Ulysses Grant – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

Despite numerous failed examples, socialism still fascinates some people

An 1872 presidential campaign banner for Horace Greeley sold for $40,000 at a December 2016 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Many credit the famous 19th century motto of “Go West, young man” to newspaperman Horace Greeley for a line in a July 1865 editorial. However, there is still a debate over whether it was first penned by Greeley or the lesser-known John Soule in an 1851 edition of the Terre Haute (Ind.) Express. Either way, the dictum helped fuel the westward movement of Americans in our quest for Manifest Destiny (“From sea to shining sea”). Clearly, Greeley helped more to popularize the concept due to the great influence of his successful newspaper.

Greeley was much less successful as a politician. He was sent to Congress in 1848 in a special election to represent New York. His colleagues groused that the brief three months he spent there were primarily devoted to exposing Congressional corruption in his newspaper rather than passing legislation. He was unable to generate any meaningful support for re-election, which relegated him back to his real interest, which was reporting on news and exposing crooked politicians.

Despite this setback to his political career, Greeley remained a powerful force in American politics throughout the entire Civil War period and beyond. After exposing the corruption in the first term of the Grant presidency (1868-1872), he found himself in the curious position of being the presidential candidate for both the Democratic Party (which he had opposed on every issue for many years) and the Liberal-Republican Party (which was an offshoot that objected to the corruption).

The 1872 presidential election was especially bitter, with both sides resorting to dirty tricks and making wild allegations against each other. Grant won the Republican nomination unanimously and as the incumbent, chose not to actively campaign. Greeley was a virtual whirlwind, traveling widely and making 20 or more speeches every day. A cynic observed that the problem was it was the wrong message to the wrong audience, but fundamentally, the issue was that Greeley was simply a poor campaigner and Grant was still a very popular president/general.

Grant easily won his re-election bid for a second term with 56 percent of the popular vote and Greeley died on Nov. 29 – just 24 days after the election and before the electoral votes were cast or counted. This is the first and only time a nominee for president of a major party has died during the election process. Grant went on to snag a comfortable 56 electoral votes as the others were spread among several candidates, including three for the deceased Greeley (which were later contested).

Thus ended the life of Horace Greeley (1811-1872), who had been founder and editor of the New-York Tribune, arguably in the top tier of great American newspapers. Established in 1841, it was renamed the New-York Daily Tribune (1842-1866) as its daily circulation exploded to 200,000. Greeley was endlessly promoting utopian reforms such as vegetarianism, agrarianism, feminism and socialism. In 1852-62, the paper retained Karl Marx as its London-based European correspondent to elaborate on his basic tenets of Marxism.

Great Britain had just finished its decennial census, which put the population at precisely 20,959,477. This was just 1.6 percent of the world’s population, but nowhere on the planet was there a more rich or productive group of people. The empire produced 50 percent of the world’s iron and coal, controlled two-thirds of the shipping and accounted for one-third of all trade. London’s banks had more money on deposit than all other financial centers … combined! Virtually all the finished cotton in the world was produced in Great Britain on machines built in Britain by British inventors.

The famous British Empire covered 11.5 million square miles and included 25 percent of the world’s population. By whatever measurement, it was the richest, most innovative and skilled nation known to man, and in London – where he was living the good life – primarily on his friend Friedrich Engels’ money – Marx was still churning out socialist propaganda. He made no attempt to explain that for the first time in history, there was a lot of everything in most people’s lives. Victorian London was not only the largest city in the world, but the only place one could buy 500 different kinds of hammers and a dazzling array of nails to pound on.

While Marxism morphed into Bolshevism, communism and socialism – polluting the economic systems of many hopeful utopians like Greeley – capitalism and the market-based theories of Adam Smith (“the father of modern economics”) quietly crept over America almost unnoticed. Despite the numerous failed examples of socialism in the real world, there will always be a new generation of people wanting to try it.

JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Civil War Soldiers Found Themselves in New, Far Deadlier Warfare

A Confederate Civil War enlisted man’s jacket, captured by Union soldiers at Cumberland Gap, sold for $41,825 at a June 2008 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Surprisingly, very little written about the Civil War attempts to correlate the level of carnage with changes in armaments and tactics by both sides that almost literally required sacrificing troops in battles over real estate, rather than simply destroying the other side’s capacity to wage war.

When shots first rang out, American officers – Federal and Confederate – had last faced combat in 1846-47 in the Mexican-American War, armed with smoothbore flintlock muskets with a range of barely 200 yards. Now, more modern rifle-muskets, the English-made caliber .557 or Austrian Lorenz caliber .54, were accurate up to 600 yards and capable of killing at 1,000 yards. Soldiers found themselves in a new, far more deadly sort of war.

Artillery was no longer viable within 300 yards without suffering prohibitive losses. Cavalry charges against unbroken infantry attacks were risky, costly encounters. The result was an infantryman with a rifle-musket suddenly dominated and literally forced into the use of field fortifications. Both sides began the war with the same drill manuals and same tactics, only modifying them to fit the infantry weapons. However, it was a slow process and well into 1862 before either side had a majority of rifle-muskets, and even then the slow rate of fire made it necessary to use masses of men to attack or defend.

At Shiloh in April 1862, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston’s initial attack was delivered by two corps – one behind the other – and two more held in column as reserves. The two-day casualty count was nearly 24,000, a new historic high (including the death of Johnston). At Gettysburg (July 1863), Pickett’s famous charge, “the high-water mark of the Confederacy,” was three brigades deep and at Atlanta in 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood formed his brigades with their regiments in columns – one behind the other – giving them a depth of eight to 12 men all lined up to be slaughtered.

Perhaps the most marked tactical feature of the Civil War was the employment of heavy entrenchments, made of whatever material was available. Little-used before 1863, but after the sunken roads at Fredericksburg and stone farm fences at Gettysburg, the average soldier wisely concluded to dig in. Throughout 1864 and 1865, troops in the vicinity of the enemy, even if ordered to attack, would entrench using tin cups, discarded halves of canteens and knives or sticks.

It gradually transformed the war to one of attrition, a fact that was not lost on General Ulysses Grant, who was willing to make big sacrifices since he knew the South was resource-constrained and General William Tecumseh Sherman was on a rampage destroying everything in a broad swath through the South and confident he could stamp out the last vestiges of hope and willingness to continue in the process. It was a lethal combination that was impossible to defend against.

Though the war ended in his defeat, the Confederate infantryman earned a reputation for hard fighting, swift maneuvering, and endurance amid extreme hardships against vastly superior forces. Trusted officers could lead them against any danger, except for any West Pointers or those with pomp and circumstances, which became a moot point, since both victory and defeat killed large numbers and eventually it became impossible to replace them with men of courage and competence. Even Grant in his memoirs commented on how his men were hesitant to fight even when they had a 5-to-1 advantage at times.

A British observer concluded that the Confederate infantry could accomplish wonders – but at a cost the South could not afford.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

General Longstreet at Center of One of Civil War’s Greatest Controversies

A signed carte de visite of Confederate General James Longstreet sold for $3,250 at a June 2015 Heritage auction.

“Bring me Longstreet’s head on a platter and the war will be over.” – President Abraham Lincoln

By Jim O’Neal

Confederate General James Longstreet (1821-1904) was born in South Carolina and his mother sent him to live with an uncle who decided his should have a military career. He received an appointment to West Point, where he underperformed academically. However, he made many lifelong friends, including future President Ulysses Grant.

Commissioned into the infantry, he served until the outbreak of the Mexican-American War. From 1847 to 1849, he served under generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, was wounded at the Battle of Chapultepec, and finally resigned from the U.S. Army in June 1861. It was nearly a month after Fort Sumter.

Like many of his southern colleagues, he joined the Confederacy and ended up in the Army of Northern Virginia after Robert E. Lee declined Lincoln’s offer to head up the entire Union Army. Almost inexorably, this led to the most famous battle of the Civil War. On July 1, 1863, Longstreet rode onto the battlefield of Gettysburg as infantry units were cleaning up after a decisive day-one victory. He was 42 years old.

After surveying the Federals rallying on Seminary Ridge, he lowered his field glasses, turned to General Lee and spoke – launching one of the greatest controversies of the entire Civil War. “General Lee, we could not call the enemy to position better suited to our plans… all we have to do is to flank his left…” The words either surprised or angered Lee, who pointed a fist toward the ridge beyond town: “If the enemy is there tomorrow, I will attack him!”

Despite the open disagreement, Longstreet reluctantly supervised the disastrous infantry assault known as Picket’s Charge (the high-water mark of the Confederacy) as ordered. The date was July 1863, and despite being preceded by a massive artillery bombardment, its futility was an avoidable mistake: 12,500 Confederate soldiers in nine infantry units advanced over three-quarters of a mile – charging into a withering hail of Union pure death. The staggering 50 percent casualty rate resulted in a defeat that the South never recovered from – either militarily or psychologically.

Noted historians are still debating who to blame: Lee, for overriding the advice of his most-trusted second-in-command, or Longstreet for being too slow to carry out a direct order.

Personally, I side with General George Pickett, one of three Confederate generals who led the assault under Longstreet and who was bitterly unequivocal: “That old man [Lee] destroyed my division.” His regular daily report is missing and is believed to have been intentionally destroyed, perhaps by Longstreet personally. It was now just a matter of time until the South’s war machine gradually came to a stop. The war would continue until April 1865, but the end was never again in doubt.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].