Lost, Now and Then

At an intersection of two country roads, neither of which anyone ever uses except for the very locals and the hopelessly lost, a woman in an SUV flagged me down.

She was trying to end-run the reservoir, and, particularly, the SR 13 bridge. She explained that following a stroke, she experiences vertigo (my term) when crossing high bridges.

She had come up from Paoli, and had been on the road over 4 hours. Her destination was just over the bridge, and several (less than 10) miles.

Here is a problem: Mississinewa Lake is a flood-control reservoir, and there is one bridge downstream, Red Bridge, which is higher, longer, and more narrow than the SR 13 span. And there is the dam, which is higher and twice as long as either.

Downstream is a morass of twisting, narrow lanes and gravel roads.

I finally convinced her to go back to the highway and give it a try. I led her out of the wilderness and back to SR 13, and then stopped and gave her the most helpful advice, to set the cruise control and close her eyes.

Of course, since I have nothing better to do than re-examine everything I say and do, today I came up with two better ideas.

One would be to go around to the bridge on SR 124, just east of Peru. This bridge is only a few hundred yards from where the Mississinewa dumps into the Wabash River, and is surprisingly mundane.

Still a problem: I couldn't give Rand or McNally directions to find this bridge, and driving there would have cost her about 30 minutes and me, 50.

The other great, late, idea would have been to park on the south end of the SR 13 bridge, drive her across, then walk back. Too bad for the nice lady that didn't occur yesterday.

She said she was going to turn the radio up and pray. Godspeed, ma'am.

As a Kindergarten Civil War student, I am almost embarrassed to comment on the people who history remembers. Scholars spend decades poring over century-old accounts and diaries.

I read a couple of books.

My opinions most surely mirror those of the authors of the contemporary tellings I have read.

Stephen Sears is my favorite, and he has a low opinion of the war record of Union General George McClellan, and so do I.

McClellan was a Philadelphia blueblood who was allowed to attend West Point at age 15 and graduated second in the class of 1846. "In the day", as they say on "Pawn Stars", West Point made engineers, not warriors. McClellan completed his bellicose education with an intensive study of Napoleon and his tactics, capped with a field trip to Europe.

McClellan was called the Young Napoleon, but there was a disconnect. Lincoln referred to his "case of the slows". A poem, "Tardy George" was widely circulated.

The Young Napoleon viewed war in terms of the decisive battles of his namesake. He required an overwhelming advantage, chose every battle as the end-all, the victory to end the war. He abhorred loss of life, and strove to limit it by careful preparation and tactics.

This last is admirable, but the advancements in weaponry (read: savagery) rendered Napoleon's proven tactics suicidal, the battle lines subject to annihilation.

The reason: rifling. Rifling is grooving the inside (bore) of the gun barrel to impart spin to the projectile, vastly improving accuracy. Prior to rifling, a 3" bullseye at 30 yards was perfect - everything worked. Misses were caused by imperfections in the ball, the same reason pitchers (using a baseball's stitches) can throw a curve.

Firing a Minie' (minnie) ball, even refitted muskets were accurate to 200 yards, 300 yards, and further. Overgrown BB guns were transformed into uber-efficient killing machines.

How efficient? Consider: the Revolutionary War accounted for an estimated 10,600 American casualties (killed and wounded). The Civil War battle of Antietam produced 12,600 casualties - in the Morning Phase. That's one of three phases. (The day's total: 22,700. Killed or wounded. One fucking day.)

Granted, two of the major Colonist victories were in terms of survival. One being the winter at Valley Forge, the other the successful withdrawal (retreat) after the defeat at the battle of Long Island (aka the battle of Brooklyn). Both were directed by General George Washington.

Battle lines are most basic: selecting a patch of ground to defend, and forming a line wide enough do it. Attackers must form in a line sufficient to confront the defensive line. To come up short on either end, or fail to protect those four ends, risks being "flanked", attacked on a "thin" end and rolled over. (Thin, because the lines were necessarily thin, as troops in the rear couldn't fire through their lines. Two, and, at most, three lines allowed volleys, fire and duck to reload.)

McClellan, as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, devised an end to the war. Called the Peninsula Campaign, the plan was to sail the army to Hampton/Newport News, VA, then march to and seize Richmond, the Confederate capitol. Audacious, and might have worked, but Little Mac stalled on the approach, and the Rebel counterattacks took a terrible toll. McClellan was ordered to bring the army back to DC, where the Army was assigned to General John Pope.

Then Pope had his entire command nearly destroyed at the battle of Second Bull Run (Manassas), thoroughly drenching the already hallowed ground in much more blood, and, after at least two refusals (including Joe Hooker, where that term ensues), McClellan was offered the joint Army of the Potomac/Army of Northern Virginia.

(One mitigating factor at Second Bull Run was McClellan's alleged failure to move two of his divisions in timely support of Pope. The magnitude of this "lapse" was never persecuted, perhaps as the Federals attempted to downplay what was a total rout. I submit this supported by the fact that "press releases" of US battle casualties were halved.)

His reluctance to coordinate and order a simultaneous attack across the front of the outnumbered (56,000 Union soldiers to 34,000) Confederates, and his ultimate failure to engage an entire (XIIth) Corps, led to the bloodiest draw (and bloodiest day) in US history.

Antietam has been called a Union victory, with 12,4000 casualties to the Rebels' 10,300. Further, Lee was allowed to withdraw without pursuit.

Some victory, that.

The entire Army of Virginia was left to live and fight another day. So much for that singular victory McClellan believed he was called by God to deliver.

And, contrary to the belief of Pesident Lincoln, Secrretary of War Edwin Stanton, and General-in-Chief Henry Halleck, Lee's objective in crossing the Potomac River into Maryland was not DC, but Pennsylvania. And there he went.

But not before thousands and thousand more were killed and wounded in major battles at Fredricksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, and other, "lesser", battles.

Much is made about McClellan's popularity with the troops in his command. One point not made in any print I have seen is that, until Antietam, his reticence to fight kept them out of harm's way. Lee continually split his armies, a war no-no, trusting in that reticence to buy him the time to accomplish tertiary goals, such as overrunning the Federal Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, (now) West Virginia. McLaws' Division of Longstreets' Corps was still on the march from Harper's Ferry as the Confederates withdrew from the Dunker Church to bring to a ragged close the Morning Phase at Antietam.

To save the Union, a hard-drinking, harder-fighting, proven warrior from the West replaced McClellan, such that the Rebel invasion of the North was repulsed at Gettysburg. U. S. Grant delivered the decisive blow ordained on Little Mac.

The war began as a grand picnic. People from DC and Baltimore turned out en masse to watch the Union destroy the Seccesh at Manassas Junction. Two things intervened: that horrible rifling, and the fact the Union generalship, until Grant, couldn't lead a horse to water.

Just about anyone who has read Bruce Catton or the Time-Life Civil War series, or watched the Ken Burns documentary, would say had the Union had the Confederacy's generals, the war would have ended at First Bull Run.

As it was, those in attendance, looking to watch the equivalent of today's re-enactments, saw blood and gore beyond measure, then hid in their homes, expecting Johnny Reb to come knocking.

Re-enactments: how fucking stupid. These "players" must be guys who yearned for dolls as children, and were denied by "my boy ain't a sissy" dads. So now they dress theselves in period attire, and spend summer weekends sweating themselves silly in overblown woolens.

The only way I would go is if they used live ammunition.