GETTYSBURG - Chapter One

 

I doubt Major General Robert Milroy (above) had any doubts when the sun rose on that muggy Monday, 15, June, 1863. Even the first volley from 3,500 rebel muskets and the blasts from the single cannon failed to shake the confidence of the “Grey Eagle", as Milroy liked to call himself. I doubt even then Millroy believed he was responsible for the disaster into which he had lead his soldiers.

Sitting at the northern entrance to the Shenandoah Valley, Winchester, Virginia  (above) had already changed hands twice in this war. Most professional soldiers considered it indefeasible. Despite this, and even after General-in-Chief Halleck had ordered him to retreat to Harpers Ferry, and even after being warned about the approach of a Confederate horde, the Grey Eagle remained in Winchester, confident his earthen forts would withstand any attack by the despised Confederate army.  

As Hoosier farm boy Robert Milroy dreamed of being a soldier. When his father refused to recommend the boy for West Point, he paid his own admission to a private military academy in Vermont.  But after graduation, the U.S. Army rejected his application to be an officer, and only then did he bow to his father's will and enter law school. But for the rest of his life the lawyer and judge scorned the "...selfish, bigoted, supercellious, incompetent West Pointers" whom he blamed for killing his dream.  He saw the American Civil War as a chance to get even.  

As a captain of Indiana militia Milroy proved a brave and competent leader, rising quickly through the ranks thanks to his courage and his deep hatred of slavery. Twice in the first two years of the war the aggressive "Gray Eagle" managed to throw Confederate General Stonewall Jackson off balance, something damn few Federal commanders ever did.  With his "...piercing black eyes...aquiline nose..." and "... white, shocky, stiff hair" Milroy was loved by his men, despite "...an ever present pomposity..."

But as the occupier of Winchester, Virginia (above),  Milroy was perhaps the most hated Yankee in the nation.  Under his regime, only farmers who signed a loyalty oath were allowed to buy grain to feed their dairy cows.  He forbade gatherings of two or more people, even harassing school girls walking home together. After 8:00pm no townspeople were allowed outdoors. And his troop of paid informers insured that anyone who said anything which might be construed as pro-Confederate was immediately expelled from the town. He admitted, "I feel a strong disposition to play the tyrant among these traitors." He did this so well, the rebels offered a $100,000 reward for his capture. 

It was not until he was ducking shot from rebel artillery from the surrounding hills that Milroy realized by retreating into the 3 earth forts he had built, he had merely concentrated his 9,000 men, making them easier targets. After the capture of the West Fort he finally ordered his shell shocked troops to slip out of their fortifications at 1:00 am. on 15 June and belatedly begin their retreat 30 miles north to Harpers Ferry on the Potomac River. 

But Milroy's division had made less than 4 miles in the dark before the Confederate infantry snapped the trap shut (above, yellow star, far right) on the road to the railroad station at Stephenson's Depot. 

The cork holding Milroy in the bottle was the single cannon on a wagon bridge over the destroyed tracks of what had once been the Winchester and Potomac Railroad. 

In his panicked response Milroy launched two unprepared flailing attacks which killed all but one of the brave rebel gun crew, but failed to silence the cannon or remove the supporting infantry. Just as Milroy launched a third assault another 1,300 rebel infantry appeared – the brigade once led by Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. And under their combined fire the federal regiments began to surrender.

The next day the “debris of Winchester” stumbled into Harpers Ferry. The Hoosier Milroy (above) had lost half his men - killed, wounded and more than 2,500 taken prisoner. But he saved himself.  

By order of Brigadier General Halleck (above)  General Milroy was relieved of his command and arrested.  As the overall Union Commander explained, “We have had enough of that kind of military genius.” 

Thanks to Major General Robert Milroy's arrogance and stupidity the road “down” the valley, meaning to the north (above),  was now wide open, and the entire 75,000 man rebel Army of Northern Virginia under the feared Robert Edward Lee was free to invade Maryland and Pennsylvania, with it's supply line back to Virginia secure.  It was the idiot Milroy who made the battle of Gettysburg possible.

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ETERNAL TRIANGLE Pt Three

 

I can’t think of a single love triangle that turned out productively for the participants, from King David who did not let morality preventing him from separating Bathsheba from her Hittite husband, Uriah,....

...through King Arthur, who did let morality prevent him from separating his beloved Guinevere from her lusted after Lancelot.  And the “ménage-a-fools” between “Big” Jim Fisk, Josie Mansfield and Edward Stokes repeated the same sad story, with an unfortunate familiar final twist.

These self destructive convergences usually leave the participants exhausted and mumbling some absurd self justification, like “The heart wants what the heart wants”, when, in truth, the more apt description might be, “Stupid is as stupid does.” It needs to be noted that none of these disasters, which we all are suffer from, from time to time, could occur without the active participation of all members. The truth is the participants may be helpless, but they are never blameless.

“Big” Jim’s friends, who knew his love letters to Josie to be harmless drivel, urged him to publish them first, and thereby remove their threat. But this “Prince of the Erie Railroad”, this master of Wall Street, this robber baron supreme, refused to do so. Instead he bemoaned his fate, “By the Lord, this is my heart that you want me to make a show of, and I won't.” 

He was, however, willing to make a lesser show of it, slower and more deliciously painful, and far more dramatically detailed, by not paying the $200,000 demanded by Stokes (which "Big Jim" could easily afford) or by publishing the letters himself, which might even have turned a profit.  So, the curtain went up on the Third Act of the melodrama.

About one on the afternoon of Saturday,  6 January, 1872, “Big” James Fisk got the word that a grand jury had indicted Josie and Edward Stokes for attempting to blackmail him. He was in the offices of the Erie Railroad, on the second floor of his own Grand Opera House.  

At about 3:30 pm, a visiting friend, gambler John Chamberlain, was leaving the Opera House, when he saw a carriage crossing the intersection of 8th Avenue and 23rd Street.  As the carriage clipped past him, Chamberlain saw, peeking out from the passenger compartment, and staring bitterly up at the Erie Corporate offices, Edward Stokes.

Ten minutes later “Big” Jim Fisk was in his own carriage, heading uptown, to 44th and Amity Street, later to be renamed 3rd Avenue, to the Grand Central Hotel, around the corner from “Commodore” Vanderbilt’s brand new Grand Central Railroad Station (above).  

As he entered the hotel “Big” Jim recognized a porter by the name of John Redmond, and asked him to contact one of the guests, a daughter of Samuel B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph. The lady was living at the hotel, and had recently suffered a death in her family. Big Jim wanted to inquire as to her condition.  Redmond followed “Big” Jim up to the stairs toward the second floor lobby.

As they turned the corner at the base of the stairwell they were confronted by Edward Stokes, waiting at the top of the stairs (above) . Arm outstretched, he was pointing a handgun down the stairs - at them. “Big” Jim Fisk stopped, halfway up. Edward said firmly, “I’ve got you now,” and fired twice. Bang! Bang! 

Both shots hit Fisk, who cried out, “For God’s sake, will anybody save me?” The answer was "no".

Redmond, the porter, dove for cover.  Fisk staggered back to the foot of the stairs, where, out of the field of fire,  

Once they were sure the shooter had fled, Redmond and other employees carried Big Jim Fisk back up the stairs and into an empty room. He never left it.

A bellboy followed Edward (above), and the shooter was arrested trying to leave the hotel a few minutes later. As the police were transporting Edward to jail, he asked if he could go into a bar for a drink. The answer was “no”. He later asked his jailer, “What do you think, is the man seriously injured?”

The man was. To one visitor, “Big” Jim explained he felt as if he had just eaten green apples. “I've got a belly-ache,”  he said. The gambler, John Chamberlain, did not believe it when he was told of the shooting. “I’ll lay $500 against $100 that it's false.” He would have lost that bet.

Josie, the self-centered center of this melodramatic triangle affair, had no such doubts. Shocked when a newspaperman told her of the shooting, she blurted out, “Edward must have been insane!” Then she immediately added, “I wish you to understand that I am in no way connected with this sad affair.” And finally she insisted, “I have only my reputation to maintain.”  Well, it was a little late for Josie's reputation. But she still had hopes. Josie always had hopes.

Big Jim Fisk held on long enough to identify his attacker when Edward Stokes was brought to his room. The identification was, of course, melodrama, The pair had been business partners for years, and had even shared the physical affections of Josie for a time. At best it seems to have proved neither the doctors nor the cops thought Big Jim was going to live to see any trial.  

And he didn't. Fisk died that very evening, at 10:54pm, surrounded by a chorus of women who had depended on the "Big Jim" for financial support.

They took his body back to his childhood home, in Brattleboro, Vermont, for burial.

The newspapers were endless in their praise of the man, as unrelenting as they had been, just days before, in their ridicule of him. His love letters, published a week after his death, were so banal, that they created barely a ripple.

As writer Edmund Stedman noted, “"Had Stokes been an illiterate laborer, he would have dangled in a noose two months later.” But Edmund's family was still wealthy enough that it took three trials to convict him of manslaughter. 

And even then he was sentenced to only six years in Sing Sing prison. He was a popular and entitled inmate, and served only four actual years. 

Once out he operated restaurants, and ended his life locked in lawsuits with the very people who had rescued him financially after prison. He died in 1901, at the age of 61.on November 2, 1901.

For Josie Mansfield (above), the loss of “Big” Jim and Edward Stokes meant not just the loss of financial security, but, more importantly, the loss of drama in her life. Not that she didn't go looking for it. She testified at Edmund’s first trial, but was unavailable for the two that followed. She sued “Big” Jim’s widow, Lucy, for that $50,000 she still alleged "Big" Jim had invested for her, but that case was thrown out of court. 

She moved to Paris, where in 1891 she married a rich alcoholic, only to divorce him six years later. In 1897 she moved to Boston to live with a sister, then to Philadelphia to live with another sister. In 1899 she moved to Watertown, South Dakota to live with her brother. She died, back in Paris at the American Hospital, in 1931, having out lived her sugar daddy James, “Big” Jim Fisk, by a lifetime - 60 years. She even outlived the man she had overthrown a fortune for, Edmund Stokes – by 20 years.

At times the three had been a national laughingstock, a pubic delinquency and a media soap opera on a par with any modern day oversized love nest.  It  will not be long before another trio of thespians feels compelled to raise the curtain on another performance of the same play, and carry the character arcs to their illogical and inevitable dramatic conclusion, again. And again. And again. To quote Charley Harper, from "Two and a-Half Men"; Love is not blind. It's retarded."

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ETERNAL TRIANGLE Pt Two

 

I submit that Edward Stokes had a chance to break free from this  "triangle of stupid love".  Spending a weekend in the dreaded Tombs jail was his wake up call.  And then unfortunately, early in 1871, a judge threw out his arrest for embezzlement. Released from criminal restrictions on his behavior, Edward Stokes went full stupid.  

The judge ruled the Greenpoint Refinery (above) was not a corporation but a partnership between Edward and “Big” Jim Fisk.  As a partner Edward could not steal money owed to the refinery, since he would have been stealing from himself.   And if Edward had just left it there, he might have stayed a winner. But being Edward, it was in his nature to carry things too far. That was one of the things that made Josie fall in love with him. Except his other attraction to the lady was Edward's money, and thanks to Big Jim cutting the profits from the refinery, Edward was now broke.

So Edward sued “Big” Jim  (above) for slander, asking for that $200,000 again. “Big” Jim counter sued, demanding that his love letters be returned. 

Why Josie (above) had given the letters to Edward passes beyond common sense. In any case,  Edward's lawyers argued that the letters might provide evidence of Erie railroad stock fraud, and might be needed in some future criminal trial, and so should not be released. 

In truth, the only crime the letters were proof of was blackmail, which Edward and Josie were attempting to commit against Jim Fisk. And now, Big Jim's lawyers argued,  they were using the courts to carry out this crime.   So the judge ordered the letters be read by an arbiter, to determine just what they proved, if anything. 

The arbiter came to the conclusion that the love letters were maudlin, melodramatic, meretricious and – surprisingly – mundane, and contained no evidence of stock fraud. Given that the letters had only prurient value, the judge issued a restraining order preventing anyone, including the newspapers, from publishing them as long as the various slander cases continued. And with that their value as blackmail material against “Big” Jim, evaporated. After all, as James Gordon Bennet, Jr., publisher of the New York Herald, used to say, “The purpose of a newspaper is not to instruct but to startle.” 

It was at about this point that Edward’s wife took their daughter and fled to Paris. And "Big" Jim's wife, and her female lover, living in far off Boston, did the same. Clearly the married women in this case were smarter than their husbands, because they thus escaped being tainted with what that blue-nosed blue-blooded lawyer George Templeton Strong described as this “special stinkpot”.  

All of New York was snickering about the tri-cornered stench.  The newspapers kept fanning the stink, even without the letters, and day after day they mocked the participants’ peccadilloes. Now, “Big” Jim had long ago chosen to ignore the opinions of others, and Josie never had even the pretense of valuing virtue or reputation. 

So the only member of the triumphant with any sense of public pride left, and with a super abundance of that, and thus the only individual wounded by the continued public mocking, was Edward  Stokes (above). And he had been the one who had pushed the letters into court.

Having lost the letters as a weapon, Edward was forced to settle out of court.  “Big Jim" allowed him to keep the $27,500 he had filched from the refinery,  plus $10,000 compensation for the weekend he had spent in jail, and $5,000 for his legal fees. Edward exchanged all of that for his half of the refinery. 

Edward was now freed from his immediate financial difficulty. Of course he was also now $38,000 in debt to five different attorneys, for all his lawsuits against “Big:” Jim Fisk (above).  And Edward had yet to win a single one. So he urged Josie to push ahead with her lawsuit against “Big” Jim.  Not that he could have stopped her.

In her lawsuit Josie was claiming that during their multi-year affair, James Fisk had invested $25,000 for her, and now she wanted it back. With interest.  “Big” Jim’s lawyers argued that the money had never been hers, just a wooing point, and that Josie’s entire life had been one scam after another.  On the witness stand Jose began with another lie. “I will be twenty-four years of age on the 11th of December next.” She was actually 28. 

It was perfectly predictable that under cross examination, Josie's sordid past would be used to impeach her. She was asked if, in California “a pistol was pointed in your presence at a man's head?” Reluctantly Josie replied, “There was a circumstance of that kind happened.” “Was it a man by the name of D. W. Perley…Was (the gun) pointed at him by (Josie's stepfather)? (And) did (Perley) sign a check before he went out?” All of this, Josie was forced to admit, was the truth. The jury, and the press, knew a badger game when they heard one.

During over three hours on the stand,  Josie was also forced to admit that Fisk had bought her the house on 23rd Street, from the knocker on Josie's front door to the curtains in the parlor and the commode in the bedroom. She was even forced to admit that she had handed over her love letters from Fisk because Edward thought they “would benefit him in the case…pending between him and Mr. Fisk.”  All of this was predictable, as her lawyer must have predicted. But Josie had insisted on proceeding. Thus she was three times stupid; she was in love, she was in love with Edward, and she was greedy. 

And then, on January 6, 1872, Edward took the stand in Josie’s case. Even under friendly direct examination, the spectators could not suppress a giggle when Edward insisted he and Josie were “just friends”.  When court broke for lunch at 1:00 p.m. Edward stormed out, infuriated. He was willing to be thought a liar, and a cad. But he was deeply offended at being laughed at. 

He lunched at Delmonico’s on the corner of South Hill Street and 14th street, and it was there that he learned from "a friend" that he and Josie had just been indicted for blackmailing “Big” Jim Fisk. It was the last straw.

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