bguy
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How did Sherman's career survive the Second Mexican War? The defense of San Francisco wasn't exactly impressive.
TL-191: Filling the Gaps
- Thread starter Craigo
- Start date
How did Sherman's career survive the Second Mexican War? The defense of San Francisco wasn't exactly impressive.
Turtledove wrote about attacks on New York, Boston and the Great Lake Cities. I imagine that most commanders didn't come off well in that war, whether they were in charge of coastal defenses or infantry in Kentucky. Most battles were a disaster and the army hasn't gotten through firing all the bad commanders. The TL-191 army was kind of terrible in that period and San Francisco barely had any defenses. Plus in OTL Sherman retired in 1885, so they could have been letting him retire.
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yeah, but he is old army. He remained in the army before secession and during. plus, he does have politial connections.
I have my own theory on that, based on a chance comment in chapter 16 of How Few Remain:
Military Courts in the Union army, 1863-4
In the aftermath of the Battle of Camp Hill, Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet fell into open warfare over their next course of action. Some like Edward Bates pressed for the opening of peace talks with the Confederacy in order to salvage as much as possible from the ruin, while others were determined to die in the last ditch to preserve the Union. Chief amongst the latter was Edwin McMasters Stanton, secretary of war, a Democrat in a Republican cabinet who owed his position to a combination of administrative ability and a heartfelt detestation of secession. When continued bad news from the Western theatre finally persuaded Lincoln to accept offers of international mediation, Stanton was left determined to root out and punish those responsible for the defeat.
As Stanton brooded, his Republican colleagues calculated. The party had taken a heavy beating in the Congressional election, and feared worse in the coming years as bad news continued to come in. A significant minority of cabinet members and other party grandees considered the only way to stave off this coming disaster was to deflect blame from the political leadership onto the military. Though they had written off Lincoln’s prospects, seeing his descent into melancholy following the defeat as a sign of his unfitness for power, they still believed it was possible to salvage the party’s fortunes beyond 1864. Before the peace conference opened in Quebec, secretary of state Seward and Benjamin Wade, Radical Republican leader of the Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War met Stanton at his home in Franklin Square to suggest a course of action that would suit both their needs.
In September 1863, Wade’s committee announced the results of its investigation into the management of the war. It announced that the defeat was entirely due to the army’s West Point-trained officers, hinting at cowardice, defeatism and secret Confederate loyalties among their ranks. Much of its ire was directed towards George McClellan, who it accused of squandering the greatest army ever fielded in North America, and his collection of incompetent subordinates, though the five hundred page report also had ample room for criticism of the effort in the western theatre. The published report itself went through six official editions, but its accusations were brought to a much wider audience in a flurry of unofficial handbills, pamphlets and broadsheets which reprinted its conclusions and added their own salacious, often speculative commentary.
Following the publication of the report, Stanton announced that courts-martial would be instituted against a number of officers for their performance in the war. Unwilling to risk any indecisive verdicts, he packed the courts with carefully selected Republican officers to ensure convictions were delivered. Some of these officers, such as David Hunter, James Garfield and Benjamin Prentice, had served on the prototype court-martial of FitzJohn Porter: however, even relative novices like James Henry Lane and John C. Fremont soon understood what was expected of them. The first verdict cashiering Don Carlos Buell was delivered just before Christmas 1863, with the second condemning Joseph Hooker shortly afterwards.
To Stanton’s grim satisfaction and the almost undisguised glee of the Republicans, those on trial began to air their frustrations and resentments in public. Ulysses Grant was thrown to the wolves by both Charles Smith Hamilton and John Alexander McClernand, the least of the lengthy recitation of his sins being the open drunkenness to which the defeat had driven him. William Rosecrans also chose to appear as a witness against Grant, thus escaping the court-martial of his own that would have been the almost certain result of his quarrel with Stanton. Although Grant chose to jump before he was pushed, fifteen senior Union generals had already been dismissed by the Democratic nomination. However, as the Republicans struggled their way through the campaign, the need for scapegoats intensified- as did the bloodshed.
Though the courts-martial provided volumes of evidence for military incompetence at the highest levels, they were slow to report and were neither shifting public opinion nor satisfying Stanton’s desire to root out those responsible for the defeat. In July 1864, therefore, the war minister began to issue general orders to dismiss officers. He acted against men he considered guilty, often with little more than his personal opinion of their loyalties as proof. Soon these orders were being issued in bulk, often six or seven at a time, with the same familiar boilerplate wording in each case. The peak came in August 1864, when thirty eight generals were dismissed in one day for causes ranging from cowardice in the face of the enemy through corruption and peculation to laudanum addiction. As if to illustrate the slapdash way in which these later purges were conducted, the slip of a clerk’s pen directed a dismissal for gross incompetence at the Battle of Shiloh to Brigadier General T. W. Sherman instead of his fellow brigadier W. T. Sherman, whose army career survived thanks to the indifference of his namesake and his consequent unwillingness to contest his treatment.
The tide of dismissals slowed to a trickle in September 1864, when even the most die-hard Republican could have little hope for the coming election. Their effect, however, lingered long after the election. Some of the Union’s most promising generals had been cashiered; brother officers had testified against one another in the hope of saving their own political and military careers; and the atmosphere of mistrust and dislike lingered in regimental messes for decades afterwards. Some observers saw in the disaster of 1881 the results of the bloodletting of 1864, and the structural reforms of the army which followed the war were, in part, designed to sweep away the last remnants of an officer corps which could not shake off the legacy of its defeat.
Love it. I saw the line about Garfield as being part of these military tribunals for the first time a few months ago. Those little nuggets are my favorite part of this series. That is also largely how i imagined the military tribunals would have played out.
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Emory Upton IV
Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman and Major General Emory Upton met at the newly built Remembrance Train stations. The station was built after the destruction of its predecessor in the Royal Navy raid of 1881. Colonel Sherman at age 65 had a checkered career. Before the WoS (War of Secession), Col. Sherman was known within the army as a capable and intellectual officer. However his performance in the WoS was only shielded from the loyalty committees by the political connections of his brother Senator John Sherman. In the post war period Sherman served primarily on the frontier taking part in campaigns against the Sioux and Apache. He gained a quick reputation for brutality and fairness, one of the few officers advocating giving citizenship to those tribes that submitted. His success gained him command of the garrison at the Presidium opposite the golden gate narrows of San Francisco in 1875.
When the SMW (Second Mexican War) broke out, Col. Sherman was acutely aware that he had little means to deter any kind of attacks on the city. The Presidium had outmoded guns, incapable of penetrating the hulls of modern warship. The Pacific squadron stationed in San Francisco was nothing more than floating relics, lucky not to have been scrapped after the SoW. His own garrison was barely two battalions of infantry and a battalion of coastal artillery, incapable of defending a city of more than 200,000 people. To make up for the cities lack of defenses, he worked with Mayor Adolph Sutro, to organize the citizens of San Francisco into volunteer militia companies. Despite the added help Col. Sherman knew he could not repel a major attack, only minimize the damage it caused to the city. As he struggled to improve the city’s defenses, he also worked to calm the paranoia in the city. He helped to curb the vigilantly committees that sprung up in the city after the outbreak of the war. He insisted in having veto power over any persons the committee recommended for prosecution as spies.
When the attack on San Francisco came in the late fall of 1881, the cities defenses proved as inadequate as Sherman feared. The British Navy sunk the US Pacific Squadron in a few salvos of their main guns and bombarded the city. The British Navy’s superior gunfire quickly silenced the US Coastal guns. The Royal Marines raid on the Mint was well planned and executed. Because of the destruction in the city created by shellfire, Sherman’s infantry could not respond to raid until it was too late. While he could not prevent the raid, his stern administration of the martial law imposed in the aftermath earned the admiration of the citizens of San Francisco. Over the next few years he used what connections he had through his brother to get federal funding to improve the city’s defenses and help rebuild the city. Further endearing him to the people of San Francisco and making the city a center of the Remembrance movement in California.
When Major General Upton arrived in 1885, Colonel Sherman had been the commander of the Presidium garrison for nearly a decade. He was planning on retiring in 1886 and settling with his family in San Francisco. MG Upton quickly came to rely on COL Sherman’s expertise in the San Francisco and the other California, Oregon and Washington Garrisons; that now made up his command. The two quickly learned that they shared similar views on war and how to prepare for its inevitability. Sherman believed that modern war had become so brutal, that only the complete mobilization of a nation could achieve victory. He believed civilians on both side of a conflict would inevitably suffer horribly and only the nation that best marshaled all their nation’s manpower, economic, and political power could prevail. After many late night discussions, Upton gave Colonel Sherman copies of his work on A Military Policy of the United States. After working closely together for several months Upton convinced Col. Sherman to stay on until 1886 and help him finish his book.
While Upton was busy organizing the Pacific Department, Sherman was helping Upton to finish his chapters on the War of Secession. He provided invaluable incite into the costs of military defeats in the War if Secession and Second Mexican War and its effect on the civilian population and government. The two worked on it throughout 1885, Sherman suggested that they have the work edited by Samuel Clemens a newspaper editor and friend he had made in the aftermath of the SMW.
As the Military Policy of the United States, neared its completion a new storm was brewing in Philadelphia. The Remembrance wing of the Democrats was growing in strength, especially throughout New England and the Border States. In both regions a string Remembrance candidates won state gubernatorial elections. Men like Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, Joshua Chamberlain of Maine and Karl Schurz of Missouri won overwhelming victories in states touched by the war. In Philadelphia, Congress was passing legislation for new defense spending. In spring of 1885 Congress passed the New Navy Bill calling for a modern all steel battle fleet, manufactured completely in the United States. A nationally popular measure after the damaged suffered by the nation’s coastal cities. The big gathering fight was over the proposed conscription bill, which called for the creation of a national peacetime draft to meet the manpower requirements of the growing Regular Army.
The Conscription bill would create a Conscription Bureau in the War Department, with offices in each Congressional District throughout the United States. All male citizens were to register with their closest office within a year of their eighteenth birthday. From this body of men, the Conscription Bureau would randomly select a number of them, all between the ages of 18 to 21, to appear for military service. If found fit by the draft board, they served a period of two years on active duty, followed by another eight years as a reservist. Married men, or those with dependent children, could seek a deferment. It also called for the creation of a military reserve force controlled by federal officers to replace the old State Militia system. The Softline Democrats objected to this as an unnecessary escalation tension between the two nations, considering the United States was still recovering from the effects of the last war. President Hendricks objected to the bill’s needless antagonism of the CSA, its violation of states rights and lack of sound basis in the constitution. President Hendricks vowed to veto the bill if it was presented to him.
All throughout 1885 the conscription bill was hotly debated in the national papers and on the floor of house. Socialist Party groups held demonstrations in Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Boston and St. Louis. Socialists and the Softline Democrat factions put up fierce opposition in the House of Representatives. It was during this period that Remembrance Democrats began pressuring Upton to release the Military Policy of the United States. They believed the book could be influential in swaying public opinion in the conscription debate. As a result of this pressure Upton finally release his magnum opus in August 1885, after almost three years of work.
The book was published and distributed almost immediately by Remembrance aligned publishers. It was also serialized in major Remembrance Democrat and Republic newspapers across the country. The Military Policy of the United States quickly created the bombshell that it was intended for. Socialists were mortified by Upton’s argument that "During the late riots of the 1870s and post Second Mexican War Period, had there been available from 25 to 50 battalions of national reserve volunteers, commanded by regular officers, it is possible, and probable, that much of the bloodshed and loss of property might have been avoided. That Army could have quickly put down labor disturbances that were becoming endemic in the nation. " The idea that Upton’s new Big Army could be used to further oppress the workers earned him undying enmity in many Labor Circles.
Soft-line Democrats argued that his goal of a mass peacetime army were directly antithetical to the intentions of the founders. That his push to reforms would undermine the state governments and leave the US no more than a North American Prussia, stripped of the basic liberties the nation fought for over the last century. Further, that the peacetime draft had no basis in the constitution and the creation of a General Staff, with control over the various army departments would remove civilian over-cite from the military.
Critics argued that in his fervor Upton pushed his historical arguments to an extreme—the U.S. could hardly have "prepared" a national military force for the Revolution, when it was not yet a nation. Critics also found his argument for an easy success of a hypothetical pre-War of Secession Regular Army as specious. That a large Regular Army existing before the War of Secession, would only have existed to oppress the southern states which they in turn never would have voted for. When it came to the War of Secession, Upton spewed vindictive on the civilian government administration and very nature of Federalism or any of the policies that frustrated the Union cause. The federal government, he wrote, was trying to "save the Union by fighting as a Confederacy, [while] the Confederates sought to destroy it by fighting as a nation," abandoning states' rights and overriding the prerogatives of state governors in appointing militia officers. Yet this was an exaggeration of Confederate war policy, as the rebel’s central government struggled constantly force local areas to comply with the draft, and governors to send their militia regiments out of state.
Those in the growing Remembrance movement looked at Upton’s work as a blue print for the future, and the means of ultimately obtaining revenge. They used his military criticism as a new club to beat the soft-line democrats and republicans into submission. It struck a particularly strong cord with veterans of the War of Secession and Second Mexican War. It also had a strong effect with the younger generation of Americans, like Theodore Roosevelt, John J. Pershing, Robert Lansing and Henry Cabot Lodge, who resented two decades of humiliation. Many young men in the nations growing middle class were also enthusiastic for Upton’s proposals for new military academies to further their access to education and career opportunities in an enlarged Army.
A vote for the bill in the House of Representatives was scheduled for October, however the sudden death of President Hendricks halted the vote. President Hendricks death came as a shock to the nation; he was the first president to die in office since Zachary Taylor, more than 30 years ago. Many in Remembrance circles openly say with the ascension of Winfield Scott Hancock, their time had finally come. A vote quickly scheduled for January of the New Year in both the house and the Senate. Many believed that Hancock would dismiss General and Chief Hunt and appoint Upton. The call however never came and Upton was forced to watch the battle over conscription from the presidium. Hancock supported a new conscript Army; Hancock however would not support the complete dismantling of the militia system. Hancock believed this was too much of an intrusion on states rights. A compromise was quickly worked out where a reserve force would be created, however draftees could choose where they served their obligatory post Regular Army eight-year reserve time.
The bill passed both houses in January of 1886, Hancock signed the bill into law on January 27th, and died shortly thereafter. After only three months as President, Hancock ushered in the largest change to civil society in United States history. Upon the death of Winfield Scott Hancock, he was replaced by President pro tempor of the Senate Allen Thurman. President Thurman was little inclined to army reform and not in the Remembrance wing of the Democratic Party. President Thurman was content to have the current General in Chief manage the expansion of the Army and maintain a laissez-faire approach to the economy and government.
Seeing that the tide of reform had again dissipated in Philadelphia, Upton focused institutionalizing his ideas of reforms within his own command. He set his staff to drawing up plans to invade British Columbia and Baja California. He mandated the Staff reforms be incorporated on the Battalion and Regimental levels that he introduced in the SoW. Working with Captain Dewey, a rising star in the revitalized Pacific Squadron, the two co-authored a report on the threat posed by the British occupation the Sandwich Islands. He also spent this time helping to cultivate his young officers and organize instruction on German and Confederate military doctrine.
While Upton worked to imbue his department with his philosophy, the army continued to stagnate under General and Chief Hunt. GoC Hunt worked to purchase modern artillery and equipment from Germany, but failed to institute the potential reforms the draft could afford the army. General in Chief Hunt chose only to grow and cultivate the Regular Army grew and not the new draft force. By 1888 the US army had strength of 200,000 and in time of war activate enough state militia to grow to 500,000. The US now possessed some of the most modern artillery in the world.
Upton transformed the Pacific Department Staff from a backwater post to an aggressive finishing school for future officer. Just as the Pacific Department was becoming a sought after post, the new generation of American leadership was reaching out to him. Remembrance Democrats Presidential candidates like Thomas Reed, George A. Custer and John A. Logan, all contacted him for military advice. Not ready to get involved in politics at this stage, Upton restated to all candidates that he stood by the recommendations he made in the Military Policy of the United States and wished all of them luck.
Since two Presidents had died in office a little over a year, the elderly Thurman was passed over by the party Bosses in favor of Speaker of the House Thomas Reed of Maine. His only challenger was the popular governor of New York Grover Cleveland. When the Democratic convention was held in New York City, in august of 1888 many thought New York’s favorite son Governor Cleveland was a shoe in. He would have been in any other year, but Cleveland’s ambivalent attitude towards the United States enemies and the damage New York City and his home city of Buffalo suffered at the hands of British naval bombardment helped transform the primary ballot into a referendum on the future course of the Democratic Party. There was no clear winner on the first ballot, but over the next three ballots delegates slowly turned away from Cleveland and towards the Remembrance candidate. Cleveland’s falling a foul of Tammany Hall, also helped to undermine his viability.
The Cleveland campaigns poor politicking helped to ensure an overwhelming fifth ballot victory for the Remembrance Candidate Thomas Reed. After Thomas Reed secured of the nomination his election was all but ensured. Still Thomas Reed unlike his predecessors and his Republican opponent Chief Justice Garfield, Reed was a vigorous campaigner. His strong anti-Confederate line helped to bring many former Republicans over to his side. When Election day 1888 rolled around Thomas B. Reed won the biggest electoral majority in American history.
Thomas Reeds elections was heralded across the Union with torch light processions. In City’s like Boston, New York, Cleveland, St. Louis, Portland, Buffalo, Rochester and San Francisco young Democrats marched torch light in support of the new Remembrance movement. In San Francisco the parade ended with a march past the presidium where MG Upton and COL Sherman looked on in satisfaction. Within the week President Elect Reed had telegraphed MG Upton with a confidential telegraph that upon his election he would insist on General in Chief Hunt’s dismissal, paving the way for Emory Upton’s nomination as the Army’s senior soldier and master of its destiny.
Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman and Major General Emory Upton met at the newly built Remembrance Train stations. The station was built after the destruction of its predecessor in the Royal Navy raid of 1881. Colonel Sherman at age 65 had a checkered career. Before the WoS (War of Secession), Col. Sherman was known within the army as a capable and intellectual officer. However his performance in the WoS was only shielded from the loyalty committees by the political connections of his brother Senator John Sherman. In the post war period Sherman served primarily on the frontier taking part in campaigns against the Sioux and Apache. He gained a quick reputation for brutality and fairness, one of the few officers advocating giving citizenship to those tribes that submitted. His success gained him command of the garrison at the Presidium opposite the golden gate narrows of San Francisco in 1875.
When the SMW (Second Mexican War) broke out, Col. Sherman was acutely aware that he had little means to deter any kind of attacks on the city. The Presidium had outmoded guns, incapable of penetrating the hulls of modern warship. The Pacific squadron stationed in San Francisco was nothing more than floating relics, lucky not to have been scrapped after the SoW. His own garrison was barely two battalions of infantry and a battalion of coastal artillery, incapable of defending a city of more than 200,000 people. To make up for the cities lack of defenses, he worked with Mayor Adolph Sutro, to organize the citizens of San Francisco into volunteer militia companies. Despite the added help Col. Sherman knew he could not repel a major attack, only minimize the damage it caused to the city. As he struggled to improve the city’s defenses, he also worked to calm the paranoia in the city. He helped to curb the vigilantly committees that sprung up in the city after the outbreak of the war. He insisted in having veto power over any persons the committee recommended for prosecution as spies.
When the attack on San Francisco came in the late fall of 1881, the cities defenses proved as inadequate as Sherman feared. The British Navy sunk the US Pacific Squadron in a few salvos of their main guns and bombarded the city. The British Navy’s superior gunfire quickly silenced the US Coastal guns. The Royal Marines raid on the Mint was well planned and executed. Because of the destruction in the city created by shellfire, Sherman’s infantry could not respond to raid until it was too late. While he could not prevent the raid, his stern administration of the martial law imposed in the aftermath earned the admiration of the citizens of San Francisco. Over the next few years he used what connections he had through his brother to get federal funding to improve the city’s defenses and help rebuild the city. Further endearing him to the people of San Francisco and making the city a center of the Remembrance movement in California.
When Major General Upton arrived in 1885, Colonel Sherman had been the commander of the Presidium garrison for nearly a decade. He was planning on retiring in 1886 and settling with his family in San Francisco. MG Upton quickly came to rely on COL Sherman’s expertise in the San Francisco and the other California, Oregon and Washington Garrisons; that now made up his command. The two quickly learned that they shared similar views on war and how to prepare for its inevitability. Sherman believed that modern war had become so brutal, that only the complete mobilization of a nation could achieve victory. He believed civilians on both side of a conflict would inevitably suffer horribly and only the nation that best marshaled all their nation’s manpower, economic, and political power could prevail. After many late night discussions, Upton gave Colonel Sherman copies of his work on A Military Policy of the United States. After working closely together for several months Upton convinced Col. Sherman to stay on until 1886 and help him finish his book.
While Upton was busy organizing the Pacific Department, Sherman was helping Upton to finish his chapters on the War of Secession. He provided invaluable incite into the costs of military defeats in the War if Secession and Second Mexican War and its effect on the civilian population and government. The two worked on it throughout 1885, Sherman suggested that they have the work edited by Samuel Clemens a newspaper editor and friend he had made in the aftermath of the SMW.
As the Military Policy of the United States, neared its completion a new storm was brewing in Philadelphia. The Remembrance wing of the Democrats was growing in strength, especially throughout New England and the Border States. In both regions a string Remembrance candidates won state gubernatorial elections. Men like Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, Joshua Chamberlain of Maine and Karl Schurz of Missouri won overwhelming victories in states touched by the war. In Philadelphia, Congress was passing legislation for new defense spending. In spring of 1885 Congress passed the New Navy Bill calling for a modern all steel battle fleet, manufactured completely in the United States. A nationally popular measure after the damaged suffered by the nation’s coastal cities. The big gathering fight was over the proposed conscription bill, which called for the creation of a national peacetime draft to meet the manpower requirements of the growing Regular Army.
The Conscription bill would create a Conscription Bureau in the War Department, with offices in each Congressional District throughout the United States. All male citizens were to register with their closest office within a year of their eighteenth birthday. From this body of men, the Conscription Bureau would randomly select a number of them, all between the ages of 18 to 21, to appear for military service. If found fit by the draft board, they served a period of two years on active duty, followed by another eight years as a reservist. Married men, or those with dependent children, could seek a deferment. It also called for the creation of a military reserve force controlled by federal officers to replace the old State Militia system. The Softline Democrats objected to this as an unnecessary escalation tension between the two nations, considering the United States was still recovering from the effects of the last war. President Hendricks objected to the bill’s needless antagonism of the CSA, its violation of states rights and lack of sound basis in the constitution. President Hendricks vowed to veto the bill if it was presented to him.
All throughout 1885 the conscription bill was hotly debated in the national papers and on the floor of house. Socialist Party groups held demonstrations in Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Boston and St. Louis. Socialists and the Softline Democrat factions put up fierce opposition in the House of Representatives. It was during this period that Remembrance Democrats began pressuring Upton to release the Military Policy of the United States. They believed the book could be influential in swaying public opinion in the conscription debate. As a result of this pressure Upton finally release his magnum opus in August 1885, after almost three years of work.
The book was published and distributed almost immediately by Remembrance aligned publishers. It was also serialized in major Remembrance Democrat and Republic newspapers across the country. The Military Policy of the United States quickly created the bombshell that it was intended for. Socialists were mortified by Upton’s argument that "During the late riots of the 1870s and post Second Mexican War Period, had there been available from 25 to 50 battalions of national reserve volunteers, commanded by regular officers, it is possible, and probable, that much of the bloodshed and loss of property might have been avoided. That Army could have quickly put down labor disturbances that were becoming endemic in the nation. " The idea that Upton’s new Big Army could be used to further oppress the workers earned him undying enmity in many Labor Circles.
Soft-line Democrats argued that his goal of a mass peacetime army were directly antithetical to the intentions of the founders. That his push to reforms would undermine the state governments and leave the US no more than a North American Prussia, stripped of the basic liberties the nation fought for over the last century. Further, that the peacetime draft had no basis in the constitution and the creation of a General Staff, with control over the various army departments would remove civilian over-cite from the military.
Critics argued that in his fervor Upton pushed his historical arguments to an extreme—the U.S. could hardly have "prepared" a national military force for the Revolution, when it was not yet a nation. Critics also found his argument for an easy success of a hypothetical pre-War of Secession Regular Army as specious. That a large Regular Army existing before the War of Secession, would only have existed to oppress the southern states which they in turn never would have voted for. When it came to the War of Secession, Upton spewed vindictive on the civilian government administration and very nature of Federalism or any of the policies that frustrated the Union cause. The federal government, he wrote, was trying to "save the Union by fighting as a Confederacy, [while] the Confederates sought to destroy it by fighting as a nation," abandoning states' rights and overriding the prerogatives of state governors in appointing militia officers. Yet this was an exaggeration of Confederate war policy, as the rebel’s central government struggled constantly force local areas to comply with the draft, and governors to send their militia regiments out of state.
Those in the growing Remembrance movement looked at Upton’s work as a blue print for the future, and the means of ultimately obtaining revenge. They used his military criticism as a new club to beat the soft-line democrats and republicans into submission. It struck a particularly strong cord with veterans of the War of Secession and Second Mexican War. It also had a strong effect with the younger generation of Americans, like Theodore Roosevelt, John J. Pershing, Robert Lansing and Henry Cabot Lodge, who resented two decades of humiliation. Many young men in the nations growing middle class were also enthusiastic for Upton’s proposals for new military academies to further their access to education and career opportunities in an enlarged Army.
A vote for the bill in the House of Representatives was scheduled for October, however the sudden death of President Hendricks halted the vote. President Hendricks death came as a shock to the nation; he was the first president to die in office since Zachary Taylor, more than 30 years ago. Many in Remembrance circles openly say with the ascension of Winfield Scott Hancock, their time had finally come. A vote quickly scheduled for January of the New Year in both the house and the Senate. Many believed that Hancock would dismiss General and Chief Hunt and appoint Upton. The call however never came and Upton was forced to watch the battle over conscription from the presidium. Hancock supported a new conscript Army; Hancock however would not support the complete dismantling of the militia system. Hancock believed this was too much of an intrusion on states rights. A compromise was quickly worked out where a reserve force would be created, however draftees could choose where they served their obligatory post Regular Army eight-year reserve time.
The bill passed both houses in January of 1886, Hancock signed the bill into law on January 27th, and died shortly thereafter. After only three months as President, Hancock ushered in the largest change to civil society in United States history. Upon the death of Winfield Scott Hancock, he was replaced by President pro tempor of the Senate Allen Thurman. President Thurman was little inclined to army reform and not in the Remembrance wing of the Democratic Party. President Thurman was content to have the current General in Chief manage the expansion of the Army and maintain a laissez-faire approach to the economy and government.
Seeing that the tide of reform had again dissipated in Philadelphia, Upton focused institutionalizing his ideas of reforms within his own command. He set his staff to drawing up plans to invade British Columbia and Baja California. He mandated the Staff reforms be incorporated on the Battalion and Regimental levels that he introduced in the SoW. Working with Captain Dewey, a rising star in the revitalized Pacific Squadron, the two co-authored a report on the threat posed by the British occupation the Sandwich Islands. He also spent this time helping to cultivate his young officers and organize instruction on German and Confederate military doctrine.
While Upton worked to imbue his department with his philosophy, the army continued to stagnate under General and Chief Hunt. GoC Hunt worked to purchase modern artillery and equipment from Germany, but failed to institute the potential reforms the draft could afford the army. General in Chief Hunt chose only to grow and cultivate the Regular Army grew and not the new draft force. By 1888 the US army had strength of 200,000 and in time of war activate enough state militia to grow to 500,000. The US now possessed some of the most modern artillery in the world.
Upton transformed the Pacific Department Staff from a backwater post to an aggressive finishing school for future officer. Just as the Pacific Department was becoming a sought after post, the new generation of American leadership was reaching out to him. Remembrance Democrats Presidential candidates like Thomas Reed, George A. Custer and John A. Logan, all contacted him for military advice. Not ready to get involved in politics at this stage, Upton restated to all candidates that he stood by the recommendations he made in the Military Policy of the United States and wished all of them luck.
Since two Presidents had died in office a little over a year, the elderly Thurman was passed over by the party Bosses in favor of Speaker of the House Thomas Reed of Maine. His only challenger was the popular governor of New York Grover Cleveland. When the Democratic convention was held in New York City, in august of 1888 many thought New York’s favorite son Governor Cleveland was a shoe in. He would have been in any other year, but Cleveland’s ambivalent attitude towards the United States enemies and the damage New York City and his home city of Buffalo suffered at the hands of British naval bombardment helped transform the primary ballot into a referendum on the future course of the Democratic Party. There was no clear winner on the first ballot, but over the next three ballots delegates slowly turned away from Cleveland and towards the Remembrance candidate. Cleveland’s falling a foul of Tammany Hall, also helped to undermine his viability.
The Cleveland campaigns poor politicking helped to ensure an overwhelming fifth ballot victory for the Remembrance Candidate Thomas Reed. After Thomas Reed secured of the nomination his election was all but ensured. Still Thomas Reed unlike his predecessors and his Republican opponent Chief Justice Garfield, Reed was a vigorous campaigner. His strong anti-Confederate line helped to bring many former Republicans over to his side. When Election day 1888 rolled around Thomas B. Reed won the biggest electoral majority in American history.
Thomas Reeds elections was heralded across the Union with torch light processions. In City’s like Boston, New York, Cleveland, St. Louis, Portland, Buffalo, Rochester and San Francisco young Democrats marched torch light in support of the new Remembrance movement. In San Francisco the parade ended with a march past the presidium where MG Upton and COL Sherman looked on in satisfaction. Within the week President Elect Reed had telegraphed MG Upton with a confidential telegraph that upon his election he would insist on General in Chief Hunt’s dismissal, paving the way for Emory Upton’s nomination as the Army’s senior soldier and master of its destiny.
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Woodrow Wilson (1856—1924)
Woodrow Wilson served as the ninth President of the Confederate States from 1910-1916, and led the country at the beginning of the Great War. Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia, on December 28, 1856. Wilson's father Joseph Ruggles Wilson was originally from Steubenville, Ohio, where his grandfather published a newspaper, which was pro-tariff and anti-slavery. Wilson's parents moved south in 1851 and identified with the Confederacy. His father defended slavery, owned slaves and set up a Sunday school for them. The parents cared for wounded soldiers at their church. Wilson’s father also briefly served as a chaplain to the Confederate Army. Woodrow Wilson's earliest memory, from the age of three, was of hearing that Abraham Lincoln had been elected and that a war was coming. Wilson would forever recall standing for a moment at Robert E. Lee's side and looking up into his face.
Wilson's father was one of the founders of the Southern Presbyterian Church in the United States in 1861. Wilson attended Davidson College in North Carolina for the 1873–1874 school year. After medical ailments kept him from returning for a second year, he transferred to Princeton as a freshman when his father took a teaching position at the university. Graduating in 1879. In 1879, Wilson attended law school at the University of Virginia for one year. His frail health dictated withdrawal, and he went home to Wilmington, North Carolina, where he continued his studies.
In 1881 Wilson briefly considered joining the CS Army at the outbreak of the Second Mexican War, but declined when he was told by his family physician that he would be unable to pass the CS Army physical exam. He became an important fundraiser for Militia regiments in the Wilmington area. In January 1882, Wilson started a law practice in Atlanta. One of his University of Virginia classmates, invited him to join his new law practice as partner and Wilson joined him in May 1882. On October 19, 1882, he appeared in court before a State Judge to take his bar examination, which he passed easily. Competition was fierce in a city with 143 other lawyers, however military contracts and the industrial expansion brought on by the Second Mexican meant that Atlanta was a hot bed for opportunities. Wilson earned a good reputation in the city as a clever and capable litigator, often working for the cities important industrial firms. This brought his first contact with the growing Whig political machine. Wilson despite his reform tendencies became a life long Whig.
Nevertheless, Wilson found staying current with the law obstructed his plans to study government to achieve his long-term plans for a political career. In April 1884, Wilson applied to the Johns Hopkins University to study for a doctorate in history and political science and began his studies there in the fall. Wilson began his graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University in 1883 and three years later completed his doctoral dissertation, "Comparative Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics." He received a Ph.D. in history and political science. In 1887 he became a member of the faculty of University of Virginia. There he taught Jurisprudence and political economy. He became head of the new James Madison School of Government in 1891, after spending a year as a visiting professor at the New York Law School in 1890. Wilson quickly made a name for himself on campus, with his desire to transform the Department and make it the equivalent of any “Yankee University.” The trustees promoted Professor Wilson to president of the University of Virginia in 1902, over the next 6 years Wilson made a name for himself and the school, as an institution for the production of the responsible and reform minded Confederate Government Officials.
Few men in public life have experienced as rapid a ride to prominence as Woodrow Wilson, who, as president of the University of Virginia, was elected Governor of Virginia in 1908, only a year before he was elected President of the United States, over retread Tom Watson. Wilson a strong believed that the Confederacy should emulate Britain’s Cabinet style government. In his Ph.D. doctoral thesis he argued that government is best run when an active executive which exercised power through an appointed cabinet, which is supported by its party in Congress, which holds a majority. In 1912 he succeeded, along with Secretary of the Treasury Carter Glass, another Virginian, in forming a Confederate central bank modeled on the US's Federal Reserve, formed in Mahan's administration. He also supported legislation limiting the workday to 10 hours, and pursued better ties with the United States. Despite his professor like appearance Wilson was seen by most Confederate as an active President, He was the first president to deliver the annual State of the Confederacy Report to Congress. Until Wilson tradition dictated that the speech be delivered to Congress and read there. In a Confederacy, which held its traditions sacred, Wilson’s reform and active Executive government made more tradition bound Whigs uncomfortable.
His years of education in northern institutions gave Wilson a profound understanding of the character of the United States, especially its growing revanchist Remembrance movement. However, his research in the parallels in government institutions in the North and South gave Wilson a hope that the two “democracies” could find a peaceful way to coexist. He even planned a state visit North, the first for either a US or CS President since the War of Secession, but it had unfortunately been scheduled for late 1913 - after the inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt, a man Wilson had despised ever since they had got into an argument following a guest lecture Wilson had given at Columbia in 1899. The visit was unceremoniously canceled.
By 1910 a tumultuous argument broke out in Confederate military circles between the Louisville side and the Fire-eaters wings. Wilson had personally seen Remembrance Day parades in Baltimore and New York. Wilson understood the earnestness with which the Northern people desired revenge. Following Theodore Roosevelt's election, Wilson finally and came in on side of the Fire- Eaters. Upon taking office, President Wilson reviewed the War Department's scattershot planning for War with the United States and ordered a thorough review. He agreed with the General Staff’s belief that defenders would have an easier time of it in a modern war, but he also recognized that Confederate morale would suffer if not allowed to go on the offensive. Further that the US's greater resources permitted them the luxury of a war of attrition. As a Virginian who'd grown up being regaled with stories of death and destruction from the War of Secession, he was loath to fight on his state’s own soil. In the end, he sided with the “fire-eaters” and agreed the C.S. Army should emulate Lee's Pennsylvania campaign of 1862. He authorized the CS General Staff’s plan to deliver a knockout blow to Philadelphia as soon as the war began.
When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914, President Wilson affirmed the CSA's commitment to the Quadruple Entente, describing the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia as a case of oppression of a smaller nation by a larger one. However, Wilson remained in close contact with Prime Minister Asquith of the United Kingdom during the July crises. The Confederacy’s ambassador informed the Prime Minister that it would look to Great Britain to make the decision of whether the war is to be confined to the continent, or would include the Entente’s North American partners. Wilson and his Ambassador subtly informed Secretary Grey that the CSA preferred not to get involved. Wilson believed this was primarily a continental matter and possibly in violation of the defensive nature of the Entente agreement. Wilson had long believed that France and Russia were needlessly antagonizing Germany and Austria- Hungary.
On July 25, Austria- Hungary delivered its ultimatum to Serbia. In response, Wilson held an emergency cabinet meeting. There Secretary of War Emmanuel Sellars, warned the President that the General Staff believed that were the CSA sit out the war, and the UK became involved the US would rapidly overrun Canada, thus making victory in any future war unlikely without the threat of a second front in Canada and Britain’s Naval support, and the other resources of Britain’s other positions like the Sandwich Islands. Secretary of State Thomas Watt Gregory argued, State Department also projected any failure to join the war, like Italy was considering to do to the Quadruple Alliance, it would mean then end of future cooperation with Great Britain and its Imperial possessions. Wilson argued that if Britain does not declare war, even if the US declares war against France and Russia, the US would be incapable of providing effective help to Germany. Britain had already pledged to keep the German High Seas fleet out of the Channel. The CS and UK could easily send material support to France, without violating neutrality. If the CSA remains neutral they would have to declare The Empire of Mexico a protectorate. The Cabinet agreed that the CSA’s defense is bound with its alliance to Britain and the support it can provide. Any help from France would be negligible in any future war. Even the Empire of Mexico, which is formally a French puppet is now more closely tied to the CSA than the French. The Cabinet meeting ended with the agreement that the CSA would be bound by Great Britain’s decision.
When Germany violated Belgian neutrality the UK declared war against Germany. CSA honored its commitment and declared war again Germany on August 5th, 1914. In his speech rallying the nation to war, Wilson reminded the Confederate people of the importance of Britain and France to the CSA's birth and continued survival. He called upon the C.S. to stand with its allies against the "tyrannical" Germany and the "bitter" United States, reminding the crowd that the U.S. had followed a "dark" path, and that it was the CSA's duty to be a continuing a shining example of freedom for the world by entering the war.
Wilson clung to his idealistic view of the war for the remainder of his term. He sincerely believed that the Entente and the CS in particular represented "civilization" and "progressivism" against "oppression", a view he shared with his supporters like Anne Colleton. He was pained by the price in lives such a defense needed, but paid it readily. During his Presidency he made secret envoys to the US to bring about a peace settlement based on a status quo ante bellum. However President Roosevelt refused any overtures, as did his Entente allies. Despite these peace attempts in his State of the Confederacy speech before Congress in January of 1915, He committed to prosecute the war to save Confederate honor, however he proposed a post war settlement that was just for all nations. He also called for the creation of an international body to prevent similar future wars. By this time, certain quarters were of the opinion that Wilson had not prosecuted the war as vigorously as he could have.
By 1915 the Great War, expected to be over by the previous Christmas, had settled into a bloody stalemate all over the globe. With a few months before the C.S. presidential elections, Wilson was now a lame duck. He continued to rally the Confederate people, but he also began campaigning for his Vice President, Gabriel Semmes, the Whig presidential candidate.
Wilson left office in 1916. He continued to support the war efforts with speeches and newspapers editorials. He supported Presidents Semmes decision to recruit black soldiers to stem defeat, however he did not go so far as to support black veterans gaining citizenship. He also supported President Semmes decision to make peace in the August of 1917. However the stress of the defeat and his role in the nations humiliation caused him to suffer a minor stroke.
He recovered by 1920, but remained retired in relative obscurity in his home outside Charlottesville, Va. He died in 1924 was buried in Richmond. On his death the University of Virginia renamed its School of Government, the Wilson School of Government in his honor. Though often a target for Freedom party anger with the prewar Whigs, he was remembered with a certain fondness by later generations of the C.S. as the last true “Gentleman President.”
Woodrow Wilson served as the ninth President of the Confederate States from 1910-1916, and led the country at the beginning of the Great War. Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia, on December 28, 1856. Wilson's father Joseph Ruggles Wilson was originally from Steubenville, Ohio, where his grandfather published a newspaper, which was pro-tariff and anti-slavery. Wilson's parents moved south in 1851 and identified with the Confederacy. His father defended slavery, owned slaves and set up a Sunday school for them. The parents cared for wounded soldiers at their church. Wilson’s father also briefly served as a chaplain to the Confederate Army. Woodrow Wilson's earliest memory, from the age of three, was of hearing that Abraham Lincoln had been elected and that a war was coming. Wilson would forever recall standing for a moment at Robert E. Lee's side and looking up into his face.
Wilson's father was one of the founders of the Southern Presbyterian Church in the United States in 1861. Wilson attended Davidson College in North Carolina for the 1873–1874 school year. After medical ailments kept him from returning for a second year, he transferred to Princeton as a freshman when his father took a teaching position at the university. Graduating in 1879. In 1879, Wilson attended law school at the University of Virginia for one year. His frail health dictated withdrawal, and he went home to Wilmington, North Carolina, where he continued his studies.
In 1881 Wilson briefly considered joining the CS Army at the outbreak of the Second Mexican War, but declined when he was told by his family physician that he would be unable to pass the CS Army physical exam. He became an important fundraiser for Militia regiments in the Wilmington area. In January 1882, Wilson started a law practice in Atlanta. One of his University of Virginia classmates, invited him to join his new law practice as partner and Wilson joined him in May 1882. On October 19, 1882, he appeared in court before a State Judge to take his bar examination, which he passed easily. Competition was fierce in a city with 143 other lawyers, however military contracts and the industrial expansion brought on by the Second Mexican meant that Atlanta was a hot bed for opportunities. Wilson earned a good reputation in the city as a clever and capable litigator, often working for the cities important industrial firms. This brought his first contact with the growing Whig political machine. Wilson despite his reform tendencies became a life long Whig.
Nevertheless, Wilson found staying current with the law obstructed his plans to study government to achieve his long-term plans for a political career. In April 1884, Wilson applied to the Johns Hopkins University to study for a doctorate in history and political science and began his studies there in the fall. Wilson began his graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University in 1883 and three years later completed his doctoral dissertation, "Comparative Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics." He received a Ph.D. in history and political science. In 1887 he became a member of the faculty of University of Virginia. There he taught Jurisprudence and political economy. He became head of the new James Madison School of Government in 1891, after spending a year as a visiting professor at the New York Law School in 1890. Wilson quickly made a name for himself on campus, with his desire to transform the Department and make it the equivalent of any “Yankee University.” The trustees promoted Professor Wilson to president of the University of Virginia in 1902, over the next 6 years Wilson made a name for himself and the school, as an institution for the production of the responsible and reform minded Confederate Government Officials.
Few men in public life have experienced as rapid a ride to prominence as Woodrow Wilson, who, as president of the University of Virginia, was elected Governor of Virginia in 1908, only a year before he was elected President of the United States, over retread Tom Watson. Wilson a strong believed that the Confederacy should emulate Britain’s Cabinet style government. In his Ph.D. doctoral thesis he argued that government is best run when an active executive which exercised power through an appointed cabinet, which is supported by its party in Congress, which holds a majority. In 1912 he succeeded, along with Secretary of the Treasury Carter Glass, another Virginian, in forming a Confederate central bank modeled on the US's Federal Reserve, formed in Mahan's administration. He also supported legislation limiting the workday to 10 hours, and pursued better ties with the United States. Despite his professor like appearance Wilson was seen by most Confederate as an active President, He was the first president to deliver the annual State of the Confederacy Report to Congress. Until Wilson tradition dictated that the speech be delivered to Congress and read there. In a Confederacy, which held its traditions sacred, Wilson’s reform and active Executive government made more tradition bound Whigs uncomfortable.
His years of education in northern institutions gave Wilson a profound understanding of the character of the United States, especially its growing revanchist Remembrance movement. However, his research in the parallels in government institutions in the North and South gave Wilson a hope that the two “democracies” could find a peaceful way to coexist. He even planned a state visit North, the first for either a US or CS President since the War of Secession, but it had unfortunately been scheduled for late 1913 - after the inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt, a man Wilson had despised ever since they had got into an argument following a guest lecture Wilson had given at Columbia in 1899. The visit was unceremoniously canceled.
By 1910 a tumultuous argument broke out in Confederate military circles between the Louisville side and the Fire-eaters wings. Wilson had personally seen Remembrance Day parades in Baltimore and New York. Wilson understood the earnestness with which the Northern people desired revenge. Following Theodore Roosevelt's election, Wilson finally and came in on side of the Fire- Eaters. Upon taking office, President Wilson reviewed the War Department's scattershot planning for War with the United States and ordered a thorough review. He agreed with the General Staff’s belief that defenders would have an easier time of it in a modern war, but he also recognized that Confederate morale would suffer if not allowed to go on the offensive. Further that the US's greater resources permitted them the luxury of a war of attrition. As a Virginian who'd grown up being regaled with stories of death and destruction from the War of Secession, he was loath to fight on his state’s own soil. In the end, he sided with the “fire-eaters” and agreed the C.S. Army should emulate Lee's Pennsylvania campaign of 1862. He authorized the CS General Staff’s plan to deliver a knockout blow to Philadelphia as soon as the war began.
When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914, President Wilson affirmed the CSA's commitment to the Quadruple Entente, describing the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia as a case of oppression of a smaller nation by a larger one. However, Wilson remained in close contact with Prime Minister Asquith of the United Kingdom during the July crises. The Confederacy’s ambassador informed the Prime Minister that it would look to Great Britain to make the decision of whether the war is to be confined to the continent, or would include the Entente’s North American partners. Wilson and his Ambassador subtly informed Secretary Grey that the CSA preferred not to get involved. Wilson believed this was primarily a continental matter and possibly in violation of the defensive nature of the Entente agreement. Wilson had long believed that France and Russia were needlessly antagonizing Germany and Austria- Hungary.
On July 25, Austria- Hungary delivered its ultimatum to Serbia. In response, Wilson held an emergency cabinet meeting. There Secretary of War Emmanuel Sellars, warned the President that the General Staff believed that were the CSA sit out the war, and the UK became involved the US would rapidly overrun Canada, thus making victory in any future war unlikely without the threat of a second front in Canada and Britain’s Naval support, and the other resources of Britain’s other positions like the Sandwich Islands. Secretary of State Thomas Watt Gregory argued, State Department also projected any failure to join the war, like Italy was considering to do to the Quadruple Alliance, it would mean then end of future cooperation with Great Britain and its Imperial possessions. Wilson argued that if Britain does not declare war, even if the US declares war against France and Russia, the US would be incapable of providing effective help to Germany. Britain had already pledged to keep the German High Seas fleet out of the Channel. The CS and UK could easily send material support to France, without violating neutrality. If the CSA remains neutral they would have to declare The Empire of Mexico a protectorate. The Cabinet agreed that the CSA’s defense is bound with its alliance to Britain and the support it can provide. Any help from France would be negligible in any future war. Even the Empire of Mexico, which is formally a French puppet is now more closely tied to the CSA than the French. The Cabinet meeting ended with the agreement that the CSA would be bound by Great Britain’s decision.
When Germany violated Belgian neutrality the UK declared war against Germany. CSA honored its commitment and declared war again Germany on August 5th, 1914. In his speech rallying the nation to war, Wilson reminded the Confederate people of the importance of Britain and France to the CSA's birth and continued survival. He called upon the C.S. to stand with its allies against the "tyrannical" Germany and the "bitter" United States, reminding the crowd that the U.S. had followed a "dark" path, and that it was the CSA's duty to be a continuing a shining example of freedom for the world by entering the war.
Wilson clung to his idealistic view of the war for the remainder of his term. He sincerely believed that the Entente and the CS in particular represented "civilization" and "progressivism" against "oppression", a view he shared with his supporters like Anne Colleton. He was pained by the price in lives such a defense needed, but paid it readily. During his Presidency he made secret envoys to the US to bring about a peace settlement based on a status quo ante bellum. However President Roosevelt refused any overtures, as did his Entente allies. Despite these peace attempts in his State of the Confederacy speech before Congress in January of 1915, He committed to prosecute the war to save Confederate honor, however he proposed a post war settlement that was just for all nations. He also called for the creation of an international body to prevent similar future wars. By this time, certain quarters were of the opinion that Wilson had not prosecuted the war as vigorously as he could have.
By 1915 the Great War, expected to be over by the previous Christmas, had settled into a bloody stalemate all over the globe. With a few months before the C.S. presidential elections, Wilson was now a lame duck. He continued to rally the Confederate people, but he also began campaigning for his Vice President, Gabriel Semmes, the Whig presidential candidate.
Wilson left office in 1916. He continued to support the war efforts with speeches and newspapers editorials. He supported Presidents Semmes decision to recruit black soldiers to stem defeat, however he did not go so far as to support black veterans gaining citizenship. He also supported President Semmes decision to make peace in the August of 1917. However the stress of the defeat and his role in the nations humiliation caused him to suffer a minor stroke.
He recovered by 1920, but remained retired in relative obscurity in his home outside Charlottesville, Va. He died in 1924 was buried in Richmond. On his death the University of Virginia renamed its School of Government, the Wilson School of Government in his honor. Though often a target for Freedom party anger with the prewar Whigs, he was remembered with a certain fondness by later generations of the C.S. as the last true “Gentleman President.”
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Artillery of the Great War in the North American Theater
When most remember the Great War they imagine tens of millions of infantry men, fighting in trenches across five continents. Despite the massive commitment of these men the Great War can often be conceived of as an Artilleryman’s duel. More than half the casualties of the war were produced by shellfire and the strain of maintaining their nations Artillery Forces and ammunition stocks destroyed national economies. North America was no different and the US’s Artillery’s success can be seen as a microcosm of USA-CSA struggle. Despite excellent training and the finest field gun of the war, the famed 75mm, CS Artillery could not compete against the larger, more innovative and better supplied US Artillery.
Pre-War
Despite two disastrous wars the one branch of the US army that retained their reputation was the Artillery. in the War of Succession and the Second Mexican War, Artillery saved countless of US lives. The performances of US batteries in the battle of Louisville earned the praise of General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, arguably the greatest American commander of the 19th century.
While the army reforms orchestrated by Chief of Staff Upton began in earnest in 1890, reform in Artillery equipment and doctrine began as early as 1883. When Henry Hunt replaced that William Rosecrans as General in Chief, he stymied what little reforms Rosecrans made in the wake of the Second Mexican War. The notable exception was in the US artillery. Hunt ordered Artillery officers training in Germany to procure the latest German gun designs and ammunition. In 1887 US officers procured the designed for weaponized trinitrotoluene (TNT) artillery shells, and early models of recoil artillery.
Under the leadership of Chief of Staff Upton (originally an Artillery Officer) and then Adams the US and Germany began comprehensive exchange of artillery design tactics and organization. By 1900 the US and Germany were the two leading industrial powers. Both known for highly developed economies and some of the best educated populations in the world. These assets helped to give both nations the advantage in Artillery development and training highly capable officers. Both Germany and the US believed the key to victory lye in heavy accurate artillery fire and focused on the development of Heavy Artillery. By 1914 each US and German division was equipped with a regiment of artillery. A standard US artillery division was equipped with one Battery of 77mm field guns and two batteries of 105 mm medium howitzers. Each Corp was equipped with 4 Batteries of 150mm howitzers.
The US also augmented their artillery forces with a range of mortars and super heavy artillery. In 1913 the US purchased the design of the Austrian 305mm Super Heavy Howitzer from the Skoda works in Austrian Bohemia. These pieces along with the 250mm and 177mm mortars were purchased for use against Confederate and Canadian fortresses.
US artillery officer’s training was focused on tactics over technology, as compared to CS training which focused on more technical training. While the US armies did pride themselves on technical excellence the focus on tactics made the US far more open to using innovative ways of collaborating with infantry movement. This gave US Artillery Corp a cultural advantage on their tradition bound confederate opponents.
Like the United States the Confederate States has always prided itself on the competency of its Artillery men and the accuracy of their fires. The Confederate Artillery has produced many of its most capable soldiers. Its performance in both the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War ensured their national survival. After the Second Mexican War, General and Chief Jackson’s report on the battle of Louisville emphasized the importance of their artillery in the counter attacks which nearly drove the US forces into the Ohio river. These successes impressed upon the Confederate Army leadership the necessity of keeping pace with any US advances in artillery.
When the US began sending their officers for instruction in Germany in 1882, President Longstreet negotiated similar arraignments with Great Britain and France. When the US purchased TNT shells and recoil artillery from the Germans, the CSA made similar agreements from the French the leading nation in artillery technology. The French were the first to develop recoil howitzers and to weaponize trinitrophenol (TNP), a more stable and powerful explosive than TNT.
The most important Confederate acquisition was the French 75mm, capable of firing 15 rounds a minute, it was considered the best field piece of the Great War. Its light-weight and rapid but accurate fire made it ideal for the French forces. The French Plan XVII called for a swift attack on Alsace and Lorraine. The light weight rapid firing 75mm was ideal for that mission. The CSA copied the French forces artillery organizations and each CSA Corp was equipped with 120 75mm’s.
Unlike the French however, the Confederacy lacked a coherent strategy for a war with the US in the interwar period. The Confederate military establishment was divided between those that wanted to copy General Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania and those that wanted to stand on the defensive. As a result the Confederacy divided its resources between fortress construction and procuring modern artillery pieces. While the Confederacy had many heavy artillery pieces, they were generally deployed in fortresses and were of an older design, which were non-recoil capable.
All of this changed however with the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1910. Growing up in Northern Virginia Wilson heard stories of the devastation wreaked by the War of Secession. Wilson sided with the offensive minded faction of the Confederate Military. After finally deciding on a grand strategic plan, few in the Confederate Army saw the new dilemma this created. The 75mm was not capable of destroying modern fortifications. This created a further schism in artillery community between those that supported the highly mobile 75mm force and those that wished to augment the army with new heavy artillery guns. Eventually a compromise was reached and the Confederacy began purchasing 10.5cm British. Vickers howitzers as a Corp asset. The Confederate modernization program was scheduled for completion by April 1917. Each Corp would receive 24 of the new heavy weapons with the Army of North Virginia receiving priority. Unfortunately for the CS Army by the outbreak of the war only one Corp had been equipped with heavy 1.05cm howitzers.
1914
The US Congress declared war on August 6th 1914, the US General Staff immediately mobilized the Modified Case Blue. Case Blue called for the schwerpunkt of the US Army to be the invasion of Kentucky. The plan called for three Armies to invade Kentucky, while the other army groups were to extend the frontier away from US civilian population centers and capture strategic enemy targets where possible. As a part of Case Blue, US super heavy artillery was sent to 2nd Army based in Indiana. Its mission was to destroy the Confederate Fortifications around Louisville. The area around Louisville and the Ohio riverbanks, were heavily fortified following the Second Mexican War. Though extensive, these fortifications were created before Heavy Recoil Artillery. These fortifications represented the epitome of pre-war “Louisviller” defensive planning.
The C.S. Army believed that the heavy fortifications around Louisville would hold any Yankee attempts to seize the city directly as in the Second Mexican War. The CS Army of Kentucky was therefore deployed to contest any river crossings away from Louisville. General Pershing surprised the CSA by obliterating the Confederate fortifications around Kentucky with 305mm Skoda Super Howitzers. As a result of the shock of destruction of the lynchpin of their defenses, the Army of Kentucky Commander General Cabell Breckinridge rushed reinforcements into the city of Louisville. This denuded CS forces guarding the Ohio River, which allowed General Pershing’s 2nd Army to cross the Ohio largely uncontested. This opening phase showed the effect of modern artillery against out-moded pre-modern fortifications. The 2nd Army easily crossed the Ohio River and outflanked Louisville. The loss of these fortifications meant the loss of many of the Army of Kentucky’s heavy guns. However quick action by the Army’s chief of Artillery Colonel Charles P. Summerall, meant the CSA was able to get out much of the fortresses heavy guns and its ammunition reserves before General Pershing’s flanking attack captured the city.
East of the Appalachian Mountains the CSA began the war with the great wheel around Baltimore. The CS General Staff hoped to emulate General Lee and capture Philadelphia in a knock out blow. The Army of Northern Virginia began the attack with 5 Corps or 17 Divisions. To prevent an attack in its rear, the Army of Northern Virginia allocated two Corps to capture the de jura US Capitol of Washington DC. In a two-day bombardment, CS Batteries along the Arlington Heights smashed the US Capitol Building and much of the now vacant Federal Buildings. The US forces largely withdrew to the fortifications defending the city, but US machine gun squads still made the Confederates pay by fighting fight block to block. US Forces under LTG John Jacob Astor IV
Fought relentlessly to slow the progress of the advancing CS Infantry. At the same time other Corps oft he ANV were rapidly advanced through Maryland. The 75mm performed excellently. Its light wait allowed it to keep up with the advancing infantry and its rapid fire was superb for slaughtering US troops caught out in the open.
On Day 4 (August 10th) of the attack on DC, CS Regiments began assaulting the fortifications around DC. The CS Army found that their quick firing 75mm, with its low angle of fire, was much less effective against the Yankee fortifications. The CS quickly discovered the 75mm was almost completely infective against the more modern fortification’s in the Northern areas of the City. Only the CS copies of the heavy British 1.05 cm howitzers were able to clear them. The 75mm was shown that beyond 2 km, the 75mm became dramatically less accurate. This meant the CS Artillery needed to be push closer toward the C.S. trench’s, which exposed them to enemy counter-fire, which they could not accurately reach. This was seen at the towns US forces bothered to defend like Frederick, Maryland and York Pennsylvania. In their retreat north of the Susquehanna. whole batteries were destroyed by the farther reaching 105mm US howitzers. With its high angle of fire which was accurate to 10 km, the US Artillery out gunned the CSA.
By this point Confederate field Commanders began requesting the General Staff release those Heavy Guns in fortification’s not along threatened fronts to be used to augment the 75mm. Unfortunately for the CSA these guns were older and non-recoil, which seriously degraded their accuracy and rate of fire. Despite the 75mm’s flaws and lack of heavy artillery the ANV kept up a steady advance for most of August and September causing the US Army to withdraw North of the Susquehanna River and East to the fortifications around Baltimore.
The full magnitude of the CS Artillery problems were not appreciated until the fall of 1914, when the Army of Northern Virginia attempted to cut off Baltimore from reinforcements and in its attempt to cross the Susquehanna. Modern US fortifications defied the CS Forces attempts to destroy them. The heavy caliber and longer reach of the US guns thwarted CS attempts to isolate Baltimore and prevent the resupply of the growing US Forces in what was being called the Baltimore Pocket. Further west US guns prevented the CSA from concentrating their forces to cross the Susquehanna. The Heavy guns of the US fortresses south of Harrisburg prevented Confederate forces from crossing and further disrupting US supplies to Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Along the Canadian Front the US pushed rapidly towards the St. Lawrence River from Upstate New York. Like-wise the US saw swift advancement through the former territory of Maine. US guns rapidly overwhelmed what few border defenses the Canadians had. Coordinated Naval Artillery, joint Army attacks and Marine landings captured the Canadian Maritimes south of the St. Lawrence by winter of 1914. However unlike their Confederate counter parts the Canadian field guns were largely augmented by the British 10.5 cm howitzer, which meant they could conduct accurate counter-fire. This only further exacerbated the growing stalemate along the Niagara Peninsula.
By the end of 1914 each side was struggling with problems of observation and coordination between the infantry and Artillery. The use of planes for artillery spotting was widely adopted in 1914. US, CS and Canadian forces all used planes to sketch enemy positions and spot for their artillery. Each side quickly began sending planes to fight off the others attempt to spy on their formations and harass ground troops. By the end each army was coming to terms with the reality of modern war. All three nations began the mass use of observation balloons, which became the backbone of artillery spotting. As the United States began pushing its batteries further from the frontlines to prevent their being reached by CSA guns the US began inserting forward observes into Infantry Companies. The CSA who were forced to keep their 75mm field guns closer did not begin instituting this until 1916. Each side came to realize they needed better communication between the infantry and artillery. New better maps of the grounds they would be fighting was becoming evident. Again the US led the way with establishing a cartography department that worked with aerial observers to generate more accurate maps of the different fronts. Finally all sides realized they would need larger reserves of ammunition to keep up with the rate of fire the modern battlefield required.
When most remember the Great War they imagine tens of millions of infantry men, fighting in trenches across five continents. Despite the massive commitment of these men the Great War can often be conceived of as an Artilleryman’s duel. More than half the casualties of the war were produced by shellfire and the strain of maintaining their nations Artillery Forces and ammunition stocks destroyed national economies. North America was no different and the US’s Artillery’s success can be seen as a microcosm of USA-CSA struggle. Despite excellent training and the finest field gun of the war, the famed 75mm, CS Artillery could not compete against the larger, more innovative and better supplied US Artillery.
Pre-War
Despite two disastrous wars the one branch of the US army that retained their reputation was the Artillery. in the War of Succession and the Second Mexican War, Artillery saved countless of US lives. The performances of US batteries in the battle of Louisville earned the praise of General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, arguably the greatest American commander of the 19th century.
While the army reforms orchestrated by Chief of Staff Upton began in earnest in 1890, reform in Artillery equipment and doctrine began as early as 1883. When Henry Hunt replaced that William Rosecrans as General in Chief, he stymied what little reforms Rosecrans made in the wake of the Second Mexican War. The notable exception was in the US artillery. Hunt ordered Artillery officers training in Germany to procure the latest German gun designs and ammunition. In 1887 US officers procured the designed for weaponized trinitrotoluene (TNT) artillery shells, and early models of recoil artillery.
Under the leadership of Chief of Staff Upton (originally an Artillery Officer) and then Adams the US and Germany began comprehensive exchange of artillery design tactics and organization. By 1900 the US and Germany were the two leading industrial powers. Both known for highly developed economies and some of the best educated populations in the world. These assets helped to give both nations the advantage in Artillery development and training highly capable officers. Both Germany and the US believed the key to victory lye in heavy accurate artillery fire and focused on the development of Heavy Artillery. By 1914 each US and German division was equipped with a regiment of artillery. A standard US artillery division was equipped with one Battery of 77mm field guns and two batteries of 105 mm medium howitzers. Each Corp was equipped with 4 Batteries of 150mm howitzers.
The US also augmented their artillery forces with a range of mortars and super heavy artillery. In 1913 the US purchased the design of the Austrian 305mm Super Heavy Howitzer from the Skoda works in Austrian Bohemia. These pieces along with the 250mm and 177mm mortars were purchased for use against Confederate and Canadian fortresses.
US artillery officer’s training was focused on tactics over technology, as compared to CS training which focused on more technical training. While the US armies did pride themselves on technical excellence the focus on tactics made the US far more open to using innovative ways of collaborating with infantry movement. This gave US Artillery Corp a cultural advantage on their tradition bound confederate opponents.
Like the United States the Confederate States has always prided itself on the competency of its Artillery men and the accuracy of their fires. The Confederate Artillery has produced many of its most capable soldiers. Its performance in both the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War ensured their national survival. After the Second Mexican War, General and Chief Jackson’s report on the battle of Louisville emphasized the importance of their artillery in the counter attacks which nearly drove the US forces into the Ohio river. These successes impressed upon the Confederate Army leadership the necessity of keeping pace with any US advances in artillery.
When the US began sending their officers for instruction in Germany in 1882, President Longstreet negotiated similar arraignments with Great Britain and France. When the US purchased TNT shells and recoil artillery from the Germans, the CSA made similar agreements from the French the leading nation in artillery technology. The French were the first to develop recoil howitzers and to weaponize trinitrophenol (TNP), a more stable and powerful explosive than TNT.
The most important Confederate acquisition was the French 75mm, capable of firing 15 rounds a minute, it was considered the best field piece of the Great War. Its light-weight and rapid but accurate fire made it ideal for the French forces. The French Plan XVII called for a swift attack on Alsace and Lorraine. The light weight rapid firing 75mm was ideal for that mission. The CSA copied the French forces artillery organizations and each CSA Corp was equipped with 120 75mm’s.
Unlike the French however, the Confederacy lacked a coherent strategy for a war with the US in the interwar period. The Confederate military establishment was divided between those that wanted to copy General Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania and those that wanted to stand on the defensive. As a result the Confederacy divided its resources between fortress construction and procuring modern artillery pieces. While the Confederacy had many heavy artillery pieces, they were generally deployed in fortresses and were of an older design, which were non-recoil capable.
All of this changed however with the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1910. Growing up in Northern Virginia Wilson heard stories of the devastation wreaked by the War of Secession. Wilson sided with the offensive minded faction of the Confederate Military. After finally deciding on a grand strategic plan, few in the Confederate Army saw the new dilemma this created. The 75mm was not capable of destroying modern fortifications. This created a further schism in artillery community between those that supported the highly mobile 75mm force and those that wished to augment the army with new heavy artillery guns. Eventually a compromise was reached and the Confederacy began purchasing 10.5cm British. Vickers howitzers as a Corp asset. The Confederate modernization program was scheduled for completion by April 1917. Each Corp would receive 24 of the new heavy weapons with the Army of North Virginia receiving priority. Unfortunately for the CS Army by the outbreak of the war only one Corp had been equipped with heavy 1.05cm howitzers.
1914
The US Congress declared war on August 6th 1914, the US General Staff immediately mobilized the Modified Case Blue. Case Blue called for the schwerpunkt of the US Army to be the invasion of Kentucky. The plan called for three Armies to invade Kentucky, while the other army groups were to extend the frontier away from US civilian population centers and capture strategic enemy targets where possible. As a part of Case Blue, US super heavy artillery was sent to 2nd Army based in Indiana. Its mission was to destroy the Confederate Fortifications around Louisville. The area around Louisville and the Ohio riverbanks, were heavily fortified following the Second Mexican War. Though extensive, these fortifications were created before Heavy Recoil Artillery. These fortifications represented the epitome of pre-war “Louisviller” defensive planning.
The C.S. Army believed that the heavy fortifications around Louisville would hold any Yankee attempts to seize the city directly as in the Second Mexican War. The CS Army of Kentucky was therefore deployed to contest any river crossings away from Louisville. General Pershing surprised the CSA by obliterating the Confederate fortifications around Kentucky with 305mm Skoda Super Howitzers. As a result of the shock of destruction of the lynchpin of their defenses, the Army of Kentucky Commander General Cabell Breckinridge rushed reinforcements into the city of Louisville. This denuded CS forces guarding the Ohio River, which allowed General Pershing’s 2nd Army to cross the Ohio largely uncontested. This opening phase showed the effect of modern artillery against out-moded pre-modern fortifications. The 2nd Army easily crossed the Ohio River and outflanked Louisville. The loss of these fortifications meant the loss of many of the Army of Kentucky’s heavy guns. However quick action by the Army’s chief of Artillery Colonel Charles P. Summerall, meant the CSA was able to get out much of the fortresses heavy guns and its ammunition reserves before General Pershing’s flanking attack captured the city.
East of the Appalachian Mountains the CSA began the war with the great wheel around Baltimore. The CS General Staff hoped to emulate General Lee and capture Philadelphia in a knock out blow. The Army of Northern Virginia began the attack with 5 Corps or 17 Divisions. To prevent an attack in its rear, the Army of Northern Virginia allocated two Corps to capture the de jura US Capitol of Washington DC. In a two-day bombardment, CS Batteries along the Arlington Heights smashed the US Capitol Building and much of the now vacant Federal Buildings. The US forces largely withdrew to the fortifications defending the city, but US machine gun squads still made the Confederates pay by fighting fight block to block. US Forces under LTG John Jacob Astor IV
Fought relentlessly to slow the progress of the advancing CS Infantry. At the same time other Corps oft he ANV were rapidly advanced through Maryland. The 75mm performed excellently. Its light wait allowed it to keep up with the advancing infantry and its rapid fire was superb for slaughtering US troops caught out in the open.
On Day 4 (August 10th) of the attack on DC, CS Regiments began assaulting the fortifications around DC. The CS Army found that their quick firing 75mm, with its low angle of fire, was much less effective against the Yankee fortifications. The CS quickly discovered the 75mm was almost completely infective against the more modern fortification’s in the Northern areas of the City. Only the CS copies of the heavy British 1.05 cm howitzers were able to clear them. The 75mm was shown that beyond 2 km, the 75mm became dramatically less accurate. This meant the CS Artillery needed to be push closer toward the C.S. trench’s, which exposed them to enemy counter-fire, which they could not accurately reach. This was seen at the towns US forces bothered to defend like Frederick, Maryland and York Pennsylvania. In their retreat north of the Susquehanna. whole batteries were destroyed by the farther reaching 105mm US howitzers. With its high angle of fire which was accurate to 10 km, the US Artillery out gunned the CSA.
By this point Confederate field Commanders began requesting the General Staff release those Heavy Guns in fortification’s not along threatened fronts to be used to augment the 75mm. Unfortunately for the CSA these guns were older and non-recoil, which seriously degraded their accuracy and rate of fire. Despite the 75mm’s flaws and lack of heavy artillery the ANV kept up a steady advance for most of August and September causing the US Army to withdraw North of the Susquehanna River and East to the fortifications around Baltimore.
The full magnitude of the CS Artillery problems were not appreciated until the fall of 1914, when the Army of Northern Virginia attempted to cut off Baltimore from reinforcements and in its attempt to cross the Susquehanna. Modern US fortifications defied the CS Forces attempts to destroy them. The heavy caliber and longer reach of the US guns thwarted CS attempts to isolate Baltimore and prevent the resupply of the growing US Forces in what was being called the Baltimore Pocket. Further west US guns prevented the CSA from concentrating their forces to cross the Susquehanna. The Heavy guns of the US fortresses south of Harrisburg prevented Confederate forces from crossing and further disrupting US supplies to Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Along the Canadian Front the US pushed rapidly towards the St. Lawrence River from Upstate New York. Like-wise the US saw swift advancement through the former territory of Maine. US guns rapidly overwhelmed what few border defenses the Canadians had. Coordinated Naval Artillery, joint Army attacks and Marine landings captured the Canadian Maritimes south of the St. Lawrence by winter of 1914. However unlike their Confederate counter parts the Canadian field guns were largely augmented by the British 10.5 cm howitzer, which meant they could conduct accurate counter-fire. This only further exacerbated the growing stalemate along the Niagara Peninsula.
By the end of 1914 each side was struggling with problems of observation and coordination between the infantry and Artillery. The use of planes for artillery spotting was widely adopted in 1914. US, CS and Canadian forces all used planes to sketch enemy positions and spot for their artillery. Each side quickly began sending planes to fight off the others attempt to spy on their formations and harass ground troops. By the end each army was coming to terms with the reality of modern war. All three nations began the mass use of observation balloons, which became the backbone of artillery spotting. As the United States began pushing its batteries further from the frontlines to prevent their being reached by CSA guns the US began inserting forward observes into Infantry Companies. The CSA who were forced to keep their 75mm field guns closer did not begin instituting this until 1916. Each side came to realize they needed better communication between the infantry and artillery. New better maps of the grounds they would be fighting was becoming evident. Again the US led the way with establishing a cartography department that worked with aerial observers to generate more accurate maps of the different fronts. Finally all sides realized they would need larger reserves of ammunition to keep up with the rate of fire the modern battlefield required.
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Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson (b 1824- 1896)
Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was the Fifth President of the Confederate States of America and one of its most gifted Generals. He served in the War of Secession and as General-in-Chief during the Second Mexican War. Thomas Jackson was the third child of Julia Beckwith (Jackson (1798–1831) and Jonathan Jackson (1790–1826), an attorney. Both of Jackson's parents were natives of Virginia. The family already had two young children and were living in Clarksburg, in what is now West Virginia.
In 1842, Jackson was accepted to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Because of his inadequate schooling, he had difficulty with the entrance examinations and began his studies at the bottom of his class. Displaying a dogged determination, he graduated 17th out of 59 students in the Class of 1846. It was said by his peers that if he had stayed there another year, he would have graduated first.
Jackson began his United States Army career as a second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Artillery Regiment and was sent to fight in the Mexican–American War from 1846 to 1848. He served at the Siege of Veracruz and the battles of Contreras, Chapultepec, and Mexico City, eventually earning two brevet promotions, and the regular army rank of first lieutenant. It was in Mexico that Thomas Jackson first met Robert E. Lee. During the conflict he learned Spanish, which he continued to use throughout his life. After the war, Thomas Jackson was briefly assigned to forts in New York, and then to Florida after of the Seminole Wars. In the spring of 1851, Jackson accepted a newly created teaching position at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), in Lexington, Virginia. He became Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Instructor of Artillery. There he instilled his students with what he regarded as the timeless military essentials: discipline, mobility, assessing the enemy's strength and intentions while attempting to conceal your own, and the efficiency of artillery combined with an infantry assault.
When the War of Secession began, Jackson threw in his lot with the Confederate States. He was given brigade command by the governor of Virginia. He earned the nickname "Stonewall" for both himself and his brigade at First Bull Run by standing firm in the face of battle, prompting another brigade commander to shout "There stands Jackson like a stone wall! Rally around the Virginians, boys!" After the battle Jackson was given command of a division.
He held independent command in the Shenandoah Valley in the spring of 1862, where he defeated a much larger Union force. It was here that he earned his reputation of brilliant tactical leadership as well as a general who was capable of moving large bodies of infantry at speeds close to that of cavalry.
Following this action he was transferred to the Peninsula, where his command was attached to the Army of Northern Virginia. It was here that Jackson met Robert E. Lee. Jackson proved instrumental to the Army's efforts on the Peninsula as well as at Second Bull Run, where he turned John Pope's flank. Jackson took part in the final campaign of the war, helping to destroy the Army of the Potomac at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, in the fall of 1862. It was Jackson’s flanking attack that destroyed the only bridge the Union army controlled across the Potomac, eliminating the last means of the Army of the Potomac’s escape. This ensured the Army of the Potomac’s surrender. He then commanded a Corp advancing on Philadelphia, ensuring the Confederate victory in the War of Secession.
After the war, Jackson became General-in-Chief of the Confederate army. During the Second Mexican War, he personally commanded two field armies: first a small army which beat back a small US invasion from West Virginia, then the Army of Kentucky in its defense of Louisville, the war's primary front. In the Battle of Winchester Jackson routed the he US invading army using the “new infantry tactics,” modeled on the column and assault tactics developed by Colonel Emory Upton.
The Confederate Army of Kentucky, now under the command of General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson commandeered Negro laborers to build firing pits and earth works around the city of Louisville. However, the defense of the city would rely heavily on the artillery of Major General E. Porter Alexander. Jackson ordered the guns to fire on the barges and boats as they crossed the river, but US guns made this difficult. He then ordered two brigades to the waterfront to resist the crossing.
With the Army of Ohio on the banks of Kentucky, CS artillery switched targets, from the boats to the men on the shore. While this caused casualties it did not slow down the advance, and US troops quickly entered Louisville. To Wilcox's surprise, Jackson chose to fight for the city rather than retreat and engage US forces on open ground. This bled the Union army white as it was forced to fight house to house to seize control of the city. This negated the US Armies superiority in numbers.
In fall of 1881 Jackson planned and executed the attack that nearly destroyed the US army in Kentucky. The attack came as a total surprise to US commanders. US artillery shifted focus, but this time they were too slow to respond. Fortunately for the Union the IInd Corp commanded by LTG Hancock had been shifted to this salient. However with an assault from the flank and rear, the US salient quickly collapsed. CS troops rapidly overran the supply dump of the salient and by the end of the day, were standing on the bank of the Ohio. Still the heroic efforts of the IInd Corp prevented a complete route of union force, as bad as Camp Hill. After this disaster, US President Blaine called for an unconditional cease-fire along all fronts.
In wrecked Louisville, Generals Jackson and Wilcox met to discuss terms. Jackson wanted the US to withdraw from all of Kentucky while Wilcox refused. Jackson wired Longstreet asking for permission to force the Yankees out, but was turned down in fear it might restart the war. Jackson's use of heavy entrenchments at Louisville, proved the effectiveness of the tactic and led to its extensive use by all sides in the Great War thirty years later. He received Wilcox's formal surrender in the spring of 1882.
While Jackson was initially opposed to President James Longstreet's plan for the end of slavery after the war, he grew to see Longstreet's logic, and supported the decision. Thus, when Wade Hampton III approached Jackson about possibly launching a coup to overthrow Longstreet, Jackson harshly rebuked Hampton.
The Confederate Army's string of victories remained unbroken when Stonewall Jackson, hero of two wars, was elected in 1885. A reluctant candidate Jackson was only convinced to run by his long time friend and some time rival President Longstreet. After the aborted coup by Senator Wade Hampton III, Longstreet asked Jackson to run. The two eventually agreed that Jackson was the only name with the gravity to ensure the successful implementation of manumission and the retention of Britain and France as allies. A slave owner himself, he set a good example by voluntarily manumitting his own slaves between his election and his inauguration.
As President, Jackson remained for the most part politically aloof, except in issues of national defense. When the US passed its first conscription bill in 1886, the CSA responded with its own the year after in 1887. Jackson sent CS officers abroad to purchase French artillery, then the leading nation in artillery research. When the US adopted the General Staff system in 1891, one of his last official acts was to sign the Confederate General Staff Bill. The new Confederate General Staff was organized in 1891, albeit modeled on the French System. Ambrose Powell Hill, General and Chief under President Jackson, became the CSA’s first Chief of Staff. While in office Jackson remained interested in the development of military doctrine. He followed closely the military developments in Europe and the US. He was an admirer of General Upton and often ordered studies in implementing General Upton’s reforms in the CS Army.
During his term the Radical Party became popular among poor whites, which faced growing competition from free blacks for wage labor on farms and in factories. The Jackson administration did little meddling in domestic policy outside support of the manumission amendment. He rarely appeared in public outside official state ceremonies and helped maintain the air of good feelings in Confederate Politics and small government. He did however speak in support of state laws to restrict Negroes from industrial jobs, a key plank in the Whig platform.
After politics Jackson returned to teach at the Virginia Military Institute. He taught mathematics and Artillery ballistics. He died in 1896 in home his home outside Lexington, Virginia. After his death, Jackson's likeness was minted onto Confederate five-dollar gold coins, called "Stonewalls". His old Brigade in the War of Secession henceforth became known as the Stonewall Division and became the Confederacies elite infantry division. It saw meritorious action in the great wheel around Baltimore, however it received 70% casualties in a single attack against fortifications north of Baltimore. The slaughter of that many considered the cream of the Confederate Infantry would be known through the C.S. Army as the slaughter of the innocents. By the end of the War it would suffer more than 200% casualties.
Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was the Fifth President of the Confederate States of America and one of its most gifted Generals. He served in the War of Secession and as General-in-Chief during the Second Mexican War. Thomas Jackson was the third child of Julia Beckwith (Jackson (1798–1831) and Jonathan Jackson (1790–1826), an attorney. Both of Jackson's parents were natives of Virginia. The family already had two young children and were living in Clarksburg, in what is now West Virginia.
In 1842, Jackson was accepted to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Because of his inadequate schooling, he had difficulty with the entrance examinations and began his studies at the bottom of his class. Displaying a dogged determination, he graduated 17th out of 59 students in the Class of 1846. It was said by his peers that if he had stayed there another year, he would have graduated first.
Jackson began his United States Army career as a second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Artillery Regiment and was sent to fight in the Mexican–American War from 1846 to 1848. He served at the Siege of Veracruz and the battles of Contreras, Chapultepec, and Mexico City, eventually earning two brevet promotions, and the regular army rank of first lieutenant. It was in Mexico that Thomas Jackson first met Robert E. Lee. During the conflict he learned Spanish, which he continued to use throughout his life. After the war, Thomas Jackson was briefly assigned to forts in New York, and then to Florida after of the Seminole Wars. In the spring of 1851, Jackson accepted a newly created teaching position at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), in Lexington, Virginia. He became Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Instructor of Artillery. There he instilled his students with what he regarded as the timeless military essentials: discipline, mobility, assessing the enemy's strength and intentions while attempting to conceal your own, and the efficiency of artillery combined with an infantry assault.
When the War of Secession began, Jackson threw in his lot with the Confederate States. He was given brigade command by the governor of Virginia. He earned the nickname "Stonewall" for both himself and his brigade at First Bull Run by standing firm in the face of battle, prompting another brigade commander to shout "There stands Jackson like a stone wall! Rally around the Virginians, boys!" After the battle Jackson was given command of a division.
He held independent command in the Shenandoah Valley in the spring of 1862, where he defeated a much larger Union force. It was here that he earned his reputation of brilliant tactical leadership as well as a general who was capable of moving large bodies of infantry at speeds close to that of cavalry.
Following this action he was transferred to the Peninsula, where his command was attached to the Army of Northern Virginia. It was here that Jackson met Robert E. Lee. Jackson proved instrumental to the Army's efforts on the Peninsula as well as at Second Bull Run, where he turned John Pope's flank. Jackson took part in the final campaign of the war, helping to destroy the Army of the Potomac at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, in the fall of 1862. It was Jackson’s flanking attack that destroyed the only bridge the Union army controlled across the Potomac, eliminating the last means of the Army of the Potomac’s escape. This ensured the Army of the Potomac’s surrender. He then commanded a Corp advancing on Philadelphia, ensuring the Confederate victory in the War of Secession.
After the war, Jackson became General-in-Chief of the Confederate army. During the Second Mexican War, he personally commanded two field armies: first a small army which beat back a small US invasion from West Virginia, then the Army of Kentucky in its defense of Louisville, the war's primary front. In the Battle of Winchester Jackson routed the he US invading army using the “new infantry tactics,” modeled on the column and assault tactics developed by Colonel Emory Upton.
The Confederate Army of Kentucky, now under the command of General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson commandeered Negro laborers to build firing pits and earth works around the city of Louisville. However, the defense of the city would rely heavily on the artillery of Major General E. Porter Alexander. Jackson ordered the guns to fire on the barges and boats as they crossed the river, but US guns made this difficult. He then ordered two brigades to the waterfront to resist the crossing.
With the Army of Ohio on the banks of Kentucky, CS artillery switched targets, from the boats to the men on the shore. While this caused casualties it did not slow down the advance, and US troops quickly entered Louisville. To Wilcox's surprise, Jackson chose to fight for the city rather than retreat and engage US forces on open ground. This bled the Union army white as it was forced to fight house to house to seize control of the city. This negated the US Armies superiority in numbers.
In fall of 1881 Jackson planned and executed the attack that nearly destroyed the US army in Kentucky. The attack came as a total surprise to US commanders. US artillery shifted focus, but this time they were too slow to respond. Fortunately for the Union the IInd Corp commanded by LTG Hancock had been shifted to this salient. However with an assault from the flank and rear, the US salient quickly collapsed. CS troops rapidly overran the supply dump of the salient and by the end of the day, were standing on the bank of the Ohio. Still the heroic efforts of the IInd Corp prevented a complete route of union force, as bad as Camp Hill. After this disaster, US President Blaine called for an unconditional cease-fire along all fronts.
In wrecked Louisville, Generals Jackson and Wilcox met to discuss terms. Jackson wanted the US to withdraw from all of Kentucky while Wilcox refused. Jackson wired Longstreet asking for permission to force the Yankees out, but was turned down in fear it might restart the war. Jackson's use of heavy entrenchments at Louisville, proved the effectiveness of the tactic and led to its extensive use by all sides in the Great War thirty years later. He received Wilcox's formal surrender in the spring of 1882.
While Jackson was initially opposed to President James Longstreet's plan for the end of slavery after the war, he grew to see Longstreet's logic, and supported the decision. Thus, when Wade Hampton III approached Jackson about possibly launching a coup to overthrow Longstreet, Jackson harshly rebuked Hampton.
The Confederate Army's string of victories remained unbroken when Stonewall Jackson, hero of two wars, was elected in 1885. A reluctant candidate Jackson was only convinced to run by his long time friend and some time rival President Longstreet. After the aborted coup by Senator Wade Hampton III, Longstreet asked Jackson to run. The two eventually agreed that Jackson was the only name with the gravity to ensure the successful implementation of manumission and the retention of Britain and France as allies. A slave owner himself, he set a good example by voluntarily manumitting his own slaves between his election and his inauguration.
As President, Jackson remained for the most part politically aloof, except in issues of national defense. When the US passed its first conscription bill in 1886, the CSA responded with its own the year after in 1887. Jackson sent CS officers abroad to purchase French artillery, then the leading nation in artillery research. When the US adopted the General Staff system in 1891, one of his last official acts was to sign the Confederate General Staff Bill. The new Confederate General Staff was organized in 1891, albeit modeled on the French System. Ambrose Powell Hill, General and Chief under President Jackson, became the CSA’s first Chief of Staff. While in office Jackson remained interested in the development of military doctrine. He followed closely the military developments in Europe and the US. He was an admirer of General Upton and often ordered studies in implementing General Upton’s reforms in the CS Army.
During his term the Radical Party became popular among poor whites, which faced growing competition from free blacks for wage labor on farms and in factories. The Jackson administration did little meddling in domestic policy outside support of the manumission amendment. He rarely appeared in public outside official state ceremonies and helped maintain the air of good feelings in Confederate Politics and small government. He did however speak in support of state laws to restrict Negroes from industrial jobs, a key plank in the Whig platform.
After politics Jackson returned to teach at the Virginia Military Institute. He taught mathematics and Artillery ballistics. He died in 1896 in home his home outside Lexington, Virginia. After his death, Jackson's likeness was minted onto Confederate five-dollar gold coins, called "Stonewalls". His old Brigade in the War of Secession henceforth became known as the Stonewall Division and became the Confederacies elite infantry division. It saw meritorious action in the great wheel around Baltimore, however it received 70% casualties in a single attack against fortifications north of Baltimore. The slaughter of that many considered the cream of the Confederate Infantry would be known through the C.S. Army as the slaughter of the innocents. By the end of the War it would suffer more than 200% casualties.
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James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart, Jr (b. 1864- 1944)
A Confederate officer who served for over 64 years, since his 16th years old. He was the son of Jeb Stuart. Stuart, the most respected Cavalry Commander of his generation and martyr of the Second Mexican War. J.E.B. Stuart Jr. was born in the Stuart ancestral home in Patrick County in 1864. He was educated in Patrick, but moved often because of his father’s military career. At age 14 he was sent to the V.MI.’s preparatory school. Like most other Jr.’s he was given a brevet rank of lieutenant at the outbreak of the Second Mexican War. There first came to prominence at age of 17, as a lieutenant of infantry in Thomas Jackson's Army of Kentucky at the Battle of Louisville in the Second Mexican War. When the US Army of the Ohio under the command of General Orlando Wilcox invaded Kentucky at Louisville, Stuart and his company distinguished themselves under fire when they held and repulsed Wilcox's flanking move. In the middle of the fighting, Stuart saved his company when its commander was wounded, and became a war hero just like his father, who was serving in Mexico. Right after the battle, Stuart personally met the Confederate Army chief, Jackson, who he had known his entire childhood.
At the war, he was admitted to the V.M.I. he graduate within three years in the top 1/3rd of his class. After graduating in 1886, he was admitted as a 1st Lieutenant to the prestigious Stonewall Brigade, the Confederacy’s most elite infantry unit. For the next ten years, Jeb Stuart, Jr. rapidly advanced through the ranks. In 1889 he was transferred to his father’s old Trans- Mississippi Department. Now a Captain, he took part in the final pacification of the Apache tribes. He returned to the Stonewall Brigade in 1892. Throughout this period General Chief and the President Jackson kept a close watch on his career. President Jackson remained a mentor to the young officer. In 1895 now a Major, he was admitted to the first class of the new General Staff school, in Lexington, Virginia. After graduating he was promoted to Lt. Colonel and given a prominent role at the War Department by virtue of his glory in 1881 and through the magic of his family's name, which counted for as much as merit did (and probably more) in the caste-world of the Confederacy.
Stuart like his father was naturally inclined towards the offensive and became an early member of the member of the “Fire Eater” faction. These officers believed the only way the Confederacy could defeat the United States was to deliver a knockout blow by capturing Philadelphia in the early phase of the war. Stuart continued to play a prominent role in the C.S. Army and an influential role in the Confederate General Staff. In 1904 he was promoted to Brigadier General and commander of the Stonewall Brigade. 1909 he became a Division Commander of the 2nd Virginia “Stonewall” Infantry Division; the most coveted Infantry Command in the Confederate Army. By 1912 he was the Chief of Staff of the Army of Virginia, there he oversaw the planning of the “Great Wheel” around Baltimore and the planned knock out blow against Philadelphia.
When the Great War began in 1914, Stuart was Adjutant General. He helped unleashed the Army of Northern Virginia north through Washington DC, and southern Maryland in a move aimed at capturing Philadelphia, the de-facto capital of the United States. When it failed in the winter of 1914/1915 he was promoted to Deputy Chief of Staff to replace LTG Robert Bullard.
As the Army of Northern Virginia stood on the Susquehanna River, disturbing reports filtered from the front to the War Department of a nature that suggested a grave danger to the safety of the entire CSA. Many cells of Marxist black laborers had been uncovered in the various armies. One such cell included Pompey, the manservant of Stuart's son, Captain Jeb Stuart III of Battery C, First Richmond Howitzers. The accusation there had been made by one of Stuart's sergeants in Battery C, Jake Featherston, and passed on to the top by a major from Intelligence named Clarence Potter.
Jeb Stuart, Jr. didn't wish to upset his son by having the manservant, Pompey, taken away for detention. He ordered the affair hushed up, not believing that Pompey was even capable of plotting rebellion or anything seditious. When the Red Rebellion of 1915-16 broke out in autumn of 1915, Pompey disappeared with the other rebels. Jeb Stuart III was now under a cloud, and when Pompey was captured and brought back to the captain for confirmation of identity, any chances of his being promoted went down the drain. Jeb Stuart III died in combat not long after the affair, recklessly attacking the enemy with the intent of being killed. Jeb Stuart, Jr. punished Sergeant Featherston and Major Potter for their parts in the controversy by blocking their promotions. Potter got over his situation; Featherston was enraged, and began his quest for revenge.
LTG Stuart dutifully served the Confederacy and was one of the first officers to speak out about the continuing deterioration of the Confederate Army. In 1916 his team decided on the plan to focus it offensive capabilities by eliminating the threat to the Roanoke Front, which despite its lack of strategic significance was a major drain of resources It was Stuart that championed General Bruckner’s planned Roanoke offensive in fall of 1916. Stuart who more than anyone else in the General Staff saw the promise of the new style of close cooperation of Infantry and Artillery. The Roanoke Offensive on the fall of 1916 was the only major victory for the Confederacy in the later half of the war. Stuart became a convert to the new infiltration or “Foot Cavalry” tactics pioneered by Colonel Thomas Rowland and named after his mentor’s style of attack in the war off Secession. These new tactics called for heavy weapons battalions to assault weak points in the enemy’s positions and bypass the forward trenches. Then these units would push into the enemy’s rear and causing chaos and preventing reinforcement. The success of the attack allowed allowed the Stuart to propose all new confederate units be trained in this tactics. The stunning CSA victory is considered the forerunner for the Confederate lightening drive through Ohio. Stuart supported President Semmes policy of allowing Negroes to join the Army. Stuart’s office oversaw the planning for the integration of Black soldiers.
After the Confederacy's defeat, Stuart remained part of the War Department. In this period he ascended to Chief of Staff in 1918. Under his leadership the CSA sought to circumvent the restrictions set in place by the Treaty of Philadelphia. In 1918 the General Staff entered into agreements with Mexico and Argentina to send advisors to experiment with new military technology. CS designed Barrels saw action in the closing phase of the Great War in South America and the Mexican Civil War. The CSA also created shell companies to purchase aircraft engines and technology. When Action Françoise took power in France, it was Stuart that began military cooperation with the new regime. It is largely now believed that Stuart was the architect of many of the Free Corp units that put down what was left of the Red Republics in the cotton belts. Helping to hide the weapons to put down the insurrection by these units, from US inspectors. Stuart also organized what was called in that period as the Black Staff, a department of CS Army intelligence whose mission was to hunt down and execute those that collaborator with the US reparations regime. The Black Staff was responsible for the death of over 200 CS citizens collaborating with US inspectors.
It was Stuart who put together the commissions to examine why the CSA lost the last war and what it needed to do to win the next war. It was this commission that determined that more than ¾ of all CS casualties were caused by heavy artillery fire, while the US number was less than 2/3. This group determined that the average US Army Corp had more heavy firepower than the entire CS Army. This led to the CS suffering a casualty rate that despite being on the defensive was nearly as high as the US. The lack of heavy artillery meant what Confederate Offensives were made suffered unnecessary casualties. Primarily because the 75mm was inaccurate past 2 km and the CSA lacked recoiled Heavy Artillery until 1916. The secret committee recommended that any future war would have to overcome this lack of accurate firepower, that only the close coordination of Barrels, Artillery, Infantry and Airpower could overcome US strength in Manpower.
As Chief of Staff he ordered a rigorous selection process for the retention of officers. He retained the officers with only the best battlefield service recorded. Focusing on accomplishments on tactical skill and their use of combined infantry and artillery ability. He purposely sought out the experts in each branch for retention. He purposely retained Colonel Thomas Rowland, the victor of the 12th Battle of Roanoke. He promoted Colonel Rowland to Brigadier General and head of Troop Training. Like Rowland he retained Lt. Colonel George S. Patton, the Confederacy’s most experienced Barrel Commander and generally considered the C.S. Army equivalent of Morrel. He introduced the policy of having officers train to be able to lead unit’s two sizes larger. As a result the CS Army in the inter war period.
Despite its limited numbers, developed a tactical and leadership expertise to rival any army. However this focus on battlefield tactics is believed to have sacrificed the retention of CS army soldiers with strategic vision and logistic expertise. Despite his many reform’s under his leadership the CS Army retained its prejudice for officers with pedigree and privileged background. He purposely advanced those remaining officer with more aristocratic backgrounds. This included men like N.B. Forrest III and George S. Patton. This prejudice grew especially after the rise of the Freedom party; he mistakenly believed their pedigree made them reliable Whigs. It was not until the rise of Featherston that not being of the Military or Plantation caste like George S. Marshal rose to prominence.
Though often singled out by Featherston as the example of the nepotism and conservatism, which had crippled the CS Army during the war, Stuart remained silent until 1923. When President Wade Hampton V's assassination seemed sure to consign the Freedom Party to the dustbin of history, Stuart personally met with Featherston for the first time. He quietly but smugly informed Featherston that he had come to say goodbye, as he believed that the Freedom Party would no longer be a force in Confederate politics. While it did not consume his outer appearance, it seemed he deeply regretted his actions that allowed the Red Rebellion to occur. He believed that the death of his son was a result of his mistake. He also admitted that blocking Featherston’s promotion was a mistake as well. Stuart's confidence proved misplaced. Featherston did recover from the 1923 debacle, and eleven years later was sworn in as the Confederacy's President.
Despite his campaign promises, Featherston walked softly around the army for the first two years of his presidency. But in the aftermath of a failed assassination attempt at the 1936 Olympics, Featherston's popularity was such that he felt the time had come to shake up the CS Army's leadership. He called Stuart into his office and gloatingly reminded him of their last meeting before asking for his resignation. The icy civility of both men swiftly gave way to abuse; when Stuart refused, demanded a court-martial, and labeled Featherston "white trash", the enraged president threatened to charge the general with treason for his part in facilitating the Red Rebellion, as well as exposing his son's involvement with protecting the Marxist Pompey. A shaken Stuart promptly resigned. Shortly afterward news of the Pompey Affair went out over the Confederate wireless and cinema.
J.E.B. Stuart II attempted to rejoin the Army on the outbreak of the Second Great War, but was denied a commission. He was forced to sit out the war. He watched on the sidelines as the Army he conceived advanced farther and conquered more territory than any Confederate Army. Historians continue to debate whether he was a part of the attempted Forrest Coup. He was arrested anyway and sent to a concentration camp for political prisoners outside Blackstone, Virginia. He was informed that he would be held there until his involvement could be ascertained. His name was apparently found in the documents of the conspirators as a possible member of a new military government. He was shot by freedom party guards, three days after the fall of Richmond; his remains were recovered after the liberation of the Camp in September of 1944.
A Confederate officer who served for over 64 years, since his 16th years old. He was the son of Jeb Stuart. Stuart, the most respected Cavalry Commander of his generation and martyr of the Second Mexican War. J.E.B. Stuart Jr. was born in the Stuart ancestral home in Patrick County in 1864. He was educated in Patrick, but moved often because of his father’s military career. At age 14 he was sent to the V.MI.’s preparatory school. Like most other Jr.’s he was given a brevet rank of lieutenant at the outbreak of the Second Mexican War. There first came to prominence at age of 17, as a lieutenant of infantry in Thomas Jackson's Army of Kentucky at the Battle of Louisville in the Second Mexican War. When the US Army of the Ohio under the command of General Orlando Wilcox invaded Kentucky at Louisville, Stuart and his company distinguished themselves under fire when they held and repulsed Wilcox's flanking move. In the middle of the fighting, Stuart saved his company when its commander was wounded, and became a war hero just like his father, who was serving in Mexico. Right after the battle, Stuart personally met the Confederate Army chief, Jackson, who he had known his entire childhood.
At the war, he was admitted to the V.M.I. he graduate within three years in the top 1/3rd of his class. After graduating in 1886, he was admitted as a 1st Lieutenant to the prestigious Stonewall Brigade, the Confederacy’s most elite infantry unit. For the next ten years, Jeb Stuart, Jr. rapidly advanced through the ranks. In 1889 he was transferred to his father’s old Trans- Mississippi Department. Now a Captain, he took part in the final pacification of the Apache tribes. He returned to the Stonewall Brigade in 1892. Throughout this period General Chief and the President Jackson kept a close watch on his career. President Jackson remained a mentor to the young officer. In 1895 now a Major, he was admitted to the first class of the new General Staff school, in Lexington, Virginia. After graduating he was promoted to Lt. Colonel and given a prominent role at the War Department by virtue of his glory in 1881 and through the magic of his family's name, which counted for as much as merit did (and probably more) in the caste-world of the Confederacy.
Stuart like his father was naturally inclined towards the offensive and became an early member of the member of the “Fire Eater” faction. These officers believed the only way the Confederacy could defeat the United States was to deliver a knockout blow by capturing Philadelphia in the early phase of the war. Stuart continued to play a prominent role in the C.S. Army and an influential role in the Confederate General Staff. In 1904 he was promoted to Brigadier General and commander of the Stonewall Brigade. 1909 he became a Division Commander of the 2nd Virginia “Stonewall” Infantry Division; the most coveted Infantry Command in the Confederate Army. By 1912 he was the Chief of Staff of the Army of Virginia, there he oversaw the planning of the “Great Wheel” around Baltimore and the planned knock out blow against Philadelphia.
When the Great War began in 1914, Stuart was Adjutant General. He helped unleashed the Army of Northern Virginia north through Washington DC, and southern Maryland in a move aimed at capturing Philadelphia, the de-facto capital of the United States. When it failed in the winter of 1914/1915 he was promoted to Deputy Chief of Staff to replace LTG Robert Bullard.
As the Army of Northern Virginia stood on the Susquehanna River, disturbing reports filtered from the front to the War Department of a nature that suggested a grave danger to the safety of the entire CSA. Many cells of Marxist black laborers had been uncovered in the various armies. One such cell included Pompey, the manservant of Stuart's son, Captain Jeb Stuart III of Battery C, First Richmond Howitzers. The accusation there had been made by one of Stuart's sergeants in Battery C, Jake Featherston, and passed on to the top by a major from Intelligence named Clarence Potter.
Jeb Stuart, Jr. didn't wish to upset his son by having the manservant, Pompey, taken away for detention. He ordered the affair hushed up, not believing that Pompey was even capable of plotting rebellion or anything seditious. When the Red Rebellion of 1915-16 broke out in autumn of 1915, Pompey disappeared with the other rebels. Jeb Stuart III was now under a cloud, and when Pompey was captured and brought back to the captain for confirmation of identity, any chances of his being promoted went down the drain. Jeb Stuart III died in combat not long after the affair, recklessly attacking the enemy with the intent of being killed. Jeb Stuart, Jr. punished Sergeant Featherston and Major Potter for their parts in the controversy by blocking their promotions. Potter got over his situation; Featherston was enraged, and began his quest for revenge.
LTG Stuart dutifully served the Confederacy and was one of the first officers to speak out about the continuing deterioration of the Confederate Army. In 1916 his team decided on the plan to focus it offensive capabilities by eliminating the threat to the Roanoke Front, which despite its lack of strategic significance was a major drain of resources It was Stuart that championed General Bruckner’s planned Roanoke offensive in fall of 1916. Stuart who more than anyone else in the General Staff saw the promise of the new style of close cooperation of Infantry and Artillery. The Roanoke Offensive on the fall of 1916 was the only major victory for the Confederacy in the later half of the war. Stuart became a convert to the new infiltration or “Foot Cavalry” tactics pioneered by Colonel Thomas Rowland and named after his mentor’s style of attack in the war off Secession. These new tactics called for heavy weapons battalions to assault weak points in the enemy’s positions and bypass the forward trenches. Then these units would push into the enemy’s rear and causing chaos and preventing reinforcement. The success of the attack allowed allowed the Stuart to propose all new confederate units be trained in this tactics. The stunning CSA victory is considered the forerunner for the Confederate lightening drive through Ohio. Stuart supported President Semmes policy of allowing Negroes to join the Army. Stuart’s office oversaw the planning for the integration of Black soldiers.
After the Confederacy's defeat, Stuart remained part of the War Department. In this period he ascended to Chief of Staff in 1918. Under his leadership the CSA sought to circumvent the restrictions set in place by the Treaty of Philadelphia. In 1918 the General Staff entered into agreements with Mexico and Argentina to send advisors to experiment with new military technology. CS designed Barrels saw action in the closing phase of the Great War in South America and the Mexican Civil War. The CSA also created shell companies to purchase aircraft engines and technology. When Action Françoise took power in France, it was Stuart that began military cooperation with the new regime. It is largely now believed that Stuart was the architect of many of the Free Corp units that put down what was left of the Red Republics in the cotton belts. Helping to hide the weapons to put down the insurrection by these units, from US inspectors. Stuart also organized what was called in that period as the Black Staff, a department of CS Army intelligence whose mission was to hunt down and execute those that collaborator with the US reparations regime. The Black Staff was responsible for the death of over 200 CS citizens collaborating with US inspectors.
It was Stuart who put together the commissions to examine why the CSA lost the last war and what it needed to do to win the next war. It was this commission that determined that more than ¾ of all CS casualties were caused by heavy artillery fire, while the US number was less than 2/3. This group determined that the average US Army Corp had more heavy firepower than the entire CS Army. This led to the CS suffering a casualty rate that despite being on the defensive was nearly as high as the US. The lack of heavy artillery meant what Confederate Offensives were made suffered unnecessary casualties. Primarily because the 75mm was inaccurate past 2 km and the CSA lacked recoiled Heavy Artillery until 1916. The secret committee recommended that any future war would have to overcome this lack of accurate firepower, that only the close coordination of Barrels, Artillery, Infantry and Airpower could overcome US strength in Manpower.
As Chief of Staff he ordered a rigorous selection process for the retention of officers. He retained the officers with only the best battlefield service recorded. Focusing on accomplishments on tactical skill and their use of combined infantry and artillery ability. He purposely sought out the experts in each branch for retention. He purposely retained Colonel Thomas Rowland, the victor of the 12th Battle of Roanoke. He promoted Colonel Rowland to Brigadier General and head of Troop Training. Like Rowland he retained Lt. Colonel George S. Patton, the Confederacy’s most experienced Barrel Commander and generally considered the C.S. Army equivalent of Morrel. He introduced the policy of having officers train to be able to lead unit’s two sizes larger. As a result the CS Army in the inter war period.
Despite its limited numbers, developed a tactical and leadership expertise to rival any army. However this focus on battlefield tactics is believed to have sacrificed the retention of CS army soldiers with strategic vision and logistic expertise. Despite his many reform’s under his leadership the CS Army retained its prejudice for officers with pedigree and privileged background. He purposely advanced those remaining officer with more aristocratic backgrounds. This included men like N.B. Forrest III and George S. Patton. This prejudice grew especially after the rise of the Freedom party; he mistakenly believed their pedigree made them reliable Whigs. It was not until the rise of Featherston that not being of the Military or Plantation caste like George S. Marshal rose to prominence.
Though often singled out by Featherston as the example of the nepotism and conservatism, which had crippled the CS Army during the war, Stuart remained silent until 1923. When President Wade Hampton V's assassination seemed sure to consign the Freedom Party to the dustbin of history, Stuart personally met with Featherston for the first time. He quietly but smugly informed Featherston that he had come to say goodbye, as he believed that the Freedom Party would no longer be a force in Confederate politics. While it did not consume his outer appearance, it seemed he deeply regretted his actions that allowed the Red Rebellion to occur. He believed that the death of his son was a result of his mistake. He also admitted that blocking Featherston’s promotion was a mistake as well. Stuart's confidence proved misplaced. Featherston did recover from the 1923 debacle, and eleven years later was sworn in as the Confederacy's President.
Despite his campaign promises, Featherston walked softly around the army for the first two years of his presidency. But in the aftermath of a failed assassination attempt at the 1936 Olympics, Featherston's popularity was such that he felt the time had come to shake up the CS Army's leadership. He called Stuart into his office and gloatingly reminded him of their last meeting before asking for his resignation. The icy civility of both men swiftly gave way to abuse; when Stuart refused, demanded a court-martial, and labeled Featherston "white trash", the enraged president threatened to charge the general with treason for his part in facilitating the Red Rebellion, as well as exposing his son's involvement with protecting the Marxist Pompey. A shaken Stuart promptly resigned. Shortly afterward news of the Pompey Affair went out over the Confederate wireless and cinema.
J.E.B. Stuart II attempted to rejoin the Army on the outbreak of the Second Great War, but was denied a commission. He was forced to sit out the war. He watched on the sidelines as the Army he conceived advanced farther and conquered more territory than any Confederate Army. Historians continue to debate whether he was a part of the attempted Forrest Coup. He was arrested anyway and sent to a concentration camp for political prisoners outside Blackstone, Virginia. He was informed that he would be held there until his involvement could be ascertained. His name was apparently found in the documents of the conspirators as a possible member of a new military government. He was shot by freedom party guards, three days after the fall of Richmond; his remains were recovered after the liberation of the Camp in September of 1944.
Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840- 1914)
Mahan was born on September 27, 1840 in West Point, New York to Dennis Hart Mahan (a professor at the United States Military Academy and Mary Helena Mahan. His middle name, Thayer, honors "the father of West Point", Sylvanus Thayer. Mahan grew up in West Point and attended boarding school. Mahan studied at Columbia for two years w then, against his parents' wishes, transferred to the Naval Academy, where he graduated second in his class in 1859.
Commissioned as a lieutenant in 1861, Mahan served the Union in the War of Secession as an officer on USS Worcester, Congress, Pocahontas, and James Adger and as an instructor at the Naval Academy. In 1865, he was promoted to lieutenant commander, and then to commander (1872), and captain (1885). Despite his success in the Navy, his skills in actual command of a ship were not exemplary, and a number of vessels under his command were involved in collisions, with both moving and stationary objects. He had affection for old square-rigged vessels and did not like the smoky, noisy steamships of his time; he tried to avoid active sea duty. In the 1870s in various shore installations, burning with resentment at what he saw as the insanely reckless policy of a small Navy. After the Panic of 1875, President Cox sold several warships to foreign nations and halted naval construction. An outraged officer serving with the Lighthouse Board, Captain Mahan began putting his thoughts on the supremacy of seapower to paper that year.
In 1876 he became an instructor at the naval academy. His series of lectures at the Naval Academy on the use of sea power during the Napoleonic Wars earned him wide acclaim, and he began writing a book on the subject. However he was given the command of the Charles Ellsworth, in 1880. For him, the Second Mexican War was the last straw. Serving as skipper of the Charles Ellsworth, he watched in rage as the superior armor and gunnery of the Royal Navy wrecked a flotilla sent to intercept British troops moving to Canada.
In 1885, he was appointed as a lecturer in naval history and tactics at the Naval War College. Before entering on his duties, College President Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce pointed Mahan in the direction of writing his future studies on the influence of sea power. For his first year on the faculty, he remained at his home in New York City researching and writing his lectures. Upon completion of this research period, he succeeded Luce as President of the Naval War College from June 22, 1886 to January 12, 1889. There, in 1887, he met and befriended Theodore Roosevelt, then a visiting lecturer.
While President of the Naval War College, Mahan plunged into the library and wrote lectures that drew heavily on standard classics and the ideas of Henri Jomini. The lectures became his sea-power studies and led to his writing of The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (1889).
In The Influence of Sea Power upon History, Mahan explored the seventeenth century conflicts between Holland, England, France and Spain, where British naval superiority eventually defeated other continental naval powers and consistently prevented invasion and blockade. To a modern reader, the emphasis on controlling seaborne commerce is commonplace, but in the nineteenth century, the notion was radical, especially in the United States where the nation focused with expansion on to the continent's western land and the threat posed by Confederate land power. He argued that Britain’s rise to global dominance was the result of her Naval Dominance. Further that other nations like France also gained greater influence through the possession of their own fleet. On the other hand, Mahan's emphasis of sea power as the crucial fact behind Britain's ascension neglected the well-documented roles of diplomacy and armies; Mahan's theories could not explain the success of terrestrial empires, such as Bismarckian Germany.
Where most American Imperialists were focusing on irredentist claims on the Confederate States and Canada. Mahan backed a revival of Manifest Destiny through overseas imperialism. He held that sea power would require the United States to acquire defensive bases in the Caribbean and Pacific. Specifically to take possession of the Sandwich Island’s and all of Britain’s possessions in the western Atlantic and Caribbean after any future war with Britain. This came at the time when the United States launched a major rearmament program following the disaster of the Second Mexican War. His book was right in time to capture the imaginations of the growing Remembrance movement.
His vigorous style and clear theory won widespread acceptance of navalists across the world. Sea power supported the new the Great European Powers colonialist projects in Africa and Asia. Given the very rapid technological changes underway in propulsion (from coal to oil, from boilers to turbines), ordnance (with better fire directors, and new high explosives) and armor and emergence of new craft such as destroyers and submarines, Mahan's emphasis on the capital ship and the command of the sea came at an opportune moment.
Mahan's concept of sea power extended beyond naval superiority; he preached that in peacetime, states should increase production and shipping capacities, to acquire overseas possessions. As a result of the modern industrial economy, great powers required he acquisition of either colonies or privileged access to foreign markets. He stressed that the number of coal fuelling stations and strategic bases should be few, not to drain too many resources from the mother country. He believed the British Empire had overstretched itself and the United States was in the perfect position to exploit this weakness and capture the Sandwich Island’s and Britain’s North American possessions.
By 1890 his book became an international best seller, Mahan's name became a household word in the German navy, as Kaiser William II ordered his officers to read Mahan, and Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz used Mahan's reputation to finance a powerful surface fleet. At home, President Reed had long held a deep interest in naval power and naval affairs. This interest only grew after the bombardment of his home district of Portland, Maine by the Royal Navy.
President Reed was given an early copy of the Influence of Sea Power on History by then Assistant Secretary of War Theodore Roosevelt. Through the young Assistant Secretary, Reed became familiar with Mahan’s theories and invited Mahan to join the cabinet as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. There he became a forceful advocate of a modern, two-ocean navy. Under Reed and Mahan’s Stewardship the US Congress passed legislation for an all steel modern steel battle fleet built entirely in the United States. The two also lobbied for a new Naval Staff Bill mirroring the Army’s new General Staff. After the passing of the Steel Fleet & Staff bill in 1891, Mahan was elevated to full Secretary of the Navy. By 1895 the United States produced 4 all steel Battleships, 6 steel armored cruisers, more than a dozen ocean/Great Lake monitors.
By 1895 the United States felt a resurgence of national confidence thanks to the reforms of Secretary of the Navy Alfred Thayer Mahan and Army Chief of Staff Emory Upton. For the first time since the Second Mexican War the US felt capable of resisting further Confederate- British and French expansion in the Western Hemisphere. In 1895 The Confederate Congress pushed to annex Haiti over failed debt payments to CSA Banks. President Reed however ordered squadron of warships sent to Port- au- Prince. President Reed followed this up by declaring Haiti a protectorate, preventing the islands annexation by Confederate filibusters. Because of the United States growing military confidence and the British reticence to enter in a new war on the North American continent, the United States scored its first diplomatic victory in thirty years. The pivotal role the new navy played in its successful conclusion of the Haiti Crises helped turn Mahan into a hero in Remembrance circles.
It was during this time that Mahan first met then Chief of Staff Emory Upton. Both admired each others work and both were theorists who were now attempting to turn their ideas into reality. It was during the Reed administration that the first Interservice Coordination Conference was established. Until this time generally all interservice meetings happened at the cabinet level, between Secretary of the Navy and War. However in 1892 Secretary of War Sickles, proposed to the President Tri-annual Interservice Coordination Conference. This was really the work of Assistant Secretary of War Theodore Roosevelt, his last contribution before leaving to become the Inspector General of the New York National Guard.
The first meeting was held in 1893, it was a full meeting of the Army General Staff and the new Naval Staff. There the two Staffs convened a board to coordinate how each could mutually support each other’s strategic objectives. It was agreed there that the Navy’s North Atlantic Squadron would set its first objective as capturing the Canadian Maritimes and preventing British reinforcements of its forces already in Canada. The Army agreed by pledging to support an attack through Maine, despite its primary effort being the invasion of Kentucky. The Navy also requested an Army attack on British Columbia, but this was rejected. It was during this meeting that the Army attempted to bind the Navy into an agreement that the Army’s conquest of Confederate Territory it should be allocated priorities in resources and funding. The Army further demanded that the Navy should not attempt to make any territorial acquisitions that might be a drain on these objectives. The Navy emphatically, refused to agree to these terms. This was the first indication that the Army under Chief of Staff Upton would likely attempt to subordinate all that stood in the way of its objectives.
In 1896, the barons of the Democratic Party have become restless under eight years of a single administration. Two of these titans, Grover Cleveland of New York and Robert Pattison of Pennsylvania, deadlocked at the convention. The party brokers then handed the nomination to the relative-unknown Alfred Mahan. Though uninterested in partisan politics, Mahan saw this as n opportunity to put his ideas fully into practice. He defeated both the Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison, and the young Socialist Congressman William Jennings Bryan. This was the first election where a Socialist candidate has outpolled the Republican.
In his inauguration speech Mahan laid out his vision for two ocean Navy capable of repelling attacks by the Royal Navy on the American coastal cities, prevent the British from reinforcing their forces in Canada, project the United States’ interested abroad and bring the fight to the home waters of the nation’s enemies. In the first year in office he won approval by Congress for a new Fleet Bill that guaranteed funding for a two Ocean Navy.
During his eight years in office, the US built a modern two-ocean navy, consisting of the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, and Great Lakes Squadrons, with riverine operations becoming the Army's province. As befitting US strategic interests, the Atlantic Fleet received the bulk of funding. The cost of building such a fleet however put tremendous strain on the nation and the economy. Under the Mahan administration the Federal Reserve was established. The Government also began the wide scale rationing of strategically important commodities like steel, coal, nitrates, cotton and sometimes meat.
It was the impact of the rationing which is attributed to the rapid growth of the Socialist Party in this period. During his first administration the nation wracked by violent strikes. Mahan a staunch Democrat often ordered the army to violently intercede on behalf of the factory owners. However as the strain of the rationing policy took its toll, Socialist Party leadership expected a rapid expansion of the party. However the violent reputation of the party kept many blue-collar workers away. It was not until they renounced violence or “direct action” that the party really expanded. It was not until in the late 1890’s that the socialist party replaced the Republicans as the second largest Party in Congress.
The expanding Navy and its voracious appetite for funding and national resources, not only strained relations for with labor, but the Army as well. By 1898 the ever-expanding naval budget and army budget was bankrupting the nation. Congress was for the first time since the Remembrance Democrats came to power did not have the votes for the increase in defense spending. The President and the House Committees on Military and Naval Affairs, had to make hard choices. Either continue with the Naval Expansion or continue with the Army expansion program suggested by Chief of Staff Emory Upton. The President and The House Committees compromised and the 1899 budget saw a reduced spending for both the Army and Navy.
Unfortunately Chief of Staff Upton did not agree, years of exponential Naval growth and only slightly slower increase in the army, made the General Staff question the Presidents priorities. This effectively meant that the United States would only have the resources to draft ½ of the eligible male population. Tension between the President and Chief of Staff’s continued into next year, despite their effective cooperation during the Nicaraguan crises. At the third triennial Naval review Upton again presented a plan for a beefed up Army expanding the number of Armies from four to six, fixing the number of divisions at fifty-four and establishing new training facilities to increase the percentage of eligible men drafted from 50% to 80%. At that time the CS Army currently drafted 88% of its male white population. At the same time he presented a counter Naval budget and plan that would only allow it prevent British from supplying Canada, a small coastal defense fleet in the Pacific and a expanded Great Lakes and Riverine force. President Mahan supported the expansion of the army to its new six-army force structure, but rejected the increase in draftees and rebuked Upton for meddling in Naval Affairs. It was becoming clear the President and the Chief of Staff, had deeply different views on the future of the United States defense policy.
Early in his first term the Entente tests him with a plan to build a transoceanic canal through Nicaragua. In 1897 the Confederacy finally had the funds and the agreement with Nicaragua to construct a trans-oceanic canal across the isthmus. They also had an agreement with the British to support and finance a canal scheme, as long as it did not anger the “other Americans.” At first Confederacy attempted to make an agreement with the United States to recognize the building of a Confederate- British canal across the isthmus. President Mahan threatened war the second the first Confederates shovel dug into Nicaraguan earth. Mahan argued before Congress that a canal across the isthmus would allow the Confederacy and its allies the ability to move ships between the Atlantic and Pacific at more that three times the speed than if they had to sail around South America. The Canal would give an overwhelming advantage to who ever owns it and allow the Confederacy to build their own two ocean Navy.
The bellicose Confederate President States Rights Gist immediately demanded support from his allies to build the canal under the threat of possible war. Mahan knew that neither the Navy nor Army was ready for war with the Confederacy or Great Britain. The Navy was far from a match to the might of the Royal Navy and Upton’s Army reforms were still under way. However Mahan gambled that the British people were not interested in a renewed war with the United States, especially given the threat of war looming in South Africa. Mahan gambled paid off with its attention turned towards South Africa, Britain would not risk a war.
Without British support the humiliated President Gist was forced to end all Confederate aspirations for a trans-oceanic canal. After President States Rights Gist, the C.S.A. turned its back on former Generals as Presidents. In 1898 the Confederate citizens elected Robert Taylor as President. Each pursued a policy of preventing further exploitation of the Caribbean by European Powers and non-conflict with the United States. Meanwhile under Mahan’s leadership, Germany and the United States continued to cultivate alliances across South America, most notably with Chile, Paraguay and Venezuela.
When 1900 arrived Mahan easily captured the Democratic Party nomination. His success in handling the Nicaraguan crises and his humiliation of President Gist gave the people of the United States a sense of pride it had not felt since the First Mexican War. Mahan went on to crush Socialist candidate Williams Jennings Bryan and Republican candidate John Hay. President Mahan had recently appointed Hay ambassador France. Mahan became the second Democrat since Andrew Jackson to win a second term.
Despite his success tension still festered between the President and Chief of Staff Upton. Upton continued to malign the president to his allies in congress. Upton even tried to coax his allies in Congress into running a more Army centric candidate for President like Theodore Roosevelt. Mahan was aware of his machinations, but Upton was too popular and there was no other Army officer with the reputation to replace him. No one else in the army had his vision or foresight. Mahan’s overwhelming re-election in 1900, greatly increased influence in Philadelphia. The President plied his new found influence into pushing for a new Navy Bill, which if passed would be put the nation on track to match the power of the Royal Navy by 1922. It's objective was not just dominance in the Western Atlantic, but across the planet, making the US the dominant global Naval Power. Chief of Staff Upton overtly attempted to block the bill. When he failed, Upton wrote a scathing editorial for the Philadelphia Tribune, A Republican news outlet. In it Upton railed against the growing dangers of the Confederate Army and the US Army’s criminally negligent lack of resource. Mahan attempted to sooth things over with Upton through the new Secretary of War Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt’s overtures went unanswered, Upton now Chief of Staff for twelve years, was developing a distain for civilian oversight. General Upton again presented a proposal to the Committee on Military Affairs and the President for an increase in the number of Armies from six to eight, an increase in the percentage of the eligible male population trained and an increase in the conscription period service men served from two to three years. This had become standard in the Confederate Army. Upton raised fears that the average Confederate soldier was now better trained. When Upton threatened to resign if his demands were not met, Mahan called his bluff. In fall of 1901 Chief of Staff Upton, resigned. Charles Francis Adams, brother of the Speaker of the House Henry Adams, replaced him. A fact that made Upton’s retirement more palatable for Congress. Chief of Staff Adams quickly proved easier to work with and more deferential to civilian oversight.
Mahan continued to remain aloof in domestic politics, outside of his support for the Federal Reserve and rationing policies. He did not take sides in the growing issue over the power of Corporate Trust’s nor did he way in on the grawing movement to establish oversite and the food and drug industries. In 1902, however he did use his offices to end a major anthracite coal minor strike. Mahan unexpectedly sided with the striking workers and forced the mine owners to give into nearly all of the striker’s demands. For the first time a Democratic President reached out to Socialist Party Congressmen in ending a strike, instead of calling in the Army or National Guard. In forcing an end to the strike Mahan prevented a possible major disruption in the nations coal supplies that winter.
In Foreign Policy Mahan continued the Reed administrations policy of increasing ties with Germany. The two regularly exhcanged military officers to report on inovations in their partners countries. Mahan focused on increasing ties between the two nations Navy. Mahan signed agreements allowing the West Atlantic Squadron of German High Seas Fleet to use Boston as a coaling station and secured reciprocal agreements, which allowed the US fleet to use German Ports in the Pacific to coal US warships. US and German warships began joint excercises in the Pacific and Atlantic. He did however prevent the Kaiser from seizing control of Venezuela, which cause a slight rift between the two powers. However by 1903 he was able to mend this relationship and formally bring the United States into the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. In October 1903 the Triple Alliance officially became the Quadruple Alliance. This marked the most radical departure in US foreign Policy, since the founding of the Republic. By signing the agreement the nation officially rejected President Washington’s warnings against entanglement in foreign alliances.
By 1904 the United States had completed twenty battleships, and became the dominant Naval power in the Western Atlantic, eclipsing the British, Canadian and CSA in Naval strength in the region. After no incidents since Nicaraguan Crises of 1897, President Mahan gambled again. Mahan sent 12 Battleships of the US Atlantic Squadron on a goodwill trip around the world; formally announcing that the US had become a major global power. Mahan left office in 1905, happy to return to his studies.
After leaving office Mahan took a grand European tour, beginning in 1906 and it lasted more than a year. In Europe he was requested by the Naval Academies of friend and foe alike, to lecture about the future of naval power. While lecturing at Portsmouth he met future First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill and First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher. He was given a heroes welcome in Berlin and joined the Kaiser on his yacht for a tour of the Norwegian coast. He returned to the United States in 1907 where he settled in New York City and returned to writing.
While in office as Secretary of the Navy, Mahan still found time to write. There he finish two more books, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812 (2 vols. 1892); and the Life of Nelson: The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain (2 vols. 1897). After he left office he continued his writing completing John Paul Jones: The origins of American Sea Power (2 vols. 1910). In this biography Mahan stressed the importance of the individual in shaping history, and extols the traditional values of loyalty, courage, and service to the state. Mahan sought to resurrect John Paul Jones as a national hero in the United States and used the book as a platform for expressing his views on naval strategy and tactics. Mahan’s friend President Roosevelt successfully petitioned the return of Jones body from France in 1913, where he was buried. Roosevelt sent an armored cruiser to retrieve Jone’s body. Jones was interned with full honors in Annapolis.
Thanks to Mahan's vision, the US was not far behind when the Royal Navy put the Dreadnought to sea, and the first ship of the US's competing New York class was commissioned the next year. Unlike many of the other Naval Powers the US did not experiment with Battlecruisers and saved itself from the embarrassment the Royal Navy suffered at the battle of Jutland. Mahan had his limits, however. His love of the surface navy caused him to underestimate the submersibles, which would wreak much havoc in both Great Wars. In 1914, the US's submarine fleet was nearly the same size as Confederacy's, and somewhat inferior in design. Despite the Submarine being invented by the United States naval engineer John Holland. But the war did much to break hidebound tradition, and in 1917 Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels approved the far-sighted USS Remembrance airplane carrier, restoring the US's reputation as a naval innovator.
The US entered the Great War with 14 Dreadnought type battleships, 20 Pre-dreadnought Battleships, 10 Great Lake Battleships, 6 armored cruisers, 30 cruisers, 120 Destroyers, 30 river monitors and 20 submersibles. The US focused mainly on a decisive battle doctrine, with a powerful surface fleet. Its mission was to Blockade the Confederacy and prevent UK forces from reaching Canada. The Atlantic Fleets first objective was supporting the US invasion of Canada and aggressive pursuit of any open Entente movement into the Western Atlantic. At the same time the Pacific Fleet was to neutralize the threat posed by the Royal Navy in the Sandwich Islands. The Riverine Fleet and Great Lake fleets mission was to support the US invasion across the Ohio and landings on the St. Lawrence peninsula.
When war broke out in 1914, he was invited by Roosevelt to come to Philadelphia and consult on Naval Strategy. He lived to see the Navy’s success in capturing the Sandwich Islands and the Canadian Maritimes. He also lived to see the growing threat from asymmetrical naval attacks like mines and submersibles. Before he died, he counseled Roosevelt that the main problem with republics is that "over time, the voters are apt to get tired of paying for what their country needs to defend itself.” He cautioned Roosevelt to either defeat the Confederacy and Britain so thoroughly that they can never pose a threat again or make allies of them.
Mahan died in Philadelphia of heart failure on December 1, 1914. In part because of his leadership the US defeated the Confederate States and the British Empire, the dominant naval power for the last 200 years. The US eclipsed the its German allies and the Royal Navy in size and strength by the early 1920’s. Thanks to his Naval Program and leadership the US became the world's greatest Naval powerful.
Mahan was born on September 27, 1840 in West Point, New York to Dennis Hart Mahan (a professor at the United States Military Academy and Mary Helena Mahan. His middle name, Thayer, honors "the father of West Point", Sylvanus Thayer. Mahan grew up in West Point and attended boarding school. Mahan studied at Columbia for two years w then, against his parents' wishes, transferred to the Naval Academy, where he graduated second in his class in 1859.
Commissioned as a lieutenant in 1861, Mahan served the Union in the War of Secession as an officer on USS Worcester, Congress, Pocahontas, and James Adger and as an instructor at the Naval Academy. In 1865, he was promoted to lieutenant commander, and then to commander (1872), and captain (1885). Despite his success in the Navy, his skills in actual command of a ship were not exemplary, and a number of vessels under his command were involved in collisions, with both moving and stationary objects. He had affection for old square-rigged vessels and did not like the smoky, noisy steamships of his time; he tried to avoid active sea duty. In the 1870s in various shore installations, burning with resentment at what he saw as the insanely reckless policy of a small Navy. After the Panic of 1875, President Cox sold several warships to foreign nations and halted naval construction. An outraged officer serving with the Lighthouse Board, Captain Mahan began putting his thoughts on the supremacy of seapower to paper that year.
In 1876 he became an instructor at the naval academy. His series of lectures at the Naval Academy on the use of sea power during the Napoleonic Wars earned him wide acclaim, and he began writing a book on the subject. However he was given the command of the Charles Ellsworth, in 1880. For him, the Second Mexican War was the last straw. Serving as skipper of the Charles Ellsworth, he watched in rage as the superior armor and gunnery of the Royal Navy wrecked a flotilla sent to intercept British troops moving to Canada.
In 1885, he was appointed as a lecturer in naval history and tactics at the Naval War College. Before entering on his duties, College President Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce pointed Mahan in the direction of writing his future studies on the influence of sea power. For his first year on the faculty, he remained at his home in New York City researching and writing his lectures. Upon completion of this research period, he succeeded Luce as President of the Naval War College from June 22, 1886 to January 12, 1889. There, in 1887, he met and befriended Theodore Roosevelt, then a visiting lecturer.
While President of the Naval War College, Mahan plunged into the library and wrote lectures that drew heavily on standard classics and the ideas of Henri Jomini. The lectures became his sea-power studies and led to his writing of The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (1889).
In The Influence of Sea Power upon History, Mahan explored the seventeenth century conflicts between Holland, England, France and Spain, where British naval superiority eventually defeated other continental naval powers and consistently prevented invasion and blockade. To a modern reader, the emphasis on controlling seaborne commerce is commonplace, but in the nineteenth century, the notion was radical, especially in the United States where the nation focused with expansion on to the continent's western land and the threat posed by Confederate land power. He argued that Britain’s rise to global dominance was the result of her Naval Dominance. Further that other nations like France also gained greater influence through the possession of their own fleet. On the other hand, Mahan's emphasis of sea power as the crucial fact behind Britain's ascension neglected the well-documented roles of diplomacy and armies; Mahan's theories could not explain the success of terrestrial empires, such as Bismarckian Germany.
Where most American Imperialists were focusing on irredentist claims on the Confederate States and Canada. Mahan backed a revival of Manifest Destiny through overseas imperialism. He held that sea power would require the United States to acquire defensive bases in the Caribbean and Pacific. Specifically to take possession of the Sandwich Island’s and all of Britain’s possessions in the western Atlantic and Caribbean after any future war with Britain. This came at the time when the United States launched a major rearmament program following the disaster of the Second Mexican War. His book was right in time to capture the imaginations of the growing Remembrance movement.
His vigorous style and clear theory won widespread acceptance of navalists across the world. Sea power supported the new the Great European Powers colonialist projects in Africa and Asia. Given the very rapid technological changes underway in propulsion (from coal to oil, from boilers to turbines), ordnance (with better fire directors, and new high explosives) and armor and emergence of new craft such as destroyers and submarines, Mahan's emphasis on the capital ship and the command of the sea came at an opportune moment.
Mahan's concept of sea power extended beyond naval superiority; he preached that in peacetime, states should increase production and shipping capacities, to acquire overseas possessions. As a result of the modern industrial economy, great powers required he acquisition of either colonies or privileged access to foreign markets. He stressed that the number of coal fuelling stations and strategic bases should be few, not to drain too many resources from the mother country. He believed the British Empire had overstretched itself and the United States was in the perfect position to exploit this weakness and capture the Sandwich Island’s and Britain’s North American possessions.
By 1890 his book became an international best seller, Mahan's name became a household word in the German navy, as Kaiser William II ordered his officers to read Mahan, and Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz used Mahan's reputation to finance a powerful surface fleet. At home, President Reed had long held a deep interest in naval power and naval affairs. This interest only grew after the bombardment of his home district of Portland, Maine by the Royal Navy.
President Reed was given an early copy of the Influence of Sea Power on History by then Assistant Secretary of War Theodore Roosevelt. Through the young Assistant Secretary, Reed became familiar with Mahan’s theories and invited Mahan to join the cabinet as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. There he became a forceful advocate of a modern, two-ocean navy. Under Reed and Mahan’s Stewardship the US Congress passed legislation for an all steel modern steel battle fleet built entirely in the United States. The two also lobbied for a new Naval Staff Bill mirroring the Army’s new General Staff. After the passing of the Steel Fleet & Staff bill in 1891, Mahan was elevated to full Secretary of the Navy. By 1895 the United States produced 4 all steel Battleships, 6 steel armored cruisers, more than a dozen ocean/Great Lake monitors.
By 1895 the United States felt a resurgence of national confidence thanks to the reforms of Secretary of the Navy Alfred Thayer Mahan and Army Chief of Staff Emory Upton. For the first time since the Second Mexican War the US felt capable of resisting further Confederate- British and French expansion in the Western Hemisphere. In 1895 The Confederate Congress pushed to annex Haiti over failed debt payments to CSA Banks. President Reed however ordered squadron of warships sent to Port- au- Prince. President Reed followed this up by declaring Haiti a protectorate, preventing the islands annexation by Confederate filibusters. Because of the United States growing military confidence and the British reticence to enter in a new war on the North American continent, the United States scored its first diplomatic victory in thirty years. The pivotal role the new navy played in its successful conclusion of the Haiti Crises helped turn Mahan into a hero in Remembrance circles.
It was during this time that Mahan first met then Chief of Staff Emory Upton. Both admired each others work and both were theorists who were now attempting to turn their ideas into reality. It was during the Reed administration that the first Interservice Coordination Conference was established. Until this time generally all interservice meetings happened at the cabinet level, between Secretary of the Navy and War. However in 1892 Secretary of War Sickles, proposed to the President Tri-annual Interservice Coordination Conference. This was really the work of Assistant Secretary of War Theodore Roosevelt, his last contribution before leaving to become the Inspector General of the New York National Guard.
The first meeting was held in 1893, it was a full meeting of the Army General Staff and the new Naval Staff. There the two Staffs convened a board to coordinate how each could mutually support each other’s strategic objectives. It was agreed there that the Navy’s North Atlantic Squadron would set its first objective as capturing the Canadian Maritimes and preventing British reinforcements of its forces already in Canada. The Army agreed by pledging to support an attack through Maine, despite its primary effort being the invasion of Kentucky. The Navy also requested an Army attack on British Columbia, but this was rejected. It was during this meeting that the Army attempted to bind the Navy into an agreement that the Army’s conquest of Confederate Territory it should be allocated priorities in resources and funding. The Army further demanded that the Navy should not attempt to make any territorial acquisitions that might be a drain on these objectives. The Navy emphatically, refused to agree to these terms. This was the first indication that the Army under Chief of Staff Upton would likely attempt to subordinate all that stood in the way of its objectives.
In 1896, the barons of the Democratic Party have become restless under eight years of a single administration. Two of these titans, Grover Cleveland of New York and Robert Pattison of Pennsylvania, deadlocked at the convention. The party brokers then handed the nomination to the relative-unknown Alfred Mahan. Though uninterested in partisan politics, Mahan saw this as n opportunity to put his ideas fully into practice. He defeated both the Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison, and the young Socialist Congressman William Jennings Bryan. This was the first election where a Socialist candidate has outpolled the Republican.
In his inauguration speech Mahan laid out his vision for two ocean Navy capable of repelling attacks by the Royal Navy on the American coastal cities, prevent the British from reinforcing their forces in Canada, project the United States’ interested abroad and bring the fight to the home waters of the nation’s enemies. In the first year in office he won approval by Congress for a new Fleet Bill that guaranteed funding for a two Ocean Navy.
During his eight years in office, the US built a modern two-ocean navy, consisting of the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, and Great Lakes Squadrons, with riverine operations becoming the Army's province. As befitting US strategic interests, the Atlantic Fleet received the bulk of funding. The cost of building such a fleet however put tremendous strain on the nation and the economy. Under the Mahan administration the Federal Reserve was established. The Government also began the wide scale rationing of strategically important commodities like steel, coal, nitrates, cotton and sometimes meat.
It was the impact of the rationing which is attributed to the rapid growth of the Socialist Party in this period. During his first administration the nation wracked by violent strikes. Mahan a staunch Democrat often ordered the army to violently intercede on behalf of the factory owners. However as the strain of the rationing policy took its toll, Socialist Party leadership expected a rapid expansion of the party. However the violent reputation of the party kept many blue-collar workers away. It was not until they renounced violence or “direct action” that the party really expanded. It was not until in the late 1890’s that the socialist party replaced the Republicans as the second largest Party in Congress.
The expanding Navy and its voracious appetite for funding and national resources, not only strained relations for with labor, but the Army as well. By 1898 the ever-expanding naval budget and army budget was bankrupting the nation. Congress was for the first time since the Remembrance Democrats came to power did not have the votes for the increase in defense spending. The President and the House Committees on Military and Naval Affairs, had to make hard choices. Either continue with the Naval Expansion or continue with the Army expansion program suggested by Chief of Staff Emory Upton. The President and The House Committees compromised and the 1899 budget saw a reduced spending for both the Army and Navy.
Unfortunately Chief of Staff Upton did not agree, years of exponential Naval growth and only slightly slower increase in the army, made the General Staff question the Presidents priorities. This effectively meant that the United States would only have the resources to draft ½ of the eligible male population. Tension between the President and Chief of Staff’s continued into next year, despite their effective cooperation during the Nicaraguan crises. At the third triennial Naval review Upton again presented a plan for a beefed up Army expanding the number of Armies from four to six, fixing the number of divisions at fifty-four and establishing new training facilities to increase the percentage of eligible men drafted from 50% to 80%. At that time the CS Army currently drafted 88% of its male white population. At the same time he presented a counter Naval budget and plan that would only allow it prevent British from supplying Canada, a small coastal defense fleet in the Pacific and a expanded Great Lakes and Riverine force. President Mahan supported the expansion of the army to its new six-army force structure, but rejected the increase in draftees and rebuked Upton for meddling in Naval Affairs. It was becoming clear the President and the Chief of Staff, had deeply different views on the future of the United States defense policy.
Early in his first term the Entente tests him with a plan to build a transoceanic canal through Nicaragua. In 1897 the Confederacy finally had the funds and the agreement with Nicaragua to construct a trans-oceanic canal across the isthmus. They also had an agreement with the British to support and finance a canal scheme, as long as it did not anger the “other Americans.” At first Confederacy attempted to make an agreement with the United States to recognize the building of a Confederate- British canal across the isthmus. President Mahan threatened war the second the first Confederates shovel dug into Nicaraguan earth. Mahan argued before Congress that a canal across the isthmus would allow the Confederacy and its allies the ability to move ships between the Atlantic and Pacific at more that three times the speed than if they had to sail around South America. The Canal would give an overwhelming advantage to who ever owns it and allow the Confederacy to build their own two ocean Navy.
The bellicose Confederate President States Rights Gist immediately demanded support from his allies to build the canal under the threat of possible war. Mahan knew that neither the Navy nor Army was ready for war with the Confederacy or Great Britain. The Navy was far from a match to the might of the Royal Navy and Upton’s Army reforms were still under way. However Mahan gambled that the British people were not interested in a renewed war with the United States, especially given the threat of war looming in South Africa. Mahan gambled paid off with its attention turned towards South Africa, Britain would not risk a war.
Without British support the humiliated President Gist was forced to end all Confederate aspirations for a trans-oceanic canal. After President States Rights Gist, the C.S.A. turned its back on former Generals as Presidents. In 1898 the Confederate citizens elected Robert Taylor as President. Each pursued a policy of preventing further exploitation of the Caribbean by European Powers and non-conflict with the United States. Meanwhile under Mahan’s leadership, Germany and the United States continued to cultivate alliances across South America, most notably with Chile, Paraguay and Venezuela.
When 1900 arrived Mahan easily captured the Democratic Party nomination. His success in handling the Nicaraguan crises and his humiliation of President Gist gave the people of the United States a sense of pride it had not felt since the First Mexican War. Mahan went on to crush Socialist candidate Williams Jennings Bryan and Republican candidate John Hay. President Mahan had recently appointed Hay ambassador France. Mahan became the second Democrat since Andrew Jackson to win a second term.
Despite his success tension still festered between the President and Chief of Staff Upton. Upton continued to malign the president to his allies in congress. Upton even tried to coax his allies in Congress into running a more Army centric candidate for President like Theodore Roosevelt. Mahan was aware of his machinations, but Upton was too popular and there was no other Army officer with the reputation to replace him. No one else in the army had his vision or foresight. Mahan’s overwhelming re-election in 1900, greatly increased influence in Philadelphia. The President plied his new found influence into pushing for a new Navy Bill, which if passed would be put the nation on track to match the power of the Royal Navy by 1922. It's objective was not just dominance in the Western Atlantic, but across the planet, making the US the dominant global Naval Power. Chief of Staff Upton overtly attempted to block the bill. When he failed, Upton wrote a scathing editorial for the Philadelphia Tribune, A Republican news outlet. In it Upton railed against the growing dangers of the Confederate Army and the US Army’s criminally negligent lack of resource. Mahan attempted to sooth things over with Upton through the new Secretary of War Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt’s overtures went unanswered, Upton now Chief of Staff for twelve years, was developing a distain for civilian oversight. General Upton again presented a proposal to the Committee on Military Affairs and the President for an increase in the number of Armies from six to eight, an increase in the percentage of the eligible male population trained and an increase in the conscription period service men served from two to three years. This had become standard in the Confederate Army. Upton raised fears that the average Confederate soldier was now better trained. When Upton threatened to resign if his demands were not met, Mahan called his bluff. In fall of 1901 Chief of Staff Upton, resigned. Charles Francis Adams, brother of the Speaker of the House Henry Adams, replaced him. A fact that made Upton’s retirement more palatable for Congress. Chief of Staff Adams quickly proved easier to work with and more deferential to civilian oversight.
Mahan continued to remain aloof in domestic politics, outside of his support for the Federal Reserve and rationing policies. He did not take sides in the growing issue over the power of Corporate Trust’s nor did he way in on the grawing movement to establish oversite and the food and drug industries. In 1902, however he did use his offices to end a major anthracite coal minor strike. Mahan unexpectedly sided with the striking workers and forced the mine owners to give into nearly all of the striker’s demands. For the first time a Democratic President reached out to Socialist Party Congressmen in ending a strike, instead of calling in the Army or National Guard. In forcing an end to the strike Mahan prevented a possible major disruption in the nations coal supplies that winter.
In Foreign Policy Mahan continued the Reed administrations policy of increasing ties with Germany. The two regularly exhcanged military officers to report on inovations in their partners countries. Mahan focused on increasing ties between the two nations Navy. Mahan signed agreements allowing the West Atlantic Squadron of German High Seas Fleet to use Boston as a coaling station and secured reciprocal agreements, which allowed the US fleet to use German Ports in the Pacific to coal US warships. US and German warships began joint excercises in the Pacific and Atlantic. He did however prevent the Kaiser from seizing control of Venezuela, which cause a slight rift between the two powers. However by 1903 he was able to mend this relationship and formally bring the United States into the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. In October 1903 the Triple Alliance officially became the Quadruple Alliance. This marked the most radical departure in US foreign Policy, since the founding of the Republic. By signing the agreement the nation officially rejected President Washington’s warnings against entanglement in foreign alliances.
By 1904 the United States had completed twenty battleships, and became the dominant Naval power in the Western Atlantic, eclipsing the British, Canadian and CSA in Naval strength in the region. After no incidents since Nicaraguan Crises of 1897, President Mahan gambled again. Mahan sent 12 Battleships of the US Atlantic Squadron on a goodwill trip around the world; formally announcing that the US had become a major global power. Mahan left office in 1905, happy to return to his studies.
After leaving office Mahan took a grand European tour, beginning in 1906 and it lasted more than a year. In Europe he was requested by the Naval Academies of friend and foe alike, to lecture about the future of naval power. While lecturing at Portsmouth he met future First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill and First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher. He was given a heroes welcome in Berlin and joined the Kaiser on his yacht for a tour of the Norwegian coast. He returned to the United States in 1907 where he settled in New York City and returned to writing.
While in office as Secretary of the Navy, Mahan still found time to write. There he finish two more books, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812 (2 vols. 1892); and the Life of Nelson: The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain (2 vols. 1897). After he left office he continued his writing completing John Paul Jones: The origins of American Sea Power (2 vols. 1910). In this biography Mahan stressed the importance of the individual in shaping history, and extols the traditional values of loyalty, courage, and service to the state. Mahan sought to resurrect John Paul Jones as a national hero in the United States and used the book as a platform for expressing his views on naval strategy and tactics. Mahan’s friend President Roosevelt successfully petitioned the return of Jones body from France in 1913, where he was buried. Roosevelt sent an armored cruiser to retrieve Jone’s body. Jones was interned with full honors in Annapolis.
Thanks to Mahan's vision, the US was not far behind when the Royal Navy put the Dreadnought to sea, and the first ship of the US's competing New York class was commissioned the next year. Unlike many of the other Naval Powers the US did not experiment with Battlecruisers and saved itself from the embarrassment the Royal Navy suffered at the battle of Jutland. Mahan had his limits, however. His love of the surface navy caused him to underestimate the submersibles, which would wreak much havoc in both Great Wars. In 1914, the US's submarine fleet was nearly the same size as Confederacy's, and somewhat inferior in design. Despite the Submarine being invented by the United States naval engineer John Holland. But the war did much to break hidebound tradition, and in 1917 Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels approved the far-sighted USS Remembrance airplane carrier, restoring the US's reputation as a naval innovator.
The US entered the Great War with 14 Dreadnought type battleships, 20 Pre-dreadnought Battleships, 10 Great Lake Battleships, 6 armored cruisers, 30 cruisers, 120 Destroyers, 30 river monitors and 20 submersibles. The US focused mainly on a decisive battle doctrine, with a powerful surface fleet. Its mission was to Blockade the Confederacy and prevent UK forces from reaching Canada. The Atlantic Fleets first objective was supporting the US invasion of Canada and aggressive pursuit of any open Entente movement into the Western Atlantic. At the same time the Pacific Fleet was to neutralize the threat posed by the Royal Navy in the Sandwich Islands. The Riverine Fleet and Great Lake fleets mission was to support the US invasion across the Ohio and landings on the St. Lawrence peninsula.
When war broke out in 1914, he was invited by Roosevelt to come to Philadelphia and consult on Naval Strategy. He lived to see the Navy’s success in capturing the Sandwich Islands and the Canadian Maritimes. He also lived to see the growing threat from asymmetrical naval attacks like mines and submersibles. Before he died, he counseled Roosevelt that the main problem with republics is that "over time, the voters are apt to get tired of paying for what their country needs to defend itself.” He cautioned Roosevelt to either defeat the Confederacy and Britain so thoroughly that they can never pose a threat again or make allies of them.
Mahan died in Philadelphia of heart failure on December 1, 1914. In part because of his leadership the US defeated the Confederate States and the British Empire, the dominant naval power for the last 200 years. The US eclipsed the its German allies and the Royal Navy in size and strength by the early 1920’s. Thanks to his Naval Program and leadership the US became the world's greatest Naval powerful.
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US Decision Making in Ending the War.
President Roosevelt, Chief of Staff Wood and the General Staff were faced with a dilemma in autumn of 1917. The CSA was asking for a peace and willing to surrender most of the territory conquered by the US, if that meant their continued independence. Canada and Great Britain however, continued to fight on, despite the surrender of their allies in Europe and North America. British intransigence, presented US leadership with two primary options; continuing the war until all the CSA and the Canada was completely conquered or only absorb one of the two nations.
The US General staff predicted that continuing the war until both Canada and the CSA was occupied, would last until at least the end of 1918, if not into 1919. While the Army of Northern Virginia had collapsed, the CS general Staff was organizing a new Army in Richmond. The CS General Staff intended an apocalyptic show down with the US, if they continued the war. In the prewar period, Richmond like Philadelphia, Louisville and Baltimore had been heavily fortified. The US General Staff projected that any attempt to conquer Richmond would take most of 1918. Then the Confederacy, Canada and Great Britain would be militarily and economically in ruins and unable to prevent US occupation of North American. However the General Staff predicted that that ultimate victory would likely cost as many as a million more causalities and untold suffering in all nations.
The General Staff predicted that the price of winning the war and occupying all of North America would bankrupt the nation and prevent the US from effectively exercising power in the global international system until at least 1945. They believed annexing both the Confederacy and Canada would result in at least a generation of open guerrilla warfare. It may also invite class struggle in the U.S. with the absorption of possibly millions of Marxist Negroes. This would require the United States to maintain a peacetime Army of over a million men to effectively occupy the two nations.
Another concern facing the US was the ability of their allies to remain at war. With France and Russia withdrawing from the war, Germany and Austria- Hungary had little to gain by remaining at war with the UK. Both Britain and the continent were suffering Uunder mutual blockade. Germany had seen food shortages in cities through out the country in the winter of 1916-1917. The newly acquired territory in Poland and the Ukraine would not meet alGermany’s agricultural needs, since most of it was in ruins. It was clear that if Germany and Britain did not make peace, each would be starving by January of 1918. The German General Staff alerted their US counterparts in July, that they would seek an armistice with the UK by November of 1917, whether or not the US had made peace. The US General Staff was then presented with the possibility of facing the entire British Empire and its Navy alone if they did not conclude the war by November of 1917.
President Roosevelt and the General Staff were also feeling pressure from members of the Democratic Party in Congress and the State governments. The US public was increasingly war weary, and newspapers across the country were questioning why the war was continuing when Confederacy requested for peace across all fronts. 1916 also saw the largest gains the socialists had made in US history. Many in the party feared that if the US continued the war into late 1918, the democrats might loose both houses of Congress to the Socialists. Some even feared out right red- rebellion like the CSA had suffered. A string of violent labor strikes in the Northwest by Long-shore men in the spring of 1917 raised tensions in industrial cities across the country.
With all the mounting pressure President Roosevelt and Chief of Staff Wood decided its best course of action, was to make peace with the CSA and occupy all of Canada. Thus removing the threat of a two front war in North America once and for all. The General Staff was confident that once peace with the CSA was achieved, the US could defeat Canada by October of 1917. As a result the US accepted President Semmes offer of peace in August of 1918.
President Roosevelt, Chief of Staff Wood and the General Staff were faced with a dilemma in autumn of 1917. The CSA was asking for a peace and willing to surrender most of the territory conquered by the US, if that meant their continued independence. Canada and Great Britain however, continued to fight on, despite the surrender of their allies in Europe and North America. British intransigence, presented US leadership with two primary options; continuing the war until all the CSA and the Canada was completely conquered or only absorb one of the two nations.
The US General staff predicted that continuing the war until both Canada and the CSA was occupied, would last until at least the end of 1918, if not into 1919. While the Army of Northern Virginia had collapsed, the CS general Staff was organizing a new Army in Richmond. The CS General Staff intended an apocalyptic show down with the US, if they continued the war. In the prewar period, Richmond like Philadelphia, Louisville and Baltimore had been heavily fortified. The US General Staff projected that any attempt to conquer Richmond would take most of 1918. Then the Confederacy, Canada and Great Britain would be militarily and economically in ruins and unable to prevent US occupation of North American. However the General Staff predicted that that ultimate victory would likely cost as many as a million more causalities and untold suffering in all nations.
The General Staff predicted that the price of winning the war and occupying all of North America would bankrupt the nation and prevent the US from effectively exercising power in the global international system until at least 1945. They believed annexing both the Confederacy and Canada would result in at least a generation of open guerrilla warfare. It may also invite class struggle in the U.S. with the absorption of possibly millions of Marxist Negroes. This would require the United States to maintain a peacetime Army of over a million men to effectively occupy the two nations.
Another concern facing the US was the ability of their allies to remain at war. With France and Russia withdrawing from the war, Germany and Austria- Hungary had little to gain by remaining at war with the UK. Both Britain and the continent were suffering Uunder mutual blockade. Germany had seen food shortages in cities through out the country in the winter of 1916-1917. The newly acquired territory in Poland and the Ukraine would not meet alGermany’s agricultural needs, since most of it was in ruins. It was clear that if Germany and Britain did not make peace, each would be starving by January of 1918. The German General Staff alerted their US counterparts in July, that they would seek an armistice with the UK by November of 1917, whether or not the US had made peace. The US General Staff was then presented with the possibility of facing the entire British Empire and its Navy alone if they did not conclude the war by November of 1917.
President Roosevelt and the General Staff were also feeling pressure from members of the Democratic Party in Congress and the State governments. The US public was increasingly war weary, and newspapers across the country were questioning why the war was continuing when Confederacy requested for peace across all fronts. 1916 also saw the largest gains the socialists had made in US history. Many in the party feared that if the US continued the war into late 1918, the democrats might loose both houses of Congress to the Socialists. Some even feared out right red- rebellion like the CSA had suffered. A string of violent labor strikes in the Northwest by Long-shore men in the spring of 1917 raised tensions in industrial cities across the country.
With all the mounting pressure President Roosevelt and Chief of Staff Wood decided its best course of action, was to make peace with the CSA and occupy all of Canada. Thus removing the threat of a two front war in North America once and for all. The General Staff was confident that once peace with the CSA was achieved, the US could defeat Canada by October of 1917. As a result the US accepted President Semmes offer of peace in August of 1918.
bguy
Donor
Excellent discourse on the US reasons for ending the war when they did. (I particularly liked the idea that they were afraid of the possibility of Red Rebellion breaking out in the U.S.)
My only question about it is why would Germany be starving by the beginning of 1918. That sounds worse than how OTL Germany was doing by that point, when I would think the British blockade would be a lot weaker in TL-191. (Even before the fall of France, Italy being neutral would leave a huge hole in the Entente's blockade, and once France surrendered the British blockade would be pretty much unworkable since the badly overstretched Royal Navy would now have to cover the approaches to all the French and Spanish ports as well as the North Sea.)
I enjoyed your entries on Stuart and Mahan as well, (though if Stuart was willing to operate a clandestine death squad against threats to the CSA then wouldn't he have used it against Featherston at some point?) And of course I still object to the idea of William Jennings Bryan as a Socialist. (As a farm state populist he should be the quintessential Republican in TL-191.)
My only question about it is why would Germany be starving by the beginning of 1918. That sounds worse than how OTL Germany was doing by that point, when I would think the British blockade would be a lot weaker in TL-191. (Even before the fall of France, Italy being neutral would leave a huge hole in the Entente's blockade, and once France surrendered the British blockade would be pretty much unworkable since the badly overstretched Royal Navy would now have to cover the approaches to all the French and Spanish ports as well as the North Sea.)
I enjoyed your entries on Stuart and Mahan as well, (though if Stuart was willing to operate a clandestine death squad against threats to the CSA then wouldn't he have used it against Featherston at some point?) And of course I still object to the idea of William Jennings Bryan as a Socialist. (As a farm state populist he should be the quintessential Republican in TL-191.)
In OTL Germany they were calling the winter of 1916/1917 it the Turnip Winter.Critical food shortages were becoming a problem by then and increasing overall war-weariness. If they aren't starving they are certainly hurting. Ludendorff and Hindenburg are more concerned with keeping power after the war. If the war finishes and the people are seriously hungry this could present a problem for them, so better to make peace now than risk an over throw of the military government after the war.
In OTL by 1918 and after the war much of Europe was starving or critically short of food. Not just the combatants but the neutral countries as well. My thinking is that the war like in OTL destroyed the international movement of food. While Italy is out of the war, Italy didn have the excess food to meet Germany's needs. By 1917 there really is no one to buy food from, in the eastern hemisphere. Even with a loose blockade the British control of the Eastern Atlantic means no one is going to risk food shipments to Germany. Ludendorff and Hindenburg just wanted the war to end so they trade with anyone and not have to worry about whether they will get the food the country needs or not.
As for Stuart, I was trying to make him analogous to the German General von Seekt, who ran the General Staff in secret after it was outlawed by the Treaty of Versailles. For the CSA to pull of its secret rearmament it has to have some enforcers. Seekt had a similar group, just thought it would be a interesting tie in.
On Featherston my thinking is that Stuart never thought he was a real threat. That is at least what i got from their conversation after the Grady Calkins incident. I also think the General Staff liked and supported the right wing groups that popped up after the war. I think Stuart believed that he could control Featherston if he did win power. Much like the German Generals thought of Hitler.
I agree with you about Bryan, i just went off Craigos old list of former candidates. Maybe I'll change it when i can think of a good socialist candidate for 1896. Its just don't seem like the Socialists could do well without a candidate like him.
In OTL by 1918 and after the war much of Europe was starving or critically short of food. Not just the combatants but the neutral countries as well. My thinking is that the war like in OTL destroyed the international movement of food. While Italy is out of the war, Italy didn have the excess food to meet Germany's needs. By 1917 there really is no one to buy food from, in the eastern hemisphere. Even with a loose blockade the British control of the Eastern Atlantic means no one is going to risk food shipments to Germany. Ludendorff and Hindenburg just wanted the war to end so they trade with anyone and not have to worry about whether they will get the food the country needs or not.
As for Stuart, I was trying to make him analogous to the German General von Seekt, who ran the General Staff in secret after it was outlawed by the Treaty of Versailles. For the CSA to pull of its secret rearmament it has to have some enforcers. Seekt had a similar group, just thought it would be a interesting tie in.
On Featherston my thinking is that Stuart never thought he was a real threat. That is at least what i got from their conversation after the Grady Calkins incident. I also think the General Staff liked and supported the right wing groups that popped up after the war. I think Stuart believed that he could control Featherston if he did win power. Much like the German Generals thought of Hitler.
I agree with you about Bryan, i just went off Craigos old list of former candidates. Maybe I'll change it when i can think of a good socialist candidate for 1896. Its just don't seem like the Socialists could do well without a candidate like him.
bguy
Donor
What about shipping food to Italy though? Italian flagged vessels would be able to sail to and from US ports, so they could pick up food there and sail it back to Italy, after which it could be shipped by rail to Germany. The British wouldn't have any legal basis to intercept these shipments as Britain doesn't have an effective blockade of the US east coast during the Great War and thus has no basis in international law for interfering with neutral ships trading with the US. (And of course the British would have to fear Italy joining the war against them if they did start seizing Italian flagged vessels.) Of course that would require the US to have a surplus of food available to export, which may not be the case in TL-191.
Post Grady Calkins, pre-Crash I could see Stuart not taking Featherston seriously. But in the time frame of 1920-1921 and again after the Crash, wouldn't he have to consider Featherston a major threat?
The difference there though is that Hitler actively courted Germany's military leaders while Featherston was openly contemptuous of the Confederate General Staff. Thus Stuart really has no reason to believe Featherston will be anything but hostile to the CGS if he takes power. (Especially after Stuart went and taunted Featherston when he seemed to be down and out.)
Agreed. Its difficult to come up with viable Socialist presidential candidates for that period. Most of their OTL leaders from that time seem to have been foreign born and thus not eligible for the presidency.
Thanks Jsmith, big fan of what you guys got going on over there on the eugenics war timeline. I think I have an Idea for the Bundeswehr during the eugenics wars.
I'll hammer out a better argument for the european food shortages and more about the Black Staff in august. Taking a few weeks off, I'm studying for the bar. This stuff gets me way too distracted.
When I come back I'll have the rest of the Great War Artillery plus a couple more bios. I think I have something interesting for the CSA offensive on the Roanoke front in 1916, the one where Chester Martin got shot. I finished Upton about three months ago, but i lost half of it on my girlfriends computer. Its rough rewriting all that, but as you can see from the Mahan post, I have an ending. See you guys in August.
I'll hammer out a better argument for the european food shortages and more about the Black Staff in august. Taking a few weeks off, I'm studying for the bar. This stuff gets me way too distracted.
When I come back I'll have the rest of the Great War Artillery plus a couple more bios. I think I have something interesting for the CSA offensive on the Roanoke front in 1916, the one where Chester Martin got shot. I finished Upton about three months ago, but i lost half of it on my girlfriends computer. Its rough rewriting all that, but as you can see from the Mahan post, I have an ending. See you guys in August.