TFSmith is obsessed with West Point, believing that it gives the Union a vast pool of reserve officers who would 'have made a tremendous difference in a war with Britain' and whose existence 'makes clear how true Shelby Foote's "one hand behind its back" meme actually is'. Perhaps the best place to illustrate how completely stupid this belief is would be the West Point Class of 1829.
The Class of 1829 consisted of 46 graduands. By the start of 1862, 18 of these had died; four were serving in the Confederate Army (including both J.E. Johnston and R.E. Lee); three were living in the South; and thirteen were serving with the Union Army. TFSmith treats seven of the remaining eight as 'ralliers', giving them staff appointments ranging from chaplain through paymaster, commissary, and inspector general. The only one he leaves unassigned is Edward R. Williams, presumably because Bill Thayer's guide to Cullum's Register doesn't include any information on his life. Clearly, going to census records or obituaries to find out more about Williams would be too much effort- just as it would be too much effort to research British officers.
This 95% availability figure for West Point graduates is patently ridiculous. For a start, the class record reveals that, by the start of 1862, these individuals would have been aged between 57 and 51. At a time when life expectancy was 40.5, and when almost 40% of the class had died already, we might well expect some of the remaining seven to be sufficiently infirm to disqualify them from service.
Yet, far from making an allowance for this, TFSmith actively puts sick men into service. Take Miner Knowlton, who TFSmith admits was 'sidelined by poor health after Mexico (may have been malaria or something equally nasty and reccurring)'. McClellan's temporary bout of typhoid fever was enough to have him sacked as general-in-chief, but 'nasty and recurring' illnesses don't disqualify people from service as long as TFSmith considers them 'obviously capable'.
At least some of these appointments seem to be elaborate jokes. For instance, TFSmith appoints Class of 1829 graduate Lancaster P. Lupton as commissary in California. The perpetually drunk Lupton had resigned from the US Army to avoid being court-martialled for insulting President Jackson, and had been bankrupted at least twice in civilian life. Does he sound like a particularly good candidate to be put in charge of valuable army supplies, or given responsibility for managing government funds? Needless to say, absolutely no reference is made to Lupton's flaws in the timeline, as it is only British officers who are allowed to have personal failings.
We also have the case of Major John C. Symmes, dragged out of retirement to form part of the Union delegation that meets with Otto von Bismarck in October 1862. Symmes would undoubtedly have made a singular impression on Bismarck, as the reason he left the service was because - not to put to fine a point on it - he was stark raving bonkers. As Bill Thayer's guide to Cullum's Register explains, he was:
'on leave of absence till November, 1861, when he was retired. The cause of his early retirement was aberration of the mind. He was in Europe at the time of his retirement and never returned to this country... The last letter I received from him told me that I might expect a call from him anyday from his balloon, in which he was coming across the Atlantic.'The reader may well wish to know whether Symmes' transatlantic ballooning capabilities were discussed at Schonhausen, or if his father's theories about the earth being hollow came up during a more informal part of the evening. Alas, this is left to our imagination.
It is possible that TFSmith was lazy enough not to click through to the part of the webpage that discussed Symmes' madness. However, we know elsewhere that he lies about the qualifications of these 'ralliers' in order to make them fit the story. For instance, in Chapter 10 part 1 we find the following description of those working on the defences of the northern lakes:
The most senior of them all was retired Brigadier General Joseph G. Swift, 79, who had graduated from West Point in 1802 and had a distinguished career as an engineering officer for more than five decades. Although in poor health, Swift, who lived in Oswego, provided a living symbol of the previous conflict, and on the handful of sunny days, could be found on the ramparts of Fort Ontario, watching the stone and earthworks being thrown up and guns emplaced.
Yet elsewhere we find Smith admitting that Swift 'in 1861-62, was in Geneva, NY, on Lake Seneca'- where he actually lived, fifty miles from Oswego. And even this positioning in Geneva is wrong! Swift's memoirs show that he split his time between Brooklyn, West Point, and Geneva, and specify that 'From the arrival of General Scott from France in December 1861, I was with him frequently in conversation upon the passing events of our unhappy rebellion'. As Scott was in New York during this time, this strongly suggests that Swift was in Brooklyn- not Geneva, and certainly not Oswego.
The other factor which TFSmith completely ignores is the question of loyalty. We have seen that in the hands of TFSmith, even the most ardent Secessionist is 'a loyalist at heart'- indeed, most of the British and Canadians want to be American too. In reality, many of these supposed 'ralliers' would not have come out for a war with Britain any more than they would have come out for the Civil War.
Consider Henry B. Sears. Because it is in Cullum's Register, TFSmith knows that he has been in Britain for five years by the time of the Trent, and has established himself as a merchant at Liverpool. However, TFSmith has him throw all this in to join the mission to Otto von Bismarck (alongside the balloonist major). For TFsmith to have Sears make such a sacrifice, you might assume that he can support it with evidence that Sears was a strong Union supporter.
However, all the available evidence points in the other direction. In 1871, less than six years after the end of the Civil War, Sears married his daughter Ella to Lieutenant Irvine Stephens Bulloch CSN (formerly of the Alabama and the Shenandoah). Indeed, Sears is buried in Toxteth Cemetery next to Commander James Dunwoody Bulloch CSN, Irvine's half-brother. Here we have the quintessential demonstration of the timeline's pro-Union bias. Where there is circumstantial evidence that men might have been disloyal, TFSmith either ignores it or fails to pick up on it. When he needs them to fight for the Union, he invents it by terming them 'loyalist at heart' or 'soldiers of fortune'.
We may find this phenomenon demonstrated elsewhere. Robert E. Lee came second in the class of 1829: the man who beat him was Charles Mason. TFSmith believes that Mason 'seemed an obvious choice for the JAG post in Fremont's Department of the Northwest in BROS'. However, this only shows how little research TFSmith has done. Fremont was a Radical Republican, and Mason was a Copperhead Peace Democrat - and a virulent racist, to boot.*
Far from working with Abolitionists, Mason tried to block the promotion of Colonel Marcellus Crocker of the 13th Iowa volunteers by posting evidence of his abolitionist views to the Senate Military Affairs Committee. He was angered by the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and protested that the Fugitive Slave Law was not being adhered to. He saw the Emancipation Proclamation as a blow to property rights, complaining that Lincoln was an 'absolute despot' and arguing that freed blacks should be returned to slavery at the end of the war.
Instead of allowing such men to sit out the war, TFSmith puts them right at the heart of its prosecution. Yet simultaneously, he allows Lincoln to push through radical emancipation measures more quickly than he could historically. In effect, this is TFSmith's version of the Confederacy slave-soldiers trope, or the reunion of North and South in Stars and Stripes Forever with its concomitant emancipation. It is ahistorical, nonsensical, wishful thinking.
TFSmith believes that these 'ralliers' would leap to the defence of the Union with the threat of foreign war. In reality, Mason illustrates how stupidly, blindly nationalistic this belief is. Far from being prepared to fight foreign intervention, Mason actively prayed for it. He hoped that European powers would join the war- 'I do not care how quick they do so. It is high time that some outside power should intermeddle to oblige us to keep the peace.' As Wubben summarises:
'He wanted northern armies defeated, which, not incidentally, meant northern soldiers being killed in great enough numbers to lose battles. He wanted Confederate armies to be successful... He wanted foreign intervention if necessary to achieve this end. He wanted southern armies to enlist blacks so they could stave off defeat (enlistment of blacks in northern armies, however, was unthinkable). And he wanted southern soldiers to hold fast, to stick with their units, and to fight on stubbornly in the last few months of the war. Suffice it to say that those who, during the war, believed Charles Mason was a completely loyal man at heart would have been shocked had they read his diary.'
No doubt many of the other so-called 'ralliers' shared his sentiments, either to a greater or lesser degree. Therein, undoubtedly, lies the reason they never 'rallied' during the Civil War as it was fought historically. However, even if TFSmith had the nous to discover this, he is far too much of an American exceptionalist ever to admit it to be true.
*This draws from H.H. Wubben, 'Copperhead Charles Mason: A Question of Loyalty,' Civil War History volume 24 number 1 (March 1978)
The whole concept was dubious to begin with, honestly, because a lot of these men (on account of having had what TFSmith feels is an important professional education) would have roles in the civilian economy which could not easily be substituted - that is, if they're all as competent as he thinks.
ReplyDeleteIt's like the Union's permitted to undergo Total Economic Mobilization on the scale of WW1 Britain or France (or WW2 Germany) but when Britain pushes up their number of voluntary military recruits from ~0.8% of population to ~1% of population the roof falls in and the economy collapses.