Tag Archives: robert e lee

October 15, 2013 · 23:12

To the Brink…An Unnecessary Condition of Affairs

I have resisted writing much about the shutdown that has beset our nation the past two weeks and the looming debt default. Truthfully I don’t know what to say. I am amazed that we have reached this point, but then at the same time I am not. I saw it coming in 2011 when the I wrote a couple of articles while nursing a broken leg. One The Deal is Done and are We? There are Always Results was written the day the deal was done, the other Be Careful…there is a point of no return and we may have crossed it was written the day prior to the deal.

Both articles lamented the state of the body politic of the nation and recognized that the actions of our political leaders, men and women elected by us were much less about the budget than a cultural war elicited by the unbridled hatred of our fellow citizens.

Back then I wrote:

“The attitudes that we have formed and angry words which we now use so ubiquitously are reflective of a deep hatred that now is becoming what defines us as a people. In fact the deep and abiding hatred which now permeates our society is now threatening the international standing and I would say the national security of the United States. We have only ourselves to blame because through our actions and inactions of the past decade we have made our choice to be what we have become and there is no one group especially in our political, media and business elites that have served us well. In fact we have as voters chosen this toxic mix of elected officials often more influenced by hate spewing pundits and our own self interests rather than that of the nation and future generations much as we would like to claim that we are looking out for the future.”

I am an American. I serve my country regardless of who the President is. I have served under five Presidents now. In each case there have been things that I have liked and disliked about each of them as well as policies with which I have disagreed. But for me the fundamental principle was always the good of the country. That is something that I cannot say exists, especially in the Jacobins of the Tea Party who have driven the country to the point of default for no good reason.

People can say that their opposition to the Affordable Health Care Act is a matter of principle. But it is law and has been deemed Constitutional by the Supreme Court. Shutting down the government and bringing about default is not the means to change a law, even one that some despise.

The government shutdown, the default and the Sequester brought about by the Budget Control Act of 2011 are dangerous. I see them from a national security point of view. In national security parlance our national power is not merely based on military power. It is what we call the DIME. The Diplomatic, Informational, Military and Economic power of the nation. These factors all have been weakened by the shutdown, the threatened default and the sequester. Our status as a world power is directly affected by these actions, and like it or not in our globalized interconnected world all these factors matter. The actions of Congress, particularly the members of the House precipitating these actions are dangerous, irresponsible and stupid.

It doesn’t take much to figure out that the Chinese in particular are attempting to use this to their advantage. The are lobbying for a new world economic order which would replace the Dollar as the world wide reserve currency. The loss of this would harm us immeasurably as many of our advantages in trade, finance and other economic matters are directly related to our economic and political stability and trust of other nations believing that we will act in a responsible matter.

Likewise there are people that have become unhinged. Today I had a comment on the site which I did not allow from a man in Louisiana (IP address lookup is a cool tool) who was more extreme than many of the more extreme Tea Party extremists I have encountered. By labeling these particular people extreme I am not making a blanket statement about people in the Tea Party because I know many good people who I count as friends in the Tea Party movement who are rational, reasonable and non-violent.

That being said I have gotten past the point of needing to engage unhinged internet trolls or giving them room to spout their hatred on this site. The man was spouting the most insane babble, a mixture of Alex Jones paranoia and simple hate devoid of any real real arguments. I went to his site and saw that this was his normal writing style. It was scary because his answer was violence.

I am reminded of what Robert E Lee testified before a Senate hearing after the defeat of the Confederacy.

“I may have said and I may have believed that the position of the two sections which they held to each other was brought about by the politicians of the country; that if the great mass of the people, if they had understood the real questions would have avoided it. I did believe at the time that it (the war) was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forbearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides.”

That is what we face today. There is a hard core of idealist who will not compromise, who see compromise as weakness and defeat. They lack the understanding that the very narrow latitude prescribed in our governmental structure and Constitution prescribed by our founders demands compromise. Otherwise the system cannot work. It is not perfect by a long shot. There will always be things about the country that one faction or another does not like and attempts to change through the normal legislative process. That is what is supposed to happen in order to form “a more perfect union.” However that is not what is happening in this case. The radicals appear to want to destroy the country allegedly to save it.

I know not what tomorrow holds. I hope and pray that the shutdown will be ended, a continuing resolution passed and default averted. However I do not know if it will happen, and that should cause all of us regardless of our political views to ask just what the hell are we doing?

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as affordable health care act, budget control act of 2011, chinese communists, congress, dollar as reserve currency, government shutdown, national security, robert e lee, sequester, supreme court, tea party movement, the DIME, united states constitution

September 17, 2013 · 23:58

Antietam and Syria…Beginning to Understand How Societies Slip Into Carnage

On September 17th 1862 the there was a battle in the War Against the Slaveholder’s Rebellion, sometimes called the American Civil War. It occurred when the Rebel Army under the command of Robert E Lee invaded the North, moving into Maryland. After a series of smaller engagements the Army of the Potomac under Major General McClellan engaged the Rebel forces at the town of Sharpsburg on the banks of the Antietam Creek.

The ensuing battle was the bloodiest single day engagement fought on the North American Continent. Almost 23,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded that day. Historian Stephen Sears titled his book about the battle Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam.

I have been to that battlefield a number of times, both on my own and as part of a formal “Staff Ride.” My own military career touches the battle because when I served in the Texas and Virginia National Guard units that I was a part of traced their lineage to units that fought on that blood drenched parcel of land. In Texas units I served with were part of the 1st and 5th Texas Regiments which served in John Bell Hood’s Texas Brigade and in Virginia the 2nd and 17th Virginia Infantry Regiments.

Each time that I have been there I have never failed to be overwhelmed by the carnage inflicted on Americans by other Americans in the space of under 12 hours.

Then I think about other current civil wars and I begin to understand how places like Syria or Iraq can degenerate into sectarian bloodbaths. Both of those countries have only existed in their present form about 80 years and even then they were under the rule of military leaders for decades.

Actually it is not that hard for this to happen. We in the United States like to hold ourselves up as a model of how to do things right. But our own “Civil War” or the Slaveholder’s Revolt shows just how easily the populace a supposedly Christian and religious society can turn against each other and in the course of a day slaughter thousands and in the space of a few short years kill nearly 600,000 of their own countrymen.

Thus when I look at what is happening in other nations I am less likely to judge them so harshly. I wonder how bad the carnage of our civil war would have been had we had modern weapons including chemical weapons. Somehow I think that we would have used them quite effectively against each other and that the casualties of the war would have been at least twice as great as the Civil War.

What would the rest of the world think if it was happening here today? But more importantly what would we do?

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as american civil war, battle of antietam, landscape turned red, robert e lee, stephan sears, syria

July 3, 2013 · 23:26

Gettysburg at 150: The Accounting in Lives and Difficult Moral Questions

“Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?”James Longstreet

“It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it.” Robert E Lee

As the sun set on the evening of July 3rd 1863 the battered Army of Northern Virginia and the battered but victorious Army of the Potomac tended their wounds, buried their dead and prepared for what might happen next.

Following the disastrous attack aimed at the Union center, what is commonly called “Pickett’s Charge” Lee and his surviving commanders prepared for an expected Union counter attack. However, George Meade, the commander of the Army of the Potomac who had correctly anticipated Lee’s assault decided not to gamble on a counter attack, though it was tempting. He knew too well the tenacity and skill of the Confederate commanders and soldiers on the defense and did not want to risk a setback that might give Lee another chance.

The dead and wounded littered the battlefield. Field hospitals, little more than butcher shops where arms and legs were amputated by overworked surgeons and attendants while those with abdominal wounds that could not be easily repaired were made as comfortable as possible. Triage was simple. If a casualty was thought to have a reasonable chance at survival he was treated, if not they were set aside in little groups and allowed to die as peacefully as possible. Chaplains made their way around, Protestant’s ensuring that their soldiers “knew Jesus” and Catholics administering the Last Rites.

One Confederate soldier describe the scene west of the town on July 4th:

“The sights and smells that assailed us were simply indescribable-corpses swollen to twice their size, asunder with the pressure of gases and vapors…The odors were nauseating, and so deadly that in a short time we all sickened and were lying with our mouths close to the ground, most of us vomiting profusely.”

Among the killed and wounded were the great and the small. John Reynolds who died on day one, Winfield Scott Hancock, the valiant commander of the Union II Corps wounded during Pickett’s Charge, Mad Dan Sickles, who had nearly brought disaster on the Federal lines by advancing to the Peach Orchard on July 2nd had a leg amputated.

The Confederates suffered grievous losses. Divisional commanders like Dorsey Pender were mortally wounded. John Bell Hood was severely wounded, Isaac Trimble was wounded and captured while Harry Heth was wounded. Numerous Generals were killed or wounded and among regimental commanders the toll was fearful. In Picket’s division alone all three brigade commanders, Kemper, Armistead and Garnett were killed or wounded while 26 of 40 Field Grade officers were casualties. 46% (78 of 171) of the regiments of the Army of Northern Virginia suffered casualties at the command level. The Confederate casualties, especially among the best leaders were irreplaceable and Lee’s Army never recovered from the loss of seasoned leaders who were already in short supply.

One witness, Frank Haskell looked in at a field hospital in the Union II Corps area and wrote:

“The Surgeons with coats off and sleeves rolled up…are about thier work,… “and their faces and clothes are spattered with blood; and though they look weary and tired, their work goes systematically and steadily on- how much and how long they have worked, the piles of legs, arms, feet, hands, fingers…partially tell.” (Gettysburg by Stephen W Sears, Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Company Boston, New York 2004 p.466)

All told between 46,000 and 51,000 Americans were killed or wounded during the three days of Gettysburg. Busey and Martin’s Regimental Strengths and Losses at Gettysburg lists the following casualty figures, other accounts list higher numbers. One also has to remember that many of the missing were killed but simply never found or if their bodies were found identified:

killed wounded missing total

Union 3,155 14,531 5,369 23,055

Confederate 4,708 12,693 5,830 23,231

Total 7,863 27,224 11,199 46,286

To provide a reference in 8 years of war in Iraq the United States suffered fewer casualties than during the three days of Gettysburg. It was the bloodiest single battle in American history.

At the end of the war, Joshua Chamberlain, the hero of Little Round Top who was well acquainted with the carnage of war asked the most difficult questions:

“…men made in the image of God, marred by the hand of man, and must we say in the name of God? And where is the reckoning for such things? And who is answerable? One might almost shrink from the sound of his own voice, which had launched into the palpitating air words of order–do we call t?–fraught with such ruin. Was it God’s command that we heard, or His forgiveness that we must forever implore?”

May we pray for peace that such an event never take place again.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as battle of gettysburg, gettysburg casualties, james longstreet, joshua chamberlain, robert e lee

July 1, 2013 · 23:26

Gettysburg at 150 Day One: “For God’s Sake Forward!” John Reynolds at Herr’s or McPherson’s Ridge July 1st 1863

Iron Brigade Forward! Battle of Gettysburg, PA – July 1, 1863 by Mark Maritato

“…by his promptitude and gallantry he had determined the decisive field of the war, and he opened brilliantly a battle which required three days of hard fighting to close with a victory.” Major General Harry Hunt, Chief of Artillery, Army of the Potomac on the actions of Major General John F Reynolds at Gettysburg

Major General John Reynolds was on his home soil. A native of Lancaster Pennsylvania Reynolds was the senior Corps commander in the Army of the Potomac. Considered by his peers and superiors to be the best commander in the Army he had been given command of a wing of the Army, his own I Corps, Oliver Howard’s XI Corps and John Sedgewick’s III Corps. He also had John Buford’s 1st Cavalry Division under his command.

Early in June Abraham Lincoln had offered command of the Army of the Potomac to Reynolds, however Reynolds’ set a condition which Lincoln in the political climate of the time could not grant, that he would be free from the political interference which had beset previous Army commanders. Both Reynolds’ request and Lincoln’s response are understandable. Lincoln respected Reynolds and when Major General Joseph Hooker was relieved of command of the Army by Lincoln Major General George Meade, commander of V Corps another Pennsylvanian took his place with Reynolds keeping his position.

As the Army of the Potomac reacted to the advance of Robert E Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia Hooker pursued and Meade continued the pursuit into Pennsylvania once he took command.

Reynolds’ wing of three Infantry corps and Buford’s Cavalry division acted as the advance elements of the Army. Late in the afternoon of June 30th Buford’s troops observed Johnston Pettigrew’s brigade of Harry Heth’s division near Gettysburg. Pettigrew on detecting Buford’s cavalry refused to engage and Buford made the choice to take the good high ground west of Gettysburg and hold it in order to give Reynolds followed by the rest of the Army time to arrive.

The Death of Reynolds (Waud)

Reynolds sent messages late in the evening to both Reynolds and the Union Calvary Corps commander, Major General Alfred Pleasanton describing the situation. Reynolds’ units were south of Emmitsburg moving north and on the morning of the 1st of July he brought his troops up as Buford and his cavalry troopers engaged Heth’s division in a delaying action in order to give Reynolds’ units time to get to the good high ground around Gettysburg.

Reynolds rode ahead and briefly met Buford at the Lutheran Seminary where Buford ensured Reynolds that his troopers could hold. With that Reynolds ordered his leading corps, the lead division under the command of Abner Doubleday to advance to the action at the double-quick. He then sent a message to Meade through a staff officer stating “Tell the General that we will hold the heights to the south of the town, and that I will barricade the streets of the town if necessary.”

As his units arrived into an already raging battle Reynolds directed them to key areas of the battlefield. As he directed the “Iron Brigade” into position in Herr’s (McPherson’s) Woods Reynolds exhorted the men forward.“Forward! men, forward! for God’s sake, and drive those fellows out of the woods!” As he said these words he was struck by a bullet in the head and died instantly.

In the immediate confusion following Reynolds’ death the I and XI Corps confusion reigned. It seemed that the Union corps now fighting two Confederate Corps, Hill’s 3rd Corps which they had been fighting since the morning and Ewell’s 2nd Corps which arrived in a flanking position to their north during the afternoon might be routed. The Federal troops, I Corps now under the command of Doubleday and XI under Major General Oliver Howard withdrew through Gettysburg to Cemetery Hill where they were rallied by Reynolds’ old friend Major General Winfield Scott Hancock of II Corps.

Hill’s troops entered the town but did not attempt to take the hill while Ewell passed on an opportunity to take nearby Culp’s Hill which would have dislodged the Federal right flank.

The first day ended with the Army of the Potomac holding the high ground in an easily defensible position on interior lines. Lee’s Army was spread out and the defense mounted by Buford and Reynolds had disrupted Hill’s Corps, causing significant casualties.

Buford is to be given much of the credit for choosing the ground of the battle and fighting a stellar delaying action against superior forces. But had Reynolds not brought his units up in the expeditious manner in which he did and then all of Buford’s efforts might have been in vain. The two men, bound by their professionalism and commitment to duty and their oath helped save the Union on that first day of July 1863.

Charles Veil who served as a staff officer under Reynolds wrote the following epitaph stating that Reynolds “was a man who knew not fear or danger was, in a word (he was) one of our very best Generals. Wherever the fight raged the fiercest, there the General was sure to be found, his undaunted courage always inspired men with energy & courage.”

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as a.p. hill, army of northern virginia, army of the potomac, battle of gettysburg, george meade, harry heth, herr's ridge, i corps, iron brigade, john buford, john reynolds, john sedgewick, mcpherson's ridge, oliver howard, richard ewell, robert e lee, seminary ridge, winfield scott hancock, xi corps

June 30, 2013 · 23:08

Gettysburg at 150 Day One: Lee Blunders into Battle

Pender’s Brigade on Day One

The Army of Northern Virginia commanded by Robert E Lee was now deep in Union territory and nearly blind to the location of the Federal Army of the Potomac. On the 30th advanced units of Dick Ewell’s Second Corps had gone nearly as far as Harrisburg while most of the Army was on the road around Chambersburg and Cashtown. Lee’s Cavalry Division under the command of J.E.B. Stuart was far away engaging Union Cavalry around Hanover and not in position to report on Union troop movements. General A.P. Hill sent Johnston Pettigrew’s Brigade of Harry Heth’s Division to Gettysburg on the 30th but Pettigrew observing the Federal cavalry of Buford’s 1st Cavalry Division take up positions on Seminary Ridge declined to engage and reported the Federal concentration to Hill.

As reports from the spy Harrison came to Lee and Longstreet Lee began to concentrate the Army around Cashtown. However the morning of July Hill ordered Harry Heth’s division to move on Gettysburg without the benefit of cavalry support or reconnaissance believing that the troops reported by Pettigrew could be nothing more than local militia. His leading brigades under Brigadier General James Archer and Joseph Davis took heavy casualties and soon Heth became embroiled in a fight with Buford’s cavalry and lead elements of the Federal 1st Corps under the command of Major General John Reynolds.

Gettysburg Day One (Map by Hal Jespersen, http://www.posix.com/Com)

Lee was surprised by the engagement and though he chastised Heth for getting involved committed his army to the attack. Reynolds was killed early in the engagement but the fight was bitter, the Iron Brigade exacted a fearful toll on Archer and Davis’s brigades. The attack by Hill’s 3rd Corps was helped immensely when elements of Ewell’s 2nd Corps arrived on the right flank of the Federal XI Corps, forcing the Federal troops to withdraw through Gettysburg and up to Cemetery Ridge. Ewell’s arrival was fortuitous because it tilted the balance to Lee, but the advantage was short lived.

Lee Deliberates Heth’s Advance – Gettysburg by Bradley Schmehl

Ewell failed to press the attack on Cemetery Ridge or Culp’s Hill while Federal forces were still disorganized, despite the repeated entreaties of Major General Isaac Trimble who was with him. The delay would be fatal to Lee’s intentions as Lee decided to give battle at Gettysburg, ignoring General Longstreet’s plea to disengage take up a favorable position between Gettysburg and Washington DC and force the Army of the Potomac to attack.

Don Troiani’s Painting of Hancock taking Command on Cemetery Hill on Day One

The Army of Northern Virginia came very close to sweeping Federal forces from the field on July 1st in spite of Lee’s lack of planning and clear commanders intent. That much is clear. His orders to Ewell, to take the high ground “if practicable” we interpreted by Ewell in a manner that he determined not to be practicable, so the advanced Federal corps under the command of Major General Winfield Scott Hancock were able to regroup, dig in and be reinforced by the rest of the Army.

Whether Lee intended to engage the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg so early in a campaign where his multiple and contradictory strategic aims and lack of clear commander’s intent to his subordinate commanders created confusion is debated. Much of the controversy comes from Lee’s own correspondence which indicates that he might have not fully understood his own intentions. Some correspondence indicates that Lee desired to avoid a general engagement as long as possible while other accounts indicate that he wanted an early and decisive engagement. The controversy was stoked after the war by Lee’s supporters, particular his aides Taylor and Marshal, and Longstreet’s supporters.

Isaac Trimble, traveling with Lee at the beginning of the invasion of Pennsylvania recored that Lee told him:

“We have again outmaneuvered the enemy, who even now does not know where we are or what our designs are. Our whole army will be in Pennsylvania day after tomorrow, leaving the enemy far behind and obliged to follow by forced marches. I hope with these advantages to accomplish some single result and to end the war, if Providence favors us.” (Glenn Tucker, High Tide at Gettysburg (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co.: 1958), p. 24.)

The vagueness of Lee’s instructions to his commanders, many of whom were occupying command positions under him for the first time and were unfamiliar with his command style led to confusion. Where Stonewall Jackson might have understood Lee’s intent, even where Lee issued vague or contradictory orders, many others including Hill and Ewell did not. Lee did not change his command style to accommodate his new commanders and that lack of flexibility on Lee’s part proved fatal to his aims in the campaign.

The vagueness of Lee’s intent was demonstrated throughout the campaign and was made worse by the fog of war. Day one ended with a significant tactical victory for Lee’s army but without a decisive result which would be compounded into a strategic defeat by Lee’s subsequent decisions on the 2nd and 3rd of July.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as a.p. hill, cemetery ridge, dorsey pender, gettysburg, gettysburg campaign, gettysburg day 1, harry heth, isaac trimble, james archer, james longstreet, john buford, john reynolds, richard ewell, robert e lee, seminary ridge, winfield scott hancock

June 30, 2013 · 13:15

Gettysburg at 150 and the Lingering Curse of the “Lost Cause” on the United States

This week I will be writing a lot about the Battle of Gettysburg which happens to fall in the days before the celebration of our Declaration of Independence. Some of these will be articles that I published before and some will be new work. I think that the American Civil War and its consequences today is something that we need to look at as a society, and not from the romanticized “Lost Cause” revisionism that is so popular among many even today.

Last year washed up rocker and now political activist Ted Nugent wrote in the Washington Times “I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War.” I find his remark appalling and disgraceful but I have come to expect such comments from him and and others who voice similar sentiments. But Nugent is not alone, an organization called The League of the South states its goals in very clear language: “The League of the South is a Southern Nationalist organization whose ultimate goal is a free and independent Southern republic.”

When I hear such sentiments and they are many now days I think of men like Joshua Chamberlain. Chamberlain was a college professor who served in the Union Army and won fame and the Medal of Honor for the defense of Little Round Top at Gettysburg. There is a quote from the film Gods and Generals which I think about when I hear anyone suggesting that it would have been better for the Confederacy to have won the war:

“Now, somewhere out there is the Confederate army. They claim they are fighting for their independence, for their freedom. Now, I can not question their integrity. I believe they are wrong but I can not question it. But I do question a system that defends its own freedom while it denies it to an entire race of men. I will admit it, Tom. War is a scourge, but so is slavery. It is the systematic coercion of one group of men over another. It has been around since the book of Genesis. It exists in every corner of the world, but that is no excuse for us to tolerate it here when we find it right in front of our very eyes in our own country. As God as my witness, there is no one I hold in my heart dearer than you. But if your life, or mine,is part of the price to end this curse and free the Negro, then let God’s work be done.”

There is a spot near the Copse of Trees along Cemetery Ridge which is referred to as the “High Water Mark of the Confederacy.” It is the spot close to where Confederate Brigadier General Lewis Armistead fell mortally wounded as the decimated remains of his command were overwhelmed by Union forces shortly after they breached the Union line. It is a place immortalized in history, literature and film. It is the place that marked the beginning of the end for the great evil of slavery in America.

My ancestors lived in Cabell County which in 1861 was part of Virginia. They were slave holders along the Mud River, a tributary of the Ohio River just to the north of what is now Huntington West Virginia. When war came to the country the family patriarch James Dundas and my great, great grandfather joined the 8th Virginia Cavalry Regiment in which he served the bulk of the war as a Lieutenant. When it ended he refused to sign the loyalty oath to the Union and had his lands, which are now some of the most valuable in that part of West Virginia confiscated and sold by the Federal Government. He was a believer in the “Lost Cause” that romantic and confused idea about the rightness of the South in its war against what they called “Northern aggression.”

Because he and others on both sides of my family served in Confederate ranks I am eligible for membership in the Sons of the Confederacy. However it is something that I cannot do. There are some that do this as a means to honor their relatives that served in the war and I do not make light of their devotion to their family, but there are some that take that devotion to places that I cannot go. As much as I admire the valor and personal integrity of many military men who served the Confederacy I cannot for a moment think that their “cause” was just.

It has been said that the North won the war but that the South won the history. I think this is true. Many people now days like to reduce the reasons for the war to the South protecting its rights. Sometimes the argument is “states rights” or “economic freedom” and those that make these arguments romanticize the valor shown by Confederate soldiers on the battlefield but conveniently ignore or obscure the evil of the Southern economic system.

The “rights” and the “economic freedom” espoused by those that led the secession and that are lamented by those like Nugent were based upon the enslavement and exploitation of the Black man to maintain an archaic economy based on agriculture, particularly the export of King Cotton. Arguments which try to place the blame on the North, especially arguments that attempt to turn the Northern States into economic predators’ intent on suppressing the economic rights of Southerners only serve to show the bankruptcy of the idea itself. The fact that the “economic and political freedom” of Southerners was founded on the enslavement of a whole race of people matters not because the “cause” is greater.

One interesting point that many turn a blind eye to is that in each of its campaigns above the Mason Dixon Line Lee’s Army rounded up blacks, mostly freemen and sent them back to the South in chains to be used as slaves. I have to wonder what Southern success at Gettysburg would have meant to African Americans today. Lee believed that his campaign in Pennsylvania would bring about a result that would change the political situation in the North and bring about a situation where the North would recognize Southern independence. He wrote in April of 1863 “next fall there will be a great change in public opinion at the North. The Republicans will be destroyed & I think the friends of peace will become so strong that the next administration will go in on that basis…”

Of course Lee was wrong and his campaign was flawed in large part because he did not adequately define his intent to his commanders. That much is obvious in the writings of the surviving participants after the war.

The overall situation for the Confederacy in June of 1863 was grim. There had been food riots in Richmond, Vicksburg was on the bring of falling and with it the Confederacy would be split in two along the Mississippi River, the Union blockade of Southern ports was working, the South had not been recognized by any foreign powers and the textile industries of Europe had found other suppliers for “King Cotton.” Despite this Lee held on to the hope that a military victory in the East could change the political calculus.

The fact is that the longer the South relied solely on its agriculture which was supported by the institution of slavery it deprived itself of the means of economic progress, the same progress that propelled the North to prosperity. The south lagged in all industrial areas as well as transportation infrastructure. The majority of non-slave owning whites lived at the poverty line and only enjoyed some elevated social status because the slaves ranked beneath them on the sociological and economic hierarchy. The South depended on cheap imports from England, which then was still considered an enemy of the country. When tariffs to protect newly establish American industries were enacted in 1828 South Carolina attempted to nullify the Federal law even raising troops and threatened a revolt in 1832.

The Southern economic system was immoral and antiquated. It enslaved blacks and it impoverished most rural Southerners, with the exception of those that owned the land and the slaves. It was a hateful, backward and loathsome system which even the southern churches attempted to justify from Scripture. Southern Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians would all break away from their parent denominations regarding their support for the institution of slavery.

This does not mean that I think that the average Confederate soldier or officers were dishonorable men. Many officers who had served in the United States Army hated the breakup of the Union but served the South because it was the land that they were from. It was the home of their families and part of who they were. To judge them as wanting 150 years later when we have almost no connection to family or home in a post industrial world is to impose the standards of a world that they did not know upon them. For those that gave up everything to serve one can feel a measure of sympathy. So many died and so much of the South was destroyed in the defense of that “cause” one has to wonder just why the political and religious leaders of the South were willing to maintain such an inadequate and evil economic system one that hurt poor Southern whites nearly as much as it did blacks.

The war devastated the South and the radicals that ran “Reconstruction” ensured that Southerners suffered terrible degradation and that Southern blacks would have even more obstacles raised against them by the now very angry and revengeful whites. It would take another 80-100 years to end segregation and secure voting rights for blacks. Thus I have no desire to become part of an organization that even gives the appearance of supporting the “cause” even if doing so would allow me to “honor” an ancestor who raised his hand against the country that I serve.

I was raised on the West Coast but have lived in the South much of my adult life due to military assignments. I have served in National Guard units that trace their lineage to Confederate regiments in Texas and Virginia. Despite my Confederate connections both familial and by service I can find little of the romance and idealism that some find in the Confederacy and the “Lost Cause.” I see the Civil War for what it was, a tragedy of the highest order brought about by the need of some to enslave others to maintain their economic system.

Today there are many that use the flags of the Confederacy outside of their historic context. They are often used as a symbol of either racial hatred or of defiance to the Federal Government by white Supremacist or anti-government organizations. Many that use them openly advocate for the overthrow of the Federal Government. The calls for such “revolt” can be found all over the country even in the halls of Congress much as they were in the 1830s, 40s and 50s. Some of this is based in libertarian economic philosophy which labels the government as the enemy of business, some based social policies which are against their religious beliefs and some sadly to say based in an almost xenophobic racial hatred. The scary thing as that the divisions in the country are probably as great as or greater than they were in the 1850s as the country lurched inexorably to Civil War with neither side willing to do anything that might lessen their political or economic power even if it means the ruin of the country.

As seems to be the case around this time of year I have seen the symbols of the Confederacy, particularly the Battle Flag displayed in manners that can only be seen as symbols of defiance. July 4th will be celebrated this week and it seems to me that the flag that should be most prominently displayed is the Stars and Stripes not the Confederate Battle flag or even the Gadsen Flag which has become the symbol of the modern Tea Party movement. Somehow I find the flag flown in rebellion to the country that I serve displayed in such an arrogant manner.

For people like the Federal Government which is the enemy. Now I know that our system of government has its flaws. Likewise I cannot agree more about the corruption of many in political office, regardless of their political allegiance. While it is true that the Federal Government has taken upon itself many powers some never envisioned by those that crafted the Constitution, it has done so because leaders of both political parties have consented to it and even worked to strengthen the Federal Government with the consent of the American people that elect them again and again.

Despite this much of this has been accomplished by the Federal Government has been for the good for the country and people no matter what the critics say. Many of the things that we enjoy today are the result of the work of the Federal Government and not business as much as those that deify big corporations want to believe. There are the National Parks, laws against child labor and for safe workplaces brought about by Teddy Roosevelt, the infrastructure built in the 1930s and 1940s by the Franklin Roosevelt administration. The Roosevelt administration also brought about Social Security and banking regulations to protect Americans from corporations and banks that violated the public trust. The Eisenhower administration began the Interstate Highway system which is the backbone of our transportation system. Likewise the Space Program and yes even the military have led the way in technological, scientific and medical innovation including that thing that we all take for granted today the Internet.

Today quite a few people are calling for revolt or secession if they do not get what they want be it socially, politically or economically. For years politicians on both sides have fought to minimize such talk and enact compromises with the usual discontent that comes with compromise. Unfortunately many of those compromises have had the effect of widening the political divide much as the various compromises on the road to the Civil War. Jefferson said of the Missouri Compromise of 1824: “but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.”

We have allowed the issues of our time to become a fire of unbridled angry passion where those with almost no historical understanding and whose history is often based on myth stake claims and promote ideas that will destroy this Union if they continue. Unfortunately we have not yet reached the high water mark of this movement yet and I fear like Jefferson that the hatred and division will only grow worse as both radical on the right and left prepare for conflict.

This week we celebrated the 236th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. It is a remarkable occasion. It is the anniversary that free people as well as those oppressed around the world look to as a beacon of liberty. It has been paid for time and time again, especially during that cruel Civil War which killed more American soldiers than any other war that we have fought.

A few months after Gettysburg Abraham Lincoln a man much reviled by those that have romanticized the Cause and who is demonized by many “conservative” politicians and pundits today as a “tyrant” made these brief remarks at the site of the battle:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Today with so many radicals, especially those on the political right, but some on the left such as the “Anonymous” group doing all that they can to plunge us into yet another civil war we should remember Lincoln’s words and rededicate ourselves to this Union, this remarkable Union. Tony Blair the former Prime Minster of Great Britain remarked in 2011:

“It may be strange for a former British Prime Minister to offer thoughts on America when the country will be celebrating its independence from Britain. But the circumstances of independence are part of what makes America the great and proud nation it is today. And what gives nobility to the American character.

That nobility isn’t about being nicer, better or more successful than anyone else. It is a feeling about the country. It is a devotion to the American ideal that at a certain point transcends class, race, religion or upbringing. That ideal is about values, freedom, the rule of law, democracy. It is also about the way you achieve: on merit, by your own efforts and hard work.

But it is most of all that in striving for and protecting that ideal, you as an individual take second place to the interests of the nation as a whole. This is what makes the country determined to overcome its challenges. It is what makes its soldiers give their lives in sacrifice. It is what brings every variety of American, from the lowest to the highest, to their feet when “The Star-Spangled Banner” is played.

Of course the ideal is not always met – that is obvious. But it is always striven for.

The next years will test the American character. The world is changing. New powers are emerging. But America should have confidence. This changing world does not diminish the need for that American ideal. It only reaffirms it.”

I think that the Prime Minister got it right and Ted Nugent is an ignorant fool but he has the right to be one.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under civil rights, civil war, History, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as 20th maine regiment, 8th virginia cavalry, abraham lincoln, battle of gettysburg, declaration of independence, gods and generals, high water mark of the confederacy, joshua chamberlain, league of the south, lewis armistead, little round top, missouri compromise of 1824, patriotism, reconstruction, robert e lee, slavery, southern churches and slavery, southern economic system, states rights, ted nugent, the gettysburg address, the lost cause, thomas jefferson, tony blair, white supremacists

February 27, 2013 · 23:15

Remembering the Deal with the Devil that Has Brought us the Sequester

“But we have no one to blame but ourselves. We voted them all into office and we have encouraged their repugnant behavior with our votes which more often than not were purchased by the fear mongering engaged by each side and our desire to have our special interests and or ideology come out on top.” Padre Steve August 2nd 2011

Back in late July 2011 it appeared that the Federal Government would o what it had never done, default on the payments for the National Debt. I was in Washington that week and could not believe what had become of the country.

For me it was a week that I remember well because on a nighttime picture taking expedition on the National Mall I fell off a darkened ledge at the Washington Monument while turning to line up another picture while walking in the dark.

That week I wrote a number of articles on my observations of what was happening. Since it appears there is a strong chance of the dreaded “Sequester” occurring in a bit over 48 hours I am posting those articles in their entirety here along with the links to the articles on this website.

As a historian and serving Naval Officer I really have a hard time believing what is happening in our government. I can only imagine it is the same kind of feeling that officers in service in 1860 and 1861 felt as their families, friends and the elected officials home states were pushing the country into the abyss. Unfortunately now, as it was then there is enough blame to spread copious amounts between politicians, preachers, and pundits the Unholy Trinity of both parties and across the political spectrum. Men, women and institutions that care more for their special interests than the country that gives them the opportunity to achieve great things.

These are my writings from that unfortunate week in our history. Unfortunately nothing leads me to believe that anything has changed since then and that the leaders of both of our political parties and their supporters in their respective media, corporate and lobbying interests and partisan pundits and preachers on both sides will not do all they can to ensure the ruin of this country.

While I have my own opinions about the root causes of this situation and my own political leanings. That being said I cannot fail to note that among our political classes and their supporters that to some degree they and we are all to blame. No one wants to hear that but it is the truth. Most of us and certainly our political leaders, lobbyists, business leaders and pundits have by refusing to listen to those we disagree with have brought us to this point. Just like 1860. This is something that need not have ever had to happen. I agree with the hero of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Union General John Buford: “I am disgusted and worn out with the system that seems to prevail.”

God help us because I do not believe that our leaders have the capacity in themselves to do anything.

Peace

Padre Steve+

A Tuesday in DC: Lunch with a Dear Friend and a Night walk through the Monuments

Today was another good day, in fact really good day at the conference I am attending with the George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health. At lunch I was able to spend some time with my former commanding officer at Marine Security Forces. It was good to see Mike again. He and I went through some very trying times together and I treasure his friendship as well of that of his family. I think that of all the commanding officers that have served under which have included some incredible men that he was the best. We are a lot alike in many ways both rather cerebral and out of the box thinkers. We basically are the same generation as far as military service goes, when he was a young Marine Corps Officer I was a young Army Officer.

We reminisced about the way the country was back then how our leaders still worked together and even if we disagreed with the policies of those in the opposing party that we still knew that we were Americans and that at the end of the day we were friends. I guess that Mike and I are dinosaurs now; we tend to look at the big picture and both being career officers of the same generation have seen the country change. We both entered the military during the Cold War and after the loss of Vietnam. Our teachers were the men that served in that war, those who came home to a then hostile country. Neither Mike nor I are service academy types nor the products of conservative military schools, Mike went to Harvard and attended Navy ROTC and I went to a California State University School, CSU Northridge and took Army ROTC at UCLA. We both come from strong yet tolerant religious traditions and were influenced by chaplains early in our careers. Mike’s academic background is Economics mine Theology and Military History and both of us hold advanced degrees in those subjects. We both graduated from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. We have both served overseas and in combat. We love our country and treasure our military service and that of the men and women that we have served with over so many decades.

I am honored that Mike will administer the Oath of Office when I am promoted on September 1st at Harbor Park in Norfolk Virginia. By the way Mike loves baseball too and being from Boston he is a Red Sox fan. His dad, a die hard fan died a few months before the Sox broke the “Curse of the Bambino” in 2004. My dad died a few months before his San Francisco Giants won the World Series in 2010.

Talking with Mike today made me think back to a time when things were not like what they are now, where political opponents were simply opponents and not “the enemy.” I shared with Mike the terms the German Military used in the Second World War to describe those that they fought against. The Western Allies were “die Gegener” or simply opponents and for the most part the German military observed the Geneva Convention and Laws of War when fighting the Americans, British and French. However with the Soviet Unionit was different. The Soviets were “Der Feind” or the enemy.

As divided as we were in the 1970s and 1980s there was still a modicum of respect for the other side and ability to work together when we needed and Mike brought up the relationship of Ronald Reagan and Thomas “Tip” O’ Neill, vigorous political opponents who remained friends. However there is today and has been for the past 20 years or so for members of the extreme wings of both major parties to identify their opponents as “enemies.” The language difference is significant. An opponent is a adversary that you hope to defeat but there is not a hatred involved and when the competition ceases the opponents remain friends and even colleagues even as they prepare for the next “game” so to speak.

Enemies are another matter. To be an enemy is to assume that the other side poses an existential threat to your side or your agenda. Thus there can be no compromise and the opponent is not simply to be defeated but destroyed and annihilated much like the Old Testament when the Israelites were commanded by God to kill everything even the babies and pregnant women. So much for being pro-life but I digress….

Today we are more divided than any time since the Civil War, blood is boiling and if there is compromise it will be a mere truce until the next round of political bloodletting which if we are not careful may become actual bloodletting and the enemies allow their unbridled hatred of each other spill out into open conflict. Such affairs never end well and if we remember our history our Civil War’s military conflict was over in a few years and yet with the relatively primitive weapons of the ay killed more Americans than any other conflict. The after effects well, frankly Scarlett took over a hundred years to recover from and I would dare posit that some believe that the war is not yet over.

Tonight I went to dinner alone cancelling my plans to head out to watch the Nationals play the Marlins. I needed the time and solitude and somehow a trip on the DC Metro seemed the last place that I would find it. I walked to the Gordon Biersch where I had dinner, drank a few beers and watched the Orioles beat the Blue Jays. After dinner I detoured from my normal route back to my campus housing which takes me in front of the White House.

Amid the lights and the amazing splendor of the buildings adorned with American and District of Columbia Flags I walked and simply observed people. Tourists from across the nation and the world were taking pictures, business people and government workers hurried about, vendors hawked their patriotic wares, mostly made in China I might add or snack foods. Here and there a protester sought to draw attention to their pet cause, there is the anti-nuclear weapons protestor that has been camped across from the White House since 1981, people demanding to see the Birth Certificate, those protesting for the removal of various Arab dictators and others peppered about. Capitol Police and Secret Service officers were out in force and amid the fortress like surroundings of many government buildings and the offices such as the World Bank and major business and financial institutions armed police and private security stood watch with cameras watching every move.

When I passed the White House I was rather down. So I decided to walk the monuments that adorn the Capitol Mall. I passed the Executive Office Building and Washington Monument and crossed the street to the World War Two Memorial. At each place I paused before I continued to walk into the night. I then stopped by the Korean War Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial, the stark reminder of the men and women killed and missing in that war as well as the rip in the fabric of the nation that I am not sure we have ever gotten past. I then went and paused before the Lincoln Memorial and I thought of the immortal words spoken by President Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address shortly before he was cut down by a bullet fired by John Wilkes Booth. They are words of reconciliation spoken even while Americans fought Americans in the last months of the war.

Fellow-Countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

As I walked through the warm and humid night air I imagined what it must have been like for officers of the United States Army, Navy and Marine Corps as the nation split in 1861 with many Southerners leaving the service to enter the service of their own states. Many tearful goodbyes were spoken by men that had served together in war and peace and on the lonely frontier of the nation, men who in a few moths time would be commanding American armies and killing their fellow Americans. My family fought for the South being from Virginia. I cannot say that I would have done different like them and so many Southerners or if like General George Thomas of Virginia I would have remained with the Union incurring the wrath of his family for the rest of his life. Since I have never taken my Oath lightly I can only imagine that I would have done what Thomas did even if it meant the loss of family.

Today I fear that even if our leaders can avert a default on or debts that they have now set the stage for worse I the coming months and years. The open hatred and contempt of our leaders for one another and the ideas that each stand for has wounded the nation more deeply than any default or government shutdown could ever do. This is not simply partisan discourse it is a deep enmity and hatred that has not been seen in this country for 150 years. If cooler heads do not prevail soon the damage may be irreparable and the consequences more terrible than we can imagine and why anyone would willingly continue down this road is beyond me, but hatred does terrible things to people and nations.

Since it was nearing10 PMI hailed a taxi by the Lincoln Memorial. I entered into a conversation with the driver, an immigrant from Morocco who has been in the United States 22 years. I mentioned my concern and he was far more hopeful than me. He said he believed that a shutdown would be averted. I love immigrants especially recent ones who have left home and family to become Americans. My dad’s side family has been in this country since 1747 and my mother’s even longer. It was inspiring for me to hear this man still be in awe of this nation despite all of our troubles. When I left the cab I thanked him, gave him a decent tip shook his hand and in my woeful Arabic said “Assalamu alaikum” or peace be unto you.

As a historian I tend to see the dangers in what is happening in our country and I do have legitimate concerns, but when I hear the words of hope and awe that this country engenders in those who come here to be free I hope again in spite of myself.

Meditations on a Wednesday Night in Washington DC

I was reflective tonight and thinking about all of those great men and women who sacrificed so much to the sake of this land and also the world as I walked the capitol late this evening. As I saw the flags around the Washington Monument at half staff in honor of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili my thoughts turned to the words of America the Beautiful.

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America!

God shed His grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

Today was another very good day in regard to the conference I have been attending at the George Washington University Medical School Institute for Spirituality and Healthcare. Today was a day to practice what we have earned so far with men and women that are employed by the Medical School as “model patients.” These are people that work with medical students before they even see a real patient and that simulate what the students might encounter when they actually start seeing patients as senior medical students and then as in their various internships and residencies following graduation. I was very enlightening as we had the chance to be the physician in our encounters with the various actors. Mine went very well and I thank God for the fact that I have worked with some very fine physicians that have modeled wonderful, compassionate and human care of patients on the various ICUs that I have worked in.

I have been very pensive this week due to the chaos that seems to reign in the halls of Congress in regard to the debt ceiling and intransigence of the members of that esteemed body to bother to work with each other or the President.

This evening I went out with my cousin Becky, actually she is my wife Judy’s cousin and works with one of the “Men in Black” law enforcement agencies headquartered in our nation’s capitol. She was with a co-worker who has served at the end of the Cold War in Germany and in the Gulf War and we had a wonderful night talking, eating and drinking good beer at the Rock Bottom Brewery in Arlington. After we were one I had Becky drop me off near the White House because I wanted to wander again about some of the monuments this time with my good camera as I wanted some good pictures from what I observed Tuesday night.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet

Whose stern impassion’d stress

A thoroughfare for freedom beat

Across the wilderness.

America! America!

God mend thine ev’ry flaw,

Confirm thy soul in self-control,

Thy liberty in law.

Since I have been at the conference or out most of the day I have only heard bits and pieces of the news, just enough to know that the Republicans and Democrats are still driving the train over the cliff even as some in each party attempt to throw the emergency brake to try to stop disaster from overtaking our fragile economy as well as that of the world. The problem as I see it is that a vocal minority is hell bent on forcing their agenda at any cost and sabotaging the cooler heads in their own and the opposition party.

O beautiful for heroes prov’d

In liberating strife,

Who more than self their country lov’d,

And mercy more than life.

America! America!

May God thy gold refine

Till all success be nobleness,

And ev’ry gain divine.

Last night I was out and was a bit melancholy as I walked the monuments but came home encouraged by an immigrant cabbie from Morocco who still holds this nation in awe and wonder. It was something that I didn’t expect because it seems that so many of us that have lived here for all of our lives no longer have that sense of awe, wonder and appreciation for this now battered land.

I started at the White House and the proceeded past the Washington Monument to the World War Two Memorial, down the National Mall and pat the reflecting pool to the Korean War Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial before walking the 7 or 8 blocks back to the GWU campus where I am staying.

O beautiful for patriot dream

That sees beyond the years

Thine alabaster cities gleam

Undimmed by human tears.

America! America!

God shed His grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea.

Tonight I took my time and did not get back to my room until 1230 AM. I was more deliberate than last night and really pondered then things that made this country great and the sacrifices made by so many that we might enjoy freedom that most of the world cannot imagine. I realized that it was not our economic or military might that made us great but the ideals that this country was founded upon and the sacrifices of men and women of many races and faiths who have each in their own way worked for the cause of liberty many at the cost of their lives in war or sadly in some cases at the hands of their own countrymen.

I do pray that the politicians, pundits and preachers, that “unholy Trinity” who have so terribly afflicted out nation and people with their loathing of all that are different than them will realize the damage that they have done to the peace and the very fabric of this country. I pray that we are able to be one nation, or as it so well expressed on the Great Seal of the United States E Plurbus Unum, “out of many one.”

As I settled down and prepared for bed I came across a poem in a book of prayers that Judy put together for my birthday during one of those very lean seminary years. It is by Alan Paton, a South African educator, writer and anti-apartheid activist who died in 1988 five years before the end of that evil system. It is a poem but also a prayer and I think that it speaks as much to me now as the first time that I read it when Judy gave me this gift.

O Lord, open my eyes that I might see the needs of others;

Open my ears that I may hear their cries;

Open my heart that they need not be without succor;

Let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong,

Nor defend the poor because of the anger of the rich.

Show me where love and faith are needed and bring me to those places;

And so open my eyes and my ears that I may this coming day

Be able to do some work of peace for thee. Amen.

A Physically Painful Thursday Night in DC: Dinner with a Classmate and watching Our Government Implode

I have spent most of the day in some bad physical pain. Last night while walking around the National Mall taking pictures I hurt myself. I was walking from the Washington Monument toward the World War Two Memorial looking at the Lincoln Memorial and trying to figure out a good camera angle. I wanted good pictures so instead of walking down either of the sidewalks that line the Mall I wanted to stay in the center which meant walking “cross country” so to speak in the dark.

I was sizing up the shot of the Lincoln Memorial while walking forward and I turned briefly to look back to see if I had a good shot of the Washington Monument and the Capitol Dome. As I made this slight turn I found that there was nothing under my right foot and I went crashing down onto a sidewalk about three feet below. I landed on the side of my right leg with the main impact seeming to be at the place where the fibula and tibia come together just below the knee. I felt a sharp pain but got up and limped back to GWU while getting shots of the WWII Memorial, the Korean andVietnamand Lincoln Memorials. I got back to my room in a substantial amount of pain and it took forever to get comfortable enough to get to sleep. When I got up all I could do was hold onto walls as I made my way across the room and put my leg up on the coffee table in the living area. Eventually I made my way over to the conference site where thankfully I was able to keep my leg up most of the day.

When the conference was over I changed clothes to meet my friend Pat, a Marine Lieutenant Colonel who I attended the Marine Corps Command and Staff College with and met up with inIraqin 2007. We met at Fado’s an Irish Pub where I had a very tasty Shepherd’s Pie and several pints of Kilkenny Ale which I have not had since traveling in the Mediterranean and the Gulf. On the way there I rode the DC Metro and was very careful to not put any extra pressure on my leg than was absolutely necessary until I got caught in a crosswalk and had to try to run across to beat the light. I am in good physical shape and I figured since I could walk I could probably still run. I was wrong. The first time my right foot hit the ground a shock wave went through my leg with the area that I had injured erupting in pain bad enough to bring tears to my eyes.

After dinner I left the Metro station near GWU and stepped off what I thought was a short one step which were actually two steps again landing on my already throbbing leg. I managed to get to my room where after a couple of Aleve tablets the edge is starting to come off of the pain. Tomorrow I will check out of my room and the conference and about 900-930 AM will hit the road out of town. I am in enough pain that as soon as I get into Virginia Beach I will stop at the Navy Clinic at Joint Base Little Creek or the Naval Medical Center to get my leg checked out.

I was very glad to get together with Pat and to enjoy the fellowship. There is something about the shared military experience including war that binds people together. It was as if we had seen each other yesterday, but then we chat often on Facebook and comment a lot on “The New Adventures of Doctrine Man!”

While we were talking another stake was placed in the talks to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. I believe that the nation is now being held hostage by a minority of people on the political right and left who have decided it is better for them to destroy the economy of the nation and livelihood of the vast majority of Americans to gain a short term political advantage in the 2012 elections.

This is not the first time this national suicide pact has happened. It is now so late and the sides so far apart with such great enmity between them that even if in the now unlikely event a debt ceiling deal is reached the damage is done. Our national credit rating will be downgraded and although the nation will survive life will become exponentially more difficult for most Americans and the chaos will spread around the globe.

Back in the late 1920s the radical left and radical right in the German Weimar Republic represented by the German Communist Party on the Left and Hitler’s National Socialist Party of Germany on the Right sabotaged the more moderate politicians of the Center Party and the Socialist Party of Germany. When Wall Street Crashed and the World entered the “Great Depression” the parties of the Left and Right became even more polarized leading President Paul Von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler to form a government.

Of course the rest as we historians are prone to say is history. The short sighted policies and actions of the German political parties after the collapse of the Empire eventually brought about the Nazi dictatorship. If our political leaders continue down this path we can expect that the already fragile economy will take a terrible hit. We can expect that many people in the United Statesand around the World will suffer the economic effects of the actions of these so called leaders. As things get worse the extremists in both major political parties aided and abetted by those that think that they can gain by this tragedy will fight it out until one or the other beats the other party into submission.

This will not be good and I expect that the pain of what our political leaders inflict on us will be far greater than the physical pain that I feel now. God help us all.

Be Careful…there is a point of no return and we may have crossed it

Be careful with your thoughts because they turn into words

Be careful with your words because they turn into actions

Be careful with your actions because they turn into habits

Be careful with your habits because they become your character

Be careful with your character because it defines you

Ezra Taft Benson (former Secretary of Agriculture) quoted by Buck O’Neil

On Wednesday night I took a walk about our Nation’s Capitol. It was a beautiful night and the buildings and monuments were illuminated in the most spectacular ways. It was inspiring in a sense to see them, symbols of the greatness of the country and the people how sacrificed themselves to build it. I can understand why so many millions of people have come to this country from all over the world to become Americans and be part of our dream.

In fact I became so engrossed I taking pictures that night that in the darkness I did not see an unilluminated ledge not far from theWashingtonMonument. I fell from it onto the waiting sidewalk below and crunched my right leg pretty bad. I had it checked out and x-rayed at the Naval Health Clinic at Joint Base Little Creek when I returned to Virginia. The doctor assumes that there is a good chance that I have a hairline fracture of either my tibia or fibula just below the knee and I am being referred for further tests when I return to Camp LeJeune Monday. Until then I am on crutches and pain meds.

I fell over the ledge that I had no idea was where it was. It was inadvertent and even when I got up and looked at it I had a hard time making it out. However there are those in the country including many in the political leadership and media that seem to want us to go over a cliff because they perceive that it helps them and their agenda. They see the ledge and they know the danger but they unfortunately enabled by “we” press on to the abyss.

For many years the political ideologues on the extremes of the Left and the Right in the United States have harbored the worst thoughts about those that do not match up with their ideologies. I have been writing for quite some time about how divided our body politic is and how dangerous the situation has become.

The contemptuous thoughts of the Left for the Right and Right for the Left first turned to words and those words became commonplace, so common that they became habitual. In a sense they have become part of the political DNA of the most extreme among us.

The attitudes that we have formed and angry words which we now use so ubiquitously are reflective of a deep hatred that now is becoming what defines us as a people. In fact the deep and abiding hatred which now permeates our society is now threatening the international standing and I would say the national security of the United States. We have only ourselves to blame because through our actions and inactions of the past decade we have made our choice to be what we have become and there is no one group especially in our political, media and business elites that have served us well. In fact we have as voters chosen this toxic mix of elected officials often more influenced by hate spewing pundits and our own self interests rather than that of the nation and future generations much as we would like to claim that we are looking out for the future.

We have chosen badly and we are paying for it. We are being held hostage by those that we elected, men and women who supposedly know better than to destroy the country in order to save it as was about the village of Bien Tre in the Vietnam War… “we had to destroy the village in order to save it.” The Left and right have racked up massive debt over the past decade which has made previous debt pale in significance. Each like to blame one another as “mostly to blame” but each has a major part of the responsibility for the mess that we are in. However the amazing thing is that neither side nor we the electorate seems to be able to hold ourselves responsible.

Without going into the whole debt ceiling debacle which now has us on the edge of a default which we can only pray will not be as bad as real economists around the world say it will be; the fact is that we have made the mess and now our leaders are failing us. I have to say that all of them have used this made up crisis to some extent to further their goals and agendas at the expense of the country. That is a shame and our elected leaders of all parties and factions are at fault and it comes back to character, theirs and ours.

You see it is about more than the budget or the debt ceiling. It is about hatred of fellow Americans which has been preached by hypocritical ideologues for decades on the radio, television and now the internet. Much of it is as raw, hateful and disingenuous propaganda disguised as “news” as was Julius Streicher’s Nazi Der Sturmer and the Communist Party Die Rote Fahne were in Weimar Germany. That poison has infected us and most of us line up on one side of the propaganda machine or the other. We know what happened to the Weimar Republic, racked by bills it could not pay, massive unemployment brought on by the Great Depression and a desperate population led by politicians that intentionally used their misery to derail the efforts of government after government to try to manage the crisis. They ended up with Hitler, the head of a large and vocal political movement which refused to compromise with anyone to bring down the Republic that they hated.

Whatever happens in regard to the debt ceiling and future budget negotiations the damage has been done. The soul of our nation and our national character has been damaged perhaps irreparably. Our leaders hate each other and the most influential media in the country, the talk radio and cable news pundits of all stripes throw gasoline on the fire every day. The social and political anarchy will reign until one side or the other has crushed their opposition. Those in the middle lose either way as they will be crushed by whichever side wins unless they ally themselves with the winning side no matter who it is.

History teaches us that such times are at best tumultuous and at worst cataclysmic. The consequences when great nations engage in such political fratricide it usually has grave consequences that effect it as well as nations and peoples far beyond its borders.

It is time for everyone to take a step back from the abyss before we plunge headlong into something that we will regret which will only benefit those that seek to benefit from it. Or are we too stupid to see what is happening?

Thoughts, words, habits, character….be careful.

God help us all

We won’t let this Happen again….Until the Next Time

“I am disgusted and worn out with the system that seems to prevail.” Brigadier General John Buford

The news is abuzz tonight about the bi-partisan deal that has been agreed to by the President, the Speaker of the House and Majority Leader of the Senate. The details will come out but certainly there will be those unhappy with the deal. I don’t know what is in it and the devil is always in the details.

I am a realist and the details seldom bode well. Like John Buford a career Officer during the Civil War I have become disgusted and worn out watching the men and women that we have elected to public office work so hard to fracture this country that I hold so dear.

Tomorrow I expect that the deal will pass in the House and Senate unless the hard core right and left work together to embarrass their respective leaders. Since neither side had enough votes to do this on their own despite weeks of impassioned and often bitter argument with neither side listening to the other it has come down to this moment. Personally in light of all that has transpired between the current Congress and the Obama administration even if this is passed Monday on Tuesday the death struggle will resume. Of course the deal may not pass and like Confederate General Robert E. Lee perhaps questioning his own rejection of Union we might someday say “the war… was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forbearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides.”

That struggle has already begun as some Tea Party leader declared Congressman Allen West and three other Tea Party Supported House Members as “Tea Party defectors” for supporting Speaker of the House John Boehner’s plan over the weekend. On July 27th Tea Party Nation leader Judson Phillips urged Boehner “to go” and be replaced by a “Tea Party Speaker of the House” while The Party Patriot co-founder Jenny Beth Martin suggested a similar thing. Many Liberals are equally critical of the President and Majority Leader Harry Reid with a growing number stating that they believe that President Obama has betrayed their ideals one Democrat Congressman calling the deal a “sugar coated Satan sandwich.”

The battle lines are still drawn and the language except for the utilitarian language that compromise was necessary to stave off a default has not changed an iota. The language of compromise does not sit well with the most vocal members of the Tea Party faction nor those on the hard Left. Many Tea Party leaders and members continue to argue that their leadership to push the government into default to achieve their goals.

The default may not happen now but the crisis is not past. No it will be with us for a long time with more division, more bitterness and more fuel being poured onto the flames of hatred that have consumed us. Much like the various crises and compromises on the road to the Civil War nothing substantial has changed. In fact William Gross the head of PIMCO one of the major global investment groups said that a downgrade was “inevitable” and that “Congress has basically proven itself to be dysfunctional and this will carry on for months even if the crisis is basically resolved in the next few days.”

We have crossed the Rubicon and unless an external and existential threat to our nation forces our leaders to work together I seriously doubt that this will end well. The President failed to lead when he had a super-majority and his allies in Congress squandered the chance that they were given in 2008. The Republicans after taking the House in 2010 are doing the same. Neither side will admit to their behavior. Both will with good reason to point the finger of blame at their opponents while ignoring their own contributions to this sordid state of affairs.

I can see it as if has already happened. The Unholy Trinity of politicians, pundits and preachers will step up their rhetoric inciting their followers to adopt even more uncompromising positions. The already fearful enmity will deepen and the center will disappear. Emotion in the form of hatred will drive the arguments that neither side will listen to even as the United States and the world economy worsens and the wars continue. Young Americans will give their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan even as their political leaders on both sides of the aisle seek ways to reduce the force and even the pay and benefits that they have earned after 10 years of unending war that the rest of the nation while seemingly grateful does not understand nor share. “We few, we happy few…” William Shakespeare quotes Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt.

Tonight I have been watching the movie Gettysburg which I think is a fitting reminder of what happens when the Unholy Trinity finally achieves their goal of destroying the very fabric of the nation and pits brother against brother. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and somehow, some way we will get through this before we long for the day that makes what we are experiencing now look good.

Like General James Longstreet I wonder “Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?”

The Deal is Done and are We? There are Always Results

“but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. a geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.” Thomas Jefferson on the Missouri Compromise

I believe that Thomas Jefferson in describing the results of the Missouri Compromise aptly describes the mood of our times and the consequences of politicians that lead us to the dark abyss of hatred and civil war. There are times that I wish that I was not a historian or theologian for then I could simply be ignorant of the place that our elected leaders are leading us.

Yesterday and today I sat convalescing at home trying to stay off of my injured leg as the final actions were taken in the House and the Senate on the Debt Ceiling Compromise. I felt as if I was watching a national tragedy being marketed as by some as a triumph of cooperation. I was amazed that talk which was paired with the opponents of the measure in both parties. I felt that those praising their actions to pass the increase and related budgetary cuts were saying it all for show even as they sharpened their swords for the next battle even as the vast majority of Americans expressed anger and frustration with the behavior of their elected officials. A Pew Research poll indicated “72 percent of American characterized the recent budget negotiations as “ridiculous, disgusting, stupid, and frustrating.”

But we have no one to blame but ourselves. We voted them all into office and we have encouraged their repugnant behavior with our votes which more often than not were purchased by the fear mongering engaged by each side and our desire to have our special interests and or ideology come out on top. We have been engaged in what conservative columnist Pat Buchanan declared a “culture war” for the past two decades and wars be they cultural, ideological, and economic or military have consequences. The longer they go on the worse and more violent they become until one side finally loses and the landscape is destroyed. A conservative German newspaper noted “It is this war-like rhetoric that has so poisoned American politics.” The Germans should know something of this. The “Kulturkrieg” and the violent hatred of their countrymen in the wake of the defeat of the First World War and humiliation of Versailles brought about civil war. The pursuit of radical ideologies in the following years is what doomed the ill-fated Weimar Republic when the economic calamity of the Great Depression struck and led to the tragedy of the Nazi takeover and ultimately led to World War Two.

I believe that the actions of all parties in this forced crisis were a disservice to the citizens of this country, the memory of all who have gone before us and done more to damage our standing in the world than I could ever imagine. It is as if the leaders of the country have forgotten why they are even in Washington. There is no unity of purpose, only the language of war being used against fellow Americans. A German newspaper wrote “No one can forget the Civil War atmosphere in which this debt fight has taken place. It weighs on America’s international reputation. From the point of view of financial markets, the dysfunctional nature of Washington is a risk factor that must be calculated for in the future.”

The sad thing is that there is so much work that has to be done and it is more than reducing Federal Government spending. Our industries have been shipped wholesale overseas using the treaties that business has foisted upon their willing accomplices in both parties in the name of “free trade.” Our unemployment continues to rise and many economic experts believe that we are entering a “double dip” recession which some believe could easily become a depression. The infrastructure of the nation crumbling with the businesses that benefit from them refusing to contribute to their maintenance unless they receive government contracts and money in return. We are committed to long term ground wars that have sapped the economy and worn out the military which now seem to serve little strategic purpose. In fact the position of the Army in Afghanistan could be disastrous if Pakistan decides to stop cooperating and not allow us to supply the Army through it.

It is apparent to me that those that can afford it the least and the military will bear the brunt of the cuts that will come and that it will be a long time before this crisis passes. No one seems to be addressing the major issue of unemployment or economic growth without which there is no recovery. I heard the President and Senate Majority Leader McConnell repeat what they have said for years but no plans and no action. As for the military we are worn to a nub, our equipment needs to be replaced and modernized and our troops still deserve the best that we can give them, but even this is on the chopping block, military retirement is called “an expensive entitlement program” by those advocating that the military adopt a private sector pay and benefit plan of little value especially to those that have spent 10 years at war paying with their minds, bodies and spirit fighting wars that the Wall Street bunch has benefited from, the same Wall Street leaders that now call for reductions in military pay and benefits. It is obscene.

I would like to believe that this is a rough patch that we will get through, but right now with the terrible acrimony present in Washington and all the State Capitols I have a hard time believing that we will. The President has failed to enunciate any kind of plan or vision and the Tea Party leadership is acting like the Jacobins in Revolutionary France.

I have no idea who will “win” this “culture war” and does it really matter? The result will be a Pyrrhic victory with the winners celebrating on the ruins of the country. I only know that we all lose.

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November 8, 2012 · 21:00

Happy 238th Birthday Marines! The Proud Tradition of the United States Marine Corps Continues

Resolved, that two Battalions of Marines be raised consisting of one Colonel, two Lieutenant Colonels, two Majors & Officers as usual in other regiments, that they consist of an equal number of privates with other battalions; that particular care be taken that no persons be appointed to office or enlisted into said Battalions, but such as are good seamen, or so acquainted with maritime affairs as to be able to serve to advantage by sea, when required. That they be enlisted and commissioned for and during the present war with Great Britain and the colonies, unless dismissed by Congress. That they be distinguished by the names of the first & second battalions of American Marines, and that they be considered a part of the number, which the continental Army before Boston is ordered to consist of.
—Resolution of the Continental Congress on 10 November 1775

Today is the 238^th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. The history of the Marine Corps is one of the most fascinating of any armed service in the world. Starting out as a tiny force attached to Navy ships and shipyards the Corps has gained prominence as one of the premier fighting forces ever assembled. Flexible and deployable anywhere in the world on short notice the Marine Corps has seen action in “every place and clime” and continues to serve around the world be it in battle in Afghanistan or aiding American citizens affected by Hurricane Sandy and the Nor’easter of this week. Marine Corps Reservists always active in their communities touch the lives of needy children through the Toys for Tots program.

The Shores of Tripoli

In 1775 a committee of the Continental Congress met at Philadelphia’s Tun Tavern to draft a resolution calling for two battalions of Marines able to fight for independence at sea and on shore. The resolution was approved on November 10, 1775, officially forming the Continental Marines. The first order of business was to appoint Samuel Nicholas as the Commandant of the newly formed Marines. Robert Mullan the owner and proprietor of the said Tun Tavern became Nicholson’s first captain and recruiter. They began gathering support and were ready for action by early 1776. They served throughout the War for Independence and like the Navy they were disbanded in April 1783 and reconstituted as the Marine Corps in 1798. The served on the ships of the Navy in the Quasi-war with France, against the Barbary Pirates where a small group of 8 Marines and 500 Arabs under Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon made a march of 500 miles across the Libyan Desert to lay siege Tripoli but only reached Derna. The action is immortalized in the Marine Hymn as well as the design of the Marine Officer’s “Mameluke” Sword. They served in the War of 1812, the Seminole Wars and in the Mexican-American War where in the storming of the on Chapultepec Palace they continued to build and enduring legacy. In the months leading up to the Civil War they played a key role at home and abroad. In October 1859 Colonel Robert E. Lee led Marines from the Marine Barracks Washington DC to capture John Brown and his followers who had captured the Federal Armory at Harper’s Ferry.

Thd Halls of Montezuma

The Corps would serve through the Civil War and on into the age of American Expansion serving in the Spanish American War in the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba where they seized Guantanamo Bay at the battle of Cuzco Wells. The would serve in China and be a key component of the international force that defended foreign diplomats during the Boxer Revolt as well as the international force that would relieve the diplomatic compound in Peking (Beijing). In World War One the Marines stopped the German advance at Chateau Thierry and cemented their reputation as an elite fighting force at Belleau Wood where legend has it that the Germans nicknamed them Teufelhunden or Devil Dogs, a name that they Marines have appropriated with great aplomb.

The Teufelhunden at Belleau Wood

During the inter-war years the Marines were quite active in the Caribbean and Asia and also developed amphibious tactics and doctrine that would be put to use in the Pacific Campaign. During the war the Marines served in all theaters but won enduring fame at Wake Island, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and numerous other battles in the Pacific war. Marine Aviators flew in some the most desperate actions in the war to support the Navy and amphibious operations ashore.

Medal of Honor Winner Mitchell Paige at Bloody Ridge, Guadalcanal

F2A Brewster Buffalo of VMF 221 at the Battle of Midway

After the war the Truman Administration sought to eliminate the Marine Corps but the Corps was saved by the efforts of Americans across the country and Marine supporters in Congress. That was a good thing because the Marines were instrumental in keeping the North Koreans from overrunning the South during the Korean War on the Pusan Perimeter, turned the tide at Inchon and helped decimate Communist Chinese forces at the Chosin Reservoir. After Korea the Marines would serve around the World in the Caribbean and Lebanon and in Vietnam where at Da Nang Keh Sanh, Hue City, Con Thien fighting the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies. The Marines took the initiative to implement innovative counter insurgency measures such as the Combined Action Platoons which enjoyed tremendous success until they were shut down by the Army high command. These lessons would serve the Marines well in the new millennium during the Anbar Awakening in Iraq which changed the course of that insurgency and war.

The Marines would again be involved around the World after Vietnam serving in the Cold War, in Lebanon and the First Gulf War which was followed by actions in Somalia, the Balkans and Haiti. After the attacks of September 11^th 2001 the Marines were among the first into Afghanistan helping to drive the Taliban from power. In the Iraq Campaign the Marines had a leading role both in the invasion and in the campaign in Al Anbar Province. After their withdraw from Iraq the Marines became a central player in Afghanistan where today they are engaged around Khandahar and in Helmand Province.

The Battle of Hue City

The Marines are elite among world military organizations and continue to “fight our nations battles on the air and land and sea.” The Corps under General John LeJeune institutionalized the celebration of the Marine Corps Birthday and their establishment at Tun Tavern. General LeJeune issued this order which is still read at every Marine Corps Birthday Ball or observance:

MARINE CORPS ORDER No. 47 (Series 1921)
HEADQUARTERS
U.S. MARINE CORPS Washington, November 1, 1921

The following will be read to the command on the 10th of November, 1921, and hereafter on the 10th of November of every year. Should the order not be received by the 10th of November, 1921, it will be read upon receipt.

On November 10, 1775, a Corps of Marines was created by a resolution of Continental Congress. Since that date many thousand men have borne the name “Marine”. In memory of them it is fitting that we who are Marines should commemorate the birthday of our corps by calling to mind the glories of its long and illustrious history.

The record of our corps is one which will bear comparison with that of the most famous military organizations in the world’s history. During 90 of the 146 years of its existence the Marine Corps has been in action against the Nation’s foes. From the Battle of Trenton to the Argonne, Marines have won foremost honors in war, and in the long eras of tranquility at home, generation after generation of Marines have grown gray in war in both hemispheres and in every corner of the seven seas, that our country and its citizens might enjoy peace and security.

In every battle and skirmish since the birth of our corps, Marines have acquitted themselves with the greatest distinction, winning new honors on each occasion until the term “Marine” has come to signify all that is highest in military efficiency and soldierly virtue.

This high name of distinction and soldierly repute we who are Marines today have received from those who preceded us in the corps. With it we have also received from them the eternal spirit which has animated our corps from generation to generation and has been the distinguishing mark of the Marines in every age. So long as that spirit continues to flourish Marines will be found equal to every emergency in the future as they have been in the past, and the men of our Nation will regard us as worthy successors to the long line of illustrious men who have served as “Soldiers of the Sea” since the founding of the Corps.

JOHN A. LEJEUNE,
Major General
Commandant

I have had the privilege of serving with the Marines in peace and war and the most memorable Marine Corps Birthday celebrations for me were in Ramadi with the Marine advisors to the Iraqi 7^th Division and with the Marine Security Force Company at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. The highlight of my career was serving with the Marines in Iraq and I wear my Iraq Campaign Medal with pride. The Marines have helped my professional development as an office through the Amphibious Warfare Course, Command and Staff College and the Fleet Marine Force Officer Qualification. I count my Marines as some of my most enduring friends.

I have provide a link to a great tribute to the Marines, the official Marine Corps Birthday Message for 2013.

http://www.military.com/video/forces/marine-corps/2013-marine-corps-birthday-message/2816787896001/

Happy Birthday Marines. Thank you for all you do.

Semper Fidelis!

Padre Steve+

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September 18, 2012 · 00:52

The Bloodiest Day: The Battle of Antietam 17 September 1863

“Of all the days on all the fields where American soldiers have fought, the most terrible by almost any measure was September 17, 1862. The battle waged on that date, close by Antietam Creek at Sharpsburg in western Maryland, took a human toll never exceeded on any other single day in the nation’s history. So intense and sustained was the violence, a man recalled, that for a moment in his mind’s eye the very landscape around him turned red.” Stephen W Sears

“I have heard of ‘the dead lying in heaps’, but never saw it till this battle. Whole ranks fell together.” Captain Emory Upton, 2nd U.S. Artillery, at Antietam

“We were in the very maelstrom of the battle. Men were falling every moment. The horrible noise was incessant and almost deafening. Except that my mind was absorbed in my duties, I do not know how I could have endured the strain.” Lt. Frederick L. Hitchcock, 132nd Pennsylvania, at Bloody Lane, Sept. 17, 1862

To the west of Frederick Maryland a small town named Sharpsburg sits on the west side of a creek. Named Antietam the creek’s headwaters are in Franklin County Pennsylvania and it meanders south where just to the south of Sharpsburg it empties into the Potomac River.

It is a peaceful place, rolling hills and agricultural country with some well preserved stone arch bridges, including one just outside of Sharpsburg. It is hard to believe that 150 years ago the town and the creek were the scene of the bloodiest single day of battle in American history.

On that indian summer day of 1862 the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, General Robert E Lee, commanding made a stand against the much larger Union Army of the Potomac, Major General George B. McClellan, commanding.

Lee had invaded Maryland following a string of successes in Northern Virginia during that summer of 1862, defeating McClellan outside of Richmond in the Seven Days, and in a campaign of maneuver bested a newly formed Army, the Union Army of Virginia commanded by Major General John Pope defeating it at the Second Battle of Bull Run between 28-30 August 1862. With Northern Virginia’s crops and livestock depleted and his opponents in crisis Lee moved his army north into Maryland. The decision was driven partly by the need to provision his army, but also had the hope of drawing Maryland away from the Union mistakenly believing that public sentiment in that state was pro-Confederate. If the people of Maryland rose up to support Lee it would be disastrous to the Union and endanger the capital itself. A final consideration was the hope that a Confederate victory on Northern soil would bring about the foreign recognition and possibly the intervention of Great Britain on the side of the Confederacy.

The Lost Order

Lee crossed the Potomac on September 3rd and sent his Second Corps west with some elements seizing the Union armory in Harper’s Ferry, others to secure the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at Martinsburg the rest of the Army was in the area of Frederick. He was pursued by the very cautious McClellan at the head of the Army of the Potomac.

On September 9th Lee issued General Order 191, the infamous “lost order” which a copy of which was found by Union soldiers wrapped around three cigars at a campground recently occupied by Lee’s rear guard element, the division of D.H. Hill on September 13th. The order detailed the disposition of Lee’s army and McClellan seized the opportunity. On the 14th the Army of the Potomac attacked part of Lee’s army at the Battle of South Mountain. The Union won that battle forcing the outnumbered Confederate forces to withdraw, though the delay allowed Lee to concentrate more of his army at Sharpsburg on the 15th.

Although he outnumbered Lee McClellan believed the reports of the Pinkerton Detective Agency which provided intelligence to the army. Those estimates which credited Lee with more than 100,000 troops. He delayed his attack until he had drawn up his full army on the on the 17th.

When he did attack on the 17th his attacks were uncoordinated and though he came close to decisive breakthrough Lee’s army desperately clung to its positions. The action began to the north of the town in the morning and both sides showed incredible ferocity at the Cornfield, where in the space of about three hours nearly 8000 soldiers were killed or wounded. The fighting shifted to the center of the line opposite the town by mid-day. Amid the destructive storm of artillery the armies fought around the Dunker Church and a sunken lane now known as “Bloody Lane.” In the confines of that 800 yard stretch of road over 5000 soldiers were killed or wounded in the course of about four hours. The Union forces broke the Confederate line but reinforcements were not sent and when the the division commander, Major General Israel Richardson was mortally wounded the attack lost its verve and the Confederates under Lieutenant General James Longstreet were able to restore the line.

The south remained quiet as McClellan ordered Major General Ambrose Burnside’s IX Corps to hold off on attacking. Burnside did not receive his orders to attack until 1000. He finally attacked across the south bridge, now known as Burnside’s Bridge in the afternoon. It was another tough fight and Burnside, after several attempts move to the south to flank Confederate forces in the late afternoon with the intention of cutting Lee from off his only escape route. The Confederates were in a desperate condition. It was at this point, about 3 PM when the division of Major General A.P. Hill arrived and immediately counterattacked breaking up Burnside’s attack. Burnside requested reinforcements from McClellan who refused saying that he had none available. This was not the case, McClellan had two full corps of infantry uncommitted to the battle but still believing that he was outnumbered and that Lee was attempting to trap him.

The actioned ended by 530 PM with both sides rested and reorganized for action the next day. Lee prepared to defend but no Union attack was offered on the 18th. An informal truce was observed to allow the evacuation of the wounded and Lee began his withdraw across the Potomac into Virginia that night. Despite being goaded by Lincoln to pursue McClellan did not and the Union lost the opportunity to destroy Lee’s army n Union territory.

Casualty estimates vary but according to Stephen W Sears in his book Landscape Turned Red that the Army of the Potomac lost 2108 dead, 9540 wounded and 753 missing. He states the best estimate of Confederate casualties are 1546 dead, 7752 wounded and 1018 missing. Most of the missing were likely killed and buried in mass graves or discovered and buried by civilians after the battle. In the space of 12 hours 22719 Americans were killed or wounded. It was the bloodiest single day in American military history.

Though the battle was inconclusive in that Lee’s army survived but had to break off its offensive it had more influence than expected. President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22nd and though it did not take effect until January 1st 1863 it marked a turning point in the war.

McClellan failed to take up the offensive in the next tow months and Lincoln relieved him of command giving the Army of the Potomac to Burnside who goaded by Lincoln took the army into battle at Fredericksburg where it met with defeat.

I have been to the battlefield a number of times, once as part of a “staff ride” with the Marine battalion that I was assigned in May of 2000. Each time I go I take the time to ponder the great losses endured by both armies and the individual courage of the soldiers involved. Some of the units that I served with in the Army National Guard in Texas and Virginia trace their lineage and honors to regiments that fought at Antietam and I have felt a connection to the battle because of that. It is hard to imagine the amount of death and carnage taking place in such a placid location in such a short amount of time.

It is something to ponder when some Americans openly suggest another civil war if their party does not win the election.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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July 4, 2012 · 20:07

Four Score and Seven: July 4th at Gettysburg

“Dead men and plenty here – and I saw plenty [3] of them in all shapes on the field – Help to wound & Kill men then Patch them up I could show more suffering here in one second than you will see in a Life…” Elbert Corbin, Union Soldier at Gettysburg 1st Regiment, Light Artillery, N. Y. S. Volunteers (Pettit’s Battery)

“In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear, but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls.” Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

The Army of Northern Virginia and Army of the Potomac remained on the bloodstained Gettysburg battlefield on July 4th 1863. Both armies had suffered severely in the fighting around 50,000 soldiers from both sides lay dead, dying or wounded on the battlefield. Surgeons and their assistants manned open air hospitals while parties of stretcher bearers evacuated wounded men for treatment and other soldiers began to identify and bury the dead. Halfway across the continent Confederate Lieutenant General John C Pemberton surrendered his emaciated forces at Vicksburg to Major General Ullysses S Grant which cut the Confederacy in half. It was a fitting day of remembrance as it was the 87th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the significance was not lost on any of the commanders.

It was a somber day, the sweltering heat sunshine which had bathed the battlefield as Longstreets’ Corps Corps attacked Cemetery Ridge was broken by heavy rain and wind. The commanders of both armies, General Robert E Lee and Major General George Mead attempted to discern the others intent while making their own plans. It was Lee’s hope that Meade would attack and possibly give him the opportunity to inflict a defeat on the Union forces. Meade, still new to command and cautious did not renew the engagement and Lee began to withdraw the battered Army of Northern Virginia from the field.

As Lee withdrew Meade slowly pursued and lost a chance at trapping the Confederate Army before it could escape across the rain swollen Potomac River. Lee completed his withdraw under pressure on the 14th and his rear-guard under the command of Major General Harry Heth fought an action against Union forces at the in which the accomplished academic and author Brigadier General James Pettigrew was mortally wounded.

Meade’s lackluster pursuit was criticized by many including President Lincoln who believed that had Meade been more aggressive that the war could have ended there. Had Lee’s army been destroyed in little over a week after the surrender of Vicksburg it could have well brought about the downfall of the Confederacy in the summer of 1863. Even so the skill of Meade in defeating Lee at Gettysburg was one of the greatest achievements by a Union commander during the war in the East. In earlier times Lee had held sway over his Federal opponents. McClellan, Porter, Pope, Burnside and Hooker had all failed against Lee and his army.

Many of the dead at Gettysburg were the flower of the nation. Intelligent, thoughtful and passionate they were cut down in their prime. The human cost some of over 50,000 men killed or wounded is astonishing. In those three days more Americans were killed or wounded than in the entire Iraq campaign.

The war would go on for almost two more years adding many thousands more dead and wounded. However the Union victory at Gettysburg was decisive. Never again did Lee go on the offensive and when Grant came East at the end of 1863 to command Union armies in the East against Lee the Federal armies fought with renewed ferocity and once engaged Grant never let Lee’s forces out of their grip.

In November 1863 Lincoln travelled to Gettysburg to dedicate a cemetery and commemorate the dead. He penned a short speech which still echoes in the hearts of Americans as one of the greatest tributes ever spoken. His Gettysburg Address is a speech that still calls Americans to the cause of freedom and the to remember the great cost of liberty with renewed passion.

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under civil war, History

Tagged as abraham lincoln, battle of gettysburg, elbert corbin, general george gordon meade, gettysburg casualties, harry heth, james pettigrew, john c pemberton, joshua chamberlain, july 4th, robert e lee, the gettysburg address, ullysses s grant, vicksburg

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