In the days following the Battle of the Wilderness (May 5-8, 1864), the Union Army moved south out of the Wilderness of Spottslyvania – Spott’s Woods -- mirroring the movements of General Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, as General Grant continued his pursuit.
Travelling little by night because of the thickets of underbrush, the Union forces moved south by road through the forests, with troops sent out skirmishing on either side, to guard the flanks of the advancing column. Private Calif Newton Drew, Pvt. Henry C. Denbo, and other scouts of the 6th Maine Infantry, were dispatched on this duty….
The Army of the Potomac eventually emerged into an area of sporadically-timbered farmland in the neighborhood of the Spottsylvania County Court House, Virginia, only to find that the rebel sharpshooters that had vigorously harassed them in the thick undergrowth of the Wilderness, had now moved up into the treetops, to positions which afforded them good vantage & many clear shots of the Union skirmishers. Nevertheless, the morning seems a routine one in war, until at the "crack" of a rifle, Union General John Sedgwick drops to the ground -- felled by a head-shot, -- and is dead.
PRIVATE DREW is the last man to speak to him alive ....
As Lt. General General Ulysses S. Grant pushes Gen. Meade's Army of the Potomac further south into Virginia -- on his OVERLAND CAMPAIGN ( sometimes called the Wilderness Campaign) beyond the Rappahannock, and then beyond the Rapidan -- the engagements of the Yankees with General Robert E Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia just become more and more ferocious ...the losses in terms of the number of men's lives, just staggering and unprecedented.
First the Battle of the Wilderness,
.... then the Battle of Spottsylvania Court House,
.... then the assault on the Mule Shoe -- the notorious Bloody Angle at Spottsylvania --
each creating literally heaps of human corpses lying in the Spottsylvania woods... MOST TO REMAIN LONG UNBURIED ...
At each engagement, the Confederates fight like wildcats, and give as good as they get -- General Lee shows off his strategic mastery and this topographers exercise an uncanny grasp of the hidden countryside ... Union losses mount....The finest fighters are mowed down ...Grant's men wonder, if he is a worse butcher than Burnsides.....
Nevertheless, Grant attains an advantage -- for a short time after the Wilderness it seems as if the Rebs show a new level of respect for the Union fighters, and are not leaving their defensive works to charge the Yankee lines. This limited advantage will not last for long, however....
NOW, almost a month after the launch of the OVERLAND CAMPAIGN it seems impossible that loss of life could escalate beyond the numbers of killed at Spottsylvania,
... but in fact, the party's just getting started. Now, GRANT and LEE SQUARE OFF AGAIN, this time at a field near COLD HARBOR TAVERN !! ... their armies dig in.
NOW, GRANT, UNPHASED BY THE CASTROPHIC LEVEL OF CASUALTIES OF THE PRECEDING MONTH, ORDERS THE CHARGE -- BUT WITHOUT ANY CORPS COHERENCE -- ACROSS 300 YARS OF OPEN FIELD, AND THE YANKEES FALL LIKE RIPE WHEAT BEFORE THE HARVESTER'S SICKLE!! The men retreat, and as his line is within reach of their own defensive works... PVT CALIF NEWTON DREW
IS HIT BY THE BLAST OF AN EXPLODING MORTAR !! HE IS KNOCKED SENSELESS ... his arm shattered, fingers blown off, a hole ripped in his abdomen ...AMPUTATION IS IN ORDER ...AND HE'S ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES !!
He's transferred to the Old Soldiers home in Washington D.C..
where, one Saturday morning, he receives an unexpected visitor....
FIND OUT WHO .. in YANKEE SCOUT -- Cold Harbor !!
YANKEE SCOUT in the CIVIL WAR !! COLD HARBOR
Following the stalemate called the MINE RUN CAMPAIGN of late November, 1863, the warring armies of the Confederacy and the United States have encamped for the Winter in Culpeper and Orange counties, Va., respectively, and Pvts Drew and Denbo been assigned to roving duty. Drew wrote: “[ Pvt. Henry C.] Denbow [ a Pleasant Point Passamoquody Indian ] and Drew were on detail for extry duty and was on the move around the enemies camps and army most-all the time. “We were given the Spencer seven-shots carbine it was the first gun using the metallic cartridge I had ever seen, we tried them out – a .50 calibre, lever-action it would do in close quarters – not to be depended on over 150 yards the powder charge could not be increased. We preferred the old Springfield for all purposes. THEN I WAS CAPTURED:
“I think it was on the 18th of Dec. while on a reconnoriter [sic] with Comp’s. C. and K. down toards the Alexander and Richmond RR. I was captured by a band of Johnny’s holding a observation post into which I ran during a thick snow squall.
“They had [seen] our forces, and counted it two large for them to attack – and was on the move to avoid us in the squall when we meet. When they saw the red and green cross on my cap they shure did treat me fine- gave me a horse to ride, four of them guarded – two of them went to Richmond with me on a flat-car where we arrived in good shape ….”
FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT, when Pvt. Drew is declared a PRISONER OF WAR in Richmond !!
As Lt. General General Ulysses S. Grant pushes Gen. Meade's Army of the Potomac further south into Virginia -- on his OVERLAND CAMPAIGN ( sometimes called the Wilderness Campaign) beyond the Rappahannock, and then beyond the Rapidan -- the engagements of the Yankees with General Robert E Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia just become more and more ferocious ...the losses in terms of the number of men's lives, just staggering and unprecedented.
First the Battle of the Wilderness,
.... then the Battle of Spottsylvania Court House,
.... then the assault on the Mule Shoe -- the notorious Bloody Angle at Spottsylvania --
each creating literally heaps of human corpses lying in the Spottsylvania woods... MOST TO REMAIN LONG UNBURIED ...
At each engagement, the Confederates fight like wildcats, and give as good as they get -- General Lee shows off his strategic mastery and this topographers exercise an uncanny grasp of the hidden countryside ... Union losses mount....The finest fighters are mowed down ...Grant's men wonder, if he is a worse butcher than Burnsides.....
Nevertheless, Grant attains an advantage -- for a short time after the Wilderness it seems as if the Rebs show a new level of respect for the Union fighters, and are not leaving their defensive works to charge the Yankee lines. This limited advantage will not last for long, however....
NOW, almost a month after the launch of the OVERLAND CAMPAIGN it seems impossible that loss of life could escalate beyond the numbers of killed at Spottsylvania,
... but in fact, the party's just getting started. Now, GRANT and LEE SQUARE OFF AGAIN, this time at a field near COLD HARBOR TAVERN !! ... their armies dig in.
NOW, GRANT, UNPHASED BY THE CASTROPHIC LEVEL OF CASUALTIES OF THE PRECEDING MONTH, ORDERS THE CHARGE -- BUT WITHOUT ANY CORPS COHERENCE -- ACROSS 300 YARS OF OPEN FIELD, AND THE YANKEES FALL LIKE RIPE WHEAT BEFORE THE HARVESTER'S SICKLE!! The men retreat, and as his line is within reach of their own defensive works... PVT CALIF NEWTON DREW
IS HIT BY THE BLAST OF AN EXPLODING MORTAR !! HE IS KNOCKED SENSELESS ... his arm shattered, fingers blown off, a hole ripped in his abdomen ...AMPUTATION IS IN ORDER ...AND HE'S ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES !!
He's transferred to the Old Soldiers home in Washington D.C..
where, one Saturday morning, he receives an unexpected visitor....
FIND OUT WHO .. in YANKEE SCOUT -- Cold Harbor !!
YANKEE SCOUT in the CIVIL WAR !! COLD HARBOR
Following the stalemate called the MINE RUN CAMPAIGN of late November, 1863, the warring armies of the Confederacy and the United States have encamped for the Winter in Culpeper and Orange counties, Va., respectively, and Pvts Drew and Denbo been assigned to roving duty. Drew wrote: “[ Pvt. Henry C.] Denbow [ a Pleasant Point Passamoquody Indian ] and Drew were on detail for extry duty and was on the move around the enemies camps and army most-all the time. “We were given the Spencer seven-shots carbine it was the first gun using the metallic cartridge I had ever seen, we tried them out – a .50 calibre, lever-action it would do in close quarters – not to be depended on over 150 yards the powder charge could not be increased. We preferred the old Springfield for all purposes. THEN I WAS CAPTURED:
“I think it was on the 18th of Dec. while on a reconnoriter [sic] with Comp’s. C. and K. down toards the Alexander and Richmond RR. I was captured by a band of Johnny’s holding a observation post into which I ran during a thick snow squall.
“They had [seen] our forces, and counted it two large for them to attack – and was on the move to avoid us in the squall when we meet. When they saw the red and green cross on my cap they shure did treat me fine- gave me a horse to ride, four of them guarded – two of them went to Richmond with me on a flat-car where we arrived in good shape ….”
FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT, when Pvt. Drew is declared a PRISONER OF WAR in Richmond !!
Veterans Credentials - POWERFUL US Military Quotes & ImagesStephen Jones
Welcome to a POWERFUL slideshow that captures some of the best US military quotes - both past and present, along with recent images from the War in Iraq.
YANKEE SCOUT -- SPOTTSYLVANIA & the BLOODY ANGLERoch Steinbach
FOLLOWING the Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-7, and the surprise killing of GEN JOHN SEDGWICK by sniper fire, on the morning of May 9, the Union Army chain of command is greatly disrupted: GENERAL GRANT voices the opinion that he could better spare the loss of an entire division, than to lose Gen. Sedgwick.
Forced adjustments in the chain of Army command now put the alcoholic Gen H.A.G. Wright in charge of the VI Corps, and open up an "internal front" within the Union Army itself -- leaving a wide opening also, for the advancement of the ambitions of a young COL. EMORY UPTON -- the chief tactical innovator and tactical drill instructor of the Union Forces.
UPTPON HAS AN IDEA for a completely new type of tactical configuration of the troops, into formations which he believes will make for more effective assault on enemy Confederate works. BASED UPON his months and months of training of Yankee troops at Brandy Station, Upton takes his innovative idea directly to GENERAL GRANT -- who concurs with UPTON's proposal....
TO EXECUTE THE ATTACK, Upton picks the Union's most proven fighters for his charge ... and WHAT HAPPENS NEXT will fell the finest flower of the Union Army in just a few short minutes.
THEIR STORY makes for a fitting objective, this MEMORIAL DAY...
On March 8, 1862 a most remarkable-looking vessel appeared in Hampton Roads, off the coast of Newport News, and began firing salvos at some of the grandest fighting ships of the U.S. Navy, the U.S.S Congress and the U..S.S. Cumberland. The crews were forced to abandon ship, and swim for shore. It looked as if the United States Navy had been bested by this ungainly, low-slung ironclad ram!! Until, the next morning, March 9, the U.S.S. Monitor -- another "ironclad" specially engineered for sub-surface operations, appeared on the scene. The battle changed the course of naval history FOREVER. Find out how ....
During the War of 1812, one necessary means of evading the enemy at sea, was deception, and hence the use of a FALSE FLAG was common for all vessels of war. See SYM-Zonia -- FALSE FLAG !! But privateers also had to survive during the conflict, and they resorted to deceptions as well: from false flags, to false cargo manifests or bills of lading, to false licenses -- and even false paint jobs and fake names for their vessels. in this CLASSIC issue of SYM-Zonia, follow the intrigues of Capt. Abimilech Riggs and the crew of the New England shaving mill, the Wiley Reynard as they seek to evade capture by British man-o-war and privateers, in an effort to deliver a key cargo to strategically selected European ports -- during the Napoleonic wars !!! Was the Wiley Reynard really the REWARD??? (Does it get better? Show me where ...)
PLUS: Our man in the field, R.Katushka delivers an EXCLUSIVE: the first shots of the Lost Stone Citadel of the Che-am-El Indians !!!
NOTES ON SKETCHES K AND K NO. 2 FROM LT. MacARTHUR'S PRELIMINARY SURVEY of th...Roch Steinbach
Certainly the best way to gain an appreciation for the merits of a harbor, is to attend to the operations of its harbor pilots, and the opinions of those who have worked and run their vessels in the harbor itself. The SECOND great American survey of the Harbor of the Mouth of the Columbia was conducted in 1850, under the command of Lt. William P. MacArthur, U.S.N. [The first survey was in 1841, under Comm. Wilkes of the United States Exploring Expedition.] Lt. MacArthur's survey not only required weeks for his team, in triangulations and soundings, to develop a full hydrographic profile and thus an entirely revamped, and scientifically up-to-date chart of the harbor; but its clear also that Lt. MacArthur and his team held numerous interviews with -- and toured the river mouth with -- the extraordinary men who had already mapped the channels in their mind: namely, river pilots like Capt. Charles White, Capt. George Flavel and maybe even Capt. Wm. Tichenor, founder of Port Orford. This research paper begins to scratch into the history of this survey, the re "discovery" of the South Channel so critical to safe commercial shipping, and Lt. MacArthur's role in Oregon City, addressing the Territorial Government on the critical issue of necessary harbor improvements ...
Veterans Credentials - POWERFUL US Military Quotes & ImagesStephen Jones
Welcome to a POWERFUL slideshow that captures some of the best US military quotes - both past and present, along with recent images from the War in Iraq.
YANKEE SCOUT -- SPOTTSYLVANIA & the BLOODY ANGLERoch Steinbach
FOLLOWING the Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-7, and the surprise killing of GEN JOHN SEDGWICK by sniper fire, on the morning of May 9, the Union Army chain of command is greatly disrupted: GENERAL GRANT voices the opinion that he could better spare the loss of an entire division, than to lose Gen. Sedgwick.
Forced adjustments in the chain of Army command now put the alcoholic Gen H.A.G. Wright in charge of the VI Corps, and open up an "internal front" within the Union Army itself -- leaving a wide opening also, for the advancement of the ambitions of a young COL. EMORY UPTON -- the chief tactical innovator and tactical drill instructor of the Union Forces.
UPTPON HAS AN IDEA for a completely new type of tactical configuration of the troops, into formations which he believes will make for more effective assault on enemy Confederate works. BASED UPON his months and months of training of Yankee troops at Brandy Station, Upton takes his innovative idea directly to GENERAL GRANT -- who concurs with UPTON's proposal....
TO EXECUTE THE ATTACK, Upton picks the Union's most proven fighters for his charge ... and WHAT HAPPENS NEXT will fell the finest flower of the Union Army in just a few short minutes.
THEIR STORY makes for a fitting objective, this MEMORIAL DAY...
On March 8, 1862 a most remarkable-looking vessel appeared in Hampton Roads, off the coast of Newport News, and began firing salvos at some of the grandest fighting ships of the U.S. Navy, the U.S.S Congress and the U..S.S. Cumberland. The crews were forced to abandon ship, and swim for shore. It looked as if the United States Navy had been bested by this ungainly, low-slung ironclad ram!! Until, the next morning, March 9, the U.S.S. Monitor -- another "ironclad" specially engineered for sub-surface operations, appeared on the scene. The battle changed the course of naval history FOREVER. Find out how ....
During the War of 1812, one necessary means of evading the enemy at sea, was deception, and hence the use of a FALSE FLAG was common for all vessels of war. See SYM-Zonia -- FALSE FLAG !! But privateers also had to survive during the conflict, and they resorted to deceptions as well: from false flags, to false cargo manifests or bills of lading, to false licenses -- and even false paint jobs and fake names for their vessels. in this CLASSIC issue of SYM-Zonia, follow the intrigues of Capt. Abimilech Riggs and the crew of the New England shaving mill, the Wiley Reynard as they seek to evade capture by British man-o-war and privateers, in an effort to deliver a key cargo to strategically selected European ports -- during the Napoleonic wars !!! Was the Wiley Reynard really the REWARD??? (Does it get better? Show me where ...)
PLUS: Our man in the field, R.Katushka delivers an EXCLUSIVE: the first shots of the Lost Stone Citadel of the Che-am-El Indians !!!
NOTES ON SKETCHES K AND K NO. 2 FROM LT. MacARTHUR'S PRELIMINARY SURVEY of th...Roch Steinbach
Certainly the best way to gain an appreciation for the merits of a harbor, is to attend to the operations of its harbor pilots, and the opinions of those who have worked and run their vessels in the harbor itself. The SECOND great American survey of the Harbor of the Mouth of the Columbia was conducted in 1850, under the command of Lt. William P. MacArthur, U.S.N. [The first survey was in 1841, under Comm. Wilkes of the United States Exploring Expedition.] Lt. MacArthur's survey not only required weeks for his team, in triangulations and soundings, to develop a full hydrographic profile and thus an entirely revamped, and scientifically up-to-date chart of the harbor; but its clear also that Lt. MacArthur and his team held numerous interviews with -- and toured the river mouth with -- the extraordinary men who had already mapped the channels in their mind: namely, river pilots like Capt. Charles White, Capt. George Flavel and maybe even Capt. Wm. Tichenor, founder of Port Orford. This research paper begins to scratch into the history of this survey, the re "discovery" of the South Channel so critical to safe commercial shipping, and Lt. MacArthur's role in Oregon City, addressing the Territorial Government on the critical issue of necessary harbor improvements ...
Following immediately on the heels of the "sleeper" SEQUESTERED Issue from Last Week,, this SHORT-SHEETED issue was the Big Kahuna of 2013 ! Never before and never since has the United States Navy suffered a mutiny on one of its ships, much less on a TRAINING VESSEL!!! The Somers Mutiny Affiair stands alone in the annals of U.S history as the darkest day ever for naval discipline. But was the sentence meted out to midshipman Philip Spencer et al, a just one? The truth of the matter is, that his "Sheet anchor of Greek Code" hbas been misunderstood as a simplistic transliteration of English into Greek .. but on this LEVIATHAN of a Puzzler, Goldengate takes the laurels as he lays out the case for 'A CODE WITHIN THE CODE" !!!!
In an age of utter deception, in which even the nation's most formidable military threat, is supported by elements in the United States Executive administration, it's important to understand that the early American patriots knew a thing or two about FALSE FLAGS too. In this rare, and hard-to-obtain CLASSIC issue of SYM-Zonia, Goldengate presents the evidence that James Fenimore Cooper was not just an inkhorn "auteur" with a flair for brilliant naval adventure-stories, but that he was an enlisted U.S. Naval cadet -- a midshipman, or "middy' for short -- who served under Capt. Lawrence aboard the U.S. S. Hornet during the war of 1812 !! You'll think otherwise until you see our evidence. What does it mean that America's first and greatest novelist had covered up his Naval service?
Plus an indispensable review of the life and times of Phillip Freneau, details on the Port Orford Pole Shift. AND the Langlois Ledger covers the Poetry Slam at the Whale-of-a-Tale café, in which Stephanie Beckon reads Eberhart's epic introduced in the STONE IDOL issue !!!
Even at a remove of some 150 years following the cataclysmic conflict of the Great War of the Rebellion or CIVIL WAR -- as most would have it -- there appear to be almost no historical treatments of General Joe Hooker’s creation of the Union Army’s 6th Corps Light Division – or sometimes, the Light Brigade – in the spring of 1863;
But your own memorialist, Pvt. CALIF NEWTON DREW, YANKEE SCOUT in the CIVIL WAR!! described the newly created Light Division in some detail, at p. 82 of his Memoir, where he wrote:
“On parade one evening by Gen’l Orders we was informed that the Reg’t was a unit in the Light Division of the 6th Corps which was composed of the 61st Pa Inft; 31st N.Y. Inf’t ; 43rd N.Y. Inf’t; 6th Me Inf’ty; 5th Wisc. Inf’ty. The 3rd N.Y. L:ight Battery of Artillery was attached to the Division and Gen’l John Newton was put in command of the Division.
“By Order of the 3rd of Feb. of Gen’l Joe Hooker, Commanding Army of the Potomac (Feb 3rd, 1863) the Light Division was supposed to be selection of the best troops in the [6th] Corps. They were to move at a moment’s notice in light marching order with 100 extra rounds of ammunition. Pack mules was to convay our knapsacks, tents, blankets and all over one days rations. We was to move with the cavalry when and where they needed infantry support, so we started to get acquainted. [P. 83 ] The 5th Wisc. was our sister regiment. The 31st Pa. we had seen under fire and they had stood up to the work in fine shape. We had a number of our men in the battery and we took the judgment of those who made the selection as to the efficiency of the New York men.” [All emphases added, here and throughout.]
The newly formed Light Division saw its first major action on April 30, 1863 in the Battle of Marye’s Heights – an engagement almost as lost to history, as the Light Division itself. The battle is sometimes otherwise known as the Second Battle of Fredericksburg ...
THIS IS THE REAL STORY
YES -- FANS, this is the story that started it all !!
IT'S A DESPARATE tale of Civil War deprivations and FORAGING by the half-starved men of the 6th Maine Infantry, one of the regiments in Brig-Gen's Winfield Scott Hancock's historic First Brigade that saw good service at Williamsburg and White Oak Swamp earlier in the advance of Gen. McClellan's 1862 Peninsular Campaign, and only more recently skirmished with Rebs at Second Battle of Bull Run !!
THE BATTLE-SCARRED men now make their way through a war-ravaged District of Columbia on their way to a certain rendezvous with the Army of Northern Virginia under command of Gen. Robert E Lee -- first at the battle of South Mountain, and shortly thereafter at ANTIETAM. But meanwhile, the men of the U.S. Army must EAT and as they enter Southern-sympathetic MARYLAND the citizens HOLDOUT on them, and official provisions are scarce, and what there is, is limited to Lincoln' s HARD-TACK and SALT PORK -- and if they want to sink their teeth into any fresh meat, the men are obliged to take DESPARATE MEASURES !! And then, they see the answer: Now ...
FIND OUT HOW THEY STOLE THE GOOSE, KEPT IT SECRET, AND THEN COOKED IT GOOD ....
LESSON 3
“Co. Aytch”
pp 1- 41
1
Co. Aytch
Chapter 2 - Shiloh
This was the first big battle in which our regiment had ever been engaged. I do
not pretend to ten of what command distinguished itself; of heroes; of blood and
wounds; of shrieks 'and groans; of brilliant charges; of cannon captured, etc. I was but a
private soldier, and if I happened to look to see if I could find out anything, "Eyes right,
guide center/' was the order.”Close up, guide right, halt, forward, right oblique, left
oblique, halt, forward, guide center, eyes right, dress up promptly in the rear, steady,
double quick, charge bayonets, fire at will," is about all that a private soldier ever knows
of a battle. He can see the smoke rise and the flash of the enemy's guns, and he can
hear the whistle of the minnie and cannon baIls, but he has got to load and shoot as
hard as he can tear and ram cartridge, or he will soon find out, like the Irishman who
had been shooting blank cartridges, when a ball happened to strike him, and he haloed
out, "Faith, Pat, and be jabbers, them fellows are shooting bullets. But I nevertheless
remember many things that came under my observation in this battle. I remember a
man by the name of Smith stepping deliberately out of the ranks and shooting his finger
off to keep out of the fight; of another poor fellow who was accidentally shot and killed
by the discharge of another person's gun, and of others suddenly taken sick with colic.
Our regiment was the 'advance guard on Saturday evening, and did a little skirmishing;
but 40 Advancing a little further on, we saw General Albert Sidney Johnson 1
surrounded by his staff and Governor Harris, of Tennessee. We saw some little
commotion among those who surrounded him, but we did not know at the time that he
was dead. The fact was kept from the troops. About noon a courier dashed up and
ordered us to go forward and support General Bragg's center. We had to pass over the
ground where troops had been fighting all day.
I had heard and read of battlefields, seen pictures of battlefields, of horses and
men, of cannon and wagons, all jumbled together, while the ground was strewn with
dead and dying and wounded, but I must confess that I never realized the "pomp and
circumstance” of the thing called glorious war until I saw these men were lying in every
conceivable position; the dead lying with their eyes wide open, the wounded begging
piteously for help, and some waving their hats and shouting to us to go forward. It all
seemed to me a dream; I seemed to be in a sort of haze, when Biz, Biz, Biz, the minnie
balls from the Yankee line began to whistle around our ears, and I thought of the
Irishman when he said, "Sure enough, those fellows are shooting bullets!
Down would drop first one fellow and then another, either killed or wounded,
when we were ordered to charge bayonets. I had been feeling mean all the morning as
if I had stolen a sheep, but w ...
DURING a long hibernation at Brandy Station, Virginia -- the Army of the Potomac's Winter Quarters for 1863-64 -- the Army BRASS is not allowing the troops to remain idle, or become remiss in the exercise of acquired tactical skills, and so Col. EMORY UPTON has been assigned to DRILL the be-je*** out of the men, and is doing so using modifications to the accepted drill routine, as set down by Brig Gen. Casey ...
BUT PVT. DREW is now back in Camp !! He has been away on a sort of surprise CHRISTMAS FURLOUGH, a furlough resulting upon being captured by Confederate soldiers and escorted under guard into the Confederate Seat -- Richmond !! -- where the Provost Guard declares him a Prisoner of War. The prisoners are marched to Belle Island in the night, and under cover of darkness, Pvt. Drew escapes !! And the, it is only with the unexpected help of a canny young Richmond slave that he manages to stay out of sight, he able to flee from the Confederacy, and soon
make his way back north.
NOW GENERAL GRANT arrives at Brandy Station and begins planning for the Spring Offensive:: an operation that will become known as the Overland Campaign. GEN ROBERT E LEE first intercepts GANT near the old battlefield of Chancellorsville, and soon THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS is on !!
READ ALL ABOUT IT -- only in YANKEE SCOUT !! In the CIVIL WAR !!
The ALl-TRUE ADVENTURES of PVT. CALIF NEWTON DREW !!
Following the decisive Battle of Rappahannock Station on the Rappahannock River, on November 7, 1863, General Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, DEFEATED, have now RETREATED further into Virginia, abandoning their Winter Quarters in Culpeper County, and continuing on south into Orange County, taking up new positions, and establishing his camp south of the Rapidan River in Orange County, near an overflown creek, known as Mine Run. Union Gen Meade gives Gen. John Sedgwick one last campaign assignment.
The Mine Run Campaign, so-called, was the General Meade's last-ditch effort to engage Lee's Army before the full onset of the Winter of ‘63-64. But Lee's new Winter Quarters south of Mine Run were so formidably defended -- by swamplands to the northwest, mingling with the overflown ice-cold waters of Mine Run itself, and a dozen other small creeks and sloughs; and furthermore blocked with thickets of slash and timber – “abattis” -- that the Army of Northern Virginia was completely impregnable to standard attack here!! The landscape was incomprehensible to military tactics, and thus thwarted every strategy: therefore, skirmishes dominated the "campaign" and isolated limited engagements marked the end of the 1863 fighting season, with Meade throwing in the towel.
Such indeterminacy does not make for STANDARD military literature -- but Pvt. Drew's narrative of scouting MINE RUN, and other relevant action, can be counter-pointed with other accounts to realize a vivid vision of the wintertime action !!
As we learned in the Last Issue of YANKEE SCOUT – Fredericksburg!! – the Union Army is now reeling with the implications of a military,strategic and moral catastrophe precipitated by growing awareness of the grim news, of it’s unprecedented battlefield losses incurred before Fredericksburg, Virginia, on December 12, 1862 – a scene of carnage that was already being dubbed “the Slaughter Pen” by the men, even as it was occurring.
United States Army forces commanded by Gen. Ambrose Burnside, saw a staggering level of losses: Pvt. Drew will peg
the Yankee killed under Gen. Burnside at 12,172 -- men uselessly sacrificed at the Battle of Fredericksburg: for not a single square inch of rebel-held territory has been taken, and Burnside has finally been forced to retreat again, north across the Rappahannock.
Meanwhile, the loss to Gen. Lee’s rebel Army of Virginia Drew reckons on the order of 5, 377. Up to this point in the Civil War, only casualties on the battlefield at Antietam, the preceding September, can compare with these new numbers of Yankee lives extinguished. Gen. Burnside, too, has seen better days. After removing Gen. McClellan (again) President Lincoln
had offered Burnside command of the Army of the Potomac in
recognition of his signal victories at Roanoke Island and New Bern, early in the war. …
Now however, after Fredericksburg, the winds of destiny seem to have shifted against Gen. Burnside ….
The ignominy now to be achieved through his pointless "MUD CAMPAIGN" will now finish his command of the Army of the Potomac, and President Lincoln will hand the Army to Hooker, placing GEN. JOHN SEDGWICK in command of the 6th Corps.
West Point History, Facts and Trivia; aka Plebe "Poop"Bob Mayer
Interesting facts and trivia about the United States Military Academy. About the graduates, the institution and the history. No place has had such a profound influence on our country as West Point.
Poetry and background to Maurice Crowther, a World War 2 veteran who fought in Malaya and Singapore between 1941 to 1945. He was interned in Changi and subsequently worked as a convict labourer in Korea and Japan. Useful for students who are studying World War 2 in Asia from the perspective of European soldiers caught up in the war.
Similar to YANKEE SCOUT -- Killing of General Sedgwick !! (18)
With Falls City, in Polk County, Oregon lying dead center along the line of the line of east-west traverse of the moon's shadow from the coming August 21 eclipse, we thought it appropriate to commemorate this historic event with the publication (by uploading) of this LOST issues of the PYM PUZZLER -- MISSING PERSONS !
Falls City (Oregon) is one of Oregon’s gemstones-of a–town, which – about a century ago, was about the burgeoningist logging and lumber-milling towns on the Little Luckiamute River, in the foothills of the Coast Range, in western Polk County. TAKE NOTE: the City took its name from a particularly powerful waterfall on that same Little Luckimaute river, west and upriver a spot, from the heart of where the town was built: for it is there that the Little Luckiamute not only “falls” but – in its natural state – is largely propelled where it is funneled through a congestion of rocks on the banks at the brink of the falls – creating an especially spumey cataract of some 40-50 feet.
HOWEVER, at the time of the events in question in This Week’s Puzzler, the Little Luckiamute was dammed – a development enplaced during the late 1800’s – as pictured above. Water in the reservoir behind the dam, was diverted via an aquaduct of tongue-and-groove fir boards, to power the sawmill on the south bank of the Luckiamute … BUT THERE'S SOMETHING MYSTERIOUS GOING ON HERE ... FIND OUT INSIDE !!
DESCRIPTION OF THE MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER -- Capt. Wm. Black (1813) Roch Steinbach
H.M.S. Racoon, Capt. Black, enters the mouth of teh Columbia River Nov. 30, 1913 to take possession of Astoria, during the War of 1812 !!.
I transcribed this extraordinary document a decade or so ago, from a photostatic copy held in the collection of the Oregon Historical Society. Apparently there are gaps in the text, or in the imagery of the text, or perhaps I just need to get back in and finish the job??? This is my complete effort at the time, and includes Capt. Black's description of critical repairs to teh Raccoon at at Angel Island, as well as of Mission San Francisco in early 1814, Monterey etc., and rather extensive material on Black's relationship with the Mexican government at the time... A HUGE DOCUMENT, totally underexposed...
IT'S ALL IN THE MINES !! -- RE-OPEN THE BUREAU OF MINESRoch Steinbach
I suggest here, that the Commerce Departmentshould be restored as an engine of productivity, modelled after Herbert Hoover’s Commerce re-organization, and featuring a restored Bureau of Mines understood as the very threshold of any real recovery of the U.S. industrial capacity, and directed at relieving the bottleneck at the very front of the cycle of production: that is, by actively promoting mineral exploration with an objective of actively advancing mining. The Bureau of Mines should be resuscitated and restored to a central position in Commerce, as stated. Under Hoover, an Englishman seeking to market English industrial output in the U.S. once said, “Our competitor is not so much American industry as it is the United Stated Department of Commerce.” But a century of progressive distortion to the very concept of Commerce, has now limited the meaning of the word, to simple trade or movement of goods generally imported, without any relationship to their native origin, or the level of science applied in finishing them for market. Recreating the BoM within Commerce may help to straighten out this badly skewed understanding, as well as recreating the sense of National mission-orientation which should cloak highly productive activity like mining
HOOVER'S BUILDING CODE COMMITTEE REPORT -- 1925Roch Steinbach
AS EARLLY AS THE 1920'S there were widespread complaints in the construction industry, about inconsistency in the way building codes were being implemented. In 1920 the Senate Select Committee on Reconstruction and Production concluded: "The building codes of the country have not been developed upon scientific data, but rather on compromises; they are not uniform in principle and in many instances
involve an additional cost of construction without assuring most useful or more durable buildings. TWO YEARS LATER, new Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover reported to Congress that conflicting building codes were increasing construction costs by 10 to 20 percent. Hoover appointed a Building Code Committee to draft recommendations that could be
used by local governments in preparing codes. The committee worked with the National Bureau of Standards until 1933, when funding was curtailed.
HERE., BY WAY OF ILLUSTRATION IS A REPORT ISSUED BY HOOVER'S BUILDING CODE COMMITTEE IN 1925 ....
HERE IT IS !!!! PART 3 OF THREE FROM SYM-ZONIA'S SUMMER OF SYM.-ERGY ~~~ (2014) with it's original BONUS COVER !!!
YES, it's a fact: THE PYRAMID LAKE INDIAN RESERVATION as it turned out, is shaped just like the outline of a KEY!!! making it beyond any doubt the TRUE KEY of the TRUCKEE RIVER... But we all know there's little sense in having a TRUE KEY until you can also match it to its TRUE LOCK !! So JOIN Native American UNK-KNOWN, Stephanie Beckon, Randy Kajtushka and the regular cast of experts, along w/ COL. JOHN CHARLES FREMONT, as they do what they can to assist Rupert Roget (Ret) former surveyor of Coon County, Oregon, to locate the TRUE LOCK that can UNLOCK your SUMMER OF SYM-ERGY !!!
TONY CHAITKIN: THE COUP -- KENNEDY & TRUMP: THEN & NOWRoch Steinbach
BREAKING RESEARCH FROM TONY CHAITKIN on the Dulles, Lemnitzer mole-network w/in the FDR Admin, and wholly dedicated to betrayal of the American V-E success, and FDR's legacy and plans -- as announced at Yalta -- for breaking up the British colonial system and ending colonialism for good. FDR's death, supposed an assassination by some leading U.S. historians, but not so referenced here -- shut-down implementation of this 4-term President's plans for securing the peace along those lines. "Those FDR had called the “Tories” rushed in to assert control over U.S. strategy' the result, inter alia, being NATO...
THIS IS THE STORY OF THAT SAME NETWORK behind the Kennedy assassination, maintaining maximum control over the U.S. Presidency during the Cold War, and which is still active -- and now largely exposed -- in the ongoing attacks on President Trump. Here,Chaitkin also discusses the work of Kennedy Administration in the production of two Hollywood films, the "Manchurian Candidate", and "Seven Days in May" -- the first released during the Cuban missile crisis, and the latter forecasting some details of a coup anticipated against a FUTURE president: DONALD TRUMP is now in their crosshairs.
FROM CHAITKIN'S INTRO:
"The Anglo-American oligarchy began a coup against President Donald Trump after his surprise 2016 election. They were in a panic to block his announced aims of partnership with Russia, the end of permanent war, the overturn of preda-tory Free Trade, and the return of Glass Steagall to break Wall Street’s power. The panic turned into a frenzy on the Russian angle, as it emerged that Trump had been working with strategic advisors who were prepared to return the United States to its traditional support for national sovereignty, and drop the regime-change insanity pursued by Presidents Bush and Obama.
"We have seen this kind of coup d’etat before, against the outstanding na-tionalist U.S. President of the second half of the 20th century, John F. Kennedy.We have lived in the shadow of that coup ever since. Perhaps throwing some new light on those events and, most importantly, what Kennedy himself understood about them, can help us see our way now to sanity and survival."
DOCUMENT PRESENTED HERE INCLUDES MAJOR ORIGINAL RESEARCH on Kennedy as a post-war correspondent for the Heart newspapers, covering the conference at Potsdam as a reporter, and the synchronization of efforts to initiate the Cold War; the rise of NATO, and JFK's own tour of Asia in 1951... MORE MORE MORE
CAPT. GEO FLAVEL -- WRECK & PERIL OF THE GEN'L WARREN -- LONG FORMRoch Steinbach
THIS IS THE SAME GRIPPING TALE told with CONTEMPORARY MAPS of the Mouth of the Columbia River !! A tale of the dangers of Pacific coast travel in the 1850's, before e there was any COAST GUARD PRESENCE on the river. The tale of the WRECK & PERIL of the GENERAL WARREN was a needless disaster occasioned by pride & foolhardiness; and triggered a daring sea-rescue gone wrong on the bar, at the mouth of the Columbia River, January, 1852.
THE SHIPWRECK WAS the virtually inevitable outcome of an unregulated shipping industry exploited by Pacific coast capitalists working the "coasting trade" between the newly recognized Oregon Territory and the equally untested State of California. The vessel that went down -- the General Warren -- was an 1844 screw steamer that left service in New York in 1850, and arrived in San Francisco on July 20, 1851: she was just one of a number of old tubs that were sailed around the Cape during the gold excitement in California. The disaster was entirely preventable -- and in fact was foreseen by a machinist who declined to accept work on the voyage outbound from Astoria: the voyage that wrecked the "General Warren". The story here is approximately as told in the papers of Oregon historian Fred Lockley.
PRESENTING THE ORIGINAL PYM PUZZLER in which was first posed the question PURPORTEDLY answered in the MATCH OF THE MILLENNIUM issue, as to whether the mysterious Western masterpiece "THE TRAPPER'S LAST SHOT'" is actually the artwork of WILLIAM TYLEE RANNEY as is conventionally and even universally accepted, or in fact does not -- as if FAR MORE LIKELY -- represent the work of a completely DIFFERENT WESTERN ARTIST, and one at east as good as RANNEY, maybe better, and who was a friend of JOE MEEK, whom all reasonable minds must agree, is actually represented in the painting , as he makes his lonesome transcontinental journey through MONTANA, and the headwaters of the Missouri River, ON HIS WAY TO WASHINGTON CITY, D.c., to beg for Federal aid for teh American settlers in Oregon !!
WAS BILLY BUDD AN ALBATROSS?
Billy Bud, an Albatross? Melville had described Billy’s hanging in chapter 26 this way: “In the pinioned figure arrived at the yard-end, to the wonder of all no motion was apparent, none save that created by the ships’s motion, in moderate weather so majestic in a great ship ponderously cannoned.”
The H.M.S. Dromedary mounted 44 guns, which might qualify the Dromedary as “ponderously cannoned” -- but, of course, so might any of scores of other British vessels of the age. At any rate, it is the ship’s MOTION, not her identity that is the focus of this line from Billy Budd. The ship’s ocean-going motions – yaw, roll, and pitch -- were the motions of all on board, who compensated instinctively, via a certain attunement of the inner-ear, or the acquisition of their “sea-legs,” to highly complex motions that could only have been interpreted, on land, as instability. Cf. “Sway”, “surge’ and “heave”. But these same motions were more “ponderously” imparted to the suspended bodies of the three mutineers, whose pendulous weight[s], elevated, and extended at the end of the yard-arm, would undergo corresponding acceleration of their movement, and amplification of inertial forces .. and more swinging.
In the last “Christmas in Richmond” issue of YANKEE SCOUT, our heroes George, the Fugitive Slave and Pvt. Calif Newton Drew, sub. nom “Sam” the slave, after a late night playing a Christmas Eve coloreds-only ball, in some large but unidentified warehouse down on the Richmond waterfront, had just pushed off from somewhere along the Richmond docks, quiet on this Christmas morning, out onto the frigid waters of the James River, as they make their desperate clandestine getaway from … RICHMOND, SEAT of the CONFEDERACY !!As part of the escape plan, Pvt. Drew is now thoroughly disguised in black-face makeup that was expertly applied by none other than George the slave himself, who, as an African-American, has an expert’s insight into this sort of thing, and who – being a barber – also cut Pvt. Drew’s hair “so short you could hardly see it.” [See last issue ! – Ed.] Now, with this baffling role-reversal, Pvt. Drew looks the spittin’ image of a strong young Ni….Ne….ne… ni … n-n African-American man, and is a suitable street-companion for George. Thus united in intent, and now largely in appearance, the two fugitives are stuck together like brothers, and ready to execute their common plan !!!
WILL THEY ESCAPE THE TENTACLES OF THE SLAVE STATE?
DRAFT ONLY -- PROPOSAL FOR A RE-ORGANIZED COMMERCE DEPTRoch Steinbach
THE U.S. ECONOMY NEEDS, IN PART, a Commerce Department re-organized along the lines of the one created by Herbert Hoover, during his service as Commerce Secretary. This Cabinet office became the engine to America's "Arsenal of Democracy" on the outbreak of WWII,
What Roosevelt appreciated in Hoover's Commerce Dept., was , however, was the extraordinary development and increase of influence that had accrued to Commerce, once it was helmed by a serious, hard-boiled U.S. mining engineer, responsible for successfully and profitably extracting mineral ores from the “bosom of the earth” using the most ingenious, leading-edge but reliable subterranean excavation, construction, mineral extraction technologies – and hard labor: Hoover himself had gotten his start working in the mines near Nevada City, California where he pushed mine-cars bodily, or manually, for a living. He also had to track the latest chemical-assaying techniques, work out cost-benefit projections for the latest milling machinery, guarantee the maintenance and upkeep of equipment, safety of existing shafts, and the digging of new ones, and personally create the “interfacing” of often–inaccessible mine-owners digs, by seeing to the construction of stub lines to the nearest rail-connections, in order to ensure transfer of ores to milling and processing plants sometimes scores or hundreds of miles away; and bring it all to work employing sometimes strife-ridden labor: all to start and then maintain productivity, not merely as against a fluctuating market demand, but sometimes also against all the physical, geological and material resistance that Mother Nature could compile to thwart him. The role of the mining engineer, in interfacing between hard, natural & physical contingencies and the masses of economic mankind, in order to render the former economically fruitful to the latter, is little appreciated today, when business often is reduced to playing by or adjusting man-made rules … creating new manners of valueless fictional papers is seen as showing business acumen.
HERE IT IS -- PERHAPS THE APEX of internet-based online historical puzzling, the classic CAUGHT ON TYPE !! issue of the PYM PUZZLER, edited by A.P. Dromgoole. This timeless issue craftily discloses, almost for the first time, the true but hidden history of the California Gold Rush, which opened not in 1849 with an exodus of New Englanders from the EAST Coast, but INSTEAD in August, 18848, with an exodus of OREGONIANS from the PACIFIC coast, -- from the Willamette Valley, in particular, heading south to California. The story begins when a strange single-masted vessel moors along the waterfront in Oregon City, just below the Falls, and begins buying up all the supplies in town !!! Why? SOON ENOUGH word leaks out of the gold strikes in the Sacramento valley, and before long wagon-trains are forming up locally, and men are leaving behind their well-tended fields and crops,their homesteads, and even their wives and children, for a long-shot chance to STRIKE IT RICH !! Amongst these men are some significant figures, who will soon make their mark on California history -- most notably the Honorable "P.' who makes a point of soliciting into his company, one young man, Charlie Putnam: the unknown, nondescript typesetter for the only newspaper being published on the Tualatin Plains in 1848 !! But just who was "The Honorable P" and why did he want to bring Charley along, of all people in the valley? Luckily some of their conversation was CAUGHT ON TYPE !! So perhaps you can find out, in why .... Only in PM PUZZLER -- CAUGHT ON TYPE !!
In which was addressed for the first time in World history ''Who was the Perpetrator of the Perplexing Plats of the Umpqua River Watershed" and how & why did create such wild, colorful and geeky oddball municipal plats for the cities and towns of Douglas County -- for instance "DRAIN" !! FEATURING A
PERTINENT GUEST CONTRIBUTION FROM ASS DR. BECKON !!
THIRD PART OF THE TRILOGY famously begun in SYM-ZONIA -- WATERSHED MOMENT !!, in this issue Michael C. Goldengate returns with further details on the mysterious survey plats of DOUGLAS COUNTY, Oregon, and the Umpqua River basin, wherein are uniquely found the works of a figure known to posterity only as the B.O.U.B. And, in particular, Goldengate probes into what may be tender areas in the personal history of the B.O.U.B., when his survey work shows a departure from a generally happy-go-lucky disposition, and takes a turn towards the darker side of life, as seen in his "Brooding Burnt Umber" period. What happened to the B.O.U..B.to cause him to create such gloomy, despairing survey plats???
RECENT RUMORS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE will fall with welcome on the ears of Oregon's "agricultural" community (U.S. Department of Forestry is in the USDA !!) throughout the state, especially in Southern Oregon'd mostly mountainous counties like Jackson, Josephine, Coos, Curry and Douglas, where, along with mining, logging has always been the economic bedrock that kept county services viable.
AT SYM-ZONIA, we the remnant followers of Michael C. Goldengate (ska "Stargate") and Stephanie Beckon herself, which to commemorate the occasion of the possible pending return of protectionism for domestic manufactures and serious industry, with the re-release of this stupendous "DRAIN" issue, and its discussion of the extraordinary history of BOHEMIA COUNTY, Oregon which had its proposed county seat in the town of DRAIN, itself -- with a key contribution form Ass Dr. Beckon herself, addressing teh question of whether Drain, Oregon isn't in fact the location of the REAL Oregon Vortex.
NOTE: THIS ISSUE IS IN FOLLOWUP to the August 19, 2012 "WATERSHED MOMENT" ISSUE, which will appear later.
McNARY-HAUGEN -- 1927 HIGH SCHOOL DEBATE HANDBOOKRoch Steinbach
THIS 1927 PAMPHLET IS INSTRUCTIVE on at least two counts, FIRST, in that it details the finer points of public debate concerning the possible advantages and potential disadvantages of the passage of the McNary-Haugen farm surplus bill, vintage 1927, for the establishment of a National Ag Bank, and in doing so -- that is because of the extraordinary level of mastery of public policy issues represented by the prompts in this text -- it also makes for an embarrassing reminder of the catastrophic falloff in the calibre of American public education over the ensuing 90 years, and also in American public political debate in general. Certainly it also illustrates something all of Washington has forgotten, that the U.S. economy has a historical & widespread cultural foundation in serious scientific agriculture and in the pursuit of improvements both in cultivation techniques and in policies that benefited the FARMER.
IT JUST SO HAPPENS that Mr. Schmidt's Google "Search" engine, has buried most such texts in which the merits of McNary-Haugen are treated: even Congressional Record Reports and hearings are unavailable. There are some texts available for access at the Hathitrust, but these require a subscription to get access. This particular unusual text I obtained myself, and scanned in a digital scanner some time ago, as appears from the irregularity of the page positioning. It should be a good text to begin considering whether an updated McNary-Haugen type of Ag Bank might still be of use to American farmers in his quest for price parity.
WITH THE OROVILLE DAM emergency spillway threatening to give way releasing a deluge and possibly Feather River downstream into a literal SHIT RIVER threatening MARYSVILLE and YUBA CITY and numerous other tranquil settlements downriver, its may be worth recalling that the denizen of MARYSILLE were once obliged to adventure into the remotest and most inaccessible regions of the Pacific coast to find SHIT RIVER itself, which was then merely mythologicial....
THE DEBATE CONTINUES in advance of eager intellectual investigation to solve the question of the TRUE authorship of "William Tyee Ranney"'s under-appreciated Wild West masterpiece, "THE TRAPPER'S LAST SHOT" -- which, it is asserted by Interim Editor Dromgoole, actually shows Oregon Pioneer Father JOE MEEK on special embassy to Washington City, encountered and encircled by a marauding band of BLACKFEET Indians. SPECIAL ISSUE includes a blockbuster reader contribution, revealing a hidden "R" on the horse's saddelback -- BUT also establishing that the artist possessed advanced equine experience, tending once again to suggest it was JOHN MIX STANLEY, and not W.T. RANNEY, the stay-at-home, who executed this fine painting.
GUEST ESSAY -- WHAT IS AMERICA TO THE WORLD -- by TONY CHAITKINRoch Steinbach
A PRIMER ON REAL AMERICAN IDENITY:
Treasure trove of core historical truths on the founding and development of the uniquely scientific & cultural American identity, sketched by one of our top tier historians, this essay is written in a simple & direct style for a new generation of audience. Chaitkin begins with the English -- then intrinsically American -- history of the industrial revolution and its core leadership in the person of Benjamin Franklin -- inventor, scientist, publisher, economist diplomat, and advances into the key intellectual alliances that underlay the American Project for liberating mankind -- finding a kind of early apotheosis in Nichols Biddle's management of the Second Bank of the United States (1816-1836), and realized in Lincoln's administration, and again under FDR and Kennedy. Chaitkin then demonstrates the spread of the American ideal to Germany, Russia, and the nations of South America.
This article is straightforward and without footnotes -- but fact-check Chaitkin's hard-nosed accuracy and this essential distillation of history, against some of the author's copiously documented works, such as the book "Treason in America" or his co-authored, "Unauthorized Biography of George Bush", as well as a prolific list of articles in Executive Intelligence Review magazine.
ROGUE RIVER VALLEY WINES now enjoy a reputation for excellence, being well-received and served in establishments of hospitality, well, almost worldwide. Wines of the Jump-Off Joe Wining District are especially sought-after, by those in-the-know. But the earlier history of this Southern Oregon wine-growing region, and some of its pre-eminent Pioneer Wines, are not so well known. This vintage matured in 1894!
NOTE: The images shown in this story, are from R.E. Ivans, M.E., C.E., unique manuscript Map of the Placer Mining Properties .. on Jump Off Joe Creek (1898). This map could be copyrighted !!! – and we don’t mess with legitimate copyrights. See, e.g., How Do You Explain the Shipwrack of David Fasold’s Noah’s Ark? [Last week – Ed.] so we’re only going to show a miniature, and a few bits and pieces – just to be honorable. Players!!! Rest assured: this has nothing to do with withholding the true location of the real Bummer Gulch and Henry Wine’s claim. Or his hidden cache ….. Because – who would guess that they switched the names around, on later maps !!!! Meanwhile, most of the events related in this story took place up Jump-Off Joe, about 4-5 years before this humdinger of a map was made.
But the story began earlier... much, much earlier ….and, in digging into the lodes in the neighborhood of Jump-Off-Joe Creek, you'll learn the answer to The age-old question "WHY DO THEY CALL IT BUMMER GULCH?"
YES.. this is indeed the very FIRST issue oF SYM-ZOnia !!
Delivering Micro-Credentials in Technical and Vocational Education and TrainingAG2 Design
Explore how micro-credentials are transforming Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) with this comprehensive slide deck. Discover what micro-credentials are, their importance in TVET, the advantages they offer, and the insights from industry experts. Additionally, learn about the top software applications available for creating and managing micro-credentials. This presentation also includes valuable resources and a discussion on the future of these specialised certifications.
For more detailed information on delivering micro-credentials in TVET, visit this https://tvettrainer.com/delivering-micro-credentials-in-tvet/
MATATAG CURRICULUM: ASSESSING THE READINESS OF ELEM. PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS I...NelTorrente
In this research, it concludes that while the readiness of teachers in Caloocan City to implement the MATATAG Curriculum is generally positive, targeted efforts in professional development, resource distribution, support networks, and comprehensive preparation can address the existing gaps and ensure successful curriculum implementation.
A Strategic Approach: GenAI in EducationPeter Windle
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Generative AI, Image Generators and Large Language Models have had a dramatic impact on teaching, learning and assessment over the past 18 months. The most immediate threat AI posed was to Academic Integrity with Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) focusing their efforts on combating the use of GenAI in assessment. Guidelines were developed for staff and students, policies put in place too. Innovative educators have forged paths in the use of Generative AI for teaching, learning and assessments leading to pockets of transformation springing up across HEIs, often with little or no top-down guidance, support or direction.
This Gasta posits a strategic approach to integrating AI into HEIs to prepare staff, students and the curriculum for an evolving world and workplace. We will highlight the advantages of working with these technologies beyond the realm of teaching, learning and assessment by considering prompt engineering skills, industry impact, curriculum changes, and the need for staff upskilling. In contrast, not engaging strategically with Generative AI poses risks, including falling behind peers, missed opportunities and failing to ensure our graduates remain employable. The rapid evolution of AI technologies necessitates a proactive and strategic approach if we are to remain relevant.
This presentation was provided by Steph Pollock of The American Psychological Association’s Journals Program, and Damita Snow, of The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), for the initial session of NISO's 2024 Training Series "DEIA in the Scholarly Landscape." Session One: 'Setting Expectations: a DEIA Primer,' was held June 6, 2024.
Exploiting Artificial Intelligence for Empowering Researchers and Faculty, In...Dr. Vinod Kumar Kanvaria
Exploiting Artificial Intelligence for Empowering Researchers and Faculty,
International FDP on Fundamentals of Research in Social Sciences
at Integral University, Lucknow, 06.06.2024
By Dr. Vinod Kumar Kanvaria
Normal Labour/ Stages of Labour/ Mechanism of LabourWasim Ak
Normal labor is also termed spontaneous labor, defined as the natural physiological process through which the fetus, placenta, and membranes are expelled from the uterus through the birth canal at term (37 to 42 weeks
This slide is special for master students (MIBS & MIFB) in UUM. Also useful for readers who are interested in the topic of contemporary Islamic banking.
3. There was a chariot racing around the stadium, and on that chariot sat a fly. As a great dust arose,
both from the pounding of the horses' hooves, and also from the turning of the wheels,
the fly exclaimed, "Oh what a mighty dust I have stirred up!"
Aesop
In the days following the Battle of the Wilderness (May 5-7, 1864), the Union
Army moved south out of the Wilderness of Spottslyvania – Spott’s Woods -
- mirroring the movements of General Lee and his Army of Northern
Virginia, as General Grant continued his pursuit.
Travelling little by night because of the thickets of underbrush, the Union
forces moved south by road through the forests, with troops sent out
skirmishing on either side, to guard the flanks of the advancing column.
Private Calif Newton Drew, Pvt. Henry C. Denbo, and other scouts of the
6th
Maine Infantry, were dispatched on this duty….
The Army of the Potomac eventually emerged into an area of sporadically-
timbered farmland in the neighborhood of the Spottsylvania County Court
House, Virginia, only to find that the rebel sharpshooters that had vigorously
harassed them in the thick undergrowth of the Wilderness, had now moved
up into the treetops, to positions which afforded them good vantage & many
clear shots of the Union skirmishers.
It is after a night of continuing tension in the Wilderness, that Pvt. Drew and his
comrades find themselves in the morning, now dodging from tree to tree, in order to escape being picked-off by
rebel sharpshooters. But one of these hits and kills Union Army Major-General John Sedgwick, and Pvt Drew
claims to be the last man to speak to him alive. And he’s not the only one …..
Is Pvt. Drew telling the truth? Remember what he wrote about Rappahannock Station ….
Is this just another manifestation of a Civil War Veteran’s “Egotistical Memoir”? Find out now:
Out of the Wilderness – Scouts Ordered
‘The country more open the roads better and it seems good to get out in the sunlight even if it is some warmer.
“[P. 145] At the end of the day’s march, after we had eaten a bite, the Regiment was advanced about ¼ of a mile
or more, and haulted in a thick groath of Oak timber and formed line of battle in a road and told to lay down and
hold that position until daylight and then take the skirmish for the day .
“I had never see the officer before who placed us there it was dark before we got in the place. Colonel Lincoln
ordered scouts out in front and on each flank.
“We always took such precaution unless we was shore there was pickets in front.
“The grown was levell no underbrush. On the right the scout reported all clear for a half a mile – no pickets.
“On the left the scouts found a rebel fort with guns mounted less than 200 spaces, the foes lines making a bend
and was nigher to us than in front – so we put our pickets on front and left and the [men] was ordered to be on
the watch also.
General John Sedgwick
4. Saved by Denbo
“No taking, no smoaking, no noise, no blanket – the men laid with their [weapons] in or close at hand. How still
it was, not even a treetoad was chippering. It was warm… I think the men in line was all asleep. I got up and took
a look at the pickets. Denbo’s signal reached me and I went to him, he had been up to the fort and heard the
rebs inside takking, couldn’t make out what they said, but they had loaded cannon in the fort. It must have been
past midnight. I started intending to get the men out of that road and had got close enough to see them when this
strange thing took place –
“The men was pushing themselves backward on their hand and knees, taking their guns with them. They got 50
feet or more [P 146 ] away from that road – they were thoroughly awake when they stoped. Not a word was
spoken. It seems as if some irresistible power had moved the line of battle out of [the] road where they settled
down and became as quiet as before. Denbo slapped me on the shoulder said “Come” and we went into the
brush some ways, when he said “The rebs’s going to fire the guns.”
[Image: Union troops worm themselves backwards after finding themselves in range of rebel works –
caption adapted from Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War, p. 354]
“Then guns -- 1, 2, --3—4 was discharged from the fort on our left – grapeshot, shrapnel and shell tore up the
grown where the men had laid. We got redy for the attack and waited, wide awake now. But not even a rebel
scout came out to see if they had down any harm to the Yanks.
“At the crack of day we got out of that place and joined the Brigade cooked and eate.
“The left battalion received a supply of ammunition and took our place as flankers for the Brigade.
“This was the 9th day of May, 1864.”
5. Gen’l Sedgwick Killed – May 9th, 1864
“As soon as we got our distant from the moveing column we received notice from the rebs that they was redy to
play ball. The column moved on a road, the line of skirmishers a 150 or more yards on the right in places where
the road bent it -- more or less the country was more open, the timber larger with less underbrush. The rebel
sharpshooters had gone to the treetops, there was a line of low rifle-pitts for our pickets to lay behind if they was
laying still, but we was on the move and they was no good to us. We could doge from tree to tree.
“About 9 o’clock A.M. we came to a place where the timber was thin being only a belt. We could see through it
and across a valley we [saw] negroes throwing up earthworks.” 1
EDITOR’S NOTE:
African-Americans under the yoke of slavery in the South,
were generally not directly commandeered or impressed into
service for the Confederate Army – since the master-slave
relationship was sacrosanct, slaves were a special category of
“chattel” and as such were protected by State and Confederate
constitutions. Rather, the Confederate Quartermaster in
Richmond would solicit slave-labor from slaveholding
Confederate citizens, generally through circulars or newspaper
advertisements, and then contract with the slave-owner for
payment of the work performed.
Of course, the slaves never saw a penny for their
labor…
For more, better get your hands on a copy of
1
Drew makes a special mention of having a view in the distance, of negroes in the employ of the Confederate
Quartermaster, at work digging entrenchments for the rebel troops. Note that in Drew’s narrative highlighted
below, Sedgwick himself asks if he doesn’t see a group of “Johnneys” in the distance throwing up earthworks …..
6. “The road came within some fifty yards of our skirmishers. There was
a couple of our guns setting [ P. 147 ] back on the road as if to let the
troops have the right of way. Out of the woods on the road rode
Gen’l Sedgwick. He took a look around, dismounted, his orderly
came up and took his bridal.”
EDITOR’S NOTE:
General Sedgwick’s General Orderly, or Aide–de-Camp at the time, was Maj. Charles A. Whittier. In the painting,
The Death of General Sedgwick, by Julian Scott, A.D.C. Whittier is shown kneeling at the far right, and holding a
bloodied handkerchief near the head of General Sedgwick. An archival photo of Major Whittier shows a man
with the same clean-shaven features and wearing a bow-tie: a testament to the accuracy of the portraiture in this
magnificent painting by Julian Scott. See below.
7. “The Gen’l [came] toards the skirmish line, I moved from behind the big tree and told him to go back, he was too
near our skirmishers. There was rebel sharpshooters up some of the trees that could reach him.
“As he came up he was taking his glass out of its case, and said, “What is that over there? I can see Johnneys
making earthworks, but ….’
“For God’s sake, Get behind this tree Gen’l!”
“Why, Helloo young man we are old acquaintances!”
2
“Yes, Gen’l, but get behind that tree or you’ll get shot!”
“Oh, I don’t think any of them will shoot me,” and he lifted his glass toards his eyes.
2
General John Sedgwick was much-beloved by his troops, and, according to Drew, was welcomed for treating
volunteer soldiers as well as he did “the regulars.” In the days following his appointment to replace Gen. Ambrose
Burnsides, Gen. Sedgwick had “made the rounds” of the camp of the Grand Army of the Potomac, but in disguise,
and wearing a civilian trench-coat, and in that way gotten familiar with his men. On one such enterprise, he came
upon the campfire of Pvt. Drew and his comrades, and in that way, “gotten acquainted.”
Later, at the battle of Rappahannock Station, Pvt. Drew had scouted the rebel camp and fortifications at Kelly’s
Ford and Rappahannock Station on the Rappahannock river, infiltrated the enemy camp, and returned with critical
intelligence on troop strength and artillery. These fortifications had been intended by General Lee, as his defensive
support for his winter quarters at Culpepper. However, the successful Union assault on the forces of Gen Jubal
Earley, and others, at Rappahannock Station, surprised Lee and forced him into the swamplands near Mine Run,
for the winter of ’63-’64. Thereafter, Sedgwick had gotten further “acquainted” with Drew, during the course of a
Board of Inquiry which Sedgwick called in the field, to review the army actions at Rappahannock Station.
8. “At that instant a bullet struck him just below the right eye, passed through, came out of the neck below the left
ear – he was dead before he struck the grown. He stood out in the opening a fair target and some rebel
sharpshooter had killed him.”
[ Image: Detail from Sneden, Plan of the Battle of Spottsylvania C.H., Virginia, fought May 8th
to 24th
, 1864 ,
with label “Sedgwick Killed here” (Library of Congress)]
9. “His staff had come up to the orderly and his horse I think some of them must have seen him fall for it seemed to
me three of them got there awfull quick. The 4 of [us] packed him back to the road and laid him down, I went
back on the fireing line.”
EDITOR’S NOTE:
Not surprisingly, four at least of General Sedgwick’s staff are shown in Julian Scott’s painting, kneeling over the
form of the dying general. They are – viewing right to left -- Maj. Charles A. Whittier, aide-de-camp, (again) at
Sedgwick’s head, and holding the handkerchief; next to him, Maj. Thomas Worcester Hyde, provost-marshall and
acting aide-de-camp; then Col. Charles H. Tomkins, chief of artillery, kneeling upright and with his arm extended
upward over Hyde’s head; and Lt. Col, Martin T. McMahon, assistant adjutant-general and chief of staff, near the
general’s feet, with his thumb pointed back over his shoulder, as if to say “Here is the ambulance. Let us move him
to the hospital….’
Another member of Sedgwick’s staff, Lt. Col. J. Ford Kent, inspector-general, appears in the picture at the left,
coming up behind the ambulance. See next page.
Julian Scott’s painting, “The Death of General Sedgwick,” is in the collection of the Drake House Museum, of
Plainfield N.J. The Drake House also has in its collection, a “key” to the figures represented, also done by the
artist. YANKEE SCOUT TM
gratefully acknowledges the assistance of curators and staff of the Drake House
Museum, in identifying the figures in Scott’s extraordinary painting w/ reference to Scott’s “key.” To learn more,
visit …
www.drakehouseplainfieldnj.org/
10. “This was a severe loss to the 6th Corps and the
Army. He was one of the regulars – a Gen’l who
respected the volunteers as much as the regulars, and
we loved him, honored and obeyed him and we
considered we had further cause to hammer the
Johnneys thus, on May 9th, 1864 Gen’l John
Sedgwick between 9 and 10 ‘clock was murdered.
“I am the last man that spoak to him.”
“With sadness in my heart I saw the ambulance bear
him way.”
EDITOR’S NOTE :
A member of the ambulance, a stretcher-bearer,
stands at the left of the painting, in front of Lt. Col. J.
Ford Kent, inspector–general, and “No. 8” in the key.
The stretcher-bearer is the largest standing figure in
the composition, but, like Drew, is a simple private in
the volunteer forces. Yet his features are distinctive,
and not generic, indicating a portrait. He brings a
blood-stained cot, its handles polished smooth from
use…
He wears his green woolen blanket as a sash; and
bears a G. I. leather cartridge box with a polished
brass emblem or clasp stamped U.S.….
11. Kneeling beside the dying general, Col. Charles H. Tomkins leans back and gestures --
pointing as if to the Stars and Stripes, seen dimly to the right, in the shadows. But the
ambulance has already arrived, and Dr. Ohlenschlager, the Maine Brigade Surgeon, is
treating Sedgwick, feeling his weakening pulse. So what is Tomkins gesturing at, if not
the tree-line across an open field in the distance, as if to explain, “The shot came from
that direction ….” See the discussion below.
A carte de visite image of Col. C. H. Tomkins confirms again the accuracy of artist Julian
Scott’s portraiture ….
12. “Never had such a gloom rested upon the whole army on account of the death of one man as came over
it when the heavy tidings passed along the lines that General Sedgwick was killed.
“Major-General John Sedgwick, who had so long been identified with the Sixth corps, was a native of
Connecticut. He graduated at West Point on the 30th
of June, 1837, and was at once assigned to the Second
artillery, as second-lieutenant. In 1839 he was promoted to first-lieutenant. He served in Mexico and was
brevetted captain for gallant and meritorious conduct, in the battles of Contreras and Cherubusco. He
was son after brevetted major for gallant conduct, and greatly distinguished himself in the attack on Cosino
gate, Mexico City. In 1845 he was made major of the First United States Cavalry, and served in Texas
until the breaking out of the rebellion. In March, 1861 he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel, Second
United States Cavalry; and in April promoted to the colonelcy of the Fourth Cavalry. He was made
brigadier-general of volunteers in August, 1861, and assigned to the command of a brigade in the Army of
the Potomac.
“He was afterward assigned to the command of the third division, Second corps, then under General
Sumner. He participated in the siege of Yorktown, and greatly distinguished himself in many battles of
the Peninsula. He was particularly noted at the battle of Fair Oaks, Savages’ Station and Glendale. His
division was one of the few divisions of the Army of the Potomac that rendered any assistance to General
Pope in his unfortunate campaign.
“At Antietam, he led his men repeatedly against the rebels, and as often forced back, until the ground over
which his division had fought was covered with dead. He was thrice wounded, but refused to be carried
from the field until faintness from loss of blood obliged him to relinquish his command.
“In December, 1862, he was nominated by the President a major-general of volunteers, and was confirmed
in March, 1863, with rank from the 31st
of May, 1862.
“In January following his promotion, he was assigned to the
command of the Ninth corps, and on the 5th
of February, was
transferred to the command of the Sixth corps, relieving general
Smith, who was assigned to the Ninth corps.
“Soon after taking command of our corps, the famous charge on
Fredericksburgh Heights was made, in which both the corps and
its commander acquired lasting renown. General Sedgwick was
especially commended by General Meade for the manner in
which he handled his corps at Rappahannock Station, and, in
General Meade’s absence, he was several times in command of
the army. He was on several occasions, offered the supreme
command of the army, but excessive modesty forbade him to
accept so important a command.
“No solider was more beloved by the army or honored by the
country than this noble general. His corps regarded him as a
father, and his great military abilities made his judgment, in all
critical emergencies, sought after by his superior as well as his
fellows….”
from George Thomas Stevens – Three Years in the Sixth Corps, pp. 327-28.
13. General Joe Johnston
The killing of General Sedgwick was of great significance not only in demoralizing the Union Army – and yet
enraging them to higher heroics and acts of daring – but also in shifting the chain of command within the VI Corps
in particular. The aftermath of Sedgwick’s killing, and its effect on the battles of Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor, is
discussed in the Next Issue of YANKEE SCOUT – Spottsylvania !!
The soldier or sharpshooter who hit Sedgwick could be credited with one of the most significant or key shots in
the Civil War. However, it was not the single most significant shot -- for Sedgwick had already declined the Supreme
Command of the Grand Army of the Potomac, and meanwhile, Lincoln’s alternate, General Ulysses S. Grant, was
already on the field, and (though leaving General Meade in titular command ) Grant had just commanded on the
day preceding, during the Battle of the Wilderness. See the Last Issue of YANKEE SCOUT !! So the Army
structure managed to absorb the loss of Sedgwick – but just barely.
Undoubtedly, the single most important shot of the Great War of
the Rebellion was an OVERSHOT – and one that had been fired
almost two years earlier on May 31, 1862:
On that day, Confederate General Joe Johnston was riding on
some mission, commanding the Confederate army in a
counterattack against Gen. George McClellan at the battle of Seven
Pines within just a few miles of Richmond, when a spent musket
ball struck him in the right shoulder at the same time as a fragment
of shrapnel from an overshot shell lodged in his chest. Johnston
was disabled – and as Confederate President Jefferson Davis had
left Richmond to view the action, he was also on the field and came
to the assistance of his fallen Commanding General.
It was clear Johnston’s service was done, and as he searched for a
replacement, Jefferson Davis decided on the spot to appoint his
own military advisor -- a Virginian of patrician heritage named
Robert E. Lee.
“From the night of May 31 when the President and Lee
returned to Richmond, the course of the settlement [of the
war] by arms began to change, leading to a change in the
nature of the war and finally in the ultimate objectives.
More than any combination of causes or moral
abstractions, the turn the settlement now took was
determined by a stray piece of metal fired by an unknown
battery whose gunners overshot their targets, Joel Cook, a
reporter for the Philadelphia Enquirer wrote that “this was
the saddest shot fired during the war,” for it changed the
Confederate command. It brought to the test by arms the
first single, controlling hand on either side.”
from Clifford Dowdey, The Seven Days: The
Emergence of Lee, p. 6 (1964)
[ BOOK HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ]
14. [ P. 148] “I have read several histories of the Great Rebellion and they all tell a different story about the place and
manner of his death.”
In his own account, Pvt. Drew indicates he was skirmishing in a
belt of trees away from the artillery, guarding he movement of
the column, and the artillery had arrived and been moved back
off the road, to allow for troop movement. Because of a bend
in road, the road itself came up to within about 50 yards from
the skirmishers – much too close for safety.
Sedgwick and his orderly, (Whitter) riding along the road,
emerge from the trees; Sedgwick dismounts, gives the “bridal”
to Whittier, and then walks towards the skirmish line, with
Whittier in attendance, probably following behind with the
general’s horse. Sedgwick continues his approach, and
recognizes Pvt. Drew, probably as the wily scout who gathered
intelligence from behind enemy lines, and enabled and
participated in the Army victory at Rappahannock Station.
Sedgwick had, after all, interviewed Drew during a Board of
Inquiry following that victory, and commended him for the
accuracy of his intelligence; and then evidently conferred with
him following, to share his findings from the Board. See, the
relevant issue, YANKEE SCOUT -- Rappahannock Station!! in…
NOW …. Pvt. Drew reports their short exchange this way, and –
in effect – places himself in command:
“For God’s sake, Get behind this tree Gen’l!”
“Why, Helloo young man we are old acquaintances!”
“Yes, Gen’l, but get behind that tree or you’ll get shot!”
“Oh, I don’t think any of them will shoot me,” and he lifted
his glass toards his eyes.
By placing himself in the center of the action, and by issuing
“commands” to General Sedgwick, what Pvt. Drew’s Memoir
illustrates, is that during the Civil War, there was, in addition to the
military conflicts being played out on the battlefields of Virginia,
many other battles underway ….
Some of them BETWEEN the STAFF …
and others AMONG the GENERALS !!!
Let’s look ….
15. Maj. Charles A. Whittier
.
Nowhere does the epic clash of egos play itself out so visibly, as in the memoirs of those who participated in the
events; and in their recorded accounts of the uniquely important roles they played in history. Aesop’s flea cries,
“Oh what a mighty dust I have stirred up!” and some civil war memoirs seem to echo this flea ….
According to Pvt. Drew, the only other immediate eye-witness to the killing of Sedgwick, was Charles A. Whittier,
the general’s aide-de-camp. Fortunately Whittier himself left as strange sort of letter about some of his memories
of service to General Sedgwick, which includes his own account of the great general’s death in the gunsights of a
confederate sharpshooter. Because of Whittier’s own disclaimers, the letter has been captioned by archivists as is
“Egotistical Memoirs” – and it can be found here: https://archive.org/details/egotisticalmemoi00whit
A quick glance will reveal that Whittier’s Memoirs is anything but “egotistical”:
“Those were busy and trying days in the Wilderness and Spottsylvania. The long line in in the thick jungle
of the former, shells dropping in there and there without reason or warning; the inequalities of the ground
making the line very irregular, and it was a long tedious work to communicate with the different divisions.
“As I was riding with Gen Sedgwick, we came in a little wood path across one of the pickets whom I told
to advance, as he was far in rear of the line of the left. He said, “But the enemy is right there.” I ridiculed
this as impossible, so he started by a little bend of the road and was killed at once by a musket shot of
the enemy. It is certain that the skirmish line on his left was far in advance. This illustrates the difficulties
in of long a line in such a country. On the day of the breaking away of our right in the Wilderness, General
Seymour and Shaler had been sitting talking with General Sedgwick. As Seymour mounted his horse, he
said “Well, General, we have repulsed two attacks today, but my men are pretty shakey (it was a poor
division) and I should be very fearful in case of another attack.” Just as he said these words, Bang, Bang –
the attack came and the Division at once melted into the air. All night was passed in making a new line +
finding and placing the troops. The right was retired and the rifle pits were being dug.
“A very warm morning and the negro troops, who had not been engaged or working, passed through our
lines, loaded with knapsacks, etc. they puffed and sweated. One of the working Vermonters observing two
very black and warm Africans, drew himself up, saluted them, by taking off his hat and said, “Good
morning, gentlemen, you must find this sort of work very fatiguing.”
16. General Thomas H. Neill
Then, Col. Whittier describes how General T. H. Neill suffers a nervous breakdown, under the extreme
pressure of the Confederate sharpshooters, who appear to be everywhere, in the days before the real fighting
began in Spottsylvania, at the point the generals called “the Salient”, and the soldiers referred to simply as …
“The Bloody Angle.”
“We had a sharp little fight the first day at Spottsylvania and
carried a crest which Gen. Sedgwick deemed most important
to be held and instructed Gen. [Thomas H.] Neill to keep it at
all hazards; that he would soon send him entrenching tools,
etc. This was just at dusk. Gen. Sedgwick and I then rode to
General Meade’s headquarters, and did not get back to the
corps headquarters until midnight.
“We slept by a haystack until daylight, when Gen Sedgwick was
informed that the position had been abandoned. Inquiry
developed an unsatisfactory condition of things – the fact being
that General Neill, who had been an excellent Brigade
Commander, had entirely lost his nerve, and from this time on
was not good for command. A wreck from no fault of his,
simply tension too great for him to bear.
“Gen. Sedgwick, as was his custom, immediately went to the
point of importance and there for a long time supervised the
digging of rifle pits and entrenchments. Seeing some troops moving by the angle of our position, he went
me to see whose they were. I approached him to have the message repeated. He thinking that I was going
for my horse said, “Oh, I wouldn’t ride out there.”
“As I returned to report, I met him on the way out. When he reached the angle, he bade the officer
commanding the infantry support move his troops to the right a little to give the gunners an opportunity to
serve their guns. A rifle ball whizzed by us. A soldier in front of the general ducked his head. The general
said, “Oh, don’t duck my man, they couldn’t hit an elephant at that distance.” The man said, “I ducked
once general, and it saved my life,” at which we laughed. Another bullet and another duck, at which the
general reproved the man, discovering that he was a sergeant. The third bullet killed our commander, one
of the truest and whitest souls ever known to any army.”
Thus reads a part of Whittier’s so-called “Egotistical Memoirs” – which gives much food for thought. Q. v. Inter
alia, Whittier also shares with Drew a sense of betrayal and outrage at the level of alcoholism among the generals.
But with the exception of a single detail -- that the soldier who skirmishing and who is reproved by Sedgwick, is
identified as a sergeant – the two accounts dovetail. This is no surprise, because Maj. Charles A. Whittier is -
according to his office at the time, Sedgwick’s orderly, and so, seeing the correspondence of these accounts, we can
recognize that must be the same orderly mentioned by Pvt. Drew, as holding the bridle of Sedgwick’s horse, while
Sedgwick approaches the skirmishers line, on foot, to adjust the troop positions in order to provide the artillery a
clearer shot : at which point he, General Sedgwick, becomes involved in a conversation with a posted soldier who
is under close fire from an enemy sharpshooter. Etc.
Could Whittier be mistaken on the rank of the soldier who ducked? Was it in fact Pvt. Calif Newton Drew?
Perhaps: during his scouts Pvt. Drew was re-commissioned as a Major, and reported directly to the Generals ….
17. Pvt. Drew had said, “I have read several histories of the Great Rebellion and they all tell a different story about the
place and manner of his death.”
This appears to be the case, although considering the sweep and scope of events in
this cataclysm of American civilization, some discrepancies in the details of this single
event, could be expected. In fact, at least two of the officers shown by Julian Scott as
in attendance on the mortally wounded General Sedgwick also recorded their
experience of that morning, in their own later writings.
One of these, Lt. Thomas Worcester Hyde, 7th
Maine Volunteer Infantry, wrote and
published a book on his experiences, entitled Following the Greek Cross, or
Memories of the Sixth Army Corps (Houghton & Mifflin, 1894) available online here:
https://archive.org/details/05047532.3057.emory.edu
Hyde placed a full page portrait of Sedgwick in his book, as the
frontispiece …
… and placed himself beside General Sedgwick, whom, he
says, was seated on a cracker box, “pulling Hyde’s ears
affectionately” shortly before he was shot:
“My errand done, I got back in the same way, and sat down
beside the general on the ground. He was sitting on a cracker
box behind a tree, and began pulling my ears affectionately, and
chaffing me a little as I was trying to fill my pipe, and to tell him about my ride. Then a section of artillery came up
the road at the trot and went to the right into position. He got up, went over to give them directions, I thought.
Directly I heard some one cry out, “The General;” and hastening over there, saw lying on this back, our friend, our
idol. Blood was oozing slowly from a small wound under his eye. McMahon was trying to raise him up. Tompkins,
Beaumont, Whittier, Halsted and others of the staff gathered mournfully around; the men had risen upon their
knees all along the line and were looking on in sorrow. Gradually it dawned upon us that the great leader, the
cherished friend, he that had been more than a father to us all, would no more lead the Greek Cross of the 6th
Corps
in the very front of battle; that this noble heart was stilled at last!” from, T. W. Hyde, “Following the Greek Cross,
or, Memories of the Sixth Army Corps,” pp. 192-335.
18. Did you get that part about Gen. Sedgwick pulling affectionately on Lt. Hyde’s ears?
Brevet Maj-Gen. Martin T. McMahon
“I gave the necessary order to move the troops to the right, and as they rose to execute the movement the
enemy opened a sprinkling fire, partly from sharp-shooters. As the bullets whistled by, some of the men
dodged. The general said laughingly, “What! what! men, dodging this way for single bullets! What will you
do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this
distance." A few seconds after, a man who had been separated from his regiment passed directly in front
of the general, and at the same moment a sharp-shooter's bullet passed with a long shrill whistle very close,
and the soldier, who was then just in front of the general, dodged to the ground. The general touched him
gently with his foot, and said, “Why, my man, I am ashamed of you, dodging that way," and repeated the
remark, “They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." The man rose and saluted and said good-naturedly,
“General, I dodged a shell once, and if I hadn't, it would have taken my head off. I believe in dodging."
The general laughed and replied, "All right, my man; go to your place."
“For a third time the same shrill whistle, closing with a dull, heavy stroke, interrupted our talk; when, as I
was about to resume, the general's face turned slowly to me, the blood spurting from his left cheek under
the eye in a steady stream. He fell in my direction; I was so close to him that my effort to support him
failed, and I fell with him.
Then, Maj- McMahon seems to provide the description that artist Julian Scott might have used in composing his
painting:
“Colonel Charles H. Tompkins, chief of the artillery, standing a few feet away, heard my exclamation
as the general fell, and, turning, shouted to his brigade-surgeon, Dr. Ohlenschlager. Major Charles A.
Whittier, Major T. W. Hyde; and Lieutenant Colonel Kent, who had been grouped near by, surrounded
the general as he lay. A smile remained upon his lips but he did not speak. The doctor poured water from
a canteen over the general's face. The blood still poured upward in a little fountain. The men in the long
line of rifle-pits, retaining their places from force of discipline, were all kneeling with heads raised and faces
turned toward the scene ; for the news had already passed along the line.”
McMahon’s colorful account also appears in a pamphlet commemorating the Sedgwick Memorial Association: 6th
Army Corps, Spottsylvania (1887), and one on the Dedication of the Equestrian Statue of Major-General John
Sedgwick (1913), for his monument at Gettysburg. These pamphlets contain yet further interesting eyewitness
accounts of the General’s killing. See also http://civilwarhome.com/sedgwickdeath.htm
In a day when oratory was all, this must been a great story to tell the dinner-guests ...
19. We have two fairly egotistical accounts, McMahon’s and
Hyde’s, that would seem to place General Sedgwick among
the artillery at the time he was shot by the sharpshooter.
Hyde’s story – including the ear-pulling bit – definitely
places Sedgwick off the skirmish line, and directing the
placement of artillery, when he is struck.
Meanwhile McMahon’s account brings an errant soldier
into the vicinity of the General and his staff, and thus also
well off the skirmish line. The General is conversing with
McMahon himself, when he is struck, and then “the
general’s face turned slowly to me…”
If these two accounts are accurate, it would mean of course,
that the painting by Scott not only shows the place where
Sedgwick died, but – to the degree it can be regarded as
historical – also shows the place where he was hit: among
the artillery.
And that is the presumption…. Which cannot entirely be
overcome, even by the gesture of Col. Tomkins, in Scott’s
painting.
But Drew states in his Memoir, “I have read several histories
of the Great Rebellion and they all tell a different story about
the place and manner of his death.”
But does Drew have any less an egotistical memory than the authors of these other “egotistical memoirs”? He
states at pp. 146-47, that there were “a couple of our guns sitting back by the road to let the troops have the right
of way” and that these guns were idle, to give the advancing column of infantry room. Sedgwick rode up along this
same road, dismounted, gave his horse into the keeping of an orderly – Whittier -- and left the safety of the road
for the area in which Drew and others were working as skirmishers, to provide defense to the advance column,
against the rebel sharpshooters. Whittier’s account confirms Drew, and in detail gives a narrative of Sedgwick’s
movement toward the skirmish line – where he was struck, and then carried back to safety by his staff. So what?
The following account is by Rev. W. R. Helms, chaplain of the 14th
New York Volunteer Infantry: it’s a narrative
which rings with verisimilitude, for its attention to tactics along the skirmish lines. Here, Gen. Sedgwick rides out
into the open pine woods in order to check the route of the night’s march. He passes Rev. Helms who is
skirmishing, and continues on -- “to where the view was clear” -- meaning to a treeline. Within half a minute he is
hit. The only details which differentiate Helms’ account from Drew’s, is that in Pvt. Drew’s memoir, Sedgwick first
dismounts and engages in a momentary exchange with Drew, who is posted as skirmisher, before Sedgwick raises
his field-glasses to examine the distant landscape, when he is hit by the death-dealing sharpshooters. And …..
If Sedgwick is killed on the skirmish line, as Drew and Whittier report, than the following by Rev. Helms is validated:
20. “Some sharpshooters from our army was sent out to get the high roosters. I heard a few days after that they had
tumbled several rebels out of the trees before night .”
21. “Gen’l H. G. Wright was put in command of the 6th
Corps and
the army moved on, there was no fighting of any account
during the day by the corps. Soon after dark the skirmishers
was relieved by a picket guard. We went to the rear, cooked
and had something to eat; during the day we had lost four from
the skirmishline from Co’s C + E.
“I think we got more than that from the rebs.
“Just before being relieved we captured a rebel sergeant who
said, this was the greatest surprised the Yanks had ever given to
Marsa Robert …. [General Lee – Ed.]
“Why don’t you’s retreat as you ought? And always has
done after a big fight? And this has been the D and D fighting
of them all but perhaps you will retreat down the Peninsula?”
“We told him we thought we would and take Gen’l Lee with
us.
“This was a very disastrous day to the old 6th Maine Volenteers.
No bugle call or drum was needed to call us out in the morning at 4 o’clock A. M. We had eat breakfast refilled
cartridge boxers, and most of us had filled canteens with coffee, and was waiting for orders to begin our first days
work under Gen’l H. G. Wright as commander of the 6th Corps.
“The movement soon began – battrees and troops was passing us, and remarks was made [P. 149 ] that Gen’l
Wright was getting the corps lined to suit him right.
“The rebel sharp shooters seemed to be trying to get in their work – about 9 o’clock A.M. we took our place in
line making a slow creeping, haulting march which is always very annoying. We [were ] proverly two or less miles
when at mid-day while setting besides the road nibbling hard tack there came an order for skirmishers from the
6th Me. Colonel Lincoln in command of the Reg’t some 400 all told.
Skirmishers Away
“Companyes’ E. G. and K was ordered to step forward, then Lincoln asked the aid how many men he wanted.
“Oh! There are plenty. We followed the aid along the road some half mile or a little less perhaps, was halted and
told we was wanted to drive the rebel pickets and skirmishers into their works and to keep them down, that there
would be a charge made on the rebels works some time that after noon.
“We took distance and started to advance when the aid asked, “Ain’t you going to load them guns?” “Our guns
are always loaded,” someone answered. And we [moved] forward toards the foe. There was a mixture of timber
brush, and open land for near half a mile, then a wide peace of open land, there was our picket line. We passed
through without taking them along.
“In a few minutes the Johnneys gave us notice that our advance was known. We took such cover as we could find
and the ball was opened.
“We took a new mode of skirmishing which I think was a surprise to the rebs. We would use every devise we
could to draw their fire, then we would rush forward on the jump with a yell in a short time. [P. 150 ]. We had
them on the move and kept them so until we drove them across the open field and into their works. They had a
fort with four guns, rifle pits on each flank extending into more timber.
General Horatio G. Wright
22. “We stoped at the edge of the opening but the skirmishers on each flank worked a head quite a bit.”
The Commanding General, John Sedgwick dead – the victim of a sharpshooter … !!
The soldiers demoralized by the loss of their beloved & favorite general ….
General Thomas H. Neill, disabled mentally by the
sheer pressure of the exposure of rebel
sharpshooters – seemingly on all sides ….!!
A new & untried chain of command …
about to be tested …
And the real fighting is yet to begin!!!
NOT JUST “The BLOODY ANGLE” … but
Pvt. C. N. Drew will be there ….
and Pvt. Henry C. Denbo …
Pleasant Point Passamaquoddy Indian!!