July 3, 1754

Out of Necessity: Or the Military Redemption of Mr. George Washington.

With the weekend holiday approaching, today offers us a unique opportunity to examine the early career of an American icon: none other than George Washington. After making a name for himself as a surveyor on the frontier in the 1740's, it is not surprising that the Governor of Virginia appointed Washington to raise militia when trouble with the French surfaced in Ohio. His knowledge of the land and his relationship with the Native Americans of the region would prove invaluable in his first military trial.

Moving through the Allegheny Mountains in Western Pennsylvania, Washington heard of a small French force harassing British subjects in the area. When the French overwhelmed a British garrison at the Forks of Ohio, Washington assumed that their next target would be his small band made up of Virginians, Indians and a few British regulars. Two-weeks march from home, dependent on themselves for supply and expecting no help from other Colonies, Washington ordered his men to dig in and await the French attack he knew would come.

The French were on their way indeed, but not exactly for the purpose Washington suspected. Under orders not to engage the Virginians unless provoked, the French sent a small detachment on a diplomatic mission to order the colonists out of the area. Misreading their intentions, Washington's men ambushed the detachment, killing some French soldiers in the skirmish and murdering the envoy Joseph Coulon de Jumonville once the fighting was over. The effect on the rest of the French was obvious, and soon after, they returned on much less diplomatic terms.

Fully expecting a response, Washington ordered his men to build a small fort, which they named Fort Necessity. Nearly out of supplies, the Virginians waited in their tiny circular fortifications. Setting out from their own encampment, Fort Duqesne (a settlement which eventually grew into the city of Pittsburgh), the French arrived on July 3, 1754. Initially, the Virginians and the British tried to fend off the advance in a skirmish line outside the fort. An attack from French-supporting Indians scattered the militia and forced the regulars back inside the walls. A heavy rainstorm compounded Washington's problems, and late that night for the first and only time in his career he surrendered his command.



It goes without saying that Washington's story does not end there. After abandoning the fort the next day and returning with his command to Virginia by mid-July, the colonists celebrated Washington as a hero for even attempting to stand up to the French. In Britain, however, the murder of the French envoy before the battle was seen as the spark that began the Seven Years War, or as it is known in North America, the French and Indian War. Most English statesmen were quite annoyed that a young Virginian ignited a conflict with the French that was eventually fought all over the world.

The actions during this ignominious beginning to his career would lead to the conflict that turned into one of the main causes of the American Revolution, his greatest triumph. In an interesting side note, July 3 would eventually become an important day in Washington's career. Not only did he surrender Fort Necessity on that date, but 21 years later to the day, on July 3, 1775, he was appointed commander of the Continental Army. While there were many dark days ahead for that command, their successes are obviously quite enduring. After all, what are we Yanks celebrating tomorrow?

July 2, 1863

The Second Day at Gettysburg: Or a Peach Orchard, the Devil's Den and a Bald, Rocky Hill.

It may seem as if all we cover here at Lies Agreed Upon are Germans and the Civil War, but the calendar is providing us with events too good to pass up. That Thursday at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 1863 is in our opinion the turning point of the war, and thus the turning point in the history of the United States. While the Confederacy would see its high water mark the next afternoon on Cemetery Ridge, the action on the second day of America's bloodiest battle paved the way for the climactic victory on the third.



Robert E. Lee must have been disappointed on the morning of July 2, 1863; still confident, but disappointed nonetheless. Riding high on a string of victories, the Army of Northern Virginia's invasion of the North was supposed to produce the kind of decisive battle that would force the North to sue for peace. In light of this, Lee ordered his commanders not to fully engage the enemy until the entire army could be concentrated on ground of his choosing. Therefore, when General Henry Heath skirmished Federal Cavalry at a small crossroads town in Pennsylvania, it derailed Lee's plans.

Yet like all successful generals, Lee's flexibility must have made him believe a victory was at hand. After committing two of his Corps to an attack on the Union left on July 1, Lee called on General James Longstreet's corps to roll up the Federal flank the next day. These assaults, which Longstreet wanted to delay, changed the course of the war.

Seeing Longstreet moving to his left, General Daniel Sickles of the Union III Corps moved his entire command out in front of the rest of the Federal line. This not only exposed the Army of the Potamac's flank, but the move also hung Sickles' men out to dry. The heaviest fighting in this sector was in a small peach orchard, where blood ran red over the pink peachtree petals that littered the ground.

With the Union flank thus exposed, the V Corps was moved into the line behind Sickles' men. After pushing through the Peach Orchard, Longstreet's men moved further around to the left, into a rocky bottom overlooked by two small hills. Known to the locals as Devil's Den, the area was covered in piles of rocks that made perfect fighting positions. A pitched fight back and forth resulted in heavy losses on both sides, and after the battle the dead lay among the boulders.

These exposed positions on the left flank were anchored by the two hills to the rear, one round and wooded, the smaller bald and flat faced. It was the smaller, Little Round Top, that became the extreme end of the Federal line, and it was up the smaller wave after wave of Confederate assaults came. The regiment responsible for protecting the flank, the 20th Maine commanded by Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, fought off each attack. Unable to retreat lest the flank cave, low on ammunition and thus unable to hold their position, the 20th executed an unlikely bayonet charge that broke the point of the Southern spear and ended their push on the left.

With the Confederate chances for victory lengthened by Longstreet's failure to turn the flank, the stage was set for General George Pickett's desperate charge (big surprise: another frontal assault) across open ground the next afternoon. When that assault failed, so too had the invasion of the North. Lee was forced to retreat, and the initiative swung to the Union. The Army of Northern Virginia would live to fight another day, but thereafter it would be the Federal forces that would do the pursuing, eventually chasing Lee to Appomattox.

July 1, 1916

Over the Top: Or Debacle on the Somme.

Last week we took a quick look at the effects of frontal assaults in the face of modern weaponry at Belleau Wood. Today we examine another First World War battle which has become synonymous with the futility and slaughter of Western Front trench warfare. The Battle of the Somme, which began on July 1, 1916, is not only remembered for its unfathomable bloodshed, but also for the fact that such bloodshed could have been avoided.

After the Germans failed to reach Paris in the first days of war in 1914, it is well known that the Western Front settled into a stalemate for most of 1915. The following year saw both sides attempt to break through the maze of trenches that now stretched from the English Channel to Switzerland. An attack on the Somme River in the Picardy region of France had been planned for a combined Anglo-French force, but the German attack at Verdun in February diverted almost the entire French army to that sector of the front.

To relieve the pressure on the French, the British planned to go ahead with the attack. At the outbreak of war, British Secretary of State for War Horatio Kitchener warned that the struggle would be a long and costly one. To prepare for this, he sent out a call for volunteers, which he hastily trained and equipped for the fighting in France. In an attempt to make up for the number of men being fed into the meat-grinder at Verdun, the British supplemented their forces with these raw recruits, disparagingly known as "Kitchener's Mob."

In such a rush to get these men and the proper ordinance to the front in time for the attack, the British made several key errors. First, as mentioned, the men in the new divisions were not nearly as well trained as the veterans in the British Regular Army. Secondly, the number of artillery shells needed for the assault caused quality control issues at British plants; an unbelievably high number of dud shells would be dropped on German lines July 1. And finally, the shells that were in working condition at the time of the attack were not the high explosive variety needed to dislodge the deeply entrenched German defenders.

All this, in effect, added up to disaster. While French history was being altered in the ten-month slugfest at Verdun, the climactic British moment of the war occurred, for all intents, on a single day. On the morning of July 1, under Hawthorn Ridge on the Somme sector's left flank, 40,000 pounds of high explosives were detonated, signaling the start of the attack. The problems with British artillery meant the week-long bombardment prior to the assault did little to weaken the German line. The mine explosion under Hawthorn Ridge did nothing but alert the Germans to the attack's imminence. Thus, when wave after wave of untried British youth poured over the top of their trenches, the Germans were waiting for them. The scene was a nightmare, the likes of which have not often been seen in a single day of battle, certainly not in British history. By the end of the day, over 57,000 men of Kitchener's new divisions were lost, almost 20,000 of them lying dead in No Man's Land.

Incredibly, July 1 was just the beginning. The battle would last nearly six months, with countless more frontal assaults to follow. British persistence (some would say obstinance) however, was not the only cause for the continued bloodshed. Surely German arrogance played a part as well, for commanders were ordered that every yard of ground lost had to be immediately retaken, resulting in countless see-saw, hand to hand battles. Hindsight suggests that had the Germans given ground in some places, thousands could have been spared without sacrificing the main line of resistance.

Regardless, by the end of the battle in November, 1916, nearly a million men had been lost between the two sides. The Battles of Verdun and the Somme have endured as symbols of the stalemate and attrition of the First World War and serve as a chilling reminder to all of how capable man is at destroying himself.