On June 30, 1917 President Wilson signed an executive order seizing German boats in American territory. This was de jure seizure, de facto seizure of the vessels occurring immediately after the Declaration of War in April. I am surprised by the number of them, considering that the War had been raging since 1914 and the Allies controlled the seas.
Whereas the following joint resolution adopted by Congress was approved by the President May 12, 1917:
Joint Resolution Authorizing the President to take over for the United States the possession and title of any vessel within its jurisdiction, which at the time of coming therein was owned in whole or in part by any corporation, citizen, or subject of any nation with which the United States may be at war, or was under register of any such nation, and for other purposes.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President be, and he is hereby, authorized to take over to the United States the immediate possession and title of any vessel within the jurisdiction thereof, including the Canal Zone and all territories and insular possessions of the United States except the American Virgin Islands, which at the time of coming into such jurisdiction was owned in whole or in part by any corporation, citizen, or subject of any nation with which the United States may be at war when such vessel shall be taken, or was flying the flag of or was under register of any such nation or any political subdivision or municipality thereof; and, through the United States Shipping Board, or any department or agency of the Government, to operate, lease, charter, and equip such vessel in any service of the United States, or in any commerce, foreign or otherwise.
Sec. 2. That the Secretary of the Navy be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to appoint, subject to the approval of the President, a board of survey, whose duty it shall be to ascertain the actual value of the vessel, its equipment, appurtenances, and all property contained therein, at the time of its taking, and to make a written report of their findings to the Secretary of the Navy, who shall preserve such report with the records of his department. These findings shall be considered as competent evidence in all proceedings on any claim for compensation.
And whereas the following vessels were, at the time of coming into the jurisdiction of the United States, owned in whole or in part by a corporation, citizen, or subject of the Empire of Germany, a nation with which the United States is now at war, or were flying the flag of or under the register of the Empire of Germany, or of a political subdivision or municipality thereof:(more…)
The improbably named Button Gwinnett was the second of the Founding Fathers to depart this vale of tears. John Morton of Pennsylvania died of tuberculosis on April 1, 1777.
Born in 1735 in England, in 1762 Gwinnet and his wife departed England for Charleston, South Carolina. A merchant, in 1765 he left that trade and purchased a plantation in Georgia, the youngest of the 13 colonies. In 1769 he was elected to the provincial legislature. Sent as a delegate from Georgia to the Second Continental Congress, he signed the Declaration of Independence.
Back in Georgia he was elected Speaker of the Georgia Assembly. After the death of the President (Governor) of Georgia he was elevated to that position. He did not have long to enjoy it, receiving a mortal wound in a duel with arch political foe Lachlan McIntosh following a dispute arising out of a failed invasion of East Florida and dying on May 19, 1777.
Gwinnett has the distinction of leaving behind some of the most valuable autographs in the world, only some 51 examples of his signature having come to light.
A bit over a century ago the Treaty of Versailles was signed. It turned out to be a twenty year truce prior to the onset of World War II, but none of the signatories of course knew that at the time. At 198 pages it is a bloated document, never a good sign. It rambles along for 440 articles. Go here to glance at it. Perhaps the man who understood the implications of the Treaty of Versailles best was Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies, in 1918 in France and Italy, who thought it was too lenient on Germany. As the treaty was being signed, he remarked: “This is not peace. This is an armistice for twenty years.” Foch died in 1929 at age 77, a decade before he would have learned how much of a prophet he was.
I have heard men say that if they ever killed a Yankee during the war
they were not aware of it. I am satisfied that on this memorable day,
every man in our regiment killed from one score to four score, yea,
five score men. I mean from twenty to one hundred each. All that was
necessary was to load and shoot. In fact, I will ever think that the
reason they did not capture our works was the impossibility of their
living men passing over the bodies of their dead. The ground was piled
up with one solid mass of dead and wounded Yankees. I learned afterwards
from the burying squad that in some places they were piled up like cord
wood, twelve deep.
Private Sam Watkins, Company H, First Tennessee Infantry
Throughout his maneuvers to slow Sherman’s drive on Atlanta, General Joseph Johnston often occupied strong positions that he hoped Sherman would assault. At Kennesaw Mountain on June 27, 1864 he got his wish.
Following the battle of Pickett’s Mill on May 27,1864, go here to read about it, the Union and Confederate armies would spend June with Sherman attempting to find some way to outflank or make his way through the defensive lines constructed by Johnston to defend Marietta, Georgia, and his rail supply line.
Sherman having successfully turned his initial line, Johnston fell back on a previously prepared fortified line astride Kennesaw Mountain, an immensely strong position, on June 18-19. Sherman’s attempt to turn the left of Johnston’s position came to a halt at the Battle of Kolb’s Farm on June 22. Here Hood, in a foreshadowing of dark days to come for the Confederate Army of Tennessee, had his corps attack without adequate reconnaissance and incurred heavy losses of 1500 to 250 Union. Nonetheless, Sherman’s flanking movement was stopped.
Growing impatient, on June 27 Sherman launched the last frontal assault of his career. Assuming that Johnston had stretched his line too thin, Sherman attacked the Confederate center. The attack began with a furious cannonade at 8:00 AM involving 200 cannon. The Union attack went in and was bloodily repulsed with 3000 Union casualties to 1000 Confederates. The fighting was over by 10:45 AM. Sherman twice urged General Thomas to renew the assault. Thomas flatly refused, saying “One or two more such assaults would use up this army.”
The aftermath of the battle was anti-climactic. The armies stood facing each other for five days, until July 2, 1864 when Sherman again attempted to outflank Johnston’s left, this time with success, Johnston retreating to prepared lines at Smyrna. Here is Sherman’s account of the battle in his memoirs:
On the 23d of June I telegraphed to General Halleck this summary, which I cannot again better state:
We continue to press forward on the principle of an advance against fortified positions. The whole country is one vast fort, and Johnston must have at least fifty miles of connected trenches, with abatis and finished batteries. We gain ground daily, fighting all the time. On the 21st General Stanley gained a position near the south end of Kenesaw, from which the enemy attempted in vain to drive him; and the same day General T. J. Wood’s division took a hill, which the enemy assaulted three times at night without success, leaving more than a hundred dead on the ground. Yesterday the extreme right (Hooker and Schofield) advanced on the Powder Springs road to within three miles of Marietta. The enemy made a strong effort to drive them away, but failed signally, leaving more than two hundred dead on the field. Our lines are now in close contact, and the fighting is incessant, with a good deal of artillery-fire. As fast as we gain one position the enemy has another all ready, but I think he will soon have to let go Kenesaw, which is the key to the whole country. The weather is now better, and the roads are drying up fast. Our losses are light, and, not-withstanding the repeated breaks of the road to our rear, supplies are ample.
During the 24th and 25th of June General Schofield extended his right as far as prudent, so as to compel the enemy to thin out his lines correspondingly, with the intention to make two strong assaults at points where success would give us the greatest advantage. I had consulted Generals Thomas, McPherson, and Schofield, and we all agreed that we could not with prudence stretch out any more, and therefore there was no alternative but to attack “fortified lines,” a thing carefully avoided up to that time. I reasoned, if we could make a breach anywhere near the rebel centre, and thrust in a strong head of column, that with the one moiety of our army we could hold in check the corresponding wing of the enemy, and with the other sweep in flank and overwhelm the other half. The 27th of June was fixed as the day for the attempt, and in order to oversee the whole, and to be in close communication with all parts of the army, I had a place cleared on the top of a hill to the rear of Thomas’s centre, and had the telegraph-wires laid to it. The points of attack were chosen, and the troops were all prepared with as little demonstration as possible. About 9 A.M. Of the day appointed, the troops moved to the assault, and all along our lines for ten miles a furious fire of artillery and musketry was kept up. At all points the enemy met us with determined courage and in great force. McPherson’s attacking column fought up the face of the lesser Kenesaw, but could not reach the summit. About a mile to the right (just below the Dallas road) Thomas’s assaulting column reached the parapet, where Brigadier-General Barker was shot down mortally wounded, and Brigadier-General Daniel McCook (my old law-partner) was desperately wounded, from the effects of which he afterward died. By 11.30 the assault was in fact over, and had failed. We had not broken the rebel line at either point, but our assaulting columns held their ground within a few yards of the rebel trenches, and there covered themselves with parapet. McPherson lost about five hundred men and several valuable officers, and Thomas lost nearly two thousand men. This was the hardest fight of the campaign up to that date, and it is well described by Johnston in his “Narrative” (pages 342, 343), where he admits his loss in killed and wounded as
Total …………. 808
This, no doubt, is a true and fair statement; but, as usual, Johnston overestimates our loss, putting it at six thousand, whereas our entire loss was about twenty-five hundred, killed and wounded.
Doubtless none of the men of Major General Jubal Early’s division felt any twinges of foreboding as they marched through Gettysburg on their way to York, Pennsylvania on June 26, 1863. Why should they have? They had swatted aside some Pennsylvania militia who quickly decided that discretion was definitely the better part of valor against veteran Confederate infantry and taken to their heels. The War for the Confederates had turned into a summer time lark where they were living off the produce of Pennsylvania and having a fun time giving the population of the Keystone State a small taste of what Virginia was enduring as a combat theater of operations. Part of the fun was no doubt the arrest of John Burns, 69 year old veteran of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, who was briefly jailed by the Confederates for his insistence of upholding the authority of the Union. Brown was released as the Confederates marched out, and he promptly began arresting Confederate stragglers. An innocent prelude to the bloodiest battle of a very bloody war.
I have always been somewhat bemused by the fact that vast attention is paid to the Battle of the Crater at the seige of Petersburg on July 30, 1864, while the mine explosion at Vicksburg on June 25, 1863 tends to be overlooked in popular memory of the War. Both efforts were unsuccessful, both mine explosions producing a breach in the Confederate lines that Union troops were ultimately unable to exploit, with Confederate troops rallying and sealing the breach. It is true that the Battle of the Crater was a much larger operation involving four times the explosives with divisions involved as opposed to regiments at Vicksburg. The use of black troops in the Battle of the Crater and the slaying of some Union prisoners and their officers by Confederate troops, also helped ensure maximum press coverage. Still it is surprising to me how little attention is paid to the Vicksburg mine even in fairly extensive histories of the War. Here is Grant’s memories of the mining operations at Vicksburg in his Personal Memoirs: (more…)
Something for the weekend. If The Johnnies Get Into Power, a campaign song of the James Garfield campaign in the election of 1880. For a generation Republicans would “wave the bloody shirt” against Democrats, conjuring up the bogeyman of the terrible things that would happen if the Democrats, Confederate loving traitors!, elected a President. In the South Democrats would return the favor, using hatreds born of the Civil War and Reconstruction to keep the South a one party section of the nation. Not the most edifying period in the political history of our nation.
Here is a video of the great Johnny Cash singing a song about the assassination of James Garfield: (more…)
June 7, 1780 was a day of deep tragedy for the Reverend James Caldwell, a Presbyterian Minister. Known as the soldier parson because of his ardent support of the Patriot cause, he was with the Continental Army in Morristown as a chaplain. Tragically, war came to his home and his wife Hannah Caldwell was killed by a British soldier during the Battle of Connecticut Farms when he fired into her house. Caldwell quickly found an opportunity for revenge when he partipated in the defense of Springfield, New Jersey, the last major battle of the American Revolution in the North, on June 23, 1780. A mixed band of Continentals and militia were stubbornly defending the town from 2500 British and Hessian regulars, when they began to run low on musket wadding. Caldwell did not hesistate. Running into the Springfield Presbyterian Church he gathered up hymnals and passed them out to the troops to tear out the pages for wadding, all the time yelling “Give ’em Watts Boys! Give ’em Watts!” Hailed as a hero of the battle, an American victory, Caldwell did not survive the war. He is buried beside his beloved Hannah in the church yard cemetery of the First Presbyterian Church in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the church he served as pastor for 30 years. Their nine orphaned children were raised by friends and family in a free America.
“War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste… The only redeeming factors were my comrades’ incredible bravery and their devotion to each other. Marine Corps training taught us to kill efficiently and to try to survive. But it also taught us loyalty to each other – and love. That espirit de corps sustained us.”
“Until the millennium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others, it will be necessary to accept one’s responsibilities and be willing to make sacrifices for one’s country – as my comrades did. As the troops used to say, “If the country is good enough to live in, it’s good enough to fight for.” With privilege goes responsibility.”
(I originally posted this at The American Catholic and I thought the history mavens of Almost Chosen People might enjoy it.)
Language and violence advisory for the above video giving a fairly sanitized Hollywood version of what the battle of Okinawa was like. Austin Bay at Strategy Page reminds us of just how bad the battle of Okinawa, raging seventy years ago, was:
On shore, some 80,000 to 100,000 Japanese manned hardened fortifications. Historians debate the total number of defenders. The Okinawan Home Guard (Boeitai) participated, but to what extent is uncertain: 500,000 civilians lived on the island. Though Tokyo’s ruling supremacists regarded Okinawans as low caste, they encouraged them to die for the Emperor, in droves.
That served the diplomatic end. With the European war drawing to a close, Japan’s rulers gambled that strategic fanaticism would convince war-wearying America that fighting Japan was too costly. Attention Missouri, New York, Texas — your soldiers will die for each inch of rock.
The Japanese decided to defend Okinawa in selected sectors. Troops would wait inland. If the kamikazes sank a few supply ships, that might slow the land attack. As U.S. troops approached, Japanese forces would attack then withdraw into the defense system, forcing a bunker-to-bunker fight. Defenders in the South might resist for months in the concentric defense surrounding the town of Shuri.
U.S. troops initially met limited opposition. By April 4, a Marine division had cut across the island. On the same day, U.S. Army units encountered in-depth defenses to the south. The kamikazes hit the fleet; Japanese in the Southern sector launched several vicious attacks. And Okinawa’s great bleeding began.
From April 12 to 14, the Japanese attacked along the entire south front. Both sides suffered casualties; the U.S. invasion stalled. On April 30, an Army division had to be withdrawn. Bunker battles had reduced the division to 30 percent strength.
Japanese attacks in early May rattled U.S. forces. However, outside their forts, the Japanese suffered heavy casualties. One assault cost the Japanese 7,000 dead. The Americans employed endless volleys of artillery and on-call air strikes.
Monsoon rains slowed operations in late May. The mud and muck reminded some of WWI’s Ypres battlefield. U.S. forces chipped away at the concentric defense. An intense artillery barrage would rake a Japanese bunker; a limited infantry assault would finish the dirty job. Behind the bunkers, GIs found more bunkers, but the defenders were less skilled. Fighting lapsed. On June 22, the Japanese commanders committed ritual suicide.
All told, Okinawa killed 12,500 Americans and wounded approximately 50,000. It was the U.S. Navy’s biggest killer, with 4,907 sailor deaths and 4,874 wounded. Japan lost an estimated 75,000 military dead. As for civilians? Estimates run from 50,000 to 110,000.(more…)
The final remnants of resistance on Okinawa were crushed on June 21, and the United States was stunned by the American casualties of approximately 80,000. For a nation that was becoming weary of war, this was a bitter victory. One casualty stood out: Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr, the commander of the Tenth Army, the invasion force.
The product of a May-November marriage, Buckner’s mother was 29 and his father, Simon Bolivar Buckner, a former Confederate Lieutenant General, was 63 when he was born in 1883, like his father he was a West Point graduate, class of 1908. Much of his career was spent either attending or teaching at Army schools, including a stint as Commandant at West Point. Prior to being tabbed to command the Tenth Army, Buckner spent most of the War in the Pacific sideshow of Alaska.
On June 18, 1945 Buckner was inspecting an observation post when a Japanese artillery shell exploded in nearby coral driving fragments into his chest. He died on the operating table. The General was warned just prior to the artillery barrage to remove his helmet with three stars that might attract enemy fire. He did so, but by that time the Japanese, ever on the alert, had probably targeted him.
One of three US Lieutenant Generals to die in the War, Buckner’s death underlined the cost of taking Okinawa.
Buckner’s poor generalship doubtless added to the toll. He specialized in grinding frontal assaults, failing to utilize complete American dominance of the seas for amphibious landings behind the Japanese lines, suggested by subordinates, and his attacks were more WWI than WWII in their use of battering ram application of firepower and costly infantry assaults. Unimaginative, costly plodding is an accurate assessment of Buckner’s military malpractice on Okinawa.
It was sad for Buckner’s family that he was killed on Okinawa and their grief is to be respected. It was sadder for his troops that he was not killed at the beginning of the battle rather than at the end.
Donald R. McClarey
Paul Zummo
Almost Chosen People 