It was a fear Milton Smith Littlefield Jr. simply couldn’t shake whenever speaking before an audience. Though well-respected, the Presbyterian minister and editor of hymn books agonized about being recognized as the son of Civil War General Milton Smith Littlefield. The younger Littlefield did what he could to squash this controversial legacy, even tearing out, upon his father’s death, the pages of the general’s scrapbook to conceal his crimes from curious readers.

Was General Littlefield really worthy of such shame, however? He had been a rising star in the U.S. Army—a friend of Abraham Lincoln and, during the war, a distinguished commander of African American troops.

The elder Littlefield befriended Lincoln while working as a lawyer and newspaper reporter, and enthusiastically lent his support during the 1860 presidential election. His brother, John H. Littlefield, worked as a clerk in Lincoln’s Springfield, Ill., law office and was later appointed a U.S. Treasury Department clerk.

Elected a captain in the 14th Illinois Infantry, Milton Littlefield Sr. led a company at Shiloh, drawing praise from one of his sergeants for standing “erect in front of his men, during the whole engagement” and escaping “injury, except having about three inches torn from the left shoulder of his coat, by an [enemy] ball.”

In November 1862, Littlefield was aboard the steamer Eugene when it struck a sunken ship and sank in the Mississippi River, about 12 miles above Fort Pillow. While trying to keep passengers calm, the future general was knocked overboard and drifted downriver until rescued by Union soldiers at the fort.

Four months later, Littlefield was sent to South Carolina to organize and lead African American troops. As colonel of the 21st U.S. Colored Infantry, he was attached to Brig. Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore’s staff and, during the famed assault on Fort Wagner in July, was among those noted for “doing all in their power to sustain the courage of the troops and urge on reinforcements” while under “constant” fire. Littlefield assumed command of the 54th Massachusetts, replacing slain Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, and in November 1864 was brevetted a brigadier general.

Erasmus W. Jones, 21st USCI chaplain, would write that Littlefield’s “unflinching perseverance, united with that perfect moral integrity that have so far elevated him, will soon raise him to higher dignities and honors.” The general’s postwar endeavors erased any chance of that, however.

In 1867, he and George W. Swepson, president of the Western North Carolina Railroad, were involved in a multi-million-dollar embezzlement scheme. Having fled to Florida, he evaded prosecution despite multiple attempts to extradite him.

After relocating to New York in his later years, he was arrested for other offenses, including grand larceny and misappropriation of a mortgage bond. He died in Vadhalla, N.Y., on March 6, 1899—his burial service lightly attended, no surprise.

Perhaps Milton Littlefield Jr. had his father in mind with this entry in his Hymns of the Christian Life: “Those who never knew Thee, Those who’ve wandered far, Guide them by the brightness Of Thy guiding star….To that heavenly home, Where no sin nor sorrow Evermore shall come.” 

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

See more stories

SubscriBE NOW!

 

Bullets zipped by him like a thunderstorm gone frenetic, whistling past his ears and slamming into the crumbling walls overhead. Minutes earlier the young Hispanic had bolted across the plaza to hole up in the tiny wood-and-adobe jacal—meager refuge from the coming hail of lead. Over the next 36 hours more than 4,000 rounds of ammunition would riddle the structure, tearing away parts of the house. Eight slugs were later pried from a broom handle.

Yet through it all the teen survived unscathed.

In late October 1884, in a dramatic display of skill, spunk and luck, unimposing 5-foot-7 19-year-old Elfego Baca instigated and prevailed in what was likely the most unequal civilian gunfight in the history of the American West. Certainly, it was the most unusual ever recorded.

Elfego’s Early Life

Many legends surround Elfego Baca, but a few facts are certain. On Feb. 27, 1865, he was born in Socorro, New Mexico Territory, to Francisco and Juana María Baca. The first legend has it his mother was playing las Iglesias, the Mexican version of softball, when her son emerged into the world right there on the field. Another legend claims Elfego was kidnapped in early childhood by Indians who immediately returned the toddler to his family after his screaming disturbed the serenity of the abductors’ camp.

A year after Baca’s birth his parents relocated the family to Topeka, Kan. There, surrounded by Anglos, Elfego grew up learning English and how to defend himself—using his wits before resorting to fists or gunplay, but never backing down. 

Then, in early 1872 an unrecorded illness struck the family, claiming the lives of Baca’s mother, two sisters and a brother. Deciding to return to New Mexico Territory, Elfego’s father, Francisco, brought along eldest son Abdenago but left Elfego in the care of an orphanage. Settling in the small town of Belen, in Valencia County some 40 miles north of Socorro, the senior Baca was soon appointed marshal.

In 1880 15-year-old Elfego left the orphanage and made his way to Socorro, some 75 miles south of Albuquerque. There he reunited with brother Abdenago and other members of the Baca clan, later reconnecting with father Francisco. But it was to be a brief reunion for Elfego and his father. That December in the line of duty Marshal Baca shot into the midst of a drunken brawl in Belen, killing a man. Tried for murder the following spring, he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Francisco was being held in the Valencia County Jail, in Los Lunas, awaiting transfer to the Kansas State Penitentiary, in Lansing, when he and three other prisoners were “liberated” by Elfego and 15-year-old accomplice identified only as Chavez.

Newspapers reported details of the jailbreak, but only a few people knew of Elfego’s involvement. After escorting his father to El Paso, Texas, where Francisco could slip across the international border should need arise, Elfego returned to New Mexico Territory. Young Baca worked on his uncle’s isolated Socorro cattle ranch and then for a time in the Albuquerque area, where he transported meat by wagon to Santa Fe Railroad workers. But he always returned home to Socorro.

“Not Afraid”

From the 1880s into the ’90s Socorro was besieged by more than 3,000 miners without benefit of much law enforcement. Sheriffs were stretched thin, thus the town ran wide open 24 hours a day. One day in January 1883 liquored-up Texas cowboys staggered out of a Socorro saloon and rode through the Hispanic neighborhoods in a cloud of dust and bullets. County Sheriff Pete Simpson was in pursuit when he happened across Baca. Mounted and armed, Elfego, weeks shy of his 18th birthday, joined the chase at Simpson’s request. In an interview years later Baca claimed to have shot one of the fleeing horsemen from the saddle at better than 300 yards. Newspapers at the time reported that Simpson had made the shot, but Elfego remained cocky about the encounter. When asked if he knew the name of the dead cowboy, he replied flippantly, “He wasn’t able to tell me by the time I caught up with him.”

Though still wild and reckless in many respects, Elfego took a desk job at age 19 as a mercantile clerk for onetime Socorro judge and mayor Juan José Baca (not a relative), where the teen’s ability to speak both Spanish and English served him well. Though hardly as exciting as being a posse member, it beat being punching cows. Still, Elfego harbored ambitions of being a lawman.

In October 1884 Pedro Sarracino, a county sheriff and saloon owner from San Francisco Plaza, aka Frisco (present-day Reserve, N.M.), rode to Socorro to visit storeowner Baca, his brother-in-law. While there Sarracino mentioned to Elfego that several cattle ranches had sprung up in the Frisco area, and that their hands, mostly rowdy Texans, were running roughshod over local Hispanics. The chaos had recently come to a head when cowboys tortured and maimed a local man in Sarracino’s cantina. Outraged and full of teenage braggadocio, an outraged Elfego declared, “I will show the Texans there is at least one Mexican in the county who is not afraid of an American cowboy.” According to a 1924 autobiographical pamphlet, Baca volunteered on the spot to be Sarracino’s deputy. “I told him that if he would take me back to Frisco with him, that I would make myself a self-made deputy.” Elfego later claimed to have made his own badge. With that, the pair headed to Frisco, 110 miles west as the crow flies in far west-central New Mexico Territory. 

The Legendary Fight

For two centuries before Anglo miners and trappers explored the region that today comprises western New Mexico and eastern Arizona the land supported several hundred Hispanic families. Farming, fishing and hunting kept the people well fed. Long before that, of course, the region had supported various sedentary Indian tribes.

In the 1880s cattlemen arrived from Texas and Oklahoma, daily swelling the population of sprawling San Francisco Plaza, a string of three settlements along the namesake river, which by 1884 had become a staging ground for cross-cultural sparring. Anglos sparred with Hispanics who sparred with Indians, and around it went. Adding fuel to the flames were heated arguments between the various cattle outfits—men who “rode for the brand” and took offense when someone from a competing ranch made an offhand comment. On the heels of the influx of rash young men more than a dozen saloons and bordellos sprang up in Middle and Lower Frisco. The valley was rife with tension.

Soon after Sarracino and young Baca arrived in town, Elfego stepped forward to make his first official arrest. On Oct. 29, 1884, inside the popular Milligan’s Whiskey Bar, drunken cowboy Charlie McCarty brandished his pistol at Hispanic patrons, ordering them to dance, then shot off Baca’s hat. Standing his ground, Baca flashed his badge at McCarty, who hailed from the John Bunyan Slaughter ranch, a notoriously rough Socorro County outfit. Somehow Elfego managed to take the man’s gun. 

Cowboys gathered outside were unhappy to hear that this swaggering, self-deputized Hispanic hero had snagged their partner. Liquored up and ready to fight, the Slaughter cowboys leveled their Winchesters at the saloon, cocked at the ready. As angry shouts, curses and threats from the street resounded off the interior walls, Baca barricaded the saloon doors and windows.

The leader of the mob, Slaughter ranch foreman Young Parham, demanded McCarty’s release even while testing the doors and windows with his shoulders. Parham vowed he and his men would take their friend by force if necessary. Elfego hollered back from inside, threatening to shoot if the cowboys weren’t “out of there by the count of three.” The story goes that the ranch hands had begun to crack jokes about Elfego’s race being unable to count, when they heard him call out in a single quick breath, “One-two-three!” Baca and his “deputies”—friends who’d joined him inside—then fired several warning shots through the door.

In the resulting fusillade Parham had his horse shot out from under him, and as it collapsed, the horse crushed and killed him. Another cowboy caught a bullet through his knee. Out of ammunition and focused on caring for Parham, his horse and the wounded man, the ranch hands retreated, swearing vengeance against Baca and his deputies, who remained holed up at Milligan’s. Early the next morning Slaughter’s hands offered a compromise, vowing to leave be those inside the saloon if Baca would allow McCarty to be tried at a neighboring house. Elfego warily agreed and strolled next door with his ward.

At the speedy trial the justice of the peace fined the sobered-up McCarty $5 and ordered his release. By then, however, rumors had spread among the hands on surrounding ranches that Hispanics in Frisco had gone on a murderous rampage, killing and dismembering Anglo citizens. Seeking to mollify the gathering mob, the justice moved to detain Baca for questioning in Parham’s death.

Unwilling to be arrested, mobbed and undoubtedly lynched, Baca slipped out the “courtroom’s” side door and dashed across the plaza to a crude little jacal whose walls of mesquite sticks and dried mud would almost certainly not stop bullets. Evicting owner Geronimo Armijo and family, Elfego settled in for a siege. While much of the populace fled into the overlooking hills to watch the unfolding drama, some 80 vengeance-seeking ranch hands, using the adobe buttresses of a local church as cover, emptied their weapons into the jacal, reloaded and kept firing until its walls were full of holes. 

Incredibly, none of the bullets struck Baca. All attempts to dislodge the teen were unsuccessful. He refused to come out. In frustration Burt Hearne, of the Spur outfit, rode up to the jacal, leapt from his horse and tried to force the door. Immediately, shots from inside struck Hearne in the stomach. He died within moments. The cowboy soon had company. In the long gunplay four of the vigilantes were killed, eight wounded. Late that evening someone lit a stick of dynamite and tossed it at the jacal. The resulting explosion collapsed the roof and one wall. To spectators and Baca’s attackers alike it seemed no one could have survived the blast. But none of the cowboys was willing to investigate in the darkness. They wisely decided to wait and sift the ruins soberly in the light of day. 

As the morning sun peaked over the Mogollon Rim, the hands who’d spent the night sleeping on the cold ground around Baca’s hideout awoke to the aroma of steeping coffee and fresh tortillas—from inside the jacal. After a hearty breakfast the very much alive Baca resumed his watch. One hungry and enraged cowboy charged forward using a cast-iron shield pirated from a cookstove, only to flee and drop the armor after a slug creased his hairline.

At 6 that evening, a day and a half after the first shots were fired, the battle ended when a bona fide Socorro County deputy sheriff, Frank Rose, persuaded Baca to surrender. Before doing so, Elfego insisted on two conditions: to stand trial in Socorro, and to retain his two pistols (one was McCarty’s). The next morning he rode in the back of a buckboard on the return trip to his hometown. Trailing cowboys were warned not to approach.

Back in Frisco curious onlookers pored over the jacal. Inside, they were astonished to find an intact plaster statue of Nuestra Señora Doña Ana. That Baca had survived was also considered a miracle—until his secret was revealed. The jacal’s floor was recessed 18 inches belowground, enough to have screened Elfego from the incoming barrage. 

Yet Baca did seem to lead a charmed life, for an ambush planned for him on the road to Socorro also failed. Two separate groups of would-be assassins each mistakenly thought the other had carried out the attack. Meanwhile, the lawman arrived safely in custody in Socorro.

Charged with murder in the shooting of Hearne, Baca remained in jail until his trial in Albuquerque in May 1885. Among the items entered into evidence was the door of the jacal, bearing nearly 400 bullet holes. That and Sarracino’s testimony convinced the jury Elfego had indeed killed in self-defense. Subsequently tried and acquitted of murder in the death of Parham, Baca was immediately thrust into the status of folk hero to the local Hispanics.

A Colorful Career

Exploiting his notoriety from the Frisco shootout, Baca officially resumed his career as a deputy sheriff in Socorro. He was later elected county sheriff, with the power to secure indictments for the arrest of local lawbreakers. Instead of having his deputies risk life and limb in pursuit of the wanted men, he sent each of the accused a letter: 

“I have a warrant here for your arrest. Please come in by [fill in date] and give yourself up. If you don’t, I’ll know you intend to resist arrest, and I will feel justified in shooting you on sight when I come after you.”

Most fugitives turned themselves in.

Shortly after his acquittal in 1885 Baca married 16-year-old Francisquita Pohmer. Despite alleged dalliances by Elfego, the couple remained together 60 years and raised two sons and four daughters. 

In 1888 Baca was appointed a U.S. marshal and served two years. He then studied law and in 1894 was admitted to the bar. After working for respected jurist Alfred Alexander Freeman’s law firm in Socorro in 1895, Elfego operated his own practice on San Antonio Street in El Paso from 1902 to ’04.

Around 1910 he moved to Albuquerque, where he worked as both a lawyer and private detective. “Dressed in a flowing cape and trailed by a bodyguard, he stalked the downtown streets handing out business cards,” historian Marc Simmons writes. On the front of the card was printed Elfego Baca, Attorney-at-Law, Fees Moderate, on the reverse Private Detective, Divorce Investigations Our Specialty, Discreet Shadowing Done. As if being a private detective wasn’t exciting enough, Baca also worked a stint as a bouncer in a gambling house south of the border in Juárez, Chihuahua.

That period of his life spawned another legend. One day Baca received a telegram from a client in El Paso. “Need you at once,” it read. “Have just been charged with murder.” Attorney Baca supposedly responded with a tongue-in-cheek telegram reading, “Leaving at once with three eyewitnesses.”

When New Mexico achieved statehood in 1912, Baca ran for Congress as a Republican. Though unsuccessful, he remained a valued political figure for his ability to turn out the Hispanic vote. He held several other public offices in succession, including Socorro County clerk, Socorro County school superintendent, mayor of Socorro, and district attorney for Socorro and Sierra counties. “Most reports say he was the best peace officer Socorro ever had,” Leon Metz writes of Baca in his 1996 book The Shooters.

Still more adventures, with revolutionary overtones, awaited Elfego.

Another Escape

In February 1913, after a period of unremitting turmoil amid the Mexican Revolution, President Victoriano Huerta wrested control of the republic, though he continued to face challenges from guerrilla leaders in the northern provinces. Chief among them was Francisco “Pancho” Villa, who controlled much of the state of Chihuahua, bordering New Mexico.

In early January 1914, hotly pursued by Villa’s army, Huerta-allied General José Inés Salazar crossed into Presidio, Texas. Almost at once he was arrested and charged with having violated American neutrality laws. Placed in military custody at Fort Bliss, outside El Paso, the general was later moved to Fort Wingate, near Gallup, New Mexico Territory.

President Huerta in particular wanted Salazar out of jail, and agents of the Mexican government sought the legal services of Baca, whose reputation had spread across the border. Baca traveled to Washington but failed to gain the general’s release. He then engaged in a series of legal shenanigans that garnered his client an additional perjury charge. On November 16 Salazar was transferred to the Bernalillo County Jail, in Baca’s hometown of Albuquerque, to face the charge. Four days later two masked men entered the jail, overpowered and bound the sheriff and sped off in a car with Salazar. He was last spotted in El Paso, headed south.

Word about town had it Huerta’s accomplices had arrived in Albuquerque beforehand and quietly contacted certain influential residents, providing them with substantial funds to arrange Salazar’s freedom. Some suspected Baca had been the ringleader. Yet Elfego had an ironclad alibi for his whereabouts on the night of the escape; he’d been drinking at the crowded Graham Bar in downtown Albuquerque and had even overtly asked a friend for the exact time so he could set his watch.

Regardless, in April 1915 a federal grand jury handed down indictments charging Baca and three other officials with conspiracy in Salazar’s escape. At their December trial all four were acquitted. Elfego’s reputation only soared among Hispanic admirers.

On Feb. 26, 1940, the day before Baca’s 75th birthday, he boasted to The Albuquerque Tribune that of the 30 people he had defended on charges of murder, only one was sent to the penitentiary. In later years Baca worked closely with longtime New Mexico Senator Bronson M. Cutting as a political investigator and wrote a weekly newspaper column in Spanish praising the senator’s work on behalf of local Hispanics. He even switched parties with Cutting in support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1944, despite poor health, 79-year-old Baca considered running for governor, but that year he failed even to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination for district attorney. 

“I Made ’em Believe it”

For more than six decades Baca remained a lively part of New Mexico’s cultural landscape, relating spirited memories of comely señoritas and political intrigues past. His miraculous deliverance from the 1884 Frisco shootout had earned this man of many facets a reputation as one tough hombre. That reputation followed him throughout his years as a lawman, criminal lawyer, district attorney, private detective, chief bouncer of a Prohibition gambling house and American agent for President Huerta.

On July 13, 1936, Janet Smith of the Federal Writers’ Project, part of the Roosevelt-era Works Progress Administration, conducted an interview with Baca, the notes from which are preserved in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. “I never wanted to kill anybody,” Baca told Smith, “but if a man had it in his mind to kill me, I made it my business to get him first.” Full of self-confidence throughout his life, Baca added, “In those days I was a self-made deputy. I had a badge I made for myself, and if they didn’t believe I was a deputy, they’d better believe it, because I made ’em believe it.” 

As befitting a legend, New Mexico lawman Elfego Baca, who’d been born near the close of the Civil War in 1865, died at age 80 on Aug. 27, 1945, near the close of World War II. He is buried at Sunset Memorial Park in Albuquerque. 

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

See more stories

SubscriBE NOW!

 

For further reading on this topic author Melody Groves recommends Memoirs: Episodes in New Mexico History, 1892–1969, by William A. Keleher; Incredible Elfego Baca: Good Man, Bad Man of the Old West, by Howard Bryan; and The Lost Frontier, by Rod Miller.

Fishkill, New York was arguably the fulcrum of espionage efforts by Patriots in the American Revolution. Fishkill is where Founding Father John Jay coordinated counterintelligence efforts around undercover agent Enoch Crosby. Crosby’s successful efforts to infiltrate Loyalist militia networks during the war inspired the first best-selling novel in U.S. history, The Spy, by James Fenimore Cooper, published in 1821. Cooper had gleaned the exploits of Crosby from his handler, Jay, over many dinners and created a composite spy character named Harvey Birch. Crosby eventually published his own memoirs several years later, The Spy Unmasked, though unfortunately the sales of his original accounts paled in comparison to Cooper’s smash novel. 

What is largely unknown even today is the existence of the site of an invisible ink laboratory located in what is now East Fishkill. Operated by John Jay’s brother, Sir James Jay, it produced the unique, magical ink that Gen. George Washington heavily relied on for use by many of his spies. This included not only both the Culper Spy Ring of Major Benjamin Tallmadge and the Dayton Spy Ring of Col. Elias Dayton of Elizabeth, New Jersey, but also some very sensitive correspondence of diplomat Silas Deane of Wethersfield, Connecticut and Elias Boudinot of Elizabeth, New Jersey. 

Washington’s Secret Lab

The first of 32 letters involving Gen. Washington, the spymaster, and James Jay (including 10 between Washington and Jay) is an introductory letter about the invisible ink between these two Founding Fathers—to Washington from John Jay:

Fish Kill 19th Novr 1778

Sir

This will be delivered by my Brother, [James] who will communicate & explain to your Excellency a mode of Correspondence, which may be of use, provided proper agents can be obtained. I have experienced its Efficacy by a three Years Trial. We shall remain absolutely silent on the Subject. I have the Honor to be with the highest Esteem & Respect Your Excellency’s most obedient Servant

John Jay

James Jay (1732-1815) was a physician and amateur chemist, who studied and practiced medicine in Great Britain from the 1750s until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. James was knighted by King George III in 1763 for his efforts in raising money for King’s (Columbia) College of New York as well as Ben Franklin’s projected college, now the University of Pennsylvania. James was described as “haughty, proud, overbearing, supercilious, pedantic, vain, and ambitious” as well as being a notorious over-charger; eventually his medical practice “became entirely confined among his own relations.” His writings included a pamphlet written in 1772, Reflections and Observations on the Gout. James developed his invisible ink in 1775 and used it throughout the war in correspondence with his brother, John. He never disclosed the chemistry of the ink.

The Problem With INk

Invisible ink letters were already being composed using any liquid that dried to a clear color. The liquid also needed to be slightly acidic such as milk, lemon, lime or grapefruit juice as well as vinegar. When it was heated by fire, it would redevelop and allow for reading of the intended content. This reaction was able to happen because the heat weakened the fibers in the paper, thereby turning the ink brown and visible. 

James’s invisible ink, however, was unique. The skilled chemist was able to create an ink that would not react to heat. This would prove to be the bane of British leadership in New York which was headed by Gen. Sir Henry Clinton and his intelligence officers, Maj. Henry Beckwith and Major John André.

By April of 1779, the Culper Ring had possession of Jay’s invisible ink and developer, as evidenced by the fact that Abraham Woodhull, aka Culper, wrote on April 12th to Tallmadge that he had received a vial of the invisible stain. 

Washington soon after informed Boudinot he could share James Jay’s secret concoction in a May 3, 1779 letter: “It is in my power, I believe, to procure a liquid which nothing but a counter liquor (rubbed over the paper afterwards) can make legible—Fire which will bring lime juice, milk & other things of this kind to light, has no effect on it.” 

The recipe for this special ink centered around gallotannic acid. This is found in the galls of many species of oak trees. As Washington indicated to Boudinot, anyone wish-ing to develop any letter written in Jay’s invisible ink had to have the counterpart liquid, or developer, also known as the reagent.

Summer 1779 proved to be an important turning point in secret correspondence in the American Revolution. Unbeknownst to Washington, his favorite battlefield commander, Maj. Gen. Benedict Arnold, had just begun correspondence with Maj. Andre in May, the month after his wedding to the fetching Peggy Shippen, daughter of a prominent Tory family. Also, that summer the British intercepted a letter of June 21st from Caleb Brewster to Tallmadge, revealing that Anna “Nancy” Strong, wife of Justice Selah Strong, was part of the Culper Ring.

Improving Secrecy

Another hapless event happened on July 3. Tallmadge was embarrassed to report by letter to Washington that he had lost his horse, some guineas and some important papers in a British surprise attack on his camp during the early morning of July 2. Washington replied to his case officer of the Culper Ring: “I have just received your letter of the 3d—the loss of your papers was certainly a most unlucky accident—and shows how dangerous it is to keep papers of any consequence at an advanced post—I beg you will take care to guard against the like in future—If you will send me a trusty person I will replace the guineas.” 

As if all this was not enough, on July 5, a letter from Woodhull in Setauket, Long Island advised his childhood friend Tallmadge that he was under suspicion and therefore could no longer go into the British army camp in New York City. He further informed of his plan to move from the city back to Setauket, adding, “I shall endeavor to establish a confidential friend [Robert Townsend] to step into my place if agreeable direct in your next and forward the ink.”

Over the next several weeks, both Washington and Tallmadge scrambled to improve the tradecraft and the secrecy of the Culper Ring. Two letters on the same day, July 25, attest to these mutual efforts. Washington wrote to Tallmadge from West Point: “All the white Ink I now have (indeed all that there is any prospect of getting soon) is sent in Phial No. I. by Colo. [Samuel] Webb. the liquid in No. 2 is the Counterpart which renders the other visible by wetting the paper with a fine brush after the first has been used & is dry—You will send these to C——r Junr as soon as possible & I beg that no mention may ever be made of your having received such liquids from me or any one else—In all cases & at all times this prudence & circumspection is necessary but it is indispensably so now as I am informed that Govr Tryon has a preparation of the same kind, or something similar to it which may lead to a detection if it is ever known that a matter of this sort has passed from me.” 

Making the Laboratory

That same day, a letter from Tallmadge to Washington demonstrates Tallmadge’s rushed efforts to create his famous code book, which is actually only four pages. The letter was written from Ridgefield, Conn., and enclosed the codes of numbers and words to correspond with the Culper spy ring. The intent was to have a reference guide for key players in the Culper espionage efforts that would not identify the participants to anyone who might intercept a letter. This way, despite interception and decoding, the opposition would still not know key individuals referred to by code names.

By spring 1780, the volume of letters between Washington and James Jay increased, as Washington had suddenly run out of the invisible ink in April. Washington wrote to Jay, who was with his brother John in Fishkill, in a bit of panic on April 9: “The liquid with which you were so obliging as to furnish me for the purpose of private correspondence is exhausted; and as I have found it very useful, I take the liberty to request you will favour me with a further supply. I have still a sufficiency of the materials for the counterpart on hand. Should you not have by you the necessary ingredients, if they are to be procured at any of the Hospitals within your reach, I would wish you to apply for them in my name. I hope you will excuse the trouble I give you on this occasion….P.S. If you should not be able to prepare the liquid in time for the bearer to bring, & will be so good as to commit it to the care of Colo. Hay he will forward it to me.”

James Jay replied to Washington on April 13, “I have the honor of yours of the 9th instant and I do myself the pleasure to send you the medicine you desire, in a little box, which I hope you will receive with this letter. I wish I could furnish you with a greater quantity, because I am afraid you may be too sparing of the little you will receive…This little however is all that remains of what I brought with me from Europe—I have now the principal ingredients for the composition by me, & the rest may be procured: but the misfortune is, that I have no place where a little apparatus may be erected for preparing it…” 

The letter goes on about his need for an appropriate laboratory to reproduce the ingredients. Jay concluded: “I shall soon have the satisfaction of sending you such a supply that you may not only use it freely yourself, but even spare a little to a friend, if necessary, without the apprehension of future want.” 

Washington’s Favorite Ink

Washington was delighted to receive more of Jay’s ink by special courier. It would be interesting to know who was entrusted with such a special, sensitive duty. A likely candidate would have been one of Tallmadge’s colleagues in Col. Elisha Sheldon’s Second Continental Light Dragoons, an elite cavalry unit in which Tallmadge was an officer.

In a letter to Jay, Washington expressed his improved state of affairs—and also his support for having an invisible ink laboratory constructed for Jay. Instead of being obvious about the content in question, Washington cloaked his wording to Jay: “I have had the pleasure of receiving your favours of the 13th & 20th of April. The Box of Medicine mentioned in the former came safe to hand, and was the more acceptable, as I had entirely expended the first parcel with which you had been kind enough to furnish me. I have directed Colo. Hay to assist you in erecting a small Elaboratory from which I hope you will derive improvement and amusement, and the public some advantages.” 

Washington then wrote to Lt. Col. Udny Hay, deputy quartermaster general, who was located at Fishkill because of the town’s supply depot for the Continental Army and patriot militia. He informed Hay that Jay asked for a day or two to build a small “Elaboratory, as he purposes making some experiments which may be of public utility and has already furnished me with some Chymical preparations from which I have derived considerable advantages I think it proper to gratify him.” 

Untraceable

Following a year and a half of “on again, off again” secret correspondence, Maj. Gen. Benedict Arnold and Maj. John André met on the shoreline in the woods south of West Point on Sept. 22, 1780. On that same fateful day in 1776, Capt. Nathan Hale had been hanged as a spy by the British in Manhattan. Several days earlier, on Sept. 19, James Jay wrote the last of any existing letters between himself and Washington before war’s end. He apologized for not supplying the “medicine” sooner due to financial constraints. It was evident from the letter and its warm closing that Jay held Washington in high esteem. Years later, in 1784 Jay wrote to Washington, asking him to validate his secret service, which he did. This letter was penned from London, where he lived out the rest of his life.

The invisible ink and Tallmadge’s code book proved largely effective. None of the agents or couriers, nor Tallmadge the case officer, were positively identified or captured by the British. Details of the efforts of James Jay and the Culper Ring did not come to light until the 1930s research of Long Island historian Morton Pennypacker. The team effort of Washington as spymaster, coupled with the many brave agents and couriers (as well as Tallmadge), blended with a talented chemist in James Jay to become a formidable force against the mighty British military. They used ingenuity and creativity in their quest for freedom and independence from the British global empire.

The location of Jay’s secret laboratory is adjacent to the temporary home of John Jay which was the 1740 Judge Theodorus Van Wyck House, located in the Wiccopee hamlet of what is now East Fishkill. This was for many years on the property of today’s large IBM campus. The lab was lost to history sometime after the war, while the Van Wyck House was unfortunately demolished by IBM in the 1970s.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

See more stories

subscribe now!

 

He was a frontier lawman above reproach and probably made a greater impact on his assigned jurisdiction than any other badge wearer west of the Mississippi. Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves was part Superman, part Sherlock Holmes and part Lone Ranger. But he was real, and he was black.

The larger-than-life African-American marshal worked in the most dangerous area for federal peace officers, Oklahoma and Indian territories, for 32 years. Recent research shows that before the two territories merged into the state of Oklahoma in 1907, at least 114 deputy U.S. marshals died on duty there. It was no picnic for members of the Indian police or local law enforcement, either, but the challenges and hardships were usually greatest for the deputy marshals.

The majority of federal lawmen were killed in the Cherokee and Creek nations of Indian Territory, within a 50-mile radius of Muskogee, in the Creek Nation. When recognizing the wild towns of the Wild West, Muskogee must be mentioned along with Tombstone, Arizona Territory; Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory; Dodge City, Kan.; and El Paso, Texas.

Born a slave near Van Buren, Ark., in July 1838, young Bass moved with his owner to north Texas in the 1840s. His owner, George R. Reeves, was a farmer, tax collector and sheriff before the Civil War. During the war, Colonel Reeves organized the 11th Cavalry Regiment for Grayson County, Texas. Bass Reeves said in a 1901 interview that he had been George’s body servant but that they had parted company (not on good terms, according to family history) during the war. Supposedly, Bass and George argued during a card game, and Bass knocked his master out cold. In Texas, a slave could be killed for such an act, so Bass headed for Indian Territory and found refuge with the Creek and Seminole Indians, learning their customs and language. (After the war, George Reeves would rise to become speaker of the House of Representatives in Texas before dying from a rabid dog’s bite on September 5, 1882.)

Exactly what Bass Reeves did during the Civil War after he left his master remains uncertain. One uncorroborated claim says that Reeves served in the U.S. Army as a sergeant during the conflict. It’s possible he could have been with one of the guerrilla Union Indian bands in the territory, such as the Cherokee Pins. He might also have served with the Union’s First Indian Home Guard Regiment, composed mostly of Seminoles and Creeks, under an Indian name. The Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole), who earlier had been relocated from the Southeast to Indian Territory, fought on both sides during the conflict. Afterward, the western portion of the territory was taken away from them and set aside as reservations for Plains Indian tribes (Comanche, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Apache and Kiowa) who were subdued by the U.S. military.

By the early 1870s, Bass and his family (wife, Jennie, and four children; eventually there would be 11 children) were living in Arkansas. Although other blacks lived in the countryside near Van Buren, Reeves built a substantial home for his family right in the town proper on the riverfront. Several oral stories say that Reeves served as a scout and guide for federal lawmen going into Indian Territory in search of outlaws. A better employment opportunity came in 1875. That March, Judge Isaac C. Parker took over the Fort Smith federal court in Arkansas, which had jurisdiction over all Indian Territory and western Arkansas, and he promptly ordered his marshal to hire 200 deputies. At that time, the territory consisted of all the land that would become the state of Oklahoma except for the panhandle. This was the largest federal court, in terms of area, in U.S. history, and most likely there were never more than 70 deputies covering the vast area at any one time. Bass Reeves was one of the deputies hired that year. He was skilled with weapons, could speak several Indian languages and apparently knew the lay of the land. The federal police had jurisdiction over whites or blacks that were not citizens of the respective tribes in Indian Territory. The Indians had their own police and courts for their citizens. Noncitizens who committed crimes against the Indians would have to be arrested by deputy U.S. marshals and their cases heard in federal court.

Bass Reeves has been called the first commissioned African-American deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi River, but this may not be true. A story in the “Indian Pioneer Papers” at the Oklahoma State History Museum in Oklahoma City tells of a posse led by one “Negro” Smith from Fort Smith in 1867. Smith was sent to catch a gang of outlaws who had robbed a stagecoach and killed the driver near Atoka, in the Choctaw Nation. The Cherokee Advocate reported on October 14, 1871, that a Cherokee Indian named Ross had killed a black deputy U.S. marshal on the banks of the Arkansas River opposite Fort Smith. Reeves, though, was undoubtedly one of the first, and he certainly became the most famous black deputy to work the Indian nations before statehood.

In the late 1870s, despite being a commissioned deputy U.S. marshal, Reeves served as a posseman and went into Indian Territory with more experienced lawmen, including Deputy U.S. Marshals Robert J. Topping and Jacob T. Ayers. Later, Reeves and his good friend Deputy U.S. Marshal John H. Mershon teamed up on occasion. Federal law mandated that deputies take at least one posseman whenever they went into the field. On extended trips into the territory, deputy marshals often brought two or more possemen, along with a guard and a cook. One or two supply wagons (sometimes referred to as “tumbleweed wagons”) would serve as headquarters on the prairie while the lawmen rounded up desperadoes. The Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad tracks in the territory were known as the “deadline.” Deputies couldn’t arrest anyone east of the tracks until they were on their way back to Fort Smith. The lawmen typically traveled west to Fort Reno and Anadarko, south to Fort Sill and then back to Fort Smith. This trip took in about 400 miles and would take one to two months depending on high water.

Reeves made catching criminals while in disguise part of his modus operandi. He did this throughout his years while working for the federal courts at Fort Smith, Ark., and Paris, Texas. Sometimes he would appear as a drifter, other times as a cowboy, preacher or farmer. For example, he once got a tip that some dangerous outlaws were holed up in a log cabin, so he dressed in farmer overalls and intentionally got his ramshackle wagon stuck on a nearby tree stump. When the four outlaws came out to help him get unstuck, he got the drop on them and brought them to justice.

In disguise or not, it was a dangerous business. The closest he came to losing his life, he said in a 1906 newspaper interview, came sometime in 1884 while riding the Seminole whiskey trail in search of four men, two white and two black, for whom he had warrants. His pursuit was interrupted by three brothers named Brunter—who had been accused of horse stealing, robbery and several unsolved murders in Indian Territory.

The Brunters got the drop on Reeves. With their guns pointed at the lawman, they ordered him to dismount and keep his hands away from his Colt revolver. Reeves played it cool, showing the brothers warrants for their arrest and asking them what day of the month it was, so that he could make a record for the government. The outlaws thought the lawman must be out of his mind. They told Reeves, “You are just ready to turn in now,” but they were laughing too hard and relaxed their guard. Reeves whipped out his Colt and killed two of the brothers as quick as lightning. While he was in the act of shooting those two, he grabbed the gun barrel of the third outlaw, who could only manage three harmless shots. Reeves hit the third Brunter in the head with his revolver, killing him. There would be no fees to collect on the three dead men, but there were now three fewer desperadoes infesting Indian Territory. Also in 1884, a benchmark year in Reeves’ long career, Bass and the noted Choctaw lawman Charles LeFlore arrested Texas horse thief Robert Landers right in Fort Smith. Reeves’ most celebrated gunfight occurred that same year. Jim Webb, the foreman of the huge Washington-McLish Ranch in the Chickasaw Nation, was his foe. A black preacher who owned a small farm adjacent to the ranch had let a fire get out of control, and it spread onto ranch land. Webb had scolded the preacher, but that didn’t satisfy his anger. He had then shot him to death. Webb was one tough hombre who had reportedly killed 11 men while living in the Brazos River region in Texas. Reeves was able to arrest Webb without incident but was forced to go after him again when the foreman jumped his bond.

In June 1884, Reeves located Webb at Bywaters Store at the foothills of the Arbuckle Mountains. Webb refused to surrender this time, and the two men had a running gunfight. After nearly being shot himself, Reeves got down from his horse, raised his Winchester and shot Webb twice from a distance of about a quarter-mile. Several cowboys and the owner of the store witnessed this gunfight. Heroics like that had caused the Muskogee Indian Journal to refer to Reeves as one of the best deputy U.S. marshals in Indian Territory. At that time, after Reconstruction, it was rare to find black federal policemen anywhere in the country except Indian Territory. Reeves and the other black deputies there would blaze a trail of justice and equality for all citizens of that federal protectorate. During the territorial era, at least 50 black deputy U.S. marshals served in Indian Territory.

Reeves stood out in most any gathering of marshals, white or black, and not just because he stood 6-foot-2 and weighed 180 pounds. He had a reputation for being able to whip any two men with his bare hands and manipulate six-shooters and rifles equally well with either hand. His most trusted weapon was a Winchester rifle, but he was also known to carry as many as three revolvers, two butt forward at his belt for easy access. Territorial newspapers reported that during his career he killed 14 desperadoes—but it could have been twice that number. He brought in a great many men alive, too, including outlaws with bounties on their heads. As a man hunter, he had few equals. On one occasion he hauled in 17 horse thieves in “Comanche country” near Fort Sill. Texas rustlers often ventured into Indian Territory to steal ponies from the Indian residents. Not that Bass Reeves was perfect. Nobody could be a lawman that long without chalking up a blemish or two on his record. On one of his 1884 trips into the Chickasaw Nation, Reeves shot and killed his black cook, William Leech. On April 8, while Reeves and his posse were camped near the Canadian River, he uttered a few choice words about Leech’s cooking, and Leech responded in kind. The possemen assumed the banter was all in fun, since Reeves and Leech had seemingly gotten along in the past. But this time things apparently got out of hand. Leech, according to one popular account, poured some hot grease down the throat of a puppy that Reeves had in camp, and the deputy marshal proceeded to shoot down the cook. Then again it might not have happened that way at all, and the dog might have belonged to Leech. In any case, nothing came of the shooting for a while.

The next year, 1885, was considerably less eventful. But in September ’85, Bass Reeves did swear out a warrant for the arrest of the infamous female outlaw Belle Starr, as well as Fayette Barnett, for horse stealing. Reeves and Belle Starr were apparently on friendly terms. Many times in dealing with people he knew, Reeves would inform them that they were wanted in Fort Smith and it might be better if they would turn themselves in so he wouldn’t have to haul them around the countryside. Although it is not known for sure that he made this suggestion to Mrs. Starr, she did soon turn herself in at Fort Smith—the only time on record that she did so—and reportedly said that she “did not propose to be dragged around by some federal deputy.”

In January 1886, two years after shooting his cook, Reeves was indicted for first-degree murder, arrested by Deputy U.S. Marshal G.J.B. Frair and held in the Fort Smith federal jail. It took six months before Reeves could make bond. On May 21, President Grover Cleveland appointed a new U.S marshal, John Carroll—the first former Confederate veteran that Reeves would serve under at Fort Smith. Whether Carroll had anything to do with the proceedings against Reeves is not known. The trial was finally held in October 1887. Eleven witnesses were called for the prosecution, while Reeves and his excellent attorneys requested 10 witnesses for the defense. Reeves testified that he had argued with Leech while in camp but that nothing had come of it. That same evening, Reeves said, a cartridge caught in his Winchester rifle and while trying to dis lodge the bullet, the gun accidentally went off. The bullet, the defendant continued, struck Leech in the neck, and though Reeves sent for a doctor, the cook expired before medical help could arrive. Reeves was acquitted of malicious murder, but because the murder trial had depleted his substantial savings, he had to sell his home in Van Buren and move his family to a house on the outskirts of Fort Smith.

Reeves resumed his productive ways in the field after this interlude, once again bringing in desperadoes and villains by the dozen. In the spring of 1889, Jacob Yoes, a Union Army veteran, was appointed U.S. marshal at Fort Smith. Late that year, Yoes sent Reeves after a gang of killers, and on December 30, Reeves sent a note to the marshal saying, “Have got the three men who killed Deputy Marshal [Joseph] Lundy [on June 14, 1889].” His three prisoners were Seminole Indians— Nocus Harjo, One Prince and Bill Wolf. In April 1890, Reeves captured the notorious Seminole Tosa-lo-nah (alias Greenleaf), who had murdered and robbed three white men and four Indians. Greenleaf had been on the run from the law for 18 years, and this was the first time he was arrested.

In November 1890, Reeves went after an even more famous Indian Territory outlaw, the Cherokee Ned Christie, who was accused of killing Deputy U.S. Marshal Dan Maples in May 1887. Christie had maintained his innocence but refused to come to the white man’s court, for he felt no justice would be served. Reeves and his posse attacked Ned’s hideout in the Cherokee hills, known locally as Ned’s Fort Mountain. Reeves was able to burn down the fortified cabin. At first, he believed Christie was trapped inside, but he later found out that the renegade had escaped. Christie swore vengeance on Reeves but failed to make good on the threat before a large federal posse killed Christie at Fort Mountain on November 2, 1892.

The first white and black settlers had been allowed onto Indian lands in 1889, when Oklahoma Territory, just west of Indian Territory, was opened. In a 1930s interview, Harve Lovelday, an early white settler in Pottawattomie County, described the scene in the territories:

In Old Oklahoma the West was West when the six-shooters worked out in the gambling halls and in the saloons of Asher, Avoca, Wanette, Earlsboro, Violet Springs, Corner, and Keokuk Falls about the time of 1889 and 1890….These small Western towns were inhabited by Negroes, whites, Indians, half-bloods, gamblers, bootleggers, killers and any kind of an outcast….

Bass Reeves, a coal-black Negro, was a U.S. Deputy Marshal during one time and he was the most feared U.S. marshal that was ever heard in that country. To any man or any criminal what was subject to arrest he did his full duty according to law. He brought men before the court to be tried fairly but many times he never brought in all the criminals but would kill some of them. He didn’t want to spend so much time in chasing down the man who resisted arrest so would shoot him down in his tracks.

The new Oklahoma Territory towns were different from the Indian Territory towns in that saloons were legal in the former. Profiteers—principally white men and women—could make a killing by buying liquor in Oklahoma Territory and bringing it into Indian Territory, as long as the deputy U.S. marshals didn’t catch them. The federal court for Oklahoma Territory was in Guthrie. Reeves, like many other deputy U.S. marshals, became cross-deputized so that he could work in both territories.

The worst saloon town in Oklahoma Territory was said to be the Corner, just across the boundary with the Seminole and Chickasaw nations. The term “bootlegging” supposedly came from the drovers, cowboys and ranchers who would put a flat bottle of whiskey in their boots and smuggle the contraband into Indian Territory for profit. The term “last chance” was coined here, because these border saloon towns offered the last chance to get legal whiskey before a traveler crossed into the dry Indian nations. On at least one occasion, Reeves reportedly killed a gunman in a Corner saloon who called him out for a gunfight.

In late June 1891, Reeves and his posse rode into Fort Smith with eight prisoners (five wanted for murder) from the Indian nations. The captured outlaws included William Wright, a black man; Wiley Bear and John Simmer, Indians; and William McDaniel and Ben Card, white men. McDaniel and Card had been arrested for allegedly killing John Irvin, a black man, but Reeves apparently didn’t have enough solid evidence to indict the pair. The Fort Smith Weekly Elevator attacked Reeves for chaining up the two men and dragging them around Creek country for nearly a month. Most likely, Reeves was reprimanded by Marshal Yoes, but there is no record of such action.

Reeves left Fort Smith around 1893 and transferred to the federal court at Paris, Texas. This court had jurisdiction over much of the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations in the 1890s. Reeves was stationed at Calvin, Choctaw Nation, and would take many of his prisoners to Pauls Valley, Chickasaw Nation, where a federal commissioner was stationed and there was a jail. Hearings would be held at Pauls Valley, and if necessary, criminals were transferred to the Texas court for trial. By the late 1890s, three federal courts were located in Indian Territory to hear major and minor cases—the Southern District at Ardmore, Central District at McAlester and Northern District at Muskogee. Federal authorities transferred Reeves to the Northern District, where he was first stationed at tiny Wetumka in the Creek Nation. By 1898 he was living in Muskogee, where he would stay until statehood in 1907.

Reeves escaped many assassination attempts during his career, one of the last occurring on the evening of November 14, 1906, at Wybark, Creek Nation. While riding in his buggy looking to serve warrants, he was fired upon under a railroad trestle by unknown parties. He returned fire, but nobody was hit. By that time, Reeves was focusing on arresting black and Indian felons, though he would still arrest white outlaws if the occasion called for it.

The last major gunfight that Reeves took part in erupted in Muskogee on March 26, 1907. A large group of black anarchists calling themselves the United Socialist Club had taken over a two-story house and declared that they could claim any property in town. Two city constables, John Colfield and Guy Fisher, were sent with eviction papers, only to be met at the door of the house by gunfire. Fisher was wounded, but escaped; Colfield was severely wounded and couldn’t move from where he lay. The U.S. marshal’s office was alerted, and Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Bud Ledbetter, along with a black deputy U.S. marshal named Paul Smith and others, arrived on the scene. An intense gunfight followed. Ledbetter killed two of the offenders, and Smith saved Ledbetter’s life by killing one of the radicals who had Ledbetter pinned down. Reeves arrived late. After noting where most of the gunfire was coming from, he plugged an anarchist who was shooting down on the lawmen from an upstairs window. The lawmen killed two more of the group before the remaining seven anarchists surrendered. Constables Colfield and Fisher recovered from their wounds, and Ledbetter called Reeves “one of the bravest men this country has ever known.”

Even before that shootout, on March 8, 1907, the Oklahoma City Weekly Times-Journal ran a story headlined “He has Killed Fourteen Men: A Fearless Negro Deputy of the Indian Territory.” Two days later, on March 10, The Washington Post reprinted that lengthy article. It would be the most national exposure Bass Reeves received during his lifetime. And if accurate, it means that the black anarchist he killed later that month would have been No. 15.

When Oklahoma became a state on November 16, 1907, the federal office was downsized, and many of the lawmen found other jobs. Bass Reeves, now 68, took a job with the Muskogee police department, walking a downtown beat. Old-timers reported that Reeves would walk with a sidekick who carried a satchel full of pistols and that there was never a crime on his beat. Reeves would complete 32 years of service as a law officer without ever being reported wounded. He died at home of Bright’s disease on January 12, 1910, at age 71, and was buried somewhere in Muskogee. The exact location is not known today; it was probably either in the Old Agency cemetery or in a small black cemetery west of town on Fern Mountain Road. Reeves’ long service and remarkable dedication to duty could match any lawman of his time, and his six-shooter had been, as the two newspapers reported in March 1907, “a potent element in bringing two territories out of the reign of the outlaw, the horsethief and bootlegger, to a great common wealth.”

Art T. Burton, a native of Oklahoma, is a history professor at South Suburban College in South Holland, Ill. His 2006 book Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves is recommended for further reading along with his 1991 book Black, Red, and Deadly: Black and Indian Gunfighters of the Indian Territories. Originally published in the February 2007 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here. 

It was Shakespeare who wrote, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” The Bard was obviously unfamiliar with our brand of Western history, which inverted that truism. Consider the epitaph of famed Texas Ranger Captain Bill McDonald: No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that’s in the right and keeps on a-comin’. In a similar vein popular culture tends to paint every Western lawman as a Marshal Matt Dillon, that radio and television paragon of virtue who kept the peace in Dodge City, Kan.

Historian Jay Robert Nash, among others, has debunked the stereotypical image of the Western outlaw-gunman as the sociopathic product of a broken home who despises all authority figures. But few writers have debunked the idealistic stereotype of the Western lawman. Indeed, certain hagiographic historians universally laud them for their courage, dedication to duty and strong family ties. Even Nash refers to such officers “the few good men” who cleaned up the West.

A closer examination reveals a more nuanced view, for many, if not most, officers in the Old West worked both sides of the law, either out of necessity to supplement their meager pay or simply because they were bent that way. It is virtually impossible to name one notable lawman who did not have a few stains on his record. Such men didn’t go through the background checks that are standard today, and their records did not follow them around. Thus, a man could commit bank robbery or murder in New Mexico Territory, yet get hired on as marshal of a small Texas town. Big cities like Dodge did conduct careful searches for their marshals. Regardless, the kind of tough hombre needed to clean up a wild and woolly cow town didn’t figure to be a straight arrow. Just the opposite. The more dangerous reputation a man bore, the more likely he was to be hired for the job. Wild Bill Hickok didn’t earn his reputation with a gun by shooting tin cans.

Nor was it especially difficult to get away with working both sides of the street. The outlaw became a lawman simply by putting on a badge, and the lawman could operate a quiet side business in cattle rustling, extortion or gun-for-hire escapades without anyone being the wiser. The only recognizable difference between them was the badge, and any old body could slap on a tin star and cop an attitude. That became a serious enough concern in Fort Worth that in 1889 the City Council passed an ordinance making it a crime to impersonate an officer. The ordinance is known to have been enforced in only two instances—that fall when a couple of young bravos were fined $10 and $5 respectively in city court for “personating [sic] policemen.”

Lawmen and outlaws had a natural simpatico, derived oftentimes from having been brothers-in-arms in the recent Civil War, or perhaps from having driven longhorns up the Chisholm Trail together. Others were blood relations. Jesse James had no trouble cobbling a gang together from his brother and fellow Confederate bushwhackers after the Civil War. Of course, Jesse never felt moved to put on a badge. He kept to his side of the street. But for so many others the line between good guy and bad guy remained hazy. One wag said the only way to distinguish one from the other after a gunfight was to turn over the corpse and see if it was wearing a badge.

Those who knew such men personally saw past their dime-novel personas. Interviewed in 1931, Kansan Annie Anderson, a former dance hall girl who knew Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and pals, insisted, “They were a bunch of cowards.” Though their actions certainly don’t bear out such an assertion, neither were they regarded as upstanding citizens by much of the population.

Men of Action

The familiarity between lawmen and outlaws was also due in part to the fact both groups comprised men of action. Thus, they had a rough, mutual respect for each other—that is, when not shooting at one another. Hired gun and sometime lawman Jim McIntire, for example, was always welcome in the home of Fort Worth Marshal Ed Terrell. Texas Rangers showed similar courtesy to Fort Worth marshal turned gun for hire Jim Courtright in 1884 when arresting him on a murder warrant out of New Mexico Territory. Tarrant County Sheriff Walter Maddox and Fort Worth Marshal Bill Rea treated the jailed fugitive more like an honored guest than a wanted man, thus it’s no surprise Courtright managed to escape with little trouble. When Fort Worth private detective Heck Thomas brought the body of murderer Jim Lee through Gainesville, Texas, in September 1885, he told a reception party admiringly, “He died game, fighting as long as there was breath in his body.” High praise indeed from the man tasked with bringing in the notorious Lee brothers, dead or alive.

Earlier that year, when U.S. Marshal Harrington Lee “Hal” Gosling was escorting two men to prison, a friend remarked the marshal treated them “more like friends than a brace of the most villainous desperadoes ever consigned to the keeping of an officer.” Gosling’s failure to take routine precautions enabled his prisoners to arm themselves and escape, killing the marshal and two others in the process. A lesson learned the hard way.

Even the worst of outlaws could count friends in law enforcement. An 1892 petition to pardon cold-blooded killer John Wesley Hardin, then serving time at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, bore the signatures of Tarrant County Sheriff John C. Richardson and former Tarrant County Sheriffs Walter Maddox and Ben Shipp. Ironically, the man Hardin had been convicted of murdering was a deputy sheriff.

Conversely, a hard-boiled outlaw might tip his hat to an honest lawman like Sheriff Tom Bell, of Hill County, Texas. In 1898 convicted murderer John B. Shaw wrote to Bell from his Cleburne death cell:

“Tom, [I knew] if I was caught, you would do it or cause it. It makes me love a man for him to rustle hard. I believe if a man is an officer, he ought to be an officer; if he is a thief, he ought to be a thief. I think more of [Johnson County Sheriff] Bill Stewart for rustling hard for me.” 

Shaw signed the note “respectfully” and even invited Bell to come see him before his date with the gallows. 

It didn’t hurt a lawman’s reputation to have a few formidable gunfighting friends he could call on if needed. While sheriff of Ford County, Kan., Bat Masterson benefited from his close relationship to the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday and Luke Short, not to mention brother Ed, a Dodge City policeman. The street ran both ways. When Short ran afoul of Dodge City’s powers that be in 1883, he called on Wyatt, Bat and other pals to back his play. They went down in history as the ironically named “Dodge City Peace Commission.”

The fact is some of the most notorious killers in Old West history wore a badge at one time or another. Edward Capehart O’Kelley is remembered today as the man who in Creede, Colo., on June 8, 1892, shotgunned Bob Ford to avenge the latter’s assassination of Jesse James a decade earlier. A certifiable sociopath, O’Kelley—nicknamed “Red” for his hair color and not his bloodthirsty nature—also happened to be a town marshal in nearby Bachelor, Colo.

Another Jekyll-and-Hyde type was Ben Thompson, who drank, gambled and shot his way across Texas before being elected city marshal of Austin in 1880. Wearing a badge did nothing to moderate the marshal’s violent ways, and he spent more time at the gambling tables than patrolling the streets. In 1882 Thompson killed San Antonio saloonman Jack Harris. Though the marshal was acquitted of all charges, Austin’s city fathers forced him to resign. Thompson’s closest pal, rustler-gunslinger King Fisher, also worked the other side of the law as a Uvalde County deputy sheriff. On March 11, 1884, the two were gunned down in Harris’ San Antonio saloon in a revenge killing. The Austin newspaper Texas Siftings recalled Thompson as “the best city marshal in Texas.” Not all his constituents would have agreed.

Henry Newton Brown was another well-known gunman with several notches on his pistol grips when serving as a lawman in Tascosa, Texas, and later as town marshal of Caldwell, Kan. While wearing the badge in Caldwell, he organized a failed bank robbery at Medicine Lodge, Kan., that got him lynched.

The good people of El Paso and the surrounding county had the bad judgment to make sociopathic killer Mannie Clements Jr. a constable and deputy sheriff. On being booted after his acquittal for armed robbery, he was assassinated in a city saloon in 1908.

David Kemp killed his first man in 1879 when he was but 15. Sentenced to hang, he was granted a pardon by the governor of Texas. In 1890 he relocated to Eddy County, New Mexico Territory, where he served as sheriff before killing his successor, Sheriff Les Dow, on Feb. 18, 1897. Found not guilty, Kemp settled into domestic life as a (thrice) married saloonkeeper.

The appropriately named Baz Outlaw was a member of the vaunted Texas Rangers with a predilection for gunplay when he drank too much, which was often. Though the fed-up Rangers ultimately discharged him, Outlaw parlayed his credentials into an appointment as a deputy U.S. marshal. On April 5, 1894, while on a bender in El Paso, he shot and killed a Texas Ranger before being gunned down by Constable John Selman.

Selman himself was no monument to justice. Before being elected constable of El Paso, he’d rustled cattle and terrorized citizens in Shackelford County as a deputy under crooked Sheriff John M. Larn. In addition to killing Outlaw, the corrupt constable back-shot Hardin, killing him, and engaged in repeated drunken quarrels. One such quarrel, with Deputy U.S. Marshal George Scarborough on April 2, 1896, got Selman killed. Despite his checkered career, his headstone bears the simple inscription John Henry Selman… El Paso Constable.

Another El Paso lawman of questionable virtue was Dallas Stoudenmire. Appointed city marshal in 1881, he spent a year doing a commendable job, which included gun battles with a host of ne’er-do-wells. Unfortunately, Stoudenmire too exhibited a weakness for alcohol, which made him belligerent and quarrelsome and led city fathers to fire him. Months later, on Sept. 18, 1882, he died as so many lawman-outlaws did, in a saloon gunfight.

Best known as a gun for hire, “Killin’ Jim” Miller served at various times as a deputy sheriff, town marshal and Texas Ranger. On Sept. 13, 1896, then Pecos Marshal Miller publicly gunned down former county sheriff and longtime nemesis Bud Frazer in a Toyah, Texas, saloon. It says something about Frazer’s reputation that a jury acquitted Miller. Later advertising his services as a paid assassin, Miller offered to kill anyone for $150.

By his early 30s “Mysterious Dave” Mather had spent much of his young life behind bars in Texas, Kansas and New Mexico Territory. Between jail stints the adept gunhand had no trouble finding work as a lawman. The difference in opinion regarding Mather’s reputation in Dodge City and Dallas, respectively, is mysterious indeed. In 1885 the Dodge City Times hailed him as a “good officer,” while the Dallas Daily Herald deemed him “a notorious horse thief, stage robber and murderer.”

Yet another lawman with a checkered reputation and colorful moniker was Fort Worth’s “Longhair Jim” Courtright, who served three terms as city marshal in the mid- to late 1870s. Depending on one’s perspective, he either tamed the town or tolerated a disgraceful degree of lawlessness. On losing his fourth run for office, he went wholly over to the dark side as a hired gun and extortionist. Courtright, too, died in a shootout, on Feb. 8, 1887—only it was in front of a saloon (Fort Worth’s White Elephant), as the fallen marshal had been gentlemanly enough to call out rival Luke Short for a proper showdown.

A Higher Standard

Not all bad behavior by badge wearers ended in death. On April 3, 1889, Fort Worth officers Jim Rushing and John W. Coker were tying one on in the red-light district known as Hell’s Half Acre when fellow officer Pat Stevens stepped in to arrest the raucous duo. When they resisted, all three men drew their weapons. Stevens fired a shot before terrified onlookers disarmed him, and cooler heads prevailed. It was only dumb luck no one was hit, let alone killed. Initially charged with “assault to murder,” Rushing and Coker were let off with a reprimand. After all, they were officers, and no one had been injured.

Rules governing officers’ behavior came late to Western law enforcement. In 1882 Dodge City Mayor Alonzo B. Webster drew up one of the first such set of rules for a department West of the Mississippi. Borrowed from similar codes back East, it called for officers to be “quiet, civil and orderly” and to maintain “decorum, command of temper, patience and discretion.” A year later the Galveston City Council laid down rules that included this challenge: “Policemen shall not become offended at any harsh or abusive language that may be applied to them, and they will not make arrests in their own quarrels or those of their own families.”

But it took Sam Farmer, who served two stints as Fort Worth marshal (1879–83 and 1887–91), to lay down the law in Texas with regard to using deadly force. Prior to his tenure it was common practice for officers to use whatever force they deemed necessary to do the job. Farmer set a higher standard for his force with 11 rules, including these notable few:

No. 3—Use no more force than absolutely necessary to make an arrest.

No. 4—Never make an arrest merely because someone is saucy toward you.

No. 10—Wear six-shooters out of sight and only use them in self-defense; anything more than that is illegal.

Of course, setting down rules on paper meant nothing if not enforced. And in Fort Worth at least, they must not have been, as the general run of lawmen didn’t noticeably improve after the turn of the century. Things still operated pretty much the same as they had in frontier days. Consider, for example, Captain Tom McClure. For much of his seven years on the force, the captain turned a blind eye to bootlegging and illegal gambling, presumably for a price. Not until 1922 did the police department get wind of things and force McClure into retirement. The city declined to prosecute, likely weighing the public embarrassment certain revelations would have caused. 

Passage of both the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Act and the 1919 National Prohibition Act actually spawned new temptations for officers. Recall that many virtually lived in saloons when not on duty—and sometimes while on duty—and more than a few died in gun battles in those same haunts. Others had moonlighted as bouncers or bartenders. It couldn’t have been easy for them to turn their backs on that part of their lives. Likewise, drug dealing had been another way for men forced to make do on the piecework “fees-and-fines” system to supplement their meager income. By 1922 the rumor mill in Fort Worth was rife with reports of “persons in police uniform” peddling illegal whiskey and narcotics. Investigating federal agents found the rumors to be true. The kingpin behind most of the illicit trade turned out to be not some drug lord or bootlegger but a special county policeman.

Sheriff departments also had their share of bad apples. The 1903 year-end report of the Fort Worth Police Department recorded the arrests of four of Tarrant County Sheriff John T. Honea’s deputies on various offenses. None of the cases made it into the newspaper. 

The Power of the Dark Side

Trying to delve into the psyches of men who lived a century or more ago is a challenge. What forces drove lawmen to the dark side? Money issues are only part of the equation. Inner demons? Drink? A thirst for power? Entitlement? Some combination of the above? Forensic psychiatrist R. Gregory Lande argues that the dehumanizing effect of the Civil War, particularly the horrors men had witnessed, was the biggest single reason for the postwar crime wave. Such a rationale also explains a related rise in alcoholism and drug use over the same period.

That said, no one answer fits all. The reasons certain high-profile lawmen went bad are less speculative. For instance, Deputy U.S. Marshals Bob and Grat Dalton decided there was more money to be made robbing trains than preserving law and order, while Mather associate Milt Yarberry, Albuquerque’s first town marshal, was simply a vicious bully who preferred a life of crime to living peacefully. On Feb. 9, 1883, after one of his victims showed up dead with a bullet in the back, Yarberry was marched to the gallows.

Men of Yarberry’s ilk treated the badge as a license to do whatever they pleased, and reform was slow to come. In 1908 Fort Worth mounted officer Hugh Glosson placed his horse in the path of two cars preparing to drag race down Hemphill Street. When their drivers sped past the officer on either side, Glosson yanked and leveled his sidearm at them before ordering the drivers out of their cars. As they were unarmed and had their lady friends with them, the drivers objected to Glosson’s threatening manner and filed a complaint with the police department. At the subsequent hearing Glosson said the cars had scared his horse, and he would only have shot out a tire had the drivers not pulled over. No surprise, the department sided with Glosson, who went on to a long and feisty career in uniform in Fort Worth.

Despite what one reads in today’s headlines, law enforcement has come a long way from the days when a “cowboy culture” prevailed in many departments out West. Professional standards are higher, rules are in place, and the public is less tolerant of official misbehavior. Only when we view Western law enforcement through the nostalgic prism of “the good ol’ days” do we risk buying into the dime-novel version of history. 

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

See more stories

SubscriBE NOW!

 

For further reading on the topic author Richard Selcer recommends Texas Gunslingers, by Bill O’Neal, and Encyclopedia of Western Lawmen & Outlaws, by Jay Robert Nash.

Hiram Dryer is not a name that readily comes to mind when we ponder leaders who stood out during the Battle of Antietam. He remains largely unknown to all but the battle’s most ardent students, yet the impact Captain Dryer had on the fighting September 17, 1862, should not be underestimated.

A New York native, Dryer was 53 years old at Antietam. Relatively little is known about his early years, but on October 1, 1846, during the Mexican War, he enlisted in the Regular Army. Assigned to the newly organized Regiment of Mounted Riflemen, he rose rapidly in rank to first sergeant, and then earned a commission on July 31, 1848, as a second lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Infantry for gallantry at the battles of Chapultepec and Garita de Belan. He served for a time with future Civil War luminaries Ulysses S. Grant, Phil Sheridan, and George Crook. In 1852, the 4th U.S. was transferred to the West Coast, which required the regiment first to cross the Isthmus of Panama and then journey by ship to the Pacific Northwest. Passage across Panama’s isthmus was a nightmare, as a cholera breakout killed 104 enlisted men and one officer. In November 1853, while stationed at Fort Vancouver in Oregon, Dryer displayed trademark courage in volunteering to lead a supply expedition to a group of settlers trapped by a blizzard in the Cascade Mountains.

Dryer returned with his regiment to the East in the fall of 1861 and was assigned to the Army of the Potomac. The early war period was a time of great change for the Regular Army, its leadership decimated both by officers assuming commissions of higher rank in the U.S. Volunteer service and Southern-born officers who resigned to fight for the Confederacy. Individuals pulled from civilian life frequently filled the resulting vacancies.

The enlisted ranks were also in flux due to the expansion of the Regular Army, featuring nine new regiments of infantry and one each of cavalry and artillery. Some of the noncommissioned officers serving under Dryer were no doubt grizzled veterans, but many of his soldiers had enlisted in 1861. Rigorous training and discipline was what set Regulars apart from most volunteer regiments, and the heightened attention they received in skirmishing and marksmanship would prove particularly crucial.

Dryer, who saw service during the 1862 Peninsula and Second Bull Run campaigns, was his regiment’s senior officer when fighting broke out at Antietam. At about 10 a.m. September 17, Maj. Gen. George McClellan ordered his cavalry commander, Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton, to cross Antietam Creek at the Middle Bridge with his troopers and horse artillery in order to provide a diversion and support to the current Union attack on the Confederate position along the Sunken Lane.

A diversion was a sound idea; using cavalry was not. Most Union troopers lacked carbines or training in fighting dismounted, so Pleasonton’s men were forced mainly to hide from enemy artillery either behind Joshua Newcomer’s large barn or on the Antietam Creek bank. This left the horse artillery exposed to long-range fire from skirmishers and sharpshooters. Disgusted that his guns and the others had been sent into harm’s way without proper support, one horse battery commander, John C. Tidball, sought infantry help.

Pleasonton managed to get two companies of the 1st Battalion/12th U.S. Infantry (1/12th) to support his batteries, and then for Brig. Gen. George Sykes, commanding the 5th Corps’ 2nd Division (which included all of the army’s Regular regiments) to send in the entire 2nd/10th U.S. Infantry, commanded by Lieutenant John Poland.

Fierce artillery duels and skirmishing continued well into the afternoon. Worried the Confederates had large reserves concealed behind Cemetery Hill and Cemetery Ridge, Sykes was reluctant to send more infantry across the creek but acquiesced on Poland and the 2nd/14th U.S., and then, at 2 p.m., ordered Dryer to cross the creek with the 4th U.S. and the 1st/14th U.S. and to assume command of all Regular forces there.

Described by a peer “as one of the coolest and bravest officers in our service,” Dryer proceeded to justify such high praise. He first reinforced the Regulars’ skirmish line west of Newcomer Ridge—high ground several hundred yards west of the Newcomer farmhouse. Then, he ordered skirmishers forward on both sides of the Boonsboro Pike, toward Cemetery Hill south of the pike, and Cemetery Ridge, north of it. Unlike commanders who liked to test enemy strength and position by an all-out attack with massed infantry, resulting in extensive casualties—Maj. Gen. William H. French, for instance—Dryer used the superior training, leadership, and marksmanship of the Regulars to probe and press the enemy defenses, his men deployed in dispersed order, offering no inviting targets for Confederate artillery or riflemen.

Backed by plentiful artillery deployed along Newcomer Ridge, the Regulars worked their way forward, advancing on the left as far as the Sherrick Farm lane and on the right, north of the pike, using four companies (at most 130 men) to dislodge Confederate defenders on Cemetery Hill. While forcing the artillery there to withdraw, they advanced within 450 yards of the Lutheran Church on Cemetery Hill’s western slope. But that would be their high-water mark, not because of Rebel resistance, but because of General Sykes. What Sykes saw in Dryer’s advance was an unnecessary risk rather than an opportunity. He found it highly unlikely the Confederate center was simply a hollow shell, only that his Regular infantry faced potential destruction with Dryer exceeding his orders.

Sykes’ orders directing him to immediately withdraw his forces to Newcomer Ridge left Dryer incredulous. Asking if there was any discretion, he was told the “order was imperative.” Gathering up their dead and wounded, Dryer and his Regulars fell back.

At a cost of 11 killed and 75 wounded, they had cleared Cemetery Ridge of Confederates and threatened to capture Cemetery Hill. It would be an exemplary yet virtually unknown achievement. When one considers that the 1st Delaware lost 230 men alone in French’s failed frontal assault upon the Sunken Lane, Dryer’s proficiency in tactics and managing his troops is remarkable.

Dryer went on to receive brevet promotions for courage at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville but, surprisingly, not for Antietam. He apparently lacked political clout, or had no interest in taking a volunteer commission, for there is no evidence he sought or was considered for promotion to higher rank in the volunteer service.

Thrown from a horse in June 1863, Dryer would miss the Gettysburg Campaign. The injury apparently affected his ability to return to the field, for he spent the rest of the war in staff duties. He was remembered by a fellow officer as “always kind and friendly.” We might add that he was also a man of remarkable, daring skill and competence who deserves to be remembered.

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

See more stories

SubscriBE NOW!

 

Nazi wives and lovers tended to be mediocre women. They were not especially gifted or brilliant. They were content to be used as tools for their partners’ purposes—and to make the most of their proximity to power. That might surprise you. You might have expected Nazi-advertised attributes like “blonde,” “athletic,” “Nordic,” or “motherhood” to have had something to do with why certain women ended up in relationships with Adolf Hitler and his inner circle.

While it’s true that several top Nazis tended to be partial to blondes, they chose female partners for reasons of exploitation rather than personal admiration. Hitler, for example, scorned marriage and children, instead preying on naive teenage girls he could dominate; one such relationship was with his half-niece Geli Raubal. 

In most cases, the exploitation was mutual. While the Third Reich touted the ideal of “noble” and “simple” housewives, reality shows the women who stood at the prow of the Third Reich were anything but. They were willing to court monstrosity for money and privilege. Some became sadistic: like Brigitte Frank, who wore furs stolen from displaced Jewish women, or Unity Mitford, who toured a Jewish family’s apartment she wanted to confiscate while the owners wept in front of her. 

Nazi propaganda made people forget that attributes like blondeness, athleticism and motherhood are ordinary. In a world where mediocrity became an ideal, women who otherwise stood no chance of success were able to transform themselves into goddesses, thriving in an atmosphere of cruelty, materialism and superficial glamor.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

See more stories

subscribe now!

 

A night owl’s lament about wanting more sleep became an unexpected hit song in 1918 with lasting popularity. Irving Berlin’s “Oh! How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning,” swept across music halls in World War I and was performed all over the U.S. in World War II. 

Perhaps America’s most influential composer, Berlin was born Israel Beilin to a Jewish family in Russia and emigrated to New York City at age 5. He became a singer as a teenager living a hardscrabble existence on the Lower East Side, performing songs and parodies in music halls and nightclubs. Berlin won the hearts of audiences and quickly rose to fame in the city’s “Tin Pan Alley” as a composer and singer. His 1911 hit, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” sparked a wild craze for what was then seen by older folks as “scandalous” dancing. Berlin was a rising star.

World War I turned Berlin’s world upside down. Drafted into the U.S. Army and packed off to Camp Upton in Yaphank, Long Island in 1918, he was reduced to despair at being dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn. Berlin preferred moonlit streets, crowded clubs and staying up late to write music.

“There were a lot of things about army life I didn’t like, and the thing I didn’t like most of all was reveille. I hated it. I hated it so much I used to lie awake nights thinking about how much I hated it,” he later said. Needing to vent, Berlin expressed himself with a song that was not so much an artistic effort as an ode to drowsy grumpiness. It incorporated reveille into its refrain.

Oh! How I hate to get up in the morning, Oh! How I’d love to remain in bed; For the hardest blow of all, is to hear the bugler call: Youv’e got to get up, You’ve got to get up, You’ve got to get up this morning! 

Someday I’m going to murder the bugler, Someday they’re going to find him dead; I’ll amputate his reveille and step upon it heavily, And spend the rest of my life in bed. 

The song spread like wildfire. It appeared in a 1932 Betty Boop cartoon as well as Berlin’s popular 1942 Broadway show, “This is the Army.” Although Berlin wrote many other hit songs, including “God Bless America,” and received a Congressional Gold Medal for his achievements, his anti-morning ballad is among his most famous.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

See more stories

subscribe now!

 

Thanks to modern media, Joshua L. Chamberlain is remembered today for his bravery on Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg. He was much more than a Civil War hero, however. A new biopic by award-winning historian Ronald C. White examines the full breadth of the man who went from mild-mannered college professor to Medal of Honor recipient and one of the Union Army’s most respected generals. On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (Penguin Random House, 2023) offers a deep dive into Maine’s native son, who spoke nine languages, served as a four-term governor of Maine, was president of his alma mater Bowdoin College, and, yes, had a remarkable mustache. Chamberlain was the real deal: honorable, dutiful, religious, intellectual, compassionate and committed to the ideals of the Republic. America’s Civil War recently spoke with White about his new book and what he learned about the “Lion of Round Top.”

After writing about Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant, what drew you to Chamberlain?

I was speaking about Grant at the Jonathan Club in downtown Los Angeles and someone said, “What is your next book? And I said, “I’m not exactly sure. Do you have any ideas?” And suddenly this fellow literally leapt up in the back of the room and shouted out, “Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain!” Well, I didn’t really know that much about him, so I took it to my editor and publisher. We looked at the things that were already out there and realized there was a need for a full-scale biography—not simply Chamberlain at Little Round Top, which is very important, but an in-depth book. So that’s how it all started. 

What surprised you the most about him?

To me, it was the whole religious story. His father wants him to go to West Point, his mother wants him to be a minister or missionary, so he goes to Bangor Theological Seminary after Bowdoin College. At the end of those three years, Chamberlain receives three calls to Congregational churches in Maine and New Hampshire, but he offers an address at Bowdoin’s commencement. It is so successful they offer him a teaching position. In all other biographies, those three years at Bangor are literally erased. I mean, they were important for him. All the records of the seminary, which was founded in 1814, are at the Maine Historical Society. I realized that if I was going to devote two chapters to Chamberlain’s four years at Bowdoin College, I needed to devote at least one chapter to his three years at the Bangor Theological Seminary. I was able to find things that no one else had ever looked at before. This is part of his formation, part of his shaping, part of the values that he will carry forward. 

Chamberlain has a strong sense of duty and honor. Where does that come from?

As a professor at Bowdoin during the first year of the Civil War, he saw how many of his students volunteered, how many of them were captured, how many of them were killed. He watched as these 17-, 18-, 19-year-olds go off to war. Finally he comes to the conclusion that this war cannot simply be fought by boys. It has to be fought by men of his distinction and substance. He was 33 years of age with a wife and two young children, so no one would criticize him for not serving. Yet he decides he must do this. His sense of duty compels him to do it. 

When Chamberlain volunteers for the Army, he turns down his first commission. Why?

I love that. The governor of Maine said, “I’ll make you colonel.” He responds, “No, I don’t deserve that title. Make me lieutenant colonel. I’m not a military man, but I can learn.” That was terrific. It shows the humbleness of the man. 

What impact did his religious and educational background have on his service in the military?

People went off to the Civil War in those days with patriotic values and Christian values, both of which would be severely tested. They were not at all prepared for what they would encounter in the Civil War in terms of the suffering and death. His strong faith helped him get through a horrible war and gave him the strength to survive a wound that would impact his life for 50 years. 

How important was Chamberlain’s role at Little Round Top? 

It was a very important moment at the Battle of Gettysburg. Chamberlain never demeaned—he actually lifted up—the role of Union Colonel Strong Vincent. He gives him incredible credit. Vincent is the one who, before the battle begins, says, “You will hold this line.” The same with General Gouverneur Warren, who was the first to see that Little Round Top was in danger because it wasn’t defended. Years later, Chamberlain will become an important witness for Warren, who was trying to restore his rank after he had been relieved of command by General Phil Sheridan. There’s not just one person who needs to be remembered at Little Round Top. In 1889, Chamberlain is at a reunion of the 20th Maine. He acknowledges that many things had been claimed about that engagement. He said, “We’re all right. We’re all correct.” I thought that was really a statesman-like comment. Years later, there’s no point trying to argue who did or didn’t do that. “We are all right.” That, to me, is Chamberlain. 

When things were dire at Little Round Top, Chamberlain gives a one-word order.

He later said he didn’t have time to give some embroidered command. It was simply, “Bayonet.” That was understood by the men under his command. They were running low on ammunition and knew what they had to do. 

Little Round Top was Chamberlain’s first serious introduction to combat.

This is what surprised many people and why I use “Unlikely Hero” in the title of my book. You wouldn’t think of a mild-mannered college professor being willing and able to act with courage and be so daring in battle. When I was at West Point a few years ago, several members of the faculty told me they believe Chamberlain is an embodiment of what military leadership should be all about. My friend David Petraeus [retired U.S. Army general and former CIA director], who thinks Grant is the greatest general of all time, also thinks Chamberlain is a great, great military leader. So it’s not just me, someone writing a biography, but it’s military people themselves who are validating Chamberlain’s leadership. 

Chamberlain is given the nickname “Lion of Round Top.” Does he deserve it?

I think it is well deserved. He earned it. Chamberlain led by example. When the 20th Maine rushes down the hill with bayonets, Chamberlain is out front with them. He confronts an officer with a sword and a pistol [Lieutenant Robert H. Wicker, 15th Alabama] and he convinces him to surrender. That’s an amazing story. He was not afraid to face death. 

What happens to Chamberlain at Petersburg in June 1864?

He almost died at Petersburg. Chamberlain was shot through the hip and it caused severe internal damage. It was a horrible injury that would plague him for the rest of his life. He had several surgeries and suffered terrible pain and infections until the day he died. He never, never complained and never really talked about it. He earns the nickname Bloody Chamberlain that day. He suffered a terrible pelvic wound that probably would have killed another man, then he’s leading his troops again less than a year later. His mother says to him, “Have you not given enough of yourself? You’ve done more than enough. Let other people do it.” He answers, “No, I have yet to finish this job.” The record is not clear, but Chamberlain may have used a catheter for the rest of his life. With the Civil War, we often focus on amputations as a big thing. What I learned from several scholarly articles was that it was really these invisible wounds hidden from sight that were the most prevalent and the most terrible. They went on for the rest of your life. You never got rid of them. Chamberlain finally dies, ultimately from the infections from his wounds, in 1914. He is considered the last Civil War veteran to die from his injuries. 

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

See more stories

SubscriBE NOW!

 

His wound likely caused incontinence, constant pain and maybe sexual dysfunction. How does he endure this?

Again, he never talks about it, but you have to imagine what this meant for his entire life, for 50 years after the Civil War. That’s a long, long time. I think his faith enables him to accept it. I was surprised to learn that several people would see him in pain and ask why he never talked about it. He was not the kind of man who would do that. Not at all. 

Chamberlain, a strong Unionist, did not believe in the Confederate cause. Yet he does something unusual during the surrender at Appomattox.

This, to me, was so much the essence of who Chamberlain is. He never accepted their cause, but he always applauded their courage by ordering his troops to salute the surrendering soldiers. This can be difficult for contemporary audiences who are revisiting Confederate monuments and wondering if Robert E. Lee was a traitor. I want to emphasize he never, ever accepted the cause of slavery or the cause of disuniting the Union, but he never gave up his compassion for the courage of these men. He could hold both of those views at the same time.I don’t think the salute was a planned thing. I would argue that like his actions at Little Round Top, this all ultimately grows out of his whole set of values. It’s understandable because this is who he was. His whole idea of wanting reconciliation with the South as just a part of his faith, his values, the formation of his life. 

Some historians claim Chamberlain embellished his Civil War record, but you don’t think so. Why?

I found confirmation for several of his claims. For example, John Brown Gordon, the Confederate general who surrendered at Appomattox. He and Chamberlain were really on the same page about what happened. That discovery was quite fascinating. Chamberlain was also accused of changing his speeches. After the war, he was reading all these regimental histories. When he got new information, he put that into his addresses. It says a lot about who he is. I think it is a great quality that he wanted to set the record straight. 

What do you want readers to take away from your book? How do you want them to remember Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain?

As a rediscovered hero of America who has the kind of values that we need to have in our society today. And what is the source of those values? It’s both his classical education and his Christian education. And I think he is a great example of what a person can do, even facing immense difficulty with his wounds for 50 years. He perseveres and becomes not simply the Civil War hero, but the governor of Maine, president of Bowdoin College, and one of the great speakers about the values of the American democracy in those decades after the Civil War. No one spoke more eloquently than Chamberlain about what it meant to be an American in the last part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century. I wish we had people like him around today. Chamberlain had integrity and duty and loyalty. Those were the bedrock values in his life.

On Great Fields

The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
By Ronald C. White, Penguin Random House, 2023

get it on amazon

If you buy something through our site, we might earn a commission.

John Brown’s body had almost no time to molder in the grave before the first biography of his life appeared in 1861. Since then he has been the subject of full-length biographies, novels, poems, plays, songs, even an opera. So is there anything new to say about the abolitionist firebrand?

For readers interested only in the history-altering raid and not in the complicated life that led Brown to the picturesque town at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers, this detail-filled and briskly written story adds rich context to an oft-told tale. Of course, readers have to get past Dennis Frye’s “Twilight Zone” foreword, an eerily atmospheric sense of place that would make Rod Serling envious. But Frye, the longtime National Park Service historian at Harpers Ferry, understands the power of the landscape and Gilot and Pawlak build on the symbiotic relationship between Brown, the raid, and the town, which culminated in the 36-hour occupation that failed to free any slaves but helped spark the irrepressible conflict that exploded 18 months later.

The authors quickly dispose of Brown’s early life and his bloody exploits in Kansas. They explain that Brown carefully chose Harpers Ferry not merely because it was a transportation hub and the site of a federal arsenal with its thousands of arms. “The mountainous topography of the South Mountain range and the Allegheny Mountains farther to the west,” they write, “offered Brown the ideal terrain to launch his ‘lightning raids’. Believing he could destabilize the slave market in the border South, Brown hoped economics would prove more lethal to slavery than the sword.” Throughout the summer of 1859, Brown’s “army” arrived by ones and twos, slipping by at night into the nondescript farmhouse Brown had leased about seven miles above Harpers Ferry. Gilot and Pawlak build their narrative with a sense of anticipation and dread that must have prevailed among the raiders as they awaited details of Brown’s intentions.

Brown’s audacious plans called for “slipping into Harpers Ferry and holding the town and government facilities while slaves and hostages were gathered. From there, they would strike plantations, gathering slaves and retreating back into the mountains, the sort of lightning strikes that had long appealed to Brown.” Not all in his irregular army agreed; even his three sons and daughter Annie opposed it. But after a vote was taken, all decided to stay with Brown and his plan, finally launched on October 16, 1859.

The book thankfully includes a number of fascinating anecdotes and a detailed timeline, and some historical myths are dispelled (e.g., Brown kissing a slave child on his way to the gallows). A feature seen in other Savas Beatie “Emerging Civil War” monographs, there is an excellent walking tour of Harpers Ferry as well as a self-directed driving tour of pertinent nearby places, enabling modern-day enthusiasts to follow in the footsteps of Brown and his raiders from their initial hideout to the gallows in Charles Town, where Brown and six of his followers were hanged for treason on December 2, 1859. (Ten raiders died of wounds incurred during the abortive raid, and five escaped.) This is a satisfactory examination of the incursion that sparked the Second American Revolution.

John Brown’s Raid

Harpers Ferry and the Coming of the Civil War
By Jon-Erik M. Gilot and Kevin R. Pawlak, Savas Beatie, 2023

get it on amazon

If you buy something through our site, we might earn a commission.

While a number of enslaved African Americans looked on, 40-year-old Thomas Jefferson, shovel in hand, began poking into the side of the large Indian mound. Spherical in shape and 40 feet in diameter, it sat on the flood plain of the gently flowing Rivanna River, six miles north of Monticello, his mountaintop home. Jefferson was standing in a ditch surrounding the “barrow,” as he called it, when he commenced. “I first dug superficially in several parts of it,” he wrote, “and came to collections of human bones, at different depths, from six inches to three feet below the surface. These were lying in the utmost confusion….”

Americans can usually rattle off a few of Thomas Jefferson’s titles and achievements. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson, our third president, was the driving force behind the Louisiana Purchase and the wildly successful Meriwether Lewis and William Clark Expedition. But he was much more. Jefferson was a true Renaissance man, a brilliant polymath with an eclectic and dizzying array of interests.

Of these, he called science his “passion,” and over the course of his busy life, despite devoting more than 30 years to public service, Jefferson made contributions to botany, paleontology, meteorology, entomology, ethnology, and comparative anatomy. He was also an amateur archaeologist, and in 1783, spurred on by a document sent him by the French government, Thomas Jefferson excavated a Monacan Indian burial mound. It was one of his greatest scientific accomplishments. “In applying his innate sense of order and detail,” wrote science historian Silvio A. Bedini, “he anticipated modern archaeology’s basis and methods by almost a full century.”

Born on April 13, 1743, at Shadwell, his father’s plantation in the Virginia Piedmont—the western edge of European settlement—Thomas Jefferson studied in private schools prior to his 1760 enrollment at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. There, as he later wrote, it was his “great good fortune” to study under and befriend, Dr. William Small, a disciple of the Scottish Enlightenment who “probably fixed the destinies” of his life. “[F]rom his conversation,” Jefferson wrote, “I got my first views of the expansion of science & of the system of things in which we are placed.”

It was in Williamsburg, too, that young Jefferson had an encounter that helped foster his fascination with Native Americans. In the spring of 1762, a party of 165 Cherokee from the Holston River Valley accompanied their chief to Williamsburg prior to his journey to London. Called “Ontesseté,” this chieftain delivered a stirring farewell oration the evening before he departed. Enthralled, Jefferson looked on from the edge of the native’s camp. “The moon was in full splendor,” he later wrote, “and to her he seemed to address himself….His sounding voice, distinct articulation, animated action, and the solemn silence of his people…filled me with awe and veneration, although I did not understand a word he uttered.”

After college, Jefferson practiced law for seven years. Then, following service in the Virginia House of Burgesses, the Continental Congress, and the Virginia House of Delegates, he was elected governor of the Old Dominion in 1779 during the American Revolution. In October 1780, the same year he was reelected governor, Jefferson received a fascinating set of 22 queries—in essence, a questionnaire—from the secretary of the French legation to the United States, François, Marquis de Barbé-Marbois (who in 1803 would play a large role in negotiating the Louisiana Purchase). The questionnaire sought out some of the basic statistical information on the nascent American states, then embroiled in a war with France’s common enemy.

The Virginia copy had been forwarded to Jefferson by a member of the state’s congressional delegation. Query number three, for example, asked for “An exact description of [the state’s] limits and boundaries,” while seven inquired about “The number of its inhabitants.” Others sought out details on the state’s religions, rivers, mountains, flora, seaports, colleges, commercial productions, and military force, as well as customs and manners.

this article first appeared in American history magazine

See more stories

SubscriBE NOW!

 

An inveterate compiler of data, Jefferson was well-prepared to respond. As he later noted in his Autobiography: “I had always made it a practice whenever an opportunity occurred of obtaining any information of our country [Virginia], which might be of use to me in any station public or private, to commit it to writing. These memoranda were on loose papers….I thought this a good occasion to embody their substance, which I did in the order of Mr. Marbois’ queries, so as to answer his wish and to arrange them for my own use.”

Although burdened with the responsibilities of his governorship, Jefferson began working on his reply immediately. Unfortunately, the declining state of military affairs in Virginia for Jefferson’s last seven months as governor meant that he had to set aside the project that so sparked his enthusiasm. During this tumultuous time, he was forced to flee twice from Richmond, the new state capital he had established. And—after Jefferson and the legislature relocated to Charlottesville to escape the enemy—he was compelled to even abandon Monticello when a British raiding party rode up the “little mountain” and captured his neoclassical home.

Although Jefferson later termed this troubling period the very nadir of his public career, the termination of his governorship in early June 1781 did nevertheless give him the time he needed to focus on the French questionnaire. Organizationally, each query became the topic of a chapter. In December 1781, Jefferson had the first version sent to Barbé-Marbois, but he immediately began enlarging the manuscript—indeed, tripling the length—until it was published in Paris in 1785 and then in London two years later by John Stockdale as Notes on the State of Virginia.

Most of the information came from Jefferson’s personal papers, his large library at Monticello, and his numerous learned correspondents. One query, however, animated him to travel afield. It asked for: “A description of the Indians established in the State….An indication of the Indian Monuments discovered in that State.” After writing about Virginia’s “upwards of forty different tribes”—and compiling a table of their numbers, “confederacies and geographical situation”—the former governor tackled the query’s second section. “I know of no such thing existing as an Indian monument…,” he wrote, “unless indeed it be the Barrows, of which many are to be found all over this country.”

Jefferson penned that these were “of considerable notoriety among the Indians,” and that one stood in his neighborhood. He recalled that, in the mid-1750s, a party of Native Americans “went through the woods directly to it…and having staid about it some time, with expressions which were construed to be those of sorrow, they returned to the high road” about six miles distant. (While some writers claim that young Jefferson, then only 10 to 12 years old, witnessed this incident himself, it is much more likely he heard this story secondhand.)

These Native Americans were most certainly Monacans, a Siouan-speaking people who, in the dim past, had journeyed from the Ohio River Valley across the Appalachian Mountains. Up through the late 1600s, the Monacan Nation—a confederacy of like-speaking Native American tribes—controlled a vast region of the fertile Virginia Piedmont, including the valleys of the Rivanna and upper James Rivers. By the time of the arrival of Europeans in the Piedmont in the 1720s, the Monacan had long since removed to the southwest.

Monacan men stalked elk, deer, and small game through the open woods and sometimes pursued bison over the beautiful Blue Ridge into the Shenandoah Valley. Dressed in animal skins, and sporting wildly cut manes, they adorned themselves with necklaces made of copper they had mined. Much prized, the copper they sometimes traded with the Powhatan, an Algonquin people who occupied Tidewater Virginia to the east. The Monacan and the Powhatan also frequently fought.

The Monacan women raised crops of corn, beans, and squash in the fields surrounding their villages. Often comprising scores of bark-covered domed structures, these villages were surrounded by 7-foot-high palisade enclosures (a feature that made them resemble the English-built forts). One such town, Monasukapanough, had once stood near the Rivanna River in close proximity to the “barrow” in Jefferson’s neighborhood. He noted the connection between the two sites when he wrote that the mound was located “opposite to some hills on which had been an Indian town.”

To better answer Marbois’ query and to satisfy his own curiosity, Jefferson determined to “open and examine” this mound thoroughly. Prior to the excavation, however—in anticipation of what was later termed the “scientific method”—he posited questions he hoped to find answers for in the earth. It was obviously a repository of the dead, but when was it constructed? How was it constructed? Was it true that those interred were the casualties of Native American battles fought nearby? Was it the common sepulcher (or tomb) of just one town? This supposition came from a tradition, Jefferson wrote, “handed down from the Aboriginal Indians, that, when they settled in a town, the first person who died was placed erect and earth put about him, so as to cover and support him….”

When another person died, the dirt was removed, he was reclined against the first, and then the earth was replaced. (In this manner, therefore, a burial mound would grow outward from the center.) Another question—inferred but never stated exactly—was this: Rather than being related to just one Indian village, was this barrow a sacred burial place for an entire section of the Monacan Nation?

Interestingly, a theory at the time—popular among members of the nation’s foremost scientific organization, the American Philosophical Society, which Jefferson had been elected to in 1780—claimed that Native Americans were too primitive to have erected the barrows, also called “tumuli,” which had been encountered in numerous states. Instead, they attributed their construction to a much earlier people descended from either Phoenicians, Israelites, or perhaps even Scandinavians (think Vikings). These ancient “Mound Builders,” they theorized, were subsequently driven away by the barbarous ancestors of the Native Americans with whom they were familiar. Some of the Mound Builders journeyed south, they believed, and founded the Aztec civilization. While Jefferson was certainly familiar with this racist hypothesis, it is unknown whether he was considering it as he began his dig.

Unfortunately, too, the exact date of the excavation is not known. Concerning this important detail—and so uncharacteristic of Jefferson, who was normally minutiae-obsessed—his Notes on the State of Virginia is silent. Historian Douglas L. Wilson, however, who studied the original manuscript at the Massachusetts Historical Society, the “setting copy” for the 1785 Paris edition, has concluded that the dig “must have been performed after…the summer or early fall of 1783 and before [Jefferson] left for Philadelphia on 16 October.”

The circular barrow was large, 40 feet in diameter, encircled by a ditch five feet across and five feet deep. It had been 12 feet high, Jefferson observed, “though now reduced by the plough to seven and a half, having been under cultivation about a dozen years.” Prior to that, it had been covered with a small stand of trees one foot in diameter.

Restored Honor

Finally recognized as an official state tribe by Virginia in 1989, the Monacan Indian Nation has made considerable strides in reestablishing its ancestral legacy. Its headquarters is located on Bear Mountain, Va., not far from Lynchburg. For more information, visit www.monacannation.com.

Jefferson’s poking around quickly established that the mound contained human bones. They were lying in disarray, “some vertical, some oblique, some horizontal…entangled, and held together in clusters by the earth. Bones of the most distant parts were found together, as, for instance, the small bones of the foot in the hollow of a scull…to give the idea of bones emptied promiscuously from a bag or basket….”

These were “secondary burial features,” wrote University of Virginia anthropology professor Jeffrey L. Hantman, “the comingled remains of numerous individuals” who had been initially buried elsewhere, “then moved collectively at designated ritual moments….”

Jefferson marveled at the number of remains he uncovered; the vast majority being skulls, jaw bones, teeth, and the bones or arms, legs, feet, and hands. Some he extracted intact, but others, such as the skull of an infant, “fell to pieces on being taken out” of the mound.

Next began the most commented-upon aspect of Jefferson’s archaeological endeavor. “I proceeded then,” he wrote, “to make a perpendicular cut through the body of the barrow, that I might examine its internal structure. This… was opened to the former surface of the earth, and was wide enough for a man to walk through and examine its sides.” Typical of Jefferson’s writings, this passage disguises the fact that he alone could not possibly have performed this labor. Surely, the “perpendicular cut” was dug by a rather large number of enslaved African Americans, perhaps as many as 30 or 40, whom he had either transported from Monticello or leased from a nearby plantation owner. These sentences, too, reveal Jefferson’s utter insensitivity to the site’s sacred status.

Now the amateur archaeologist was able to determine how the barrow was constructed. “At the bottom, that is on the level of the circumjacent plain,” he wrote, “I found bones; above these a few stones brought from a cliff a quarter of a mile off…then an interval of earth, then a stratum of bones, and so on.”

At one end of the trench he found four strata of bones; at the other, three. The bones in the strata closest to the surface were the least decayed. Down through the ages, therefore, the barrow had grown taller with recurring layers of bones, stones, and earth. Next, he was able to determine whether any of those interred had fallen in battle. Of the bones he pulled from the mound’s various strata: “No holes were discovered in any of them, as if made with bullets, arrows, or other weapons.”

What of the other questions? Naturally, Jefferson wasn’t able to determine when the Monacan burial mound was initiated, but—thanks to his methods—he was able to answer two others. For the following reasons, he wrote, it was obviously not one town’s common sepulcher: The number of skeletons it contained (he “conjectured” 1,000); None of them were upright; The bones lay in different stratas, with no intermixing; And, the “different states of decay in these strata” seemed to indicate “a difference in the time of inhumation.” This burial mound, therefore, must have appertained to a fairly large region of the Monacan Nation. “Appearances certainly indicate,” he wrote, “that it has derived both origin and growth from the accustomary collection of bones, and deposition of them together….”

In the balance of his response to the aborigine-related query, Jefferson briefly mentioned two other barrows (one of which also contained human remains), presciently noted “the resemblance between the Indians of America and the Eastern inhabitants of Asia,” and urged the collection of Native American vocabularies so that those skilled in languages could “construct the best evidence of the derivation of this part of the human race.” He concluded with a seven-page table listing the tribes residing within, and adjacent to, the United States, their names, approximate numbers, and the locations of their tribal lands.

Ambitious in scope, Notes on the State of Virginia—with its double-entendre title—won for Jefferson considerable notoriety. In 1785, the year of its French publication, Secretary of the Continental Congress Charles Thomson, a fellow member of the American Philosophical Society, called it “a most excellent natural history not merely of Virginia but of North America and possibly equal if not superior to that of any country yet published.”

Wrote English professor William Peden, who edited a 1954 edition of the work: “The Notes on Virginia is probably the most important scientific and political book written by an American before 1785; upon it much of Jefferson’s contemporary fame as a philosopher was based.”

And no small amount of that fame was due to the “sage of Monticello’s” archaeological dig (the only such of his lifetime). Unfortunately, other than what was published in Notes on the State of Virginia, there is no other information about the Monacan burial mound. Jefferson left no field notes. Its exact location has never been pinpointed, although many individuals have tried, including professor Hantman and a team of anthropology students from the University of Virginia.

Unfortunate, too, is the fact that Jefferson never mentioned refilling the trench. If it was indeed left open, the examined remains strewn across the ground, the Rivanna River, which frequently inundates the plain upon which the mound stood, would have washed it away within a few decades. Jefferson obviously believed that the benefits of scientific inquiry greatly trumped the barrow’s importance to the Monacan people.

All that being said, the dig was nonetheless a major scientific achievement. “The importance of Jefferson’s experience and his report of it cannot be overstressed,” wrote science historian Silvio A. Bedini, “for he introduced for the very first time the principle of stratigraphy in archaeological excavation.” With this discipline, examining the layers—“strata,” Jefferson called them—provides a calendar for determining the age of items or human remains contained therein. In his description, Jefferson “not only indicated the basic features of the stratigraphic method, but also virtually named it,” wrote German archaeology writer C.W. Ceram, “although a hundred years were to pass before the term became established in archaeological jargon.”

Most important is the fact that thanks to his excavation of the Monacan Indian burial mound—and the detailed account of his posited questions and scientific methodology—Thomas Jefferson became known as the “father of American archaeology.”

Rick Britton is a historian and cartographer who lives in Charlottesville, Va., in the shadow of Thomas Jefferson’s “Little Mountain.”

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of American History magazine.

historynet magazines

Our 9 best-selling history titles feature in-depth storytelling and iconic imagery to engage and inform on the people, the wars, and the events that shaped America and the world.

subscribe today

Judas Maccabeus (190-160 bce)

The third of five sons born to Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, priest (cohen) of Modein—the others being Eleazar, Simon, John and Jonathan—the man more widely known by his Greek name was known in Hebrew as Yehuda HaMakab, or Judah the Hammer. Judas was a cohen in his own right and would have remained so had his Seleucid overlord, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (“God Manifest”), not sought to promote homogeneity in his multi-ethnic kingdom by imposing Hellenic culture and religion on all his subjects in 168 bce. That included installing images of Hellenic gods in the Second Temple of Jerusalem, provoking a revolt by Mattathias, his sons and other Jewish pietists. 

During this war for control over Judea, Judas came to the fore. After winning a string of victories, he led his makeshift army into Jerusalem on the 25th day in the Hebrew month of Kislev (approximately December), 164 bce. In the course of cleansing the Temple, tradition has it that there was only enough oil to light it for a single day, but it burned through eight nights until more oil was found. 

The fighting was far from over, however. Eleazar was killed in 161 and at Elasa in 160. Judas was outgeneraled by Bacchides and died fighting. His burial ended with a quotation from King David’s lament to King Saul: “How the mighty have fallen!” Jonathan and Simon subsequently died, leaving John the last Maccabee standing by 142 bce, when Judea finally won autonomy within the Seleucid kingdom and independence in 141.

Narses (c.ad 478-568)

The exact dates of Narses’ birth and death are uncertain, as is how he came to be castrated. What is known is that he was a Romanized Armenian who served as steward, chief treasurer and grand chamber of the court to the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I. 

He played a vital role in putting down the Nika riots on 532, but there is no evidence of military training leading to Justinian’s ordering him in 538 to Italy, where Count Flavius Belisarius, after having conquered the Vandals in North Africa in 533, was trying to wrest the Western Roman Empire from the Ostrogoths. Although Narses demonstrated a surprising grasp of command, he and Belisarius did not trust one another and Justinian recalled Narses. Working with minimal resources, Belisarius conduced a brilliant defense of Rome in 538, but in 541 Justinian, suspecting his loyalty, reassigned him to fight the Sassanians in Mesopotamia. Narses took Belisarius’ place in Italy and by June 551 was the supreme commander at age 73 with a string of victories. In 554 the undersized eunuch was feted to the first Triumph held in Rome in 150 years—and the last. On Nov. 14, 565, Justinian died and the new emperor, Justin II, recalled Narses to Constantinople in 567. Some accounts claim he died enroute in April 568, but others describe his death in peaceful retirement in 574 at what might have been age 96—itself an achievement in the treacherous cauldron of Byzantine politics. 

Genghis Khan (c. 1162-1227)

Born to a Mongol chieftain of the Borjigin clan, Temujin was eight when his father died. Certainly he would have learned the standard Mongol mounted warrior repertoire, but his accomplishments had gone far beyond that by 1206, when a kurultai of his peers elected him their first khagan, under the name of Genghis Khan. Among the most intriguing mysteries surrounding his rise to power is how he learned, hands-on, to forge alliances, turn an unwieldy collection of steppe warriors into a vast, well-disciplined army capable of conquering continents and, while he was at it, create a political entity of unprecedented scope to administer his holdings, complete with a codified legal system—all conceived virtually from scratch.

Although the victims of his ruthless expansion of empire have been estimated as high as 17 million—one-fifth the earth’s population at the time—Genghis Khan conquered the largest contiguous land mass in history and laid the foundation for a meritocracy allowing universal religious tolerance, which in times of peace connected the western world by pan-Eurasian trade. All this was without precedent in the Mongol world, but it lasted a quarter of a millennium. Is it any wonder that, however controversial he is elsewhere, Genghis Khan is still at the top of Mongolia’s hierarchy of national heroes?

Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly (1559-1632)

Born in the Brabant in the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium), Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly attended Jesuit school in Cologne, but at age 15 enlisted as a soldier in the Spanish army against the Dutch in the Eighty Years War. In 1600 he served in a mercenary unit with the Holy Roman Empire fighting Ottoman forces in Hungary and Transylvania. It was not uncommon for professional soldiers to learn hands-on as they rose in the ranks in the 17th century, but Tilly was exceptional in that he ascended from private to field marshal in just five years. In 1610 Duke Maximilian I gave him command of the Catholic League. 

When the Thirty Years War broke out in Bohemia in 1618, Tilly’s victory at White Mountain in 1620 knocked Bohemia out of the conflict at almost the beginning. As other Protestant countries rose against the Empire, Tilly defeated each in turn, seeming to be invincible.

Tilly’s career began to tarnish when King Gustavus II Adolphus put the Thirty Years War through a new phase with his innovatively mobile Swedish army. After a 20-day siege, on May 20, 1631 Tilly’s forces stormed Magdeburg and for the first time he lost control over his troops, who butchered 20,000 of the city’s 25,000 population. On Sept. 17, Tilly confronted Gustavus at Breitenfeld and was convincingly outmaneuvered and beaten, suffering 27,000 casualties. Tilly scored a modest victory at Bamberg on March 9, 1632, but at Rain am Lech on April 15 he was struck in the thigh by an arquebus round and died of osteomyelitis in Ingolstadt on the 30th.

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)

When the English Civil War broke out, its most famous—and notorious—figure was known among the merchant community and had been a member of Parliament for his home county of Huntingdon in 1628-29 and 1640-42. His only military experience had been raising a cavalry troop in Cambridgeshire for the Parliamentarians, which arrived too late to participate in the opening battle at Edgehill on Oct. 23, 1642. Oliver Cromwell proved avid at learning from experience, most notably at Gainesborough on July 23, 1643, at which point he was a colonel. He was involved in redeveloping the Parliamentary forces into a “New Model Army,” which proved its worth in the pivotal battles of Marston Moor in July 1644 and Naseby on June 14, 1645. By 1652 Cromwell’s subsequent campaigns in Scotland and Ireland sealed his place among Britain’s most successful generals. If appraised by his own standard, however—“warts and all”—he is also remembered as a regicide (he was the third of 59 to sign King Charles I’s death warrant), the revolutionary who dissolved Parliament and made himself “Lord Protector,” i.e. dictator, and one of those oppressors the Irish still love to hate.

Nathanael Greene (1742-1786)

Born in Warwick, Rhode Island, Nathanael Greene was running a mill when the American Revolution broke out, but he was an avid reader with—despite being a Quaker—a fascination with military science. That and his advocating the break with Britain led to his being expelled from his congregation, although he still regarded himself as a Quaker. When the battles of Lexington and Concord occurred, Greene’s only contribution was to form a militia unit, the Kentish Guard. On June 14, 1775 Greene met Maj. Gen. George Washington, the new commander of the Continental Army, in Boston, and the two became close friends. Serving as quartermaster-general, Greene distinguished himself in combat at Brandywine Creek, Valley Forge and Monmouth Court House. On Dec. 2, 1780 Washington sent Greene to Charlotte, N.C., where he reorganized the beaten Continental forces in the southern colonies and set out to retake them from British Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis’ army. Greene choreographed an artful campaign of fighting retreats, climaxing at Guilford Court House, N.C., on March 15, 1781. Although Cornwallis ended up holding the ground and technically winning the battle, the 633 casualties he suffered compelled him to disengage and retire to Virginia. While Cornwallis was trapped at Yorktown, Greene took the offensive, driving the last British in the South from Charleston, S.C. on Dec. 14, 1782. Before his death of heatstroke in Georgia on June 19, 1786, Greene summed up how he wore Cornwallis down: “We fight, get beat, rise and fight again.”

François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803)

The son of an educated slave on French-owned Saint-Domingue, François-Dominique Toussaint got some education of his own from Jesuit contacts while serving as a livestock handler, herder, coachman and steward until 1776, when he attained freedom. A slave revolt broke out between oppressed blacks and their white and mulatto overseers in August 1791. By 1793 he was leading rebels in a self-developed guerrilla force and had adopted the surname “Louverture” (“opening”). Later that year he and his followers helped a newly-Republican France fight off Spanish and British forces and was encouraged to learn that the French National Assembly ended slavery in May 1794. Over the following years Louverture displayed a remarkable grasp of civil leadership, restoring the economy in 1795 and overrunning Spanish San Domingo in January 1801, declaring the liberation of its white, black and mulatto population. In January 1802, however, Sainte-Domingue was invaded by a French army led by Maj. Gen. Charles Victoire Emmanuel Leclerc, brother-in-law of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, with orders to reinstate slavery on the island. Overwhelmed and losing followers, Louverture agreed to lay down his arms in May and retire to his plantation. Instead, Bonaparte ordered his arrest. He died in Fort-de-Joux in the Jura Mountains on April 7, 1803. 

Bonaparte’s treachery backfired. Leclerc died of yellow fever in November 1802. On May 18, 1803 Bonaparte made some quick cash for his European operations by approving American President Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, effectively writing off his ambitions in the New World. On Jan. 1, 1804 one of Louverture’s disciples, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, declared himself governor-general of Haiti, the world’s first black republic. 

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie (1762-1806)

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie was the issue of Alexandre Davy, Marquis de la Pailleterie, a minor French noble plantation owner in Jérémie, Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), and one of his slaves, Marie-Céssette Dumas (whose surname Thomas-Alexandre adopted). The boy accompanied his father to France, where he could be free and get an education. In 1786, however, he enlisted in the French army’s 5th Dragoon Regiment (Queen). When the French Revolution broke out, he found numerous opportunities to show his military talents. On June 2, 1792 he was promoted to corporal, but over the next few years he was commissioned a lieutenant, then rose to lieutenant colonel and, in July 1793–the first person of African descent in history to attain the rank of brigadier general. Although not the most gifted strategist, he was exceptionally strong and reveled in leading by example. Among others, Dumas commanded the Army of the West in 1796 and the Army of Italy in 1796. On March 25, 1797, during a fighting retreat from Brixen and Botzen in the Tyrol, Dumas held the Brixen bridge against an Austrian cavalry squadron singlehanded. From 1798 to 1799 he served in Napoleon Bonaparte’s Army of the Orient. 

Retiring in 1802, Dumas died of stomach cancer in 1806. Undoubtedly his lifetime of adventure inspired his son, Alexandre Dumas Sr., to write adventure novels, such as The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask and The Count of Monte Cristo. His grandson, Alexandre Dumas Jr. also became an esteemed novelist and playwright, best known for La Dame aux Camélias.

Benjamin H. Grierson (1826-1911)

One of the iconic names in American Civil War cavalry had no military training and was afraid of horses. Born in Pittsburgh, Pa. on July 8, 1826, Benjamin Henry Grierson was nearly kicked to death by a horse at age eight and distrusted the beasts ever since. Educated in Ohio, he became a music teacher and shopkeeper in Illinois when war broke out and joined the U.S. Army at Cairo on May 8, 1861, as a volunteer aide to Brig. Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss. On Oct. 24, however, Grierson was assigned to the 6th Illinois Cavalry and on March 26, 1862 his men elected him colonel.

Mastering his horse problem, Grierson led his troopers on raids and skirmishes throughout Tennessee and Mississippi. This climaxed with a diversionary raid in which Grierson led 1,700 troopers of the 6th and 7th Illinois and 2nd Iowa Cavalry regiments from La Grange, Tenn. on April 17, 1863 600 miles to Baton Rouge, La. on May 2. A step ahead of Confederate pursuers, Grierson’s raiders inflicted 100 casualties, took 500 prisoners, captured 3,000 arms and destroyed 50 to 60 railroad and telegraph lines. Of greatest strategic importance, the raid diverted a division’s worth of Confederate soldiers while Maj. Gen. Ulysses Grant’s forces slipped south of the Mississippi fortress of Vicksburg, leading to its July 4 surrender. After the war, Grierson decided to make a career of Army service, spending most on the frontier, his commands including the 10th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (Colored). On April 5, 1890 he was given a rare promotion to brigadier general in the Regular Army, shortly before retiring on July 8 of that year. 

Vo Nguyen Giap (1911-2013)

The son of a well-to-do farmer who died in a French prison, Vo Nguyen Giap attended a Catholic lycée in Hue, joined the Indochinese Communist Party in 1931, gained a law degree in 1938 and worked as a history teacher while self-studying military history. In May 1940 he met Ho Chi Minh in China, where he learned tactics and strategy as practiced by Mao Zedong. By the end of World War II Giap was Minister of Defense for the communist-nationalist People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN). 

Between 1946 and 1954 Giap blended guerrilla and conventional warfare, winning some campaigns and suffering some stinging defeats but learning from experience. His decisive victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 shocked the Western powers, as did his success in wearing down U.S. forces between 1965 and 1973. Giap viewed himself as more soldier than politician, which may explain his being sidelined by North Vietnamese General Secretary Le Duan, whose “big battle” strategy prevailed over Giap’s during the 1968 Tet and 1972 Easter offensives, resulting in bloody tactical defeats. In the end, the PAVN prevailed over the American-backed Saigon government in 1975. In 1978 Giap oversaw an invasion of Kampuchea that toppled Pol Pot’s radical Maoist Khmer Rouge government. When the Chinese retaliated with a punitive expedition into Vietnam on Feb. 12, 1979, the PAVN’s stout defense convinced the invaders to withdraw on March 16. 

Although Vo Nguyen Giap is widely touted as one of the military geniuses of his century, much of his self-taught strategy and tactics could only have worked in Indochina’s unique conditions in the second half of the 20th century.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

See more stories

subscribe now!

 

When the Second World War in Europe ended in May 1945, the United States military had custody of a staggering number of enemy prisoners of war: 4.3 million total worldwide, with more than 400,000 held in prison camps inside the domestic United States. German personnel represented the single largest group of prisoners. However not every soldier in German uniform who fell into American hands—whether through capture, surrender, or exchange of custody with another ally—was actually a German citizen.

Between 1939 and 1945, tens of thousands of Frenchmen, Poles, Dutchmen, and Norwegians wound up in German uniform, either voluntarily or through coercion. Nearly a million Soviet citizens, ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, and Cossacks had served in the German military for a myriad of reasons, plus many more millions of captured Soviet soldiers held as prisoners of the Germans were now in American or British hands; it was they who would represent one of the thorniest problems among the former allies in the war’s aftermath.

Forced Repatriation?

Prisoner of war issues during WWII were at least notionally governed by the 1929 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, but the conduct of Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union demonstrated all too clearly the limitations of international conventions and laws of war. The Soviet Union was not a signatory to the 1929 Convention; Japan signed it but never ratified it; Germany was a full signatory. The legal distinction between them was largely irrelevant, because those three nations were categorically guilty of the worst treatment of prisoners of war of any belligerents during that conflict.

As many as 3 million Soviet soldiers died in German captivity. Japanese treatment of captured Allied soldiers was infamously brutal, with a death rate estimated at 27.1 percent among prisoners of Western armies (the mortality rate for American POWs in Japanese hands was more than 30 percent). Japanese treatment of Chinese prisoners was even worse, with a nearly 100 percent death rate—only 56 Chinese prisoners were officially recorded as being released from Japanese custody at the end of the war, for the grim reason that Imperial Japanese forces killed most Chinese prisoners outright. The Soviets, at the end of the war, held as many as 3,060,000 German POWs. How many of those men died in captivity is debated, but of the 1.3 million German military personnel listed as missing in action, the vast majority of them are assumed to have died as Soviet prisoners. More than 50,000 Japanese POWs perished in Soviet prison work camps after the war was over.

The end of the conflict precipitated one of the most controversial episodes related to international conventions on prisoners of war: the question of forced repatriation. 

The 1929 Convention stipulated that “repatriation of prisoners shall be effected as soon as possible after the conclusion of peace.” What it did not account for, or at least did not anticipate, was how a nation should handle prisoners of war who did not want to return to their nation of origin. 

At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Soviets insisted that all Soviet citizens held as prisoners of war by the Germans or liberated from German custody by the Western Allies were to be repatriated without exception. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union with Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the Soviet government announced a policy that labeled all its soldiers who fell into enemy hands—whether by capture or surrender—as traitors. Order 270 issued August 16 that year, explicitly stated that Soviet soldiers’ only option was to fight to the last. To be taken prisoner, especially if one was a commander or political commissar, would be equated with desertion and defection to the Nazis. Stalin supposedly said, “There are no Soviet prisoners of war, only traitors.” With that attitude in mind, Soviet insistence on repatriation of their captured soldiers did not sound particularly benevolent.

More than 800,000 Soviet soldiers had in fact changed sides once in German hands for a variety of reasons. After the grim years of the Great Terror of the 1930s and Stalin’s purge of the Red Army before the war, there was no shortage of Soviet citizens in the military who loved the Motherland but genuinely hated Stalin and the repressive USSR government. Stalin was especially unpopular among Ukrainians, Cossacks, and other ethnic groups who had suffered in the years following the Bolshevik victory in the 1917-1923 Russian Civil War.

Some senior Red Army officers, such as Lt. Gen. Andrey Vlasov, seem to have become turncoats for self-serving reasons, but led thousands of rank-and-file soldiers into peril. Other Soviet soldiers in German custody, faced with near-certain slow death by starvation and slave labor in prisoner of war camps, chose what seemed to be the lesser of two evils and signed on for what they were told would be labor battalions in German service, only to find out too late that they were deployed as frontline combat formations or as guards in Nazi death camps. 

A Promise at Yalta

The problem was that when the Soviets at Yalta extracted the promise from their British and American counterparts to repatriate all Soviet citizens, there was no consensus as to who fit that definition. The Soviets insisted that persons from the Baltic States and eastern Poland, annexed by the USSR in 1939-1940, were Soviet citizens, but neither the U.S. nor Great Britain recognized that claim. Nor had the Allies anticipated the problem of what to do with Soviet prisoners who did not want to return. The 1929 Convention made no provision for that situation, and it did not specifically allow a detaining power to grant asylum to prisoners in its control who asked to not be returned to their country of origin. 

As the war drew to its close, British and American officials, in both the civilian governments and military command structures, were confronted by this question: did the uniform a soldier wore determine the nation to which he should be repatriated? If a Soviet citizen fought in a German uniform and was captured as a German soldier, did the Geneva Convention say he was a member of the German armed forces and protected by that service as a prisoner of war, or was he a Soviet combatant who should be returned to his country of origin?

Legal specialists in the British Foreign Office argued “it was the uniform that determined a soldier’s allegiance and no government had the right to ‘look behind the uniform’ of any POW.” Part of the thinking behind that decision was a desire to avoid reprisals against British and American prisoners still in German control.

Unfortunately, they also had to worry about the risk their countrymen then in German POW camps faced from their own ally, the USSR. As Soviet forces advanced in the east and began overrunning German prison camps containing American and British prisoners, Britain and the U.S. wanted to do nothing that might cause the Soviets to delay the repatriation of those men. Previous Soviet behavior had repeatedly demonstrated this was no idle concern. Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, told Churchill, “It is most important that they [British POWs] should be well cared for and returned as soon as possible. For this we must rely to a great extent upon Soviet goodwill and if we make difficulty over returning to them their own nationals I am sure it will reflect adversely upon their willingness to help in restoring to us our own prisoners.”

Even so, some of the language coming out of the Foreign Office in London was starkly coldhearted. As one Foreign Office official stated in an official memo, “This is purely a question for the Soviet authorities and does not concern His Majesty’s Government. In due course all those with whom the Soviet authorities desire to deal must be handed over to them, and we are not concerned with the fact that they may be shot or otherwise more harshly dealt with than they might be under English law.” This attitude did not sit well with many British military officers, but it became the policy of repatriations as the war ground to a halt.

“A Battle of Discourtesy”

The same debate caused problems between civilian and military leaders on the American side. In early 1945 Gen. Dwight Eisenhower grew increasingly frustrated with the lack of good faith cooperation from his Soviet counterparts on POW negotiations—the Soviets demanded much but conceded nothing. It eventually got so bad that Eisenhower suggested to the Chief of the U.S. Military Mission to the USSR in the U.S. embassy in Moscow, Maj. Gen. John R. Deane, that he should simply stop cooperating with the Soviets until they proved more willing to collaborate as allies should. Deane said this would be pointless; there was absolutely no chance, he said, of “winning a battle of discourtesy with Soviet officials.” 

Statesmen in Washington also grumbled about the push to give into Soviet demands on the repatriation issue. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson vehemently opposed the idea of “turning over German prisoners of Russian origin to the Russians.” He put it bluntly: “First thing you know we will be responsible for a big killing by the Russians. … Let the Russians catch their own Russians.” The U.S. Attorney General agreed on grounds of legal precedent. “I gravely question the legal basis or authority for surrendering the objecting individuals to representatives of the Soviet Government….Even if these men should be technically traitors to their own government, I think the time-honored rule of asylum should be applied.”

But like the British, the Americans were most concerned about the fate of their own POWs who fell into Soviet control, which overrode all other issues. Edward Stettinius, the U.S. Secretary of State, expressed this clearly in a communique in February 1945 when he wrote, “The consensus here is that it would be unwise to include questions relative to the protection of the Geneva convention and to Soviet citizens in the U.S. in an agreement which deals primarily with the exchange of prisoners liberated by the Allied armies as they march into Germany… we believe there will be serious delays in the release of our prisoners of war unless we reach prompt agreement on this question.” By “agreement” he meant capitulating to Soviet demands, but there seemed no simple solution.

The Soviets knew very well their British and American allies were vulnerable on this point, and they kept the pressure on in a manner that was nothing less than outright coercion. That January, U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle glumly told Stimson, “the Russians have already threatened to refuse to turn over to us American prisoners of war whom they may get possession of in German internment camps.” That threat was very much in plain view when Roosevelt and Churchill signed the Repatriation Agreement with Stalin at Yalta the next month.

Asylum Would not be granted

By the end of February nearly 370,000 Soviet POWs were in the custody of British and U.S. forces in Western Europe, and a great many of those were taken while wearing the uniforms of the German military. In accordance with the Geneva Convention, Allied command had at first issued orders that forced repatriation would only apply to POWs and Displaced Persons (DPs) who identified themselves as Soviet citizens. That arrangement did not last long.

On May 23, representatives of the Soviet High Command and Supreme Headquarters Allied European Forces signed the Leipzig Agreement, which specified that, “All former prisoners of war and citizens of the USSR liberated by the Allied Forces and all former prisoners of war and citizens of Allied Nations liberated by the Red Army will be delivered through the Army lines to the corresponding Army Command of each side.” The operative word was “all.” Washington passed instructions on to its military commanders in Europe that they were to hand all Soviet citizens over to the custody of the Red Army “regardless of their individual wishes.”

Asylum would not be granted, not even for persons whose status all but guaranteed that they would be executed as traitors when they were returned to Soviet control. Mass repatriations followed, and by the end of September 1945, 2,034,000 former prisoners identified as Soviet citizens were given over to the Red Army, sometimes by use of military force.

Nothing in the 1929 Geneva Convention provided for the forced repatriation of prisoners who did not want to return to their government’s control, so the American and British decision to comply with Soviet insistence on the matter was not compelled by law or treaty obligation. It was, instead, an unpopular course of action driven by the need to protect their own soldiers from an ally whose brutality was in some cases nearly as bad as that of their common enemy. 

Refusal to Release Prisoners

By citing the 1929 Geneva Convention in its insistence that Britain and the U.S. had to repatriate all Soviet prisoners whether they wanted to return or not, the USSR’s position was duplicitous in the extreme. The Soviets had refused to join the Convention themselves, but that did not prevent them, during the Yalta negotiations, from pointing to Article 75 with its requirement that “repatriation of prisoners shall be effected with the least possible delay after the conclusion of peace.”

The diametric contrast between the wording of that article and what the Soviets themselves did in practice was absolutely appalling. The Soviet Union kept nearly 1.5 million German prisoners of war as forced labor for an entire decade after the war ended. The last of them were not repatriated until 1955. “Fragmented archival sources,” as historian Susan Grunewald says, “imply that the Soviets primarily held onto German POWs out of economic necessity caused by the war’s destruction.” As many as 560,000 Japanese prisoners were held by the Soviets until 1950 under the same excuse. The USSR used those men to rebuild a national infrastructure damaged by the war, but such practice was directly contrary to the spirit, if not the actual letter, of the very international convention that the Soviets cited when it suited their purposes.

Soviet refusal to release their prisoners after the end of WWII directly influenced the drafting of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 when it replaced the 1929 Convention. Article 118 (Release and Repatriation) begins with the sentence, “Prisoners of war shall be released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities.” At that time, there was still no end in sight to Soviet delaying tactics.

The 1960 Commentary on the Convention discusses Article 118 in refreshingly simple language: “This is one of the most important Articles in the Convention and is intended to remedy very unsatisfactory situations. As a result of the changed conditions of modern warfare, the belligerents have on two occasions, and without expressly violating the provisions of the existing Conventions [of 1929], been able to keep millions of prisoners of war in captivity for no good reason. In our opinion, it was contrary to the spirit of the Conventions to prolong war captivity in this way.” It then explains in detail that the Geneva Convention (III) is interpreted to mean that forced repatriation is unacceptable, and that a Detaining Power has the right to grant asylum to prisoners it holds in any situation “where the repatriation of a prisoner of war would be manifestly contrary to the general principles of international law for the protection of the human being.” 

Both interpretations exist today precisely because of the long shadow cast by Soviet policies on the repatriation of prisoners at the end of the Second World War.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

See more stories

subscribe now!

 

In his Life of Julius Caesar ancient biographer Plutarch describes Caesar’s Gallic campaigns as a beginning for the conqueror—the first and greatest step on his path to power and immortal fame. The subjugation of Gaul showed him superior to Rome’s greatest military commanders. His mettle was tested and proved in nearly 10 years of successful operations in difficult terrain, navigating shifting alliances and counter-alliances, confronting and conciliating savage enemies and perfidious allies, and producing victory repeatedly through determination, imagination, and audacity. He fought more battles and killed more enemies than any of his predecessors. Through battle and siege, he subdued nations, slaying a million men and capturing a million more, bringing vast territory under Rome’s control.

But Gaul was not an end in itself. Although the stage of Caesar’s exploits was beyond the Alps, his audience was Rome. Military service had long been requisite for Roman political office. Successful military command was a potent aid in attaining the highest positions. In the late Republic, it increasingly became the means of acquiring extra-constitutional authority as the sword became the arbiter of power. 

A Political Opportunity

Caesar was already involved in this game when he entered Gaul in 58 BCE. Two years before he had formed a political alliance with Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus, called the First Triumvirate, that allowed them to control the entire Roman political system. Caesar knew the arrangement could not last forever. He had to prepare for the inevitable showdown. He needed the opportunity to increase his fame and influence as well as cultivate the intense personal loyalty of his troops that would allow him to challenge Pompey. Gaul was his training ground. 

To maximize the political benefits of his exploits in Gaul, Caesar wrote his own account. Just as he used the war in Gaul to gain the power and influence necessary to bend Roman politics to his will, he used his narrative to enhance his reputation toward the same end. The Gallic War, based on his notes, diaries, dispatches, memoranda, and reports to the Senate embellished with added content and literary flourish, highlights Caesar’s abilities and achievements. While many historians suspect it was exaggerated for the author’s benefit and is propagandistic rather than strictly historical, it is our primary source for the conflict.

Caesar’s account famously begins by describing Gaul as divided into three parts inhabited by the Belgae, the Aquitani, and the Gauls. This simple mental map becomes far more complicated as the annual campaigns are narrated. The work ultimately mentions more than 100 tribes Caesar must defeat or pacify. This ethnic diversity overlays a challenging topography marked by rivers, swamps, mountains, and vast, trackless forests magnifying the difficulties of logistics and maneuver—and punctuated by nearly unassailable strongholds.

From a Roman perspective, Gaul was tribal, atavistic, chaotic, and dangerous.

Its specter of fear haunted for centuries after the Gauls sacked Rome in 390 BCE. Already in control of Cisalpine Gaul, the area of Italy north of the River Po, Rome added Transalpine Gaul as a province in the second century BCE. This territory was often called Provincia Nostra or simply “the Province,” whence derives the name for the modern French region Provence. These territories and peoples were heavily influenced by Roman culture and involved in trade with Rome, imbibing the benefits of its civilization. This Romanization was reflected in the name Gallia Togata (toga-wearing Gaul). The farther one traveled, the weaker this Roman influence became. The Romans called these untamed lands Gallia Comata (long-haired Gaul), evoking the wild, freedom-loving character of their inhabitants. 

As part of the Triumvirate’s division of political spoils, Caesar was appointed proconsul of the provinces of Illyricum as well as Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul in 58 BCE. Before him stretched a vast field of opportunity, and he meant to make the most of it. The years that followed were marked by numerous successful campaigns and a constant stream of victories enhacing Caesar’s reputation.

Gaul became an endless gift to Caesar. The restless stirrings of Gallic tribes against Roman domination ensured constant conflict, yet the Gauls’ disunity and inability to put common interest over local loyalties meant that Caesar could deal with them in a largely piecemeal fashion. 

But eventually, Caesar’s successes would forge a new enemy—spurring a leader to arise among the Gauls capable of forging a unity among the tribes not realized before. This leader’s name was Vercingetorix. He would confront Caesar with his greatest challenges yet.

A New Enemy

If Gaul seemed tranquil in the beginning of 52 BCE, it was only the calm before another breaking storm. Beneath the snow-laden trees and in the recesses of shadowed hills, secret meetings were held to commiserate about the misfortunes of Gaul and call for a united effort to drive the Romans out. The moment seemed favorable. Not only had Caesar withdrawn beyond the Alps, as he habitually did in winter to be closer to events in Rome, rumor alleged that he was tangled in political turmoil that would prevent him from joining the troops he had left to garrison Gaul. Solemn oaths were sworn and swords were sharpened. 

The first stroke fell upon Cenabum, where Roman traders were massacred, and their goods looted. Like embers carried by swift winds, the news spread quickly. Vercingetorix, the newly-proclaimed king of the Averni, seized the moment to forge the necessary unity among the tribes. Calling upon all to uphold the oaths they had sworn, he combined exhortation and severity to forge an army with which to oppose Rome and over-awe the tribes who hesitated. By common consent, he was given supreme military command. 

Receiving word of these events, Caesar hurried to Transalpine Gaul only to confront an immediate difficulty. The Province was under threat, but the bulk of his forces were still in winter quarters, far to the north. If he called them south, they would be harried all the way, yet to march to them was equally dangerous. Using surprise, misdirection, and maneuver, he forced the enemy to shift position and was able to unite his entire field army under his command. 

But Vercingetorix was a wily general who understood his enemy’s challenges as well as his own. The keys to controlling territory in Gaul were the fortified towns called oppida, which could function as anchors of strength and supply or as hostages to force an opponent’s hand. He besieged Gorgobina, a chief center of the Boii who, along with the Aedui, were allied with Rome. This forced Caesar to choose between two undesirable alternatives: conveying weakness to allies and surrendering the initiative or moving before spring and risking major problems of transport and supply. Caesar chose to march. 

New Rules of War?

Caesar’s decision worked toward solving both problems at once. He quickly took three villages rich with supply and caused Vercingetorix to abandon the siege. Recovering the initiative, Caesar marched toward the hostile town of Avaricum, the most important stronghold of the Bituriges, hoping its capture would subdue the surrounding territory. But the old rules would no longer necessarily apply. 

Vercingetorix had a new kind of war in mind. Convening a council, he presented a strategic vision to the Gauls that would require patience, forbearance, and self-sacrifice in the national cause. He outlined an asymmetric strategy that would avoid direct assault, focusing instead on strangling Roman forces by preventing them from foraging and gathering supplies. Victory would be won by attrition.

The advantages in such a war fell to the Gauls, who were operating in their own territory. There were no ripe harvests in the early season to sustain large infantry forces, which meant the Romans would have to go looking. An abundance of Gallic cavalry would enable them to isolate and destroy the foraging parties. To maximize the effects of this strategy, he called for scorched earth. Villages, towns, farm buildings, food, supplies—anything they could not carry with them was to be destroyed before the enemy could take possession. The Romans would have to travel farther in search of food, increasing their vulnerability. 

Preparing For a Siege

Flames sprang up in all directions. Such a strategy was not easy to carry out because it called for the destruction of one’s own. The Bituriges begged the others to spare Avaricum, the finest city in Gaul. It was eminently defensible, they argued, as it was surrounded almost completely by a river and a swamp. The sturdy walls fostered hope that the Romans could not take it by force of arms. Vercingetorix argued against this exception, but the tide of sympathy was against him. Nonetheless, he would not commit his field army.

The townspeople would be left on their own. After all, if Avaricum fell, it would only vindicate his tactics. Caesar began preparations for a siege while Vercingetorix watched from a distance.

With his options limited because of difficult terrain, Caesar began constructing an earth ramp and two siege towers. The threatening presence of the Gallic field army lurked in the hinterlands, ambushing foraging parties. Shortage of food, cold temperatures, and steady rains added discomfort to an already arduous task. Moreover, the Gallic defenders were both energetic and inventive. They undermined the siege ramp by digging tunnels, raised the height of their walls and towers, made frequent sallies to set fire to the siege works, and cast heavy stones on the working legionaries. 

Despite these challenges, the Romans completed the ramp in 25 days.

The Gauls made one last great effort to forestall the storming of the town. They launched sorties and hurled incendiaries onto the siege towers and ramp. But Caesar had foreseen the danger. Although it was the middle of the night, Caesar’s policy of stationing two legions outside the fortified camp and remaining near the construction site himself enabled him to react quickly and decisively. The fires were put out and the enemy pushed back.

Caesar Changes His Plan

Seeing that they could not hold out, the Gauls resolved to abandon the town. They hoped to escape to the camp of Vercingetorix during the night. As they prepared to flee, the women, fearing they and the children could not escape, begged the men not to leave them to the enemy. When the women’s pleas were ignored, they began calling out and gesturing to the Romans. This put the Romans on the alert. The escape plan had to be abandoned.

The next day the blow fell. The siege towers rolled forward, and the Romans poured onto the wall. The defense collapsed in panic. The Romans, desiring revenge for the massacre at Cenabum, made no distinctions of age or sex and gave no quarter. Of 40,000 inhabitants, hardly 800 escaped. Vercingetorix showed himself equal to the moment, using the disaster to reinforce his strategy, win over the remaining Gallic nations, and increase his army.

Caesar was also making use of events. Having captured a large amount of grain and other supplies, he refreshed and restored his army for a spring campaign. But his difficulties stretched beyond the battlefield. Envoys of the Aedui arrived to urgently request his help in resolving an internal dispute over the leadership of their nation. Reluctant to postpone the campaign, the potential consequences of civil strife within so important an allied people could be devastating. Caesar altered his plans. Settling the dispute according to their national laws, he sought to restore their unity and remind them of their allegiance to him. 

Ordering a levy of 10,000 infantry and all available cavalry, he then marched in search of Vercingetorix. Caesar knew that a war of constant maneuver and attrition did not favor him. He had to destroy the Gallic field army. As a means of provoking decisive conflict, he marched into the lands of the Averni themselves, targeting Gergovia, their capital. Vercingetorix was compelled to shadow him.

For days the two armies marched and camped within sight of each other on opposite banks of the Elaver River. Gergovia was strongly situated on a very high hill, with the elevated ridge in front of the town thickly covered by the camp of the enemy. Undaunted, Caesar first built a large, fortified camp. He then seized and fortified a lower hill, stationing two legions there and joining the camps by parallel trenches. The Gauls watched the methodical industriousness of the Romans with uneasy eyes. 

Traitors In Their Midst

Vercingetorix had other weapons to wield than those visible upon the field. He made use of bribery and collusion. Leaders of the Aedui turned against their Roman allies. One of them was the commander of the infantry force Caesar had called to his aid; this man employed lies and fearmongering to convince his men to attack the Romans. Caesar managed to restore the loyalty of the troops without battle and received the deepest apologies from Aedui envoys.

However, the episode made the Roman leader increasingly uneasy about traitors in his midst and the prospect of being surrounded by a larger Gallic uprising. He began considering how to withdraw his army from Gergovia to more favorable ground—without giving the impression he was fearful.  

An opportunity presented itself when, in response to Caesar’s misdirection, the bulk of the enemy force was employed fortifying a western approach to the town, leaving their camp virtually empty. A swift, stealthy attack delivered the camp into his hands. This is apparently all he intended. The retreat was sounded. But many of Caesar’s troops did not hear the signal. Carried away by hopes of swift victory, they assaulted the town itself. An alarm caused the bulk of the Gallic forces to rush back through the town to engage the Romans at the wall.

As their numbers increased, they gained the advantage. The Romans were driven off with heavy losses. When they rallied on the plain to face their pursuers, the Gauls would not engage, nor could they be tempted to do so for the next two days. Such restraint indicated that the message of Vercingetorix was having an effect.  

Caesar’s failure to take Gergovia increased Vercingetorix’s reputation and further loosened Caesar’s hold upon his allies. The unrepentant “traitors” among the Aedui looted and burned a key supply cache at Noviodunum. Refusing to take an embarrassing and backward strategic step, Caesar did not withdraw into Transalpine Gaul. Instead, he went on the offensive, surprising the enemy with quick movement and risky river crossings to seize what he needed. Knowing he could not expect relief forces from the south, he hired Germanic horsemen from across the Rhine to supplement his forces.

A Gamble Worth Taking?

Over the next few months, Vercingetorix collected a considerable force, increasing the threat to the Province and drawing Caesar closer. His marked superiority in cavalry convinced Vercingetorix that the opportunity for a decisive attack was at hand. But his aim was still a strike against Roman logistics rather than a general engagement. Dismissing the ability of the Germanic cavalry to stop them, he convinced the other Gauls that by attacking the Romans while they were burdened by their baggage and strung out in column on the march, they could severely weaken them. Yet Vercingetorix underestimated Roman cohesion and discipline. 

Caesar adroitly managed both to secure his baggage train and to inflict heavy damage on the enemy. Reeling back, Vercingetorix withdrew into the nearby oppidum of Alesia. This move seems a departure from Vercingetorix’s previous strategy. He had now allowed himself to be pinned down and be subjected to Roman siege warfare, at which they excelled. On the other hand, sending his cavalry away on the mission of recruiting a massive relief army can be seen as the capture of a unique opportunity. If they could hold out, Caesar would be crushed between two forces. It was perhaps a gamble worth taking. But the price of failure would be high.

Settling in for the siege, Caesar built a system of fortifications of extraordinary size and complexity. His fortifications enclosed the defenders within Alesia (circumvallation) and guarded against assault from without (contravallation). An initial trench 20 feet wide was dug on the plain to discourage attacks on the working parties. Behind this obstacle two more trenches were dug and filled with water diverted from the river that flowed across the plain. Behind these ditches, a wall of earth and rubble was raised, crowned with a palisade, reinforced with parapets and battlements, and guarded by towers that served as firing platforms for catapults.

Mechanized Artillery

But the 11-mile circuit stretched his lines thin, particularly during the construction phase. Thus Caesar added a system of hidden obstacles and traps in front of the walls and trenches so that the fortifications could be defended by smaller numbers. Triple rows of sharpened wooden stakes covered pits. Barbed iron spikes would not only cause casualties but slow any assault so that the Romans could concentrate force against it. Caesar had an identical line of fortifications built facing the other direction to guard against the relieving army.

After an initial unsuccessful attack when the relief army arrived, the Gauls spent the next day preparing to assault the Roman fortifications. They constructed wicker screens to cover the trenches, grappling hooks to pull down the parapets, and ladders to scale the palisade. In the middle of the night, they raised a mighty shout to signal those besieged in the town and launched their attack.

Hearing the clamor, Vercingetorix led his forces out to attack the Roman interior lines. His hopes must have been high, but the shouts of his rescuers quickly turned to screams of pain. As they rushed forward in the darkness, iron spikes pierced their feet. Sharpened stakes impaled them as they fell into the hidden pits.

While the Gauls launched an initial barrage of missiles to drive the Romans off the parapets, they came under the murderous fire of Roman mechanical artillery firing stone shot and heavy bolts. Even without precise aim in the darkness, these did great damage to the massed ranks of the attackers. By the time Vercingetorix’s forces had negotiated the first trench, the attack had failed. 

Repelled twice with heavy losses, the Gauls considered what to do. Because of the difficult terrain, Caesar’s fortifications were not completely uniform. The Gauls saw an opportunity in a gap to the north of the town created by a hill too large and steep to be encompassed by siege lines. The gap was guarded by a Roman camp holding two legions, but it was on unfavorable ground and constituted a weak point. The Gauls secretly dispatched a force of 60,000 men. A stealthy night march put them behind the hill before dawn, where they waited until the appointed hour. Gallic forces on the plain gathered to divert Roman attention. The assault was launched around mid-day. 

The Crucial Moment

From his vantage point in Alesia, Vercingetorix saw these movements and prepared to launch his own supportive assault from within the lines. But his was not the only eye surveying the field. Caesar had set his own camp on the high ground south of the town for a clear view of the scene. The Romans were now under assault in multiple locations and from two directions.

This was the crucial moment. The struggle in the north was particularly bitter. Exhausted legionaries were in danger of being overrun by relentless and determined Gauls. Caesar dispatched six cohorts to plug the gap while riding out to encourage the troops holding the line on the plain, his purple cloak announcing his presence to friend and foe alike. His personal intervention turned the tide. The line held. But the battle could still be lost. Calling upon four cohorts and available cavalry, Caesar rushed toward the crisis point.

Seeing their commander’s approach, the Romans resisted with renewed energy. Desperate to break through before Caesar’s arrival, the Gauls attacked wildly. But Caesar had divided his cavalry. One half rode with him; the other half he had sent to circle around and attack the enemy from behind. When the Gauls became aware of this second force, they broke and turned to flee. Most were run down and slaughtered. Vercingetorix’s plan was a near stroke–but the Gauls had lost. Those inside withdrew back into Alesia. Those outside fled from their camps and dispersed to their various nations.

Caesar’s victory was decisive. The 74 enemy military standards brought to him testified to the magnitude of his success. Several key enemy leaders were killed or captured. Vercingetorix surrendered himself to the conqueror in order to preserve what remained of his people—held captive in Rome for five years, he was ritually garroted in 46 BCE during Caesar’s much-delayed “triumph” ceremony in the Roman capital. Alesia marked the end of general, organized resistance to Rome. Though Gaul was not yet completely subdued, it was effectively conquered.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

See more stories

subscribe now!

 

In December 1232 a.d., a single arrow changed the course of history. Loosed by a Buddhist monk, the missile struck down the leader of the second Mongol invasion of Korea. His death precipitated a lifting of the siege of Cheoin and subsequent Mongol withdrawal from Goryeo. Yet they wouldn’t be gone for long. The extended nightmare that characterized Mongol attempts to subdue the Korean kingdom was destined to continue for a generation.

The geopolitical environment of Northeast Asia in the early 13th century would be recognizable to us today. Multiple, militarized states in a relatively compact area shared diplomatic, military, and trade relations. However, the identity of the regional powerhouses at the time is different from our modern construct.  

China was divided. In 1127 a confederation of Jurchen tribes had seized control of northern China, later known as Manchuria. To their south, the Jurchen faced what remained of the Chinese Song Dynasty, known today as the Southern Song. The Jurchen proclaimed the establishment of a “Great Jin” Dynasty. Fighting with the Chinese continued until a line of unassailable fortified Song cities along the Huai River forced a stalemate. This resulted in a cessation of Jin-Song hostilities in 1138 and the formalization of a new border. 

Genghis Khan On the Rise

The war between the Jurchen and the Chinese couldn’t have come at a worse time. In 1206, far to their north, an aggressive and ambitious Mongol chieftain was declared Khagan, Emperor of the Mongols. Genghis Khan—whose name meant “Universal Ruler”—wasted no time in turning the energy of the newly-unified Mongol and allied steppe tribes toward external foes. 

Genghis Khan launched his invasion of the Jin Empire in 1211 and, by 1215, he’d taken the capital at Zhongdu (modern Beijing). Distracted by events further to the west, Genghis Khan left a force to keep the pressure on the Jin while he himself marched off to destroy the Qara Khitai (in central Asia north of the Indian subcontinent) in 1217. He then smashed the prosperous Khwarezmid Empire (a Muslim empire that included present-day Iran, Afghanistan and central Asia) in 1221.

Genghis Khan died in August 1227, leaving a massive empire in the hands of his very capable third son, Ogedai, who was formally recognized as khan in 1229. When Ogedai led an army back to Jin lands the following year, his veteran troops made short work of the remaining resistance. Aizong, the last Jin emperor, hanged himself to avoid capture, ending that dynasty in 1234. Having toppled the Jin Empire, the conquerors would soon turn their attention to the Song. 

Throughout this tumultuous period the Korean kingdom of Goryeo bided its time. Goryeo had been founded through military conquest in 918. A hereditary military aristocracy held significant, if declining, influence at court. Martial clout reached its peak in 1170 when the military usurped the king’s authority. The aristocracy established a dictatorship that would last a hundred years, ruling in the king’s name but holding near-absolute power.

Swords and Scholars

In keeping with the nature of its founding, Goryeo maintained the greatest military capability of any Korean polity until the 20th Century. Goryeo troops were, at the beginning of the 13th Century, highly trained, well-equipped, battle-hardened, and well-led by the military aristocracy.

The sword arm of Goryeo was augmented by a rising class of Confucian scholars who provided sage advice to the royal family and a well-educated pool of wily diplomats. This scholarly class found itself increasingly at odds with the established military aristocracy and dictatorship, though powerless to resist the dictator’s private army. The intellectuals waited patiently for an opportunity to challenge what they saw as an illegitimate usurpation of the throne.

Fissures aside, the Goryeo court wielded its key elements—the quill and the sword—with admirable dexterity. The kingdom exhibited phenomenal ability to rapidly concentrate and project coercive power. This approach facilitated a multi-pronged expedition against the Jurchen in 1107, which seized massive tracts of land from the semi-nomadic tribes. This campaign set the conditions for a pledge by the Jurchen Wanyan tribe—the same tribe that would establish the Jin Dynasty eight years later—not to encroach upon Goryeo territory.

The annals show Goryeo’s leaders recognized the Mongol storm on the horizon. A number of factors made it seem like a distant problem at first. Korean kingdoms had long fended off mounted Jurchen incursions along the border, launching their own attacks north when timing and local advantage were favorable. To the Goryeo the Mongols were nothing more than another group of barbarians on horseback.

Yet it was the handling of the Khitan Liao incursions of the 11th Century wherein the Goryeo playbook for dealing with the Mongols would be written. Throughout the course of three invasions in 993, 1010, and 1018, Goryeo’s armies fought viciously until conditions rendered further resistance undesirable.  The king would then sue for peace—ensuring any terms included the withdrawal of the invading force—buying time to reorganize for the next campaign before resuming the conflict. 

The best example of this Goryeo sword-and-quill tactic, an admirable early synthesis of military and diplomatic efforts, led to the Battle of Guiju during the third Khitan invasion in 1019, and the annihilation of a 100,000-strong Khitan army in the mountains of modern North Korea. Goryeo would employ this same strategy, with notable success, against the Mongols.

Korea, an Unlikely Contender

Given what we know of the Mongol conquests, it might appear unbelievable that the tiny Kingdom of Goryeo would even consider resisting. The khan’s armies subdued China, Khwarezm, and Persia before invading Russia and Eastern Europe. Goryeo, however, was fiercely protective of its independence and had successfully defended itself against innumerable invasions, generally punching well above its weight class.

Goryeo’s leaders long understood their greatest advantage lay in the peninsula’s geography. Broad rivers guarded the northern border. Fortified mountain ranges separated by disease-infested valleys loomed over the route to the capital at Kaeseong. That rugged terrain had swallowed up invading armies throughout Korea’s long history. There was no reason for King Gojong to think it wouldn’t continue to do so.

Regardless of the strength of the kingdom’s defenses—both natural and man-made—the court closely monitored burgeoning Mongol power. Goryeo also extended efforts to maintain an amicable relationship with the Mongols—Koreans and Mongols even joined forces in 1219 to destroy a pillaging army of Khitans which had crossed Goryeo’s northern border.

In 1224 the inevitable occurred. A Mongol envoy arrived at the Goryeo court in Kaeseong and demanded tribute. Goryeo’s military dictator at the time, Choe Woo, refused. The emissary departed. While enroute home, the envoy was killed by bandits. The Mongols labeled the unfortunate event treacherous, and it became a pretext for invasion. It was Goryeo’s turn to face the all-conquering armies of the Great Khan.

The Korean Peninsula is only about 760 kilometers (450 miles) from the Yalu River to Busan (formerly known as Pusan). Given that the Mongols were at that time fighting successfully as far away as the Persian Gulf and Russia, one might expect the subjugation of such a small nation to be simple. That turned out not to be the case. 

The First Invasion

The first invasion took place in August 1231 under the command of the Mongol general Saritai. This force crossed the Yalu and quickly moved south, overrunning the border town of Uiju. The Mongols then took the city of Anju but failed to breach the walls of Kuju, despite numerous attempts. Already tiring of siege warfare, Saritai bypassed the strongpoint, marching hard to the south and seizing the capital of Kaeseong. Goryeo sued for peace and accepted the installment of 72 Mongol administrative officials. Saritai, no doubt reveling in the accomplishment of his mission, turned the army north and in short order departed the kingdom.

In 1232, Choe Woo fortified Ganghwa Island, west of modern-day Seoul, stocked it with ample provisions, and ordered the construction of all the facilities required by a fully functioning royal court. The dictator then evacuated the entire Goryeo government to Ganghwa, eliciting instant suspicion among the Mongol administrators. With that move—taking advantage of Mongol maritime weakness—Choe set the conditions for a stubborn resistance.

Choe instructed the people to take refuge in the many fortresses scattered throughout the countryside. Once the population was safe, he had the Mongol administrators killed. When word reached Saritai, he turned his army southward again and began the second invasion of Goryeo in June 1232.

Saritai failed in a half-hearted attempt to reach Ganghwa Island—less than a mile off-shore—and commenced the siege of Cheoin near modern Yongin. It was there that the monk Kim Yun-hu, chosen by the locals to lead their defense, struck down Saritai with an arrow in December. His death caused the Mongol army to withdraw from Goryeo, ending the second invasion.

In July 1235, the Mongols returned. Frustrated by Goryeo’s willingness to retreat within city walls and high mountain fortresses, the invaders settled upon an age-old strategy: scorched earth. If the inhabitants wouldn’t defend their lands, they’d lose them. The new plan involved massive, roving bands of Mongol cavalry, burning and pillaging their way well south of the Han River.

On the rare occasion when the Mongols took a fortified site, they massacred the inhabitants. Yet civilian resistance remained strong behind stout fortifications. The Mongols suffered several setbacks as Korean forces trapped and annihilated isolated groups of marauders.

The Mongols Retreat

After years of wanton destruction punctuated by sporadic military engagement, Choe sued for peace in 1238. The Mongol demands included a requirement for the Goryeo court to return to Kaeseong and for a prince to be sent to the khan to live as hostage. Instead, Choe fooled the Mongols by sending an unrelated member of the royal family—an act which, discovered years later, enraged the invaders.

By 1247, the Mongols realized that the endless excuses Goryeo offered as to why the government had yet to return to Kaeseong were just that: excuses. Choe was not about to place the court back within striking range of Mongol forces. This led to a fourth invasion that July, carried out in much the same way as the previous one. 

The people fled to local fortifications and once again took up arms while the Mongols burned anything and everything they found, killing or enslaving those hapless enough to be caught outside the walls. This time, neither cities nor fortresses were successfully taken, and the campaign ended in 1249 after Mongol emperor Guyuk Khan, Ogedei’s eldest son, had passed away in April 1248, causing the army to return home.

With Mongke Khan’s ascension to leadership, the Mongols renewed their demands upon Goryeo in 1251. Receiving the by now familiar excuses, the Mongols invaded a fifth time in July 1253, ravaging the empty countryside. This time, however, Goryeo had lost its most intractable advocate for resisting the invaders. Choe Woo had abruptly died of an unspecified disease in December 1249, handing dictatorial powers to his son, Choe Hang.

Compared to his father, Choe Hang held much less control over the royal family, as the annals make clear King Gojong himself met with Mongol envoys to arrange a cease-fire in early 1254. The king agreed—once again—to move his court back to the mainland.

By summer that same year, the Mongols learned that not only were multiple high-ranking officials still resident on Gangwha, but that the king’s stepson hostage wasn’t even from the royal line. There were also rampant rumors that Goryeo officers who’d cooperated in any way with the Mongols had been executed. For the Mongols this was the last straw. They set out in July 1254 to punish Goryeo.

Famine

After so many years of constant warfare and pervasive destruction, famine gripped the kingdom. The people were reaching their breaking point. Civilians surrendered to the invaders in ever increasing numbers. This latest incursion introduced the most widespread havoc to date and resulted in more than 200,000 people taken as slaves. The Mongol army marched their captives north, ending the sixth invasion that December with no political resolution at all.

Growing frustrated with the situation, the Mongols again switched tactics. By this time they’d abducted a large number of Goryeo subjects and, in the same manner employed elsewhere, set out to find those with useful skill sets. Thus, in 1255 the Mongols launched seaborne raids along the coast in ships built by captured Korean craftsmen.

Intent upon taking Gangwha from the sea, intervention at the Mongol court by a Goryeo diplomat, Kim Su-gang, convinced Mongke Khan to cease the effort and recall his army. This ended the seventh invasion in June 1256 but, again, without any permanent resolution.

A much debated eighth invasion in 1257, played out almost the same way, with an impending assault on Gangwha interrupted by diplomacy and the khan’s recall of Mongol forces. However, Choe Hang died in May 1257, passing the mantle of dictatorship to his son, Choe Ui. The 25-year-old dictator held even less power than his father over the Goryeo monarch. Most decision-making appears to have been pried from his inexperienced hands.

In response to renewed hostilities in 1258, the king’s civil advisers—slowly gaining the upper hand over the military aristocracy—recommended sending the crown prince to the Mongols as a hostage, per the invading commander’s request. Unsatisfied with waiting for King Gojong to make his decision, the Mongols took Sinui and Changnin islands off the southwestern coast, their first amphibious successes. Still, a strong Goryeo fleet prevented the Mongols from making a proper run at Gangwha. Mongol coastal operations ceased with word that Mongke Khan had once more recalled the army. Goryeo diplomacy had once again purchased more time. The king’s Confucian advisers were intent to make the most of it.

A coup against the Choe family the next year resulted in the death of Choe Ui just two years into his dictatorship. This left Goryeo’s royal family with more authority than it had held in many years. Heeding the scholars’ advice, the king struck a peace treaty with the Mongols.

But time was not on Gojong’s side. He passed away in 1259, succeeded by his son Weonjong. Despite treaty obligations, it would be 11 years before the redoubtable fortifications protecting Gangwha Island would be torn down and the court returned to Kaeseong. Following the coup, the private army that had kept the Choe family in power for nearly 60 years fled the capital. Its leaders attempted to create their own state along the southern coast, unwilling to the very end to submit to Mongol rule. This elite force—fueled by an unquenchable need to resist Mongol domination—managed to hold out against repeated attacks for another 14 years. Their last stand took place on Jeju Island in 1273, where they were finally crushed—ironically, by a combined Goryeo-Mongol force.

Political Independence

Goryeo maintained its political independence, a true rarity among those peoples who dared to defy the will of the Great Khan. The terms of the treaty were relatively lenient—reflecting that the Mongols had been worn down after dispatching so many armies down the troublesome peninsula. However, Goryeo was required to pay an annual tribute and the king was forced to marry a Mongol princess, tying the royal families together. In this way, Goryeo received the status of a Mongol ally. The kingdom’s henceforth Confucian-trained rulers would take their alliance obligations seriously.

The first and most important reason for the difficulty the Mongols experienced in Korea was the geography of the peninsula. That preceding Korean dynasties and kingdoms had fortified every advantageous height or narrow defile from the Yalu River to the southern coast only magnified those natural defenses.

Topography didn’t turn out to be quite the obstacle to the Mongols that it had been for so many invading armies throughout history. This is most likely due to the speed with which Mongol forces pressed their advance. An army passing through at the speed of horses spends far less time in malaria-infested lowlands than one moving at the speed of infantry, thereby reducing its vulnerability. Whatever the cause, the annals fail to mention Mongol losses from disease and related attrition inflicted upon other historical invaders.

On the other hand, Goryeo fortresses, often constructed high above the surrounding lands and incorporating natural defenses, proved difficult for the Mongols to access, much less assault. Even with professional siege engineers brought from distant lands, siege equipment had to be hauled or pushed up steep slopes, under withering bow fire, just to reach the fortress walls. This was never easy. Many Mongol warriors lost their lives in fruitless sieges like the one at Sangju where 50 percent of the besiegers were reportedly slain before the siege was lifted.

The evacuation of the court to Gangwha proved genius. It removed a vulnerable pressure point as effectively as if the government had fled to the Moon. The Mongol inability to assault that small island, so tantalizingly close to the mainland, highlights a very real gap in an otherwise profoundly dominant military organization.

The Mongol difficulty in storming the mountain fortresses, or even reaching Goryeo’s offshore strongholds, helps explain why from the third invasion (1235) onward the steppe armies generally refrained from siege activities, concentrating instead on starving out an entire nation. The invaders would eventually try their hands at amphibious warfare, but that capability would never be something the Mongols would bring to maturity, relying instead upon the navies of subjects and allies.

The Goryeo armed forces at the beginning of the Mongol invasions consisted of a large, centrally controlled army augmented by private armies made up of highly skilled professional soldiers under the command of the military aristocracy. These conventional forces, however, could not stand up to the Mongols in a set piece battle. No shame there, of course, as they found themselves in good company with armies as far away as China, Persia, and Poland.

Goryeo’s unique solution to the problem of losing field battles against the Mongols was to quit fighting those engagements. Both the central army and the private ones broke down into smaller, more maneuverable, “patrols” scattered across the kingdom. This distributed approach sought to stiffen local civilian resistance and, wherever possible, ambush separated or unwary Mongol bands. The approach proved successful for Goryeo. It helps explain why the most victorious military organization to that point in history found it so hard to decisively crush the tiny Korean state.

With the destruction of the military aristocracy, the inhabitants of Korean settlements came to understand they had to defend themselves—though their king would assist when and where he could. This development underpins the rapid rise and incredible effectiveness of Joseon Era guerrilla armies, which sprang into action following the Japanese invasion of 1592. Simply put, the populace was by then well-armed and conditioned to join the fight, a mindset borne out of necessity during the protracted Mongol assault on their homeland.

Diplomacy and War

Finally, Goryeo’s well-coordinated use of alternating diplomacy and warfare served it well. It provided breathing space when necessary and extended the resistance of an army and people that should have—from the Mongol perspective—quit fighting long before. This appears to have been an approach the invaders either didn’t truly understand or to which they couldn’t adapt. In the end, however, the Mongol solution proved every bit as Machiavellian as the diplomatic-military sword wielded by Goryeo. If the kingdom refused to come out and defend its fields, the Mongols determined there would be no fields, and thus, no food. Over time, this brutal, protracted assault on the citizenry was a war-winning strategy. In the end, Goryeo survived the Mongol tempest. Peace returned to the peninsula and the Pax Mongolia allowed reconstruction of the damage done. 

As well, when the last anti-Mongol forces were snuffed out in 1273, the scholarly class of bureaucrats found they had once and for all established dominion over the military aristocracy. From this point on, for better or worse, Korean kingdoms would be dominated by Confucian scholars.

Goryeo took to its new role in the order of Northeast Asia with gusto, obeying Kublai Khan’s command to facilitate the Mongol invasion of Japan. This led to a pair of attempts in 1274 and 1281, both of which failed in part due to the arrival of typhoons which scattered the first fleet and wrecked much of the second. By 1389, with pirates preying on the kingdom’s coastal communities, Goryeo executed a successful amphibious raid on Tsushima Island, burning several hundred pirate vessels and freeing more than 100 Koreans held captive there.These expeditions were, however, the last gasp of Goryeo’s military power.

The strength of the Korean military aristocracy was broken on the battlefield by the Mongols and at court by Confucian scholars. Those tough-as-nails military families—representing the traditional martial vitality of the Korean people—would be missed in future conflicts. The succeeding Kingdom of Joseon would pay dearly for their political emasculation.

Most importantly, the Kingdom of Goryeo—and the Korean people—survived a 40-year war of resistance against the fearsome Mongols. This was a result that several, much larger and stronger empires had failed to achieve and remains a point of national pride for Koreans today.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

See more stories

subscribe now!

 

Like it or not, war can sometimes be a fashion statement. Among the multivarious uniforms that distinguish one unit from another, senior officers may indulge in the privilege of distinguishing themselves with individual touches—to be identifiable to their own troops, though hopefully not to the enemy. History records Hannibal Barca going to battle dressed as a common soldier, less conspicuous to his Roman enemies but still recognizable to his men. During the Napoléonic wars the namesake French emperor, Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher and British Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, favored the casual route, confident they’d be recognized by the right people when it counted. For every such low profile, however, there were extroverts who, aided by singular flourishes, went the distance to be unmistakable to all.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Military History magazine.

historynet magazines

Our 9 best-selling history titles feature in-depth storytelling and iconic imagery to engage and inform on the people, the wars, and the events that shaped America and the world.

subscribe today

Major General John Pope’s actions with the Army of Virginia resonated far beyond the battlefields of August 1862. Often dismissed as a blustering incompetent who supposedly announced his headquarters would be “in the saddle,” he experienced ignominious defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run and then exile to the backwater of Minnesota. Few army commanders on either side inspired more scorn from contemporaries and subsequent historians. Yet Pope’s record in Virginia deserves serious attention as crucial to the shift from a restrained to a more all-encompassing style of war in the Eastern Theater. This shift, in turn, lessened the likelihood of a brokered peace that would restore the nation to anything resembling the prewar status quo.

Pope entered the Virginia theater at a pivotal moment. Orders creating his Army of Virginia on June 26, 1862, consolidated the commands of Maj. Gens. John C. Frémont, Nathaniel P. Banks, and Irvin McDowell, which had faced Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley. Charged with defending Washington, Pope also was “in the speediest manner [to] attack and overcome the rebel forces under Jackson and [Richard S.] Ewell, and render the most effective aid to relieve General [George B.] McClellan and capture Richmond.” Less than a week after issuance of these orders, McClellan’s unforced retreat following the Seven Days’ Battles changed everything, persuading Abraham Lincoln and the U.S. Congress that the war would continue much longer and require more drastic measures to crush the Confederate military resistance. Pope soon found himself a leading actor amid a tectonic shift in the nation’s war aims and policies.

McClellan’s failure escalated debates about emancipation, the limits of “civilized” warfare, and the relationship between armies and civilians and their property. Such controversial topics had arisen earlier in Missouri, where Frémont had tried to confiscate slaves owned by pro-Confederates, and anti-Union depredations by irregular forces had prompted discussions between Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck and the German-born scholar Francis Lieber. Prompted by his exchanges with Halleck, Lieber later in the war codified the rules of war in a document signed by President Lincoln and issued as General Orders No. 100 in April 1863. Controversy in Missouri, a secondary military arena, was one thing—controversy in Virginia, where the most famous armies campaigned in proximity to the rival capitals, proved more explosive.

Within three weeks of McClellan’s withdrawal from Richmond to Harrison’s Landing on the James River, both Congress and Abraham Lincoln acted regarding emancipation. The Second Confiscation Act of July 17, 1862, freed slaves held by Rebel owners, authorized seizure of property from several categories of individuals, and empowered the president “to employ as many persons of African descent as he may deem necessary and proper for the suppression of this rebellion.” Senator Charles Sumner, a Radical Republican from Massachusetts, observed that “the Bill of Confiscation & Liberation, which was at last passed, under pressure from our reverses at Richmond, is a practical Act of Emancipation.”

Four days earlier, according to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, the president discussed “the subject of emancipating the slaves by Proclamation in case the rebels did not cease to persist in their war on the govt’ and the Union, which he saw no evidence.” Lincoln believed “the reverses before Richmond, and the formidable power and dimensions of the insurrection which extended through all the Slave States…impelled the administration to adopt extraordinary measures to preserve the National existence.” At Cabinet meetings on July 21-22, 1862, Lincoln discussed emancipation and his intention to issue a proclamation.

These policies contrasted starkly with McClellan’s ideas. Shortly after the Battle of Malvern Hill, “Little Mac” offered the president a gratuitous tutorial about how to conduct the war. The United States should adhere to the “highest principles known to Christian Civilization,” insisted McClellan in what came to be called the “Harrison’s Landing letter.” The conflict “should not be, at all, a War upon population; but against armed forces and political organizations. Neither confiscation of property, political executions of persons, territorial organization of states or forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment.”

On August 1, while still ensconced at Harrison’s Landing, McClellan wrote to General-in-Chief Halleck. “I believe that together we can save this unhappy country and bring this war to a comparatively early termination,” he stated, “the doubt in my mind is whether the selfish politicians will allow us to do so. I fear the results of the civil policy inaugurated by recent Acts of Congress and practically enunciated by General Pope in his series of orders to the Army of Virginia.”

New Orders

Pope issued three general orders between July 14 and 23 that drew on his prior experience in Missouri and signaled a sharp departure from McClellan’s conciliatory approach. The first, General Orders No. 5, instructed Union troops to “subsist upon the country in which their operations are carried on” without reimbursement to pro-Confederate owners. Next, General Orders No. 7 held people “throughout the area where the Army of Virginia campaigns” responsible for any damage to railroads, roads, and telegraph lines at the hands of “lawless bands of individuals not forming part of the organized forces of the enemy nor wearing the garb of soldiers.” Anyone connected to “such outrages, either during the act or at any time afterward, shall be shot, without awaiting civil processes.”

Finally, General Orders No. 11 instructed Union officers “immediately to arrest all disloyal male citizens within their lines or within their reach in rear of their respective stations.” Those who refused to take the oath of allegiance would be sent south beyond the pickets of the army and if subsequently found “within our lines or at any point in rear they will be considered spies, and subjected to the extreme rigor of military law.” Anyone who took the oath and later violated it “shall be shot, and his property seized and applied to the public use.”

Pope’s thinking aligned with political leaders seeking harsher treatment of Confederates and their property. Lieutenant Colonel David W. Strother, who served on Pope’s staff, and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase recorded impressions of the general in July. Although not an abolitionist, Pope told Strother “the war had necessarily given the death blow to slavery. Wherever the Union armies move, the old system of master and slave falls.” Describing Pope’s ideas as “clear and strong,” Strother added that his chief believed enslaved people “ought to be taken and used remorselessly whenever needed….They will not make soldiers but as laborers they might be extensively used.” Chase summarized Pope’s thinking about employing Black laborers in almost identical terms, while also observing that the new commander “expressed himself freely and decidedly in favor of the most vigorous measures in the prosecution of the war.”

Divided Opinion

Pope made no effort to disguise his low opinion of McClellan. “[H]e regarded it as necessary for the safety and success of his operations that there should be a change in the command of the Army of the Potomac,” noted Chase, because “Genl. McClellan’s incompetency and indisposition to active movements were so great….” Pope’s widely quoted message to the Army of Virginia on July 14, 1862, can best be read as a critique of McClellan’s type of warfare. “I have come to you from the West,” he began bluntly, “where we have always seen the backs of our enemies; from an army whose business it has been to seek the adversary and to beat him when he was found; whose policy has been attack and not defense.” In a direct slap at McClellan, Pope inveighed against a preoccupation with “‘taking strong positions and holding them,’ of ‘lines of retreat,’ and of ‘bases of supplies.’” Discard such ideas, he counseled, and instead “study the probable lines of retreat of our opponents, and leave our own to take care of themselves. Let us look before us, and not behind. Success and glory are in the advance, disaster and shame lurk in the rear.”

Many people in the loyal states responded favorably to Pope’s orders and attitude. William Swinton, a correspondent for The New York Times, believed Pope’s actions were popular in the loyal states. “[T]here is no doubt,” he wrote shortly after the war, “that the declaration of a more vigorous war-policy quite met the views of the mass of the people.” Representative quotations from newspapers in the summer of 1862 buttress Swinton’s view. In this vein, the Republican Chicago Tribune printed and endorsed the orders on July 22: “We like Gen. Pope and the way he falls to work in the Shenandoah . . . . [H]is orders have the right tone, and are based on the right principles of conducting the war. It has been severe enough upon loyal men; it is now proposed to render it unpleasing to the rebels.” 

Two New York papers took similar stances. The largely Democratic New York Herald claimed the “commonest complaint from our soldiers…has been, that while standing guard over rebel property they have been liable to be shot down by rebel bushwhackers.” The measures Pope learned in fighting guerrillas in Missouri “appear to be working very well among the same customers in Virginia.” The New-York Daily Tribune, a Republican sheet, made the same point with greater emphasis from a special correspondent near Warrenton. “I cannot describe too strongly the intensity of the feeling among the soldiers of this Virginia army,” he wrote, “—how clearly they see, and how strongly they feel that they are fighting in an enemy country. They needed to be convinced that their commanders and the Government also appreciated their situation, and they find in these orders the assurance they have sought.”

Michigan’s Lansing State Republican will have the final word here. Under the heading “New Life in the Army,” its editor cheered: “There is no longer to be that extreme carefulness of the rights, and tenderness at the feelings of rebels, but they are hereafter to be treated as rebels….General Pope intends to make clean work as he goes. This policy will give new life and vigor to the army, and to the people of the loyal States. This looks like putting down the rebellion. Hurrah for General Pope!”

Many Union soldiers echoed such opinions. A New Yorker deployed near Warrenton, Va., who complained that nothing “is more galling to a patriot and Union loving man than to be compelled to guard the property of his enemies,” celebrated Pope’s orders as “a very important step toward ending the war. Until the rebels are made to feel the severity of the war, but little permanent success will be won by our arms.” Lieutenant John Meade Gould of the 10th Maine Infantry praised Pope’s policies as overdue. “It is positively proven that an easy policy is a poor one,” he insisted from near Chester Gap, Va., “the natives laugh at us, jibe us, and when we are gone, pick up our stragglers and sick….WAR is a great and terrible game….Let the terror be with our enemies and not among ourselves.”

Disgust and Anger

McClellan’s loyalists, in contrast, lambasted Pope. They often opposed emancipation and tougher policies regarding Confederate civilians, while also bridling at what they deemed sneering allusions to the Army of the Potomac’s passivity. None vented more fulsomely than Brig. Gen. Marsena R. Patrick, who served as military governor of Fredericksburg in May–June 1862 and later led a brigade in the field. Pope’s orders “demoralized the Army,” the New Yorker noted in his diary on July 18, “& Satan has been let loose” among soldiers who pillaged at will. 

About a month later, Patrick pronounced himself “so utterly disgusted that I feel like resigning & letting the whole thing go—I am afraid of God’s Justice, for our Rulers & Commanders deserve his wrath & curse—” Lieutenant Charles Francis Adams Jr., whose family boasted two presidents and the current U.S. representative to Great Britain, spoke in Washington with members of McClellan’s and Halleck’s staffs and concluded “that Pope is a humbug and known to be so by those who put him in his present place.” “I still believe in McClellan,” affirmed Adams, “but I know that the nearest advisers of the President…distrust his earnestness in this war.”

Criticism emanated from within the Army of Virginia as well. Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams castigated Pope after Second Bull Run: “It can with truth be said of him that he had not a friend in his command from the smallest drummer boy to the highest general officer. All hated him.” Reaching a hyperbolic crescendo, Williams spewed “that more insolence, superciliousness, ignorance, and pretentiousness were never combined in one man.” Lieutenant Robert Gould Shaw of the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry, who like Williams served in Banks’ 2nd Corps, also took a scolding position. “Pope criticizes and abuses McClellan with a will,” he observed on August 3, “showing in a man in his position no better taste than appeared in his proclamation and some of his orders….He looks just what we have always understood he was,—a great blow-hard, with no lack of confidence in his own powers.”

George B. McClellan refused even to wish for Pope to succeed against the Rebels. “I have a strong idea that Pope will be thrashed during the coming week—& very badly whipped he will be & ought to be,” McClellan wrote on August 10 in language that flirted with disloyalty, “—such a villain as he is ought to bring defeat upon any cause that employs him.” Two days earlier, he had denounced Pope and the war’s new direction. “I will issue tomorrow an order giving my comments on Mr. Jno Pope,” he told his wife, “—I will strike square in the teeth of all his infamous orders & give directly the reverse instructions to my army—forbid all pillaging & stealing & take the highest Christian ground for the conduct of the war—let the Govt gainsay it if they dare.”

Confederate reactions underscored the powerful ramifications of Pope’s short tenure with the Army of Virginia. On July 22, the United States and the Confederacy agreed to a cartel stipulating “that all prisoners of war hereafter taken shall be discharged on parole till exchanged.” Nine days later, an indignant Jefferson Davis wrote to Lee regarding the “general order issued by Major General Pope on the 23rd of July.” Because of that directive, the Confederate government recognized “General Pope and his commissioned officers to be in the position…of robbers and murderers, and not that of public enemies entitled if captured to be considered as prisoners of war.” For the present, the Confederacy would forego retaliation against Pope’s enlisted soldiers and treat them as prisoners of war. Should the United States continue its “savage practices,” however, “we shall reluctantly be forced to the last resort of accepting war on the terms chosen by our foes, until the outraged voice of a common humanity forces respect for the recognized rules of war.”

On August 1, Davis instructed Robert E. Lee to seek details from the Union general-in-chief about “alleged murders committed on our citizens by officers of the U.S. Army”—including one in Missouri supposedly ordered by Pope. Lee was instructed to allow Halleck 15 days from receipt of the query to reply; failure to do so would set in motion “retributive or retaliatory measures which we shall adopt to put an end to the merciless atrocities which now characterize the war waged against us.”

The Confederate War Department issued General Orders No. 54 that same day. It quoted part of Pope’s General Orders No. 11 and another authored by Brig. Gen. Adolph von Steinwehr on July 13 to show that the United States had “determined to violate all the rules and usages of war and to convert the hostilities hitherto waged against armed forces into a campaign of robbery and murder against unarmed citizens and peaceful tillers of the soil….” If captured, Pope, von Steinwehr, and their subalterns would not be treated as the recent cartel mandated but held in “close confinement so long as the orders aforesaid shall continue in force and unrepealed by the competent military authorities of the United States….” Should the Federals murder any unarmed Confederate civilians under Pope’s orders, whether with or without trial, an equal number of U.S. officers held in custody would be hanged.

On August 18, Davis sent a message to the Confederate Congress accusing the United States of “Rapine and wanton destruction of private property, war upon noncombatants, murder of captives, bloody threats to avenge the death of an invading soldiery by the slaughter of unarmed citizens, [and] orders of banishment against peaceful farmers.”

That Pope did not enforce his orders on a grand scale made little difference. Perception rather than reality held sway, as is almost always the case, and Confederates reacted with a spasm of anger to the threats inherent in the orders and to specific instances of Federal arrests and confiscation. Meanwhile, the increased movement of enslaved refugees toward Pope’s lines inflamed fears of the consequences of emancipation. Confederates coalesced with an outraged sense of purpose, determined to resist a foe who threatened every aspect of their social and economic structures.

Newspapers across the Confederacy engaged in a carnival of outrage that instigated popular fury directed at Pope. Two examples illustrate this phenomenon. On July 24, the Richmond Daily Dispatch printed Pope’s three orders under the heading “GEN. POPE’S ARMY / VIRGINIA TO BE LAID WASTE.” In early August, this paper expressed a hope “to see this execrable villain and his lieutenant[s] expiate their crimes on the gallows.” In North Carolina, Winston’s Western Sentinel deprecated Pope and his “execrable order which exposes all sexes and ages to the severest cruelties of ruffian Yankee troops.” The editor further observed that “North Carolina has hitherto been exempt from the operations of these brutal military decrees . . . only because the minions of Lincoln in this State have not had the force at command to enforce their execution.”

Robert E. Lee joined countless Confederates who read the texts of Pope’s orders in newspapers. He related that his son Rob was “off with Jackson & I hope will catch Pope & his cousin Louis Marshall. I could forgive the latter for fighting against us, if he had not have joined such a miscreant as Pope.” Lee’s use of the word “miscreant” bears close attention. Its mid-19th century meanings, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, included “Misbelieving, heretical; unbelieving, infidel” and “A vile wretch; a villain, rascal.”

Others selected comparably harsh epithets for Pope and his troops. A Catholic priest with the 14th Louisiana Infantry deplored “Pope’s abolition robbers,” while a British-born soldier stated that “our men heartily hated him for his ruthless cruelty to the inhabitants of the country, and his extraordinary amount of vanity and bombast.” Colonel Josiah Gorgas, the Confederate chief of ordnance, called Pope the “morally worthless” author of “infamous orders holding citizens responsible for the shooting of his men by guerrillas, or rangers.”

Women left ample testimony about the impact of Pope’s orders, much of which alluded to what newspapers decried as the “uncivilized” and “savage” conduct of Union soldiers. For Lucy Buck, living near Front Royal, the reality of General Orders No. 11 exceeded her worst imaginings. “This is what I have all the time been dreading,” she wrote on July 26, “and now it had come in a more hideous shape than I had ever anticipated.” Neighbors agreed: “We met Mr. Hope and Mr. Hainie and the former had been weeping and seemed to be utterly bewildered by the shock. Oh how intensely I did hate the whole race of Yankees.”

A diarist from outside Virginia reflected the national interest in Pope and his orders. Kate Edmondston clipped the texts of General Orders No. 5 and No. 7 from a newspaper and pasted them in her journal. “Gen. Pope has issued an order…monstrous in its cruelty and contrary to the practices of all civilized warfare,” she commented with obvious anger, “but this is not civilized warfare, nor do our enemies show either the genius of Christianity or the spirit of Civilization.”

Anyone interested John Pope’s impact in Virginia must look beyond the battlefield. His inept tactical performance and defeat at Second Bull Run, however embarrassing, shaped Union military fortunes in only a transitory way. Campaigning in Maryland almost immediately seized the spotlight, relegating operations in July and August to a secondary position they hold to this day. The ratcheting up of animosities during those two months proved far more consequential.

Pope’s orders and conduct played a crucial role in this process, evident in the Eastern Theater and on the respective home fronts, which heralded a kind of war that could engulf untold noncombatants. Lincoln’s preliminary and final proclamations of emancipation, the sack of Fredericksburg by Union soldiers during the Fredericksburg campaign, and other episodes left little doubt that George B. McClellan’s sort of war had ended. The stakes had been raised, hatreds stoked, and the stage set for elemental social, cultural, and ideological disruptions.

this article first appeared in civil war times magazine

See more stories

SubscriBE NOW!

 

In 2002, I ventured to Culpeper, Va., to satisfy a particular quest of mine: to explore the route that Brig. Gen. Evander Law’s Alabama Brigade, in Maj. Gen. John Bell Hood’s Division, undertook from Raccoon Ford to Gettysburg in June 1863. Hood’s command was present at the massive cavalry reviews that Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, the Army of Northern Virginia Cavalry Corps’ commander, conducted in the vicinity of Brandy Station on June 5 and 8.

Leaving the crass commercial sprawl of the I-95 corridor and Spotsylvania County, I traveled west on Virginia State Route 3 to the vast open space of Culpeper County. Since first visiting Culpeper in the early 1990s, I could not help but feel the county seat was a somewhat odd place, suffering perhaps from an identity crisis or cultural amnesia. It appeared to be a town lost in time, not knowing how to, or not interested in, capitalizing on heritage tourism. Although Culpeper was not unique, the song remained the same in many historic towns in Virginia and beyond. But Culpeper had been so significant in the war.

The town and surrounding area held a wealth of history that had not been tastefully capitalized on. Perhaps it was lofty idealism on my part, sprinkled with unreasonable economic considerations.

The architecture of Lt. Gen. A.P. Hill’s hometown was impressive and hopefully a future anchor for downtown redevelopment. One could see the potential of investing in history, especially in the wake of Ken Burns’ pop-culture phenomenon, The Civil War.

Just north and east of Culpeper is the battlefield of Brandy Station—known as the largest cavalry battle in the war (though folks heavily interested in the 1864 cavalry battle at Trevilian Station, Va., might argue otherwise). Of course, as many know, Brandy Station has the often-common layers of Civil War history—from Maj. Gen. John Pope’s 1862 Federal occupation to the massive 1863 battles, to the grand encampment of the Army of the Potomac, to nearby Kelly’s Ford, Rappahannock Station, Cedar Mountain, and so on. It is indeed a target-rich environment, as all these sites are within a few miles of each other.

Many modern preservation battles have been fought here as well. In the past 40 years, the county has been on the front-line of the see-saw preservation saga. Because Culpeper is located on the U.S. Route 29 highway—which provides a corridor for quicker ingress and egress, thus accommodating the growing Washington, D.C., regional commuting population movement in that direction—developers have long salivated over exploiting the area. Traditionally, many members of the Culpeper Board of Supervisors have not exactly gone out of their way to care for their historic pearl, as their voting records will attest.

Despite the constant development hurdles, much property has been protected through the yeoman service of long-term Culpeper–Brandy Station advocate Clark “Bud” Hall. The founder of the Brandy Station Foundation has fought much for the battlefield land around Culpeper —from thwarting a proposed Formula 1 racetrack in the mid-1990s to efforts by Southern California land developers looking to exploit and radically change the area.

Until 1987, not a single acre of Brandy Station had been saved. Since then, the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites (APCWS), which became the Civil War Trust (now the American Battlefield Trust), and others have saved 1,872 acres of the Brandy Station battlefield, including Fleetwood Hill, the site of J.E.B. Stuart’s headquarters and the epicenter of the battle. Because the battle was so massive, and substantially a cavalry fight, it covers a lot of ground—more than 10,000 acres.

The Brandy Station preservation issue begs reoccurring questions: How much land needs to be saved? Why should it be saved? How does one quantify preservation? Who benefits from it? Time is dwindling to save this vast historic and natural area from the advancing Washington, D.C., commuter traffic and population. The area is indeed fragile.

On my 2002 trip to Culpeper, many of the historic sites were threatened, and I was concerned I perhaps would never get to see them. Yet my schedule dictated a fast pace, negating extensive exploration—always a big draw when traveling into history in the Old Dominion. My focus this time was on Law’s Yellowhammer Brigade in June 1863 at Brandy Station.

A Massive Mounted Force

Law’s Brigade camped with John Bell Hood’s Division southeast of Culpeper, near Pony Mountain and paralleling the Fredericksburg Pike (modern-day Virginia Route 3), from June 5 through June 15.

A soldier in Hood’s Division wrote of the town: “Once more we stand with shattered walls of Culpeper, and again our line of operations points onward to the Potomac….Shaken by the shock of twenty battles, mutilated by four barbaric invasions, her sanctuaries defiled, devastated by pestilence and famine and the citizens driven from their hearths depending on God alone for food….”

In early June 1863, J.E.B. Stuart had assembled a force of 10,000 troopers around Culpeper. The size of a mounted force that large made me wonder about the forage and logistics of the horse and mule element of Lee’s army; it was a part of military strategy of which I often feel ignorant.

Peter Wellington Alexander, the popular partisan reporter from The Savannah Republican newspaper, would write about forage and logistics of equestrian sustenance while at Culpeper: 

“The number of horses [and mules] in this army, including the cavalry, artillery, quartermaster’s department, and field and staff, is not far from 35,000….To supply these horses with the usual rations of corn and hay, would require 7,500 bushels or 420,000 pounds of the former and 490,000 pounds of the latter, per day. The labor and expense of supplying so large a quantity of forage are necessarily very heavy.

“Fortunately for us, as well as for the horses, neither army has occupied this part of the State since last fall, and consequently the supply of grass, clover and timothy is abundant, otherwise it would be impossible to subsist so many animals with our limited wagon and railroad transportation, and at a time of so much scarcity as the present. You will be surprised to hear, therefore, that the horses receive no hay at all, and very seldom and fodder, and only one third the usual ration of corn. And yet I have never seen them in better condition.

“It is reported that the grazing in the counties between the Rappahannock and the Upper Potomac is equally as good as it is in this vicinity. Many of the farms have been abandoned, and much of the fencing destroyed, but it is believed that the supply of grass, though not as abundant as in times of peace, is ample for our wants, should the army advance. The farmers are allowed ten cents per day for the grazing of each horse, which would make the total cost of grazing 35,000 horses, $3,500 per day.”

That account underlines the logic of necessity for Lee to move his army to another region to survive. I have often overshadowed the Confederate desire for supplies as a major reason for their movement north in 1863; however, the mathematical logic illustrated by Alexander’s account partially illuminates the hard realities of supply and logistics.

On June 5, and three days later, Stuart conducted massive cavalry reviews near Culpeper. Hood’s Division attended both events; General Robert E. Lee attended the latter.

A Southern soldier-reporter in Hood’s Division said of the June 5 equestrian spectacle: “It was an imposing sight. One hundred and forty-four companies passed in review in the most splendid order. I counted twenty-six stands of colors, exclusive of those belonging to Stuart’s horse-artillery. After the review there was a sham fight, in which the artillery fired over one hundred and sixty rounds, and the cavalry made several brilliant charges. The horses were generally good, and everything indicated a good degree of discipline. Many ladies, blooming in health and beauty, were present. Gen. Hood marched his whole division out to witness the review.”

Such accounts always spur my imagination and whet my appetite to travel back in time. It is hard to fathom what 10,000 cavalrymen would look like thundering ahead. To what can we truly compare the sound of 40,000 charging hooves?

“On the 8th of June General Lee ordered a review of the whole of General Stuart’s Corps,” recalled Robert T. Cole, the 4th Alabama’s adjutant. “The 4th…was present and witnessed the grandest and most spectacular display of the largest body of cavalry they had ever seen massed on one field. General Stuart was in all his glory. Mr. Davis, his cabinet, and a large number of ladies from Richmond and the surrounding country were among the spectators.”

Wrote one of Hood’s infantrymen: “Yesterday we had a great review. Thousands of cavalry and infantry were upon the ground. The infantry rested on their arms and the cavalry pranced and maneuvered over the field to the delight of about 500 young and thoughtless beauties. The cavalry looked fine with the Prince of showy men at their head, dressed with gold and yellow trappings glistening on the plain grey surface like fire-flies on a darkening night. They were essentially a collection of pretty men, dressed in their best, while the poor, tattered, worn and tired infantry received not one smile from the light-hearted beauties who were out on that day….The cavalry parade was a beautiful sight, but I have no patience for such tomfooleries.”

I could relate somewhat to that soldier’s words; in my reenacting days, the grimy, hardcore, authentic types rarely got the attention of the fairer sex—but the cavalry did, especially if they wore “glittery” things.

“A Sham Battle”

Alexander, usually writing under the acronym “PWA”, was a notorious Stuart critic. On June 8 he penned an article that would appear in the June 15 Savannah Republican, declaring: “Gen. Stuart has assembled a heavy cavalry force here….Some of the ladies adorned him and his horse with flowers, and in this condition he presented himself to General Lee, who, it is reported, having surveyed him from head to foot, quietly remarked: ‘Do you know General, that Burnside left Washington in like trim for the first battle of Manassas. I hope your fate may not be like his.’ Unfortunately, Stuart was too much occupied with his flowers to take the hint.”

That evening, observed Cole, “General Stuart entertained his visitors with a sham battle. To several members of the 4th Alabama there was only one thing to mar the occasion—the absence of the dashing Alabama artillerist of Stuart’s Horse Artillery, John Pelham, who was killed leading a cavalry charge [at Kelly’s Ford] only a few miles from where we then were, on the 17th of March 1863.”

Continued Cole: “That night the little village of Culpeper was filled to overflowing with beautiful women and brave men, where a dance…inaugurated by the cavalry continued until long after we infantry had retired…”

Early the next morning, true fighting broke out at Brandy Station, although Hood’s Division was held back in a concealed support position near Pony Mountain. Although the Federal horsemen were repelled after a hard-fought clash, Lee’s troop concentration at Culpeper had been revealed. Wrote Alexander: “Lee’s flank movement, like a coal of fire on the terrapin’s back, has had the effect to put [Hooker’s Army of the Potomac] in motion….”

The Gettysburg Campaign had begun.

Visiting Culpeper last October, I was struck by the new sense of community building with a historic bent. As I drove by the nearby fields of Brandy Station, it felt good to know much is now protected and that a new state park incorporating neighboring Brandy Station and Cedar Mountain is being developed. It’s the kind of development I love to see. I thought of Bud Hall, whose incredible efforts over the years have helped bring this park to fruition. Without him, so much would have been lost, denying me and others the opportunity to easily imagine the historic events that had transpired there, such as those glamorous Confederate cavalry reviews of June 5 and 8. 

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

See more stories

SubscriBE NOW!

 

On February 7, 1825, Samuel Morse’s wife, Lucretia, died suddenly, at the age of 25, while Morse was working in Washington, D.C. By the time he was notified by letter and had returned home to New Haven, Conn., she had already been buried.

Perhaps motivated by his regret, in the early 1830s, Morse began perfecting his version of an electric telegraph and, with the help of researchers Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail, produced a single-circuit version. By pushing a key, the operator sent an electric signal across a wire to a receiver at the other end. Soon thereafter, Morse and Vail developed the code that would translate the pulses and silences to language.

On May 24, 1844, Morse sent his first telegraph message, from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Md.: “What hath God wrought!”

Indeed. Its invention forever changed communication, and with it, transformed everything. A message, a military order, a money transfer, a piece of news, that once took weeks to deliver by horse and carriage, could now be exchanged almost instantly.

On April 11, 1846, the patent shown here specified a combination of devices to move and mark a paper roll to record the incoming message; and, more importantly, the use of a magnet in the telegraph receiver to amplify the current, enabling the telegraph to receive messages over longer lines—a long-distance call.

By 1866, the first permanent telegraph cable had been successfully laid across the Atlantic Ocean.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of American History magazine.

historynet magazines

Our 9 best-selling history titles feature in-depth storytelling and iconic imagery to engage and inform on the people, the wars, and the events that shaped America and the world.

subscribe today

When World War I settled into static trench warfare, even the most advanced armored cars were effectively immobilized by the Western Front’s combination of muddy terrain, trenches, barbed wire, heavy machine guns and artillery.

To meet such challenges, in February 1915 British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill formed a Landship Committee tasked with designing an armored vehicle capable of mastering mud, bridging an 8-foot gap, climbing a 5-foot earthwork and other specifications outlined by British army Lt. Col. Ernest Swinton. Under the guidance of mechanical engineer Major Walter Wilson of the Royal Naval Air Service and agricultural engineer Sir William Tritton, the committee purchased twin “creeping grip” track assemblies from the Bullock Tractor Co. of Chicago, Ill., and fitted them beneath a boxlike crew compartment of riveted steel plates. Powering the vehicle was a Daimler-Knight 6-cylinder, 105 hp tractor engine provided by Tritton’s Foster & Co., of Lincoln, England. On discovering the Bullock tracks were too small to accommodate the vehicle’s weight, Tritton designed longer, wider tracks. He also added twin rear wheels to facilitate steering. A proposed round turret packing a 2-pounder Vickers gun was never installed.

Officially known as the No.1 Lincoln Machine or Tritton Machine, the prototype landship was nicknamed “Little Willie” (a derisive name then applied to Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia). When not undergoing testing, it was kept under the strictest wraps, a backstory claiming it was a new mobile “water tank.” The abbreviated tank reference became universal for Little Willie’s descendants.

Little Willie was found to be top-heavy, but by that time a better design was in development, with a rhomboid-shaped track running above and below the superstructure and 6-pounder guns in sponsons on either side. Nicknamed “Mother,” the improved variant was further refined into the Mark I tank, which first saw combat at the Somme on Sept. 15, 1916. Today the tank’s forebear, Little Willie, is in the collection of the Tank Museum in Bovington, England.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Military History magazine.

historynet magazines

Our 9 best-selling history titles feature in-depth storytelling and iconic imagery to engage and inform on the people, the wars, and the events that shaped America and the world.

subscribe today