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Trivia Question
How were battles named during the Civil War?
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News and Events
Stars & Stripes Events
From the Colonial Period through the Civil War & Beyond
In this newsletter we have two articles.
1.)The first article discusses Lincoln's use of the telegraph and how he integrated this new invention into the war effort.
2.)The second article examines loyal blacks who rallied to the British flag in the Revolutionary War. The book review details their significance and the predictable outcome of their choice.
Stars & Stripes Contact Info:
Stars Stripes Events
info@starsandstripesevents.com
bruceventer@aol.com
dave@davehinze.com
Website
www.starsandstripesevents.com
Phone
1-888-399-7874
Address
PO Box 1649
Rolla, MO 65402
Tours at a glance:
Mosby's Confederacy: Fights and Sites of the 43rd Battalion, Partisan Rangers Sunday, April 18, from 8 AM to 5 PM with Horace Mewborn & Bruce Venter.
Daniel Boone: Revolutionary War Hero of Kentucky-Dave Hinze and Bruce Venter-May 15-17-Lexington, KY.
Jesse James Rebel, Outlaw & American Icon. -Dave Hinze and Josh Scott-June 4-6-Liberty, MO.
Drums Along the Mohawk: The Revolutionary War in Upstate New York-Bruce Venter and Dave Hinze-July 21-24-Johnstown, NY.
Custer, Crook and Crazy Horse-Robert F. O'Neill with Bruce Venter. August 4-7-Sheridan, WY.
Richmond Redeemed: Grant's Fifth Offensive at Petersburg: New Market Heights, Ft. Harrisson, Poplar Grove Church & more.-Dr. Richard J. Sommers. October 7-10.
The Bristoe Campaign: Lee vs Meade in the fall of 1863. Led by historians J. Michael Miller, Horace Mewborn, & Bruce Venter. October 28-30 Culpeper, VA.
Great Commanders Series - Patrick Cleburne vs. George Thomas: Chattanooga to Chickamauga-Thomas Cartwright and Dave Hinze-November 3-6. Chattanooga, TN.
Tour Basics
1. All tours go rain or shine.
2. Bus departs on time. We cannot wait for late boarders.
3. Itineraries are subject to change.
4. Call 888-399-7874 to determine the accessibility of specific tours
for people w/ limited mobility to make advanced accommodations if necessary.
5. Special dietary restrictions should call 888-399-7874 beforehand to arrange accommodation.
6. Seats near front of the bus can be saved for those with special needs. The two front seats behind the driver will be reserved for historians.
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Speaking Engagements
Bruce & Dave accept offers for speaking engagements on a variety of topics from the Revolutionary War through the Civil War. Bruce does a superb job of impersonating a variety of British officers who served in America. Dave has speeches ready on the Revolutionary War & the Civil War.
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How the Telegraph Helped Lincoln Win the Civil War By Tom Wheeler. Mr. Wheeler is the author of Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War (HarperCollins, 2006)
"What became of our forces which held the bridge till twenty minutes ago...? The President of the United States telegraphed a colonel in the field during the Civil War Battle of Second Manassas (Bull Run) in 1862. Abraham Lincoln was using the new medium of electronic communications in an unprecedented manner to revolutionize the nature of national leadership.
When Lincoln arrived for his inauguration in 1861 there was not even a telegraph line to the War Department, much less the White House. Storm clouds were brewing, but when the US Army wanted to send a telegram they did like everyone else: sending a clerk with a hand written message to stand in line at Washington's central telegraph office. That unwieldy situation changed rapidly, however, as wires were strung to the War Department and other key installations. The White House, however, remained without any outside connection.
The national leaders were like their constituents in their understanding of electronic communications. While an interesting and growing technology, the telegraph's potential was still widely under appreciated and it certainly had never been tested in a time of crisis. This reality makes Lincoln's subsequent embrace of the new technology even more remarkable. Without the guidance of precedent, and in the middle of a battle for the nation's survival, Abraham Lincoln used the new electronic communications to transform the nature of the presidency. The telegraph became a tool of his leadership and, thus, helped to win the Civil War.
Four months into his presidency Lincoln sat with his generals and waited while the thunder of cannon could be heard from the battlefield at Manassas, just 30 miles outside the capital. Their lack of activity was almost surreal. The General-in-Chief, Winfield Scott, was so accepting of the tradition of being unable to communicate rapidly with the front that he took a nap during the battle. The president found it necessary to awaken his top commander as the battle raged.
A young Pennsylvania Railroad supervisor named Andrew Carnegie had been given the responsibility of extending a telegraph line into Northern Virginia. The task was incomplete by the time the two armies clashed; the line stopped ten miles short of the battlefield. In a hybrid of the old and new, messengers from the field galloped to the end of the telegraph line. "Lincoln hardly left his seat in our office and waited with deep anxiety for each succeeding despatch [sic]," recorded the manager of the War Department's new telegraph office.
The telegraph was beginning to change the executive's relationship with his forces in the field. While General Scott napped, the new president consumed the electronically delivered updates. Thirteen months later, when the armies battled again along Bull Run, it was a different story in the telegraph office. No longer was Lincoln content to sit idly by and await information, he was actively in communication with the front.
During Second Manassas (Bull Run) the Confederates cut the telegraph connections with Washington. Unable to communicate with his key generals, Lincoln opened a telegraphic dialog with a subordinate officer that continued for several days. The telegrams between the president and Colonel Herman Haupt were at one point the national leadership's best source of information. The telegraph office became, as Eliot Cohen identified, the first White House Situation Room where the president could be in almost real time communication with his forces while at the same time participating in strategic discussions with his advisers.
Throughout the entire history of armed conflict, the ability to have a virtually instantaneous exchange between a national leader at the seat of government and his forces in the field had been impossible. As a result, field commanders had been the closest things to living gods. Cut off from the national leadership, the unilateral decisions of the generals determined not only the fate of individuals' lives, but also the future of nations. It was for this reason that heads of government, such as Henry V at Agincourt or Bonaparte in Russia, had remained with their troops to combine both national and military leadership.
The American democratic experiment was different, however. American wars had always been fought with the head of government removed from the scene of battle. When General Scott decided to march on Mexico City in 1847, for instance, the nation's leaders learned of the attack days after the event.
Had the traditional model of generals divorced from speedy interaction with the national leadership persisted during the Civil War the results could have been quite different. Lincoln used the telegraph to put starch in the spine of his often all too timid generals and to propel his leadership vision to the front. Most importantly, he used the telegraph as an information gathering tool to understand what was going on in the headquarters of his military leadership.
When General Joseph Hooker floated a trial balloon at the start of the Gettysburg Campaign in 1863, Lincoln used the telegraph to reinforce his strategic redirection away from the acquisition of real estate to the destruction of the enemy. Hooker saw the Confederates' move north as an opportunity to move against their capital. Lincoln responded succinctly, reminding Hooker of his objective, "If left to me, I would not go South of the Rappahannock, upon Lee's moving North of it...I think Lee's army, and not Richmond, is your true objective point." Of course couriers could have carried these messages back and forth, but the immediacy of electronic messages put the president in his general's tent, capable of a rapid-fire back-and-forth exchange almost as if he were physically present.
The year before his exchange with Hooker, during Confederate General Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign, Lincoln had done more than simply counsel on strategy; he used the telegraph to take command. As Jackson threatened Washington, the president telegraphed direct orders to generals in the field, moving men around as though on a chessboard. That the orders did not produce the desired result is more of a reflection on their poor implementation than on the president's strategy and tactics.
When Lincoln and the nation finally found the general they deserved in Ulysses Grant the president continued to evolve his use of electronic messages. The wire became a way for the president to stay informed and assert himself.
After reading a message from Grant to Chief-of-Staff Halleck which fretted that quelling the draft riots of 1864 might deplete the force at the front and thus affect his operations, Lincoln intervened directly. "Hold on with a bull-dog grip, and chew and choke, as much as possible" he wired Grant. It was as good as walking into Grant's headquarters, sizing up the general's state of mind, and responding through conversation. As he put down the president's telegram, Grant laughed out loud and exclaimed to those around him, "The President has more nerve than any of his advisers." Grant was, of course, correct in his observation. More important, however, he had just held in his hands the tool Lincoln used for reinforcing his resolve and making sure that neither distance nor intermediaries diffused his leadership.
The slightly fewer than 1000 telegrams Abraham Lincoln sent during his presidency also provide us with an insight that his other writings cannot. Because Lincoln kept no diary we must rely on his correspondence and speeches for insights into the workings of his mind and the nature of his interactions with others. In this regard, however, Lincoln's telegrams can be the next best thing to a transcript. Whereas Lincoln's letters were well thought out précis designed to stand on their own, many of his telegrams are spontaneous responses to a specific stimulus. Thus they constitute the closest we will ever get to a tape recording of Lincoln's interaction with his generals. Read in tandem with the messages he received, these telegrams are like eavesdropping on a conversation with Abraham Lincoln.
The story of Abraham Lincoln and the telegraph is perhaps the greatest
untold story about this great man. Through these messages it is possible to watch Lincoln's confidence grow and in turn to observe his
growth as a leader. What is most remarkable, however, is that Abraham Lincoln applied the new telegraph technology in an absence of precedent. Without the guidance of text, tutor, or training Lincoln instinctively discerned the transformational nature of the new technology and applied its dots and dashes as an essential tool for winning the Civil War.
Black Loyalists in the American Revolution
By John J. McLaughlin Mr. McLaughlin received his PhD in history from Drew University in 2008. His dissertation focused on General Albert C. Wedemeyer.
In 1775 when armed conflict appeared inevitable between England and the American Colonists, there were approximately 500,000 slaves in the Southern Colonies, roughly twenty percent of the total population of the entire 13 colonies. This presented a frightening situation for the slave owners, but fascinating opportunities for the British forces. The British were chronically short of troops, and a number of theories were advanced to take advantage of the slave situation, such as inciting an insurrection of the slaves and causing chaos in the southern colonies, wrecking their economy.
The colonists briefly considered using some as soldiers to fight the British, but this notion was quashed by the fear of putting weapons in the hands of slaves whose loyalty was uncertain. Furthermore, slave owners feared that if this plan was implemented, some slaves, devoted to their masters, would have willingly borne arms, but would have presented postwar problems. The question would have been how to compel them to revert to their pre-war slave status after having fought a war for independence and "freedom" from oppression.
Two declarations, both authored by the British, initiated "Black Loyalist" history. The first was Lord Dunmore's Proclamation of 1775; the second, Commander-in-Chief Sir Henry Clinton's Philipsburg Proclamation of 1779. The idea behind both declarations was to encourage the slaves to desert their masters and come over to the British cause on the promise of freedom and free land at the end of the war. Lord Dunmore's Proclamation met with only limited success because it required the slaves to actually join the fighting forces and bear arms. It was unlikely that any married slave would desert his family and leave them to the mercy of an infuriated master. Four years later, Sir Henry Clinton's proclamation solved this dilemma by making the same offer to any slave who came over to the British side and pursued "any occupation which he shall think proper." The offer applied to males and females and included the slave's family.
Clinton's proclamation was very successful. It is estimated that about 100,000 slaves, often whole families, deserted to the British. Black slaves proved extremely useful to the British. In addition to the thousands who actually saw military action, many were employed as blacksmiths, coopers, tailors, carpenters, bakers and guides. Slaves were especially important as guides. Many knew the country intimately (especially the back roads, swamps, rivers and streams) and were invaluable to the British.
Just what did the termination of hostilities mean for slaves who had taken advantage of the Dunmore and Philipsburg Proclamations? After all, the British were the losers and hardly in a position to dictate terms. Suffice to say, it presented the British with a real dilemma. General Carlton, the new British commander who replaced Clinton, knew that the Treaty committed his country to returning all slaves to their former owners, a policy totally at odds with the promises of Dunmore and Clinton, and he resolved to remedy the situation.
The Americans, intending to enforce the provisions of the peace treaty relating to return of slaves, demanded their slaves back as "property" and were not interested in any British commitment to free the slaves and grant them land. General Washington met General Carleton at Orangetown, New York on May 6, 1783 and determined to force his will on the British general and return the slaves. Carlton, to his immense credit, refused to honor the provision of the peace treaty that required return of the slaves to their former owners. He insisted that the British commitment be honored and he pledged the honor of the British Parliament to grant compensation to the slave owners if his stand was not upheld. He refused to give in to the pressure from Washington, in itself a formidable task.
There were thousands of blacks in New York claiming freedom. In order to settle the claims a commission was set up to hear the cases. The commission, under the supervision of General Samuel Birch, consisted of three British and two American officers. They met twice weekly at the famous, and still standing, Fraunces' Tavern, in lower Manhattan to hear and decide the cases of those blacks who claimed to "qualify" under the terms of the proclamations. One can only imagine the heartrending scenes that transpired, as hundreds of poor, uneducated, and inarticulate blacks seeking to produce evidence faced hostile and demonstrative masters who poured into the city from all over the south, demanding their "property" back. The actual records still exist and copies of the hearings are lodged with the New York Public Library. Each decision is written in longhand. There were no "pro bono" lawyers or a "Legal Aid Society" to represent them. Doubtless, many of those entitled to freedom lost their cases. Many worthy blacks were spirited away by former masters and returned to slavery without a chance to present their cases.
The approximately 3,000 slaves that qualified were transported to Nova
Scotia to begin a new life along with roughly 27,000 white Loyalists. They landed in Birchtown [named after Samuel Birch] in the spring and summer of 1783, full of hope and the expectation to begin a wonderful new life as free men and women.
The story should have ended there with a happy conclusion for these brave colonists. Unfortunately, it did not. Most of the good land was deeded to the 27,000 white Loyalists who fled to Nova Scotia. Priority was given to those who lost the most "property" in the revolution, and, of course, none of the blacks had any property to lose, so they came at the end of the line. After seven years of suffering, approximately one-third of the black settlers accepted an offer to create a new colony by the name of Sierra Leona in Africa, and sadly they returned to their native land.
Descendants of the two-thirds of the Black Loyalists who came to Nova Scotia and did not return to Africa are still living in Nova Scotia. Their remarkable history is recorded in the Black History Museum located in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. This author has twice visited the Museum and interviewed some of the descendants. Anyone interested in reading more about the Black Loyalists should consult the two best books The Black Loyalists, by James W. St. G. Walker and The Loyal Blacks by Ellen Gibson Wilson, or visit The Black Loyalist Heritage web site at blackloyalist@blackloyalist.com
Dave Hinze
Bruce Venter |
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