Category Archives: Leonard Wood (General)

Sunday morning coffee

09 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in John Purroy Mitchel, Leonard Wood (General), Lusitania, Preparedness (WW1), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Woodrow Wilson

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I am having my coffee and a bite to eat before heading off to the Tomb. I see it is raining. It is too early to tell how it might effect the event at Sakura Park that runs from 12:00 – 8:00. I am watching the progress of Hurricane Florence as well. In addition to the terrible havoc it might unleash on many lives and communities, it may effect next week’s Camp Doughboy weekend on Governors Island. We will keep our fingers crossed that the Florence, and the storm building behind it, do not turn into major tragedies.

You Can’t Raise Two Flags at Once, Brooklyn Daily Eagle August 9, 1915

I was gathering my notes yesterday for next week’s talk about John Purroy Mitchel and came across this political cartoon which I thought I would quickly share. It is from the August 9, 1915 Brooklyn Daily Eagle and, coincidentally or not, is positioned next to an article about Mitchel’s participation in the Plattsburg training camp that summer. The cartoon shows Theodore Roosevelt explaining the dangers of what he and his supporters called hyphenated-Americanism during the Great War. The United States was not yet in the war when this cartoon was published. This was, however, just three months after the sinking of the Lusitania. The tension between Roosevelt, General Leonard Wood, Mayor Mitchel and other Preparedness advocates against President Wilson was building.

Just a few weeks after this cartoon appeared Roosevelt gave a controversial speech at Plattsburg taking the Wilson Administration to task for what he saw as its poor response to the war. General Wood was in attendance in Plattsburg with Roosevelt and later reprimanded by Secretary of War Lindley Garrison.

John Purroy Mitchel, 1879-1918

06 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by in John Purroy Mitchel, Leonard Wood (General), Lusitania, Memory, New York City, Preparedness (WW1), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Those we remember, Woodrow Wilson

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Major John Purroy Mitchel in pilot gear, 1918

The have my article up and running over at Roads to the Great War about the life, times, and death of John Purroy Mitchel. New York City’s Boy Mayor was all of thirty-four when he became mayor in 1914. Initially he was an ally of Woodrow Wilson, who in 1913 had appointed him Collector of the Port of New York. Men like Chester Arthur had previously held the collectorship. Mitchel and Wilson soon had a falling out over what the mayor saw as the president’s poor leadership during the war. Soon, Mitchel was very publicly allying with friends like Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard Wood advocating for Preparedness. When he lost his re-election bid, Mitchel became a military aviator. He died in a flight exercise in Louisiana on July 6, 1918, one hundred years ago today.

(image/courtesy of Margaret Maloney via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Decoration Day 1917

29 Monday May 2017

Posted by in Baseball, Charles S. Whitman (Governor), Governors Island, J. Franklin Bell (General), Leonard Wood (General), Memory, Monuments and Statuary, New York City

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I wanted to share a few images from Decoration Day 1917. These photographs were taken near the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Monument in Manhattan’s Riverside Park. Turn out was higher than for Decoration Day parades in recent years, which is not surprising given that this was the first Memorial Day since the call for war. The parade route was actually cut shorter in 1917 to accommodate the increasingly infirm veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic. About four hundred GAR veterans marched in New York City’s 1917 Decoration Day parade, one hundred and thirty fewer than just a year earlier. Veterans of the Spanish-American War and New York Guardsmen recently returned from Texas fell in behind. All told, 18,000 men and women marched in the parade through the Upper West Side. For the first time ever there was a regiment of Negro troops included in New York City’s Decoration Day parade. Though many would not have grasped it at the moment, the perceptive understood that this was an early sign of the coming of what became the New Negro Movement.

That is Major General J. Franklin Bell, commander of the Department of the East on Governors Island, and Governor Charles S. Whitman on the review stand. In the two middle image, they are there on the right in the box. Conspicuously absent is Leonard Wood, though his spirit in a sense was present. Before leaving New York City several weeks earlier he had given his blessing for a parade of the Public School Athletic League. While the veterans’s event was going on, a separate parade comprised of 40,000 schoolchildren was taking place south of here.

Memorial Day also means baseball. Just north of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Monument in the Polo Grounds Grover Cleveland Alexander of the Philadelphia Phillies lost 5-1 to the New York Giants. He went on to win thirty games that season. The following year Alexander was in France fighting the Germans. The Yankees were in Philadelphia playing the other team from the City of Brotherly Love, the Athletics. The Yankees won a double header and held the A’s scoreless over twenty-four innings. The Dodgers, then still the Brooklyn Robins, lost 2-0 to the Braves in Boston. It’s worth noting that the American League was less than twenty years old at this time and very much a competing association with the National. American League owners consciously put teams in cities were the Senior Circuit already had a presence. It says something about the size and influence of Gotham that unlike Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities New York ended up with not just two but three teams.

Enjoy your Memorial Day, everyone.

(images/Library of Congress)

Augustus Peabody Gardner, part one

16 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by in Leonard Wood (General), Preparedness (WW1), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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Congressman Alexander Peabody Gardner (D-MA) was on the golf course in 1916 but back in a military uniform one year later. In May 1917 he was appointed a colonel in the Army.

In Sunday’s post I mentioned Theodore Roosevelt’s efforts to raise four divisions to fight the Germans in the Great War. Two of the major players in that episode were Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and his son-in-law Augustus Peabody Gardner. Lodge and Peabody were Boston Brahmins, part of a world that Roosevelt came to know in the late 1870s while attending Harvard. The names say it all: Lodge, Peabody, Gardner. I am not sure how Augustus is related to Isabella Stewart Gardner, the founder of the museum that bears her name, but the connection is there somewhere. I intend to do a deeper dive on A.P. Gardner later in the centennial, but today I wanted to pause and note something I found to be of great interest: it was one hundred years ago today that he left the United States House of Representative to return to military service.

Augustus Gardner had been a congressman for fifteen years. Before that he had served in the Spanish-American War. Gardner resigned on May 16 and returned immediately to the Officers’ Reserve Corps. Apparently the original plan was to join Major General Leonard Wood’s command in Charleston, South Carolina before going on to France. He was wasting no time. Less than ten days after stepping down, Gardner was stationed for the time being not in the Palmetto State but in New York Harbor at Governors Island. He wrote his wife on May 25 from the Department of the East explaining that he had a small billet in the officers club. He seemed eager to back in uniform but complained that the Army Band was having a soirée just outside. The noise chased him out of his quarters and back to the desk in the Adjutant’s office. Gardner was one of the earliest proponents of Preparedness and knew most of the major players in the movement, including obviously Wood and Roosevelt. With the United States officially in the war and the American military apparatus now gearing up, he was again in an officer’s uniform. He seemed eager to get down to it. In the letter to his better half he explained that he probably would not be leaving the island much because he wanted to focus on the tasks at hand.

(image/Library of Congress)

No Pullmans this time for troops on the move

08 Monday May 2017

Posted by in Governors Island, J. Franklin Bell (General), Leonard Wood (General)

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New York National Guardsmen traveled in luxury on their way to the Mexican Border in June 1916 during the Punitive Expedition (above). Accommodations would be more spartan eleven months later in the leadup to the larger campaign to come against the Kaiser.

I have not been there yet but the Governors Island season began last weekend. Normally things get underway Memorial Day Weekend but they are starting earlier this year. Things were moving at Governors Island one hundred years ago as well. Leonard Wood was gone by now, banished by Newton Baker and Woodrow Wilson to the Department of the Southeast in South Carolina. The new commander in New York Harbor was J. Franklin Bell. He got off to a running start; the Plattsburg training camp was scheduled to open in mid-May, within two weeks of his arrival at Governors Island to command the Department of the East. Thankfully General Bell had men like Major Halstead Dorey continuing with the work they had begun over the previous few summers preparing the nascent American forces. Officers at the Preparedness camps were also working diligently.

Now there was an increased sense of urgency. With war having been declared over a month ago men were moving not just to Plattsburg but to camps across the forty-eght states. This created an extraordinary logistical problem for the War Department. The act of moving men, let alone training and supplying them, was a task unto itself. On 8 May 1917 officers at the Plattsburg training camp announced the train schedule for the troops slated to start arriving later in the week. Here and elsewhere the railroad system was the primary means of travel and the system was severely tested and strained as spring went on. This was not lost on Secretary of War Newton Baker. On 21 April Secretary Baker had issued an order prohibiting the use of luxurious Pullman sleeper cars for the movement of American troops. It was to be day cars only for the doughboys. The measure allowed for a few exceptions–with prior approval–under extenuating circumstances but Baker was adamant that the order be carried out So many men had to be moved to so many different locales on so few rails that there was no other option.

(image/Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 29 June 1916)

The Yankees support General Wood

10 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by in Baseball, Governors Island, Leonard Wood (General), Preparedness (WW1), Woodrow Wilson

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The New York Yankees play their home opener this afternoon against the Tampa Bay Rays. In 1917 the Yankees opened their season at the Polo Grounds versus Babe Ruth and the Boston Red Sox. Leonard Wood threw out the first pitch. I wrote about that two years ago on Opening Day. Here today are two more images of that event. This was 11 April 1917, in between Wood’s lateral demotion from the Department of the East and his move to South Carolina. Dorey had worked for Wood from their time together in the Philippines through the Preparedness movement on Governors Island. President Wilson had relieved Wood of command there a few weeks before this photo was taken. Wood however was still in New York wrapping up in preparation for his transfer to the Department of the Southeast.

Even more intriguing is the photograph below.The men to the extreme right are Yankee owners Colonel Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston. Ruppert is the better known today and was the George Steinbrenner of his era: a German-American who bought the Yankees at a low point and turned them into a juggernaut. On April 13, two days after this photo was taken, Ruppert and other German-Americans met with New York City mayor John Purroy Mitchel at City Hall to announce their formation of a Committee of Men of Teuton Blood in support of the American war effort.

All but forgotten today is his co-owner, with whom he bought the sputtering Yankees in 1915. Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston had served in the Spanish-American War nearly two decades earlier. In February 1917 when things were heating up with Germany he proposed a Sportsmen’s Battalion of athletes to fight should war indeed come. When it finally did, Huston returned to military service and served in France as part of the 16th (Engineers) Regiment. He eventually became the colonel of that unit.

Yankee owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston (in suits, far right) went out of their way on Opening Day 1917 to publicly express their support for Major General Leonard Wood. One month later Huston himself would join what became the A.E.F.

(images/Library of Congress)

Leonard Wood’s reassignment

25 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by in Governors Island, Leonard Wood (General), New York City, Woodrow Wilson

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The Outlook, a pro-Preparedness magazine for which Theodore Roosevelt wrote, told the story of Wood’s transfer in this 1917 article.

The United States was all but on a war footing by the last week of March 1917. There had been several sinkings of American ships that month. On March 20 Woodrow Wilson had called for a special of Congress to be held on April 2. In the meantime National Guardsmen were boarding trains and shipping out to various posts. No one therefore thought anything too amiss when on the afternoon of March 24 Wilson left the White House and traveled to Newton Baker’s office in the State, War, and Navy Building. It seemed natural that the President and Secretary of War would discuss the fluid situation. Instead the two made the fateful decision to relieve Major General Leonard Wood of his duties as commander of the Department of the East on Governors Island. Wood was notified that evening and responded the following day, Sunday March 25. The rest of the country found out the following day.

While some claimed at the time that Wood’s transfer was unexpected, more aware individuals had seen the writing on the wall for some time. Wood had been making increasingly passionate pleas for Preparedness for much of the past year, and was never more publicly vocal than in those last winter days of 1917. Remember that then as now New York City was the media capital of the nation. The city had nearly a dozen daily newspapers, most of which were sending reporters around following Wood’s many appearances.

Technically Wood was not demoted. He remained in the Army and kept his rank. Wilson got rid of Wood by dividing the Eastern Department into three separate jurisdictions. The number of military departments went from four to six. J. Franklin Bell was to move from the Western Department to take over in New York. Wood was given the option of taking over in Hawaii, the Philippines or a new Department of the Southeast in Charleston, South Carolina. Wood chose the latter and effective May 1, 1917 would leave Governors Island island for the Southeastern Department. The Wilson Administration said all the right things, publicly claiming that it was merely a lateral move, but everyone new that this was not the case. New York City was obviously going to be the focal point of any American involvement in the Great War. Wood would now not only be far removed from Governors Island and the New York limelgiht but banished out of the Northeast itself, where support for the American war effort was much stronger than in the more isolationist, solidly Democratic South. Wood was stoic and put on a brave face. When the news came down he responded simply “I am a soldier and I go where I am sent.”

(image/New York Public Library)

Remembering Victor Carlstrom’s flight

26 Thursday May 2016

Posted by in Governors Island, Leonard Wood (General), Philately

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One of the approximately 1000 pieces of mail Victor Carlstrom carried on his flight

One of the approximately 1000 pieces of mail Victor Carlstrom carried on his flight

This coming week in New York is the World Stamp Show, an event I first heard was coming to the Big Apple in 2011. It was one of those things where you hear about it and say to yourself, “Yeah, but 2016 is five years away.” A friend and I have been talking about it eagerly since January and plan to attend to take it all in. An interesting thing came through my in box yesterday about aviator Victor Carlstrom, who I had not heard of until reading the article. Governors Island has a rich aviation history and it turns out that Carlstrom ran airmail for the Post Office in a plane called “The New York Times” that landed on the island in fall 1916. Carlstrom’s Chicago-to-New York run took two days and was hampered by a fuel leak that forced him to touch down a little more than half way. Apparently this one-time thing was something of a promotional stunt for both the Post Office and the Times.

And this was a fairly big event. Carlstrom landed at Governors Island, where Leonard Wood was on hand to greet the pilot. The article has a great photograph of the two men. Presumably he landed on the island because of the Army base’s proximity to Manhattan and the resulting ease to transport the mail haul across the harbor by ferry. Even more touching is that Carlstrom was a Swedish immigrant who had come through Ellis Island a little more than a decade previously. From his plane he would have seen the Immigration station, whose traffic had slowed considerably since the start of the Great War.

The_Brooklyn_Daily_Eagle_Wed__May_9__1917_Carlstrom set all kinds of aviator records but did not have much longer to live. When the United States entered the war the following spring he trained America’s soon-to-be flying aces. As this headline from the 9 May 1917 Brooklyn Daily Eagle shows, Carlstrom was killed in a training accident in Virginia.

(top image, NYPL; bottom, Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

 

 

 

Winding down January 1916 at Governors Island

31 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Governors Island, Leonard Wood (General)

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Theodore Roosevelt's friend and political ally Leonard Wood was a major advocate Preparedness while commanding at Governors Island.

Theodore Roosevelt’s friend and political ally Leonard Wood was a strong advocate of Preparedness while commanding at Governors Island. As January 1916 closed out he was planning for, and looking ahead to, the opening of the civilian training centers come summer.

In the digging I did for yesterday’s post for the anniversary of the birth of Franklin Delano Roosevelt I came across a vignette about Major General Leonard Wood. Wood was commanding the Department of the East on Governors Island at the time, and with talk about Preparedness coming from all sides–from Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Elihu Root, and now even President Wilson–Wood too was thinking about the possibility of American involvement overseas. That is why one hundred years ago this week General Wood publicized his plans for that coming summer’s Plattsburgh camps. As Wood described it there would be five camps in Plattsburgh itself and four at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia. I believe choosing a base in Georgia was a conscious effort to bring North and South together in preparation for joining the Allied cause. That’s also why, when America really entered the war a year later, so many of the bases hastily springing up down South were named after Confederate officers. Remember that this is only a few years after the Gettysburg 50th anniversary.

In a bulletin Wood explained that the nine camps would be divided into senior and junior divisions. College graduate and men aged 23 – 45 would attend the senior encampments and undergraduates and age-qualifying high school senior would be in the junior ranks. The Eastern Department brass was envisioning 10,000 men participating. 1916–just like 2016–was an election year and the Plattsburgh Movement would play a greater role in the election as the months passed.

(image/The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Maj.-Gen. Leonard Wood, 1860-1927.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1860 – 1920. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-1144-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99)

 

 

Memorial Day 2015

25 Monday May 2015

Posted by in Leonard Wood (General), Monuments and Statuary, New York City, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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index.phpA few years ago during Open House New York weekend a friend and I went to the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Riverside Park hoping to get a glimpse inside. We did not, as it turned out to be closed. This monument was completed in 1902 after decades of the sausage-making inherent in constructing such public memorials. Fundraising efforts dated back to at least 1882. Officials nearly chose 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, the site where the statue of William T. Sherman now stands. Oddly the Sherman statue, dedicated on Memorial Day 1903, was originally intended for Riverside Park but Sherman’s family did not want it so close to Grant’s Tomb.

The New York Times noted this past Thursday that Riverside Park Conservancy is pushing for a major renovation. The last major rehabilitation came in the early 1960s during the Civil War centennial.

The Soldiers and Sailors Monument was part of the fabric of New York City Memorial Day ceremonies for decades, and still is to a degree. There were 700 Grand Army of the Republic veterans in attendance on Memorial Day 1914. Archduke Ferdinand was killed just a few weeks later and the Great War was soon on. The following year Leonard Wood, then commanding the Department of the East at Governors Island, pointedly made an appearance. I say pointedly because he, Theodore Roosevelt and others were advocating strenuously for American preparedness, a sentiment that did not endear the general to the Wilson Administration.

Lieutenant Colonel Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt, veteran of the Great War and a founder of the American Legion, led the Great War contingent at the 1919 Memorial Day ceremony held at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. Present that day were veterans of the WW1, the Spanish-American War, and the dwindling contingent from the War of the Rebellion. Ironically Governor Al Smith reviewed the troops that Memorial Day; Roosevelt ran unsuccessfully against Smith five years later in the 1924 governor’s race.

I really hope the conservancy can raise the funds to rehabilitate this important part of our city’s and nation’s history.

(image/Art and Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. “Soldiers’ and sailors’ Monument, Riverside Drive, New York.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-8d55-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99)