Best wishes for storm victims

          We all have our ups and downs. Sometimes it is fun to complain about day-to-day life and once in a while a witty comment is fun to write.

          There will be no complaints today, no attempts at humor. Instead, our best wishes to all Americans hit by heavy storms in the last few days.

          You are in our thoughts and prayers.

 

The military career of Reuben E. Davis

          His name was Reuben E. Davis and he was a Confederate soldier. His story is an interesting one which throws sand into the gears of the machinery that generates the idea that the Civil War was a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight among Confederates.

          Davis was born in Georgia, not too far from the Alabama line. He enlisted in Montgomery, Alabama in July of 1862 and became a soldier in the First Battalion of Hilliard’s Legion. The First Battalion was an infantry unit.

          Reuben Davis was a successful farmer. The records show his property was valued at $2,500 and his personal property was worth better than $600. That was a lot of money in pre-war America. Cards on the table, I do not know how many slaves Davis owned, if he owned any at all.

          Davis was 44 when he enlisted. He was married and had a large family. It appears that one of his sons also served in the Confederate Army.

          Why Davis elected to serve in an Alabama unit is not known. The Legion had a few Georgians on the rolls, so he was not alone in that regard. There is one note that your loyal blogger has seen that indicates Davis was a substitute for another soldier and that could have played a role in Davis not serving in an outfit from his home state.

          The Legion did not see battlefield action until it played a pivotal part in winning the battle of Chickamauga. Serving in a brigade commanded by General Archibald Gracie, Davis’ First Battalion was the first group of Gracie’s men to plant its regimental flag in the informal Union breastworks near the edge of the top of Horseshoe Ridge in the final hours of the fighting. The First suffered severe losses going up that hill and Davis was among those injured. He was wounded in the hand.

          After Chickamauga, the Legion was split into three new units, the 23^rd Battalion Alabama Sharpshooters, the 59^th Alabama Infantry Regiment and the 60^th Alabama Infantry Regiment. The three served together through the end of the war, surrendering at Appomattox with the remainder of the Army of Northern Virginia.

          Davis recovered from his Chickamauga wound and spent the remainder of the war in the 60^th Regiment, displaying tremendous resilience. He returned to his comrades in time to fight at Knoxville, and then was wounded again at Bean’s Station. He was present at Drewry’s Bluff but was wounded in the leg during the siege of Petersburg.

          Davis is listed as a prisoner of war briefly in April of 1865 and was taken to a hospital in Fort Monroe, Virginia in May of that year. He took the oath of allegiance and was discharged from the hospital July 16, 1865, three years and seven days after enlisting in the Confederate Army.

          But Davis had used up his strength. He got home to Heard County, Georgia and then died of a fever on August 19, 1865. While your loyal blogger has seen no written evidence of it, the supposition here is Davis probably died of an infection stemming from his leg wound suffered in the trenches at Petersburg.

          Let’s face it, Davis fought for a cause we find unacceptable today. But he gave it his all and, in the end, that was all he had.

          Thanks for reading.

What's in a nickname? Lots!

          Nicknames are an important part of life’s experience. We should give incidents and locations nicknames and, when possible to do so without hurting the feelings of the intended individual, we should give each other nicknames.

          For example, I call my podiatrist my Doc of the Walk.

          Mrs. Leeway (yep, that’s a nickname) doesn’t think Doc of the Walk is a fitting nickname. She feels it does not rhyme properly.

          Since I feel it is important to reemphasize my opinion on all matters upon which we disagree, I was moved to make up the following song (with apologies to Larry Collins and Alex Harvey, who wrote the country song, Delta Dawn):

 

Sore footed Dawn, what’s that weird boot you have on?

Did you see a walk Doc for your right foot pain?

And did I hear you say that you had X-Rays today?

To see why you have suddenly gone lame?

 

          Not too good, I agree, but I was making it up as I sang along to the benefit of my spouse and you get extra points under those conditions.

          But the topic here is nicknames.

          When I was calling basketball games for California Lutheran University, the men’s basketball team had an outstanding shooter whom I nicknamed The Master of Disaster because he was so good at scoring when games were close and time was running out. As a newspaperman, I once covered an Imperial Valley College star named Jessie Jackson and I shortened his name to Jax for headline use. I once nicknamed a co-worker at a radio station The Fox with the Golden Locks and another co-worker shortened that to Goldie Locks and the shortened version (even I had to admit the other guy’s version was better) stuck.

          The late broadcaster Chick Hearn was brilliant with nicknames. He used to call Hall of Fame guard Jerry West Mr. Clutch or Zeke from Cabin Creek and Hearn called a backup guard named Flynn Robinson, Instant Points, because Robinson started scoring as soon as he got in a game. Who would remember Robinson without the nickname?

          They called President Calvin Coolidge Silent Cal and other chief executives have been known by their initials, such as JFK and LBJ. President Eisenhower was Ike.

          Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, who never actually existed, was The Fonz. Lieutenant Pete Mitchell, USN, was Maverick and his buddy, Lieutenant junior grade Nick Bradshaw, was Goose.

Anthony Joseph Foyt Jr., who is very much a real guy, is A.J. and Richard Petty is The King. Elzie Wylie Baker was Buck and his son, Elzie Wylie Baker Jr. is Buddy.

Even history uses nicknames. One day in 1881, a group of law enforcement officers walked down the street to disarm a bunch of cattle thieves. Things did not go well and the resultant violence went down in history as the Gunfight at OK Corral.

          So nicknames are all around you. Use them in good humor.

 

          Thanks for reading.

Losing by way of victory

                Life is uncertain. We can sit around and postulate, prognosticate and speculate all we want but life has a way of making fools of us.

          Ask the 1968 Baltimore Colts. They awoke on January 12, 1969 assuming they were about to win the Super Bowl and crown themselves world champions of professional football. Instead, the Colts played as though they had already been crowned and lost to the New York Jets, 16-7.

          The philosophic preparation above could only lead us to one place: The American Civil War battle of Chancellorsville, which ended on May 6, 1863.

          Confederate General Thomas Jackson, aka Stonewall Jackson, made a sweeping attack on the Union’s right flank late in the afternoon of May 2 and routed US General Joseph Hooker’s right. Jackson’s charge was a dramatic change in fortune, for both sides.

That successful flank attack might have spelled the beginning of the end for the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.    That evening, Jackson was mortally wounded by friendly fire as he scouted the possibility of pressing the attack into the night to keep the Union army on the run. Jackson’s command eventually devolved to J.E.B. Stuart, the cavalry commander, and Stuart did an excellent job the next day of continuing Jackson’s attack.

          That next day, May 3, 1863, Hooker, the commander of the Army of the Potomac, suffered a head injury when Confederate artillery fire smashed into a support column on the front porch of the house where Hooker stood. A chunk of wood exploded from the shattered column and hit Hooker in his head. Hooker probably suffered a concussion, based upon his behavior in the following hours. But Hooker did not pass command on to a subordinate and his army was without a functioning commander for the remaining hours that day.

          You could argue that the chunk of wood that stuck Hooker cost the Union the battle of Chancellorsville. Hooker, who did not want command of the Army of the Potomac in the first place, soon lost it. George Meade took over.

          Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia won at Chancellorsville by taking chances and then taking advantage of Jackson’s successful flank attack. But it also lost Jackson, a supremely talented leader. Stuart returned to his cavalry command after Chancellorsville and Lee was left with a choice between lesser commanders to replace Jackson.

           By now you readers are asking, “What’s the point?”

          Well, see, it’s like this: The fighting at Chancellorsville led to the fighting two months later at Gettysburg. Hooker was gone from the Army of the Potomac and Meade was steadfast in Hooker’s place at Gettysburg.

          We’ll never know how Hooker might have handled the struggle at Gettysburg. We’ll never even know how Hooker might have commanded the final days at Chancellorsville had he not been knocked out by a flying chunk of wood. But we do know what Meade did in Hooker’s place and what Meade did was win the war’s most famous fight.

          Lee’s decision, after consultation with Confederate President Jefferson Davis, to attack through Maryland and into Pennsylvania in June of 1863 was made in part due to his success at Chancellorsville. But things were different by then. Lee was probably overconfident at Gettysburg.

          Lee was now attacking Meade instead of Hooker and the Confederates were without Jackson.

          The victory at Chancellorsville might have cost the Confeds the war.

 

          Thanks for reading.

Racing is life because...

          Racing can teach you all you need to know about life. What you have to do is find the philosophy.

          A few modest examples follow:

          Life is like the Daytona 500: Sometimes you’re leading the pack. Sometimes you’re the last in line. Either way, the measure of your character is how you deal with time in the pits. And regardless of where you are on the scoring pylon, you’re still just running in circles.

          Life is like the tires Goodyear manufactures for Top Fuel and Funny Car drag racers: You start out short and chubby. Then you get going and you stand up tall and thin. After a while, you become square and stout. At the end, you’re short and fat again.

          Teaching school is like officiating a stock car race: Someone has to be the boss, everyone else has to follow the rules and someone is always complaining. Sooner or later, someone’s name goes up on the board.

          Government life is like a racing sanctioning body: Everyone is broke. Everybody complains. Every complainant has a simple answer, usually an answer that directly benefits themselves. And they all want you to bust the other guy, whom they KNOW is cheating.

 

          Thanks for racing…uh…reading.

Granting you some trivia

          Remember the old joke, the one where you ask who is buried in Grant’s tomb?

          Don’t worry about trick questions here. The answer is simple: Grant.

          But you can win a lot of bets by asking who Grant’s pallbearers were.

          The answer in a moment, but first a dose of context.

          The American Civil War did not end when Ulysses Simpson Grant, the head of all United States forces in the final months of the war, forced Robert E. Lee to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia in April of 1865. Other Confederate forces were still in the field elsewhere and it took a while longer for those Confederate armies to give up.

          But when Grant dictated the terms of surrender to Lee at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, Grant also dictated to his government what the terms of surrender should be.

          Confederate soldiers who swore an oath of allegiance to the United States were paroled and those who had horses with them at the time of surrender were allowed to take their horses home in order to help with the spring planting.

          The terms Grant gave Lee’s men were in line with the thinking of Abraham Lincoln but not in line with many members of Congress nor with Andrew Johnson, the man who succeeded Lincoln as president after Lincoln was assassinated. Still, Grant’s prestige was enough to make the terms stand up.

          Grant understood that our nation needed to begin heeling at war’s end. The iron stamp of revenge, if stomped on the states that stood in rebellion, would do more harm than good, Grant indicated.

          Grant was right.

          When Grant died a little more than 20 years after Lee’s surrender, Grant’s funeral was one of the biggest events in Washington D.C. history. According to a reprint of a story which appeared in the New York Times on July 30, 1885 that this blogger found online this week, Grant’s widow asked President Cleveland to appoint the pallbearers for her husband’s funeral.

          Predictably, the list included former U.S. generals William T. Sherman and Philip Sheridan, two U.S. Navy admirals and some civilians.

          Less predictably, the list of Grant’s pallbearers also included former Confederate generals Simon B. Buckner and Joseph Johnston.

          Go figure.

          Thanks for reading.

The fighting map maker

          During the American Civil War, the newspapers covering the Army of the Potomac did not call its commander ‘Mapping Joe’ Hooker. He was ‘Fighting’ Joe Hooker.

Hooker’s successor as head of the army was not nicknamed ‘The Mapmaker.’ No, George Gordon Meade was nicknamed ‘The Snapping Turtle.’

Under both Hooker and Meade, the Army of the Potomac had a cartographer. That same map making expert had done important work before the war. During the war this man was a somewhat unsung hero but he rendered great service in important moments of key battles and now has one of the most iconic statues in the United States honoring his best-known contribution to the army.

The hero is General Gouverneur K. Warren. His pre-war work gave the federal 

The front view of Warren's
statue at Gettysburg.

government a better understanding of the part of the North American continent that was west of Philadelphia. The theory at the time was probably something like this: If we’re going to govern something, we’d best send Gouverneur out there to tell us what we govern.

Once the Civil War started, the Army needed detailed maps of the areas where it might travel and fight the Confederates and that’s where Warren came in handy. By 1863, Warren was serving with the Army of the Potomac as chief cartographer and chief engineer. He was good enough at his jobs that he served through part of the round-robin series of army commanders that the AoP went through in the first two years of the war.

Fighting Joe Hooker, who gifted himself with his own sobriquet, headed the AoP during the battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. Hooker used Warren’s eyes and ears on some occasions and as a messenger at other times. When a general officer showed up with a message from the commanding general, that message got instant attention. Hooker struggled at times to get maximum effort from some of his subordinates at Chancellorsville and he used Warren to help get things moving.

The Confeds won at Chancellorsville, but it certainly wasn’t because of any failing on Warren’s part. There is a school of thinking that doesn’t even blame Hooker.

Eventually Meade replaced Hooker and three days later the AoP found itself smack in the midst of the battle of Gettysburg. It was during the three-day death struggle against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia that Warren earned himself the wonderful statue which stands for the ages on a hill named Little Round Top.

On the second day at Gettysburg Meade, as Hooker had done, sent Warren to observe the condition of the Federal lines, particularly atop Culp’s Hill and Little Round Top. Warren famously stood on a tall rock at Little Round Top and determined that Lee’s army was attacking in that direction. Rather than report to Meade, Warren acted quickly on his own, found four regiments that didn’t seem to be too busy and got them up on Little Round Top a few minutes before the Confeds arrived.

It says here that Warren saved the battle of Gettysburg for the Federals.

Warren later earned promotions but lost his job as commander of V Corps in the

final days of the war when General Phillip Sheridan, Warren’s boss, decided Warren lacked the needed aggressiveness for Corps command. A court inquiry heard Warren’s case in 1879 and finally published its findings nine years later. The court absolved Warren of Sheridan’s charges, but Warren had been dead for six years by that time.

Even armies that win wars can only have a limited number of heroes. During the American Civil War, the United States Army had plenty. One of them is The Great Map Maker, Gouverneur K. Warren.

 

Thanks for reading.