Abatis Crazy

TFSmith is evidently very confident in the ability of the Union's engineer corps to construct defences that would withstand the British, praising 'the depth of experience and engineering/artillery specialists available' to them. Unfortunately, TFSmith is clearly not an engineering specialist, because the defences he proposes defy the most fundamental rules of logic.

Before we can understand how ridiculous they are, however, we must understand what they are. In the original version of the TL, the fortifications were described as follows.

Timber blockhouses had been built adjacent to the fort and along the border, stretching west to where the Montreal & Plattsburgh crossed the line, with a line of abatis between the blockhouses. As that took shape, a second defensive line had been built from the fort southwest toward the village of Rouse’s Point, using the stone-built railway station as the anchor to the west. The results were two lines, anchored on the fort and lake to the east and blockhouses or stone buildings to the west, and each supported by corduroyed roads and battery positions. The position formed a triangle, with its apex at Fort Montgomery and the base along the railway line, which ran almost due south toward Plattsburgh.

When the author was forced to amend the TL to take account of the fact that the Plattsburgh-Rouse's Point railway did not exist, the description changed surprisingly little:

Timber blockhouses had been built adjacent to the fort and along the border, stretching west to where the Plattsburgh Road crossed the line, with a line of abatis between the blockhouses. As that took shape, a second defensive line had been built from the fort southwest toward the village of Rouse’s Point, using the stone-buildings of the town as the anchor to the west. The results were two lines, anchored on the fort and lake to the east and blockhouses or stone buildings to the west, and each supported by corduroyed roads and battery positions. The position formed a triangle, with its apex at Fort Montgomery and the base along the post road, which ran almost due south toward Plattsburgh

It is rather unfortunate that TFSmith deleted all references to railways from this description, because contemporary maps show that the Champlain and St Lawrence runs north right across his chosen battlefield. Indeed, it crosses the post road at the border, at the exact point he placed his blockhouses. In fact, the whole situation really begs the question of why Hooker's division is stranded in Plattsburgh, with no options except marching by road or waiting for the lake to thaw. As the Point forms the hub of a rail network which would enable a force stationed there to threaten Canada as well as to shift reinforcements west to the St Lawrence or east to Vermont, would Hooker not be better there? But we digress.

Drawing an exact map of this second version is extremely difficult. As the railway runs into the town on its northern side, with very few buildings located to its north, any abatis that stretched into the town proper would also cut the railway line to Ogdensburg. TFSmith is not specific about which buildings in town were used as the anchor, and identifying them has proved almost impossible. A quick jaunt through town on Google Street View (which the reader is welcome to attempt for themselves) shows that the majority of houses are wooden clapboard, while most of the remainder are brick rather than stone. Moreover, many of these date from later than our period: for instance, the Bowron Block on the corner of Lake and State Streets bears the inscription 1908.

In this respect, the evidence of Britsh journalist G.A. Sala is instructive. To celebrate Christmas 1863 in British dominions, Sala set off on a journey of 401 miles from New York to Montreal that was supposed to take fifteen hours and actually took thirty-six. When the train from St Albans arrived at Rouse's Point, where a railway official informed that they had missed their connection to Montreal and would have to wait twelve hours for the next train, an angry mob of passengers besieged the Montreal and Champlain's traffic manager in what Sala described as 'a vast timber counting-house.' This strongly suggests that the vast majority of town was then, as it is now, made of wood.

TFSmith may well know that most of the town was wooden, and has chosen to ignore it to strengthen the Union defences. After all, the railway station he described as 'stone-built' is quite clearly brick. This does not make it easy to draw a map of his defences, but it is possible with some compromises. To reconcile his descriptions with reality, we will assume that the southern line stretches to the cluster of houses north of the railway lines but delete the railway lines themselves from the battlefield.

No liberties have been taken with this map: this is how TFSmith described the Rouse's Point defences. On seeing the map, the first observation is likely to be how extraordinarily long the lines of abatises are. In fact, the northern line is 0.94 miles and the southern 0.86. The second observation is how incredibly distant from reinforcements the northern blockhouses are. Troops in the fort are less than a mile distant, but have to cross what we are told are 'snow-covered fields, woodlots crisscrossed by deadfall, and mostly bare forest'. Though one would expect there to be a corderoy road here, there is no mention of one when the British attacked the fort: consequently, we must assume that none exists. Troops in Rouse's Point, meanwhile, have to march 1.1 miles up the post road. This is at least half an hour's march for either group of troops, plus any additional time for a messenger to contact them and for the troops to get into marching order.

The third observation will probably be that there are only two blockhouses. Again, this is true to the timeline itself. TFSmith does talk about how 'log blockhouses and abatis stretched off farther into the woods' and how 'timber blockhouses had been built adjacent to the fort and along the border'. However, a more sustained reading reveals there to be only two blockhouses, one to the east and one to the west of the road:

two black circles, showing the blockhouses the Americans had built where the railway crossed the border.

Bradford’s Royal Canadian Rifles battalion moved forward in the last minutes before dawn, skillfully using the soldiers’ abilities as woodsmen to infiltrate close enough to rush the East and West blockhouses on each side of the railroad,

The senior man in the field that night, Orderly Sgt. Daniel S. Benton, had heard something; he roused the rest of the company and Lennox ordered all of his men out of the Western Blockhouse and into a skirmish line... Witnesses said they saw Benton run across the roadbed to rouse the men of the 10th in the Eastern Blockhouse

Note that East(ern) and West(ern) are capitalised, which strongly suggests these are the only two. Moreover, 'After both the eastern and western houses had been blown to ruins,' we do not hear about any further blockhouses. As an attack on the fort would have to run their gauntlet, we can conclude that they are not present.

The deployments of the troops are also frankly extraordinary. There are 420 men of the 21st militia and 873 (per the January 1862 report) of the 50th New York Engineers quartered in the fort: a particularly impressive achievement, as the 'soldiers’ barracks were designed early on, in 1850, but these structures, which were to abut curtains I and II, were never built'; 'Construction on the soldier’s barracks adjoining curtain I was started, but work stopped before much work was done'. The 55th New York Volunteers, meanwhile, is bivouacked in the village: somehow it has ten companies, although historically its Company B failed to organise and only joined the regiment in April 1862. This leaves the only troops in the blockhouses, a mile away from any support, as the 195 men of the 10th New York Militia. Indeed, the fact that Brigadier General Samson takes a 'few of his men who had been bivouacked in the village... north along the post road' suggests that not all those 195 men were in the blockhouses to start with.

There are other observations that might be made about this map. For instance, why bother constructing 'battery positions' when the nearest artillery is a single battery stationed eleven miles away at Mooers' Point? But the most critical problem is that this whole system of defences does not actually protect the fort. If the British were not idiots, they could have completely bypassed the blockhouses and, masking them with the Royal Canadian Rifles to prevent them attacking the British rear, marched straight on their objectives. As this diagram based on accurately modelled British unit frontages shows, there is plenty of room for them to do this.

Why the British adopt the plan they do, and why they are complete idiots to do so, will be the subject of the next post. In the meantime, consider how much more efficient and effective the following arrangement of abatises and blockhouses would have been- if, indeed, any additional defences had really been required.