Happy Birthday, Mr. President

Today I'd like to go on a bit in honor of Mr. Lincoln's birthday.  It is 206 years since he was born, and he left a mark on this land that people still note. He certainly was one of the strongest willed individuals to be inaugurated, and it was this strength that we, the American nation can be thankful for. Without his strength things would have been greatly different. 

Let's play what if here. Suppose he hadn't won the election. Suppose Stephen Douglas had. The war would not have taken place because the Southern states would not have seceded, at least not at that time. Slavery would have continued, but a certain section of the country would have been up in arms about that. The New England states were the center of abolitionist feeling at that time. Maybe they would have chosen to secede instead of the Deep South. Perhaps they could have persuaded some Middle Atlantic states to join them. Imagine Robert E. Lee leading the Federal army north to a decisive battle, perhaps at a small county seat in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg.

Suppose the South seceded with a weaker willed president after the 1860s. This president, perhaps fed up with the whining that passed for southern demands, lets them go without a fight. Now the southerners have what they want-a nation of their own where slavery is constitutionally protected. In my opinion, their economy would have collapsed. Other nations which had fought slavery would have shunned them. The British were developing their own cotton sources and would not have needed King Cotton from the South. Perhaps an exodus from the Confederacy to the United States would have occurred. How the United States would have faced this is unknown, but I'm betting they wouldn't have been happy about it.

Suppose Lincoln hadn't gone to the theater that fateful night. How would things have been different? Reconstruction certainly would have been different. He would have been stricter than Andrew Johnson and more lenient than the Radical Republicans. Things might have gone more smoothly. Of course, they might have gone to Hell in a handbasket, too. That's the fun thing about what if. Ya never know.

Another thing I have learned over the years is that Lincoln's politics concerning the working man might have been a bit different than everyone assumes. Harry Turtledove, in his mammoth eleven volume alternate history of the United States between 1862 and 1945, presents Lincoln as a Socialist, and claims that if you read Lincoln's writings you will see his socialist leanings. Why, you may ask, didn't he do anything that looks socialist during his presidency? Well, during virtually his entire presidency he was fighting a war. At its end he was killed. We will never know what a peacetime Lincoln presidency would have been like.

That's about it right now. All I can say is Happy Birthday Abe. We needed you, and Thank God we had you.

General George Meade

Today I'd like to introduce you to the Union general whom I admire most, George Gordon Meade. General Meade was the last in a long line of commanders of the Army of the Potomac-last because he stayed in command of the army from June 28, 1863 until the end of the war. He was misunderstood and under appreciated by many during his command, but his reputation has been lifted up in recent years.

Meade was born in Cadiz, Spain on December 31, 1815. His family was there because his father was serving as a naval agent for the United States at the time. Though a wealthy merchant, his father was ruined financially while in Spain, and spent the rest of his life trying to get restitution from the government of Spain. It was his support of Spain during the Napoleonic Wars that had done him in financially. The rest of the Meades (he had ten siblings) returned to the United States where George eventually enrolled in West Point due to the fact that it was tuition free. This was not an unusual occurrence at that time. If an appointment could be arranged, a good schooling in engineering with at least a minor in the military arts could be obtained.

Meade graduated in 1835 and spent a year with the artillery before resigning his commission to work as a civil engineer. Upon his marriage in 1840 on his birthday (no problems remembering his anniversary!) he reenlisted in the Army with the rank of second lieutenant in the Topographical Engineers. He fought in the Mexican War and was recognized as a brave soldier, and then went on to a new phase in his career. He designed lighthouses. Some of his best were Absecon Light in Atlantic City, Cape May Light in Cape May, and Barnegat Light on Long Beach Island. 

When the Civil War started he was surveying the Great Lakes and had just finished his report. He was jumped from Captain to Brigadier General in August and given command of a brigade in the Army of the Potomac. He led this during the Peninsula Campaign in early 1862 when he was wounded in the Battle of Glendale. He returned to duty in time for Second Manassas and the fought at South Mountain and Antietam, where he assumed command of Fist Corps upon the wounding of General Hooker. His division was the one bright light for the Union at the Battle of Fredericksburg, and he was given command of Fifth Corps afterward. He led the corps at Chancellorsville and urged General Hooker not to retreat, but was ordered to fall back with his corps across the Rapidan and Rappahannock Rivers.

After this came the Gettysburg Campaign. Meade still led the fifth Corps and Hooker was in command of the Army of the Potomac. Hooker sparred with, not the Confederates, but the President and General in Chief in Washington, who were trying to get him to fight more quickly. Finally, Hooker resigned, and President Lincoln almost fell over himself in his eagerness to accept. He had tried to get other generals interested in taking command earlier, but all had declined since they were leery of the President's fondness for interfering. This time, he ordered General Meade to take command, without giving him any leeway to refuse. Meade thought he was being arrested when the President's messenger awoke him in the wee hours of June 28, 1863, and, when he realized the enormity of his task, probably wished he had been arrested.

I ask you now to put yourself in Meade's shoes. He was being given command of an army which was widely dispersed, jumped over at least two generals who outranked him,  facing an enemy whose whereabouts were only vaguely known, and having to use the ousted commander's staff due to the lack of time to break in a new one. He was also faced with the wrath of a President who was not shy about firing generals if he lost the battle that was sure to come in the next few days. The task was not impossible, but it looked that way to many. Meade no doubt asked God, "Why me, Lord?" and got to work.

The rest, as they say, is history, and I shall cover it better in a later post about the Battle of Gettysburg. On July 1, 2, and 3, 1863, the Army of the Potomac forced General Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia into uncharacteristic mistakes and defeated them. The stage was set for all the praise in the world to be showered upon George Meade-except it didn't happen that way.

You see, the Confederates got away. Meade was quite cautious by nature, and he followed Lee's army at a distance, hoping to find an opening to attack. Lee seemed trapped at the Potomac River, but he had constructed earthworks of such strength that none of Meade's corps commanders wanted to have a go at them. Lincoln couldn't quite understand the difference between courage and foolhardiness, and was very upset with Meade. He even wrote him an unsent letter telling him so. Finally Meade had about had it with Lincoln and General in Chief Henry Halleck. He told them they should just get rid of him if that was how they felt. Recognizing that this would be a public relations disaster (firing losing generals was one thing; firing a successful one was something else.), they backed off and made Meade a permanent brigadier general in the Regular Army.

The next significant thing for Meade didn't happen to him, but it did affect him and his career. Ulysses Grant was appointed General in Chief of all the Union armies and made his headquarters not in Washington, but with Meade's army. Meade offered to resign and serve elsewhere, which impressed Grant greatly, but Grant said that he wanted Meade to remain in command of the Army of the Potomac, and so Meade did, until the end of the War.

Why was Meade so disrespected? Well, one of his corps commanders at Gettysburg, General Dan Sickles, blundered and put the Union army in a precarious position. He was seriously wounded and made it back to Washington before anyone else. He was full of tales about Meade's "blunders" and how he (Sickles) had saved the day. As he was a former congressman, he had many friends in the government, and he was listened to. That was one blow to Meade's reputation. Another one was the fact that he got the reporters connected to the Army of the Potomac angry with him. They conspired never to mention his name in connection with any victories, but to feature his name in connection with defeats. These added up to people downplaying his role in the victory that reunited the country. 

Meade died on November 6, 1872 of pneumonia and complications from his war wounds. He died from war causes as much as a soldier who was shot in the head and died instantly; it just took him longer to go. He didn't get the praise he deserved while alive, but I shall leave you with this thought. On my first trip to Gettysburg I hired a Battlefield Guide. When we got to the statue of General Meade on Old Baldy, his horse, located on Cemetery Ridge, he pointed to it and said, :There's the man who saved the country."

Interesting tidbits:

I recently bought a calendar of Atlantic Coast lighthouses because it featured a picture of the Barnegat Light, built by George Meade. It was for October, my birth month, making it doubly special. Yes, I'm weird.

There was some speculation that Lincoln chose Meade to command the Army of the Potomac because he had been born in Spain, making him ineligible to be president. Lincoln was always aware that a successful or popular general might just try to run against him in an election.

Meade never really intended to be a soldier. He needed a free education. He reenlisted only because he had a wife and few job prospects. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.