JUNE 2022

JUNE  2022
I DON'T NEED A RIDE. I NEED AMMUNITION.

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Saturday, November 25, 2023

YES, VIRGINIA

 

I know of only two moments that justifies the sin of pride. Both are a "Horace Mann moment". The first, of course, when you have “won some victory for humanity”, and the second is when a child raised by you does the same. Consider Philip F. O'Hanlon, who in his own life achieved wealth and professional and public recognition. In 1886, right out of N.Y. University Medical School, this sixth generation physician became the head of surgery at the new Gouverneur Community Hospital, on the lower east side of Manhattan.

He was appointed the State Medical Examiner in 1891, and in 1895 became New York City Coroner and Police Surgeon. The later two posts made him famous, and his testimony front page news in several big murder trials. But it was as a father that Philip O'Hanlon won his greatest victory for humanity, because his daughter was Laura Virginia O'Hanlon.
Laura Virginia O'Hanlon (above, she was named after her mother), was born 20 July, 1889, the same year the family leased a larger home, at 115 West 95th Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, just a block west of Manhattan's Central Park. It was a relatively new brownstone, with a red brick front and peaked roof, having just one previous owner. As she reached the age of reason, Laura decided she preferred the name Virginia. And in the late summer of 1897, Virginia approached her father with a simple but profound question, belying her innocence and tender age. 
Fifty years later Virginia remembered the event this way: “Quite naturally I believed in Santa Claus, for he had never disappointed me.  But when less fortunate little boys and girls said there wasn't any Santa Claus, I was filled with doubts.  I asked my father, and he was a little evasive on the subject....It was a habit in our family that whenever any doubts came up as to how to pronounce a word or some question of historical fact was in doubt, we wrote to the Question and Answer column in “The Sun”. Father would always say, “If you see it in the The Sun, it's so,” and that settled the matter. “Well, I'm just going to write The Sun and find out the real truth,” I said to father. “He said, “Go ahead, Virginia. I'm sure The Sun will give you the right answer, as it always does.”
Consider for a moment this privileged Victorian child, Virginia O'Hanlon  (above) -  the daughter of a well known community leader in New York City. At eight years of age she knew children who were less fortunate than herself,  knew them well enough to talk with them, to share the theology of childhood. She was raised in a home in which the family shared knowledge, and the joy of discovery. Parents and their only child learned together. And she was encouraged to seek truth on her own.
So early in September of 1897, Virginia wrote the following letter. “Dear Editor: I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun it’s so.” Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?” She mailed it to The Sun newspaper offices, at 280 Broadway, New York City.
The Sun (“It Shines for All”) had been published in New York since 1833, but in 1868 it acquired its most famous editor, Charles Anderson Dana (above). Under Dana “The Sun” was a strongly Democratic newspaper, and “a newspaper man's newspaper”, and first of the modern newspapers, introducing editorials, society news, and human-interest stories, along side the “hard news”,  all squeezed into eight pages or less, two editions every weekday, and recently even a Sunday edition, with a circulation at its peak of 130,000.  Dana collected about him young, talented writers, and who followed his concisely stated revolutionary approach to news: “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”
But as Dana aged, “The Sun” became “notoriously inconsistent”. Others improved upon his method, like Joseph Pulitzer at the “New York World”, and built larger circulations, like William Randolph Hearst via his “Yellow Journalism”. By Charles Dana's death in 1897, and his replacement by his son Paul, “The Sun” had slipped to fourth along Newspaper Row (aka Park Row, above ) in lower Manhattan - “The World”, “The Tribune”, “The Times” and now lastly “The Sun”.
It was one of Dana's talented young writers, now an editor, named Edward Mitchell, who was the father of modern Science Fiction. And in early September Mitchell handed Virginia O'Hanlon's letter to a 58 year old editorial writer, Francis Pharcellus Church (above). He was a Columbia graduate, who had reported on the horrors of the Civil War. With his brother, Church co-founded two successful magazines. According to Mitchell, after reading Virginia's letter  “...he pooh-poohed the subject a little. Then he took it, and in a short time handed me (the) article” And on 21 September, 1897,  in a standard 500 word unsigned editorial, printed in the middle of page seven, the journeyman writer responded to the little girl's letter.
“Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age...Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence....Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus...Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”
The letter and its column were  not an instant phenomenon.  It was not until the 1920's that the newspaper began to reprint it annually. But by 1930, “The Sun” was receiving over 163,000 requests for reprints every year. Since then it has appeared in thousands of newspapers and books, decade after decade , and remains the most reprinted editorial in the English language. But it was not until after his death on 11 April, 1906, that The Sun broke their own rules and named Francis Church as the author.  Church never married and had no children. He is buried in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
In 1898, young William Randolph Hearst, in building his own newspaper empire, drove America into war with Spain. Virginia's father, Dr. Philip O'Hanlon, volunteered as lieutenant in the Medical Reserve Corps. He survived that service, and was listed as still alive in 1920, and still living on 95th street, although now on the south side of the street.
Virginia O'Hanlon  (above) received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Hunter College in 1910,  a Master's in Education from Columbia University in 1912, and the same year she began teaching underprivileged grade school children in New York City schools. 
In 1913 she married Edward Douglas, but he abandoned her just before she gave birth to her daughter, Laura Temple Douglas (above) in March of 1914.  Virginia was eventually promoted to principal, and in 1930 was even awarded her doctorate from Fordham University. Her dissertation was titled “The Importance of Play.” Her daughter would grow up, marry and have seven children of her own.
One of those grandchildren, Virginia Rogers (above, with Virginia), remembered as a child visiting her grandmother in New York City. “Gram was a lady," she said, "Very elegant. She would dress up to go across the street (to the)...post office. At Christmastime, there would be literally box-loads of mail addressed to my grandmother.”  Another granddaughter said, “She was a woman ahead of her time.”
Virginia never took credit for the column her letter inspired. She told her nephew, James Temple, “All I did was ask the question. It was Mr. Church who did something wonderful.” Virginia told an interviewer, Church's column “gave me a special place in life I didn’t deserve. It also made me try to live up to the philosophy of the editorial and to try to make glad the heart of childhood.
What Virginia did was to teach at Brooklyn’s P.S.401, which held classes for chronically ill children confined at home or in hospitals. Eventually she became a principle at the school. Shortly before she retired she wrote another letter, this one addressed to the “Children of Yesterday.” She pleaded, “Some little children doubt that Santa still lives because often their letters ...never seem to reach him. Nurses in hospitals know who some of these children are. Teachers in great city schools will know others....Won’t you try to seek out these trusting children of today and make sure that their letters in some way reach Santa Claus so that “he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.” Laura Virginia O'Hanlon Douglas had made that her life's work, after retiring from teaching in 1950.
Nine years later she moved to North Chatham, 15 miles south of Albany, New York, to live with her daughter.  During the Christmas holidays in 1969, heart problems forced Virginia to be admitted to the Columbia Memorial Hospital, in Hudson, New York.  There she was visited by Santa Clause (above), disguised as John Harms, a hospital maintenance man, who often visited patients.  He kissed Virginia on the cheek, and she whispered in his ear that she still believed.  Virginia died, in the Barnwell Nursing Home, in Valatie, N.Y., on 13 May, 1974.  She was 81 years old.
Her original letter, which the newspaper had returned, was saved in a scrapbook by a granddaughter and somehow survived a house fire. Today, the brownstone at 115 West 95th street (above), is occupied by The Studio School, where children from “an economically diverse student body” (20% receive financial aid), “ learn to value intellectual and creative ideas, and to take pleasure in the process of discovery.” The school maintains a Virginia O’Hanlon Scholarship Fund to help students with financial needs.
Late in her life, Virginia wrote the following. “Those whom Santa visits think of Christmas as a beautiful, sacred occasion which it should be — but today seldom is. But for every child tucked into bed Christmas night with his new toy, there are hundreds, no thousands, who huddle in ragged bed clothing sobbing in the night at a fate at best cruel.” And Virginia asked us all to “Remember the children at Christmas.”  
Will you try and do that ?  Please.

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Friday, November 24, 2023

CLIMBING MISSIONARY RIDGE

 

I think most Americans know about Picket's charge in July of 1863, when 15,000 rebels attacked across a mile of open ground outside of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. But few know that four months later 18,000 Midwestern farm boys crossed a half a mile of open ground to storm rifle pits filled with rebel veterans, and then clambered, grasping and panting, 500 feet up a 45 degree slope and threw themselves against even more rebel veterans and fifty cannon in what is called “The Miracle of Missionary Ridge”.
In late September of 1863, the 60,000 man federal Army of the Cumberland under General William Rosecrans, was ambushed along Chickamauga Creek in the the mountains of northern Georgia by a 65,000 man rebel army under General Braxton Bragg. The first day of the assault left Rosecrans, in President Lincoln's estimation, “confused and stunned like a duck hit on the head.”
But through the second day a single union corps under General George Thomas (above) stood like a rock against the rebel assaults, even as Rosecrans scampered 20 miles back to the union supply base at Chattanooga.
The city of Chattanooga (above), perched on the south bank of the Tennessee River, was then placed under siege by Bragg's army. The Appalachian mountain chain touched the river south west of town at the 2,400 foot tall Lookout Mountain (above - background), which Bragg's left wing occupied. That closed the union supply line to the south via the Tennessee River. 
The rebels also entrenched along the crest and the base of the two mile long Missionary Ridge (above), which loomed directly over the city.
And rebel artillery on three 400 foot high mounds north of the city - Alexander's Hill, Tunnel Hill and Billy Goat Hill (above) - closed the Tennessee River to supply boats there as well. It looked like the Army of the Cumberland would be starved out. After the defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, this was the South's “last chance at independence.”
Two men in the north saw the truth that the Army of the Cumberland (above) was trapped only if it was willing to be trapped. The first was President Lincoln, who insisted Bragg's army could only “eke out a short and feeble existence, as an animal sometimes may with a thorn in its vitals.” 
The other optimist was General George Thomas. As the federals staggered back into Chattanooga, “The Rock of Chickamauga” replaced Rosecrans at the of the Army of the Cumberland. In addition, fifteen thousand federal reinforcements under General George Hooker were dispatched by rail from the Army of the Potomac, and 20,000 more under General William “Uncle Billy” Sherman were on their way from Vicksburg. And commander of all troops west of the Appalachians, General Ulysses Grant was ordered to Chattanooga as well.
By the time Grant arrived, Thomas already devised a plan to relive the besieged city. Grant gave the go ahead and a narrow switchback road across Moccasin Point (above),  the Cracker Line, was opened to the north bank opposite Chattanooga, so basic supplies could be ferried across the Tennessee River into the city. And on 23 November, Hooker's corps pushed across the Tennessee and forced the Rebels back from Lookout Mountain. The press called it the "Battle Above the Clouds". That opened the river to union supply and troop transports (above)  to come up from the south. 
Then on 24 November General Sherman threw his reinforced corps across the river below the city. That bold movement should have outflanked the entire rebel position. But Sherman became the goat after capturing and fortifying what he thought was Tunnel Hill at the northern end of Missionary Ridge, only to discover the next morning it was only an isolated mound, which is how it earned the name “Billy Goat Hill.” (above, center)
That night the moon rose cold, bright and clear and then darkened, as it fell into the shadow of the earth. Many of the soldiers on both sides, camping on and below Missionary Ridge (above), saw this eclipse of the moon as a bad omen. The only question was, bad for which side?
The next morning, 25 November, the sun rose bright and clear, without a cloud in the sky. Sherman threw himself against the real northern end of Missionary Ridge, Tunnel Hill, with a vengeance. But the rebels under Clebourne (above, top)  had been reinforced over night. After a morning spent in a badly executed attack, the Union left flank was about where it started. 
At 12:45 pm "Uncle Billy" Sherman (above) sent a desperate message: why were Thomas' men in the center not attacking?  Thomas was unperturbed. He replied, “I am here. My right (Hooker) closing in from Lookout Mountain on Missionary Ridge.”  And indeed Hookers men had been driving the rebels on the Federal left flank all morning. 
But Grant had seen Sherman's message, and about 2:30pm,  with nothing still happening in the center, suggested to Thomas,  “General Sherman seems to be having a hard time. It seems as if we ought to go help him.” He ordered Thomas to send two of his divisions to “carry the rifle pits at the foot of Missionary Ridge, and when carried, to reform his lines on the rifle pits with a view to carrying the ridge." Grant saw the attack on Bragg's center as a diversion, to discourage Bragg from reinforcing the rebels in front of Sherman. 
But Thomas was not thinking of a diversion. He again chose to wait.  It was not until after 3 that afternoon when the sounds of Hooker's fight on the left flank of Missionary Ridge at the Rossville Gap were growing louder, that Thomas finally ordered all four of his divisions into woods in front of the rebel center.
When his own regiment was ordered to halt and shift into line of battle, Major James Connolly, the topographical engineer in General Hazen's division, confessed he was staggered by the challenge in front of him. “We could never live for a moment in the 600 yards between the strip of woods in which we were formed and the line of rifle pits at the base of the of the mountain, exposed as we would be to the fire of the 40 cannons massed...five to eight hundred feet immediately above us.”
Nervously he rode down the line. “I found Woods division, formed on our right and facing the ridge just as we were. I rode on and came to Sheridan's Division, formed on Woods right, and facing the same. Here was a line of veteran troops nearly two miles long, all facing Missionary Ridge...The purpose at once came plain to me” At about 3:30pm six cannons fired in rapid succession behind Union lines. It is the agreed upon signal. “”Forward” rings out along the long line of men and forward they go...”
A rebel officer on the crest thought the union advance a “grand military spectacle.” Grant, watching from a small rise behind the attack described it as a “grand panorama”. General Sheridan, riding in front of his own division, called the three deep ranks with glittering bayonets a “terrible sight.” As the rebel artillery opened up the word was given and the union soldiers broke into a run. 
The 9,000 rebels in the rifle pits (above)  got in one shot before the blue wave overwhelmed them. The rebels threw up their arms and surrendered or began scrambling up the slope in retreat. The union forces paused to catch their breath and reform. And five minutes after taking the rifle pits, it happened.
One historian described the beginning this way: “They came out of the trenches in knots and clusters, with ragged regimental lines trailing after the moving flags and a great to-do of officers waving swords and yelling.” 
At the top, in charge of 14,000 rebel soldiers, Georgia General William Hardee saw the beginning of the attack and immediately sent for reinforcements. 
Below him Union General Sheridan was waving his hat in one hand and his sword in the other, screaming, “Forward, boys, forward! We can go to the top! Give 'em hell! We can carry that line!” When he came to a narrow dirt road climbing the ridge in switchbacks, he followed it up, and his men followed him.
Some union troops found shallow ravines, which protected them from rebel fire as they climbed. A union officer remembered, “Each battalion assumed a triangular shape, the colors at the apex. ... a color-bearer dashes ahead of the line and falls. A comrade grasps the flag. ... He, too, falls. Then another picks it up ... waves it defiantly, and as if bearing a charmed life, he advances steadily towards the top “
Far below, Grant demanded to know who had ordered the attack up the ridge (above). Thomas said he had not, and after a moment Grant realized there was nothing to be done. He chewed on his cigar and mumbled, “Someone will suffer for it, if it turns out badly.” Grant expected a disaster, a slaughter of the advancing 18,000 federal troops when the rebel gunners on the ridge top began blasting grape shot into the faces of the clambering, out of breath union men slowly struggling up the 45 degree slope.
That did not happen for four reasons, three of which could not have been predicted or expected. First the rebels behind the breastworks could not fire down because in front of the federals were their own men, who were retreating from the fire pits at the foot of the ridge. Secondly, even before the general advance, some union troops left the rifle pits they had just captured because they found shelter hugging the slope. The union brigade in the attack which suffered the highest casualty rate (22%) had been ordered back to the rifle pits,  where they were easy targets. In fact the veteran union soldiers knew the closer to the crest they got, the better the slope protected them. And thirdly, the rebel commander, General Braxton Bragg, was an unpleasant and argumentative S.O.B.
Many of Bragg's (above) own subordinates despised him, and nobody liked to make suggestions to him. Back in early October, when the positions along Missionary Ridge had been laid out, they had been placed along the top of the ridge, in military parlance the “actual crest”. But the “military crest” was a few yards forward of the actual crest. Bragg's topographical engineers had left his soldiers with a blind spot directly in front of them. Most of Bragg's veterans saw this at a glance, but in almost two months that the rebel army had occupied this position, nobody had felt it worth suffering  Braxton Bragg's surly insults and moral degradation to point it out.
The fourth reason for the “Miracle of Missionary Ridge” was that after being delayed by a swollen creek, George Hooker's corps had resumed its attack forward from Lookout Mountain, and was now bending back the rebel left flank. General Thomas could hear the success of that attack, which is why he finally released the assault on the rebel center. And from the top of Missionary Ridge, the rebel troops could not only hear it, they could see the smoke of battle on their flank coming closer and closer.
As the great historian Bruce Catton put it, the rebels' problem was they could see too much and not enough. The rebels on Missionary Ridge could see the union army in its many thousands, arrayed before them, and now clawing its way right at them. They could see and hear the approaching federal army outflanking them. But of their own army, they could only see the men immediately around them. Even 14,000 men, trying to cover a two mile long front, were stretched very thin, with seven to eight feet between each man. The rebel soldiers on Missionary Ridge, the very center of the rebel defense, suddenly felt very, very lonely.
As Sheridan's division approached the rebel lines 19 year old first Lieutenant Arthur MacArthur (above) grabbed the regimental flag from a decapitated bearer, and carried it over the crest, planting it firmly in the ground. One rebel wrote later, “The Yankees were cutting and slashing, and the cannoneers (sp) were running in every direction. I saw Day's brigade throw down their guns and break like quarter horses. Bragg was trying to rally them. I heard him say, "Here is your commander," and the soldiers hallooed back, "here is your mule", meaning themselves.  Confederate Sam Watson remembered how he “retreated down the hill under a shower of lead leaving many a noble son of the South dead and wounded on the ground...” Sheridan promoted McArthur to major on the spot,  and nominated him for the medal of honor. Arthur's son Douglas would follow his father into the army, reaching the rank of general and leading American troops across the Pacific in World War Two, and then in Korea.
On the crest, with the rebel army broken and retreating, union soldiers straddled enemy cannon and cheered themselves horse. Said one Army of the Cumberland veteran, "The plain unvarnished facts of the storming of Mission Ridge are more like romance to me now than any I have ever read in Dumas, Scott or Cooper." And a witness from the War Department in Washington said, “No man who climbs the ascent by any of the roads that wind along its front (today) can believe that men were moved up its broken and crumbling face, unless it was his fortune to witness the deed."
When I saw the ridge fifty years ago that was still true. And it will remain true as long as that ridge rises above Chattanooga. 
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