War On the Flanks

As 1899 was winding to a close, many nations would begin to shuffle their leadership around. For the time being it was military but, Civilian leadership (at least in the democracies) were walking a tight rope as well. In Britain, Lord Salsibury’s government narrowly avoided being ousted in the aftermath of the Battle of the Yellow Sea. In Richmond, Joe Wheeler did not have to worry about standing for reelection and his term was not up for another four years. In Washington, Eli Root was facing an election in 1900 but, it was still a good year away. He knew he would be campaigning against Eugene V. Debs, an outspoken critic of the war. Root, using the first President Lincoln as a model, fully understood that his chances for re-election were riding on the success of his armies. This was probably why he saw a need for a complete shake up of his command structure.

John Hay had been looking for any excuse to get rid of Nelson Miles for a very long time. The casualty lists from west Tennessee finally allowed this but, Hay would not get his fondest wish, that of sending Miles packing in disgrace. The fact was that no one in the Army was doing very well and Root decided that Miles needed to be eased out quietly. Of course, it was impossible to hide this from the press but the Root administration made as little fanfare about it as they could.

The real question was who to replace Miles with. The choice had to be a good one or, Root realized, he could get himself into the same crack that Lincoln had in the last war. Nobody wanted to see a parade of failed generals march through the war department as had happened to Lincoln with his Army of the Potomac. Root also had political considerations. He certainly did not want to have a potential George B. McClellan facing him in a future election. Historians seem to be solidly of the opinion that it was the latter, the political ambitions of the general, that would get William Shafter the job. It was clear, even at that time, that Shafter had no political ambitions of any sort.

Bill Shafter had a distinguished military career going all the way back to the American 61. He was not originally a professional soldier but, like Miles, had opted to remain in the Army after the war and rose in rank accordingly. Shafter had gained a solid reputation as a General Officer and most thought of him as a very practical man. Shafter was most certainly a straight forward kind of thinker. He looked at a problem, he found a quick solution, and then he prosecuted that solution to the best of his ability. Unfortunately, Shafter had long out lived his use in the field. When he took Miles’ office in 1899, he weighed nearly 300 pounds and was simply incapable of commanding troops from anywhere but behind a desk.

While Shafter never bothered to write down anything after the war, he did have a chief of staff that wrote extensively of his time with Shafter. This man’s names was Tasker H. Bliss who was a Colonel at the time. Bliss was aching for a field command but he attended whatever duties he had, with loving attention. He seems to have agreed with Shafter’s thinking as well. The front lines now extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific on both the northern and southern fronts. Miles had abandoned the pre-war plan, and had chosen to strike the enemy at his strongest points. Shafter began putting preparations in motion to launch offensives at the enemies weakest points.

As Shafter saw it, the Achilles Heal of the Confederate States was not the Mississippi but, Mexico. He envisioned a broad invasion of northern Mexico that would flank Texas, and cut the allies in two. We will never know if Shafter’s plan, in it’s original inception, would have worked. This very apolitical general would have to fight a battle in the halls of Congress before he could make his strategy a reality. It was a battle that he was not suited for and, ironically, General Miles would have been. 

The United States was not the only country looking for a way to side step the general slaughter and stagnation of the front lines. The Confederacy was also looking for ways to put pressure, on it’s chief adversary, from other directions. The Confederacy had it’s trump card and Wheeler was angry at the failure of his allies to help in the matter. As the war ended it’s first full year, the fighting along the Canadian border had been relatively light when compared to the monumental struggles the Confederates found themselves engaged in. Wheeler pressed his allies in London to change this.

That was not to say that things had been quiet along the Canadian border. Some substantial battles had already taken place, mostly along the peninsular of southern Ontario. US forces attacked British troops, from multiple directions, and the Canadians promptly withdrew their forces further north where they could consolidate the lines and avoid a flanking attack. It forced US troops into making direct assaults on heavily fortified positions. By the time the Americans cleared one set of trenches the British and Canadians had already dug another just behind it. The result was that US troops were counting their advances in yards.

The rest of the Canadian frontier had remained relatively quiet and most actions were confined to raids by one side or the other. This situation was as detested by the United States Navy as it was by Joe Wheeler down in Richmond. Admiral Sampson, Commander of the Atlantic Fleet, testified to congress in September of 1899 that his fleet was unable to completely isolate Canada due to the Army’s failure to follow through with the original war plans. Commodore George Dewey, commander of the blockading fleet, backed up his admiral by pointing out that until the Army closed off the Saint Lawrence Seaway, the British would still be able to slip war supplies in and food out.

Dewey was not exaggerating in his claims. The Royal Navy, despite being overwhelmed with obligations, was managing to get two or three freighters into Quebec, each day. Comparisons of British and American records, after the war, confirmed that the US Navy had failed to stop even half of the trans Atlantic traffic. There was simply too much coast line to patrol and too many different ways the Royal Navy could get at that coast line. The US Navy had no bases in the region and most of the ships were required to return all the way to Boston to re-supply. The US Navy was also completely shut off from entering the Seaway itself. A combination of nautical mines, shore batteries, and gunboats blocked their entry. This gave blockade runners a serious safe haven once they made the high speed dash from Greenland.

General Shafter found himself unable to dispute the Navy’s claims. His battle in Congress proved to be half hearted at best. One has to wonder if Shafter even knew he was in a battle to implement his war strategy. If he did he showed no signs of it and, according to Bliss, was extremely angry when he was ordered to begin diverting resources north for an invasion of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Instead of a one strong hammer blow against the weakest point in the enemy lines, Shafter was suddenly finding himself forced to plan multiple blows that were far weaker than what he wanted. 

The US Navy was not Shafter’s only adversary in this battle of political will. A front runner for the job that Shafter now had was Arthur MacArthur. It is very possible that MacArthur may have secured the job of Army Chief of Staff for himself but, the dismal performance of the Tennessee offensive, that he personally commanded in the field, was probably what ultimately doomed his efforts. Fortunately for MacArthur, Hay was more interested in getting rid of Miles and so most of the blame was diverted from MacArthur’s direction. It was only the lingering stench of being anywhere near the Tennessee front that was hurting his chances for promotion.

MacArthur most obviously wished to reverse his fortunes and vindicate his efforts. He too was pulling political strings in order to get the needed supplies and reinforcements that would be required to keep his offensive going. Shafter was most obviously too busy with the Navy to have noticed. MacArthur got most of what he asked for and quickly stepped up the tempo of his operations. This included a new attack into northern Arkansas that he hoped would draw off Confederate resources that were now concentrated in front of his main army.

Several important changes would be made in the US Army but, at the time, they seemed relatively minor. General Smith, in Santa Fe, was finally replaced by another veteran of the American 61. Smith was suffering from health problems and was no longer able to do the job effectively. It had not been an issue when the Department of New Mexico had been considered a backwater theater. General James H Wilson was in far better shape. An engineer by trade, Wilson had been out of the military for nearly twenty years. He was seen as a competent field commander but would show little of this during his tour of duty in New Mexico. What General Wilson would do was set into motion a chain of events that would later have major repercussions. 

Wilson quickly reorganized his command structure. It seemed sensible since he would find himself in command of far more troops than Smith had. He would also be undertaking a major offensive in less than a month of assuming the post. He worked feverishly at reviewing, planning, and structuring his command. One of his first important orders was the elevation of a certain cavalry Colonel that had been serving on Smith’s staff. This man was Jack Pershing and he would be brevetted to the rank of Major General and be placed in command of Wilson’s newly formed Cavalry Division. This move precipitated the change in several other commands. Colonel Leonard Wood, just recently a Captain and Surgeon, would rise to the rank of Brevet Brigadier General and command one of Pershing’s brigades. Theodore Roosevelt would get a permanent promotion from Lieutenant Colonel to Full Colonel, of Reserves. He would take command of the regiment formerly ran by his friend Wood.

It had been Root’s intention, by placing Roosevelt in a backwater, of politically neutralizing him. While it might have seemed impossible, at the time, that Roosevelt was any kind of serious threat he was a standing member of the New York political machine and, as such, was a possible future opponent of Root and his allies. Root’s paranoia over such things led him to place Roosevelt in the middle of nowhere and appoint Shafter as Army Chief of Staff. These two events would ensure that Root’s worst nightmare, about Roosevelt at any rate, would come true.