You forgot the bit where they executed a score of rebel officers? It was....rather memorable.
A Glorious Union or America: the New Sparta
- Thread starter TheKnightIrish
- Start date
You forgot the bit where they executed a score of rebel officers? It was....rather memorable.
Indeed. I have no problem with the quote itself, it just sounds off coming from Lincoln.
Chapter One Hundred 1863 - A Year in Events
Chapter One Hundred
1863 - A Year in Events
1863 would see significant increase in the development of the American Union but it would also see a flame put to a number of powder kegs across the globe:
United States:
· West Virginia is admitted as a state;
· Arizona and Idaho become territories;
· Ground is broken on the trans-continental railroad;
· The National Currency Act is passed; and
· President Lincoln declares a national day of Thanksgiving on 5th November to celebrate Union victories.
Internationally
· First section of the London Underground is opened;
· Cambodia becomes a French protectorate;
· Formation of the Red Cross;
· The January Uprising amongst Polish-Lithuanian officers;
· Fighting between Britain, France, Netherlands, US and Japanese forces in the Shimonoseki straits;
· Christian IX succeeds to the throne of Denmark and signs the November constitution; and
· There are significant developments in both Mexico and China…
"Chinese" Gordon - Commander of the Ever Victorious Army
From “An Empire of Hubris – China and the Great Powers: 1793-1885” by Prof. Edgar McCartney
Oxford University Press 1982
“…Brilliant but erratic, Gordon managed to pull the Ever Victorious Army together and once again employ it with effect against the Taip’ings. Like Ward, he worked closely with Li, although he, too, chafed at the Kiangsu governor’s administrative practices – most particularly his consistently dilatory payment of the force. in fact, at several points during Gordon’s tenure as commander of the EVA, he and Li had basic disagreements that threatened to undermine their cooperative venture. On at least two occasions prior to Soochow, the EVA and the Anhwei Army nearly came to blows…
Li-Hung-chang - Governor of Kiangsu
The final break occurred between Li and Gordon in late 1863 after the Kiangsu governor had executed several high ranking Taip’ing leaders who had surrendered the strategic city of Soochow to the Anhwei Army on September 4, having received Gordon’s personal guarantee of their safety. This so called Soochow Incident provoked a huge outcry on the part of Westerners in China. At Shanghai representatives of the foreign powers denounced Li in a strongly worded public proclamation. Gordon, humiliated and outraged, threatened to restore Soochow to the rebels, attack Li’s troops with his foreign led EVA, and even join the Taip’ings. The British Commander in Chief, General W.G. Brown directed Gordon to “suspend all active aid to the Imperialist [i.e. Ch’ing] cause”, and the British minister Frederick Bruce, informed the Ch’ing authorities that Gordon could hold no communication with Li-Hung-chang “or in any way be under his orders”…
The Chinese government for its part felt Li’s response to the situation at Soochow had been perfectly appropriate in light of the threatening behaviour of the surrendered rebel leaders, and that foreign powers had no right or reason to become involved in the matter…
Anson Burlingame
With passions still high and matters at a diplomatic impasse, the Tsungli Yamen hoped to use the sympathy of the newly appointed Inspector General, Robert Hart, to help cool European anger. However Hart was engaged in another foreign relations debacle arising from the stopover of the CSS Rapidan, under Captain James Waddell, at Tientsin, to offload captured Union cargos. Waddell had been pursued by Captain David McDougal and the USS Wyoming. Waddell’s old French made vessel which had come into Confederate service via Spain and then Chile had almost succumbed to McDougal during an epic month long pursuit but had lost him off the islands of southern Japan. The American emissary to China, Anson Burlingame, was incandescent with rage that the Chinese government would allow rebels to sell captured goods in its ports…
The CSS Rapidan off Nagasaki, Japan
With Hart and the Tsungli Yamen distracted by the Rapidan crisis, the relationship between Li and Gordon continued to deteriorate. Li was encouraged to consider “impeaching” Gordon for insubordination. General Brown urged that the EVA be disbanded immediately “leaving the Chinese to fight their own battles”. The North China Herald editorialized “we are glad that… Major Gordon will refrain from farther [sic] operations. It is by such means only that the Chinese can be acted on. It is hopeless to appeal to their sense of honour, for they have none…”
Li greatly resented these foreign insults, but he was also anxious to placate Gordon despite encouragement from the Ch’ing government to “impeach” Gordon. He therefore sent Dr. Halliday Macartney, who had also recently entered Li’s service as an independent adviser and arsenal supervisor, to see Gordon immediately in an attempt to placate the enraged commander. Yet instead Macartney warned Gordon that Li was like to “impeach” Gordon which Gordon assumed meant he was to be arrested…
Gordon would not resign, his love of battle and the command of an army were too heady a joy for a mere major of engineers to abandon. Yet the fate of Ch’ing prisoners was all to clear to Gordon. It was at this time that Gordon was informed that the detested the mercenary officer, Henry Burgevine, was mediating a return to the rebels; and that there were upwards of 300 Europeans ready to join them…”
From "The Mexican Adventure through American Eyes" by David Hofstedder
LUS 1996
“On April 17, after a bitter two month siege, the Mexican army in Puebla surrendered. Twenty six generals and 16,500 men went into the bag. Despite the courage of the Mexican defence, it was staggering blow to the Liberal cause. On May 31, 1863 Juárez withdrew with the government to San Luis Potosí, 400 miles to the northwest. One week later the French marched into Mexico City. Gen. Forey then ordered the selection of thirty five 'notables', nearly all Conservatives, to form a Junta Superior de Gobierno. These then selected a three man regency council which wasted no time in proclaiming Mexico an empire, and offered the throne to the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, exactly as planned.
Generals Forey and Bazaine
Over the next six months, the French, under their aggressive new commander, Marshal François Achille Bazaine, gradually secured control over much of the country. By the end of 1863, Juárez had been forced to retreat from San Luis Potos¡ to Saltillo, some four hundred miles still further north. Meanwhile the French and the Mexican exiles were able to woo the somewhat uncertain Maximilian to assume the throne.
As the Republicans were pushed into the bare, sparsely populated north, Juárez had to deal with growing defections to the Imperial cause. The Liberal state governors were powers in their own right, and Juárez needed all his diplomatic skills to keep them in line. Most dangerous was Gov. Vidaurri of the two northeastern states of Coahuila and Nuevo León. With access to the Texas border, Vidaurri was raking in a fortune in customs revenue channelling foreign trade into the blockaded Confederacy. Vidaurri had a direct relationship with General Kirby-Smith and this would prove critical in the year to come…
He conveniently kept this revenue for himself, parlaying himself into a virtually independent warlord. In the winter of 1863/64 Juárez tried to move his capital to Monterrey, the capital of Vidaurri's mini-empire, and Vidaurri balked. Juarez still had 7,000 men, enough of an army to eventually force Vidaurri to flee into Texas and ultimately defect to the Imperial cause, though only after clashes between their forces, but even though "victorious" the weakness of Juárez's position was clear…"
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Allow me to go a step further. Does anyone know where I can go to vote on the Turteldove award?
You've missed the boat. Voting closed on 1st Feb. TKI came third in his class.
China - interesting butterfly. Gordon could make eastern and southern China a real hornets nest if he breaks with the Imperials. If I recall correctly the EVA was personally loyal to him with many believing he had magic powers (he led every attack with a swagger stick or the equivalent but otherwise unarmed and was never hurt).
Not sure I see any changes in Mexico yet...
Not sure I see any changes in Mexico yet...
Now begins my work on three big topics:
Of course the Union's enemies enemies have one last desperate mad option left to try to stave off defeat...
Comments, observations, expectations, hopes etc appreciated.
- The Campaigns of 1864
- The Plans for a Radical Reconstruction
- The Elections of 1864
Of course the Union's enemies enemies have one last desperate mad option left to try to stave off defeat...
Comments, observations, expectations, hopes etc appreciated.
A really implausibly, anachronistically early A-tomic bomb, invented by Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless, planted under Washington DC by Confederate sappers?
Chapter One Hundred and One Great Men and Their Ladies
Chapter One Hundred and One
Great Men and Their Ladies
From “The King and his Heir – Lincoln and Kearny in the Civil War” by Robert Todd Lincoln II
Grafton Press 1939
"In the early days of 1864 John Hay records one notable instance of the President and Mrs Lincoln arguing over Mrs Lincoln's failure to invite Mrs. Kearny to one of the many receptions held at that time. John Hay records that the "Tycoon and the lady have had the most terrible row because Mrs Kearny has once again been left off the guest list. Little as the Tycoon takes account of these things he has only now noticed"...
The matter was put to rights and the President and Mrs Lincoln received Mrs Kearny for the first time..."
Agnes Kearny nee Maxwell
From “Kearny the Magnificent” by Roger Galton
NorthWestern 2005
"Over a hundred years after their death history has sought to ignore the slights gallant General Kearny suffered on behalf of his wife during the war…
When General Kearny was promoted to command of the Army of the Potomac, not long after the death of his son Archibald "Archie" Kennedy Kearny, his wife Agnes took a house in Washington to be closer to her husband when the occasion permitted. It should have opened up a world of social occasions and gatherings to the wife of a commanding general. It did not. In her first month in Washington only two injured officers, formerly of her husband's staff, called upon her…
His victories won him both honor and forgiveness for what society perceived as his past crimes, but no garland's won by Phil Kearny, it seemed, could erase the stain that Agnes had lived "in sin" with him as his mistress abroad for years before he finally obtained a divorce and married her…
President Lincoln had a practiced disinterest in formal social gatherings so apparently necessary to a politician, so it is perhaps unsurprising that it was some months before he realised that General Kearny no longer attended social gatherings in Washington as he once had. General Kearny was often "the only person worth talking to other than myself" the President would say. Kate Chase characterised Kearny as "by far the most gallant and entertaining gentleman in Washington...no occasion is complete without the General". That changed when Agnes arrived in Washington. She received no invites and though the General did, he would not accept an invite without her and she would not trespass uninvited…
Mary Todd Lincoln
When the President finally discovered the reason for General Kearny's unsociability, (unsurprisingly from William Seward, Mrs Lincoln's bête noire), he flew into one of his rare rages with his wife. Not only would the President call upon Mrs Kearny that very afternoon, he would bring Secretary Seward and General Hooker [then in Washington] in tow. Mrs Lincoln exclaimed that they would all be disgraced in the company of such a woman. The President rejoined that not only would he call upon the lady but that she would be invited to join them at the theatre that very evening and, if Mrs Lincoln refused to attend, why he would invite Secretary Chase and his daughter - let Kate Chase be the hostess for the evening. She would not refuse the President.
John Hay recalls it as among the worst arguments the Lincolns had, "as the President mostly avoided such confrontations at all events" except when some great principle was transgressed…
Kate Chase - Mrs Lincoln's chief competition as the "Government's foremost hostess"
Mrs Kearny was extremely pleased to receive the President, Secretary Seward and General Hooker. She was even more pleased to accept the President's invitation to the theatre though in her letter to her husband, then with the Army of the Potomac in southern Virginia,`she had more to say "An excellent performance...Mr Booth was exceptional. He was made for the part of Brutus...Poor Mrs Lincoln did seem rather out of sorts. I suspect it was one of her often discussed headaches". Agnes Kearny was an intelligent, observant woman. It can be surmised she sought to spare her husband's feelings while knowing the truth of Mrs Lincoln's discomfort. However, though Agnes' period of exile was over, it would not be the last time that the relationship between Phil Kearny and his wife would be a matter of public scandal..."
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Women! In a Civil War TL! Are you quite mad?!
Thanks for not forgetting about us as many here do. This will prove interesting if Kearny pursues a political career.
I suspect Seward has earned himself a telling off from his wife Frances for getting involved! I wonder if this is also why Kearny tolerates the army's more colourful characters like Hooker and Sickles - because his own reputation has been tainted by scandal?
It would be interesting to see a bit of a slackening in Victorian morals in the US with Kearny and his wife, and of course Hooker and his reputation being more popular and therefore tolerated.
Thanks for not forgetting about us as many here do. This will prove interesting if Kearny pursues a political career.
I suspect Seward has earned himself a telling off from his wife Frances for getting involved! I wonder if this is also why Kearny tolerates the army's more colourful characters like Hooker and Sickles - because his own reputation has been tainted by scandal?
It would be interesting to see a bit of a slackening in Victorian morals in the US with Kearny and his wife, and of course Hooker and his reputation being more popular and therefore tolerated.
Good to see Lincoln didn’t suffer a headache at the theater.
A nice touch upon the Washington social scene. I’m currently making my way through “An American Lion” about Andrew Jackson’s Presidency and one of the key points of contention was the Petticoat Affair, which pretty much summed up how screwed up high society could be back then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petticoat_affair
Between this and the earlier update about the woman who shot Nathan Forrest, I applaud you for touching on a oft-forgotten part of the Civil War, not just how women were involved, but how politics and society played out in Washington.
A nice touch upon the Washington social scene. I’m currently making my way through “An American Lion” about Andrew Jackson’s Presidency and one of the key points of contention was the Petticoat Affair, which pretty much summed up how screwed up high society could be back then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petticoat_affair
Between this and the earlier update about the woman who shot Nathan Forrest, I applaud you for touching on a oft-forgotten part of the Civil War, not just how women were involved, but how politics and society played out in Washington.
I feel sorry for the Rebels. Secretary Breckinridge will be hitting the bottle and Joe Johnston will be advising "Retreat. Retreat!". Longstreet will be defensive minded (much more so than Lee). I wonder if there is any way he and Jackson can regain the initiative - Longstreet better understood the idea of strategic offensive, tactical defensive I think than Lee did.
Hardee and Cleburne will give Grant a few bloody noses I suspect but Atlanta must fall. And Magruder versus McClernand is likely a side show.
Is Beauregard still in command at Charleston? Has he any troops left to face Rodman?
I cankt see how the rebels can convince themselves they stand a chance.
I liked that as well, though if my connection - Dickinson College - was mentioned I've forgotten it. Incidentally, the graduation ceremony at Dickinson involves walking down the central corridor of a building now known as Old West. It was commandeered as a war hospital during the invasion, and due to hurry and the main floor being accessible only by stairway, amputated limbs were apparently just thrown out the windows rather than being carted out.
My guess is that French probably made his HQ in the old courthouse (sturdiest building on the square). From what I remember, Knight Irish indicated that most fighting was south of town, then French pulled out across the conodoguinet. I doubt many of the buildings of Dickenson were contested, though confederates may have occupied the town briefly, as per OTL.
Side note: I lived very close to Dickenson College for a couple of years; just down the block from some of the dorms on Louther Street.
Anyway, looking forward to more!
Chapter One Hundred and Two The Lost Cause
Chapter One Hundred and Two
The Lost Cause
The Lost Cause
Southern Strategy in 1864 Discussion Group at the 38th Annual Civil War Conference at Louisiana State University hosted by Dr. Kent Smith...
"Today we will examine that vexed question - what should have been the Confederate strategy in 1864? The winter period as 1863 turned to 1864 was one of intense preparation for the Union army. General Kearny formulated, what many consider, was his first all-theatre campaign strategy. On the Confederate side the Confederate leadership, most notably in the form of General Joseph E. Johnston and Secretary of War Breckinridge, struggled with the plans for the coming campaigns in Georgia and the Carolinas.
Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge
Outnumbered on all fronts and with major logistical problems Chief of Staff Joe Johnston felt his options were limited. We are going to ask if he made the right decisions...
Joining me today in examining the campaign are:
Grafton Lowe, historian and expert on the western theatre;
Professor Guy Enterton our resident expert on Joe Johnston here at LSU; and
retired Major General John A. Warden III who has made the Carolinas campaign his special area of study.
Gentlemen at the opening of 1864 there were four Confederate departments under direct authority from Atlanta. Northern Georgia under General William Hardee and containing the Army of Tennessee (with newly incorporated elements of the former Army of Mississippi); Southern Georgia and Western Florida under Lieutenant General John B. Magruder with his one corps; the optimistically named Virginia and North Carolina department under General James Longstreet and his Army of Northern Virginia; and finally South Carolina and East Florida under General Beauregard containing no more than two divisions worth of scattered troops.
Beyond Atlanta's control was the largely isolated command of East Tennessee under Ben Cheatham which was about to face George Thomas' corps, and of course the Department of the Trans-Mississippi under Edmund Kirby Smith.
The question for us today gentlemen is what, if any, option did the Confederate leadership have and did they make the right choices in light of the coming campaigns?
GL: The rebel forces were numerically inferior on every front. As matters stood they could expect to be overwhelmed eventually as a result. Braxton Bragg had shown the Confederates the way in 1863. They needed to use their interior lines to obtain numerically equality or even superiority on at least one front. Indeed William Hardee generously suggested to Joe Johnston, in a letter in January 1864, that he could slow down Grant's and Hooker's advance on Atlanta with fewer men. He offered one of his three corps for reassignment. Joe Johnston rejected that offer, primarily for political reasons - no one wanted to reduce the defenses of the capitol - but that was a mistake. With another corps Magruder could have overwhelmed McClernand's force for example or it could have helped Beauregard repel Rodman's invasion of South Carolina had it materialized...
GE: I think that's unfair to Joe Johnston. Firstly no one in the Confederate high command had any reason to expect an invasion of South Carolina from the sea. Since Phil Kearny took command the Union Army had focused on concentrating its forces against rebel field armies and had largely ignored combined arms operations with the navy. Rodman's invasion was a bolt from the blue that could not then have been reasonably been expected.
Secondly what good would a victory over McClernand's Army of Alabama done? It was a gnat. As Louis Wigfall put it "you don't worry about swatting a fly when there are a couple of bears at your door". The North Georgia and North Carolina fronts were where the Confederacy needed a victory but numerical parity was impossible on either of those fronts. The north Georgia terrain would have allowed for a defence perhaps with fewer troops, but one of Hardee's corps would have been a drop in the ocean on the North Carolina front. Longstreet was massively outnumbered in men, and in material. The Piedmont plateau had limited opportunities for Longstreet to force one of the defensive battles he so desperately sought. The ground was better on the tidewater side but Longstreet barely had the troops to face Reynolds' Army of the Potomac, never mind Peck's Army of the James on that flank.
Thirdly and finally this whole idea ignores one major issue - logistics. The Confederate infrastructure in the remaining four states under direct government control was now at breaking point. Georgia, Florida and North Carolina had agreed to remove the last remaining military exemptions to maximise manpower. South Carolina would soon follow. This resulted in large manpower and skills shortages in the Confederate economy. The roads system was an underdeveloped mess, and the rail system was deteriorating rapidly. Under exclusive military control in two states [Georgia and North Carolina] and without replacement rails and equipment the rail system was collapsing. The extent to which the supply shortage was actually a real shortage or an issue of not getting it to where it was needed is a real question at this point. The idea that the Confederates could simply move corps about like pieces on a chessboard is ludicrous, particularly at a time when infrastructure failures are resulting in bread riots returning for a third year to Confederates cities...
JAW: I have got to agree with Professor Enterton. Joe Johnston and John Breckinridge simply didn't have a lot of choices at the start of 1864. What choices they may have had evaporated with Rodman's arrival in South Carolina and the Charleston panic.
I think we have got to accept, as Longstreet did, that a military victory in the war at this point for the Confederacy was inconceivable. The most the Confederates could hope to achieve was to hold the Union forces off till the autumn, dealing out a bloody rollcall of northern dead, in the hope that a Democratic victory in the fall would bring the Union to the peace table. In light of the hardening attitude of the northern public we know that that hope may have been even more of a pipe-dream than a military victory but it was certainly what realistic Confederates hoped and believed was possible.
We also have to bear in mind that Johnston and Breckinridge were not independent of the rest of Confederate Government. The Cabinet Revolt had not made the army dictators. Politicians still ruled the roost. No faction wished to see the defenses of Atlanta denuded of troops even though it was on that front that a defensive posture could have been best adopted with fewer troops.
Perhaps the only place where a dramatic event might have occurred is on the Texas front. Kirby Smith still had a sizable well supplied force at his disposal. The problem was that three Union occupied states and the US Navy interrupted any communication between Smith and Atlanta. A Smith strike towards Baton Rouge threatening New Orleans might have drawn troops westwards - McClernand or perhaps Thomas. But in the end it would only have meant a longer war and I don't think anyone here believes that any result on the field was going to change the outcome of the 64 Presidential election. So in the end its academic. The Confederacy was doomed by 1864 regardless...
Kearny's plan is called a return to the Anaconda Plan. Kearny said it was "noisier than an Anaconda and has more bite. More like a rattler." Thus Kearny's Rattlesnake Plan was born...
GL: So ultimately Johnston advised that everyone remain on the defensive and avoid battle unless a positive outcome was assured. He advised that they trade space for time where they could. Breckinridge hoped overconfident Yankees would offer up an opportunity somewhere to strike back effectively. A victory, any victory would stir up morale but it was left to individual army commanders to decide when that might be possible. Instead Breckinridge and Johnston focused their efforts in maximising manpower and ordnance. The government in Atlanta had effectively vetoed any redeployment of troops leaving Johnston and Breckinridge to the job of provosts marshal and quartermasters in chief. Your saying they hoped for best but sought not to take too many risks. That was a poor decision in my opinion...
Moderator: Let's open up the discussion to our audience...
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