Chapter 1: The Curtin Call
Chapter 1: Union’s Twilight
The Curtin Call
July 8-11, 1863
Except from AlternativeHistory.net Thread “DBWI: Lee’s Susquehanna Gambit Succeeds?”
YellowLeeBestLee
For Whom the Solar Plexus Liquifies
Is it even
possible for it succeed? The ANVA was a spent force and to actually take Harrisburg would require it to:
1) Find enough supplies to defeat the roughly equivalent number of troops at the disposal of Couch;
2) Drive said forces from an entrenched position guarded by rugged terrain and an unfordable river;
3) Capture a bridge across the Susquehanna intact, when they’re all rigged to blow;
4) Do all of this while retaining enough fighting power to confront the Army of the Potomac when it comes marching up from Pipe Creek; and
5) Somehow weld the Idiot Ball into Hancock’s hand so as to keep him from demolishing the remnants of Longstreet’s corps, cutting off the ANVA’s lines of supply and communication, and forcing the ANVA to either attack or surrender.
And, even if that manages to happen through the appearance of Really Alien!ASBs, it still doesn’t change much. The ANVA will raid for a few weeks before withdrawing to Virginia, if they aren’t run out sooner by a reorganized Army of the Potomac. There’ll certainly be nothing decisive, which means that the Confederacy's still doomed.
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Excerpt from The Centennial of the Pennsylvania Emergency by Lucius Xun (State College; Penn State University Press, 1963)
“There is a special providence for drunkards, fools, and the Confederate States of America.” – Otto von Bismarck
Uttered more than six decades ago, the Prussian arch-chancellor’s sentiment is inescapable when discussing the events of the second week of July 1863. When the Army of Northern Virginia began heading towards the Susquehanna, it did so with an exhausted force of 40,000-50,000 men in Second, Third, and Fourth Corps whose supply train was in the process of disintegrating. Before them stood the might of the Department of the Susquehanna, with somewhere between 35,000 and 45,000 regular forces and federalized militia, while to their southeast lurked the Army of the Potomac, rested and reinforced at Pipe Creek, which could be expected to respond quickly to any Confederate advance. It was a suicidal throw of the dice that should have spelled the final destruction of the Army of Northern Virginia: That it did not is, if not the hand of Providence, reason to believe Napoleon was correct in thinking lucky a skill.
Beneficial weather gave Lee’s army a leg-up on the Federal forces arrayed against them. Following Gettysburg, rain had done much to impede the movement of the armies of both sides. By the morning of July 8, however, the skies cleared above Chambersburg and allowed the Army of Northern Virginia to marshal and then push northeast. The storm continued to linger over the skies of central Maryland until July 10, allowing Lee to steal at two or three days’ worth of marching, which was to prove crucial in the coming days in the compact campaigning territory south of the Susquehanna.
While the Union could not control the weather, it could control its own headquarters. Unfortunately, the headquarters of the commander of the Department of the Susquehanna, Major-General Darius Couch, was in a state of disarray at the start of the second week of July. When word had first reached Harrisburg of the Army of the Potomac’s abandoning the battlefield at Gettysburg, panic momentarily took hold as it was believed that the city would soon be besieged Couch pleaded with the War Department on July 4 and 5 to know the whereabouts of Lee’s army, as he lacked the available cavalry to ascertain such himself. No answer was immediately forthcoming, for the Battle of Gettysburg had thrown President Lincoln’s war cabinet into a crisis.
The nature of the crisis was over the next step to be taken in the campaign against the Army of Northern Virginia. The Lincoln and Stanton believed that the Departments of the Susquehanna and Monongahela should concentrate and be marched southeast, to catch the Army of Northern Virginia between the hammer of a fresh army into its rear and the anvil of the entrenched Army of the Potomac. Halleck, as General-in-Chief of the Army and the most senior military advisor to the President, opposed doing so as it would leave vital strategic sites, such as the rail hub and supply depots in Harrisburg, vulnerable to attack. Meade, as the field commander to whom any new force would be subordinate, questioned the usefulness of a large numbers of federalized militiamen in an offensive role and dreaded that they might present Lee an opportunity to dislodge the Army of the Potomac from Pipe Creek in the event they were routed. The logjam would not be broken until July 10: In the interim, Couch was informed on July 6 that the Army of Northern Virginia was in the process of marching southeast out of Pennsylvania and that he should behave appropriately.
Fearing the combination of disgruntled pickets from out-of-state militias presiding over bridges were hastily, Couch began making plans to remove the explosive placed at the bridges across the Susquehanna and demobilizing the federalized militiamen from New York and Ohio under his command. Pennsylvania’s governor, Andrew Curtin, became apoplectic when informed: He believed that the bulk of the Confederate army was still in Chambersburg based upon reports from allies of the state government south of the Susquehanna. Couch, believing Curtin to simply be seeing phantoms, stood by his orders as commander of the Department of the Susquehanna. Curtin, in response, issued an ultimatum: If non-Pennsylvanian federalized militiamen were stood down, he would, as commander of the Pennsylvanian militia, order his troops to prevent the entraining of any man leaving Harrisburg.
The result was four days of chaos, as the Department of the Susquehanna cleaved itself into two separate armies, each with contradictory priorities: Couch’s regulars and non-Pennsylvanian militiamen, who were in the process of standing down from the readiness provoked by skirmishing at Sporting Hill on June 30, and Curtin’s Pennsylvanian militia which anticipated the arrival of the Army of Northern Virginia. Couch appealed once more to Washington for guidance: The deteriorating situation in Harrisburg simply added fuel to the evolving crisis in Washington.
In the evening of July 10, word finally reached Harrisburg of Washington’s orders: The Army of Northern Virginia was still in Pennsylvania and the Department of the Susquehanna was to entrench itself as best as possible, and then prepare to act in concert with the advancing Army of the Potomac to fix and destroy Lee’s army. By the time these orders arrived, however, events had overtaken them…
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Excerpt from The Hagiography of President William C. Oates by R. H. Lee II (Durham; Trinity University Press, 1942)
Separating man from myth is always difficult. Even in these most literate of times, with so many diaries, memoirs, and other contemporaneous accounts available to the historian, it can still be hard to differentiate where history ends and folklore begins. And all the more so with events that, despite their factuality, have more than a whiff of narrative excess to them. With all of those qualifiers disclaimed, the Hummel Heights Heist can be discussed.
Following the theatrics of July 2, 1863 on the summit of Little Round Top, Oates found himself the talk of Lee’s headquarters. While much of the feting for his deeds at Gettysburg would come later, he had garnered a reputation amongst his superiors as a tenacious fighter notable for conspicuous amounts of personal bravery and a penchant for gallantry. Most importantly, he caught the eye of Major-General Jubal Early, who was most impressed by any man willing to cross steel with the Yankees. Early, despite being merely a divisional commander in Ewell’s Second Corps, approached Lee about brevetting Oates to brigadier-general and assigning him to command Hoke’s Brigade, which had lost its commanding officer on the third day of Gettysburg. While a brigade of North Carolinians being commanded by an Alabaman in an army defined largely by local forces being led by local officers was unorthodox, Early’s star was ascendant and Longstreet’s in decline. Lee granted the request as part of the wider reorganization of Longstreet’s First Corps at Chambersburg. By the time Second Corps was on the march to Harrisburg, now-Brigadier-General Oates was acclimating to his new chain-of-command. That said chain-of-command was in the process of disintegrating due to Ewell’s infuriation that Early had bypassed him entirely usually goes unremarked upon, both by Oates’ biographers and Early’s.
The Army of Northern Virginia spent July 8 and 9 on the march, with the city of Carlisle being occupied without opposition on the evening of the 9th. That night, it was decided by Lee’s war council that Second Corps would be the vanguard the following day: Ewell, in turn, determined that Early’s division would march at the head of the column. Ewell’s decision was intended to spite Early for his perceived insubordination in going directly to Lee instead of through channels: A few extra predawn hours of marching were an appropriate unofficial punishment for slighting his authority. (See Ewell, Richard,
The Diaries and Papers of Richard S. Ewell (Pineville; Confederate Historical Press, 1878).)
Ewell’s attempted malice, however, was to win Early more laurels than he could ever have dreamed of. Early’s division arrived in Mechanicsburg by noon the next day, where he was tasked with conducting reconnaissance of the approaches to the Susquehanna and Harrisburg. Seeing this as a fitting opportunity for his newest subordinate to demonstrate his abilities, Early commanded Oates to assemble his staff and personally ride ahead to ascertain the lay of the Camp Hill and the surrounding area known locally as the Hummel Heights.
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Excerpt of Interview Conducted February 19, 1866 by U.S. Army Oral History Board (Published inAppendix G of A Report On The Military Conduct of the War of Secession, 1861-1864 (Washington, D.C.; Library of Congress Press, 1868))
Army Interviewer: Please state your name and rank.
Tobias Wycliff: Tobias Wycliff. Captain in the United States Volunteers. Retired.
AI: How long did you serve in the United States Volunteers?
TW: Three years. I mustered out not long after the ink was dry on the Treaty of Copenhagen in 1864.
AI: Where were you stationed?
TW: Camp Curtin. Or Harrisburg more generally. I did a lot of clerical work on the Pennsy’s Main Line before the War of Secession, so I got assigned to Camp Curtin once I enlisted.
AI: Were you ever assigned to the staff of the Commander of the Department of the Susquehanna?
TW: Yes. I was General Couch’s liaison officer with the quartermaster at Camp Curtin.
AI: How long were you General Couch’s liaison?
TW: Until July 10, 1863, or close enough thereto as makes any difference.
AI: What happened to have you dismissed from your position as General Couch’s liaison?
TW: You and everyone else knows damn well what happened!
AI: The purpose of this interview is to commit to paper your recollections of the events in question, not assign blame.
TW: That’s what the court-martial was for, after all, wasn’t it?
AI: That acquitted you, didn’t it?
TW: Only after tarring and feathering me.
AI: The question, Captain Wycliffe?
TW: Fine. I ceased in my position as General Couch’s liaison with Camp Curtin following the capture of General Couch and most of his staff, including myself, by Confederate raiders.
AI: How did that happen?
TW: It started about noon. General Couch had just had another meeting with Governor Curtin and he found himself at his wit’s end. He decided he wanted to conduct an inspection of Forts Washington and Couch.
AI: Did General Couch state why he was infuriated with Governor Curtin?
TW: Other than my home state’s militia mutinying against its commanding officer?
AI: So it was about the, shall we say, dysfunctional command situation?
TW: Yes.
AI: Why did General Couch want to inspect the forts?
TW: “Those forts are federal property and I’ll be damned if I let them be occupied by an insubordinate governor!”
AI: Is that a direct quotation or a paraphrase?
TW: Direct, as far as I can recall.
AI: So, General Couch assembled his staff and rode out to inspect Forts Washington and Couch?
TW: Yes.
AI: So what happened then?
TW: We got turned around somehow: I was never one for orienteering, so I wasn’t handling the compass or the map. All I know is that we missed a turn somewhere.
AI: So you got lost?
TW: Until the Rebs found us, yes.
AI: So you just ran into a group of Confederate cavalrymen?
TW: Yes.
AI: What happened then?
TW: We had about equal numbers, but they got the drop on us, and had their weapons drawn. They asked us to kindly surrender or else things might get uncivilized.
AI: What was your impression of the Confederates?
TW: Looked like a group of officers doing pretty much what we were.
AI: What did General Couch do?
TW: The obvious thing! No point in dying pointlessly. The general surrendered and were taken captive.
AI: What happened then?
TW: The Confederates took our guns and then talked amongst themselves. And then we were ordered to strip.
AI: ...strip?
TW: Yes. Strip. This the part where folks normally gasp at how lurid things have become.
AI: Do go on.
TW: Well…
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Except from Invincibility’s Mantle: Lee’s Summer of Conquest by L. Brandon Merriweather (Columbia; Palmetto Press, 2002)
Oates immediately understood what he had: By blind luck, his scouting mission had waylaid a Union general and most of his staff. And not just any general, but the commander of the army on the opposite bank of the Susquehanna. There was an opportunity here, but it likely required moving quickly, before it was realized Couch was missing. And in a flash of genius an idea came to him that would rewrite the history of the North American continent.
In hindsight, it is amazing that Oates was brave enough to try the gambit he envisioned. For his plan was quite simple: Expropriate the uniforms of General Couch and his staff, pretend to be the commander of the Department of the Susquehanna on an inspection tour, and in the process capture a way across the Susquehanna for Lee’s army. For the problem of getting across the river had loomed ever larger as they had approached it. At Harrisburg, the Susquehanna was almost unfordable, and it was most likely that the bridges across it would be destroyed once it became clear that the Confederate army was approaching in force. The Army of Northern Virginia needed both speed and luck in order to menace Harrisburg: Its coverage of 65 miles in two-and-a-half days of marching accomplished the former, while Couch’s capture was a bountiful harvest of the latter.
Dressed in Couch’s ill-fitting uniform, Oates began a whirlwind ride of the western shore of the Susquehanna. The scope and scale of the Hummel Heights Heist is, deservedly, the subject-matter for an entire book on its own: Sufficed to say, Oates and his entourage were not caught, and by the time he returned to Mechanicsburg at 4:00PM, he had identified four bridges across the Susquehanna plus a site where fording might be possible. Most importantly, the two railroad bridges at Marysville, four miles north of the city, were not fortified and minimally guarded. He believed he could push his brigade across and camp on the east bank of the river. To which Early infamously quipped: “What’s so special about your brigade, Mr. Oates?”
Making good on his boast, Early rallied his division for another bout of marching: Minimal resistance was met, as Oates had predicted, and the bridges across the Susquehanna at Marysville were secured intact. Early’s division, exhausted though it might have been from the day’s marching, was fully across the Susquehanna by the sun’s setting. The North Carolinians under Oates’ command believed the next day would bring a great battle to determine Harrisburg’s fate. Unknown to them at the time, its fate was already sealed.
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Excerpt from The Centennial of the Pennsylvania Emergency by Lucius Xun (State College; Penn State University Press, 1963)
July 10, 1863 was a disaster for the Union, as all of the Department of the Susquehanna’s myriad command-related issues exploded into a cascade of failure. The conflicted visions of the military and political leadership in Washington were directly to blame for the lack of men at the bridges south of Maryville, Pennsylvania: Prior to Couch’s standing down of them, they had been guarded by Ohioan militiamen, and were exactly whom Couch had been most concerned about. In turn, the capture of Couch was owed directly to his feud with Curtin over control of the Pennsylvania militia: But for that, Couch likely never is on the west bank of the Susquehanna to be captured.
It cannot be overstated how damaging the capture of Couch was to the Department of the Susquehanna’s position. While much is made of “the Hummel Heights Heist” and its finding of the Marysville bridges, the real harm came from the removal of the senior commander from the army’s headquarters at the crucial moment: For several hours it was unclear whether Couch was simply delayed or was truly missing, during which his few remaining subordinates could not or would not make orders to stand up the army even amidst reports of Confederates as far north as Mechanicsburg swirled. Ironically, it was the receipt of orders from Washington to entrench that finally got the necessary orders issued: By the time Washington’s orders arrived, however, they were contemporaneous with news that Early’s division was now on the eastern bank of the river above the city.
Pandemonium descended upon Harrisburg, as it was clear that the Army of Northern Virginia was not only still in Pennsylvania, but would soon be marching on the city. Decapitated and barraged with rising levels of civilian panic, the authority of the Department of the Susquehanna disintegrated: The only person left in Harrisburg with the authority to organize defense was Governor Curtin. As impressive as his organizational skills might be, however, the preceding week of bickering had left local forces too disarrayed or distant to save Harrisburg. While estimates have varied, Harrisburg had 15,000-20,000 men ready to defend her the next morning. After conferring with what was left of Couch’s staff and the quartermaster at Camp Curtin, it was determined the only thing which the army could do was destroy as much war material as possible prior to dawn and then withdraw. It would be the Pennsylvanian militia which screened the army’s retreat: “The state capital could not fall without a fight, and it was only fair that Pennsylvanians protected it,” Curtin would say when news of the Battle of Fishing Creek reached him.
For it was at Fishing Creek at the Pennsylvanians made their stand on the morning of July 11, 1863: There was never any doubt as to the battle’s outcome, nor any hope for Union victory. By the time Confederate and Pennsylvanian forces clashed, 6,000 Pennsylvanians were facing the full weight of Second (Confederate) Corps plus detachments from Third (Confederate) Corps, while the remainder of Third Corps struck directly at the ford to the city’s west. All that could be done was buy time, to allow for more of the massive Union supply depots at Harrisburg to be destroyed.
But there was never enough time to destroy the massive quantities of war material at Camp Curtin and other sites around Harrisburg, for Harrisburg had become the great logistics hub of the Eastern Theater. And by 2:00PM on July 11, it was in Confederate hands.
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And there's how the Confederacy takes Harrisburg after a Gettysburg victory that is just as pyhrric as OTL! With many willing favors and just plain dumb luck. Is that Confederacy wanking? I'm not sure: Stuff like this
does happen periodically in history. (See, e.g., Ludendorff at Liege in 1914.) Heck, Ludendorff at Liege was what inspired the idea: Not quite knocking on the doors of a fort with a saber-hilt, but plenty theatrical nonetheless. (I'm very tempted to do an entry dedicated to the exact specifics of the Hummel Heights Heist, but that's an interlude project.)
Got a little foreshadowing in, too! At least we now know the name of the diplomatic accords that end the ACW! ...Copenhagen's a bit of a weird choice, but hey, it's not like there's anything happening in Denmark in 1863-64 that might ping-pong its way into the ACW, right? And our friend Winfield Scott Hancock was brought up by an ITTL AH.net poster. Wonder where he's headed given that things have hit the blender for the North in Pennsylvania?