Robert C Conner's Blog

 

On a cold and windy Veterans Day yesterday, my friend Matt (a Marines vet) and I went to Battleship Cove in Fall River, MA, where I took this photo from the deck of a destroyer launched just after World War II and named after naval aviator Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., who was killed in that war.

The photo shows two ships that did fight in WW2, the submarine Lionfish (which we didn't go aboard) and, in the background, the battleship Massachusetts, the highlight of our tour. Wandering around the decks of this huge ship, where 2,500 men lived and worked, viewing their bunks, galley, hospital, offices, engine room, rooms for calculating gunfire, damage control, radio communications and so forth, all illuminated by informative exhibits, was an engrossing experience. The destroyer was worth seeing too, as I'm sure would be the submarine.

There was also a PT boat, which was bigger and carried bigger torpedoes than I expected. The exhibits there included this one about the most well known PT officer, Joe Kennedy's brother Jack. I hadn't realized that after his famous PT-109 experience, JFK went on to serve in combat on another boat, PT-59.

The PT boats, another exhibit said, were regarded as "expendable". The great film director John Ford was in the Navy during the war, at Midway (where he was wounded) and Omaha beach. His first postwar movie was about PT boat and associated operations during the Japanese conquest of the Philippines in 1941-2. It was called They Were Expendable.

The Massachusetts started the war in the Mediterranean during Operation TORCH, fighting the Vichy French navy at Casablanca. She was hit by fire from a Vichy battleship, which she soon disabled. But no man aboard the Massachusetts was killed then or throughout the war from enemy fire. She spent most of the war in the Pacific, where her campaigns included the US reconquest of the Philippines, begun by Gen. Douglas MacArthur in October 1944. She served at that time under Admiral Bull Halsey in the battles around Leyte Gulf -- but not in the gulf, where the fiercest fighting was and Halsey's fleet was not, being otherwise engaged in combat operations.  

Here's a photo looking over the forward guns of the Massachusetts.

 

The wife and I were in Penn Yan, NY, last week (Oct. 27), where on the shore of Keuka Lake we came across this statue of the Seneca chief Red Jacket, who was from the area. He is wearing the peace medal presented to him by President Washington, which is now in Salamanca, NY, in possession of the Seneca Nation.The Tonawanda Seneca Ely Parker, a kinsman of Red Jacket who interacted with him as a very young child, inherited the medal in 1852 when he became Grand Sachem of the Iroquois Six Nations, and kept it the rest of his life.Parker met Ulysses S. Grant before the Civil War in Galena, Ill., where he was working as an engineer for the US government. He later served on Grant's military staff, in which capacity he copied out the surrender terms at Appomattox. When Robert E. Lee was introduced to Parker, the Confederate general-in-chief told him he was "glad to see one real American here," to which Parker replied, "We are all Americans." Col. Parker resigned from the Army in 1869, when President Grant appointed him as Commissioner of Indian Affairs.In 1884, Parker spoke at the ceremony where the bodies of Red Jacket and nine other Seneca chiefs were re-interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo.

 

Tomorrow, Sunday Oct. 19, is the last day to see this statue of Solomon Northup in front of the (former) Lincoln Baths in Saratoga Springs, before it moves on to Boston and then to its permanent installation site in Louisiana. Northup was a free black man, married with three children, who pursued various trades including violin player. He was lured away from his Saratoga home in 1841, then kidnapped, sold, and spent "Twelve Years a Slave", as he wrote in his best-selling memoir of that title. He was an anti-slavery activist in the 1850s, before disappearing from history. 

 

I stopped at Crown Point on my way home this week, crossing over from Vermont on the bridge seen above, next to the scant remains of the French Fort St. Frederic. Cannon could guard Lake Champlain at this narrow point, on the frontier between two colonial empires in the French and Indian War.

Lieutenant Noah Grant went off to that war from Connecticut, a married American fighting -- like George Washington -- with the British. He was part of an expedition that failed to capture Fort St. Frederic in 1755. The next year he was promoted to captain, and killed at the age of 38 in a skirmish by one account not far from the lake -- by another farther south, near Fort Edward. His younger brother Lt. Solomon Grant also was killed that year, in Massachusetts.

Ulysses Grant referred briefly to these events in his Personal Memoirs:

"In the fifth descending generation my great grandfather, Noah Grant, and his younger brother, Solomon, held commissions in the English army, in 1756, in the war against the French and Indians. Both were killed that year."

There is more left of Fort Crown Point which the British built after the French abandoned and destroyed Fort St. Frederic in 1759.

But the British fort was mostly destroyed in an accidental fire in 1773, and its small garrison was quickly captured by Seth Warner's Green Mountain Boys when the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775. The captured cannons, along with those from nearby Ticonderoga, came in useful when Col. Henry Knox delivered 59 of them to Washington near Boston.

 

Our dog Bella checks out the Sherman tank outside the New York State Military Museum (a former armory) in Saratoga Springs this afternoon.

As my friend Matt Farenell once pointed out to me, it's a Sherman that makes a crucial appearance at the end of Roberto Benigni's 1997 film Life Is Beautiful. The concept of a Holocaust tragicomedy sounds horrible, but at the time I thought it worked and was moved. The movie is on TCM tonight at 8pm Eastern.

 The bride and I are on a mini 40th wedding anniversary trip to Vermont, which includes my book talk tomorrow (Saturday Sept. 14) on Juneteenth to the Green Mountain Civil War Round Table in White River Junction (at the Bugbee Senior Center after a noon luncheon).

On the way, we stopped in Rutland yesterday and discovered Martin Henry Freeman:

 

Last week, in Congress Park, Saratoga Springs, NY, our dog Bella checked out the memorial statue of a soldier representing the NY 77th Infantry Regiment, part of the Army of the Potomac. (The number is a reference to the Revolutionary War American victory at Saratoga in 1777.) The soldier's statue was pulled down and smashed to pieces by still unknown vandals in 2020. Insurance and the listed organizations contributed to its restoration.

Col. George L. Willard, by the way, was killed on the second day of Gettysburg stopping Barksdale's Charge, Longstreet's exploitation of Sickles' rash advance into the peach orchard. The Confederate General Barksdale was mortally wounded. 

Bella and I continued our park stroll to the Spirit of Life statue, sculpted by Daniel Chester French, who later did the Lincoln Memorial on the Washington Mall.














 

 

Something new this year at Grant Cottage, the Saratoga County, NY site where Ulysses S. Grant completed his memoirs and died in 1885. The top of Mt. McGregor (at the southern end of the Adirondacks) has been opened to the public. It used to be, as I well remember, the site of the prison ballfield, and we tour guides were instructed not to toss back any baseballs that sailed across the fence, because the authorities were concerned about potential smuggling of contraband. On the left in the above photo is a guard tower, where an armed corrections officer kept an eye out.The Mount McGregor prison closed a decade ago, and New York state has been trying unsuccessfully to sell the empty buildings for redevelopment. Most of them are behind (west) and to the left (south) of the summit, and not seen in this photo, and most of them date from the early 20th century. It was built then as a tuberculosis hospital, a use which became obsolescent with the development of penicillin. Then it was a rest home for World War II soldiers and veterans, then a home for the developmentally disabled. Then in the 1970s with the crime rate rising, especially in New York City, it became a medium and minimum-security prison. Then in the 21st century, with crime falling, it closed.Grant Cottage was built in 1878 by Duncan McGregor, after whom the mountain is named, as a small hotel, and originally stood here. When McGregor sold to developers, they rolled the cottage on logs a little way downhill to where Grant found it and where it remains today. In its place, they built here the Hotel Balmoral, which burned down in 1897.When the state first marketed the site, the summit was included in the property for sale. But they eventually gave it to Grant Cottage, and plans are to tear down the fence (the razor wire is gone already) and integrate it into the historic site. The photo below shows the view to the east, across the Hudson Valley to the Green Mountains of Vermont. 

This week's meeting of Da Buffs, a Civil War dinner club that gets together every couple of months at the Shaker Road Loudonville Fire Department in Albany County, NY, hosted a presentation by Diana McCarthy about her ancestors Peter and Clarinda Dumont. Diana, portraying Clarinda, is at center of photo above. (A couple of Da Buffs are in Zouave uniforms, because Peter's regiment, the 146th New York Infantry, in 1863 took in those surviving members of the former 5th NY Infantry, a mustered-out Zouave regiment, who were remaining in the Army.)

Listening to a typical Civil War talk, we buffs already know the main outline of the story. But I didn't know what happened to Peter Dumont in the war years, and a lot did. He was, for example, captured at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, and imprisoned at Libby Prison in Richmond. Sent back for exchange, he was then, as I discovered from Diana's talk based on Peter's letters, held in Maryland under the disgraceful terms and conditions imposed by War Department-operated "parole camps" which confined Union soldiers who were waiting for exchange.

It was a moving and informative presentation. Diana McCarthy can be contacted at civilwar@dynasysweb.com.

 

Gettysburg July 1 is the title of a 1996 book I read recently by David G. Martin. Its 736 pages provide a detailed, readable and exhaustive account of the first day of the battle, the 161st anniversary of which is fast approaching. (Martin includes several citations of the work of Mark Dunkelman, historian of the 154th NY Volunteer Infantry, and my host in Providence, RI, when I spoke at the Civil War Round Table there.)As is well known, in the late afternoon of July 1, 1863, the Confederates broke through, first against the Union XI Corps commanded by O.O. Howard, and then against the I Corps commanded by Abner Doubleday, who had moved up from divisional command that morning when the preceding corps commander, John Reynolds, was killed. Army Commander George Meade replaced Doubleday with John Newton as corps commander the next day, which is odd because Doubleday did an excellent job, as Martin's record demonstrates. He held the corps together to repel several strong assaults, retreating in good order from one defensive position to another until finally being outflanked and forced to rapidly withdraw through the town by the more numerous Confederates. The two battered Union corps established a last redoubt along Cemetery Ridge, with some reinforcements trickling in along with Meade in the evening. Doubleday resumed command of his division for the rest of the battle, but was then out of combat assignment for the rest of his career. Maybe he'd seen enough of war, firing literally the first Union shot of this one from Fort Sumter, and seeing much hard action since, including at Antietam.Martin shares the conventional wisdom that the Confederates might have won the battle had they pressed harder to take Cemetery Hill late in the day. I am skeptical, preferring Longstreet's advice that evening to Lee to outflank Meade and get between him and Washington. (But then I'm prejudiced in Longstreet's favor because he was a pro-Reconstruction friend of Grant.)Speaking of Grant, July 4 is the anniversary of the surrender of Vicksburg, which along with the great defensive victory at Gettysburg marks the military turning point of the war. (July 4 was also Nellie Grant's birthday in 1855.) Flag Day seems to have come and gone, but there will be a parade so designated, followed by a concert and fireworks, starting at 5 p.m. Thursday July 4 in Saratoga Springs, NY, and I'll be marching(?) along with a Grant Cottage contingent.The photo above is of Doubleday's birthplace in nearby Ballston Spa, and the one below of a historical marker a few blocks away. Whatever his connection to baseball, Doubleday fought well at Gettysburg (he was wounded July 2, but stayed on the field through the next day).The end photo is of my wife Barbara last October 5 on the roof of a pizza bar called The Speckled Pig; the Doubleday house is in background at far left.

 

 

I mentioned Clarence Dart on this blog a couple of years ago, and on Memorial Day this week I snuck away from my volunteer duties at Grant Cottage to attend a talk given by his son Warren, a retired schoolteacher and coach from Saratoga County.

 a pillar of his Saratoga Springs church and community after the war, was a Tuskegee airman. He survived 95 combat missions in Europe in World War II, and was shot down twice. He later worked as a draftsman for General Electric Co. for 37 years, in Schenectady and at KAPL in Niskayuna.African-American troops first served (in significant numbers) in the US military during the Civil War, when they were in segregated units. That segregation remained in place through World War II.