GREED

 

I cannot conceive of a worse possible moment for the young man to deliver his lie. Two weeks before, the 3 day battle of the Wilderness had killed 2,246 men and wounded some 12,000 more.  Three days ago,  in the Shenandoah Valley, yet another Federal Army had been ambushed at the Battle of New Market, where 96 federal soldiers were killed, 520 were wounded and 225 were captured - 13% of the Federal troops committed on that field.

And this very morning, 18 May, 1864, General Grant was leading his weary army once again into battle at Spotsylvania Courthouse, which would kill 2,725 men, including legendary General John Sedgwick,  and wound another 13,400 men. It seemed as if everything the Federal government attempted in this third spring of Civil War, was producing only more blood. And, at 3:30am that morning, a young man had arrived with a missive, to seemingly drop the other shoe. 

It purported to be a bulletin from the Associated Press, which had been in business since 1848, and contained the text of a White House Proclamation. The operative passage began in the third paragraph. 

“In view...of the situation in Virginia...and the general state of the country, I, Abraham Lincoln (above)...by virtue of the power vested in me by the Constitution...call forth the citizens of the United States, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years, to the aggregate number of four hundred thousand, in order to suppress the existing rebellious combinations...”

The reaction to news of a new half million man draft, in the city which the year before had produced three days of rioting (above) in response to Lincoln's first call for a draft, was expected to be even more violence. One hundred twenty had died in the summer of 1863, at least eleven African-Americans had been lynched, untold numbers beaten, and fifty large buildings had been burned down. Many on Wall Street took this as a sign the Federal government was losing the war, and they expected investors  to dump their stocks for gold.

At first glance the notice seemed legitimate. It was written on the same cheap oily tissue paper used by the Associated Press. But it had not arrived in the usual fashion. Several editors were suspicious, but with only moments before the deadline to start the presses, and fearing hesitation would mean their papers would be scooped by the competition,  three Democratic leaning papers rushed the story into the print – The World, the Journal of Commerce, and the Brooklyn Eagle. 

But the night editor of the New York Times, a Republican paper, did not recognize the handwriting, and found it had not been delivered in an AP envelope. The editor held his own presses while he dispatched a messenger for confirmation from the Associated Press. The AP editor promptly replied , “The 'Proclamation' is false as hell and not promulgated through this office. The handwriting is not familiar.”

By 9:00am Wall Street was in an uproar, with investors and brokers crowding all the newspaper offices (above), demanding an answer. Was the proclamation real or not? When the markets opened, the price of gold rose about 10%, but quickly fell back after Secretary of State William Seward, and Secretary-of-War Edward Stanton,  both telegraphed to all the New York papers that the report was  “an absolute forgery.” 

And if the Lincoln administration had stopped there everything would have been all right. But Lincoln himself ordered the Military commander in New York City,  General John Adams Dix (above), to seize the offices of the Journal of Commerce and the New York World, and to ”arrest and imprison...the Editors, proprietors, and publishers.” It seemed the bloody mess in Virginia was making everybody a little jumpy.

The Journal of Commerce was a small anti-slavery newspaper founded by Arthur Tappan and Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph, and founder of the anti-Catholic "Know Nothing" party. That paper opposed using force to put down the rebellion. So the Postmaster General had refused to deliver the JOC via the mail, crippling the paper outside New York City, where most of its 35,000 readers lived. 

William Cowper Prime (above), a lawyer, an artist and author and "near east enthusiast" as well as business manager of the JOC, wrote to his wife that afternoon, “Found on coming down town that we, in common with the World...had been hoaxed by a most ingenious scoundrel.” That evening Federal soldiers arrived to close down the paper and arrest the guiltless Mr. Prime.

Considerably less innocent was the two cent per copy, “New York World”. The paper was owned by the Democratic National Committee, and directed by the DNC chairman, August Belmont. In its pages anything with a whiff of Lincoln or Republicanism about it was opposed. Every day the paper was filled with articles warning of the threat of the ballooning war debt, and criticism of the administration's military strategy. Its editorials called for repeal of the emancipation proclamation, and a negotiated peace with the Confederacy. It was the platform of the Democratic Party in 1864. But these were not  the position of the World's editor, Mr. Manton Malone Marble.

Marble  (above) was a newspaperman with printer's ink in his veins. Employed as the Night Editor, he had bought the bankrupt World in 1861, dreaming of a non-partisan fact based style of journalism. But after just six months he had been forced to seek new backers, and the Democratic Party had eagerly stepped in. Marble lost friends and staff members when he signed the deal. 

The joke among journalists in the city was that Marble was now little more than a conductor for the stories August Belmont (above) wanted in the paper day in and day out. But there was still a spark of independence in Marble, and when he learned from an alert staffer, before dawn on the morning of 18 May, 1864, that his paper had published the proclamation, he ordered all copies still unsold to be withdrawn from street vendors, and even dispatched a fast ship to stop and board the steamer “Nova Scotia”, carrying bundles of the newspaper bound for England. Marble even ordered the ship's captain to buy back the free copy provided to the Nova Scotia's purser. It made no difference. Marble was arrested the evening of 18 May, and the offices of “The World” padlocked shut.

That very night the member papers of the Associated Press telegraphed the President, strongly defending Prime and Marble. The next day several of the editors, including Horace Greeley, of the Republican leaning Tribune, joined the chorus of demands that Marble and Prime be released. And it began to occur to Lincoln, that he had stepped into something unpleasant. He also had the calming influence of General Dix, who seems to have quickly suspected, along with the members of the AP, that this was not a rebel plot, nor even a Democratic one.

 

At the same time he arrested Prime and Marble, Dix also ordered the arrest of Joseph Howard, jr.,  night editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, the only other paper to actually publish and distribute the false proclamation. 

Within a day Joe Howard (above) confessed. He assumed the false proclamation would drive up the price of gold, in preparation for which he had bought gold futures “short” -  meaning on credit. As one historian has noted, “Nothing worse was ever done for the purpose of speculation.” 

Two days later, on Saturday morning, 21 May,  police detectives stopped and arrested Francis Avery Mallson, a reporter for the Eagle, who had actually authored the fake telegram.  Francis had just been drafted into the army, and he had hoped profits from the scam would provide for his family while he was away at war. The next day, Sunday 22 May, military authorities released both Prime and Marble. But the damage had been done.

Marble was in a rage. He clearly felt betrayed and laid the blame for his arrest directly on Lincoln's head - where it belonged. On Monday, 23 May he unleashed his pen, in a letter that took up several columns of "The World".  “Not until today,” Marble wrote, “has The World been free to speak. But to those who have ears to hear, its absence has been more eloquent than its columns could ever be.” 

Lincoln had acted, wrote Marble (above), “for the purpose of gratifying an ignoble partisan resentment” He wondered “would you, Sir, have suppressed the Tribune and the Times as you suppressed the World and the Journal of Commerce?” He then answered the question for Mr. Lincoln. “You know you would not... Can you, whose eyes discern equality under every complexion, be blinded by the hue of partisanship.” George Templeton Strong, a diarist and observer of politics in New York, noted, “The martyred newspaper...vomits acid bile most copious.”

Marble now became the publicist for the Democratic Party, and its champion, General McClellan (above, center). He spent the next six months retelling every lie, and even creating a few new ones, about Lincoln, charging him with wanting to force "race mixing" on the public, and ignoring the pain and sacrifices of Union soldiers on the battlefield. 

And it might have cost Lincoln the election that November,  excerpt that on 2 September, 1864,  Union General William Tecumseh Sherman captured the rail and industrial heart of the Confederacy - Atlanta, Georgia.  In that instant it was clear Lincoln was winning the war, and the Democrats were revealed as defeatists, with no answers, only protests. That November Lincoln received only 33% of the vote in New York City.  Despite that, he won the state, if barely, on his way to re-election, 55% of the popular vote, and 212 electoral votes to Democrat General George McClellan's 21

The World did not accept defeat, disparaging Lincoln's speech on the night of 13 April, 1865 - the day after Lee had surrendered - it described the President as groping “like a traveler in an unknown country, without a map.” 

The following night, 15 April, 1865,  John Wilkes Booth murdered the President, transforming Abraham Lincoln into a martyr, and the The New York World and it's editor into a petty, vindictive and racist party mouthpiece.  History does that every kind of thing every once in awhile.

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WAR VIRGINS

 

I suggest  if you want a touch the reality of the American Civil War, you pick up a nine pound, 56 inch long, walnut stock .58 caliber model 1855 Springfield muzzle loading rifled musket, and consider what this weapon tells you about the world which built it. 

They made 47,000 such weapons in Massachusetts, and another 12,000 at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, before the war even started.  Over the five years after Fort Sumter, they built about a million more in various versions. 

But to the volunteers who were handed one of those older, no longer state-of-the-art weapons (costing $20 each at the time, about $500 in today's money), they were revolutionary. This was likely the first mass produced piece of high tech these people came into intimate contact with. And once they did, they were no longer virgins.

Following the manual written by Brigadier General Silas Casey, (above) - West Point class of 1828), you began with your Springfield musket standing on its base. 

You removed a paper cartridge from the box on your hip. You bite or tear off the end of a the cartridge (above), exposing 65 coarse grains of black powder, which you pour down the barrel. With your thumb you press the remains of the cartridge (with the bullet called a “minnie ball” inside), into the top of the barrel.

Using the rod stored beneath your musket's barrel, you ram the ball, cartridge and the powder down the barrel until it is firmly at the bottom. 

Replacing the ramrod, you lift the weapon to chest high. You half-cock the hammer, take a percussion cap from your cartridge box (on your other hip) and place it atop the nipple covering the opening in the breach. Then you lift the weapon to your shoulder, pull the hammer back to full cock, aim toward the enemy and upon command or choice, you pull the trigger, releasing the hammer.

The hammer falls, setting off the black powder in the percussion cap. The resulting explosion forces hot gases through the breach, which set off the black powder in the barrel. This flash of heat causes the the soft lead on the bottom of the' minnie' ball to expand, trapping the gases behind it. Those gases then drive the bullet out of the barrel at about a thousand feet per second. With luck you might hit a target 100 yards away. 

With training, a man could get off two, and maybe three, rounds every minute. But most of the soldiers, particularly in the early stage in the war, spent very little time learning to fire their weapons. Burning black powder produced enormous dense clouds of smoke, and after a few minutes you couldn't see what you are aiming at. Firing ranges were thus considered largely a waste of time for the average soldier. So the men spent most of their time learning to march.

Battlefield tactics were over half a century old by 1861, developed by Napoleon Bonaparte in the 1790's, when muskets were still smooth bore, and so inaccurate that to effectively injure an opponent they had to be used in mass, hundreds or thousands of muskets firing in the same direction at the same moment. 

Everything that occurred on the battlefield was done to create that moment, when the maximum number of men would discharge their weapons at the target, together.  The concept is still used today, and it is called "maximum lead on target". 

General Silas Casey (above), in his 2 volumes of Infantry Tactics published in  1862,  listed 84 separate and distinct steps required to move a company of 84 men from a marching column four men wide, to their firing formation, in a rank with thirty-two inches between each man, three ranks deep. And that was on the flat and open parade ground. 

The men and the officers had to to learn to do this, across unfamiliar and broken terrain, without thinking, while people were trying to kill them. The endless drilling required to achieve proficiency at marching was boring, physically exhausting, and boring. And there was no way to prepare the men for the terror of replicating it while being shot at, under the noise and horrors of combat, because each human experiences combat differently and each combat experience is different than any other, for each man.

What was it like? Well, in 1863, after two years of hard won experience with the demands, drudgery and the horrors of combat, the two sides met for three days at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. After that battle 35,000 abandoned but usable muskets were collected on the battlefield, of which 11,000 were unloaded and 24,000 were loaded, in one form or another. 

Of the loaded muskets, 6,000 had one charge, 12,000 had two charges, and the remaining 6,000 held anything from three to ten charges - One musket had twenty-two charges stuffed down its barrel;  powder, cartridge and bullet, 22 times, one atop the other. 

The noise of all those muskets firing next to unprotected ears, producing all that smoke, meant that a soldier could no longer hear his own rifle going off. And if you missed the first loaded round not being fired, likely you never got a second chance. Firing a musket with anything more than one charge in the barrel often resulted in the weapon exploding. And that raises the question of how many battlefield casualties were unconsciously self inflicted friendly fire.

Officers had a few things to learn too, even the 5'2” tall Ulysses Grant (above) who had graduated West Point in 1843. Although he had been forced to resign in 1854, his training made him a much sought after commodity, and during the opening months of the war, in June of 1861,  the governor of Illinois made him a colonel and he was given command of the 21^st Illinois volunteer regiment. 

These 1,000 men were described by their new commander as “men...who could be led astray.” And they had been. Grant said he “found it very hard work for a few days to bring all the men into anything like subordination; but the great majority favored discipline, and by the application of a little regular army punishment all were reduced to as good discipline as one could ask.”

On 3 July, 1861, the 21^st Illinois was ordered to Quincy, Illinois, but en route the destination was changed.

The 19^th Illinois regiment had been building a bridge over the Salt River west of Palmyra, Missouri - about 25 miles north west of Hannibal, on the Mississippi River. Troops of the Missouri State Guard, sympathetic to the south, had cut off the union troops. Grant was now ordered to rescue the fellow prairie state unit.

However, by the time his men had reached the Mississippi river, the threatened unit had retreated back to Hannibal, with not a shot being fired by either force. Grant wrote later, “I am inclined to think both sides got frightened and ran away.” Still, Grant got his men across the big river, and marched to the scene. The 21^st Illinois spent two weeks finishing the bridge, and was then ordered to advance on a new Missouri State Guard regiment gathering to the south, at the forks of the Salt River.

The Missouri troops were commanded by a politician, Colonel (later Brigadier General) Thomas Alexander Hariss. His position was in a valley, and was overlooked by the small community of Florida, Missouri,  with about 100 residents. 

And as Grant approached the town he started to get nervous. “In the twenty-five miles we had to march we did not see a person, old or young, male or female, except two horsemen who were on a road that crossed ours. As soon as they saw us they decamped as fast as their horses could carry them.” Grant now had to assume the rebels were alerted of his approach, and would be waiting for his men. The young commander camped his men that night beside the road, so they would be fully rested for the battle he knew was coming in the morning.

Come the dawn,  Grant lead his little force up the hill. “As we approached the brow of the hill...my heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat. I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do; I kept right on. When we reached a point from which the valley below was in full view I halted. The place where Harris had been encamped a few days before was still there...but the troops were gone. My heart resumed its place.”

In fact, Harris and his still unprepared recruits had retreated on hearing that Grant was gathering horses and wagons just to prepare for his march. With such a head start, his Missouri State Guards were now sixty miles away, heading to join larger rebel forces.  

Learning this, Grant noted it taught him something.  “It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him. This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards. From that event to the close of the war...I never forgot that he had as much reason to fear my forces as I had his”. On the march back to the bridge at Palmyra, Grant noted, “The citizens living on the line of our march....were at their front doors ready to greet us now.”

And that taught him even something more useful, something still true today - winners are always popular. Grant was no longer a virgin.  And because of that, neither were his soldiers.

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