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Transcript of Excerpts from The Transatlantic Disputations
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(Excerpts from)
The
Transatlantic
Disputations:
Essays and Meditations
MarkhamShaw PyleGMW Wemyss
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From the introduction:[ ] Mr Wemyss essays in this volume are marked by three
crowns; Mr Pyles, by three stars.
These essays are just that: as casual as any of Lambs or
Montaignes. They range widely, and are inevitably personal in
nature. Nevertheless, they are as scholarly as the form allows. Any
learned corrections shall be gratefully received.
The authors are men who cannot bring themselves not to talk
about land and nature, baseball and cricket, shooting and angling,
history and the craft of writing. If any of these things at all
interests you, they trust that the following musings1may repay
your time in the reading of them.
1 And mullings. Although if youaremulling, it is better to mull claret or cider, or ale
than Madeira.
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Terrain
and
Terroir
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Southern is captured in its eternal moment, celebrating the early
summertide of the South (were one to accept all that was implicit
in the Southerns advertising, one had expected languid caballeros
strumming guitars in Bournemouth or a souk in Brighton); the
GWR hurtles unrelentingly towards a gilded West preserved as in
amber.
Some things emerge. Terriers beseeching one to take ones dog
along; whimsical elephants advising that one may and ought to
send ones (wait for it) trunks ahead; East Coast Follies; East Coast
Types (from donkey boys to Scottish fishwives): every appeal is
made. Herne Bay and Epping Forest figure in numerous posters as
desirable destinations: it is a measure of my own mind that my
immediate reaction to seeing the name of either place is
criminological. (For those of purer mind and life, I should note that
Herne Bay was famously or infamously the site of the first
Brides in the Bath murder committed by George Joseph Smith,
and Epping Forest, notorious for murders: including the 1970
Babes in the Wood murders.) Themes emerge: the regions of
England, of Scotland, and of Ireland (less so, those of Wales);
cathedral cities; Rabbie Burns Country (when the traditional
regions palled), Sir Walter Scotts Country, Shakespeares
Country, Sir Francis Drakes Country, the painterly Constable
Country. There are race day specials, Cup Final specials, exhibition
specials (poultry and pigeons). Ruins with poetic, Romantic, and
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abbatial associations are celebrated. Nor are the up trains
forgotten: London is depicted in all its pomp and splendour,
monarchs and lords mayor, the Thames and St Pauls iconic upon
the skyline.
The art and artistry and the artfulness is astounding. The
LMS in particular was partial to showing its engines being built or
its permanent way being completed, and the best of these by,
Terence Cuneo, say, are brilliant genre paintings that leave Ford
Madox Ford standing. Equally impressive is the bold, pure colour
of Tom Purvis, which defied the conventions of the medium. For
make no mistake, the railway poster was a medium with certain
conventions of its own, so much so that at the dictates of
technology it is not always possible at first glance to distinguish
Frank Newbould from, let us say, Leslie Carr, or even Norman
Wilkinson.
Within and preciselynotin despite of that convention,
great art came forth. Cuneo, Wilkinson, Badmin, Newbould, and
Frank Henry Mason were, simply, great artists. Some of the
paintings that became railway posters: the series of paintings that
were used for series of adverts Service to Industry, Havens and
Harbours, Wilkinsons paintings of minor public schools for the
LMS (Fettes, Oundle, that placed named for an agricultural
implement ah! Yes, Harrow, thats it one doesnt see ones
own school, or WinCo), the history paintings for such destinations
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as Carlisle and Ely stand out like Canalettos amidst chocolate
boxes. And, after all, it was in Newboulds work for the railways
that his justly famous Your Britain fight for it now war posters
of after years were implicit: Alfriston Fair, the South Downs, and a
cathedral scene I find (said he, archly) remarkably familiar.
And yet . This was art, ultimately, in the service of
Mammon. It was selling something; and it was a sell. In the 1920s,
Norman Wilkinson painted St Pauls for a railways advert:
London, the seat of Empire by the grace of God. And then one
turns to two posters by Mason: London once more. The first
both were done for the Great Western, the artistic connexions of
which included, after all, Frith and Turner dates to 1938 and
shows more aptly than Mason knew London as night fell: the
Tower, the Thames, the bridge and beyond. The second, from
1946, is entitled London Pride, and shows London River and the
gleaming dome of St Pauls in cloudless day. It is beautiful; and,
showing as it does none of the still-present scars of the war, it is
profoundly false. A sell.
In this were the seeds of the grim future. The urgent post-War
attempts of the Big Four to survive by trading on nostalgia rang
false. In the Twenties and early Thirties, one neednt have been
John Betjeman to indulge such propositions as Surreys being
Londons Highlands, or to respond to promises of thatch and
packhorse bridges and old coaching inns. The Big Fours Betjemanic
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attempts to recapture that innocence, and still more the more
febrile attempts at it by the nationalised British Railways, failed;
and what cane after was unbearable. There were the 1960s and
1970s graphical monstrosities, deliberately ugly,faux-primitif.
There was ultimately the final BR logo, the Arrow of Indecision,
resembling nothing so much as a particularly nasty derailment. At
the last came the final indignity: Jimmy Savile in his ghastly
trackies, the overt appeals to use the train for your dirty weekends,
and the 1975 InterCity poster consisting simply of a Page Three
girl, wearing a shirt and a hat and nothing else, bra-less (and this is
clamantly,pokinglyevident), and the slogan, Want to see a friend
this weekend?: a (wait for it) naked appeal to what would
nowadays be called, simply, the booty-call market.
You may, as your temperament dictates, regard this as progress
towards a sterner honesty, the end of a period of slick, commercial
deception; or as symptomatic of national decay. I can only say,
How the mighty are fallen: and I am far from rejoicing in their fall.
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The Natural Occupation: The Arsenal of Garden)Warfare
But war is the natural occupation of man! War and
gardening.
Winston Churchill, as First Lord, to Robert Graves, ca
1916.
It is generally acknowledged that azaleas can be finicky. It is almost
a truism amongst the knowledgeable that very old, well-rooted
azaleas cannot be transplanted with any hope of real success, let
alone twice in a lustrum (Lone Oak to the Lake, the Lake toTallowood). That was certainly the conventional wisdom when,
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after both my paternal grandparents had died, my father and my
uncle determined to uproot, divide between them, and transplant
Grammys beloved, trademark, and locally famous azaleas from the
Old Home Place. As it happens, however, no one in my family
recognizes the existence of an impossibility. (Were not specially
courageous, were just bullheaded as all get-out, and the whole lot
of us as independent as a hog on ice. Every last one of us would
argue with a wooden cigar-store Indian.)
However, this success is not due solely to bullheadedness. Its
due to a comprehension of soil.
This [written in October, 2002] is certainly an appropriate
weekend for me to be in autumnal mood: that season, you will
recall, of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Besides the other seasonal
matters and holidays-and-observances now upon us, today is
National Farmers Day (and the Aggies beat the tar out of Baylor
yesterday, appropriately enough. Fight, Farmers, fight!). More to
the point, the first real norther of the year is blowing through. Its
an appropriate time to be thinking about redding up the garden for
next year, and its an appropriate day for me to stay snug, here at
the PC. (I love cool weather. I do. But it is a fortunate thing that I
do my best work with a slight head-cold, which, predictably, I now
am coming down with. Remember, folks, the wages of sin is death,
but the wages of overwork and mulish refusal to quit and rest
usually starts with post-nasal drip and goes on from there).
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Down here on the Gulf Coast, we have to deal with clayey,
gumbo soils that are the very devil to work with, and with the
prospect that on any given day in January, it can feel enough like
spring to fool the plants. That is why, by the way, nobody round
here should regard this cold-snap as a signal to start pruning
anything, least of all azaleas, roses, and crape myrtles (the trinity of
tutelary garden plants hereabouts, our very sign and totem). We
always have to bear in mind that winter, in Houston, generally
consists of a dank afternoon in February. (By ancient tradition, we
do our pruning of our crape myrtles as well as of our roses on
Valentines Day, unless of course its sleeting. Azaleas we dont
trim before late March or early April, only after the blooming
season; and then no more than a third of the plant. Late / repeat
bloomers such as the new Encores get trimmed even later.)
It is soil that is the most fundamental of these fundamental
facts. Soil, and the process of amending it.
Now, as it happens, I come of a notoriously greenhanded
family. My paternal grandparents had a simple division of labor:
Grammy took care of the roses and azaleas and such; Pop kept a
hellish half-acre or so under the plow in vegetables, next the horse
pasture. By this time of year, his enthusiasm for planting crops, and
Grammys grim determination to freeze what she could and can all
the rest, would have, in their living days, resulted in increased
quarterly earnings for the Mason jar people. Both understood the
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importance of soil, and of improving it. (Sometimes they went a tad
overboard. I recall nay, I shall never forget one summer I spent
with them, as I spent most summers with them: this, the Summer
of the Eggplant. Pop had been a mite too lavish with the planting,
and Nature2revenged herself with a bumper crop that exceeded all
capacity to handle it. We ate eggplant stewed. We ate it fried. We
ate it every way we could think of, short of barbecuing it or
slathering it with cream gravy. We did our dead level best to pickle
it, as a last resort, and still it flooded in. The tenants / neighbors
were given some. Then given more. Then they stopped answering
the door and flat hid under the porch as Pop relentlessly left paper
sacks full of eggplant at every door within miles. The very
compost, that year, was largely comprised of unused eggplant, by
the time all was said and done.)
At any rate, when it came to soil amendments, all else gave way
to Grammys consuming passion for azaleas, with old roses a distant
but still obsessive second. (She grew them. Then she arranged
them. Then she sat down at her easel and painted a canvas from
them. Then she went to check the garden for the next batch.)
In such soil as ours, of course, that meant souring it, making it
more acidic. (There was at least one daughter-in-law of hers who
would have suggested Gram could do that simply by addressing a
2 You will recall Horaces observation, which I here translate for those of you who have
no Latin (modern academics, for instance), that You may drive Nature out with a
pitchfork, yet shall she come back in. Pushy old broad, Dame Nature
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few mildly cutting remarks to it. I come by my caustic tongue, my
snark and my sarcasm,3by true descent from the Shaw side of the
family.) By and large, our local soils possess adequate resources
(iron, for instance); what they do not always possess is a pH level
sufficient to unlock those nutrients for the plants use. (Let your
soil get too alkaline, and you could scrap a battleship on the
flowerbed and the plants would remain iron deficient.)
Those of you who live in less nutrient-favored soils will need to
begin, in the immediate term, with an Azalea-Camellia-
Rhododendron Food that has an NPK series of 30-10-10, and after
getting your pH to acceptable levels (under 6.0 or so; Gram swore
by about 5.6 pH), follow up with a 16-2-3 or a 15-4-5.)
For us, a 16-2-3 NPK fertilizer was plenty, as it still is. You want
an azalea food thats rapidly absorbed, easy to work into a bedding
soil that has been even marginally improved (with our gumbo, you
have to dosomethingfirst to amend it, as in larding in some
compost and some cottonseed meal, or youll be using a mattock4to
break it up); and of course, synthetics by nature are uniform and
readily monitored for efficacy. Moreover, if as it ought to be it
is also an acidifier, it does double duty not only for your camellias,
but for the Glories of the Southland, the revered magnolia and the
beloved dogwood.
3 As it happens, October is also, I believe, National Sarcasm Month.Howexciting.
4 Somewhere we still have our ancestral mattock, a heavy, somehow Teutonic-looking
tool I have named Otto. (The author, smirking, waits for the penny to drop.)
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allergies.) As it happens, pine needles and duff, as a mulch, help
maintain an acidic soil pH to begin with (shrewd is the Creator,
and above all things wise), as well as helping keep moisture in the
soil. That is fundamental in the heat we so revel in down here.5
Azaleas need watering, the equivalent of an inch or so of rain
every seven to ten days, but they donotneed to sit about with wet
feet: well-drained soils are essential. (Theyll catch this blamed
head-cold I have, otherwise.) A mulch is thus essential, both to
keep them from dehydrating and to wick away excess moisture,
and you may as well use a pine mulch.
Operating on that assumption, then, the proper application of
azalea food is to sprinkle it evenly on slightly damp soil throughout
the bed, under the branch zone (the shade-shadow) of the plants,
and then to cover with pine needle mulch and water it in. Properly
and regularly used, the results are uniformly excellent, even by
synthetic standards; and many synthetics, to give due credit, do
seem anecdotally at least to live up to claims of timed and steady
release and absorption, a factor more commonly associated, at very
slow speeds, with organics.
And be sure to check out the Aggie Horticulture pages and
links on the Web, and those of the River Oaks Garden Club, for
more learning about your azaleas. The latter knows its onions
about azaleas, and the former, well, any bunch of good ol boys
5 Yep. Still sarcasm month.
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who can develop a maroon bluebonnet constitute a force to be
reckoned with.
On balance pH balance (thats a joke, son) acidophil
synthetics are a godsend, and the results in our family, as regards
generations of classic Southern azaleas: Southern Charm, Duc de
Rohan, Coral Bells, Judge Solomon, Formosa, Dixie Beauty, have
been reliably good.
In these miserable times, it is well to cultivate ones garden.
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Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
The late American golfing coach and writer, Harvey Penick, held
that any who played golf was his friend in the politer sense of
Arcadesambo,I gather.
I myself hold with Honest Izaak that there is and that I am a
member of a communion of, if not saints, at least anglers and very
honest men, some now with God and others of us yet upon the
quiet waters. There are untold numbers of persons who follow
young Mr Tom Felton on Twitter: some are fans, others, fen,
others yet, one gathers, and of both sexes, are struck with abobbysoxers calf-love: I suspect that I am one of at most a score of
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those who give him a follow as a gesture of solidarity amongst
anglers.
Note that: a gesture of solidarity amongst anglers. We are a
broad church, and a rather stuffy old dry-fly man such as am I yet
feels a kinship with even a coarse fisher. Yet naturally, men of
similar interest and passion most congregate together. And just
now, within my own fraternity of devotees of the chalk stream and
the well-tied fly, the same questions are asked wherever we
foregather or chance to meet, in person, down the local, or online:
What sort of hatch of mayfly have you where you are? and, Are
you able to spend much time on the water?
To both of these questions, alas, my answer just now is the
same: Not As Much As Id Like.[Written in Springtide 2011]
Partly this is because, for all my undeserved good fortune in this
life, I also, even I, am unable to devoteallmy hours to the
contemplative mans calling. Ive a very good stretch of water quite
near. I am blessed in not being required to plan and shift things and
travel for hours to reach Arcadia. Yet my rural idyll has the defects
of its qualities; and if the season of ovine obstetrics is now past,
that of bovine obstetrics is not, quite, and I have to put it with as
much delicacy as may obtain been, as every Springtide, up to my
elbows in it. (When young, there were certain places I never
imagined my hand as going. Some hopes, that innocence.)
Yet it is when I look at my arable that I am confronted also
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with the shadow of ill-fortune for my fishing: for the land would
tell me what the river has to say even were I never to look at the
river. We are dry, damnably dry. Father Wylye is very low; the
Chitterne Brook at the Codfords is gasping for breath; even in the
Deverills, the diving rill is brought low, even unto the dust. We are
just barely above the lowest levels of normality, and an anxious
survey of the skies promises little relief.
I do not propose to enter into the whys and wherefores of this:
it devolves all too readily, that sort of thing, into a political quarrel
of the most squalid intellectual dishonesty. I but state the fact.
And yet anglingis,after all, the contemplative mans repose
and refreshment. It is vexing, in its way, to find ones river low
and, from the anglers point of view, ailing. Compensations,
however, for the true angler, remain.
There are always, for the true angler, compensations. When
winter rages without, there are flies to tie, and memories to record,
and books to read and perhaps to write. Farming, gardening,
angling, and apiculture have, I think one may fairly say, fathered
more great literature than anything save, perhaps, war, from
Hesiod and Vergil and Columella to Adrian Bell and Haig Brown.
And with the invocation of that great name, I may begin to
note the compensations of even such times as these upon a river.
To know a river is a wondrous thing, and the study of a lifetime. It
has its own georgics and pastorals, and they are read perhaps the
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more easily when the palimpsest of ranunculus-crowfoot and cool,
clear water ceases to overwrite them. In such times as these upon
the river, it is next seasons sport that one may study, learning the
complex, subtle life of the river, flow and deposition: for as the
American or, rather, resolutely Texan writer, John Graves, has
noted (many and wonderful are the books about rivers), a river is
its course and bed and sources, its complex history and hydrology,
and all the plants and animals and people who live and have ever
lived in and on and beside it.6
And although there is that in us that thrills with satisfaction,
indeed, with satiety, to the full and glorious amplitude of such
seasons as Mole and Ratty knew, when (many and wonderful are
the books about rivers) the river is
a sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling,
gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a
laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook
themselves free, and were caught and held again
and tells to us, confidingly,
a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent
from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the
insatiable sea;
and when in its season
the pageant of the river bank had marched steadily along,
6 Mr Wemyss notes that knowing Mr Pylehashad its compensations.
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unfolding itself in scene-pictures that succeeded each other
in stately procession. Purple loosestrife arrived early,
shaking luxuriant tangled locks along the edge of the
mirror whence its own face laughed back at it. Willow-
herb, tender and wistful, like a pink sunset cloud, was not
slow to follow. Comfrey, the purple hand-in-hand with the
white, crept forth to take its place in the line; and at last
one morning the diffident and delaying dog-rose stepped
delicately on the stage, and one knew, as if string-music
had announced it in stately chords that strayed into a
gavotte, that June at last was here. One member of the
company was still awaited; the shepherd-boy for the
nymphs to woo, the knight for whom the ladies waited at
the window, the prince that was to kiss the sleeping
summer back to life and love. But when meadow-sweet,
debonair and odorous in amber jerkin, moved graciously to
his place in the group, then the play was ready to begin;
there is also reward, we know, whenSummers lease hath all
too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,and,
in a drought or in the iron of winters soul,
Nature was deep in her annual slumber and seemed to
have kicked the clothes off. Copses, dells, quarries and all
hidden places, which had been mysterious mines for
exploration in leafy summer, now exposed themselves and
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their secrets pathetically, and seemed to ask him to
overlook their shabby poverty for a while, till they could
riot in rich masquerade as before, and trick and entice him
with the old deceptions. It was pitiful in a way, and yet
cheering even exhilarating. He was glad that he liked the
country undecorated, hard, and stripped of its finery. He
had got down to the bare bones of it, and they were fine
and strong and simple. He did not want the warm clover
and the play of seeding grasses; the screens of quickset, the
billowy drapery of beech and elm seemed best away .
Old Father Wylye is today diminished to the casual eye: at
Brixton Deverill, but 0.18 metres in depth, at Norton Bavant, but
0.13, at South Newton a mere 0.21; Sweet Mother Nadder has
sunk exhausted to a mere trickle even at Tisbury, at 0.55 metres in
depth. Gammer Avon at Upavon flows at a mere 0.08 metres, and,
at Amesbury, but 0.22 metres. Gaffer Bourne at Idmiston is low
also, in metres 0.03 alone.
Shall I abandon my rivers? Should God forget His people?
Super flumina,let us even in sorrow sing; and let my rod-hand
forget her cunning if I forget these, my earthly Sion.
Rather, let us to the rivers as they are, and get wisdom. I do not
expect much fishing this year; yet I expect a catch in abundance,
multiplying like the loaves and fishes in the feeding of the
multitudes. I expect to land the Salmon of Wisdom. The rivers and
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chalk streams of my care and cure are diminished only to the casual
eye; there is much to read in them just now for them that have
eyes to see. Let us to the rivers and get wisdom: this is an
opportunity, to study and to learn, to read, mark, learn, and
inwardly digest: to study their secret ways and processes, the silver
and shadowed swift-flashing world wherein our quarry live and
move and have their being. We are in some degree doctors of
physic to our rivers; we are not their masters and we are assuredly
not their creator. It well behoves us to learn their ways and health
and structure, and we have been given a cunningly-disguised
blessing of grace in which to do just that.
For to the true angler, who would know his river, all seasons
are apt, all knowledge precious, and all things work together for
good. It was not by chance that Our Saviour sought his first
disciples amongst fishermen. And I remember, also, a kinsman of
mine in centuries past, a good honest Churchman and an angler, a
physician in Hants, who when the family were divided took the
part of the King rather than that of Parliament, and aided Honest
Izaak in the recovery of the Lesser George for the King, and
Colonel Blagues escape from the Tower and over the water, with
the Roundheads pounding after him: for angling is an honest,
ingenuous, quiet, and harmless art, and honest anglers artful and
apt to any honest service.
And if we are, as indeed we are, silver links (many of us more
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than a trifle tarnished) in a great chain of being, we must also
recognise that there are great natural cycles in which we are a part,
and a part only: we are in some degree doctors of physic to our
rivers; we are not their masters and we are assuredly not their
creator: and there are fasts that the rivers and all nature keep for
their better health. We may learn of them in fast as on feasts and
ferial days.
The man is a mere brute, and no true angler, whose sport is
measured only in fish caught and boasted of. For what purpose do
we impose on ourselves limits and conventions if not to make sport
of a mere mechanical harvest of protein? The true angler can
welcome even a low river and a dry year, and learn of it, and be
the better for it, in mind and in spirit. So, No: the hatch is not all
that it might be, for if it is warm enough and early with it, it is also
in a time of drought; and, No: I dont get to the river as often as I
should wish. But these things do not make this a poor year: they
are an unlooked-for opportunity to delve yet deeper into the secrets
of the river, and grow wise.
Rejoice, then, in all seasons, ye fishers.The world the river is;
both you and I, And all mankind, are either fish or fry.We must
view it with judicious looks, and get wisdom whilst we may. And
to all honest anglers, then, I wish, as our master Izaak wished us
long ago, a rainy evening to read this following Discourse; and that
if he be an honest Angler, the east wind may never blow when he
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goes a-fishing.
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Sursum Corda: Lift Up Your Hearts February 2000)If T. S. Eliot had stayed in St Louis, he would never have held that
April was the cruelest month. Well, unless he was a Browns fan.
At this moment, in the ragged middle of February, it begins:
beneath the snow, roots quicken. In the Deep South, already trees
begin to bud. And all over the land indeed, all over the world, in
Japan, in the Caribbean, in Australia a certain class of mammal,
fubsy, amiable, sweet-natured, begins to twitch and wake from
hibernation: the baseball fan. Is it the lengthening of the days? Is it
some subtle signal that causes them to begin to emerge from a
stupor only lightly disturbed by meetings of the Hot Stove League?
Naw. It is the magic phrase, pitchers and catchers to report .
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(Good news: the Commissioner did not see his shadow on
Groundball Day. Spring training will begin as scheduled.)
The winter of our discontent is about to be made glorious
summer by this sun of baseball. (And the people rejoiced.) This
means things more wondrous than tongue can tell unless, of
course, you were deprived as a child and somehow failed to become
a fan. The non-fans know by now that spouses, children, business
contacts, or friends will once again drag them to the ballpark. This
guide is for those unhappy souls.
Let me say at once that my years in Virginia and my deep
devotion to the Orioles as my junior circuit team of choice
notwithstanding this primer is addressed to the pure, the true,
the blissful game that is National League ball. Much of it will
apply to the unfortunates of the junior circuit, or to interleague
play, but not all.
The first consideration for the neophyte is, Where is the game
being played? If it is in a covered stadium, bring a light jacket no
matter what the weather outdoors. If it is under Gods good sun,
on the grass, then bring a slicker or a brolly, a hat, some sunscreen,
a jacket at the beginning and end of the season (Wrigley comes to
mind here).
The type of stadium dictates more than climate and comfort
concerns, I hasten to add. Domed stadia meant Astroturf, an
artificial playing surface. This in turn did funny things to chops and
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other grounders, and made incalculable differences to bunts and
infield hits. The fan under those circumstances had to pay special
attention to the middle infield.
Further to the subject of comfort, the newbie should be aware
that beer and soft drinks at the ballpark are what underwrites a
goodly chunk of those ungodly salaries. The newbie ought also to
be aware that a game may last hours upon end. This dictates the
drinking of lots of water before hand. As an Anglican I am
anything but a teetotaler; however, in open-air parks, especially
from May through the All-Star Break to the pennant stretch,
dehydration is a fact of life. Go easy on the beer, then, and drink
plenty of water.
Some stadia have of late gone utterly mad. Back in 1999, I took
my father to the game as my treat. Instead of my usual seat, we
had seats in the section immediately behind the third-base-line
dugout (the visitors dugout), where things are catered. This being
the Dome in 1999, it made perfect sense that barbecue was
available in addition to the traditional dogs and such. What
shocked my father unutterably was the sight of people in the row
ahead of us. He felt, as I did, that white wine and a cheese and
melon tray are about as out of place at a ball game as earrings on a
steer. I heard him humming when he was not making invidious
comparisons between todays players and Musial, Williams, and
DiMag something about Buy me some brie and some
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Chardonnay / I dont care if the team doesnt play .
In fact, ballpark food is notoriously overpriced and even at its
best none so good. You can spend your hard-earned money on
chow at the park, or you can feed the crew in advance (OK, so
they deserve some peanuts in the middle innings: Im big on
tradition) and use the money for good seats.
And what, you may ask, is a good seat? That depends in part
on who is playing. Teams have different styles and strengths. If a
Star Hitter is in town, outfield seats become premium: everyone
but we few purists, the High Church Party in the Church of
Baseball, is more interested in snagging a long-ball than watching
the actual game. But as a rule, this is not the case.
Where you want to sit is determined by what you want to see.
My own general rule is dictated by my own preferences for
baseball, and by what the home team is good at. One of the things
I most miss about the Dome is my point seat: a single seat where
two aisles come together into one, about ten or so rows back, with
an unobstructed view of the plate and the field looking straight
down the 3B line.
The point is this. Obviously, the closer you are to the playing
field, the better. Beyond that, in NL parks at least, the dictates of
NL strategy the eschewal of that Commie innovation the DH,
[to which for nakedly sleazy reasons the Astros are now to be
subjected] and little-ball, suggest you want a seat behind the
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dugouts or otherwise along the foul lines. (The third or first
question is up to you. In either event, for Gods sake stay alert for
fouls and flying bats.)
Unless you are a scout or a pitching connoisseur, being directly
behind the plate is not as good.
Why? Well, because of what you should be looking for. From
the side, you can see the rhythm of the pitcher. You can possibly
learn to steal the catchers signs, and the coaches. You can see the
subtle shifts that are entailed in guarding the lines, setting up a
wheel, bringing the fielders in or out for a batter on a particular
count. You can note the tantalizing bluffs between the runner
especially on first and the battery. And you have a heck of a
viewpoint for all varieties of the double-play, including the strike-
out-throw-out, than which there is no sweeter DP.
And by the time you have seen these things up close and
personal over the course of a few games, you will no longer need
this advice, for you will be a fan.
One final note for newbies and vets alike. Part of the charm of
this greatest of games is its tradition, its evocation of times gone by.
(It is the only inherently timeless game, after all: in theory, a
ballgame, once tied, could go on forever.) That being said, allow me
to renew as I do every year a plea for civility. Boo-birds are not
native to Houston, for example. Drunken louts in the stands should
be removed and possibly shot by firing squad. People who jump to
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their feet and block the view of grandmothers who are unsteady on
their pins and have to stay seated are almost as bad. Foul language
in the stands, in front of women and children and the elderly, is
contemptible; and every stadium has people to enforce the rules
against these vices. Make use of them.
Then we can all have fun; we can all succumb to what the
mystery writer John Dickson Carr called baseball dust, headier and
more addictive than cocaine; and we can all learn what is conveyed
in that great line of Mr Cubs, Its a great day for baseball lets
play two.
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War and History
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Fields of Battle, I: Manassas, First and Second: To DieHere and Conquer
Manassas NBP strikes a superb, rare balance between preserving
the all-important terrain and making it accessible. It is also
moderately well-marked and contextualized: certainly better than
most.
Many words have been spilt already, like soldiers blood, on the
battlegrounds of North America. Few, to date, have proceeded
from military historians looking at the ground as terrain. I aim to
address that lacuna.
The Battle of First Manassas is, naturally, full of interest evento the most casual reviewer. It is where the Stonewall Brigade and
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its commander, an eccentric former VMI professor named Thomas
J Jackson, earned that immortal nickname; it was the first battle in
history in which the transportation of reinforcements by rail at a
critical moment occurred; it served notice to both sides that the
war was not going to be over in a fortnight though it remains
arguable that had Stonewall and the Brigade been allowed to lead a
pursuit of McDowells fleeing levies, they could have taken
Washington, DC.
Second Manassas, by contrast, is one of the classic battles of the
Army of Northern Virginia at its zenith, perhaps more so even
than are Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville.
To begin with, it was the validation of the Seven Days victories
down on the Peninsula, by which Lee took command with
Richmond on the verge of falling and transformed the operational
situation such that, within two months, it was the Confederacy
that was on the offensive in the hinterland of Washington City
rather than the Union that was driving into the suburbs of
Richmond.
Secondly, it is the template of the way in which Lee best liked
to use II Corps Jacksons men and I Corps, under Longstreet:
the anvil and the hammer, respectively.
And thirdly, it is a set-piece battle, a classic of the military art:
Old Blue Light and II Corps holding a defensive position on an
unfinished railroad cut, Popes bluecoats being fed heedlessly into
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frontal assaults, and when the Union is too engaged to extricate
itself Old Pete and I Corps appearing on the Union left flank,
scything the Federals with a mass artillery barrage, then pouring in
in a flank assault led by Hoods Texans, smashing the US Army of
Virginia to fleeing remnants salvaged only by a desperate
rearguard action. It is as classic a battle as Chancellorsville itself.
And like most battles, each of the Manassas actions was
dictated by the land itself.
The Manassas NBP, naturally enough, comprises portions of
both these battlespaces, which, indeed, slightly overlap, though not
thank God to the extent those of the Peninsula do (on the
Virginia Peninsula, around Yorktown, you can hardly tell the
Revolutionary works from those added to them in 1861, when
indeed Yanks and Confederates alike reused and extended the
crumbling traces of Washingtons and Cornwallis field
fortifications). The hinge, as it were, between the two is the
intersection of what was, in 1861 and 1862, the Warrenton
Turnpike (now US 29, the Lee Highway) with the Sudley Road
(Virginia 234), northwest of the Henry House Hill.
That was the hinge on which the doors of fate swung at First
Manassas as well. But a hinge is not a door; and more must be said,
first, to explain what happened here.
If the levies on both sides at First Manassas were raw all
green together, on both sides, as Mr Lincoln pointed out to
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General McDowell so were the commanders. P. G. T.
Beauregard and Irvin McDowell each hit upon the same overall
battle plan: attack the enemys left. On a flat map, the collision of
such plans would have interacted to create, simply, a waltz, with
both armies rights swinging around a central position. What
changed things, of course, is that Manassas is not a flat map. It is
broken ground, ridges and fords and runs (a Virginianism for what
we Americans call creeks, freshwater rivulets not to be confused
with creeks in the British sense).
What set the whole thing up, in turn, was the preliminary
skirmish it was no more than that, though in those innocent days
it seemed big and gaudy enough to merit the title of battle the
Battle of Blackburns Ford. (If Jackson made his name at First
Manassas, Longstreet made his at the Ford.) The Ford is outside
the present confines of the Manassas NBP, being east and a little
south of the park; the Bull Run Regional Park encompasses the
Blackburns Ford site. The reason, in turn, that Federal forces
driving south from Centreville attempted to force the ford was
that to its south, in turn, was the strategically important rail
junction at Manassas Junction. Railways, of course, follow the
contours of topography, as indeed do the human settlements and
commercial depots they serve; so once again, the land and its very
shape are master here.
The Confederate success in holding off the Federals at
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Blackburns Ford, in turn, brought McDowells army out to try to
flank and overwhelm the Fords defenders, swinging to their left
and enveloping them. This entirely predictable threat, and the
strategic value of Manassas Junction as part of the rail net, in its
own turn drew Beauregards and Joe Johnstons armies to the
banks of Bull Run, the rill that Blackburn forded.
The Confederates were on the strategic defensive in most
regards: while the mere secession of Virginia meant that
Confederate armies were operating on the very outskirts of the
Northern capital, the immediate strategic objectives that fed the
armies into the grinder at this place and at this time were the
Southern defense or Union capture of the rail node at Manassas
Junction. Tactically, neither force was squarely on the tactical
defensive, in that Beauregards plan, to which J. E. Johnston,
arriving later, assented (although Johnston ranked Old Borey, he
declined overall command in favor of letting the man who planned
the action be the man to execute it), was to engage in offensive
operations against the Union left in the service of the overall
strategic defensive goals.
To recap: McDowells overall purpose was to get around the
Confederates and flank and defeat them, so that he could proceed
to Manassas Junction. Beauregards overall purpose was to spin the
Union left facing his right yet further away from that
objective. Thus the mirrored plans of attack on the enemy left.
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The Manassas NBP, dotted though it is with monuments, so
preserves the ground as to make this clear with the merest sweep
of the eye from the Henry House Hill Visitors Center. Facing
ENE from the Henrys farmstead, one looks down on the same axis
as the road to Centreville and Washington, DC. The ground falls
away to Bull Run, and the inflowing of the confluent tributaries of
Holkums Branch and Youngs Branch. Bull Run is fordable (the
Lewis and Ball Fords) on the right as you look ENE from the
Henry House, and it is spanned by a stone bridge that carried the
Warrenton Turnpike of the day across the Run upstream of those
fords, to your left. The topography funnels any frontal or even
mildly oblique assault straight towards this key position on the
Henry House hilltop. Behind this cardinal position is the Sudley
Road; immediately to your left is its intersection with the
Warrenton Turnpike, now Virginia 234, at the Stone House.
The Confederates from the start possessed a secured defensive
position, then, the literal high ground, and interior lines of
communication. The Union response was to mount a diversionary
assault across the Stone Bridge that spanned Bull Run and carried
the Turnpike, pinning the Confederates down while the bulk of
McDowells forces snuck around the Confederate left, northwest
towards Sudley Springs and then down the Sudley Road and onto
the ENE / WSW running high ground formed by Matthews Hill,
Buck Hill, and Dogan Ridge.
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Manassas NBP succeeds as only a few battlegrounds do in
making these operational considerations immediately clear to view.
From here where the Stonewall BDE was to hold its ground, it is
manifest that this is the key to the position, just as it is evident
from the other side of the bridge, as it was to McDowell, that the
only possible choices are to flank the Confederate left by coming
south down the Sudley Road, or to carry the Henry House Hill by
assault.
Thus, the overarching duty in getting a sense of what happened
here in the baking summer of 1861, at First Manassas, is to begin
with the Henry House Hill walking tour. It is the ground on which
the culminating scene of the drama played out. The Union right
had not rolled up the Confederate left with its flanking manuvre
(a device Jackson could use with hardened troops at
Chancellorsville, in after years, but sheer folly to ask of green
troops under such commanders as Burnside and Willcox and
Heintzelman, and even those under a yet-untried Sherman); but
neither had the Confederate right been able to advance upon the
Union left flank.
Inevitably, the key position of the Henrys farmhouse, now
scarred by shot and shell, had to be carried, and the Confederates
and their artillery, Imbodens in particular driven from this high
ground that, so long as the Southerners held it, left the Federal
troops hopelessly exposed in their progress towards it. Weight of
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numbers and poor generalship Beauregard was incapable of
adjusting his now-unworkable plan in the face of events had
forced the Confederates in upon themselves. Brigadier General
Barnard Bee, of South Carolina, had seen the central importance of
the Henry House Hill position, and chosen it as the rallying point
for his rattled troops: There stands Jackson like a stone wall! Let
us rally behind the Virginians! It was his last command.
The Walking Tour around the Henry House Hill shows the
sudden unfolding of the event:
the Union artillery positions (Ricketts being the
exemplar) and their Confederate counterparts, where the
cannon dueled and sharpshooters tried to tip the balance
by picking off artillerymen and artillery horses;
the Confederate forward positions and artillery
batteries placed to sweep Matthews Hill across the road in
the event of just such a flanking movement as McDowell
intended, emplacements abandoned as the blue tide rushed
onwards with mounting hope;
the rally points in the interim, and Wade Hamptons
desperate bid to buy time with his Legion of Carolinians,
there at Robinsons Lane, and again in a deadly open field
where Johnston and Beauregard led from the front,
Johnston personally taking command of the shot-to-hell 4th
Alabama;
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and then, on the duke of Wellingtons beloved reverse
slope, waiting with a deadly patience just over the crest of
the hill, Jackson, and the position held by the brigade that
would ever after be known as the Stonewall Brigade. The
Union wave came on, and like a wave dashed against a
rock, or a stone wall, broke, recoiled, and ebbed.
The 33d Virginia counter-attacked the Union artillery under
Griffin, and slaughtered the crews with a point blank volley. New
York Zouaves mounted a final counter-effort, and failed. The last,
wavering remnants of the original Federal flanking movement that
was now relegated to a supporting role, the diversionary frontal
assault having with wars mad logic become the main effort: Maine
and Vermont troops under O. O. Howard, a pious New Englander
better at praying than command: emerged on Chinn Ridge, behind
the Henry House and to the west of the Sudley Road, and were
shot to rag dolls by Confederate gunnery. They broke, and the
whole Union Army broke with them. It was the turning point.
The broader context is afforded by the Stone Bridge Walking
Tour, which begins at the point where Shanks Evans, with Rob
Wheats Louisiana Tigers, Sloans 4th South Carolina, and
Alexanders and Terrys Troops, 30th Virginia CAV the latter
Troop being Old Boreys scouts, to the extent he had any
suddenly saw the Union diversionary assault for what it was, and
headed, as the Walking Tour then heads, up to where the Sudley
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Road crosses the juncture of Matthews Hill and Dogans Ridge.
There he was able to hold and check the advance units of the
Federal flanking movement which is how the diversionary assault
on the Confederate center, there at the Henry farmhouse, became
the main assault, and the grand plan McDowell had formulated to
flank Beauregard right out of his boots came to nothing. Man
proposes. The trail then continues down the Sudley Road to the
Henry House hill, and down its killing-ground slope back to the
Stone Bridge.
The Henry House Hill walking tour is about a mile in length,
the Stone Bridge tour is some five miles worth. Self-guided, the
tours generally rely upon interpretive signs with push-activated
recordings, quite well done, that tell what happened at given spots.
The Henry House tour loop may also be walked with a ranger-
historian guide at scheduled intervals, taking about half an hour [as
of 2002].
The Second Manassas portion of the 5,000 acre park is
considerably less compact, as was the battle itself. In the brutal
heat of a late Virginia August, Old Jack opened the ball by
ambushing one of John Popes columns at Brawners Farm, west
and a little south of the earlier battlefield, as the falsely secure
Yanks slogged down the Warrenton Pike towards an expected
concentration at Centreville. Once again, the warlike Calvinist
deacon had mystified, misled, and surprised his enemy, and Lees
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orders to suppress the miscreant Pope were coming to fruition.
Pope as usual, with his headquarters where his hindquarters
ought have been took the bait, and hastened reinforcements to
Groveton hamlet.
The whole course of the battle was implicit in this opening
move. Gibbons Iron Brigade was amongst those engaged on 28
August. Gibbons rashly assumed that his men were being subjected
to minor harassment by cavalry and horse artillery, nothing more,
and ordered a flanking movement by the 2nd Wisconsin. They
proved the hard way that this was no skirmish when they came
face to face with Stonewalls waiting infantry. The rest of the Iron
Brigade was sent into line, and then simply left there without
orders; and Private George Fairfield of the 7th Wisconsin came to
an unpleasant realization:
My God, what a slaughter. No one seemed to know the object
of the fight .
That, in microcosm, was what befell the ill-led Federals for the
next three days.
Why were the armies here yet again? Because of Federal
mistakes, a whole series of them, many induced by Marse Robert
and Old Jack. In brief, McClellan and his Army of the Potomac
had been paralyzed and this was partly self-induced on the
Peninsula. Pope had been given the makeshift, thrown-together
Army of Virginia with which to at least threaten the overland
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route towards Richmond, Little Macs amphibious end-run having
so spectacularly failed. Then both men were superseded by Henry
Halleck, nicknamed, in a burst of Homeric irony, Old Brains. It
was Hallecks intention to unite the Potomac and Virginia armies
south of DC, threatening the Gordonsville rail node, and
protecting Washington by at least seeming to be ready for an
overland campaign due south against Richmond.
Lees typically audacious response was to send Stonewall his
reputation needing burnishing after the Seven Days, when he had
not performed to the standard hed set himself through his
textbook campaigns in the Shenandoah Valley in the springtime
to buffalo Pope before Pope and McClellan could unite. This was a
clear signal of faith in II Corps and its commander, and Jackson had
failings to avenge. It was an audacious plan, requiring a commander
who was at his best when on the longest possible leash, and there
was no more independent or audacious subordinate in all Lees
army than Thomas J Jackson.
He flanked Pope, got between Pope and Washington, astride
his supply lines, plundered and burnt millions of dollars worth of
supplies and rations, and got Pope to chase after him with no
regard to common sense. The Federals as a whole reacted to
borrow an acid phrase of Mr Lincolns, speaking of Heintzelman in
Tennessee the next year like a stunned duck. This included Mr
Lincoln, his cabinet, his War Department, Halleck, Pope, and
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McClellan.
Thus the return to Manassas, where Jackson suckered Pope
into attacking him.
The next morning, 29 August 1862, Jacksons II Corps (not yet
formally thus named, but here so called for convenience),
Stonewalls old Valley Army now augmented and in the best
shape of its storied history, took up a defensive position along an
unfinished railroad line, a graded cut that was a defensive
earthwork made to order. (Mr Sewards irrepressible conflict had
managed, however inevitable it was, to catch most of the country
by surprise: here, as at Gettysburg, and at numerous other battles,
warfighters found themselves deployed along unfinished
commercial projects that were interrupted by a war the captains of
industry had never imagined would actually come.)
Arrayed against them, concentrated in the NW quadrant
marked off by the Sudley Road / Warrenton Turnpike
intersection, anchored on Dogan Ridge, were Popes men, whose
Order of Battle was already beginning to sound like a roll-call of
commanders whom Jackson and Lee had already beaten and
humiliated on other fields: Sigel, Milroy, Commissary Banks, and
other victims of Old Jacks Valley campaign; Porter and
McDowell.
Jackson was riding high. The Stonewall Brigade was in the II
Corps line of battle, Branch and Dorsey Pender and Gregg and
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Early commanded hardened troops (although Taliaferro and Ewell
had both been wounded the preceding evening), Willie Pegram
was there with his cannoneers, Fitz Lee and W. H. F. Lee had their
horsemen at the ready, the Gallant Pelhams horse artillery dashed
into position, raining iron upon the Yankees, and Jeb Stuart, who
had sat his horse with the same lan at First Manassas as CO of
the 1st Virginia Cavalry, now lorded it splendidly as commander of
the whole Cavalry Division, roaring fighting songs through his
cinnamon beard, with his personal mounted banjo player, Sweeney,
at his side. This was the II Corps-to-be, Jacksons Wing, at the
height of its power, the Platonic ideal of Jacksons command made
flesh, the subject of a hundred paintings.
Incredibly, yet characteristically, the bombastic John Pope
obstinately threw uncoordinated frontal assault after
uncoordinated frontal assault, piecemeal, against the hard-bitten II
Corps in their dug-in positions. He also left his left flank in the air,
just east of Groveton. He could see only Jackson to his front, the
bait and even in itself, the poisoned bait, itself dealing death to
his men in the trap.
By the afternoon of the 29th, that trap was in place. I Corps (as
it would become) under Dutch Longstreet, with R. E. Lee keeping
a close eye on his most dilatory commander, had poured through
Thoroughfare Gap and had deployed on Jacksons right, the Union
left, effectively able to pivot upon command at right angles to the
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line II Corps had maintained. I Corps was in a position now, from
Stuarts Hill and the Cundiff area, the southwest corner of todays
Park, to roll the Federals up. Popes Army of Virginia was now
about to be enfiladed, with Lees Army of Northern Virginia
forming a V inside which and against only one stroke of which
Pope was directing his troops or, rather, his victims.
Typically, Longstreet wasted the remainder of the light fussing
about, getting his troops disposed just so, and leaving II Corps to
bear the galling, if doomed, Federal attacks, still being delivered in
spasms. (Jacksons ammunition was low, but his men knew that
they were expected required to continue fighting, if it came to
nothing but rocks, fists, and bayonets hand to hand: as in places it
did, to A. P. Hills incoherent fury with Longstreet and Jackson
both.)
Typically also, Lee suggested that Longstreet get a move on,
but declined to give a positive order to that effect.
And typically again, Pope was oblivious: elements of Morells
Division, the 1st Division of V Corps (FitzJohn Porters), early
arrivals without McClellan from the recently-beaten Army of
the Potomac, were engaged as early as 1100 on 29 August by D. R.
Joness division of I Corps, ANV (Andersons, Toombs /
Bennings, and Draytons Brigades, Georgians and one South
Carolina regiment), and other units of V Corps under Porter were
engaged all day in fitful clashes. At sunset, remarkably yet again,
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typically Hood even seized the moment for a devastating twilight
flank attack against elements of Porters Corps. Pope nonetheless
refused to believe that the rest of Lees army had arrived, and
concentrated blindly on Jackson. He got nowhere.
The situation, then, on the 30th was thus. II Corps, bloodied
but unbowed, grimly awaited the Federals from positions along the
unfinished rail track, their backs braced against Stony Ridge. Part
of II Corps line primarily Starkes Division (now under Stafford,
Starke having taken over for the wounded Taliaferro), the Fourth
Brigade of Jacksons old division, consisting of the 1st, 2d, 9th, 10th,
and 15th Louisiana and Coppens Louisiana Battalion occupied
the Deep Cut portion of the railway grade, an entrenchment that
would have done credit to the Western Front in 1916.
I Corps was in place: since before noon on the 29th, it had been
in position, Hoods Texans first and foremost, on either side of the
ENE-trending Warrenton Pike, just east of Pageland Lane, today
the westernmost boundary of the Park; with Cadmus Wilcoxs
Alabamians echeloned to his left rear and Kempers Virginians
echeloned to Hoods right and rear, extending the line south of the
present day Park bounds. Joness Georgians, who had clawed
Porters V Corps severely the preceding afternoon, extended the
line still further to the south, on Kempers right, straddling the
Manassas Gap Railway that runs a kilometer and more outside the
southern limits of todays Park. Beverly Robertsons Virginian
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cavalry (the 2d, 6th, 7th, 12th, and 17th), sent by Stuart for the
purpose from II Corps, screened towards Manassas itself.
At 1830 hours or so on 29 August, Hatchs 1st Division, III
Corps of the Federal Army of Virginia (poor old Irvin
McDowells, he being back at the scene of his earlier martyrdom),
another detachment from McClellans Potomac Army, had
engaged Hoods Texans, only to be raked with artillery fire from I
Corps gunners. They had fallen back unsupported, and at that
very moment, Porter was ordered by Pope, still willfully blind to
Longstreets presence (and unwilling to listen to Porters reports of
it), to move to Groveton for a final grand assault, the next
morning, on what Pope somehow saw as a beaten and retreating
Stonewall Jackson.
This unfathomable idiocy finally freed even the cautious
Longstreet from any restraints.
At 1200 high and fatal noon on 30 August, 1862, the Union
troops began to move to their jump-off positions for the attack on
Jackson. Reynolds Pennsylvania Reserves (III Corps under
McDowell: these included the brigade of one George Gordon
Meade, whom destiny awaited elsewhere) were shifted to Chinn
Ridge, which extends on a NE / SW axis from the SW corner of
the intersection of the Turnpike and the Sudley Road. Facing it to
the east across Sudley Road was the wreckage of the Henry
farmhouse, where Jackson had made his name and the Confederacy
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had won its battle the year before.
Three hours later, at 1500, the grand assault on Jackson line
began, all along the railway cut. Butterfields 3d Brigade, from
Porters V Corps the 12th, 17th, and 44th New York, the 16th
Michigan, and the 83d Pennsylvania and Hatchs 1st Division,
from McDowells III Corps, composed of Sullivans, Doubledays,
and Marsena Patricks New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians, the 2d
US Sharpshooters, and Gibbons dread Iron Brigade, the 2d, 6th,
and 7th Wisconsin and the 19th Indiana (Westerners grimly
determined to show the Eastern troops how it was done), fought
their way forward to Jacksons front, with Sykes 2d Division the
Regular Army regiments from Porters V Corps in support: only
to be torn to shreds by enfilading artillery fire from their left, the
southwards: Longstreets artillery.
Porters whole V Corps is at risk; Pope pulls Reynolds off the
high ground of Chinns Ridge to support Porter. This leaves only
Warrens New Yorkers out of Sykes Division and a brigade of
Reynolds Pennsylvania Reserves as the only Federal troops south
of the Pike.
The Yanks are committed now, their flank in the air and
nothing but tissue paper south of the Warrenton Turnpike. At
1530, Longstreet finally lets slip his dogs of war. Hoods Texans
advance along the axis of the Turnpike, and all I Corps pivots off
of the joinder with Jacksons right: the door is slamming shut, the
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trap is sprung. Hoods Division (or Evans: Shanks Evans, too, is
revisiting certain glimpses of the moon this day) as a whole is the
Texas Brigade: 1st, 4th, and 5th Texas, 18th Georgia, and
Hamptons Legion; Whitings (or Laws) Brigade: 4th Alabama,
6th North Carolina, 2d Mississippi; and 11th Mississippi; Evans
Brigade under Stevens: 17th, 18th, 22d, and 23d South Carolina,
and Holcombes Legion.
The rest of I Corps swings round in a great sickle-cut, a
scything motion to the NNE that reaps a harvest of Federal dead:
these are:
Wilcoxs Division: Wilcoxs Brigade of the 8th, 9th, 10th, and
11th Alabama, Pryors Floridians (the 2d, 5th, and 8th Florida with
the 3d Virginia and 14th Alabama), Featherstons Mississippians,
the 2d, 12th, 16th, and 19th;
Kempers Division: his brigade, under Montgomery D. Corse,
the 1st, 7th, 11th, 17th, and 24th Virginia, and his Sharpshooters,
Jenkins Brigade, the 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 6th South Carolina and the
Palmetto Sharpshooters, Picketts Brigade under Eppa Hunton, the
8th, 18th, 19th, 28th, and 56th Virginia;
D. R. Joness Division: Andersons Brigade: 1st, 7th, 8th, 9th,
and 11th Georgia,
Toombs Brigade under Benning: the 2d, 15th, 17th, and 20th
Georgia; and Draytons Brigade, the 15th South Carolina and 50th
and 51st Georgia; and
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The division of Dick Anderson, Lees choice, later in the war,
after Jacksons death, to succeed him should the worst happen:
Extra Billy Mahones Brigade, the 6th, 12th, 16th, and 41st
Virginia, Wrights Brigade, 3d, 22d, and 48th Georgia and the 44th
Alabama; Armisteads Brigade, 9th, 14th, 38th, 53d, and 57th
Virginia, and the 5th Virginia Battalion.
This is what was bearing down on the Federals, rolling up their
flank. Within half an hour, Warrens position has been wholly
overrun. Pope desperately shifts Ricketts 2d Division of
McDowells III Corps (Army of Virginia) New Yorkers under
Duryea and Tower, Pennsylvanians, Massachusetts men, Indiana
troops and (West) Virginians under Stiles and Thoburn to
Chinn Ridge, where Schurzs and Schencks hapless Germans of
Sigels I Corps join them. Sykes and Reynolds try to make a stand
on the Henry House Hill, while Heintzelmans III Corps (Army of
the Potomac another rich source of fatal battlefield confusion)
and Renos IX Corps try to stave off Jacksons surge forward from
his positions, north of the Pike. They are facing too much, no
matter the beating Old Jacks men have taken for two days now:
Ewells Division under Lawton is there, Earlys Virginians,
Lawtons own Georgians under Douglass, Hays Louisiana Brigade,
Trimbles Georgians, Carolinians, and 15th Alabama, and Powell
Hills whole Light Division, with Branchs Tarheels, Greggs South
Carolinians, Penders Tarheels, Archers Tennesseeans, Thomas
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Georgians, Campbells and Taliaferros Virginians, Staffords
Brigade of Louisianans, and the Stonewall Brigade itself.
It has not been easy: Taliaferro and Ewell wounded, Baylor and
Botts dead, Neff dead, Dabney and Goldsborough wounded,
Spencer killed, Forbes wounded, Field wounded, McGrady
wounded, two successive commanders of the 1st SC Rifles (Orrs)
under Gregg killed (Marshall and Ledbetter), Edwards and
McGowan both down, Trimble and Forno wounded, Fulton dead
and these are merely field-grade and general officers. But their
men are if anything the hotter, now, to avenge them.
Eleven regiments of Jebs Virginia cavalry are running riot, too:
Fitzhugh Lee is on the loose, and Bev Robertson could almost be
foxhunting back home. By 1800 hours, the Union positions on
Chinn Ridge have fallen and the Union is in dire straits on the
Henry House Hill. Sykes and Reynolds hold, just, until Stevens
Division, from Renos IX Corps, relieves them. The light fails, and
what is left of Popes army escapes, blood-boltered, towards
Centreville and Washington.
Of some 75,696 Union troops engaged, 1,724 have been killed,
8,372 wounded and 5,968 have simply melted away, missing.
Confederate casualties, of the 48,527 engaged, are about even to the
Federal toll in killed and wounded: 1,481 and 7,627, respectively.
Only 89 are missing as the smoke clears, though: a significant
pointer to how the day has gone. The Federals are in retreat, many
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have flown, and the Confederates are masters of the field.
The Second Manassas Walking Tour, and its Deep Cut
extension, about even in length with the First Manassas Stone
Bridge tour, takes in:
Brawners Farm,
the Railroad Grade and the Deep Cut,
the Stone House whence Pope watched Nemesis stoop upon
him and where the wounded and dying were piteously brought,
Groveton and its Confederate Cemetery,
the New York Monuments on Chinn Ridge, where the 5th and
10th New York were wrecked, the 5th losing 123 men in 5 minutes
the worst single-engagement infantry losses on either side in the
whole War and the Chinn House, site of a doomed last stand
that did buy time for some other, fleeing Federals,
Chinn Ridge, and
the Henry House hill. The 12-mile self-guided driving tour takes
in the same spots.
You may now have some idea of what those sites mean.
Finally, though, if you can, you ought see the whole of both
battlefields as Jeb saw it, or FitzJohn Porter, or Buford, or Lee
himself: the better part of the Park is accessible by a horseback trail
that takes in all these fateful spots and more besides.
Manassas NBP is open during daylight hours every day. The
Museum is closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas, but otherwise
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open from 0830 to 1700 daily, with extended hours in the summer.
The Henry Hill Visitor Center, which contains the quite decent
museum, also provides a quarter-hour or so orientation film every
half hour that may well be worth your time, and the bookstore is
occasionally worthwhile; the other Visitor Center, at Stuart Hill,
is open on summer weekends only. A three-day pass to the park is
$3.00, but theres little point in not investing in a Parks Pass for the
whole country if youre going to visit National Parks and
Monuments at all.
But then you may ask, Why? Why bother with this place at
all, and its history? Or if one bothers, why here and not elsewhere?
Partly, I would reply, because two very different events
occurred here, and both their common and their distinguishing
characteristics are significant. And because what happened here,
irrespective of the quotidian particulars, implicates some universal
things. Here occurred events of the greatest moment: honor and
dishonor, mercy and violence, genius and folly, gallantry and
bravery and fear and cowardice, too, which is a wholly different
thing and sacrifice. Here great issues were joined, and great men
named and nameless fought, and many died.
But why here? Even if these things matter, why does this place
matter? Leave aside the historical chances. Think only this. The
Texas writer John Graves has wisely said that the land shapes us,
and goes on shaping the hell out of us who are left. It shapes
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events as well. The men who joined battle here were shaped by
their respective lands, and the battles themselves were shaped and
influenced by the insuperable constraints of terrain. And the
Manassas NBP does one of the finest jobs of any such site in
preserving and making self-evident to all the influence of terrain,
while balancing the dictates of accessibility for those who wish to
learn more. That is Why Here. Go and see.
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MCMXLIV:Nos a Gulielmo victi victoris patriamliberavimus:6 June 2011
On this day a phrase that calls up immediately, and without
ones consciously willing it, Churchills Action This Day
memoranda: aptly on this day, then, seven-and-sixty years gone,
the narrow seas and the Norman coast were the balance in which
the world was weighed.
In that weighing and meting, the distant heirs of Brennus threw
a sword upon the scales to balance them.
Between Ouistreham and St-Aubin-sur-Mer, in Calvados, the
East Riding sent its sons to fight as they had fought at Blenheim; to
fight now beside the sons of South Lancs, the Excellers of Gallipoli,
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Clem Attlees old regiment, and beside the Suffolks garlanded with
the laurels and roses of Minden.
The Lincolnshires were at Sword Beach also, not yet the Royal
Lincolnshires, yet bearing battle honours from Malplaquet to
Bunkers Hill, from Noseys campaign in the Peninsula to Arras,
from Norway and Dunkirk and Italy. They were brigaded with the
KOSB, a Minden Regiment, with its memories of Killiecrankie and
Culloden, Chitral and Mons; and with the wolfhounds of the
Royal Ulster Rifles, who had answered to Wellington at Badajoz.
Warwickshire, Norfolk, and Salop the KSLI were there, the
Midlands and East Anglia and the Welsh Marches shoulder to
shoulder, and honours between that reached back to the Boyne and
Salamanca, Sevastopol and Cambrai and Dunkirk.
There were Sappers and Gunners and Hussars, and Lord Lovat
and Piper Millin and the Commandos, including Kieffers French
beside HM Jollies, the Royal Marines.
The pattern was repeated at Gold: DLI from the County
Palatine of Durham, Green Howards, East Yorks, Devons and
Hants and Dorsets together, the South Wales Borderers and the
Glosters already Glorious if not yet so named, brigaded with the
men of Essex; Royal Marine Commandos, Dragoon Guards,
Lancers and Sappers and the KRRC, Sherwood Rangers, Beds and
Herts and elements of the Border Regiment.
Between Sword and Gold was Juno, where 3rd Canadian
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Infantry Division and the Royal Marines showed their mettle:
Highlanders from Ottawa and Ontario, the Fort Garry Horse, the
Royal Winnipeg Rifles and the Qubcois Rgiment de la
Chaudire and all the manhood of Canada from the Atlantic
provinces to the great West.... It was to be the Canadians who
penetrated the furthest towards objective when the day had ended.
Every regiment, like every college and every university, every
parish and every communion, has its particular ethos. The
Americans did not admit that they possessed a regimental system
on the British model; yet they did. Their 29th Division, at Omaha
Beach, was drawn from National Guard units the Americans
Territorials from states that had been on opposing sides in the
American Civil War. Pennsylvanian units could boast battle
honours from First and Second Bull Run, or Antietam; their
Virginian counterparts in the Division had the same honours, yet
for First and Second Manassas and for Sharpsburg. The 116th
Infantry Regiment, the regiment of the Bedford Boys, was at
Omaha; 3rd Battalion had roots in the colonial militia of the Old
Dominion, yet its service to the United States had not been
uninterrupted, not least between 1861 and 1865. Its lineage was
that of the Stonewall Brigade, II Corps, Army of Northern
Virginia, and the spirit of its great commander seemed to hover
over it even upon a strand in France.
Such stories could be repeated of every Allied formation upon
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that memorable day, from the USAAF and RAF and the Naval
contingent, to the Poles waiting to aid in exploiting the coming
breakout; from private soldiers in the US 8th and 12th Regiments
of Infantry, to 4th Divisions second in command at Utah Beach,
Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jnr.
Bombardier JA Hill, 4th Airlanding Anti-Tank Bty, RA, from
Walsall, died that day.
Major AM Onions, 101st Bty, 20thAnti-Tank Regiment, RA,
never returned to Moseley, Birmingham.
The studious Captain JH White, South Lancs, attached to 5th
Bn, the East Yorkshire Regiment, was killed in action.
L/Cpl John Dickinson, 1st Bn Kings Own Scottish Borderers,
was 28 years in age when he died upon D-Day, leaving his wife
Nellie a widow.
Pte HR Crosswell, 2d Bn the Glosters, also left a widow new-
made upon that day.
Major Richard Gough Talbot Baines of the Hampshires died at
the age of thirty years, and sleeps in Bayeux War Cemetery with
over sixty of his fellow officers and men who fell that day, from a
lieutenant whod won the MC to a nineteen-year-old private
soldier who should never see twenty.
And the roll could be called over forever and we not sufficing
in honouring these men.
What we can do, and must do, is to remember.
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They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
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Aphorisms &
Observations
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For four centuries now, the American people have resigned
themselves to natural disasters and acts of God: floods, prairie fires,
blizzards, tornados, hurricanes, dust bowls, epidemics, academics,
lawyers, and politicians.
Only a very few things in this world do not yield themselves to
rational economic analysis: war, the vices, courage and the other
virtues, music, religion, love, patriotism, and, most significantly,
cricket. Naturally, these are the things that most matter:
particularly cricket. Its really quite vexing.
This side of the Kingdom of God upon Earth, it is a melancholy
human fact that those who beat their swords into plowshares end
up doing the plowing for those who kept their swords.
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It is a pity that fagging is done away with (being four years Mr
Camerons senior, I tend to meditate upon the world of good it
should have done him), and a greater pity that National Service is
a thing of the past, for it means that we have those who seek to
rule who have never know what it is first to serve.
As a 1928 Prayer Book Anglican, a conservative Democrat, and a
slightly schismatic Austrian with heretically monetarist leanings,
Im not overly fond of social conservatives though I dont go so
far as Wemyss does in calling that an oxymoron. (Vegetarian
chili, nowthatsan oxymoron.) But when I hear people yapping
about how the religious Right has never been right and never
accomplished anything good, I do tend to mention the abolition of
slavery.
The C of E has gone from being the Tory party at prayer to being
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the outreach department of NuLabour and whatever likeminded
socialists it can round up.
But violence never solvedanything. The hell it hasnt. It wasnt
Wedgwoods pottery that stopped the slave trade: it was the
opened gunports of the Royal Navy. No speeches not even
Lincolns preserved the Union and ended slavery in America.
The application of violence on a mass scale did that, just as the
application of violence on a mass scale gave the colonies their
independence. And Britain and America didnt liberate Dachau,
Bergen-Belsen, and Buchenwald with pamphlets and diplomatic
pressure.
Race is, in America, what class is in Britain.
Class is to the British what race is to the Americans: the dirty little
secret that mustnt be mentioned, and must be spoken of
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obsessively.
Poverty is relative. My relatives can attest to mine.
Never trust a man whom ones Clumbers disapprove.
Public life in this country is too damn dominated by people whod
read more if only their lips didnt get so tired.
A preference for local and organic provender which I share is
notmeant to be a substitute religion.
People, you dont get extra credit for doing what its your duty to
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do in the first place.
An intellectual is someone who bangs on about Congreve and
Wycherley and Udall and Wilde ... and refuses to admit that
Morecambe and Wise, Ken Dodd, Tommy Cooper, and Frankie
Howerd were bloody funny.
An academic is someone who writes and lectures aboutwhy
Wilde and Sheridan and Shaw were funny ... but doesnt get the
joke when its Humph or Horne or Marsden or Kenneth Williams.
Of all Americas natural resources, its richest is an inexhaustible
vein of irony.
nd of this sampler
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