when Theodore Roosevelt first sat down to play poker in Morton Hall, wearing his black dress coat, a top hat and pince nez glasses on a cord, the rough-hewn players at the table didn’t know what to make of this “dandy,” especially a Harvard-educated scion of the Roosevelt Clan, part of the 400 “best” New York families.

Theodore was there on a mission. He wanted to get involved in Republican politics and Morton Hall, a large room over top of an East 59th Street New York City saloon, was the headquarters and club room of the Twenty-first District Republican Association and just a few short blocks from his home.

At first, he was not very welcome at Morton Hall, as he had been warned by his rich, privileged friends, who viewed with disdain politics as the province of a rough and tumble crowd of saloon keepers, horse car conductors and low-level storekeepers and pols.

Theodore was not too pleased with the place itself, with its residue of cigar smoke and ashes, half full spittoons and a few dingy tables and chairs. The only appointments to break the dinginess were two framed pictures on the wall, of Ulysses Grant and Levi P. Morton, a Republican Vice President under President Benjamin Harrison and the club house’s namesake.

But Roosevelt persevered. He later commented, “I went around there often enough to have the men get accustomed to me and to have me get accustomed to them, so that we began to speak the same language….” It worked, and he was finally accepted for membership.

“They rather liked the idea of a Roosevelt joining them,” he later recalled. “I insisted in taking part in all the discussions. Some of them sneered at my black coat and tall hat. But I made them understand that I should come dressed as I chose…. Then after the discussion I used to play poker and smoke with them.”

Theodore’s courage, self-confidence and camaraderie especially impressed one man, Joe Murray, an Irishman and former street gang leader, and the second in command of the Twenty-First District Association—conniving to be number one. By lining up delegates under the nose of the Twenty-First’s leader, who expected his crooked candidate to get the nod for state assemblyman, Murray only needed a good candidate of his own. He decided Roosevelt was his man, and convinced the newcomer to run.

Politics Begins for Teddy

On October 28, 1881, the association’s convention was held at Morton Hall, and Murray surprised the top boss by nominating Roosevelt. The convention elected Theodore on the first ballot, and the 23-year-old went on to win his first elective office. As poker historian James McManus concluded in his book Cowboys Full, Roosevelt “had used poker and other manly ploys to raise himself up in the Republican party.”

Roosevelt would later introduce Joe Murray as the man who “started me in politics.” That start was the first step on the road to the White House. That road would have many twists and turns, but Theodore would navigate them with the fearlessness, fighting spirit, and risk-taking so prominent in the military man and adventurer he would become and the card player, success seeker and creative thinker he already was.

Richard Nixon’s Evolution

During WWII, the 29-year-old Richard Nixon joined the Navy as a Lieutenant (Junior Grade) and his life changed drastically. In his Quaker family tradition, Nixon did not smoke, drink liquor, use cuss words, gamble or play cards. That would change in the Navy.

Eventually sent to the South Pacific and promoted to Lieutenant Commander, he led a small detachment in the Combat Air Transport Command (SCAT). On the Island of Bougainville, during his first month there, Nixon’s unit was bombed by the Japanese for 28 nights out of 30. Many bombs just missed his bunker.

As in many wartime situations, much of the Navy’s SCAT team’s time was spent in what Nixon called in his memoirs “interminable periods” of monotonous waiting. They also sought diversions from the stress of nightly bombing. The boredom and fear often were quelled by poker games, which hooked the non-card-playing Nixon.

Nixon’s Poker Profits

Thrown in with some hard-living and hard-drinking Navy men, Richard Nixon soon was drinking and cussing with the best of them. Bored with lonesome evenings reading by himself, he began kibitzing the regular poker games in the camp. When he saw the amount of money being won and lost at poker, especially dollars thrown away by drunken players, he became intrigued. It was the money, not the cards that caught his attention. Nixon biographer Steven E. Ambrose concluded, “The games became an obsession with him.”

An earlier biographer of Nixon’s, Bela Kornitzer, in his book titled The Real Nixon, written while the subject was still vice president, said of Nixon’s South Pacific time, “Out there Nixon passed over Quaker objections to gambling. Why? He needed money. He learned poker and mastered it to such a degree that he won a sizable amount, and it became the sole financial foundation of his career.”

Nixon’s poker playing was very profitable. His South Pacific poker winnings are reported variously between six and ten thousand dollars. The most accurate figure, which he told his family, was $8,000, worth more than $110,000 in current dollars.

He used the winnings from the poker games to finance his successful campaign for Congress, his entry into politics.

Obama’s Poker Pals

With his Harvard law degree in hand, Barack Obama went to Chicago to join a law firm, where he concentrated on civil rights cases, and taught at the University of Chicago Law School. He quickly became involved in Project Vote for election year 1992, overseeing volunteers and registering voters, helping elect Carol Mosely Braun, Illinois’ first black U.S. Senator, and preparing himself for his run for the Illinois state senate in his district.

Obama won the primary unopposed. At age 35, four years out of law school, running against only token Republican opposition, Obama won his first public office.

In his pre-presidential autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote of succeeding in the state legislature despite the risks of a political career:

“By all appearances, my choice of careers seemed to have worked out. After two terms during which I labored in the minority, Democrats had gained control of the state senate, and I had subsequently passed a slew of bills.”

Of Poker and Politics

Obama’s entry into the state capital was not greeted warmly. The highbrow Harvard Law graduate got the cold shoulder from the old school Illinois legislators. But he found a way to earn the trust and friendship of many. Like Teddy Roosevelt—he played poker with them.

In fact, with fellow freshman Democratic senator Terry Link, Obama started a poker game, which became a favorite of an eclectic group of legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, and lobbyists.

In a 2008 The New Yorker article, poker historian James McManus concurred. “Perhaps realizing that both the Chicago machine pols and the downstate soybean farmers viewed him as an overeducated bleeding heart and a greenhorn, he decided to woo them with poker.” In his poker history, Cowboys Full, published in 2009, McManus  devoted the book’s first six pages to Obama’s poker playing, in general, and to his and Link’s games, specifically.

The poker game, at different times played in Link’s Springfield home basement, a local country club and a lobbyist’s office was called the “Committee Meeting.” It started out with only a few players but eventually developed a waiting list. They played stud and draw poker for low stakes, a dollar bet and a maximum three dollar raise. A night’s win or loss normally ran about $25, and a big loss would be $100.

In Cowboys Full, McManus quoted Link, “You hung up your guns at the door. Nobody talked about their jobs or politics, and certainly no ‘influence’ was bartered or ever discussed. It was boys night out—a release from our legislative responsibilities.”

Obama undoubtedly saw it a bit differently. As McManus wrote, Obama “seems to have understood, as a networking tool, poker is the most efficient positive of all.” “The bottom line politically,” McManus concluded, “was that poker helped Obama break the ice with people he needed to work with in the legislature.”

Later, when Obama decided to run for the U.S. Senate, he reached out to his poker friends to gauge their support. Most felt the time was right and pledged their backing.

From Poker Winner to Political Winner

As Obama wrote in his autobiographical book, A Promised Land, “I began by talking to my poker buddies… to see whether they thought I could compete in the white working-class and rural enclaves they represented… They thought I could and all agreed to support me if I ran.”

Fortuitously, at the same time, Obama gained local and national prominence with his star-turn keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, a speech called so “transformational” that politicians and the media started calling Barack a “rising star” and presidential material.

The result: Obama scored a landslide victory over Republican Alan Keyes, 3,597,456 votes to his opponent’s 1,390,690 to become, at age 43, the junior Senator from Illinois.

To celebrate his victory, his buddies held a special poker game—meant to bring Obama some humility.

In his book on Obama’s political ascent, author David Garrow reported, “We brought him down to earth real quick, explained Terry Link, describing how they worked together so that Barack lost every hand.” By night’s end, Obama had lost all his money, but maybe gained a bit of humbleness. Later, U.S. Senator Obama, visiting Springfield, again found time for a poker game with his old buddies.

The next step was the White House, where Obama continued to play cards.

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When President Lincoln Met 11-year-old Grace Bedell

A few weeks before he was elected President, Lincoln received a letter from Grace Bedell, an 11-year-old girl from Westfield, New York. Richard Bluttal explains.

Grace Bedell in the 1870s.

The Letter

N Y Westfield Chatauque Co Oct 15. 1860

Hon A B Lincoln Dear Sir

My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin's. I am a little girl only eleven years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 brother's and part of them will vote for you any way and if you will let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you   you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husband's to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is a going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to but I will try and get every one to vote for you that I can   I think that rail fence around your picture makes it look very pretty   I have got a little baby sister she is nine weeks old and is just as cunning as can be. When you direct your letter dir[e]ct to Grace Bedell Westfield Chatauque County New York

I must not write any more   answer this letter right off Good bye Grace Bedell.

 As soon as Mr. Lincoln received the letter he wrote back the following:

October 19, 1860

Springfield, Illinois Miss Grace Bedell

My dear little Miss,

Your very agreeable letter of the 15th is received. I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters. I have three sons—one seventeen , one nine, and one seven years of age. They with their mother, constitute my whole family. As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affection if I were to begin it now? Your very sincere well-wisher.

-A. Lincoln

By the time Lincoln left his Illinois home to start his inaugural journey to Washington, D.C., he wore a full beard. The trip took him by rail through New York state, where he stopped briefly in Westfield on February 16. Once at the train station, he called into the crowd for Grace. The following contemporary newspaper accounts recorded the incident.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer of February 20, 1861

At Westfield, Mr. Lincoln greeted a large crowd of ladies, and several thousand of the sterner sex. Addressing the ladies, he said, "I am glad to see you; I suppose you are to see me; but I certainly think I have the best of the bargain. (Applause.) Some three months ago, I received a letter from a young lady here; it was a very pretty letter, and she advised me to let my whiskers grow, as it would improve my personal appearance; acting partly upon her suggestion, I have done so; and now, if she is here, I would like to see her; I think her name was Miss Barlly." A small boy, mounted on a post, with his mouth and eyes both wide open, cried out, "there she is, Mr. Lincoln," pointing to a beautiful girl, with black eyes, who was blushing all over her fair face. The President left the car, and the crowd making way for him, he reached her, and gave her several hearty kisses, and amid the yells of delight from the excited crowd, he bade her good-bye, and on we rushed.

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U.S. Civil War: Battle of Fredericksburg

The Cincinnati Commercial noted, "It can hardly be in human nature for men to show more valor or generals to manifest less judgment than were perceptible on our side that day." 160 years later, that still pretty much sums up the US Civil War’s Battle of Fredericksburg from the Union side. Yet, the fact is that, as bad as it was, and it was truly awful, it did not provide the South with any lasting strategic advantage. In fact, within seven months, the tables would turn after their own costly frontal assault.

Lloyd W Klein explains.

Union soldiers from Franklin's ‘Left Grand Division’ charge across the railroad during the Battle of Fredericksburg.

General Robert E. Lee's survival at Antietam was remarkable. McClellan missed numerous opportunities to create total disaster for Lee's army, and Lee likely recognized some fundamental errors in his strategy. Yet, Lee emerged with his army intact, high morale, and a new adversary.

After McClellan's lack of aggressive pursuit post-Antietam, he was relieved of command on November 5. His replacement, Major General Ambrose E. Burnside, assumed command on November 9, under pressure from Washington to act swiftly. Burnside devised a plan to reach Richmond ahead of Lee's forces.

Situated near Warrenton, Virginia, Burnside was west of Richmond and Washington, at approximately the same latitude as Manassas. Continuing on the roads from there would lead to Culpeper and Charlottesville, necessitating the crossing of both the Rapidan and the Rappahannock Rivers.

Burnside’s Plan

Burnside proposed abandoning the southwest movement of the army, which led away from any specific target. Instead, he planned to move southeast rapidly toward the lower Rappahannock River, positioning the Union army at Falmouth, just across the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg. From there, he aimed to launch a direct attack on Richmond, avoiding Lee's forces in Culpeper, and positioning himself between Lee and the direct route to Richmond. On paper, Burnside's plan held great promise, but successful execution hinged on speed.
The direct route from Warrenton to Fredericksburg was approximately 35-40 miles. It was a single country road in late Fall, presenting logistical challenges in organizing troops and supplies. However, Burnside managed to move his 100,000-man army to Falmouth on the north bank of the Rappahannock in just two days. Fredericksburg lay opposite Falmouth, a riverport town.

Lee had conducted a cautious retreat from Sharpsburg, ensuring his rear was secure in case McClellan launched an attack, which never materialized. This route brought Lee closer to the Shenandoah Valley than to Richmond. Lee, positioned at Culpeper, had a slightly shorter distance of about 35 miles to cover to reach Fredericksburg, but he had to cross the Rappahannock River. Thus, a race was on between the two armies.

When Burnside assumed command, he found himself in a strategic predicament. McClellan had left him in a remote location with a supply line that relied on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, which extended to Culpeper Court House before heading east to Orange and Charlottesville. This placed Burnside far to the west of his desired destination, and there was no established supply line to support a rapid eastward movement. This situation raised concerns for Lincoln and Halleck, given that Burnside, a relative rookie as a general, aimed to move faster than his army had ever moved before, and he faced a cunning adversary who could launch attacks along the way.
However, Burnside devised a clever plan to address this challenge. Knowing that Longstreet was positioned at Culpeper, and Jackson was on his right flank, Burnside recognized that Longstreet had a shorter distance to reach Fredericksburg once his movement was detected.

The leadership in Washington believed that the primary target should not be Richmond itself, but rather Lee's army. They wanted Burnside to attack Longstreet at Culpeper while Jackson was separated from him. Burnside believed that this move was quite obvious and that Lee would anticipate it. He envisioned a scenario similar to the Second Battle of Manassas, with Jackson launching a flank attack against him. Burnside proposed feigning an attack on Culpeper, which would hold Lee in that area just long enough for Burnside to reach the eastern side of the Rappahannock River. He began moving supplies to Falmouth, located just north of Fredericksburg and close to the Potomac River. The plan was to reach Falmouth swiftly, resupply, and have a pontoon bridge constructed across the river before Lee could arrive. Halleck disagreed with Burnside’s plan but left it to President Lincoln, who chose to go along with it.

Crossing the Rappahannock River

Pontoon bridges have been essential in warfare for centuries. These floating bridges use floats or shallow-draft boats to support a continuous deck for infantry, artillery, cavalry, and supply wagons. The buoyancy of the supports limits their maximum load. Strong currents and storms can disrupt these bridges, making their use typically temporary, just long enough to cross a river. Connecting the bridge to the shore requires designing approaches that are not too steep, prevent bank erosion, and accommodate movements during changes in water levels (such as tides). During the Civil War, both armies commonly used pontoon bridges. They played a crucial role in key crossings, such as Grant's crossings of the James and Mississippi Rivers. Lee's use of a pontoon bridge over the Potomac River during the Gettysburg campaign is another notable example.

The plan for a pontoon bridge wasn't particularly complex, as it required old boats and wooden planks. When Burnside initiated his plans for this campaign, he requisitioned these materials on November 7, submitting his plan to Halleck. The plan was sent to Brig. Gen. George Washington Cullum, the chief of staff in Washington, on November 9. The pontoon trains were deemed ready to move on November 14.

However, when the Union Army commenced its march on November 15 and the first units arrived in Falmouth by November 17, they found no bridges built, no materials for construction, and no engineers to undertake the task. The pontoon materials were ready to move on November 14, except for the absence of the 270 horses needed to move them. Burnside was unaware until he arrived that most of the building materials had not been transported. Burnside arrived in Falmouth by November 19, but the pontoons that he planned to use to cross the Rappahannock were delayed because some functionary in Washington had failed to send the pontoons when Burnside asked for them. They were supposed to be there when he got there. Communications between Burnside's staff engineer Cyrus B. Comstock and the Engineer Brigade commander Daniel P. Woodbury indicate that Burnside had assumed the bridging was en route to Washington based on orders given on November 7.

So, when General Sumner arrived in Falmouth on November 17th, he ordered his men to race to Fredericksburg and cross the river. Except when he got there, there was no bridge. There were only 500 troops in the town and occupying the commanding heights to the west. Burnside became concerned that early winter rains would make the fording points unusable; that might make Sumner vulnerable, he could be cut off. Instead, Burnside ordered Sumner to wait in Falmouth.

Lee didn't ascertain Burnside's movement early enough to launch an attack. The part of the plan that Halleck had expressed concern about worked out favorably. Lee believed that Burnside would outpace him and cross the Rappahannock River first, prompting Lee to prepare for defense along the North Anna River instead. This plan, however, was met with dissatisfaction from President Davis, who considered it too close to Richmond . Lee recognized that Burnside had beat him to the Rappahannock – and now found himself on the wrong side of the river. Instead of moving to the North Anna, he had Longstreet move instead to the heights above the river on its south side above the town.

The materials for one bridge arrived November 25, 8 days after the Union army. This is truly a failure of the Union Army quartermaster department. The fact that Burnside ended up taking the blame for this is unfair; there was plenty of blame for everyone. Burnside was looking for a place to ford the river. The arrival of the bridge was much too late to cross the river without a battle. He knew only half of Lee’s army was across the river. Still, Burnside had an opportunity because at that time only half of Lee's army had arrived and were not yet dug in. Had Burnside acted more expeditiously and attacked Longstreet sooner, he might have won a victory before Jackson arrived. Part of his reluctance to move was his fear that if only some of his army crossed, an attack by Longstreet might be decisive.  It has always intrigued me that Burnside had delayed his attack at Antietam across the bridge and was criticized for not finding fords downstream; and 3 months later, he is criticized for the delays in looking for fords downstream.

Longstreet's arrival on November 23 marked a critical moment in the lead-up to the Battle of Fredericksburg. General Lee strategically positioned his forces, placing them on the commanding ridge known as Marye's Heights, west of the town. This defensive formation included Anderson's division on the far left, McLaws positioned directly behind the town, and Pickett's and Hood's divisions anchoring the right flank. Lee recognized the significance of holding this high ground.

Meanwhile, Lee had dispatched a message for General Stonewall Jackson on November 26, anticipating the need for his Second Corps. Jackson, known for his remarkable swiftness, had already foreseen the call and initiated a forced march of his troops from Winchester starting on November 22. They covered as much as 20 miles a day, a remarkable feat considering the challenging terrain. Jackson's timely arrival at Lee's headquarters on November 29 reinforced the Confederate position.

As General Burnside awaited the construction of crucial pontoon bridges, General Lee organized his army for the impending battle. Lieutenant General James Longstreet's wing shifted eastward from Culpeper, securing a formidable position on Marye's Heights, which offered a commanding view of Fredericksburg from the western vantage point. To the south, Lieutenant General Stonewall Jackson's troops entrenched themselves along a line stretching from Prospect Hill to Hamilton's Crossing, a strategic position four miles south of the town. 

However, as Burnside's wait for the bridges extended, he missed a valuable window of opportunity. Lee recognized this delay and anticipated that Burnside would eventually attempt to cross the Rappahannock River. Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s wing moved east from Culpeper, and Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s men hurried toward the Rappahannock from the Shenandoah Valley. Longstreet took up a position on Marye’s Heights, overlooking Fredericksburg from the west. To the south, Jackson’s men were entrenched in a line stretching over Prospect Hill and onto Hamilton’s Crossing, four miles from the town. Burnside had squandered his opportunity. During this delay, Lee anticipated Burnside’s crossing the Rappahannock. This strategic maneuvering and positioning by both sides set the stage for the dramatic events that would unfold in the Battle of Fredericksburg.

Originally, Burnside had planned to cross east of Fredericksburg at Skinker's Neck, a shallow marshy area downstream from the town. However, upon Jackson's arrival and Confederate movements in that area, Burnside changed his plan to cross at the town itself, hoping to surprise the enemy. When Jackson arrived, he placed DH Hill and Early in that area when he received notification of Union gunboats there. Union spy balloons detected this movement, so Burnside was aware of it. Since it seemed that Lee had moved toward his right, then a smarter place to cross would be to Lee’s left, so he decided to cross at the town itself, thinking it would surprise the enemy.

Union engineers finally began to assemble 6 pontoon bridges on December 11. They were designated to be placed as 2 north of the town center, 1 south of the town center, and 3 more south. In the pre-dawn hours, a regiment of Union engineers began assembling the pontoon bridges opposite the town. Confederate riflemen harassed the engineers and slowed their progress.

The delay between November 25 and December 11 was partly due to the weather. But several years later, Halleck reported to Stanton that he had never approved of the plan, and had suggested using the fords upriver instead. After the war. Burnside wrote that he had told Halleck that during the movement he wouldn’t be unable to receive telegraphic messages. I get the impression, reading these notes well after the fact, that Halleck just didn’t order things be done and Burnside didn’t think he had to be certain about this detail. https://civilwartalk.com/threads/why-were-burnsides-bridges-late-at-fredericksburg.7791/?amp=1

As Union forces under General Hunt positioned over 220 cannons on Stafford Heights, it seemed they held an impregnable advantage against any Confederate counterattack. In the late morning, the Union unleashed a formidable bombardment, This relentless shelling wreaked havoc, causing considerable damage to numerous buildings and instilling terror among the civilian population. After approximately four hours of intense bombardment, the engineers resumed their work on the pontoon bridges, but Confederate riflemen wasted no time in resuming their sharpshooting.

However, a significant challenge remained in the form of Confederate sharpshooters entrenched in the basements of buildings within Fredericksburg. It was then that General Hunt proposed a bold solution. He suggested that Burnside deploy infantry across the river to engage the sharpshooters directly, effectively proposing urban combat in the heart of Fredericksburg.

Faced with the bridging process grinding to a halt due to enemy fire, General Burnside authorized a daring plan to dislodge the Confederate snipers.

As the plan unfolded, 135 infantrymen from the 7th Michigan and the 19th Massachusetts courageously crowded into small boats, with the 20th Massachusetts following soon after. Colonel Norman Hall, a brigade commander from the nearby Second Corps, volunteered his brigade to row across the Rappahannock. Under enemy fire, these regiments successfully crossed the river and formed a skirmish line to eliminate the Confederate sharpshooters. While some Confederate soldiers surrendered, the fighting intensified as Union and Confederate forces clashed street by street throughout the town. Ultimately, the riflemen were driven from their positions on the riverbank.

By late afternoon, Sumner's Right Grand Division began its crossing at 4:30 p.m., although the bulk of his troops did not complete the crossing until December 12. Hooker's Center Grand Division followed on December 13, utilizing both the northern and southern bridges.

Union artillery unleashed over 5,000 shells upon the town and the ridges to the west, transforming Fredericksburg into a scene of destruction. By nightfall, four Union brigades occupied the town, engaging in looting on a scale hitherto unseen in the war, enraging General Lee, who likened their actions to the ancient Vandals.

December 12: The Slaughter Pen

On December 12, the remainder of Burnside's army successfully crossed the river and established their presence in Fredericksburg. As the evening developed, Burnside formulated a strategy to secure the areas surrounding the town. His plan involved utilizing the nearly 60,000 troops in Major General William B. Franklin's Left Grand Division to crush General Lee's southern flank, commanded by General Jackson. Simultaneously, the rest of Burnside's forces would maintain General Longstreet's position on Marye's Heights and provide support to Franklin if required.

However, the planning that evening left everyone in a state of uncertainty. Despite Burnside's verbal instructions, which outlined a primary attack by Franklin, supported by General Hooker on the southern flank, with General Sumner leading a secondary attack on the northern flank, his written orders on the morning of December 13 were vague and confusing to his subordinates. These orders did not reach Franklin until 7:15 or 7:45 a.m., and when they did, they differed from Franklin's expectations. Rather than ordering a full-scale assault by the entire grand division, Burnside instructed Franklin to maintain his position but send "a division at least" to seize Prospect Hill around Hamilton's Crossing. Simultaneously, Sumner was to send one division through the city and up Telegraph Road, with both flanks ready to commit their entire commands. Burnside appeared to anticipate that these limited attacks would intimidate Lee into withdrawal.

Franklin, who had initially advocated a vigorous assault, interpreted Burnside's order conservatively. Map inaccuracies further compounded the confusion. Interestingly, Burnside's use of the word "seize" conveyed less forcefulness in 19th-century military terminology than the command "to carry" the heights.

The attack finally began when General Reynolds led the way, selecting General George Meade to initiate the movement. However, substantial artillery fire from Pelham's Cavalry artillery and later Walker's artillery on Prospect Hill delayed Meade's advance until nearly 1 PM. The attack eventually gained momentum, but Jackson had concealed approximately 35,000 Confederate troops on a wooded ridge.

The battle on the southern end of the field, known as the Slaughter Pen, resulted in heavy casualties on both sides. General A.P. Hill's poor performance at Fredericksburg led to a significant portion of Confederate casualties in Jackson's corps. A triangular patch of woods extending beyond the railroad, swampy and dense with underbrush, created a 600-yard gap between the brigades of Brigadier Generals James H. Lane and James J. Archer. Brigadier General Maxcy Gregg's brigade was stationed approximately a quarter mile behind this vulnerable gap. Meade's 1st Brigade entered the gap, ascended the railroad embankment, and turned right into the underbrush, catching Lane's brigade in the flank. This maneuver enabled Meade to attack both Confederate brigades from the flank.

However, Gregg, for unknown reasons, ordered his troops not to fire, believing mistakenly that the approaching Union forces were friendly. It is suspected that his partial deafness may have prevented him from hearing the sounds of battle and gunfire. Tragically, he was struck in the spine by a minie ball and succumbed to his injuries two days later. As the situation escalated, Archer called for Gregg to send reinforcements, but by then, Gregg's brigade had suffered defeat. Early and Taliaferro moved their divisions to cover the gap, effectively halting Meade's advance. A counterattack by Early and a counter-counter charge by Union generals Gibbon and Birney eventually forced the Confederates to withdraw into the hills south of town. Had Franklin supported Meade with all of his men the gap might have led to a rout.

The main Union assault against Jackson initially achieved success. In an area later known as the Slaughter Pen, Major General George G. Meade's division briefly penetrated Jackson's line, posing a threat to the Confederate right. However, a lack of coordinated reinforcements and Jackson's resolute counterattack thwarted the Union effort. The battle resulted in heavy casualties on both sides, with neither gaining a significant advantage.

December 12: Marye’s Heights

On the northern end of the battlefield, Brig. Gen. William H. French's division of the II Corps stood ready to advance, despite facing a barrage of Confederate artillery fire raining down upon the fog-shrouded city of Fredericksburg. General Burnside had instructed Maj. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner, the commander of the Right Grand Division, to send "a division or more" to secure the high ground west of the city. This move was initially seen as a diversionary tactic, with the main thrust of the Union assault expected to occur in the south. . General Burnside's orders to Maj. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner, commander of the Right Grand Division, was to send "a division or more" to seize the high ground to the west of the city, assuming that his assault on the southern end of the Confederate line would be the decisive action of the battle.

Marye’s Heights, a prominent geographic feature overlooking the river and the city, presented an imposing obstacle. The low ridge, composed of several hills separated by ravines, including Taylor's Hill, Stansbury Hill, Marye's Hill, and Willis Hill, rose 40–50 feet above the surrounding plain. This gives an impression that it’s not an especially steep approach. While the approach was relatively open, it was punctuated by scattered houses, fences, and gardens, hindering the movement of Union forces. To reach the base of the heights, Union soldiers had to leave the relative cover of the city, descend into a valley crossed by a water-filled canal ditch, and then ascend an exposed slope of 400 yards.

Close to the crest of the ridge, specifically Marye's Hill and Willis Hill, a narrow lane in a slight depression known as the Sunken Road was protected by a 4-foot stone wall, supplemented with log breastworks in some areas. Initially, McLaws had placed about 2,000 Confederate soldiers on the front line of Marye's Heights, with an additional 7,000 in reserve positions on the crest and behind the ridge. At the front of Longstreet's position, the Sunken Road was packed with Confederates three ranks deep. Confederate artillery covered the plain below, making it a deadly approach. General Longstreet had received assurance from his artillery commander, Lt. Col. Edward Porter Alexander, that they could effectively sweep the field with gunfire: "General, we cover that ground now so well that we will comb it as with a fine-tooth comb. A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it."

Burnside's original diversionary attack against Longstreet's defensive position behind the stone wall resulted in horrendous Union casualties. Wave after wave of Federal troops advanced across the open ground, only to be met with withering rifle and artillery fire from the strongly fortified Confederate position. Lee, witnessing the carnage, famously remarked, "It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it."

The initial plan had been to distract Longstreet with this attack while the main effort took place elsewhere, but when the secondary engagement at the Slaughter Pen stalled, this ill-fated assault became the primary focus of the battle.

Sumner's Right Grand Division was the force behind the initial assault, which began at noon, kicking off a relentless sequence of attacks that persisted until nightfall. As Northern forces moved out of Fredericksburg, Longstreet's artillery rained destruction upon them. The Union troops encountered a perilous bottleneck at the canal ditch, crossed by only three narrow bridges. Once they surmounted this obstacle, they formed shallow battle lines, seeking cover behind a slight bluff that provided concealment but no protection.

The order for the final advance echoed across the field. The terrain beyond the canal ditch offered little cover, with few buildings and fences. Southern cannons wasted no time resuming their barrage on these exposed targets. As Federals covered about half the remaining distance, a torrent of bullets erupted from the Sunken Road, causing severe casualties. Survivors sought refuge behind a small depression in the ground or retreated to the safety of the canal ditch valley.

Darius Couch and the II Corps were at the forefront of this attack. His corps was ordered to assault the Confederate position at the base of Marye's Heights overlooking Fredericksburg. From the courthouse cupola, Couch watched as French's division, followed by Hancock's division and then Howard's, suffered heavy casualties. The II Corps alone sustained 4,000 casualties in this part of the battle. One may wonder why a flank attack was not attempted instead of a direct assault; in fact, Couch ordered Howard to march his division toward the right and flank the Confederate defenses, but the terrain did not permit such a maneuver; all such attempts were crowded back to the center.

Why Did Burnside order this attack?

The Assault on Marye's Heights resulted in a casualty rate estimated at 15-20% for Union troops, contributing to a total Union casualty count of 8,000. Although the assault was tactically devastating, it had minimal strategic impact on the war. It became the most one-sided Confederate victory in the war, yet it did not alter the overall trajectory of the conflict.

Several factors influenced Burnside's decision-making. There was a breakdown in communication and coordination among Union commanders. Burnside received reports of limited success in the diversionary attack on the Confederate right flank, leading him to believe that a more aggressive assault on Marye's Heights was needed to divert Confederate attention. Pressure to achieve a decisive victory and optimism may have clouded his judgment.

Burnside believed in his numerical advantage and hoped to dislodge the Confederate defenders through overwhelming force. Given the circumstances, Marye's Heights seemed the most promising target due to its proximity to the shelter of Fredericksburg and the less steep terrain.

While some subordinate commanders, including General William B. Franklin, expressed reservations, Burnside persisted in ordering piecemeal attacks. Hooker, Sumner, and several others told Burnside it was futile, but he continued to order piecemeal attacks

Aftermath

As darkness descended on the battlefield, strewn with the fallen and the wounded, it became evident that the Confederates had secured a decisive victory. The night resonated with the harrowing cries of the wounded, described as "weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear."

Burnside, undeterred by the grim outcome, issued orders to renew the assaults on December 14, even expressing a desire to personally lead them. However, his subordinates persuaded him against this perilous endeavor. On December 15, Burnside orchestrated a skillful retreat across the Rappahannock River, dismantling the bridges behind his army as they withdrew to Stafford Heights.

As darkness descended upon the battlefield, it revealed a haunting scene of devastation, strewn with the fallen and wounded. The cries of the wounded, described as "weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear," echoed through the night, serving as a grim testament to the horrors of war. The wounded soldiers who lay on the battlefield faced dire circumstances as there were limited means to evacuate them. Many had fallen in front of the Confederate lines, making any rescue attempt perilous and likely to result in even more casualties. Regrettably, many of the wounded likely succumbed to their injuries who might have been saved under different circumstances. Undoubtedly many of the wounded exsanguinated who might have been saved.

As a consequence of this tragedy, the role of Jonathan Letterman, appointed in June 1862 as the medical director of the Army of the Potomac, became pivotal. Letterman initiated a comprehensive overhaul of the Medical Service, armed with a charter from army commander Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan to enact necessary improvements. By the time of the Battle of Antietam in September, Letterman had established a system of forward first aid stations at the regimental level, introducing principles of triage. He implemented standing operating procedures for the intake and treatment of war casualties and was the first to apply management principles to battlefield medicine.

Letterman also introduced mobile field hospitals at division and corps headquarters, along with an efficient ambulance corps that operated under the control of medical staff rather than the Quartermaster Corps. He streamlined the distribution of medical supplies. Regrettably, at Fredericksburg, Letterman's innovative system was often countermanded by Union officers. Nevertheless, it was adopted by the Army of the Potomac and other Union armies after the Battle of Fredericksburg, eventually becoming the official procedure for the intake and treatment of battlefield casualties.

Amidst the grim aftermath, one story of extraordinary compassion emerged. Richard Rowland Kirkland, known as "The Angel of Marye’s Heights," displayed remarkable humanity. Kirkland, a devout Christian, could not ignore the pleas of the dying Union soldiers. Initially denied permission by his commander, Brigadier General Joseph Kershaw, due to concerns for Kirkland's safety, he eventually received approval to assist the wounded Union soldiers, symbolizing a moment of humanity amidst the brutality of war.

The Battle of Fredericksburg was the single most lopsided victory in the war. The outrageous repetitive attacks on Marye’s Heights had led to an unnecessary attack and thousands of casualties. Although profoundly discouraging for Union soldiers and the Northern populace, did not deliver a decisive impact on the overall course of the war. Despite being the most one-sided Confederate victory in the war, it had minimal strategic significance. Confederate morale surged, despite their numerical disadvantage, while Union morale had already suffered due to the replacement of the popular McClellan with Burnside. Burnside's errors in planning and leadership led to rising insubordination and his infamous ineffective second offensive against Lee in January 1863, mockingly referred to as the “Mud March.”

Understanding the lack of a long-term advantage is essential in comprehending the broader dynamics of the Civil War. Although a resounding tactical victory for the Confederacy, the Battle of Fredericksburg proved to be a hollow triumph. The North's vast resources soon compensated for Burnside's losses in manpower and supplies. Conversely, Lee faced difficulties replenishing both missing soldiers and much-needed supplies.

Strength:

- Union: 122,009 (114,000 engaged)

- Confederate: 78,513 (72,500 engaged)

Casualties and losses:

- Union: 12,653 total (1,284 killed, 9,600 wounded, 1,769 captured/missing)

- Confederate: 5,377 total (608 killed, 4,116 wounded, 653 captured/missing)

The casualty ratio was about 2:1, which, when expressed as percentages, equates to approximately 11.1% for the Union and 7.4% for the Confederacy. While it was a clear Confederate victory, the casualties were not as catastrophic as some accounts suggest. Lee's forces suffered 5,300 casualties but inflicted over twice that number of losses on their Union counterparts. Notably, of the 12,600 Federal soldiers killed, wounded, or missing, almost two-thirds fell in front of the formidable stone wall at Marye's Heights.

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The Crossword of Black History: Decoding the Real behind the so-called ‘Paternal Relation’ between Masters and Slaves

For a few centuries, the United States of America has been known as ‘the land of the free and home of the brave.’ Here, Aarushi Anand argues that in the context of slavery, the adage still holds true for the past three centuries, only the narrative gets reversed.

Mid-19th century painting Slaves Waiting for Sale - Richmond, Virginia. By Eyre Crowe.

America was the land of free people, of its native people. With the advent of British imperialism in the eighteenth-century slavery became the norm. Different degrees of freedom coexisted, from the slave stripped completely of liberty to the independent slave-owner who enjoyed a full range of rights. The settlers’ success, however, rested on depriving Native Americans of their land and, in some colonies, importing large numbers of African slaves as laborers. Freedom and lack of freedom expanded together from seventeenth-century to nineteenth-century America. 

In writings from the eighteenth century, the image of the “grateful slave,” becomes commonplace. Such a stereotype provided readers and viewers with what appeared to be a seemingly positive alternative to the injustices of human trafficking and exploitation:  a willing and even desperate captive who served a beloved White master out of gratitude for their good deeds. In the latter half of the century the vision of the “grateful slave” contributed to colonial practices of White supremacy.

Historiographical trends in analyzing relationship between master and slave

By the 1960s, U.B. Phillips had become a paradigm for the racist and regressive aspects of slave historiography. He substantiates his arguments by stressing on availability of amenities: adequate food, clothing, housing, medical care, along with instruction in contemporary technologies to “civilise" the slaves. Only occasionally were slave laws enforced, and owners hardly ever sold their slaves, "except in emergencies." Despite its significance in structuring Southern society, Phillips addresses the unprofitability of enslaved labour which slowed down the industrialization process, restricted crop diversification, and wasted soil fertility. His claim that "a negro was what a white man made him" reflects his beliefs that Blacks were culturally blank and retained few native African qualities after enslavement. 

Innumerable historians have responded unfavourably to Phillips' writings. Historian Kenneth M. Stampp dismantled Phillips' portrayal of benign paternalism and presented a starkly cruel reality to the academics and students of the South. Slaves in Charleston could not “swear, smoke, walk with a cane. or make joyful demonstrations.” For some crimes, Florida's laws permitted branding, mutilation, and even execution. Working hours from sunup to sunset, course food, exacting work, limited medical care were other forms of exploitation.  According to Stampp, absence of paternal authority and no legal sanction for slave marriages weakened the Afro-American kinship system: “the slave woman was first a full-time worker for her owner and only incidentally a wife, a mother and homemaker.” Additionally, the sale of family members separately led to “widespread sexual promiscuity” among both men and women, typified by a Kentucky female slave labour “who had each of her seven children by a different father.” 

Stanley Elkins argues that the origin of North American slavery had capitalistic tendencies which gave paramount rights to slave owners, and barred slaves from appealing to institutions, like the church or the state, which in Spanish America might protect them from some forms of exploitation. The "shock" and trauma of the slave trade, along with the adaptation to the “closed system" of the Southern plantations, resulted in the infantilization of the Afro-Americans and their absolute subservience to authority.

Initiating a new chapter in the debate over slavery, historian Eugene D. Genovese draws upon the writings of U.B. Phillips. Genovese saw the plantations as pre capitalist firms and the slave South as a distinctive civilization that was anti-bourgeois. He contends that plantations were inefficient in the South and that plantation owners were unable to make investments in labour-saving efficiency to preserve the worth of their slaves. His Marxist vision is ironic in the sense that he talks about the slave economy on the one hand, but he minimizes the degree of exploitation in the relationship between slaveholder and slave on the other. He envisioned a mutual acceptance of paternalism by both master and slave. Paternalism contained resistance, perpetuated class rule, and gave slaves moderate bargaining power.

His analysis of slave religion reveals it to be a religion of resignation which was not conducive to revolutionary political or ideological tradition. Slaves had no prophetic heritage, therefore plantation owner’s control over slave religion and Afro-American culture continued to be dictated by the whims of the planters. Genovese discredits the humanity of Africans and emphasizes the Biblical endorsement of human enslavement in order to rebut the abolitionists’ contention that slavery must be abolished on the grounds of Christianity, reason, and property ownership.

Some historians focus on the high rates of slave mortality in the rice plantations, where owners’ absenteeism was frequent, while others stress on the slave trade. In terms of housing slaves had one or two-room cottages that were situated on agricultural fields, had no ventilation and were unbearably hot. They were more susceptible to illnesses than their owners were because of poor nutrition, unhygienic living conditions, and excessive work. Skin irritations, toothaches, rickets, beriberi, and scurvy were all exacerbated by vitamin deficits. Juxta positioned with racist historiography no kind slave owner would disperse familial groups, sever the bond of father and child, or exploit slaves in the above-mentioned manner.

Debunking the narrative of father-son relationship through slave resistance

Emphasis on African antecedents provides a viable interpretive framework for understanding the subtle ways in which they provided resistance. Slaves typically hold out to music from their native countries. This implies preservation of their own culture through the memorialization of their homeland in songs, poems, and fables was a kind of resistance to white civilization. Sabotage, sluggish labour rates, and escape from plantations were the more visible forms of resistance. To limit the quantity of their services slaves encouraged their masters to underestimate their intelligence by damaging tools and feigning illnesses. Depending on the severity of the white master's brutality or the type of order disobeyed, the penalties varied from starvation and limited ration to physical violence and death. The number of laws enacted to keep the institution working gives clinching evidence of the amount of resistance slaves offered. 

An additional form of resistance was the occasional murder of overseers or masters. Additionally, slaves who had access to the master's residence would make attempts to assassinate them. One of those suspected of killing the master was the barber (as he got extremely close to him when providing grooming services and had access to long blades for shaving). Another strategy is to inflict severe discomfort or a bleeding nose on the master. People with access to a White man's household, such as female slave servants, could kill the occupants by slow poisoning, which involves putting a small amount of arsenic in meals to simulate kidney failure and demonstrate natural death.

Female experience of slavery

New work on gender and slavery throws light on the experiences and extent of resistance offered by women. Sexuality imposed an implicit price constraint on the worth of enslaved labour. The cost of female slave labour was cheaper than male slave labour, particularly when planters applied to black women the same tax-exempt status that applied to white female servants. Slave pregnancy was one of the best ways for a slave owner to increase slave numbers without being forced to buy new ones. To curb sexual attacks on White women Black females were originally brought from Africa to act as companions (sexual gratification) for the male slaves. 

Slavery, according to some historians, was an opening for a white man's sexual playground. Female slaves received the nickname "Fancy maids," and they were auctioned off into the "fancy trade." This "fancy trade" was expressly established to sell mixed-race women for sexual liaison and trafficking. Female slaves frequently attempted to flee, but since they were more concerned with the welfare of their children, their mobility was restricted and likelihood of capture raised. In addition to their physical labour, women's reproductive work was aggressively exploited. As a result slave women suffered from difficulties arising due to birthing complications, and sexually transmitted infections. To provide resistance, women in the fertile stage practiced birth control and abortion to avoid remaining in a perpetual state of pregnancy.  Thus, in the lives of slave women, financial affairs and the biological process entwined in intricate and tragic ways.

Historian Ira Berlin rightly contends that comprehending the economic, social, and political evolution of North America, particularly the United States, requires confronting slavery's key role in the nation's foundation. While the ruthless oppression of slaves constituted the foundation of colonial American society, traditional historians viewed the dehumanizing institution through rose-tinted spectacles. The revisionists' study of data pertaining to several fugitive laws, reports on death, violence and an agonizing living experience of slaves destroy the conception of a father-child bond between slave and slave owner. When Eric Foner remarked "parents do not typically sell their children," the institution’s non-paternalistic, exploitative bent gets highlighted. No wonder slavery is referred to as the nation's original sin.

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References

·       Genovese, E.D. (2011). Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. 9th edition. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

·       Morris, Richard B. "The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. By Kenneth M. Stampp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1956. Pp. xxi, 435. $5.75." The Journal of Economic History 18.1 (1958): 89-90.

·       Genovese, Eugene. (1989). The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.

·       Stampp, K. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. New York: Vintage, 1989.

·       Deborah Gray White; ‘The Nature of Female Slavery’; “Aren’t I am Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South”; W.W. Norton and Company.