Heads or Tails

General Nelson Miles was settling in to his alternate command post just north of Washington DC when he found himself facing the first real strategic decision of the war. The US mobilization system might have been chaotic on the sub unit level but it did have the distinction of being very fast. American planners had counted on this for several decades. The US, in 1898, had a very similar strategic situation to that of Germany. They were facing a two front war with enemies that had very different speeds of mobilization.

To the north was Canada. The primary military defense of this territory fell on the shoulders of the capable but very small British Army. If the British were allowed the time they could mobilize great resources that the United States could never hope to defeat. To the south was the Confederate States and while they lacked the resources of Great Britain, what they could do was throw far more troops into the conflict earlier on. Of course, this thinking was only applicable if the British and Confederates were the only ones fighting. This was no longer the case.

The United States had planned, for years before the war, to knock Canada out of the conflict first. This would leave the British with no secure bases with which to operate from in the theatre. Then the US would be free to turn their massive superiority on the Confederates. The plan was sound enough but the situation had changed. Miles had either not recognized this or did not care. In all fairness to him, the preparations for executing this plan were decades in the works and it is never a favored action of any military leader to disrupt such plans once they are underway. 

This is where the political divisions in the US government came into play. They would pay for the lack of cooperation between Miles and the Root administration. This was never more visible than the arguments that ensued between General Miles and the Secretary of State. John Hay had spent as many years laying the ground work for his plans as the US Army had spent on theirs. His diplomatic maneuvers had, in effect, rendered the Army plan obsolete (or so he supposed). The British were now distracted by war on multiple fronts and this would obviously delay their reinforcements to Canada. At least, this was the thinking at the State Department. When you combined the strategic situation with the US blockade of Canada it looked as if the British would never be able to reinforce the colony. This argued for a complete reversal of the US war plan. 

There was also another factor and this probably played more into the thinking of General Miles than any rash statements he got from Hay. Winter was quickly approaching and a good deal of Canada was already under several feet of snow. The Army had always assumed good weather and had timed their plans for invading Canada in the early summer. The timing of the war naturally negated this part of the plan. This must be why a move to the South looked far more attractive. Why not fight down there when it was not so hot and humid?

For these combination of reasons, General Miles chose to concentrate his efforts on the Confederacy first. This was no easy task to accomplish since it called for changing plans that had been counted on, by the US Army, for decades. Not only would troops, and their precious train schedules, need to be adjusted but, so would a great deal of material goods such as the supplies any modern army required. It was a monumental task to say the least. It also threw away any initial advantage that the US may have had.

The other serious weakness that had never been considered by the US Army planners was that their basic strategy for the Confederacy was hopelessly outdated. It had changed little since Winfield Scott had drawn it up long before the American 61. It had been called the “Anaconda Plan” in the days before the Confederacy even existed. It relied on two basic principals and one of those was no longer valid. Scott had envisioned a thrust down the Mississippi river to cut the south in two. At the same time the US Navy would blockade the coast and capture southern ports. The resulting effect would slowly strangle the southern states into submission.

By 1898 the blockade of the Southern coastline was no longer feasible. Not only did the Confederacy have a real navy but, they had allies with an even bigger navy. They also had Mexico. In 1861 there were no railroad tracks that lead directly from the Confederacy into Mexican territory and, by extension, to Mexican ports. This was no longer the case 1898. Any effective blockade of the considerable Confederate coastline would now require a similar effort of the Mexican as well. This was well beyond the capabilities of the US Navy that had already been committed to closing off the sea lanes between Canada and Britain.

The US Army planners failed to grasp this crucial part of the Anaconda Plan. They concerned themselves primarily with it’s land strategy and never seemed to have noticed that the Navy had completely junked the plan altogether. In all fairness to the US Army, they really had little choice in the matter. What had not changed since the time of Scott was the terrain. Any conquest of the south was going to be bound by geographical realities and the idea of cutting the south in two, was still as valid in 98 as it had been in 61.

This left Miles with the most tempting target that was open to him. Tennessee, with it’s long and open border, with more northern sympathizers than anywhere else in the Confederacy, and it’s seemingly un-defendable terrain, was the perfect place to start. The war was barely a week old when Miles began issuing orders to concentrate his forces in Kentucky, in preparation for an invasion of west Tennessee. It’s initial objective would be the important river port of Memphis and it would be the first step in the conquest of the Mississippi river valley.

The Confederacy had not been asleep at the switch for these past three decades. They too recognized the vulnerability of their western borders and in particular that of Tennessee. Many people who lived in that state remembered the last war and were not so keen on being occupied again. The last war had been a very personal one, in Tennessee, with neighbors fighting neighbors. Such wars tend to be very bloody affairs and generally leave hard feelings behind. It was a situation that both Richmond and Nashville eagerly sought to avoid.

The resulting efforts, engendered by this realization, made the Tennessee border far less exposed than it looked on a map. The Confederates were all too aware of the vulnerability of the terrain and began a Herculean effort to address this problem. They were highly successful at the effort and the most visible result would soon come to identify the average Confederate soldier for the rest of the war.

In the early 19th century, some un-named southern planter, was visiting British India. He had become familiar with a certain type of plant that he thought would look well on his plantation, back home. At some point, he transplanted the weed and because it lacked any natural enemies, in it’s new environs, as well as finding the climate of the Confederacy all to it’s liking, this vine like plant began to quickly spread. Soon it was seen as a pest to southern planters who found it impossible to stop. It quickly spread over most of the deep south. While the planters may have thought it worthless the Government of Tennessee saw it as quite valuable.

Military technology had changed in many radical ways since the last war. One of these technologies came from the civilian sector and was originally intended for use in the cattle industry. Barbed wire was employed liberally by the armies of the world in 1898. What the Government of Tennessee had stumbled on was something that was almost as formidable, particularly combined with the wire, and had many other advantages besides. The vine was planted all along the border with Kentucky where it grew well enough (even though it did not do as well as it did in the deep south). The vines quickly covered up wire, mines, blockhouses, and other essential defenses. 

Not only did the vine impede advancing infantry but it gave the defenders camouflage that they would make extremely effective use of. Unlike barbed wire, the vine grew back on it’s own. It was rooted so thoroughly that it was nearly impervious to artillery. Attempts to set it on fire proved equally as useless. US soldiers quickly learned to hate it as each clump could easily conceal a sniper or machinegun. 

Before the war the Confederate soldier had been routinely referred to by their northern counterparts as “Johnny Reb.” Not long after this war began that name would change. The southern soldier would soon become synonymous with the foliage he so often preferred. Confederate soldiers would henceforth be known as “Johnny Kudzu.” The name clung to the men as the vine did to the ground and they both stubbornly refused to yield to any attempts to dislodge them.