APRIL FOOLS

 

I don’t approve of practical jokes. I see nothing humorous in having my shoes set afire while I am  wearing them. And dribble glasses are not only not practical they are also not funny - especially on “April Fools Day”, when every glass is a dribble glass and every shoe is a potential combustion chamber. 

It turns out that this celebration of sociopathic behavior was invented by the French, a nation without humorous inclinations since Moliere slipped on a banana peel in 1673. The calendar in use at the time had been  invented by Julius Caesar - and we know how he was repaid for that creation. But the story of April Fool’s Day began when in 1564 King Charles IX decided to follow Pope Gregory’s suggestion and begin the Julian calendar on January rather than April. Why the French originally celebrated New Years Day on April 1st, I have no idea. But I think it had something to do with a hibernation habits of snails.

Now, in the 16th century, France had only one road. It came out of Paris, turned left, looped all the way around the city and re-entered on the other side of town. This tragic design error,(the world’s first Traffic Circle) made communication with the majority of the nation difficult (and introduced the phrase “Out-of-the-Loop”), and when combined with the French telephone system - which was in no better shape in the 16th century than it is today - meant that a lot of peasants never got the King’s memo concerning the calendar adjustment.

So as they had every year, thousands of these ill-informed peasants journeyed to Paris during the last week of March and on what they thought was New Year’s Eve, gathered in Bastille Square to say bonjour to 1565 and watch the guillotine drop on 1566. In unison they gleefully chanted, “Cing, quartre, trios, deux, un” and…No guillotine. No satisfying plop of a head into the basket. No Champagne corks popping. No red faced Anderson Cooper.  Instead of cheers and shouts of glee, mass ennui broke out among the masses. Now anyone who has experienced the Parisian version of “good manners” can imagine what came next; the locals mocked the bewildered peasants and made them feel like complete Americans,…ah, I mean, fools. But the way they did it makes the word “odd” seem inadequate.

For reasons beyond understanding the Parisians snuck up behind their confused country cousins, surreptitiously stuck a paper fish to the bumpkin’s backs and then shouted in a loud voice, “Poisson d’Avril!”, which translates as “April Fish!”, and then collapsed in raucous laughter and shouts of “tres bien.”

Why would they shout “April Fish!”? I have no idea. But, perhaps the first Parisian to label his victim an "April Fool” immediately received a mouth full of fist, while calling the victim an "April Fish” confused him just long enough so that the prankster could escape.

I have long thought that this uncharacteristic outbreak of French “humor” was actually inspired by Charles’ Italian Queen, Catherine de Medici, who was already famous throughout Europe for her gastronomical gags,  such as her duck a la cyanide with a hemlock sauce. Only a Medici could see the humor in humiliating the people who handled your food.

But however it started, the Parisians knew a good time when they saw it and they sent peasants on “fool’s errands”, and tricked peasants with “fool’s tales”, until every April first France reverberated with gales of laughter and shouts of “Poisson d’Avril!”  Ah, good times. But eventually the Parisian bullies grew bored with taunting the unresponsive peasants and in 1572 they shifted their attentions to the Huguenots. But by then the tradition of humiliating people for your own amusement on the first day of April had become generally popular. And like Disco music and Special Federal Prosecutors, once invented such institutions have proven impossible to dis-invent.

This holiday for the humor-impaired spread around the globe with the new calendar like a fungus, infecting and evolving a little in each newly afflicted nation. The Germans added the “Kick Me” sign, and a second day which they called “Taily Day”, to further enjoy the frivolity of bruised buttocks. Ahh, those Germans.

In Portugal, today’s innocent victim is hit with flour, sometimes while it is still in the bag - the flour not the victim.  In Scotland the target is humiliatingly referred to as an “April Gawk” (?!), in England as a “Noodle” and in Canada as an “American.”  I would have expected mental health professionals to call for a stop to this public insanity but evidently they are too busy setting their patients’ shoes on fire.

Not even a war could snap the world out of this cruel insanity. In fact, in what may have been the first time a practical joke qualified as a war crime, on April 1, 1915 a French pilot buzzed the German trenches and dropped a huge bomb. Which bounced. 

Four years later the citizens of Venice awoke on April 1, to discover their sidewalks littered with cow manure, the "gag" of a visiting Englishman, Horace de Vere Cole, with too much time on his hands and too much money in his pockets. But then what can you expect from a man who would honeymoon on April Fool's day? 

Bad humor moved into the electronic age in 1957 when BBC Television News broadcast a report about that year's successful and bountiful Swiss harvest of spaghetti.  On April Fool's Day in 1992, National Public Radio in the United States, broadcast the announcement that Richard Nixon was coming out of retirement to run again for President, under the slogan, "I didn't do anything wrong and I won't do it again."

Some years later the Australian Broadcasting Company, carried a report that the nation was about to switch to "Metric Time". The next morning would begin at midnight, but each minute would be made up of 100 milidays, each hour of 100 centedays, and each day would consist of 20 decadays. 

It is alleged that  the following morning nobody in Australia showed up for work on time, but it is unclear if that was because the April Fools joke worked, or merely because everybody in Australia still had a hangover, mate  

Admit it; there is no defense against April Fool tomfoolery, except a preemptive strike. So button up your top button, zip up your pants, tie your shoes and look out for that cat. Load up your water gun, warm up your fart cushion and repeat after me; “Poison d’Avril, sucker!”

Funny, huh?

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GETTYSBURG Chapter Six

I think the smartest thing Daniel Tyler did that June – and he did a lot of very smart things the last 2 weeks of that month - was to not assert his authority on arriving in Martinsburg, Virginia. He was a Brigadier General and under orders to take command of the town 30 miles north of Winchester.

But when he stepped off the Baltimore and Ohio train from Harpers Ferry at 8:00 that Sunday morning, 14 June, 1863, the 62 year old Tyler found Colonel B.F. Smith just leading the 1,200 man Martinsburg garrison out to face a rebel threat. Rather than create confusion on the eve of battle, Tyler sized up Smith in a glance, judged him competent, wished him good luck, offered to supply advice if asked, and concentrated on evacuating a final train load of supplies out of town.

An hour later a rider appeared in front of the Federal lines with a note from soulful rebel Brigadier General Albert “Grumble” Jenkins (above), addressed to the “Commanding Officer U.S. Forces near Martinsburg”. The note demanded the immediate surrender of the town or threatened its destruction. The post script added: “An immediate reply is necessary.” 

Technically, the Federal Commander at Martinsburg (above) was Tyler. But the Mexican War veteran never hinted, then or later, that he should have answered. Colonel Smith did - after delaying for an hour to buy time. Smith's reply told Jenkins, “ You may commence shelling as soon as you choose.”

It was now closing in on 11:00 a.m., and the old man who had spent a sleepless night on an express train out of Baltimore, still found the energy to supervise the loading of ammunition and food, and dispatching it to safety, while at the same time laying out a line of retreat for Smith and his soldiers. It is a testament to Tyler's cool competence that he marched into Harper's Ferry (above)  the next morning, Monday, 15 June at the head of all Colonel Smith's men. Tyler's reward for this display of cool professionalism was to be saddled with defending yet another place the legendary “Stonewall” Jackson himself considered indefensible.

Since 1761, when Robert Harper began operating his ferry where the Potomac River cut through the quartzite crests of the once towering Appalachian mountains, at its junction with the Shenandoah River had been a magnet for power hungry people. 

Between 1801 when it opened, and 1861, when retreating federals burned most of it, the “U.S. Musket Factory” at Harpers Ferry built half a million weapons. But even after the factory's destruction and looting in 1861, the site lost very little of its strategic importance. If you wanted to enter the fertile Shenandoah Valley from the north, you had to start at Harpers Ferry. And the fastest way to get there was on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

At the start of the Civil War the B & O ran 380 miles of iron rails, beginning in Baltimore and running first to Fredrick, Maryland, where it touched the north shore of the Potomac River. Turning west for 12 miles the railroad squeezed around the base of the 300 foot tall Maryland Heights, before crossing to the southern shore at Harpers Ferry. 

The line then wound west through 11 tunnels and over 113 bridges to Piedmont and Grafton, Virginia before reaching the Ohio River at Wheeling, Virginia.  Branch lines drew in the produce from the rich farms of the Shenandoah Valley, and coal from the mines of western Virginia and Pennsylvania – 1/3 of the railroad's profits in 1861 came from transporting coal to northern factories. And even though northern military commanders were slow to realize the advantages of the B&O for moving troops, their political masters were always sensitive to threats to corporate property.

However, the Rebels occupying Harpers Ferry found Federal artillery glowering down from Maryland Heights (above, red arrow), which forced them to evacuate the town within months of it's capture. But they captured it again during Lee's 1862 invasion of Maryland. They returned it after the failure at Antietam, but many assumed the rebels would be back this year, 1863. And after General Milroy's disastrous stand at Winchester, the new commander of Harper's Ferry, General Taylor, lacked the manpower to even be certain of holding the Heights.

Daniel Tyler (above) knew Harpers Ferry well. After graduating from West Point in 1819, the Connecticut native had specialized in ordinance, and in 1832 he was made "Superintendent of the Inspectors of Contract Arms." The next year he rejected every musket offered by private industry. His integrity so angered the industrialists that the following year, when Tyler was recommended for promotion to Chief of Ordinance, President Andrew Jackson appointed a business friendly southerner instead. In his letter of resignation, Tyler complained, “I have lost all ambition to be connected with the service where... the fact that a man was not born in the South was a bar to promotion."

But Daniel Tyler's brains and patriotism were never in doubt. As a civil engineer, he got rich saving 3 failing railroads from bankruptcy, the last being the Macon and Western, which paid 8% dividends under his direction. In 1849, when asked to explain why he unexpectedly resigned, he told the board of directors, “Gentlemen...You are educating your young men to hate the Union and despise the North, and the result will be a conflict within ten years, and in that event I mean to be with my family north of Mason and Dixon Line.” And he was, growing richer over the decade serving on 4 more northern railroads before the outbreak of war in December of 1860.

General Tyler (above) served with distinction at Bull Run, but a year of service during 1862  outside Cornith, Mississippi, under the indecisive and untrustworthy General Henry Halleck broke his health and spirit. But the old man came back in the spring of 1863 when he was dispatched to rescue the disaster in the Shenandoah Valley.  At 7:00 p.m. on the Monday he took command at Harpers Ferry, Tyler telegraphed that the remnants of General Milroy's mismanagement had arrived. “I am sending everybody over to Maryland Heights... Our effective force here...is not over 4,000 men.”

His cool head at Harpers Ferry soon showed it's value. At midday, Tuesday, 16 June, Tyler told his boss in Baltimore, Major General Robert Shenck, “...rebel cavalry this side of Halltown (3 miles to the south west), (are) endeavoring to flank our pickets.” But by 9:40 that night he could reassure his superior, “We have not been attacked at Harpers Ferry. We have been threatened from the direction of Charlestown (6 miles to the southwest), but no rebel columns have advanced nearer...” Then, at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, 17 June, General Tyler was forced to telegraph his boss, “I am requested by Major General Hooker to (send) our infantry...(to) Noland and Haulings Fords. This is out of my command. Will you attend to it?”

It was a simple matter of chain of command. Brigadier General Daniel Tyler at Harper's Ferry, reported to Major General Robert Shenck (above) who commanded the VIII Corps headquartered 70 miles away in Baltimore. Tyler's logistics – his supplies, his reinforcements and his orders - all came from Baltimore. 

And from Baltimore, Major General Shenck reported to now General-of-the-Army Henry Halleck (above) in Washington, D.C..

Major General "Fighting Joe" Hooker (above) commanded the Army of the Potomac, which usually operated south of Washington, D.C.  But as the mercurial Hooker belatedly followed the Army of Northern Virginia north of the Potomac river, he was a lot closer to Harpers Ferry than Shenck was in Baltimore. And the increasingly panicky Hooker seemed determined not to understand he had no authority to issue orders to General Tyler. 

Nor did the commander of 80,000 Federal infantry, artillery and cavalry (above) seem willing to understand why Tyler's 4,000 men could not simply abandon Maryland Heights, to provide screening troops to benefit Hooker.  Fighting Joe's  inability to order about Tyler's paltry command became an obsession, to the point that the Major General Hooker went a little nuts – never a good thing in a field commander.

I am tempted here to remind you once again of what General Omar Bradly said – so I will. “Amateurs study strategy. Professionals study logistics.”

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GETTYSBURG Chapter Five

 

I find it such a deceptively simple sentence: on Wednesday, 10 June, 1863, the second corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, under the command of Lieutenant General Richard Ewell, marched out of their camps around Culpeper Virginia, headed for Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, 130 miles to the north. 

The reality is that Ewell's corps did not move as 22,000 individuals. The second regiment in line could not step off until the first regiment had cleared the road space, and the third not until the second was away. And as Ewell's men were using a single dirt road, any delays would be multiplied accordion like for the regiments behind. It is has been a tried and reliable and potentially exhausting mode of march since the days of Julius Caesar's grandfather.

In the American Civil War the object of every march – no matter its length - was to put as many of your regiments as possible within musket range of what Napoleon called the “point d'équilibre - "Fire must be concentrated on one point”, he said, “and as soon as the breach is made, the equilibrium is broken and the rest is nothing." Achieving that is not strategy or tactics. It is logistics. And as 20^th century 5 Star General Omar Bradley put it - “Amateurs study strategy. Professionals study logistics.”

The marching routes were always scouted in advance by cavalry, searching for information on roads and enemy troops. The lead infantry regiments for Ewell's corps rose about 4:00 in the morning, and after a quick breakfast, assembled and then set out at dawn at the route march - about 2 miles an hour, with a 10 minute break to rest and close up for “lame ducks” every hour. Each regiment was followed by a horse drawn wagon carrying it's tents and tent pegs, tarps, cooking utensils – pots, pans, knives and ladles, flour and salt, and reserve ammunition. Each foot soldier carried about 40 pounds of personal gear – musket and bayonet, canteen, blanket, shot and powder, a lead shot making kit and extra clothing if available.

The average day's march was limited to between 8 and 10 hours, so that tailing regiments could get of the road before dark. The first day's march – Wednesday, 10 June - was made in “pleasant” weather and covered 25 miles. It ended at the base of the 4,600 foot high Chester Gap (above), through the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

On Thursday, 11 June – after a ten mile march through the Gap and down the western slope along  Slaone Creek, Ewell's infantry reached the pretty little village of Front Royal (above), where north and south forks joined to form the Shenandoah River. 

The road in front of Lt. General Ewell now split. The Valley Pike followed the Shenandoah northeast 35 miles to Harper’s Ferry, where the river joined the Potomac. The Front Royal Pike angled northwest 20 miles to Winchester, where Major General Robert Milroy patiently waited with his 9,000 man Federal division. Ewell spent Friday 12 June, closing up his men, and and inching forward.

On Saturday, 13 June, 1863, Brigadier General Ewell sent Major General Edward Johnson's division straight up the Front Royal Pike, slowly driving the Federal skirmishers back onto their entrenchments. At the same time Major General Jubal Early's division marched up the Valley Pike, out flanking the Federal positions. That night it rained hard but stopped shortly after midnight, allowing Early's men to launch their flanking assault on Sunday morning, 14 June, unimpeded by mud. Squeezed between the 2 Confederate attacks, the Federals were driven into their forts where rebel artillery pounded them most of the afternoon.

It was after 1:00 on the morning of Monday, 15 June, that General Milroy realized his mistake in waiting, and pulled his men out of Winchester. But at dawn Ewell's trap sprang shut, when troops of Major General Robert Rodes' division caught the Federals out in the open at Stephen's Depot, and forced half of them to surrender. General Ewell immediately released a cavalry brigade under Brigadier General Albert Jenkins’ which galloped 20 miles on to the Federal railroad warehouses at Martinsburg, Virginia. 

A detachment even reached the Potomac River before nightfall and crossed into Maryland at Williamsport, thus confirming the Shenandoah Valley was now clear of Federal troops.

That same day, 15 June, 1863, the 21,000 men of 42 year old Lieutenant General James Lonstreet's (above) First Corps left Culpeper and began their march up the same road to Front Royal. 

Riding with “Old Pete” was his boss, the 53 year old commander of the entire Army of Northern Virginia, Robert Edward Lee (above). The First Corps was the middle of Lee's army, a logical place for the commander to be. But I suspect he also wanted to keep a close eye on his “old war horse”. Until the death of “Stonewall” Jackson in early May, Longstreet had been Lee's second favorite subordinate.

Back in May it had been Longstreet who suggested to Confederate Secretary of War Seddon that the First Corps be sent west to rescue Vicksburg, rather than invade Pennsylvania. But Lee had persuaded Longstreet to drop his own plan by promising to remain on the defensive during the Pennsylvania invasion, and entice the Federals into doing all the attacking. But Longstreet also surrendered his own plan because “Old Pete” realized, as that Georgia soldier had put it, the fate of the Confederacy rode on Robert E. Lee's horse (above). The slave south had tied its fate to the personal strengths and weaknesses of the man from Virginia.

At the moment the fate of the Federal Union was tied to General “Fighting Joe” Hooker (above), who held onto his bridges at Frederick's Crossing and his dream of a coupe de main on Richmond, until Saturday, 13 June when he finally had the bridges dismantled.  Sunday was “Fighting Joe”'s “come to Jesus” moment. The next morning, Monday, 15 June he was able to telegraph Halleck that he was pulling back from the river and gathering his troops further north around Manassas. And that evening he even displayed the self confidence to admit to Lincoln “...the enemy nowhere crossed the Rappahannock on our withdrawal from it, but General Hill's (rebel) troops moved up the river in the direction of Culpeper this morning, for the purpose, I conclude, of re-enforcing Longstreet and Ewell, wherever they may be.” Then, at this very moment of insight and self awareness, Joseph Hooker's paranoia reared its ugly head again in his very next words to the President. “ I request that I may be informed what troops there are at Harper's Ferry, and who is in command of them, and also who is in command in this district.”

Like most paranoids, Hooker had reason to suspect others were out to get him. First there was what Lincoln had warned him about - the way he had undermined his old boss, Burnside. And second there was his old-old boss, "Old fuss and feathers", the 300 pound Winfield Scott (above). 

General Scott had promoted Hooker to Lieutenant Colonel during the Mexican-American war, and assigned him as second in command to General of volunteers, Gideon J. Pillow (above), “One of the most reprehensible men to ever wear 3 stars”. Hooker kept Scott informed of Pillow's disloyalty to Scott. After the Mexican War, as General-in-Chief of the Army,  Scott court marshaled Pillow,  mostly based on information Hooker supplied. But Hooker was called to testify in Pillow's defense, and Pillow got off. Scott then preceded to hound Hooker out of the army. “Fighting Joe” only got back in the fight after the outbreak of war in 1861 as a general of volunteers, not regulars.

Hooker's current superior was called “Old Brains” as a joke. Henry Halleck (above) was described by historian Allen Nevins as displaying “...irresolution, confusion, and timidity...” A contemporary Union General described Hallek as “a lying, treacherous, hypocritical scoundrel with no moral sense." That other general was Benjamin Butler, and he might have been describing himself, but most of the Federal officer corps agreed with him about Halleck.  But behind Halleck stood Lincoln, who had entrusted Hooker with the Army of the Potomac, even after he was defeated at Chancellorsville. Still, by June of 1863 Hooker was becoming ever more sensitive to slights and insults from superiors. Which may explain why he did the stupid thing he did next.

On 16 June he telegraphed Lincoln again. “You have long been aware, Mr. President, that I have not enjoyed the confidence of the major-general commanding the army, and I can assure you so long as this continues we may look in vain for success”. He then suggested that he might defeat A.P. Hill's Corps before it could rejoin the rest of Lee's Army, but insisted, “... the chances for my doing this are much smaller than when I was on the Rappahannock.” It is hard to see a purpose in this whining, petulant note other than to provide post failure proof he had kept Lincoln fully informed.

Halleck obviously saw Hooker's message, because within half an hour he telegraphed Hooker, “Unless your army is kept near enough to the enemy to ascertain his movements, yours must be in the dark or on mere conjecture.” He then provided the information Hooker had requested from Lincoln -  just in case there was any doubt the 2 men in Washington were speaking with each other.  “ Tyler is in command at Harper's Ferry, with...little or no movable troops.” Halleck closed by suggesting that if Hooker wanted to use Tyler's men, he should contact Tyler's superior directly.”

So there was a single simple sentence to describe the situation. The 70,000 man Army of Northern Virginia was moving north behind the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the 85,000 man Army of the Potomac was belatedly moving north to follow it. But although both armies were moving en-mass, their members remained individuals - particularly their commanders - prey to all the failings of individuals – pride, panic and lack of perception - proving as they approached the moment of most violent contact, how alike as individuals they all were.

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