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Monthly Archives: August 2015

The other Peninsula Campaign

06 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Governors Island, Joseph Roswell Hawley

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Puck magazine turned ten the year of the Yorktown Centennial. Sort of the Onion of its day, it naturally had to poke some fun of the occasion.

Puck magazine turned ten the year of the Yorktown Centennial. Sort of the Onion of its day, it naturally poked fun of the occasion.

I have been preparing this week for Civil War Weekend at Governors Island, which is this Saturday and Sunday. One of the most fascinating periods in the island’s history is the stretch from 1878 until Elihu Root’s reforms began transforming the island in the early 1900s. Eighteen seventy eight is the year Winfield Scott Hancock arrived and took command of the Department of the East. He quickly had his hand in many things, one of which was the Yorktown Centennial of 1881. That was the anniversary of the American and their French allies took on the British and their hired guns in Virginia. The battle involved none  of than the General George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette. A Congressional organizing committee was put together that included none other than Joseph Roswell Hawley.

When we think of the post-Civil War era, we immediately think of the reconciliation vs. emancipation paradigm that underscored so much of the nation’s domestic politics. (Hawley himself had been a Civil War general and was very much part of the reunion circuit until his death in 1905.) It is important to remember though that so much more was happening. The Gilded Age was in full swing when the U.S. and France marked the occasion of their great Revolutionary War victory. Other nations were represented as well, but Yorktown 1881 was really a Franco-American affair. The timing could not have been better for a reunion of these once and former allies. Relations between France and American had become strained over the previous twenty years. Most egregiously, Napoleon III had stuck his nose in North American affairs, trying to undermine the fragile peace that existed between Mexico and the United States in the wake of the Mexican-American War. He even managed to get Maximilian I, the brother of Franz Josef I, installed as the ruler of Mexico in 1864. France and the United States might well have gone to war after Appomattox had things gone a little differently. It was that close.

Napoleon III was gone after the Franco-Prussian war in the early 1870s and by 1881 the Third Republic had had a decade to establish itself. That is why everyone was so determined to make nice in Yorktown for the 100th anniversary of the battle. General Hancock was in charge of providing the American military contingent for the event. Various regiments left from Brookllyn’s Fort Hamilton under his orders in mid-September for Virginia. The idea was that they would march the same route that Washington and his men had taken 100 years earlier. Hancock, among others, was charged with entertaining the many dignitaries as well. This was so true that when he died five years later the government still owed him at least $2500, money he had paid out-of-pocket for the festivities in Virginia. His widow Almira was still petitioning Congress for reimbursement in the late 1880s. (Reimbursement was a delicate topic for Governors Island commanders, who were expected to entertain the many VIPs who passed through the base while visiting New York City.)

There were some glitches during the Yorktown Centennial, especially relating to such logistical issues as accommodations. Still, the commemoration was a big success and did much to restore the Franco-American alliance that had fractured during the Civil War. The memory of Lafayette had a great deal to do with that. On the 4th of July 1917 the 16th Infantry Regiment made its famous march to the marquis’s grave at Picpus Cemetery n Paris, where a senior officer famously declared “Nous sommes ici, Lafayette.” In the 1920s, after the Versailles, the 16th was stationed on Governors Island.

(image via Library of Congress; permalink: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2012647294/)

 

 

George Marshall and the Atomic Age

04 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Preparedness (WW1), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), WW1, WW2

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Here is an upcoming event I wish I could attend: the George C. Marshall Foundation in Lexington, Virginia is hosting chemistry professor and author Frank Settle this coming Thursday, August 6. That is of course the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Dr. Settle is the author of the forthcoming General George C. Marshall and the Atomic Bomb. As this article from the Richmond Times-Dispatch makes clear historians have largely overlooked Marshall’s outsized role in the planning and construction of the Bomb. The undertaking lasted several years and involved over half a million military and civilian personnel at a cost of $30 billion in today’s dollars. This was all taking place in secret while he and Secretary of War Henry Stimson were carrying out a two-front war in Europe and the Pacific.

Amy Chief of Staff Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson confer in early 1942. The two WW1 veterans were instrumental in the creation of the Manhattan Project ushering in the Atomic Age.

Army Chief of Staff Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson confer in early 1942. The two WW1 veterans were instrumental in the creation and implementation of the Manhattan Project ushering in the Atomic Age. Both men served as Secretary of State at different points in their careers.

It is incredible the way the senior leadership in the Second World War had multiple careers that stretched all the way back to the First. Stimson was Secretary of War in the Taft Administration and part of the Preparedness Movement along with such individuals as Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, who at the time was assistant secretary of the navy in the Wilson Administration. It is no wonder FDR picked Stimson to be his own Secretary of War several decades later, even though he was in the opposition party. In the 1910s Marshall, then as always, kept his mouth shut while doing so much to get the Army ready for the fighting in France. This was no small task given the sitting start from which A.E.F. began the war. Thirty years later the Manhattan Project would test Marshall’s mettle on an even vaster scale.

Here are the details for Thursday’s discussion should one happen to be in the area.

(image by the U.S. Army Signal Corps, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons)

 

What did WW1 veterans think of their service?

01 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory

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Sergeant York was one of the tens of thousands of doughboys who filled out an MSR reflecting on his experience in the Great War.

Sergeant York was one of the tens of thousands of doughboys who filled out an MSR reflecting on his experience in the Great War.

Last night I finished Edward Gutiérrez’ Doughboys on the Great War. In 2000 Dr. Gutiérrez, now a lecturer at the University of Hartford, began analyzing the Military Service Records (MSRs) that American fighting men filled out upon returning from France. Several dozen states had some version of these questionnaires, though the length and thoroughness of the questioning fluctuated wildly from state to state. Some states had index cards asking for such basic information as name, age, rank, unit, length of service, and current address. Four states–Connecticut, Minnesota, Utah, Virginia–went much further and created a several-page document in which soldiers and marines could discourse more fully on their experience. Many veterans did just that, sharing their impressions of their training, the competence of their officers, their fighting experience, and whatever else they chose to share. According to Gutiérrez–and I see no reason to doubt him–these sources had been sitting pretty much untouched for nearly a century before he began reading them.

Studying the lives of returning soldiers has become a cottage industry over the past few years. Brian Matthew Jordan’s Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War is one example. This trend should not be surprising given that we have had so many veterans returning from combat in our own time. This is a welcome addition to the scholarship. The crux of Gutiérrez argument is that, while some had difficulty adjusting, for the most part doughboys returned to society quickly and seamlessly. This runs contrary to the narrative articulated by such Lost Generation writers as Hemingway, Fitzgerald and even Faulkner in the 1920s.

Some states followed up in the 1960s and 70s, by which time the veterans were well into middle age. These later accounts differ in that they lack the immediacy of the questionnaires the veterans filled out immediately upon their return from the war. A sourness set in for many in the 1930s, climaxing in the Bonus Army march in Washington. In the 1940s Doughboys noted ruefully that there was no GI Bill for them as there was now for the soldiers returning from the Second World War.

Gutiérrez has written an important book laying out some of the issues faced by the doughboys during and after their service. Hopefully during the centennial additional scholars will explore this topic.

(image/Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ggb2006004542/)

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