Skirmish at Great Falls

With Charles P. Stone at Point of Rocks en route to Patterson's army and me out of the area, only a small post today. The 8th Battalion, DC Militia was still guarding Great Falls (nearer to the Chain Bridge, in reality) and found themselves a bit overwhelmed. Lieutenant Becker, adjutant to Captain Gerhard, sent this message to Colonel Edward Townsend, Winfield Scott's Chief of staff:

Have been fighting all day; fighting when I left at 7 o'clock this p.m. One man killed on our side. We want re-enforcements. Are not strong enough to hold our position. We want a surgeon. Please answer.

The Official Records don't record any response from Townsend or any Confederate accounts. The internet (if you trust such things) says two men were killed when all was told. There's not even a marker that I can find. It's only two and a half months since Fort Sumter, and already two deaths is a skirmish not commemorated.

Extending the War With Mexico

This is the third in a four-part series on the impact of the Mexican War on the American Civil War.  

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.

Buena Vista, from an 1847 sketch by Maj. Eaton, aide-de-camp to Gen. Taylor

President James K. Polk had a problem: he was winning a war with Mexico. Major General Zachary Taylor, leading the Army of Occupation, had won a victory at the Battle of Monterrey over a much larger Mexican force by out-maneuvering it. Taylor had signed a cease-fire that allowed the Mexicans to retreat from the city, then sat back to rest on his laurels while peace was negotiated. Taylor was being heavily courted by the Whig Party to run for president in two years against Polk's Democratic successor (he had pledged only one term), and the more they courted, the more he felt up to the job.

The political problem extended beyond just losing the White House, though. It might just undo all of Polk's schemes to set the Texas border at the Rio Grande and capture the vast area known as Alta California. This area was needed to provide territory for new states to the Union, specifically slave states, in order to counterbalance the growth of free states in the present-day Midwest that pushed economic policies based on manufacturing and trade, and were increasingly harmful to the cash-crop economies of the South. To this end, Polk had dispatched a small Army of the West under Brigadier General Stephen Kearny to seize the power centers Santa Fe and San Diego, but he still needed several more months before Polk could present Mexico City - and the Whigs in the House - a fait accompli.

The answer to Polk's dilemma, lay in the fussy, know-it-all, general-in-chief, Major General Winfield Scott. As early as the initial peacekeeping action in Texas, Scott had been irked by Polk's deliberate snub of him, the senior general in the army. Instead, Polk had chosen the barely literate Taylor to lead the American army in Mexico. Scott was a war-hero already (from 1812), a Whig, and politically connected, so the president had turned to Taylor in hopes of avoiding the creation of a serious political opponent. Now that Taylor had become that, Polk figured he could set up Scott as a rival to the Whig nomination and allow the two to destroy each other. Scott was already on record as fiercely critical of Taylor's handling of the war (Taylor made little to no effort to discipline his men, who took the opportunity to indulge in every vice imaginable), all Polk had to do was acquiesce to the general-in-chief's strategic vision.

Independence Day, 1861

Lincoln's draft of July 4 message

Almighty and everlasting God, be not angry with us for our sins, which we only confess and deplore; but pardon our offenses and extend us Thy favor. We thank Thee for Thy goodness on this anniversary of our nation--a day tenfold more precious by reason of our present troubles...disasters have befallen us and darkness broods in the land. And now we ask Thy mercy as the Senate is convening at a most momentous crisis in our history... And we beseech Thee to guide us... to cause that nothing shall fail, that the disorders of the land may be speedily healed, that peace and concord may prevail, that truth and righteousness may be established, and that Thy Church and Kingdom may flourish in a larger peace and prosperity...

So prayed Rev. Byron Sunderland, the new chaplain of the Senate at noon on Thursday, July 4. He was also the popular minister at the "Old First", the First Presbyterian Church located across from the Capitol, where the Rayburn House Office Building now stands. In 1857, he had rocked sleepy Washington by preaching abolition, and his close connections with the majority Republicans had led to his appointment (Sunderland would make waves again in 1866, when he allowed Frederick Douglass to preach from the Old First's pulpit -- he would also be instrumental in the early days of Howard and Gallaudet).

Fighting With Old Zach in Mexico

This is the second part of a four-part series on the influence of the Mexican War on the American Civil War.  

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.

The Battle of Monterrey

First Lieutenant Joe Hooker, departed on a leave of absence from the U.S. 1st Artillery Regiment stationed in Pensacola, Florida on June 11, 1846. He was bound for the Texas-Mexico border and, he hoped, glory with the Army of Occupation under Major General Zachary Taylor.

President James K. Polk had originally been nominated for president by the Democrats because they couldn't agree on any of the front-runners in their party. He had won the presidency promising fiscal reforms, annexation of Texas and Alta California, and settlement of the dispute with Britain over Oregon Country in favor of the United States (the famous "Fifty-four Forty or Fight", in reference to the American claim to own the territory along the Pacific all the way up to the tip of Russian-owned Alaska). It was a balanced platform designed to appeal to Northerners and Southerners.

But while pushing his war with Mexico in 1845 and the first half of 1846, Polk had negotiated and signed a treaty that established the northern border of the United States at the 49th parallel, ceding nearly all of the disputed Oregon Territory to Britain. The Southern Democrat dominated Senate quickly ratified it around the same time Hooker left for Texas, to the outrage of Northern Whigs and Democrats in the Northwest (today known as the Mid-west). They rightly assumed Polk had settled with the British to be better prepared for a war with Mexico.

Longstreet Arrives in Manassas

James Longstreet

Around the same time Captain Porter Alexander joined Brigadier General G.T. Beauregard's staff, the general with whom his fate would be most connected also came to Manassas - Brigadier General James Longstreet. Called "Pete" (Civil War generals seemingly were never called what history has taken to calling them), Longstreet may even have arrived on the same date as Alexander, his future chief of artillery, though Alexander's uncertainty about the date makes it hard to be sure.

What is sure is that when Pete Longstreet stepped off the train at Manassas Junction he became commander of the Fourth Brigade of Beauregard's army, replacing Colonel G.H. Terrett, who took over command of the garrison at Camp Pickens on the railroad (near the site of the Olde Towne Inn today). The brigade was made of three Virginia regiments, the 1st (from the Richmond area, led by Colonel P.T. Moore), the 11th (from Lynchburg, under Colonel Sam Garland), and the 17th (local men from around Manassas, led by Alexandria-native Colonel Montgomery Corse). Within the next two weeks, the 5th North Carolina would be added too.

It was a sign of temporary President Jefferson Davis's deep respect for Longstreet that the Georgian replaced a Virginian in charge of three regiments of Virginia troops. Even among Northerners in 1861, there was a much stronger sense of belonging to one's state, than one's nation in America. As Shelby Foote famously noted in Ken Burns' classic PBS documentary on the Civil War, in the early 1860s it was more common for people to say "the United States are" rather than "the United States is" (though Foote somewhat overstates the role of the war in the grammatical transition to today's version).

Sherman Brothers in Columbia Heights

Fellow local blog, New Columbia Heights has this find about Senator John Sherman's subdivided property, where his older brother William Tecumseh Sherman also lived.

http://newcolumbiaheights.blogspot.com/2011/06/william-tecumseh-sherman-owned-land.html

After capturing Atlanta, Cump (as General Sherman liked to be called, he hated the name "William") made a national name for himself and thanks to that and Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind he is the best known Sherman today. But younger brother John would have been far more famous to their contemporaries as an influential Senator (author of the Sherman Antitrust Act), Secretary of the Treasury, and Secretary of State.

Not at all unlike elected officials today, in May 1861 Senator-elect John Sherman (replacing Salmon P. Chase representing Ohio) took what we would now call a CODEL (Congressional Delegation) to visit Robert Patterson's army in Hagerstown, MD, and became so upset at the poor conditions of the units that he (undoubtedly with Patterson's help) composed a sharp letter to Secretary of War Simon Cameron asking for more and better supplies. It can be read here and Cameron's reply here.

(And finally, in one of those amusing moments that come from reading too much of the Official Records, check out Winfield Scott's reply to an earlier message from Patterson at the end of Sherman's letter. "Do not omit so many words. Sentences too incomplete to be understood.")

One Plan Started, Another Ended

Charles Stone was still unaware of the Cabinet meeting that had transpired while he continued to guard the crossings of the Potomac River. His comments in his report for the last day of June to General-in-chief Winfield Scott's chief of staff explain his frustration at having failed to secure the river over a three week period, largely because of Robert Patterson's continued lack of communication. In the intervening days Patterson had still not occupied Harper's Ferry, and had also not arranged with Stone to secure the Potomac, not even sending him a message. Harper's Ferry again sat unoccupied and Stone was in the same difficult position he had been in when it all began almost three weeks earlier.

Specifically, Stone fretted that "the railroad and canal are not safe for a single night" but he didn't have enough men to cover that entire stretch of river. "I suppose Major-General Patterson must have weighty reasons for leaving the point opposite Harper's Ferry without guard, for I fear each night risks an immense amount of private property and wearies local people, while it encourages the sympathizers of the enemy." Stone moaned that with just two more regiments he could occupy the entire line from Harper's Ferry to Georgetown, and with three could move across the river into Leesburg and split up the two Confederate forces.