Showing posts with label Mexican War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mexican War. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Sunday, January 21, 1900. Frontier types and technology.

Frontier personality and later Montana lawman, John "Liver-Eating" Johnson, died at age 75.

Born with the last name Garrison, in Pattenburg, New Jersey, he was a sailor in the Mexican War before deserting after striking an officer.  He became a frontiersman following that.  In 1847 his wife, a Salish Native American, was killed by a young Crow man and his fellow hunters causing Johnson to launch on on a years long campaign of revenge which featured eating the livers of killed Crow warriors.  He served for a time with the 2nd Colorado Cavalry during the Civil War and was a lawman in Montana for a time thereafter.  He died in a veterans home in California, and was buried in a Los Angeles veteran's cemetery, before being reinterred in Cody, Wyoming in 1974, following the popularity of the film Jeremiah Johnson, which was based on his life.

Anne Ellsworth Smith, the original operator on the Baltimore–Washington telegraph line, who had sent the first telegraph message on May 24, 1844, at age 17 of "What hath God wrought?" died at age 73.

Former Wild Bunch member Willard Erastus Christianson, born Erastus Christiansen, and also known as Matt Warner, was released from prison in Utah after being pardoned.  He went on to later being elected as a justice of the peace and serving as a deputy sheriff in Carbon County, Utah.

In spite of having a violent temper and having lived a life of crime, he had a reputation for being extremely honest.

Last edition:

Saturday, January 20, 1900. A fire in Honolulu's Chinatown and "Die Erwerbung werthvoller Küstenstadte der Neuenglandstaaten wäre das wirksamste mittel, den frieden zu erzwingen"

Monday, January 6, 2025

Wednesday, January 6, 1915. The Plan of San Diego.

The Plan of San Diego (Texas) was drafted by a group of  by a group of unidentified Mexican and Tejano rebels with the goal of creating civil unrest that would lead to "[freeing] Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Colorado from U.S. control". 

The plan stated:

(1) On February 20, 1915, at 2:00 there would occur an uprising against the United States government to proclaim the liberty of blacks from the "Yankee tyranny" that had held them in "iniquitous slavery since remote times" and to proclaim the independence of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and California, "of which States the REPUBLIC OF MEXICO was robbed in a most perfidious manner by North American imperialism."

(2) To achieve these objectives an army would be formed under the leadership of commanders named by the Supreme Revolutionary Congress of San Diego, Texas. This army, known as the "Liberating Army for Races & Peoples," would fight under a red and white banner bearing the inscription "Equality & Independence".

(3) Each commander was assigned certain cities to capture; once he had done so, he would amass their weaponry and funds in order to provide the necessary resources to continue the struggle. Commanders would account for everything to their superiors.

(4) Upon capturing a city, especially a state capital, commanders must immediately appoint municipal authorities to preserve order and assist the revolutionary cause.

(5) "It is strictly forbidden to hold prisoners, either special prisoners (civilians) or soldiers; and the only time that should be spent in dealing with them is that which is absolutely necessary to demand funds (loans) of them; and whether these demands be successful or not, they shall be shot immediately without any pretext."

(6) "Every foreigner who shall be found armed and cannot prove his right to carry arms, shall be summarily executed, regardless of his race or nationality."

(7) "Every North American over sixteen years of age shall be put to death; and only the aged men, the women, and the children shall be respected; and on no account shall the traitors to our race be spared of respected."

(8) "The Apaches of Arizona, as well as the INDIANS (Redskins) of the territory" would have their lands returned, so that they would assist the revolutionary cause.

(9) All appointments and ranks of subordinate officers in the revolutionary army, as well as those of other conspirators who might wish to cooperate with the cause, would be reviewed by their superiors.

(10) "The movement having gathered force, and once having possessed ourselves of the States alluded to, we shall proclaim them as an INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC, later requesting (if it be though expedient annexation to MEXICO, without concerning ourselves at that time about the form of government which may control the destinies of the common mother country."

(11) When the revolutionary movement had obtained independence for the blacks, the revolutionaries would grant them a banner, "which they themselves shall be permitted to select", and the revolutionists would aid them in obtaining "six States of the American Union, which states border on those already mentioned," so the blacks could form an independent republic of their own.

(12) "None of the leaders shall have the power to make terms with the enemy, without first communicating with their superior officers of the army, bearing in mind that this is a war without quarter; nor shall any leader enroll in his ranks any foreigners unless said foreigner belong to the Latin, the Negro, or the Japanese race."

(13) It is understood that upon the triumph of the cause, no member of this conspiracy would fail to recognize his superior, nor to aid others seeking to destroy "what has been accomplished by such great work."

(14) As soon as possible, each local junta would select delegates who would elect a Permanent Directorate of the Revolutionary Congress. At this meeting the powers and duties of the permanent Directorate would be determined, and the Revolutionary Plan could be amended or revised.

(15) It was understood that the revolutionists would achieve the independence of the blacks, and that "on no account will we accept aid, either moral or pecuniary, from the Government of Mexico; and it need not consider itself under any obligations in this, our movement."


The actual authors of the plan were unknown but the signatures on the plan document were from rebels being held inside a jail in Monterrey, Mexico, suggesting it wasn't their idea.  It was a genuine plan, however, that would later lead to raids.  Suspicion has been attributed to various factions in the Mexican Revolution, including Victoriano Huerta and Venustiano Carranza.

The plan called for no aid from the Mexican government, as noted above.

This is not, it should be noted, a later plan backed by the Germans, but it was pretty darned similar.

The Battle of Sairkamish went disastrously for the Ottomans, with the Russians firing on the headquarters of the 3d Ottoman Army and capturing entire Ottoman divisions.  Hafiz Hakki Pash ordered a full Ottoman retreat.

The German Navy attempted to use the U-12 for carrying a seaplane, unsuccessfully.

Sentiment in Italy for the country to enter World War One grew following a state funeral for a fallen officer of the Garibaldi Legion, an Italian volunteer unit to the Allied cause.

Last edition:

Sunday, January 3, 1915. Coney Island.


Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Turning the Tide in Ukraine (maybe) or at least helping them a bunch. What else the US can do. Part Two.

 

Gen. Clair Chennault.

Clair Chennault entered the U.S. Army during World War One, and resigned in 1937, going from there to China as a mercenary pilot for the Nationalist in their war against Japan.  Following a mission on behalf of the Chinese to the US in 1939, the US funded and equipped the American Volunteer Group of pilots, the legendary P-40 flying "Flying Tigers". They weren't in the US military, at least not at that time. They were, quite frankly, mercenaries, but specialized ones.

A bit different, as they were officially in the Royal Air Force, the British fielded three fighter squadrons made up of US volunteers.  "Eagle Squadrons"


There was a well-worn precedent for that.  During World War One, while Woodrow Wilson was promising to keep us out of war, the French fielded Escadrille N. 124, the  Escadrille de La Fayette.  It's pilots were Americans.


They weren't the only unit in the Great War like that.  Perhaps the most famous one was the Czech Legion, made up of Czech and Slovak volunteers who fought at first on the Eastern Front, and then fought their way across Siberia to Vladivostok so they could be taken to France, after the Russian Revolution broke out, to rejoin the Allied effort.

During the Mexican War, the Republic of Mexico fielded a unit of volunteer, mostly Irish and Irish American, artillerymen, known as the San Patricio's.  While Mexico lost the war, their performance was excellent.

The point?

Ukraine is taking in foreign volunteers for the Ukrainian Legion.  However, much more here could be done along the same lines as the AVG.  The AVG, basically, took in American military pilots used to American military gear, with that gear purchased for Nationalist China through an arrangement with the US.

This could be done in the war in Ukraine on a ground combat basis.

The US military was traditionally quite small before World War Two.  From 1947 through 1990, however, it was very large due to the Cold War, and it's not been inconsequential in size since that time.  The youngest of the Cold War warriors are now 52 years old, not young.  But maybe not as old, in modern terms, as it might seem.  At any rate, there are thousands of Americans in their 30s, 40s, and 50s who have served in the U.S. military.

Those men trained to fight the Soviet Union.  And they used, in many cases, late Cold War and early post Cold War US equipment.

This isn't unique to the U.S.  Germany only ended universal conscription of men n 2011.  France in 1996.  Thousands of men have served in the various NATO armies, using NATO standard equipment.

Why not create an American Volunteer Group and a European Volunteer Group and allow Ukraine to equip them with NATO standard weapons?  There's more than enough old NATO equipment, surely, to equip two divisions in this fashion.

Would they be elite?  Well, probably not, but they wouldn't be bad.  Some have actually trained to fight the very war that's being fought right now.

And then there's pilots and aircraft.

Lots of men trained to fly high test American fighters are now flying commercial jet liners.  Ukraine has asked for F-16s.  Why not give them the F-16s with volunteer pilots?

And, we might at this point, why not include A-10s?

Saturday, August 10, 2019

August 10, 1919. The Motor Transport Convoy rests in Laramie. Troop A, New Jersey State Militia Reserve trains at Denville.

The Motor Transport Convoy spent their Sunday in Laramie on this day in 1919.


The weather was "fair and cool", which would be a good description of most summer days in high altitude Laramie, which has some of the nicest summer weather in Wyoming.  Wind and rain in the late afternoon is a typical feature of the summer weather there.

In New Jersey, where the weather probably wasn't fair and cool, Troop A of the New Jersey State Militia Reserve was training.

Troop A, New Jersey State Militia Reserve, at Denville, New Jersey.

State units during World War One and World War Two are a really confusing topic.  All states have the ability to raise state militia units that are separate and part from the National Guard, but not all do. Generally, however, during the Great War and even more during the Second World War, they did.

State units of this type are purely state units, not subject to Federal induction, en masse. Their history is as old as the nation, but they really took a different direction starting in the Spanish American War.

Early on, all of the proto United State's native military power was in militia units. There was no national army, so to speak, in Colonial America. The national army was the English Army, which is to say that at first, prior to the English Civil War, it was the Crown's army.  That army was withdrawn from North American during the English Civil War of the 1640s and 1650s, in which it was defeated.  During that decade long struggle British North America was defended by local militias.  When British forces returned, which they did not in any numbers until the French and Indian War, it was the victorious parliamentary army, famously clad in red coats, which came back.

Not that this was novel.  Early on all early British colonies were also defended only by militias. The Crown didn't bother to send over troops to defend colonies, which were by and large private affairs rather than public ones anyhow.  At first, individual colonies were actually town sized settlements, with associated farmland, and they had their own militias.  Indeed, as late as King Philip's War this was still the case and various towns could and did refuse to help other ones and they had no obligation to do so.

Later, when colonies were organized on a larger basis, the proto states if you will, militia units were organized on that basis, although they were still local units.  I.e., towns and regions had militias, but the Governor of the Colony could call any of them out. That gave us the basic structure of today's  National Guard, in a very early fashion, and in fact that's why the National Guard claims to be the nation's oldest military body with a founding date of December 13, 1636.

Colonial militia's fought on both sides of the American Revolution, depending in part upon the loyalty of the Colonial governor at the time they were mustered as well as the views of the independent militiamen.  They formed, however, the early backbone of the Rebel effort and indeed the war commenced when British troops and militiamen engaged in combat at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775.

The Revolution proved the need for a national army to contest the British Army and hence the Continental Army was formed during the war and did the heavy lifting thereafter.   Militia, however, remained vital throughout the war.  Following the British surrender, there was no thought at all given to keeping a standing national army and it was demobilized and, for a time, the nation's defenses were entirely dependent upon militias, with any national crisis simply relying upon the unquestioned, at that time, ability of the President to call them into national service if needed.

The lack of a national army soon proved to be a major problem and a small one was formed, but all throughout the 18th and the first half of the 19th Centuries the nation's primary defense was really based on militias, with all males having a militia obligation. The quality of militia units varied very widely, but by and large they rose to the occasion and did well.  Interestingly enough, immediately to our north, Canada, a British Colony, also relied principally on militias for defense and its militias notably bested ours during the War of 1812.

The system began to demonstrate some stresses during the Mexican War during which New England's states refused, in varying degrees, to contribute to the nation's war effort against Mexico.  A person can look at this in varying ways, of course.  While we've taken the position here that the Mexican War was inevitable and inaccurately remembered, the fact that the Federal government had to rely upon state troops did give states an added voice on their whether or not they approved of a war.  The New England states did not.  The Southern states very much did, which gave the Mexican War in its later stages an oddly southern character.

The swan song of the militia system in its original form came with the Civil War.  Huge numbers of state troops were used on both sides, varying from mustered militia units that served for terms, to local units mustered only in time of a local crisis, to state units raised just for the war.  But the war was so big that the Federal Army took on a new larger role it had not had before, and with the increase in Western expansion after the war, it was reluctant to give it up.  Militia's never again became the predominate combat force of the United States.  Indeed, there was long period thereafter where the militia struggled with the Army for its existence, with career Army officers being hugely crabby about it.

That saw state militias become increasingly organized as they fought to retain a military role, and  by the Spanish American War they were well on their way to being the modern National Guard.  The Dick Act thereafter formalized that.  But the Spanish American War, which was also very unpopular in New England, saw some states separate their militias into National Guard and State Guard units, with State Guard units being specifically formed only to be liable for state service.  Ironically, some of the State Guard units that were formed in that period had long histories including proud service in the nation's prior wars.  This split continued on into World War One which saw some states, such as New Jersey, muster its National Guard for Federal induction but its State Guard just for wartime state service.

That pattern became very common during the Great War during which various states formed State Guard units that were only to serve during the war for state purposes.  Naturally, the men who served in them were men who were otherwise ineligible for Federal service for one reason or another, something that has crated a sort of lingering atmosphere over those units.  When the war ended a lot of states that had formed them, dropped them, after the National Guard had been reconstituted.  

This patter repeated itself in World War Two during which, I believe, every state had a State Guard.  After the Second World War very few have retained them, and most of the states that have, have a long history of separated militia units.  Today those units tend to provide service for state emergencies, but they also often serve ceremonial functions.  An exception exists in the form of the Texas State Guard, which was highly active on the border during the Border War period, and which was retained after World War Two even after the Federal Government terminated funding for State Guard units in 1947.  They've continued to be occasionally used in Texas for security roles.

In New Jersey, we'd note, the situation during the Great War was really confusing, as there were militia units organized for the war, as well as separate ones that preexisted it.  A lot of those units would soon disappear as the National Guard came back into being, although New Jersey is one of the few states that has always had a State Guard since first forming one.

Sunday, November 18, 2018

"‘Great War’ brought Catholics, bishops into mainstream of US society"? Not so much.

‘Great War’ brought Catholics, bishops into mainstream of US society

So claims the headline for a story in the website of   The Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau
The Roman Catholic Church of Southern Missouri.

Well. . .

I don't really think so.

One of the temptations when you study a certain era of history, or write a lot about it, or even look into it, is to attribute things to it that exceed the boundaries of where you ought to go.

Now, don't get me wrong, war brings about a lot of first.  Indeed, we've maintained here that War Changes Everything.  And that's true. But it doesn't change as much as we might think.

What this article touches on is something that we tend not to think a lot about today, even though it is still with us, that being the strong prejudice against Catholics that once existed in the United States.

On that, a little background. There was once a vast amount of prejudice against Catholics in the United States.   I've touched on this elsewhere, but the United States wasn't founded by a culture that wasn't tolerant of Catholicism in the first place, even if one of the colonies was, for a time, a refuge for English Catholics.  Indeed, contrary to what we tend to imagine about the founding of the American colonies, they weren't religiously tolerant in general.  England had gone from being a highly Catholic country prior to the reign of King Henry VIII (who no doubt always imagined himself to be a loyal Catholic of some sort in spite of everything) to being one that endured a long period of religious strife which broke out occasionally into open warfare.  By the time that the English planted their first colony in North America, the English were officially Protestant but it was still whipping around from one Protestant theology to another.  As noted, King Henry VIII basically thought of himself as the head of the Catholic Church in England, but still a Catholic.  More radical Protestant reformers were vying for position and would soon come into control with his passing, but not before the nation became Catholic again under Mary, and then ostensible reached a "religious settlement" under Elizabeth. Even that settlement wasn't really one. Things were muddy under King James I as a struggle between Calvinist and Anglicans went on during his reign over England and Scotland.  Puritans would come to be oppressed and flea to the Netherlands where they'd prove to be annoying and end up leaving later.  Various English colonies were strongly sectarian, so much so that Puritans coming down out of Rhode Island later would be tried and executed.  Religious tolerance was somewhat lacking early on.

Remains of the early church at Jamestown in the 1870s.  This was an Anglican Church, as the settlers at Jamestown were all members of the Church of England.  The Puritans (only part of the "Pilgrims") were not however, and in their Plymouth Rock settlement their church was not an Anglican one.  The two groups did not get along.

Anyhow, while Catholics were present in the colonies early on (and Catholics remained in varying stages of being underground in England but very much above grown in Ireland. . .and then there's the story of English crypto Catholics which I'll not go into as it complicates the story further) they were always a minority and knew it.  That might be, oddly enough, why the small Catholic population of the Colonies supported the Revolution in greater percentages than other colonists, in spite of the anti Catholic rhetoric of the Intolerable Acts.  Catholics remained looked down upon in the new nation even as it adopted a policy of prohibiting a state religion which morphed into officially accepting religious tolerance (the two aren't really the same).  And this continued on for a very long time.

Now, let me first note that it would be absolutely the truth to state that war, or more correctly wars, changed the view of a segments of American society and sometimes all of American society towards Catholics. But World War One wasn't really one of those wars. 

The Mexican War was.  By the time of the Mexican War, which ran from 1846 to 1848, lots of Germans and Irish were immigrating to the United States.  Indeed, the Irish were also immigrating in large numbers to Canada and some of them from Canada to the United States.  The Irish Great Famine (potato famine) commenced in 1845 and was driving millions of Irish from Eire causing a population that was already religious oppressed and living in primitive poverty to enter other lands where they were truly alien.  Political conditions in Germany were in turmoil which would break out in the revolutions of 1848, something that saw large-scale Catholic emigration out of Germany as Catholics sought to avoid living in a Prussian Germany.

A large number of Catholics therefore ended up serving in the American forces during the Mexican War as enlisted men, many of whom were Irish born or born in one of the various German states.  They were treated abysmally by their Protestant officers and particularly by Southern officers, who tended to detest Catholics.

They generally fought well however and their numbers caused the appointment of the first Catholic clerics to the U.S. Army.  That helped bring about a new relationship between the Army and Catholics, but what really did it is that the appalling abuse of Catholic enlisted men lead a group of them to desert and join the Mexican army, which formed its own artillery unit made up of American deserters.  That shock caused the Army to reevaluate what it was doing, and Catholics, particularly Catholic immigrants, found a home in the Army thereafter.

Mass hanging of captured members of the San Patricio's. The penalty for treason was death, but this would be the last act of its type and bring to an end outward discrimination against Catholics in the enlisted ranks of the U.S. Army.

That was built on during the Civil War, during which you can find several examples of very senior Catholic officers, such as Phil Sheridan.  Sheridan is notable in this context as he entered West Point in 1848, hard on the heels of the Mexican War, which shows how quickly things were changing.  By the time of the Civil War Catholics, and in particular Irish Catholics, were common in the Army.  The enlisted career Irish sergeant was a fixture in the American Army by that time.

Philip Sheridan, one of the most famous American officers of the Civil War and a Catholic.  By this time the oddity of having a Catholic general officer was gone. For that matter, William Sherman was married to a devout Catholic which is something that would have been held against him in an earlier era but was not, and he had converted to Catholicism but was not observant and sometimes disclaimed it.  His son would become a Jesuit Priest.

The Civil War brought about a wider change however as American society at large remained viciously anti Catholic prior to the Civil War.  Catholics may have found a place in the Army, but they were generally pretty isolated in every way otherwise.  Bizarre anti Catholic literature was common accusing Catholics of all sorts of things.

Following the war, however, this largely ceased. The country didn't grow suddenly tolerant, but rather open bizarre hostility stopped.  This was in part because the high degree of sectarianism also stopped due to the war. Going into the Civil War Americans not only tended to be strongly Protestant or Catholic (although the level of non observance was much, much higher than imagined, which is another story), but they also tended to strongly have opinions on other Protestant faiths if they were Protestant.

San Miguel Church in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Built between 1610 and 1625, this church is a contemporary to the Anglican church at Jamestown, but it remains in use today.  This Catholic church is emblematic of the act that with the large amount of Mexican territory taken in by the United States during the Mexican War, a Hispanic Catholic population was taken in as well.

The American Civil War had come in the wake of the Second Great Awakening, although its technically outside of the time period for that which historians have assigned it and instead in what they have framed as the Third Great Awakening.  The Second Great Awakening saw the rise of the a lot of American Protestant denominations including some that had strong millenialism beliefs.  Catholics weren't part of this in the United States, of course.  But the very strong sectarianism that came up in the period came to a bit of a hiatus due to the Civil War.  Prior to the Civil War Americans were ready to cite religion in support of their fighting positions.  Mexico's Catholic status had been a cited reason to fight it in some Protestant sermons prior to the Mexican War.  The United States had fought a small scale war with the Mormons in the 1850s.  Going into the Civil War both sides cited religious grounds for going to war, with both of those sides citing Protestant religious grounds at that.

Let's be clear.  Neither the Mexican War nor the Civil War were wars over religion by any means.  Protestant ministers who cited Mexico's Catholic nation status as a reason to fight it were sincere, but at the end of the day the Mexican War was fought because Mexico couldn't stomach the thought that it had lost the province of Texas and they couldn't agree to the border with the newly American Texas being where it was claimed to be by the United States.  Religion didn't have much to do with that. And the Civil War was about slavery, plain and simple. There were certainly religious overtones to the positions taken by both sides in the Civil War, and religion strongly informed some of those positions, but the war itself was not a religious war which is attested to by some of the oddities of the topic on both sides of the war. The Union had huge numbers of Catholic troops including some who were outright Fenians, but that impacted those units only within them.  The Confederacy, which had  much higher religious uniformity than the North; it was overwhelmingly Protestant except in Louisiana and many of its senior generals were devout Episcopalians including one who was an Episcopal Bishop found itself taking a position on slavery that had already been condemned by the Catholic Church in Rome but its president toyed with Catholicism throughout his life and the Confederate cabinet included a Jewish member.

But because of the Civil War Americans really backed down on citing religion in an extreme prejudicial way like they had before.  Indeed, it wasn't all that long, in spite of ongoing prejudice, that there would be a United States Supreme Court justice on the bench who was both a veteran of the Confederate army and a Catholic.

Which doesn't mean that the prejudice had ended.  Well into the 20th Century to be a Catholic was to be subject to prejudice.  Catholics were mostly blue collar or agriculturalist, with medicine and the law, two professions always occupied by minorities, the exceptions. They couldn't attend Ivy League schools and remain faithful to their faiths and they largely didn't go on to upper education at all.

Which was the status when the United States entered World War One.

And the status after the war as well.

St. Joseph's Polish Catholic Church, an active church in Denver Colorado today, was built in 1902 as the Polish Catholics wanted their own church separate from the southern Slavic (Balkans) Catholic church one a block away. This is a bit symbolic of the degree to which Catholics lived in ethnic Ghettos at the time, but it was also contrary to the policy of the Catholic Church to attempt to integrate all Catholics into non ethnic congregations. This church was built in 1902 just as Slavic immigration was becoming significant in the United States and obviously various diocese yielded to pressures on occasion.  This same neighborhood contains a Russian Orthodox cathedral of the same vintage, reflecting the Slavic nature of the neighborhood. At the time this church was built, Poland wasn't a state and was part of both Russia and Germany.


Indeed, going into the war there were real reasons to worry about some of the Catholic populations of the United States and their receptive loyalties.  At the time, Catholicism was heavily represented in Irish, German, French, Italian and "Mexican" demographics.  Irish populations identified heavily with their ethnic fellows in Eire, which remained part of the United Kingdom but which was struggling with obtaining home rule and which was suffering under the long impact of religious oppression that had come to an official end only in the 19th Century.  German Americans retained a strong sense of pride in their ethnic origin and openly celebrated their Germaness in various ways throughout the year.  Hispanics, who were of various origins but whom most of, at that time, traced an origin to from Mexico or Spanish Mexico, were a suspect people both because of their ethnicity and because there were fears that they may sympathize with Carranza who, it was feared, might be sympathizing with the Germans.

Only French Americans, who were mostly Acadians, Cajuns, or Creole's, and Italian Americans, were not suspect. But the French population was so remote from France that it had no real sympathies with France itself and was highly concentrated in Maine and Louisiana.  The Italians were recent arrivals who did sympathize with Italy, an Allied power in World War One, and were not accordingly suspect.

Indeed, the Italians were hugely celebrated during World War One in the United States.  The Germans, Irish and Mexicans were worried about.

For no reason, as it turned out. They were not disloyal to the United States at all and served loyally.  Prejudice against the Germans was vicious in the U.S. but the German population in the country reacted basically by burying their culture to such an extent that it was largely lost.  The Irish did not do that, but their service in the Great War, including the fact that they were well represented in the Regular Army and made up the bulk of some National Guard regiments, put aside any fears that people had.

But it didn't do much, indeed anything at all, to address the ongoing prejudice that remained in the country.  In that fashion, they found themselves in the same position, but to a much lesser degree, as African Americans. African Americans served very loyally during the war and, unlike World War Two, there were significant numbers of black combat officers in some all black units, but after the war, prejudice against them didn't abate at all.

It'd really take the Second World War to address all of that.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

Today In Wyoming's History: February 23. The Past as Prologue for the Future.

I was up rather early this morning, 3:00 am.  I should still be in bed, but as I was working on a rather large matter I concluded last night, and my mind was still on it, I woke up at the time that I have been waking up.  When I did I logged on and updated this blog and our companion Today In Wyoming's History Blog, for of course, this day.

It's interesting in that context how the past, truly, is the prologue for the future.   Consider some of the following:
Today In Wyoming's History: February 23:

February 23

1847     U.S. troops under Gen. Zachary Taylor defeated Mexican general Santa Anna at the Battle of Buena Vista in Mexico.
I'll note this as I was listening just yesterday to another inaccurate comment on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo.  I'm going to come in and post on that, but it strikes me that the Mexican War, perhaps the most forgotten of all U.S. wars, has been getting a little more press recently than it normally does, and as usually for that war, not very accurate press. This comes up, of course, in the context of discussion on the "wall" and immigration, which makes for a lot of inaccurate discussion of this event, to the extent its discussed at all.  The war turns out, of course, to really mater as its long reach is still with us, even if we think about it very little.
1941  Blizzard conditions stalled traffic in the state.  This was, of course, in the pre 4x4 days.  Prior to World War Two 4x4 vehicles were almost unheard of and were limited to industrial vehicles. Almost every vehicle was a rear wheel drive 2x4.
This item in particular is what caused me to link this day in here.

When I came home last night it was probably in the 50s.  A storm was predicated.  A bad one.

They were right. There's a titanic blizzard going on right now.  My guess is that there may not be school today.  We'll see of course.

Wyoming weather, what can you say?
1969  Gov. Hathaway signed into law a State severance tax bill. The bill had been extremely controversial, with there being strong arguments by the opposition that passing it would cause Wyoming's extractive industries to greatly reduce their activity. The arguments failed to stop the bill, and the severance tax did not greatly impact the
extractive industries.  Today, Wyoming's is nearly entirely funded by severance taxes.
This is the only item that got any comment on our This Day post.  But no wonder it did.  Governor Hathaway's 1969 actions revolutionized our schools here and gave us decades of solid educational funding.

Now, of course, coal is in real trouble and we're debating what to do. We haven't figured that out.

1985  The Bison adopted as the state mammal.
And a tasty one too.  I'll note.  My son, brother in law, and I are going to put in for licenses.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

The Zimmerman Note sent

A encoded telegram was sent from the Foreign Secretary of the German Empire Arthur Zimmermann to the German ambassador to Mexico, Heinrich von Eckardt reading as follows..
We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you. You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States of America is certain and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves. Please call the President's attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace.

Signed, ZIMMERMANN
The text proposed to invite Mexico into World War One as a Germany ally with the enticement that it was to receive those territories lost during the Mexican War.  Rather obviously Germany lacked a concrete understanding as to the degree of Mexican military strength, but as absurd as it sounds, in 1915 some vague Mexican revolutionary forces actually considered, and indeed attempted, to sponsor an uprising in that territory, albeit to little effect.  And Carranza's government did study the proposal, finding it unrealistic.

The note was decoded by the British in subsequent days, as will be seen, with negative consequences for Germany

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

The Wyoming National Guard and the Punitive Expedition

I'll confess, in making this post, that I have a soft spot for the National Guard.  In no small part that may be because I was in the Army National Guard for six years.  From 1981 to 1987, I was a member of the HHB 3d Bn 49th FA.  It is, in my view, one of the unqualified smart things I did after turning 18 years old, i.e., in my adult life.

 I've repeated this photograph of mustered Wyoming National Guardsmen from Powell several times, but its' the only such photo I have ready access to.  There are other photos of the Wyoming National Guard from this period, but not which I'm certain as to the rights to publish to.  This photo is quite interesting. The Guardsmen are dressed in the what appears to be the current pattern of Army uniform including the newly adopted M1911 campaign hat. They carry M1903 Springfield rifles which were then quite new (and in this case probably almost brand new manufacture).  They carry bed rolls rather than back packs, however, showing the retention of a Frontier Army method of carrying personal equipment.

Having been in a Guard unit, however, does make you cognizant of how unfairly they are sometimes viewed.  My unit, the 3d Bn 49th FA, was rated as combat ready the entire time I was in it and it often had the highest combat rating that the Army recognized, higher than many Regular Army units.  That it was highly rated isn't a surprise when it is considered that everyone who was in the unit wanted to be there. Moreover, in the early to mid 1980s the unit was really still in the wake of the Vietnam War and it was full of Vietnam War combat veterans.  The unit even had some Korean War combat veterans still in it, including a couple who had served with the Guard in the Korean War, and there was one remaining World War Two veteran, although he wasn't a combat vet.  Suffice it to say, the depth of knowledge in the unit was vast.  If we were, on average, older than a comparable Regular Army unit, we were also a lot more experienced as a unit as well.  Not too many Regular Army artillery units had men who wore Combat Infantry Badges nor did very many Regular Army units have NCOs who had been officers in the Marine Corps or Navy.  We did.

So, in that context its  hard not to feel a little insulted by the term "weekend warrior", although admittedly you don't hear that much anymore given that so many Guard units have served overseas in our recent wars.  Even so, its definitely the case that the Guard hasn't received its due over the years, sometimes simply by default, but sometimes because its been unfairly slighted.

Anyhow, given as we've been posting nearly daily here for awhile on the Wyoming National Guard in 1916, it  might be nice to fill that story out a bit.   What was the unit?  What was it like?  What became of it?  It's a story we haven't really told here.  And for that matter, it's a story we haven't told on our companion site on Wyoming history, This Day In Wyoming's History.  We really should.  

Indeed, we thought about posting this as a sidebar there, and we in fact will, but we will post it first here, as this blog is the one that's really been looking into 1916.

But in order to do that we need to go back a bit further, indeed, all the way back.  Prior, that is, to 1776.  If we don't, we can't really understand the story of the National Guard in any context.

For most of this nation's history the bulk of our military manpower hasn't been in the Regular Army, it's been in the militia.  And that was both by accident and design.  Few now realize it, but every American had a militia obligation prior to the 20th Century, an obligation that has been transferred over to the Federal government by statute but which many state's still retain as an uncalled upon obligation as well.  Prior to at least the Civil War, however, the obligation was very real indeed.

In the Colonial era all men of military age, which was generally men over 16 up until age 60, were members of the militia.  The militia mustered at least once a year to drill; not much training, but it was an era when not much training time was available and such training as there was often took little time.  Failure to make muster was a crime, but then generally most people somewhat looked forward to the muster as it was the occasion for a community party as a rule.  Colonial militias, early on, did a lot of fighting however, almost all of it in brutal Indian wars the nation has more or less forgotten.  Some spectacularly violent Colonial wars, such as King Philips War, were entirely fought, on the colonist side, by militias.

When the Revolution broke out it was militia that really filled the ranks of the American forces, keeping in mind that state units were little removed from militia even if purpose raised for the conflict.  This would be the pattern all the way through the Civil War.  A Continental, i.e., regular, Army was raised, but it was state units that formed the ranks everywhere.  Units raised by the individual thirteen colonies and dedicated to the conflict alongside the national army, and local militias called out for individual fights.  Indeed, the term "Continental Army" doesn't even make sense until a person stops to consider that it was drawn from, and fought for, the entire continent (ignoring the fact that the Spanish on the continent and the French, and well even 1/3d of the English colonist in the thirteen colonies didn't agree with that suggestion).  This army defeated the British army on the continent although its worth noting that the British also used a militia system, although they did not attempt to deploy mustered English militiamen beyond their shores, at least not until World War One.  They did deploy colonial militia, however, during the Revolution themselves, something that's often somewhat forgotten, and some Minute Men mustered for the Crown, not the Congress.

 American troops evacuating New York, 1783.

Following the Revolution, Congress sought to  avoid having a large Regular Army, so it didn't.  The founding fathers were well aware that standing armies were a threat to a democratic government, and indeed to any government. They all knew the example of the Praetorian Guards in Rome well.  And if, in hindsight, that example seems remote, France reminded us of how current it remained when the French Army deposed the Republic and ultimately put a new Emperor, Napoleon, on the thrown of allegedly Republican France.   The US didn't want a big standing Army.  It needed a standing Navy, but navies, being deployed or deployable at sea, rarely pose a threat to their government.  So a small army it would be.  The land forces of the United States would be principally vested in the state militias with it being acknowledged that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."  In the event of war Congress would rely mostly on state troops, was the thinking, and state part time troops wouldn't pose a threat to the republic and might even form its guardian in the event of undemocratic impulses somewhere.

Only in really big wars was it necessary to go much beyond that.  It proved necessary to do so during the War of 1812, although the Federalized militias formed the bulk of the US forces then. Ironically, in Canada, it would be mustered Canadian militias that would toss the  American forces back out, proving that a force nearly entirely made up of militias, the Canadian one, was adequate to defeat a force made up mostly of militias, the American one.  The Mexican War also saw the mustering of state troops, some raised just for the war, the latter of which were nearly a species of militia.  

This latter example was the rule for the Civil War in which both sides fought with regular armies, but which also saw both sides commit the bulk of their forces in the form of state forces.  That's forgotten by some but the Union and Confederate armies were not simply national armies by quite some measure.  The Confederate regular army was actually quite small.  The Union one was bigger, but the bulk of the Union forces were state troops raised for the conflict, a type of mustered militia.  Pre war militias also fought as Federalized units during the war, and quite often non Federalized militias, in both the North and the South, were mustered when the war came to their areas. The Battle of Gettysburg, for example, provides a classic.  The Union forces included units that were Regular Army units as well as many state units, but even the militia from Gettysburg itself fought on the first day (successfully, it might be noted).

New York militia in camp, Harper's Ferry.

The Civil War was the high water mark of the old militia system. By that time war was becoming increasingly more complicated and hence required increasingly more formal training.  Pre Civil War militia varied enormously in every measurable respect, although Congress had sought to provide some uniformity, and some equipment, right from the onset. After the war the United States government sought to impose more uniformity on state militias so that they would match more closely the United States Army.  Generally, state militias were happy to cooperate and conform to Federal requirements wherever they could, with Federal assistance.  In some rare instances, however, state units would actually exceed the Army in some respect, such as the New York National Guard, which was equipped with better arms than the U.S. Army was in the late 19th Century.

 Rhode Island Zouave, Civil War.  Popular with some New England states (and there being at least even one Confederate such unit) these units were regarded as elite and patterned their dress after French North African troops.  In Union service they tended to be issued the M1863 .58 variant of what had been the M1841 .54 rifle which ad the advantage, if it was one, of taking a huge sword bayonet.

By the Spanish American War most states had a National Guard that was equipped with Federal equipment, although it was often the case that the Guard's equipment was older than the Army's.  Federalized National Guard units in the Spanish American War, for example, often had old Army uniforms rather than the current ones.  Nonetheless they were brought up to Army standards for the war and the following Philippine Insurrection.

 8th Illinois, 1899.  This was a black Illinois militia unit.  The uniforms are correct for the period but are a pattern that was being phased out of the Army at that time and wouldn't be around much longer.

The Spanish American War and the Philippine Insurrection were the last instances in which states raised forces specifically for the war, although this was done within the context of mustering the National Guard.  Wyoming, for example, sent over 1400 men to those wars which was far more than served in its very small pre war National Guard.  Indeed, while Wyoming had a National Guard dating back to territorial days, it had been minuscule and the ranks of its state units, raised just for the war, swelled during the Philippine Insurrection.

 By the Spanish American War and Philippine Insurrection war photography had begun to take on a more modern appearance.    California and Idaho troops in churchyard at San Pedro Macati, Philippines.

During the Philippine Insurrection Wyoming contributed the 1st Wyoming Infantry Battalion and the Wyoming Light Battery to the war, units that were formed principally from mustered Wyoming National Guard units.  This is complicated, however, by the fact that the Army was authorized (or more properly instructed) to raise volunteer cavalry units and these units were in fact organized on a regional basis.  In Wyoming's case Wyoming volunteers to these units went to the 2nd United States Volunteer Cavalry and the 36th United States Volunteer Infantry.  While units within the Army's establishments, these were not really Regular Army units in practice, existed only during the conflicts and were really basically an extension, or perhaps more accurately an evolution, of the Civil War state forces system.  The Wyoming Army National Guard today still uses a unit patch for some units of a cavalryman of the 2nd United States Volunteer Cavalry, showing how close the connection was.

 

After the Civil War a struggle broke out between backers of the National Guard and the Army over incorporating the Guard officially into the Army as its reserve.  While this is fairly clearly an aspect of what the Guard was, up until that time that last formal link had not been established and some in the Army establishment resisted it even giving thought to forming a separate Army reserve.  The reasons that can be debated but there were individuals who were quite partisan on either side of the debate  They failed in their effort, however, and the Dick Act, named after a Congressman who supported it and who served in the National Guard, became law in 1903 and the Guard was officially made the reserve of the Army, bringing the ties even closer.  By 1908 Congress authorized deploying the Guard outside of the United States although Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General would opine that to be illegal, which resulted in a Congressional act providing for simply conscripting  Guardsmen into the Army should that be necessary.

This is the Guard that existed in 1916 when Columbus New Mexico was attacked in Villa's raid.  It was officially a reserve of the Army, but its quality varied by state.  In some rare instances small units were still very much the province of a local community or even individual, who contributed funding to the unit and who sometimes even purchased non standard arms.  Some units were social units, made up of social elites, who actually spent more money being National  Guardsmen than they received back in the form of drill pay.  Others were made up of rough and tumble locals who needed the drill pay, in an era when drills tended to be weekly, on a week night.  Pay was provided, as noted, but retirement, which is now a feature of long Guard service, was not.

The Wyoming National Guard (there was no "Army" National Guard at the time, Army units were National Guard, states with Naval units had them Naval Militia) between the Spanish American War and World War One were infantry.  This often surprises people but there are real reasons for it.  People want to believe that a state like Wyoming must have had cavalry but even by the Spanish American War that was not true.

Early on, even before statehood, Wyoming had militia units that were in fact cavalry, but that was in the context of contemplating deploying them against highly mobile Indians. After statehood the expense, probably, and difficulty, of keeping mounts for cavalry would likely have made that impractical.  Infantry was much easier to keep.  Indeed, while I do not know a great deal about the early cavalry units chances are very high that the horses used by those units belonged to the individual troopers and not to the state.

The forces committed by the state to the border in the Punitive Expedition were to be eight companies of infantry. Wyoming had nine on paper.  One was to be kept home, something fairly typical for big deployments.  But that didn't mean that nine full strength companies actually existed.  They did not.  So, after the Guard was called up the state spent weeks recruiting to bring the unit up to full strength.  We've read about that in the newspaper articles that have been posted on this site.

The mustered  Guard assembled at Cheyenne but it wasn't allowed by the  Army to to use Ft. D. A. Russell as a training ground, a raw deal really that was fairly inexcusable as the post's training range was enormous.  Instead, the state formed Camp Kendrick which is where Cheyenne's Frontier Park is today.  The Guard trained there all summer long. By late summer there were constant rumors about immediate deployments, and as we have seen, when the official orders came it was at first thought the unit would be deployed to San Antonio, but it was instead sent to Deming New Mexico.


At Camp Cody outside of Deming it trained further and took up the role of patrolling and garrisoning as infantry.  By the time the Wyoming Guard was deployed other Guard units had been on duty on the border for quite some time and were rotating back home.  Principally the unit trained, however, until the Regular Army returned from Mexico and the Guard was released on January 17, 1917, to return home.  In a real sense its mere presence was its mission as it served as a ready force, along with many other units, if Villa became fully resurgent or if war broke out with Mexico.

Their return in January 1917 would be brief.  The United States would enter World War One in April of that year and the recently mustered out National Guard would be called back into service.  In 1917, prior to the call up, the strength of the active Army was 200,000 men, 80,000 of which were still serving  Guardsmen. During the Great War 40% of the combat soldiers in the U.S. Army were Guardsmen who were formed into nineteen divisions.  While the U.S. Army balked at relying heavily on the Guard at the start of the formation of the Allied Expeditionary Force in 1917 the truth of the matter is that the Army would have been incapable of deploying when it did but for the Guard.  This didn't keep the Army from looking down on Guardsmen, particularly on National Guard officers, but during the war the Guard proved its mettle and served very ably.

The Punitive Expedition service, therefore had served as a nearly year long training period for the Guard that would serve it well.  In Wyoming's case that service would not be as infantry, however, and the Guard would experience a phenomenon that's not atypical for Guard units of being re-formed into some other type of unit at the start of war.  The Wyoming National Guard was converted into heavy artillery, predicting a role that it would resume after World War Two.  That conversion is a bit surprising, really as conversion into artillery during the Great War was common for cavalry, but not really infantry.  However, the Wyoming National  Guard was not a large unit and the Army created for World War One was an enormous Army, so the conversion of a unit about 600 men in strength into artillery made some sense. The bucking horse symbol came into military use at that time, as the Wyoming National Guard painted that symbol on its artillery pieces, something that they would do again during the Korean War.


Bad photograph of World War One era Wyoming National Guard symbols on monument in Cody Wyoming.

After being re-formed following World War One; the Wyoming  Guard would in fact become cavalry during the the 1920s, and remain so until converted into Horse-Mechanized Cavalry just before World War Two, and then armored cavalry during the war, and finally to artillery after World War Two.  Various designations have come and gone, but its been the Wyoming Guard all along.  Just recently, infantry returned to the Wyoming Army National Guard in the form of a small infantry unit; the first one the state has had since the 1920s.

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Further reading and partial sources:

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

The Wire Agency: News and the telegraph

I went to search for our "recent comments" here, as I was looking for a comment that LeAnn had made, which inspired this post.  I ended up having to find it another way, but I did find it.  Here it is:
Loving these posts on the Punitive Expedition. I'm so curious if you find any articles from the local paper that list the 28th Infantry, the unit my great-grandfather was in. In one of my first grad classes, I wrote a paper about how the events of the Punitive Expedition were reported in the newspapers, both national ones such as New York Times or the like and more local papers such as the Baltimore Sun. I found that the articles were essentially the same as the Associated Press was already in existence. So, there didn't seem to be any huge focuses on the local units in the local papers. Anyway, I'm finding these posts quite interesting. Thanks
The post appeared in the post on technology and the Punitive Expedition.

What LeAnn had noted about locals papers had also surprised me.  I hadn't expected such up to date news, quite frankly, .and I also expected it to have a highly local character.  It doesn't.  And that's for the reason she noted.

Now, having said that, what I will say, and which emphasizes this, is that if I take a step out further in news coverage this isn't true. That is, I was putting mostly up the Casper paper, with the Cheyenne paper on occasion.  But if you start looking at the newspapers of the smaller towns, the Punitive Expedition hardly appeared at all.  In any of them.  Now, why was that true.

Just what LeAnn noted. The wires services.  Those small papers weren't subscribing to the wire services.

Here's the first one we recently ran:

The Raid on Columbus New Mexico: The news hit.



Most towns and cities in 1916 were served by a morning and an evening newspaper, or a paper that published a morning and evening edition.  Therefore, most Americans would have started learning of the Villista raid around 5:00 p.m. or so as the evening newspapers were delivered or started being offered for sale.

Here's the evening edition of the Casper Daily Press, a paper that was in circulation in Casper Wyoming in 1916 and which is the predecessor of one of the current papers.
Here's the Encampment Record, from southern Wyoming, on the same day:


Quite a bit different.

From the Encampment Record, for the same day, we learn that improvements were being made to the city hall.  Registered livestock were being brought into the valley, something that urban sophisticates might make fun of today but real news.  A local road needed improvement.  And, some distance away, the Virginian Hotel in Medicine Bow, named for the 1902 novel by Owen Wister, and which is still there in Medicine Bow, had closed.  It only closed temporarily, of course, as it remains open today.

 
The Virginian Hotel, which has been featured on this blog before, with this photo being from Railhead.  It's interesting to note that Wister's novel was such a hit that it was inspiring the naming of a hotel in Wyoming so close to the date of its publication.

News Agencies got started in Europe as early as the 1830s. When telegraph came about, however, that really opened the door for the wire agency, a type of news agency that depended on the transmission of news by telegraph.  In the United States, the Associated Press was founded in 1846 as a nonprofit organization.  It originally only included five New York newspapers that had founded it, and it conveyed the news of the Mexican War by boat, horse and telegraph.  In 1900 the Illinois Supreme Court held that wire agencies were a public utility and that meant that the Associated Press had to let in any newspaper that would pay for the service.  The United States Supreme Court upheld the Illinois Supreme Court in Inter Ocean Publishing v. Associated Press, a decision that really opened up reporting in the United States (but which I doubt the Supreme Court would have ruled the same way in today.  Soon, any paper that wanted AP wire reports could have them, and soon thereafter competition spring up, including United Press and International News Service.

That brought in the golden age of the news reporter, as we so often imagine it today. Reporters working for the agencies going to the field and wiring in their reports to the agencies, who in turn spread them rapidly throughout the nation.  

News reporters and photographers interviewing Alma Gluck, 1917.  Gluck was a celebrated opera singer and would have been 33 years old at the time of this photograph.  There are a lot of interesting details in it, including a depiction of a fedora by a couple of gentlemen in the photo, sowing their early spread,  as well as a reporter taking his notes by hand.  That reporter, if he was a wire reporter, would then wire his story in. Note also the early large cameras, including at least one motion picture camera.

This was an amazing change in the way that things had been done.  Local newspapers before this, and there were many, simply reported on local news for the most part, until a story became so big it had to be reported in the local paper.  But now, the major news, including in our examples war news from Europe, was appearing the next day in small cities.  The world had become very connected.

Before we close in this amazing change in the transmission of news, let's observe a couple of things.  One is that the news was being wired, but photographs weren't really yet.  Some early news photos were appearing, but wire photography wouldn't come in until the 1920s with the invention of additional technology.  Secondly, lets consider the reporters.

One of the really amazing things about reporters of this era, and well after, is that these were not, as a rule, college educated men.  That says something about the nature of education at the time.  By and large, these were men with high school educations.  People didn't go to college and major in journalism.  If they wanted to be reporters, they took what they'd learned in high school and went out as a cub reporter for a paper.  Some really astounding writers are included in this group.  Francis McCullagh, an Irish born writer who traveled all over the globe writing for English, Japanese and American newspapers is one example. With a Catholic school education, he reported on wars everywhere from the Russo Japanese War all the way to the Spanish Civil War, writing several books along the way.  Robert Leckie is another.  He started writing for a local newspaper while still in high school and then went on to be a wire reporter after World War Two, later writing his famous memoir A Helmet For My Pillow as a reaction to seeing South Pacific.  It'd be hard to get in the door of a newspaper as a writer today without a university education.  Perhaps that says something about education standards of the era, or should, and expectations then and now.