The True Meaning of Antietam and Gettysburg.

[miletus12]

Today is February 22, 2022. The date is Lincoln's birthday. There are two supreme political acts for which Lincoln is internationally famous. The first political act was to declare that the end of slavery was an ultimate aim of his administration's policy. Massively disguised as a "necessary war measure" undertaken as a military act, the true purpose of the Emancipation Proclamation (See text.), was to destroy the slavocracy as it existed and purge the United States of the pernicious effects this slavocracy's kleptocrats and pseudo-aristocracy had upon the meritocracy that Lincoln aimed to emplace in it's stead.   

The Emancipation Proclamation

January 1, 1863

A Transcription


By the President of the United States of America:


A Proclamation.


Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:


"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive

Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.


"That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith,

represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States."


Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for

suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and

parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:


Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.


And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.


And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.


And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the

armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man

vessels of all sorts in said service.


And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.


In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight

hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.


By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN


WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

It should be remarked that the ever-incompetent George McClellan had managed to "not lose" at the Battle of Antietam and thus gave President Lincoln the "pretext" of a victory to publish his proclamation. 

CIVIL WAR | ARTICLE

McClellan at Antietam

Maryland Campaign

Photograph of McClellan discussing business in a tent

By Stephen Sears

In all his months as army commander, Major General George Brinton McClellan fought just one battle, Antietam, from start to finish. Antietam, then, must serve as the measure of his generalship. Colonel Ezra Carman, who survived that bloody field and later wrote the most detailed tactical study of the fighting there, had it right when he observed that on September 17, 1862, “more errors were committed by the Union commander than in any other battle of the war.”



General McClellan’s most grievous error was hugely overestimating Confederate numbers. This delusion dominated his military character. In August 1861, taking command of the Army of the Potomac, he began entirely on his own to over-count the enemy’s forces. Later he was abetted by Allan Pinkerton, his inept intelligence chief, but even Pinkerton could not keep pace with McClellan’s imagination. On the eve of Antietam, McClellan would tell Washington he faced a gigantic Rebel army “amounting to not less than 120,000 men,” outnumbering his own army “by at least twenty-five per cent.” So it was that George McClellan imagined three Rebel soldiers for every one he faced on the Antietam battlefield. Every decision he made that September 17 was dominated by his fear of counterattack by phantom Confederate battalions.



The testing of battle uncovered another McClellan failing – his management of his own generals. Of his six corps commanders, he displayed confidence in only two, Fitz John Porter and Joseph Hooker. He had termed 65-year-old Edwin Sumner “even a greater fool than I had supposed,” and regarded William Franklin as slow and lacking in energy. He had recently rebuked Ambrose Burnside for his tepid pursuit of the Rebels after the fighting at South Mountain. Joseph Mansfield, new to command, was an unknown quantity. McClellan called no council of his generals to explain his intentions, issued no plan of battle, and on September 17 conferred at length only with Fitz John Porter.



By taking up a defensive position west of Antietam Creek, General Robert E. Lee challenged McClellan to attack him. McClellan responded to the challenge with obsessive caution. He determined to strike Lee’s left, or northern, flank with at first just Joe Hooker’s First Corps. Crossing the Antietam behind Hooker and in support of him was Mansfield’s Twelfth Corps. The Second, Fifth, and Ninth Corps and the cavalry remained east of the Antietam. That stream would serve McClellan throughout the battle as a defensive moat against the counterattacks he anticipated. Franklin’s Sixth Corps was belatedly ordered up from Pleasant Valley, and only reached the field with the battle half over.



Having Hooker spearhead the attack, backed by Mansfield, was McClellan’s deliberate ploy to derail command influence by Ambrose Burnside and Edwin Sumner. On the march north from Washington, Burnside had commanded one wing of the army, comprising his Ninth Corps and Hooker’s First Corps. By peeling Hooker away and sending him to the opposite end of the battlefield, McClellan reduced Burnside’s authority by half, leaving that general sulking. Sumner had led the other wing of the army – his Second Corps and Mansfield’s Twelfth – on the march north. With Mansfield across the creek and slated to follow Hooker into battle, Sumner was left with only the Second Corps. Unlike Burnside, Sumner did not sulk at his demotion, but instead became more impatient to get into the fight.



McClellan’s initial design included a move against the Confederates’ other flank, to the south, by Burnside’s Ninth Corps. Either a diversion or a full-blooded attack – McClellan never made it clear which in dealing with Burnside – the assault was intended to prevent Lee from reinforcing against the Hooker-led main assault. However, since McClellan did not order Burnside to advance until the fighting elsewhere was three hours old, he was far too late to serve as a diversion. This was typical of McClellan’s orders that day – issued too late, or lacking in coordination, or reacting to events rather than directing them. Before long in that day of savage fighting, General McClellan lost control of the battle and fell captive to his delusions about the enemy he faced.


The morning struggle on the northern front – in the West Woods and the East Woods and the Cornfield and around the Dunker Church – proceeded in bursts from 6 a.m. onward and was unimaginably bloody. Hooker struck first with his First Corps. Rather than advancing to Hooker’s immediate support, Mansfield’s Twelfth Corps was posted too far back and brought up too late. The forces of Hooker and Stonewall Jackson shot each other to pieces without interruption.



It was not until 7:30 that the Twelfth Corps pushed past the shattered First to take up the fight. An early casualty was General Mansfield, struck in the chest with a mortal wound; General Alpheus Williams took over the command. Williams’s men were soon entangled in pockets of bitter fighting all across the northern battleground. Joe Hooker was wounded, depriving the Army of the Potomac of one of its best fighting generals at a critical moment. At nine o’clock Williams signaled McClellan: “Genl. Mansfield is dangerously wounded. Genl. Hooker wounded severely in foot. Genl. Sumner I hear is advancing. . . . Please give us all the aid you can.”



Sumner’s big Second Corps – its 15,200 men made it almost as large as the First and Twelfth Corps combined – was indeed finally advancing. But Sumner needed to cross the Antietam and march two miles to the scene of the fighting, so the Twelfth Corps, like the First, would make its fight alone. Even in unleashing Sumner, McClellan acted with exceeding caution. He permitted only two of Sumner’s three divisions to cross the Antietam. He held Israel Richardson’s division east of the creek until a division from the reserve came up to replace it. Only at nine o’clock would Richardson follow the rest of the Second Corps into action.



By then Sumner had marched straight into disaster. Furious at McClellan’s delays, he personally led John Sedgwick’s division onto the field – and into an ambush. Forty percent of Sedgwick’s men became casualties in hardly 15 minutes. To make matters worse, the trailing division could not keep pace with Sumner, lost direction, and struck the Rebel defenders of the Sunken Road, at the center of the battleground. Richardson’s division, released at last by McClellan, went to William French’s aid. This shifted the weight of the fighting to the Sunken Road.



During these early morning hours, as the First Corps, then the Twelfth, then the Second plunged separately into this fiery cauldron of a battle, McClellan held back Burnside’s Ninth Corps. Finally came word that the Sixth Corps, called up from Pleasant Valley, was approaching. This would replenish the defenses behind Antietam Creek, so McClellan released Burnside. The order, timed 9:10 a.m., read: “General Franklin’s command is within one mile and a half of here. General McClellan desires you to open your attack.”


While Burnside grappled with the problem of getting across the Antietam, the fighting at the Sunken Road abruptly turned in the Federals’ favor. Due to a mix-up of orders, the Confederate infantry abandoned the position, leaving a large gap in the center of Lee’s line. McClellan witnessed all this from Porter’s Fifth Corps headquarters, but by now he was drained of all aggressiveness. He ordered the troops at the Sunken Road to stand on the defensive.



William Franklin’s Sixth Corps was up now, and Franklin and his generals urged an assault against the depleted enemy defenses on the northern flank. McClellan rode to the scene, heard them out, then listened to a demoralized General Sumner insist that taking the offensive there would “risk a total defeat.” Bowing to his defeatist lieutenant, McClellan ordered the troops on the defensive here as well. One of Franklin’s generals, William F. Smith, termed it “the nail in McC’s coffin as a general.”



The last opportunity for a decisive victory fell to Ambrose Burnside. By one o’clock, after fumbling and false starts, Burnside seized a bridge across the Antietam and by three o’clock started a thrust toward Sharpsburg to turn Lee’s southern flank. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, Confederate general A.P. Hill assailed the Ninth Corps’ open flank. Hill had marched his division 17 miles from Harper’s Ferry to reach the field at exactly the moment to stymie Burnside. Correspondent George Smalley was with the general commanding at Fifth Corps headquarters. McClellan, he wrote, “turns a half-questioning look on Fitz-John Porter, who stands by his side, and one may believe that the same thought is passing through the minds of both generals. ‘They are the only reserves of the army; they cannot be spared.’” Burnside, unsupported, retreated to his bridge.



This final Union setback was due as much to General McClellan as the rest of the day’s setbacks. Contrary to all the canons of generalship, he had not a single cavalry vedette guarding his army’s flanks. A.P. Hill’s assault came as a complete surprise.



Antietam must be judged the best chance to utterly defeat Robert E. Lee until that day two and a half years later at Appomattox. Against an enemy he outnumbered better than two to one, George McClellan devoted himself to not losing rather than winning. Nor would he dare to renew the battle the next day. The final measure of his self-delusion is his letter to his wife on September 18: “Those in whose judgment I rely,” he wrote, “tell me that I fought the battle splendidly & that it was a masterpiece of art.”

There is not a spot in a mythical hell hot enough to roast McClellan.



The actual military situation was such that Lincoln had to take "strategic steps".

The Emancipation Proclamation was designed to implement these strategic steps:

a. Neutralize the pro-Confederate elements in English and French ruling classes that sought to use the Confederacy's treasonous rebellion to weaken the United States as a competitor to their designs for geopolitical and economic dominance in the New World. Palmerston and Napoleon III clearly intended that the United States be destroyed. Once the Emanicipation Proclamation became understood among the populations of Great Britain and France as a war against slavery as well as a war to preserve the United States, American propaganda efforts to thwart foreign ruling governments' recognition of the rebellion as anything but a slavocracy class's attempt to retain human and thus would taint by association those "ruling European elites" with the same immorality and class interests as oppressors of "the common man", would be a lot easier. It also added the shotgun effect of recruitment among the failed 1848 revolutionaries in Europe in drawing to the Union, immigrants to America,k who would swell federal armies, and provide fresh manpower to man the Union's factories. 

b. Take a third of the slavocracy's human potential out of active if coerced support to the Confederate cause. The Confederacy had 12 million human beings. About a third of them were slaves. Military manpower was potentially 1.5 million men at best. Reducing that manpower by a third was vital. As it stood, someone (Winfield Scott) who advised Lincoln, may have suggested that it would take killing one in four Confederate soldiers to bleed the slavocracy down to ruin. There is a lot of difference between murdering 400,000 men and 275,000 men. Lincoln was a cold-blooded practical man, who could understand Euclidean (military) logic. And it certainly happens, that he had at least one of the best military minds of the age as his personal advisor who could teach him the arithmetic of war if Lincoln was not versed in the details himself. *(See video) Lincoln was a GOOD self-taught strategist, who could have given the Elder Moltke a run for it and probably beaten that man.                

c. Inform all "knowing" parties, that the conflict was now a "war to the knife". See b., if the details are still unclear.  For the superficial understanders, such as that idiot, McClellan, the military outcome was now elevated to the pure economic and political environment. The slavocracy was to be destroyed and a capital / free labor system was to be established. The TRAGEDY was that Lincoln was not allowed to lay the postwar work needed to reshape American society. Instead: Andrew Johnson, a vain and petty revanchist bent on personal revenge, and the politically naive Ulysses Grant were left to mismanage Reconstruction and then the corrupt and incompetent James Garfield allowed "The Great Betrayal". 

That gives some idea of the scope of vision and intent of Lincoln's first great political act. The inconclusive Battle of Gettysburg and the opportunity to lay down the Gettysburg Address as an "outcome" of Meade's botched victory will be tomorrow's installment.

Miletus.            
  

[lordroel]

Feb 23, 2022 2:49:39 GMT miletus12 said:

Today is February 22, 2022. The date id Lincoln's birthday. There are two supreme political acts for which Lincoln is internationally famous. The first political act was to declare that the end of slavery was an ultimate aim of his administration's policy. Massively disguised as a "necessary war measure" undertaken as a military act, the true purpose of the Emancipation Proclamation (See text.)

The Emancipation Proclamation

January 1, 1863

A Transcription


By the President of the United States of America:


A Proclamation.


Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:


"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive

Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.


"That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith,

represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States."


Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for

suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and

parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:


Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.


And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.


And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.


And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the

armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man

vessels of all sorts in said service.


And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.


In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight

hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.


By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN


WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

It should be remarked that the ever-incompetent George McClellan had managed "not lose" at the Battle of Antietam and thus gave President Lincoln the "pretext" of a victory to publish his proclamation. 

CIVIL WAR | ARTICLE

McClellan at Antietam

Maryland Campaign

Photograph of McClellan discussing business in a tent

By Stephen Sears

In all his months as army commander, Major General George Brinton McClellan fought just one battle, Antietam, from start to finish. Antietam, then, must serve as the measure of his generalship. Colonel Ezra Carman, who survived that bloody field and later wrote the most detailed tactical study of the fighting there, had it right when he observed that on September 17, 1862, “more errors were committed by the Union commander than in any other battle of the war.”



General McClellan’s most grievous error was hugely overestimating Confederate numbers. This delusion dominated his military character. In August 1861, taking command of the Army of the Potomac, he began entirely on his own to over-count the enemy’s forces. Later he was abetted by Allan Pinkerton, his inept intelligence chief, but even Pinkerton could not keep pace with McClellan’s imagination. On the eve of Antietam, McClellan would tell Washington he faced a gigantic Rebel army “amounting to not less than 120,000 men,” outnumbering his own army “by at least twenty-five per cent.” So it was that George McClellan imagined three Rebel soldiers for every one he faced on the Antietam battlefield. Every decision he made that September 17 was dominated by his fear of counterattack by phantom Confederate battalions.



The testing of battle uncovered another McClellan failing – his management of his own generals. Of his six corps commanders, he displayed confidence in only two, Fitz John Porter and Joseph Hooker. He had termed 65-year-old Edwin Sumner “even a greater fool than I had supposed,” and regarded William Franklin as slow and lacking in energy. He had recently rebuked Ambrose Burnside for his tepid pursuit of the Rebels after the fighting at South Mountain. Joseph Mansfield, new to command, was an unknown quantity. McClellan called no council of his generals to explain his intentions, issued no plan of battle, and on September 17 conferred at length only with Fitz John Porter.



By taking up a defensive position west of Antietam Creek, General Robert E. Lee challenged McClellan to attack him. McClellan responded to the challenge with obsessive caution. He determined to strike Lee’s left, or northern, flank with at first just Joe Hooker’s First Corps. Crossing the Antietam behind Hooker and in support of him was Mansfield’s Twelfth Corps. The Second, Fifth, and Ninth Corps and the cavalry remained east of the Antietam. That stream would serve McClellan throughout the battle as a defensive moat against the counterattacks he anticipated. Franklin’s Sixth Corps was belatedly ordered up from Pleasant Valley, and only reached the field with the battle half over.



Having Hooker spearhead the attack, backed by Mansfield, was McClellan’s deliberate ploy to derail command influence by Ambrose Burnside and Edwin Sumner. On the march north from Washington, Burnside had commanded one wing of the army, comprising his Ninth Corps and Hooker’s First Corps. By peeling Hooker away and sending him to the opposite end of the battlefield, McClellan reduced Burnside’s authority by half, leaving that general sulking. Sumner had led the other wing of the army – his Second Corps and Mansfield’s Twelfth – on the march north. With Mansfield across the creek and slated to follow Hooker into battle, Sumner was left with only the Second Corps. Unlike Burnside, Sumner did not sulk at his demotion, but instead became more impatient to get into the fight.



McClellan’s initial design included a move against the Confederates’ other flank, to the south, by Burnside’s Ninth Corps. Either a diversion or a full-blooded attack – McClellan never made it clear which in dealing with Burnside – the assault was intended to prevent Lee from reinforcing against the Hooker-led main assault. However, since McClellan did not order Burnside to advance until the fighting elsewhere was three hours old, he was far too late to serve as a diversion. This was typical of McClellan’s orders that day – issued too late, or lacking in coordination, or reacting to events rather than directing them. Before long in that day of savage fighting, General McClellan lost control of the battle and fell captive to his delusions about the enemy he faced.


The morning struggle on the northern front – in the West Woods and the East Woods and the Cornfield and around the Dunker Church – proceeded in bursts from 6 a.m. onward and was unimaginably bloody. Hooker struck first with his First Corps. Rather than advancing to Hooker’s immediate support, Mansfield’s Twelfth Corps was posted too far back and brought up too late. The forces of Hooker and Stonewall Jackson shot each other to pieces without interruption.



It was not until 7:30 that the Twelfth Corps pushed past the shattered First to take up the fight. An early casualty was General Mansfield, struck in the chest with a mortal wound; General Alpheus Williams took over the command. Williams’s men were soon entangled in pockets of bitter fighting all across the northern battleground. Joe Hooker was wounded, depriving the Army of the Potomac of one of its best fighting generals at a critical moment. At nine o’clock Williams signaled McClellan: “Genl. Mansfield is dangerously wounded. Genl. Hooker wounded severely in foot. Genl. Sumner I hear is advancing. . . . Please give us all the aid you can.”



Sumner’s big Second Corps – its 15,200 men made it almost as large as the First and Twelfth Corps combined – was indeed finally advancing. But Sumner needed to cross the Antietam and march two miles to the scene of the fighting, so the Twelfth Corps, like the First, would make its fight alone. Even in unleashing Sumner, McClellan acted with exceeding caution. He permitted only two of Sumner’s three divisions to cross the Antietam. He held Israel Richardson’s division east of the creek until a division from the reserve came up to replace it. Only at nine o’clock would Richardson follow the rest of the Second Corps into action.



By then Sumner had marched straight into disaster. Furious at McClellan’s delays, he personally led John Sedgwick’s division onto the field – and into an ambush. Forty percent of Sedgwick’s men became casualties in hardly 15 minutes. To make matters worse, the trailing division could not keep pace with Sumner, lost direction, and struck the Rebel defenders of the Sunken Road, at the center of the battleground. Richardson’s division, released at last by McClellan, went to William French’s aid. This shifted the weight of the fighting to the Sunken Road.



During these early morning hours, as the First Corps, then the Twelfth, then the Second plunged separately into this fiery cauldron of a battle, McClellan held back Burnside’s Ninth Corps. Finally came word that the Sixth Corps, called up from Pleasant Valley, was approaching. This would replenish the defenses behind Antietam Creek, so McClellan released Burnside. The order, timed 9:10 a.m., read: “General Franklin’s command is within one mile and a half of here. General McClellan desires you to open your attack.”


While Burnside grappled with the problem of getting across the Antietam, the fighting at the Sunken Road abruptly turned in the Federals’ favor. Due to a mix-up of orders, the Confederate infantry abandoned the position, leaving a large gap in the center of Lee’s line. McClellan witnessed all this from Porter’s Fifth Corps headquarters, but by now he was drained of all aggressiveness. He ordered the troops at the Sunken Road to stand on the defensive.



William Franklin’s Sixth Corps was up now, and Franklin and his generals urged an assault against the depleted enemy defenses on the northern flank. McClellan rode to the scene, heard them out, then listened to a demoralized General Sumner insist that taking the offensive there would “risk a total defeat.” Bowing to his defeatist lieutenant, McClellan ordered the troops on the defensive here as well. One of Franklin’s generals, William F. Smith, termed it “the nail in McC’s coffin as a general.”



The last opportunity for a decisive victory fell to Ambrose Burnside. By one o’clock, after fumbling and false starts, Burnside seized a bridge across the Antietam and by three o’clock started a thrust toward Sharpsburg to turn Lee’s southern flank. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, Confederate general A.P. Hill assailed the Ninth Corps’ open flank. Hill had marched his division 17 miles from Harper’s Ferry to reach the field at exactly the moment to stymie Burnside. Correspondent George Smalley was with the general commanding at Fifth Corps headquarters. McClellan, he wrote, “turns a half-questioning look on Fitz-John Porter, who stands by his side, and one may believe that the same thought is passing through the minds of both generals. ‘They are the only reserves of the army; they cannot be spared.’” Burnside, unsupported, retreated to his bridge.



This final Union setback was due as much to General McClellan as the rest of the day’s setbacks. Contrary to all the canons of generalship, he had not a single cavalry vedette guarding his army’s flanks. A.P. Hill’s assault came as a complete surprise.



Antietam must be judged the best chance to utterly defeat Robert E. Lee until that day two and a half years later at Appomattox. Against an enemy he outnumbered better than two to one, George McClellan devoted himself to not losing rather than winning. Nor would he dare to renew the battle the next day. The final measure of his self-delusion is his letter to his wife on September 18: “Those in whose judgment I rely,” he wrote, “tell me that I fought the battle splendidly & that it was a masterpiece of art.”

There is not a spot in a mythical hell hot enough to roast McClellan.



The actual military situation was such that Lincoln had to take "strategic steps".

The Emancipation Proclamation was designed to implement these strategic steps:

a. Neutralize the pro-Confederate elements in English and French ruling classes that sought to use the Confederacy's treasonous rebellion to weaken the United States as a competitor to their designs for geopolitical and economic dominance in the New World. Palmerston and Napoleon III clearly intended that the United States be destroyed. Once the Emanicipation Proclamation became understood among the populations of Great Britain and France as a war against slavery as well as a war to preserve the United States, American propaganda efforts to thwart foreign ruling governments' recognition of the rebellion as anything but a slavocracy class's attempt to retain human and thus would taint by association those "ruling European elites" with the same immorality and class interests as oppressors of "the common man", would be a lot easier. It also added the shotgun effect of recruitment among the failed 1848 revolutionaries in Europe in drawing to the Union, immigrants to America,k who would swell federal armies, and provide fresh manpower to man the Union's factories. 

b. Take a third of the slavocracy's human potential out of active if coerced support to the Confederate cause. The Confederacy had 12 million human beings. About a third of them were slaves. Military manpower was potentially 1.5 million men at best. Reducing that manpower by a third was vital. As it stood, someone (Winfield Scott) who advised Lincoln, may have suggested that it would take killing one in four Confederate soldiers to bleed the slavocracy down to ruin. There is a lot of difference between murdering 400,000 men and 275,000 men. Lincoln was a cold-blooded practical man, who could understand Euclidean (military) logic. And it certainly happens, that he had at least one of the best military minds of the age as his personal advisor who could teach him the arithmetic of war if Lincoln was not versed in the details himself. *(See video) Lincoln was a GOOD self-taught strategist, who could have given the Elder Moltke a run for it and probably beaten that man.                

c. Inform all "knowing" parties, that the conflict was now a "war to the knife". See b., if the details are still unclear.  For the superficial understanders, such as that idiot, McClellan, the military outcome was now elevated to the pure economic and political environment. The slavocracy was to be destroyed and a capital / free labor system was to be established. The TRAGEDY was that Lincoln was not allowed to lay the postwar work needed to reshape American society. Instead: Andrew Johnson, a vain and petty revanchist bent on personal revenge, and the politically naive Ulysses Grant were left to mismanage Reconstruction and then the corrupt and incompetent James Garfield allowed "The Great Betrayal". 

That gives some idea of the scope of vision and intent of Lincoln's first great political act. The inconclusive Battle of Gettysburg and the opportunity to lay down the Gettysburg Address as an "outcome" of Meade's botched victory will be tomorrow's installment.

Miletus.            
  

Schould this thread not be in the General Historical Discussion board.

[miletus12]

Feb 23, 2022 3:45:32 GMT lordroel said:

Schould this thread not be in the General Historical Discussion board.

I thought it was pre-1900 and that there might be alternate history discussions applied. If this is the wrong section, can I request that it please be moved?

[lordroel]

Feb 23, 2022 14:10:48 GMT miletus12 said:

Feb 23, 2022 3:45:32 GMT lordroel said:

Schould this thread not be in the General Historical Discussion board.

I thought it was pre-1900 and that there might be alternate history discussions applied. If this is the wrong section, can I request that it please be moved?

A if it is AH, then this is the right place and i give you my apologizes for thinking it was a historical article,

[stevep]

Feb 23, 2022 2:49:39 GMT miletus12 said:

Today is February 22, 2022. The date is Lincoln's birthday. There are two supreme political acts for which Lincoln is internationally famous. The first political act was to declare that the end of slavery was an ultimate aim of his administration's policy. Massively disguised as a "necessary war measure" undertaken as a military act, the true purpose of the Emancipation Proclamation (See text.), was to destroy the slavocracy as it existed and purge the United States of the pernicious effects this slavocracy's kleptocrats and pseudo-aristocracy had upon the meritocracy that Lincoln aimed to emplace in it's stead.  




The actual military situation was such that Lincoln had to take "strategic steps".

The Emancipation Proclamation was designed to implement these strategic steps:

a. Neutralize the pro-Confederate elements in English and French ruling classes that sought to use the Confederacy's treasonous rebellion to weaken the United States as a competitor to their designs for geopolitical and economic dominance in the New World. Palmerston and Napoleon III clearly intended that the United States be destroyed. Once the Emanicipation Proclamation became understood among the populations of Great Britain and France as a war against slavery as well as a war to preserve the United States, American propaganda efforts to thwart foreign ruling governments' recognition of the rebellion as anything but a slavocracy class's attempt to retain human and thus would taint by association those "ruling European elites" with the same immorality and class interests as oppressors of "the common man", would be a lot easier. It also added the shotgun effect of recruitment among the failed 1848 revolutionaries in Europe in drawing to the Union, immigrants to America,k who would swell federal armies, and provide fresh manpower to man the Union's factories. 


Miletus.           

  I think this is a projection of American megalomania and intolerance onto their intended victims.  Another aspect of the US's notorious American exceptionalism delusion among its less rational elements. 

[miletus12]

Now we need to look at how Lincoln sees it.



What was Lincoln thinking on 4 July 1863 as he digested the news of Vicksburg and Grant's absolutely astounding victory? (*See map.)



Few times have I seen the two campaigns compared, but let us look at Lincoln's unsent letter to Meade.

From Abraham Lincoln to George G. Meade [Draft], July 14, 1863
Executive Mansion,
Washington, July 14, 1863.

Major General Meade

I have just seen your despatch to Gen. Halleck, asking to be relieved of your command, because of a supposed censure of mine-- I am very -- very -- grateful to you for the magnificent success you gave the cause of the country at Gettysburg; and I am sorry now to be the author of the slightest pain to you-- But I was in such deep distress myself that I could not restrain some expression of it-- I had been oppressed nearly ever since the battles at Gettysburg, by what appeared to be evidences that yourself, and Gen. Couch, and Gen. Smith, were not seeking a collision with the enemy, but were trying to get him across the river without another battle. What these evidences were if you please, I hope to tell you at some time, when we shall both feel better. The case, summarily stated, is this. You fought and beat the enemy at Gettysburg; and, of course, to say the least, his loss was as great as yours-- He retreated; and you did not; as it seemed to me, pressingly pursue him; but a flood in the river detained him, till, by slow degrees, you were again upon him. You had at least twenty thousand veteran troops directly with you, and as many more raw ones within supporting distance, all in addition to those who fought with you at Gettysburg; while it was not possible that he had received a single recruit; and yet you stood and let the flood run down, bridges be built, and the enemy move away at his leisure, without attacking him. And Couch and Smith! The latter left Carlisle in time, upon all ordinary calculation, to have aided you in the last battle at Gettysburg; but he did not arrive-- More At the end of more than ten days, I believe twelve, under constant urging, he reached Hagerstown from Carlisle, which is not an inch over fifty-five miles, if so much. And Couch's movement was very little different--

Again, my dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee's escape-- He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with the / our other late successes, have ended the war-- As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not safely attack Lee last Monday, how can you possibly do so South of the river, when you can take with you very few more than two thirds of the force you then had in hand? It would be unreasonable to expect, and I do not expect you can now affect much. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it--

I beg you will not consider this a prosecution, or persecution of yourself-- As you had learned that I was dissatisfied, I have thought it best to kindly tell you why.

[ Endorsed on Envelope by Lincoln:]

To Gen. Meade, never sent, or signed.

Now here are some factors, the popular histories never cover.

a. Lincoln received the quite detailed reports that Grant sent him of Grant's year-long effort to get Vicksburg. Lincoln had Mark Twained it down the Mississippi to New Orleans, so he knew, personally, how desperate the riverine campaign and the plight of the UNITED STATES NAVY was, fighting upon that accursed constantly shifting meandering bog infested river system. The fighting along the Yazoo Flats was worse than anything the Americans would see in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. I have been there. The town of Vicksburg sits on a bend and on a bluff, nay a sheer unclimbable rock cliff that, that sticks out of a continuous swamp that the United States Geographical Survey still defines as near or below sea level wetlands despite a century and a half of drying western Mississippi and northwest Louisiana out. Raise the sea-level a tall woman high and that land reverts to swamp instantly. The ground, for overland movement or by river, is far worse than Montreal on the Saint Lawrence. Bluffs and swamps also defend the east bank of Vicksburg north and south. There are few dry hard safe approach routes and those are only three from Jackson, Mississippi in 1863 of which one was a mud rutted wagon road, one was a poorly graded railroad, and one was a glorified mud and rut deer track. Port Arthur to the south is the exact same situation and there are then (and now) NO passable hard ground routes up from New Orleans or Baton Rouge that have not been rock bedded and engineered every stinking kilometer over ground that favors dinosaurs, crocodiles and stubborn pigheaded mud-swampers. The whole terrain is a rolling water-logged, HEAVILY FORESTED madness inducing bushwhacker happy country made for enemy irregulars and light infantry, who can live off that country. Any conventional army was soon to be nibbled to death outside its picket lines and could not sustain itself in that country save by river boat convoys guarded by the American navy. The Confederates had armored steamers and floating batteries to handle Porter's gunboats and Farragut's tall-ships. The only cure for these problems was to land an army south of the Vicksburg cliffs, march on Jackson, Mississippi, sack that town and then turn west, charge directly at Vicksburg along the railroad, invest the town and besiege it and take it before the men's back carried rations and horse carried horse fodder ran out (5 days); then use Vicksburg as a secure jump-off base for Port Arthur and then to overawe Mississippi. Grant took that all or nothing risk, not only throwing his army's destruction into the gamble if he mistimed his backpack logistics, but risking the entire USN river navy, too.

"I may be a much better general than you are, Grant, but I lack your nerve."

That was what William Tecumseh Sherman told Grant. Obviously, Lincoln did not have to sweat Grant. Lincoln gave Grant supplies and objectives and Grant got on with the job.

b. Pennsylvania was far different.

[miletus12]

Feb 23, 2022 17:52:54 GMT stevep said:

I think this is a projection of American megalomania and intolerance onto their intended victims.  Another aspect of the US's notorious American exceptionalism delusion among its less rational elements. 

This statement is curious. Is it addressed to the actual discussion, or is it a question about how Lincoln is seen globally, then and now? I dare say that Lincoln did factor France and Britain into his geostrategic calculations and acted accordingly. He was quite anxious to use any leverage he could against the sitting French and British governments of the day. As he famously told John Hay; "One war at a time." during the "Trent Affair". He was not anxious to expand his woes and worries. On the other hand, he would be quite happy to see the populations of Great Britain and France turn on their sitting governments and resist any plans to intervene in the American civil war. If that is exceptionalism, it can be attributed to the then situation that the Americans had Lincoln and the British had Palmerston and the French had Napoleon III. Leadership and circumstance matter. Lincoln logrolled those two "gentlemen" quite easily.

That is not American exceptionalism. It is Lincoln exceptionalism.

[miletus12]

Feb 23, 2022 17:57:01 GMT miletus12 said:

b. Pennsylvania was far different

Lincoln was not as personally familiar with Pennsylvania and Maryland on the ground conditions, as he was of Vicksburg. Further, he was dealing with a different set of generals in the Army of the Potomac than he was with the team of Sherman and Grant.  He had AoP generals who hated each other's guts and who were politically anti-Lincoln, about the only thing they all agreed in common, if one can judge by their interpersonal correspondence among themselves. 

The most politically neutral and most capable of that sad lot of misfits, and the one Lincoln supporter among the bunch of losers at corps command and above, was George Gordon Meade. He was not Lincoln's first choice. That man was actually John Reynolds^1.

Tombstone of the Day: Meade, The Old Snapping Turtle

Updated: Jan. 05, 2019, 7:05 p.m. | Published: Jul. 03, 2013, 1:13 a.m.

By Terry Parris Jr. | [e-mail]

meadetomb.jpg


By Joe Farley, Joe Farrell and Lawrence Knorr



George Gordon Meade was a career United States Army officer and is best known for being the victor of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. He was born on December 31, 1815, in Spain. His father was serving there as an agent for the U.S. government. In 1828, his father died and six months later the family, facing financial difficulties, returned to the United States. Initially, Meade was educated at the Mount Hope Institution in Baltimore. In 1831, with financial considerations being a prime consideration, he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He graduated ranked 19th in his class of 56 cadets in 1835 and was transferred to Florida at the beginning of the Seminole Wars.



Between November 1862 and June 1863, President Lincoln - unhappy with the performance of the Army of the Potomac - changed command from George McClellan to Ambrose Burnside to Joseph Hooker and then ultimately to Meade. Meade assumed command just three days before Gettysburg. He was not Lincoln’s first choice: the President had first asked John Reynolds to take command, but Reynolds declined. In defending his decision to appoint Meade as commander of the Union forces, Lincoln said, “Meade will fight well on his own dunghill.” Ironically, it was Reynolds who would die leading troops on the field while Meade lead the Army, rather than the other way around.



Meade was fortunate to have with him at Gettysburg such competent and brave officers as Reynolds, John Buford, Winfield Hancock, Strong Vincent, George Custer, and Joshua Chamberlain. Meade made the decision to fight a defensive battle and did well in deploying his forces. His forces repelled attacks on his flanks and on the final day of the battle, stood tall against an attack on the center of their lines. This disastrous attack became known as Pickett’s Charge. Although Meade field-marshaled the Union victory at Gettysburg, he was criticized severely then and now for not pursuing the defeated Confederate forces after the battle. Meade infuriated Lincoln when he reported that the “invaders have been driven from our land.” Reportedly, upon receiving the dispatch, Lincoln said angrily “doesn’t he understand it’s all ‘our land’?” Lincoln was overwrought at the missed opportunity to perhaps end the war and ordered Meade to pursue and attack Lee’s retreating Army. It was too late however, and Lee escaped to Virginia. In March 1864, Lincoln put General Ulysses S. Grant in charge of all Union Armies.



You can learn more about John Fulton Reynolds and many other Civil War-era Pennsylvanians in the book Keystone Tombstones Civil War at www.keystonetombstones.com

John Reynolds is a curious what-if? 

John F. Reynolds


TITLE

Major General

WAR & AFFILIATION

Civil War / Union

DATE OF BIRTH - DEATH

September 20, 1820 - July 1, 1863

John Fulton Reynolds was born on September 20, 1820, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He was one of eleven children. In 1837, he was nominated to the United States Military Academy at West Point by future President James Buchanan, a friend of Reynolds’s father. Reynolds graduated in 1841, finishing 26th in a class of 50. His classmates included future Civil War generals Horatio Wright, Richard Garnett, Don Carolos Buell, Israel Richardson, and Nathaniel Lyon.



After his graduation, Reynolds was commissioned 2nd lieutenant in the 3rd United States Artillery, stationed at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland. Over the next four years he would also serve at Fort Pickens and Fort Marion in Florida and at Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina. During the Mexican War, Reynolds, by then a 1st lieutenant, served under General Zachary Taylor. He was brevetted twice for gallantry. At the Battle of Buena Vista, his artillery stopped a flanking attack by enemy cavalry, forcing the Mexican army to withdraw.



After the Mexican War, Reynolds served at various posts, including Fort Preble in Maine, Fort Lafayette in New York, and Fort Ortford in Oregon. During this period, he became engaged to Catherine Mary Hewitt. Because she was a Catholic and he was a Protestant, however, Reynolds kept their engagement a secret. From September 1860 to June 1861, he was the Commandant of Cadets at West Point, where he also served as an instructor.



Reynolds remained a supporter of James Buchanan and his pro-slavery policies. After John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, he commented that if “a few more of the abolitionist stripe” were hanged, “it would effectively stop the agitation for a time.” Although did not support anti-slavery politics, he was a committed Unionist. On August 20, 1861, he was appointed brigadier general of volunteers in the Union Army and put in command of one of the brigades of the Pennsylvania Reserves.



During the Seven Days Campaign, he commanded his brigade at the Battles of Beaver Dam Creek and Gaines’ Mill. After the latter, an exhausted Reynolds was captured while attempting to get some sleep. An embarrassed Reynolds was comforted by his pre-war colleague, Confederate General D.H. Hill, who told him “do not feel so bad about your capture, it’s the fate of wars.”



Reynolds did not remain a prisoner for long; just weeks later he was exchanged and put in command of the entire division of Pennsylvania Reserves. At the Battle of Second Manassas, Reynolds led a rear guard counterattack that bought time for the Union Army to escape potential annihilation. He was unable to participate in the Battle of Antietam because a panicky Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin demanded that he command local militia forces during Lee’s invasion.



Reynolds once again commanded his division at Fredericksburg. After Fredericksburg, when General Joseph Hooker was given command of the Army of the Potomac, Reynolds was given command of Hooker’s old First Corps. After the Battle of Chancellorsville, Reynolds was one of several Union Generals who urged Hooker’s removal from command. However, when President Lincoln met with Reynolds and offered him command of the Army of the Potomac, Reynolds replied that he would only accept the command if he could be sure there would be no interference from his superiors in Washington. Unwilling to sacrifice civilian control of the military, Lincoln instead put Reynolds's friend General George Meade in command.



On the morning of July 1, 1863, as he was leading his forces towards Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Reynolds received a message that Confederate forces were almost there as well. Reynolds led his First Corps to McPherson Ridge, when he received a bullet through the neck. Reynolds died instantly. He was the highest ranking soldier on either side killed at Gettysburg.

The takeaways were and are:

a. Reynolds was politically unreliable.
b. Reynolds was afflicted with McClellanism, that is to state; a mindset common among Army of the Potomac senior commanders, who thought civilian control of the army and civilian interference with military operations was an impediment to "proper military authority". It can be seen in hindsight, that after holding "loose reins" on his Army of the Potomac generals, Lincoln was fed up with their incompetence and lack of simple understanding of the strategic situation and solution to the Confederate problem.^2

There is a possibility that Reynolds would have performed far worse than Meade did and would have lost the battle. He was "unlucky" in the sense that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time constantly and he tended to get credit for other's (Specifically Meade at Fredericksburg) work.      

^2 Destroy the rebel armies. 

American Civil War: Major General John F. Reynolds
By Kennedy Hickman


Updated on July 03, 2019


Major General John F. Reynolds was a noted commander in the Union Army during the Civil War. A native of Pennsylvania, he graduated from West Point in 1841 and distinguished himself during the Mexican-American War. With the beginning of the Civil War, Reynolds quickly moved up through the ranks of the Army of the Potomac and proved to be one its finest field commanders. Despite his battlefield record, he was frequently frustrated by the political restraints placed on the army and likely turned down command of it in 1863. Reynolds was lost on July 1, 1863, when he was killed leading his men onto the field during the opening stages of the Battle of Gettysburg.



Early Life


The son of John and Lydia Reynolds, John Fulton Reynolds was born at Lancaster, PA on September 20, 1820. Initially educated in nearby Lititz, he later attended the Lancaster County Academy. Electing to pursue a military career like his older brother William who had entered the US Navy, Reynolds sought an appointment to West Point. Working with a family friend, (future president) Senator James Buchanan, he was able to obtain admission and reported to the academy in 1837.


(Buchanan, the traitor, was Reynolds' sponsor to West Point. That was like having Benedict Arnold as your best buddy and political fixer to plant you into the American army officer corps. Lincoln was "aware" of this history. M.)    

While at West Point, Reynolds' classmates included Horatio G. Wright, Albion P. Howe, Nathaniel Lyon, and Don Carlos Buell. An average student, he graduated in 1841 ranked twenty-sixth in a class of fifty. Assigned to the 3rd US Artillery at Fort McHenry, Reynolds' time in Baltimore proved brief as he received orders for Fort Augustine, FL the following year. Arriving at the end of the Second Seminole War, Reynolds spent the next three years at Fort Augustine and Fort Moultrie, SC.



Mexican-American War


With the outbreak of the Mexican-American War in 1846 following Brigadier General Zachary Taylor's victories at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, Reynolds was instructed to travel to Texas. Joining Taylor's army at Corpus Christi, he took part in the campaign against Monterrey that fall. For his role in the city's fall, he received a brevet promotion to captain. Following the victory, the bulk of Taylor's army was transferred for Major General Winfield Scott's operation against Veracruz.



Remaining with Taylor, Reynolds' artillery battery played a key role in holding the American left at the Battle of Buena Vista in February 1847. In the fighting, Taylor's army succeeded in holding off a larger Mexican force commanded by General Antonio López de Santa Anna. In recognition of his efforts, Reynolds was brevetted to major. While in Mexico, he befriended Winfield Scott Hancock and Lewis A. Armistead.



Antebellum Years


Returning north after the war, Reynolds spent the next several years in garrison duty in Maine (Fort Preble), New York (Fort Lafayette), and New Orleans. Ordered west to Fort Orford, Oregon in 1855, he took part in the Rogue River Wars. With the end of hostilities, the Native Americans in the Rogue River Valley were moved to the Coast Indian Reservation. Ordered south a year later, Reynolds joined Brigadier General Albert S. Johnston's forces during the Utah War of 1857-1858.


(This is the "Mormon War" or the "First American Civil War" and forms a major heart of the case against James Buchanan, Jeff Davis and their conspiracy to extend the slavocracy into the American west by force. M)  


Fast Facts: Major General John F. Reynolds

Rank: Major General

Service: US/Union Army

Born: September 20, 1820 in Lancaster, PA

Died: July 1, 1863 in Gettysburg, PA

Parents: John and Lydia Reynolds

Conflicts: Mexican-American War, Civil War

Known For: Second Battle of Manassas, Battle of Fredericksburg, Battle of Chancellorsville, and Battle of Gettysburg.


The Civil War Begins


In September 1860, Reynolds returned to West Point to serve as Commandant of Cadets and an instructor. While there, he became engaged to Katherine May Hewitt. As Reynolds was a Protestant and Hewitt a Catholic, the engagement was kept secret from their families. Remaining for the academic year, he was at the academy during the election of President Abraham Lincoln and the resulting Secession Crisis.



With the beginning of the Civil War, Reynolds initially was offered a post as an aide-de-camp to Scott, the general-in-chief of the US Army. Declining this offer, he was appointed lieutenant colonel of the 14th US Infantry but received a commission as a brigadier general of volunteers (August 20, 1861) before he could assume this post. Directed to newly-captured Cape Hatteras Inlet, NC, Reynolds was en route when Major General George B. McClellan instead requested that he join the newly-formed Army of the Potomac near Washington, DC.



Reporting for duty, he first served on a board that assessed volunteer officers before receiving command of a brigade in the Pennsylvania Reserves. This term was used to refer to regiments raised in Pennsylvania that were in excess of the number originally requested of the state by Lincoln in April 1861.



To the Peninsula


Commanding the 1st Brigade of Brigadier General George McCall's Second Division (Pennsylvania Reserves), I Corps, Reynolds first moved south into Virginia and captured Fredericksburg. On June 14, the division was transferred to Major General Fitz John Porter's V Corps which was taking part in McClellan's Peninsula Campaign against Richmond. Joining Porter, the division played a key role in the successful Union defense at the Battle of Beaver Dam Creek on June 26.



As the Seven Days Battles continued, Reynolds and his men were assaulted by General Robert E. Lee's forces again the next day at the Battle of Gaines' Mill. Having not slept in two days, an exhausted Reynolds was captured by Major General D.H. Hill's men after the battle while resting in Boatswain's Swamp. Taken to Richmond, he was briefly held at Libby Prison before being exchanged on August 15 for Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman who had been captured at Fort Henry.



Returning to the Army of the Potomac, Reynolds assumed command of the Pennsylvania Reserves as McCall had also been captured. In this role, he took part in the Second Battle of Manassas at the end of the month. Late in the battle, he aided in making a stand on Henry House Hill which assisted in covering the army's retreat from the battlefield.


(John Pope of Island #10 fame *(Took credit for the United States Navy victory), had come east and Lincoln tried this incompetent out as a stand-in and replacement for George McClellan, going so far so far as to create a substitute army for the imbecile as well. For the results of that experiment, the Second Battle of Bull Run, see here.  The summary is that Lincoln learned to vet his generals better, before he tried them out on Lee. Pope's army was severely mauled and shattered.  M.)   


A Rising Star


As Lee moved north to invade Maryland, Reynolds was detached from the army at the request of Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtain. Ordered to his home state, the governor tasked him with organizing and leading the state militia should Lee cross the Mason-Dixon Line. Reynolds' assignment proved unpopular with McClellan and other senior Union leaders as it deprived the army of one of its best field commanders. As a result, he missed the Battles of South Mountain and Antietam where the division was led by fellow Pennsylvanian Brigadier General George G. Meade.

(Bad timing. M.)




Returning to the army in late September, Reynolds received command of I Corps as its leader, Major General Joseph Hooker, had been wounded at Antietam. That December, he led the corps at the Battle of Fredericksburg where his men achieved the only Union success of the day. Penetrating the Confederate lines, troops, led by Meade, opened a gap but a confusion of orders prevented the opportunity from being exploited.

(Reynolds was the reason the orders were screwed up. He would take credit for Meade's work anyway and then politically backstab Burnside, who after Fredericksburg, recommended to Lincoln that the entire current Army of Potamic command be purged (including himself, Burnside.) and be replaced with "reliable men". Lincoln was not about to go that far, though, since he had problems already with "reliable men" such as Benjamin Butler (a self-promoter and half-wit), Dan Sickles (a psychopath), Franz Sigel (overenthusiastic amateur). ^3   M.)

^3 {I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.

Harry Truman about Douglas MacArthur.

By the way, based on the American generals I have met and interacted with in my life, about 6 of them; I agree with Truman wholeheartedly. Most of them should be in jail for incompetence, malfeasance and dereliction. M.}


Chancellorsville


For his actions at Fredericksburg, Reynolds was promoted to major general with a date of November 29, 1862. In the wake of the defeat, he was one of several officers who called for the removal of army commander Major General Ambrose Burnside. In doing so, Reynolds expressed his frustration at the political influence that Washington exerted on the army's activities. These efforts were successful and Hooker replaced Burnside on January 26, 1863.



That May, Hooker sought to swing around Fredericksburg to the west. To hold Lee in place, Reynolds' corps and Major General John Sedgwick's VI Corps were to remain opposite the city. As the Battle of Chancellorsville commenced, Hooker summoned I Corps on May 2 and directed Reynolds to hold the Union right. With the battle going poorly, Reynolds and the other corps commanders urged offensive action but were overruled by Hooker who decided to retreat. As a result of Hooker's indecision, I Corps was only lightly engaged in the battle and suffered just 300 casualties.


(Staqnding next to a porch pillar that is struck by a cannon ball will make one "indecisive". Lincoln had an expression for situations like that one: "Like a duck hit on the head." That was what he said when he had Grant relieve Rosecrans with Thomas after Chickamauga, but it could be liberally and literally applied to Joe Hooker. M) 


Political Frustration


As in the past, Reynolds joined his compatriots in calling for a new commander who could operate decisively and free from political constraints. Well-respected by Lincoln, who referred to him as “our gallant and brave friend",

(The irony is lost on Civil War superficialist historians. Lincoln, when one reads the context, was being viciously sarcastic. M.) 


Insisting that he be free to lead independent of political influence, Reynolds declined when Lincoln could not make such an assurance. With Lee again moving north, Lincoln instead turned to Meade who accepted command and replaced Hooker on June 28. Riding north with his men, Reynolds was given operational control of I, III, and XI Corps as well as Brigadier General John Buford's cavalry division.


Death at Gettysburg


Riding into Gettysburg on June 30, Buford realized that the high ground south of the town would be key in a battle fought in the area. Aware that any combat involving his division would be a delaying action, he dismounted and posted his troopers on the low ridges north and northwest of town with the goal of buying time for the army to come up and occupy the heights. Attacked the next morning by Confederate forces in the opening phases of the Battle of Gettysburg, he alerted Reynolds and asked him to bring up support.


(That is a complete misread opf what actually happened. John Buford, a cavalry brigade commander, was the one who read the ground and he rode up to Reynolds and argued to the point of mutiny to that corps commander, who wanted to retreat, to "stand and fight here" was the best possible decision.)


Moving towards Gettysburg with I and XI Corps, Reynolds informed Meade that he would defend “inch by inch, and if driven into the town I will barricade the streets and hold him back as long as possible.” Arriving on the battlefield, Reynolds met with Buford advanced his lead brigade to relieve the hard-pressed cavalry. As he directed troops into the fighting near Herbst Woods, Reynolds was shot in the neck or head.


(Good Confederate shooting from the Union point of view. Abner Doubleday was arguably a better general. M.)


Falling from his horse, he was killed instantly. With Reynolds' death, command of I Corps passed to Major General Abner Doubleday. Though overwhelmed later in the day, I and XI Corps succeeded in buying time for Meade to arrive with the bulk of the army. As the fighting raged, Reynolds' body was taken from the field, first to Taneytown, MD and then back to Lancaster where he was buried on July 4.


A blow to the Army of the Potomac, Reynolds' death cost Meade one of the army's best commanders. Adored by his men, one of the general aides commented, "I do not think the love of any commander was ever felt more deeply or sincerely than his." Reynolds was also described by another officer as “a superb looking man…and sat on his horse like a Centaur, tall, straight and graceful, the ideal soldier.”

I do not agree that Reynolds was a "good" commander, or a good choice as an alternative to "The Snapping Turtle"..  

  

[stevep]

Feb 23, 2022 18:12:16 GMT miletus12 said:

Feb 23, 2022 17:52:54 GMT stevep said:

I think this is a projection of American megalomania and intolerance onto their intended victims.  Another aspect of the US's notorious American exceptionalism delusion among its less rational elements. 

This statement is curious. Is it addressed to the actual discussion, or is it a question about how Lincoln is seen globally, then and now? I dare say that Lincoln did factor France and Britain into his geostrategic calculations and acted accordingly. He was quite anxious to use any leverage he could against the sitting French and British governments of the day. As he famously told John Hay; "One war at a time." during the "Trent Affair". He was not anxious to expand his woes and worries. On the other hand, he would be quite happy to see the populations of Great Britain and France turn on their sitting governments and resist any plans to intervene in the American civil war. If that is exceptionalism, it can be attributed to the then situation that the Americans had Lincoln and the British had Palmerston and the French had Napoleon III. Leadership and circumstance matter. Lincoln logrolled those two "gentlemen" quite easily.

That is not American exceptionalism. It is Lincoln exceptionalism.

  I'm referring to the false statements I highlighted.  Only fairly deranged leaders/states assume that everybody is out to get them, as Putin is showing at the moment.  That you argue Lincoln was seeking to undermine the governments of two neutral states, one of which was most definitely friendly suggests that either Lincoln, or you if misrepresenting him have a very inaccurate view of events.

[miletus12]

Feb 24, 2022 18:08:36 GMT stevep said:

I'm referring to the false statements I highlighted.  Only fairly deranged leaders/states assume that everybody is out to get them, as Putin is showing at the moment.  That you argue Lincoln was seeking to undermine the governments of two neutral states, one of which was most definitely friendly suggests that either Lincoln, or you if misrepresenting him have a very inaccurate view of events.

Lincoln was not deranged.

One has an unfair advantage here.

Item 1.

Item 2.

May I quote a piece of correspondence?

Lord Palmerston to Charles Francis Adams, June 11, 1862

BROCKET, 11 June, 1862.

MY DEAR SIR, — I cannot refrain from taking the liberty of saying to you that it is difficult if not impossible to express adequately the disgust which must be excited in the mind of every honorable man by the general order of General Butler given in the enclosed extract from yesterday’s “ Times.” Even when a town is taken by assault it is the practice of the commander of the conquering army to protect to his utmost the inhabitants and especially the female part of them, and I will venture to say that no example can be found in the history of civilized nations, till the publication of this order, of a general guilty in cold blood of so infamous an act as deliberately to hand over the female inhabitants of a conquered city to the unbridled license of an unrestrained soldiery.

If the Federal government chooses to be served by men capable of such revolting outrages, they must submit to abide by the deserved opinion which mankind will form of their conduct.

My dear Sir, Yrs faithfully,
PALMERSTON.
C. F. ADAMS, Esq.

SOURCE: Charles Francis Adams [Jr.], Charles Francis Adams, p. 248-9

Lincoln had a very clear and rational picture of Lord Palmerston and his government. It was a hostile Palmerston attitude at the time toward the American government.

That is why Lincoln instructed Adams to seek any reasonable means to turn British public opinion against Palmerston and his clique.

[stevep]

Feb 24, 2022 19:13:09 GMT miletus12 said:

Feb 24, 2022 18:08:36 GMT stevep said:

I'm referring to the false statements I highlighted.  Only fairly deranged leaders/states assume that everybody is out to get them, as Putin is showing at the moment.  That you argue Lincoln was seeking to undermine the governments of two neutral states, one of which was most definitely friendly suggests that either Lincoln, or you if misrepresenting him have a very inaccurate view of events.

Lincoln was not deranged.

One has an unfair advantage here.

Item 1.

Item 2.

May I quote a piece of correspondence?

Lord Palmerston to Charles Francis Adams, June 11, 1862

BROCKET, 11 June, 1862.

MY DEAR SIR, — I cannot refrain from taking the liberty of saying to you that it is difficult if not impossible to express adequately the disgust which must be excited in the mind of every honorable man by the general order of General Butler given in the enclosed extract from yesterday’s “ Times.” Even when a town is taken by assault it is the practice of the commander of the conquering army to protect to his utmost the inhabitants and especially the female part of them, and I will venture to say that no example can be found in the history of civilized nations, till the publication of this order, of a general guilty in cold blood of so infamous an act as deliberately to hand over the female inhabitants of a conquered city to the unbridled license of an unrestrained soldiery.

If the Federal government chooses to be served by men capable of such revolting outrages, they must submit to abide by the deserved opinion which mankind will form of their conduct.

My dear Sir, Yrs faithfully,
PALMERSTON.
C. F. ADAMS, Esq.

SOURCE: Charles Francis Adams [Jr.], Charles Francis Adams, p. 248-9

Lincoln had a very clear and rational picture of Lord Palmerston and his government. It was a hostile Palmerston attitude at the time toward the American government.

That is why Lincoln instructed Adams to seek any reasonable means to turn British public opinion against Palmerston and his clique.

  So your saying that Lincoln didn't have the idiotic view you were suggesting he had earlier?

  Palmerston may have gotten a somewhat inaccurate report of Butler's threat to the women of New Orleans, although he didn't actually as far as I'm aware carry out that threat but by the standards of the time it was a revolting suggestion as generally reported.  I.e. to treat women as whores for expressing opposition to the occupation of the city, albeit in rather controversial terms.  That does nothing to support your argument that both Britain and France sought to destroy the US.  As I've pointed out before if Britain has so wished it could have greatly harmed the US simply by taking a stronger stance on the crisis brought about by Wilkes illegal actions in the Trent Affair and Washington's initial refuse to release the hostages taken and apologize for the action. 

[miletus12]

Feb 25, 2022 13:16:01 GMT stevep said:

  So your saying that Lincoln didn't have the idiotic view you were suggesting he had earlier?

Nope.

About one hour in. It should be an eye opener.