Who's Left? Who's Right?

Lately I've endured a couple of rough weeks here on the Rollins Plantation, meaning I've had to attend endless committee meetings and face stacks of papers that require grading. If I could somehow eliminate grading and committee meetings altogether, I might keep this job forever, even without pay. (If an administrator happens to read this posting - JK.)

Anyway, I have a brief chance to write a few words this weekend, and I will use it to respond to a friendly note I received from my old pal Bob from Colorado who just discovered my blog. Bob said he would leave a comment sometime if I would "promise not to get mad at him or have Guido break his knee caps or something like that if he leaves a comment from a conservative perspective."

Of course I can make no such promise, Comrade Roberto. But please note that we liberals would obviously never use Guido-type thugs in such a way. My own liberal sleeper cell, for example, uses elegantly dressed thugs with names like Arianna, Stephane and Daphne to kidnap our conservative archenemies and hold them in tastefully decorated, fern-garnished lofts where we break their resistance by forcing them to watch Jane Fonda work-out tapes round the clock. Most effective.

Alas, I won't have time to write a full-length item today since I'll soon be off on a road trip to visit Dear Old Dad. However, instead of posting something new, I'll put up a piece I wrote for the Fort Lauderdale newspaper (aka The South Florida Sun-Sentinel) eight years ago.

I came across this old forgotten column by accident. Last June an angry left-wing commentator (whose name I forget) responded to an article I had written about Afghanistan by accusing me of being a colonial anthropologist. I wanted to see if his attack was still up on the web, so I googled "Robert L. Moore" "Afghanistan" and lo and behold, one of my old moth-eaten pieces from the Sun-Sentinel came up. I think it's appropriate here, because it says something about what, even today, I see as significant differences between liberals and conservatives. So here it is:



Who's Left, Who's Right?
Robert L. Moore
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, June 10, 2002

Rush Limbaugh has moved to the left. At least that's what billboards all over Central Florida have been proclaiming ever since Limbaugh began appearing on a new radio station a few notches down on the FM dial. The joke hinges on our knowing right from left, politically speaking, and recognizing that Limbaugh always leans hard to the right.

Sometimes it's hard to tell left from right. In a recent CNN.com article, Hong Kong writer Willy Wo-Lap Lam declared that "leftists" or "ultra-conservatives" in the Chinese Communist Party were blocking the admission of wealthy capitalists into the party ranks.

But Lam is confounding leftists and ultra-conservatives here. If these protectionist party leaders are "ultra-conservative," they lean to the right and cannot, by definition, be "leftists."

It's true that the Chinese Communist leaders used to be extreme leftists back when they fought to bring down the rich and lift up the poor. They no longer do this, but instead spend most of their energy defending their power base. This means they are no longer leftists. They are conservatives.

The backbone of conservatism is group loyalty, and most conservatives belong to some group -- racial, religious, moneyed or empowered -- that enjoys privileged status. There is no group in China more privileged than the members of the Communist Party, and by narrowing their mandate to the defense of their own privilege, they have redefined themselves as conservatives.

Left and right are often confused here in America, too. In her February speech to the Conservative Action Political Conference, Ann Coulter goofed when she said, to an appreciative audience, "We need to execute people like [American Taliban] John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals "

But Coulter would have a hard time making the case that the Taliban are liberals. The Taliban have an unshakable faith in the superiority of their own religion, and this kind of self-assurance in religious matters is a hallmark of conservatism.

Liberals tend to be more open-minded about these things. In fact, Robert Frost said that a liberal is a man who is too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel.

Of course, being ostentatiously broad-minded has its drawbacks, too. The liberal's selfless appeals to justice and compassion strike some observers as hypocritical posturing, and it could be argued that this is just as nerve-grating as the stubborn selfishness of the conservative.

Recently I've noticed some cars sporting "Jesus was a Liberal" bumper stickers, a claim that can't be more than half-true. Certainly Jesus' single-mindedness on religion is conservative, while his compassion and sense of justice make him liberal on social issues. As a social liberal, it's unlikely he would look favorably on Enron-style capitalism, a point he vividly demonstrated with his Ralph Nader-style action against the moneychangers in the temple.

The liberal-conservative switch made by Republicans and Democrats since the Civil War has caused some confusion over the meanings of liberalism and conservatism here in America.

Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans were liberal in the 1860s, while Jeff Davis and his pro-slavery supporters were conservative Democrats. Abraham Lincoln, the liberal, expanded the power of the federal government in order to rescue the victims of slavery. Jeff Davis and Robert E. Lee, as conservatives, took up arms against the United States to fight on behalf of an entrenched and privileged group (which, by the way, is exactly what John Walker Lindh is accused of doing).





Jefferson Davis - Democrat and Die-Hard Conservative

For a hundred years the Democratic Party was closely identified with the slave-owning aristocracy of the Old South. It wasn't until the civil rights era that white Southerners began to vote GOP in large numbers. Richard Nixon promoted this trend with his Southern strategy in 1968, a strategy that saved the Republican Party from being marginalized.

In short, if Abe Lincoln and Jeff Davis were alive today, each would have to switch parties in order to feel at home with his principles.

All this raises an important question. Should the Republican Party continue identifying itself with a raging liberal like Abraham Lincoln? Given its new conservative coloring and Nixon's success in winning over the old Confederacy, the time is ripe for the GOP to stop calling itself the Party of Lincoln, and begin referring to itself by a new and more accurate label: the Party of Nixon.














 





Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy made the GOP a kind of reborn Confederacy

Bourgeois Blues

My friend John R., who knows a thing or two about music, recently forwarded to me the “Rules of the Blues” (see below). The rules, I’m afraid, are bound to put a damper on my longstanding dream, which was to form a blues group and make a living singing about my troubles. Some years ago I even went so far as to compose a verse or two. OK, if you are going to insist, I’ll offer you some samples here:

From “Academic Blues”
(copyright pending by Bipolar Bobby Buchanan)

I got the academic blues, my book is hot off the press,
Yeah, my theory is wired and my book is hot off the press,
But the dean just fired my ass,
He don’ like the way I dress

(Impressive guitar riff here)


Back in Pueblo, Colorado, in the 1980s, I played soccer on a city league. I put together a few verses then for which Brother Becker, our most memorable goalie, played the guitar licks in our post-game gatherings. The verse I remember best came after we suffered a 3-0 blowout, and it goes something like this:

Got Stomped Again Blues

Some folks’ll tell ya, they don’ care ‘bout the score,
Yeah, some folks they say, they jus’ don’ care ‘bout the score,
Well, I don’ care either,
As long as my team got more.


I don’t know, but it seems to me that living a middle class life in suburbia shouldn’t rule you out from singing the blues. I mean, even though we may be bourgeois, if you prick us, do we not bleed, and all that? So, how about this, then?


Got No Right to Sing the Blues, Blues

The rules, they be harsh, they say we can’t sing the blues
Yeah, they harsh and they heavy, they say we can’t sing the blues
But I ain’t hiding ‘neath no bushel,
To follow these rules, I refuse.


















The Great and Famous Blues Brothers.
They're from Chicago which makes it OK for them to sing the blues.



-------------------------------------------

OK, now for some amusing "Rules for the Blues" forwarded to me by John. (He does not claim to have written them!):

If you are new to Blues music, or like it but never really understood the whys and wherefores, here are some very fundamental rules:

1. Most Blues begin with: "Woke up this morning...."

2. "I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin the Blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, "I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town."

3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes, sort of: "Got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Dionne Warwick and she weigh 500 pound."

4. The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch...ain't no way out.

5. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues don't travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train, usually described simply as "the next thing smokin'." Jet aircraft and state-sponsored motor pools ain't even in the running.

6. Teenagers can't sing the Blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, "adulthood" means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.

7. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or anywhere in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues.

8. A man with male pattern baldness ain't the Blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is.. Breaking your leg 'cause you were skiing is not the Blues. Breaking your leg 'cause a alligator be chomping on it is.

9. You can't have no Blues in an office or a shopping mall. The lighting's wrong. Go outside and sit by the dumpster.

10. Good places for the Blues:
a. highway
b. jailhouse
c. empty bed (preferably with rocks in it)
d. in a hollow log

11. Bad places for the Blues:
a. Nordstrom's
b. Starbucks
c. gallery openings
d. handball courts

12. No one will believe it's the Blues if you wear a suit, 'less you happen to be an old person, and you slept in it.

13. Do you have the right to sing the Blues?
Yes, if:
a. you're older than dirt
b. you're blind
c. you shot a man in Memphis
d. you can't be satisfied
e. you're fixin' to die

No, if:
a. you have all your teeth
b. you were once blind but now can see
c. the man in Memphis lived
d. you work for Goldman-Sachs

14. Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the Blues. Sonny Liston could have. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the Blues.

15. If you ask for water and she gives you gasoline, it's the Blues.
Other acceptable Blues beverages are:
a. cheap wine
b. whiskey or bourbon
c. muddy water
d. black coffee

The following are NOT Blues beverages:
a. Perrier
b. Chardonnay
c. Snapple
d. Slim Fast

16. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it's a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So are the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a broken-down cot. You can't have a Blues death if you die during liposuction.

17. These are some Blues names for women:
a. Sadie
b. Big Mama
c. Bessie
d. Fat River Dumpling

18. These are some Blues names for men:
a. Joe
b. Willie
c. Little Willie
d. Big Willie

19. Women with names like Michelle, Amber, Jennifer, Debbie, and Heather can't sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.

20. Here's a Blues Name Starter Kit. You should have three names:
a. the first name should be the name of a physical infirmity (Blind,
Mute, Lame, etc.)
b. the second name name should be fruit (Lemon, Lime, etc.)
c. the last name should be the same as a U.S. President (Jefferson,
Clinton, Fillmore, etc.)

A proper Blues name would be:
a. Blind Lemon Jefferson
b. Pegleg Lemon Johnson
c. Clubfoot Cumquat Coolidge

A lousy Blues name would be:
a. Hemorrhoid Lemon Jefferson
b. ADT Kiwi Bush
c. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Lime Washington

21. I don't care how tragic your life is: if you own a computer, you
cannot sing the blues, period. Sorry!

[Editor's note: Damn!]

Lie to me or I won't vote for you

A recent Rasmussen report told us that only 16% of those polled believed Congress's performance to be good or excellent. The report helpfully adds that this is the highest approval rating Congress has had over the past 12 months.

What this shows us is that America is cursed with a particular group of incompetent knuckleheads who know as much about governing as do Larry, Moe and Curly. I'm talking, of course, about the American voters.







Let's vote for the cute one!









When you consider that we, the voters, hire these people in Congress, and that we also review their performance every two years, it's astonishing that over the past five or six years we've generally given them approval ratings below 50% and usually closer to 15%. What kind of idiots are we that we don't know how to hire good people to serve us?

Well I'll tell you what kind of idiots we are: the kind of idiots who require our representatives to pay for their campaigns with money from the likes of BP and ExxonMobil, and then imagine that these corporate-bought lawmakers are going to ignore their benefactors and do what we, the voters, ask of them. Duh.

Of course in their campaigns our office-seekers always promise us that they will work for "the American people," and will stick it to "the special interests," but only a bunch of dimwits would believe they will actually keep their word and "stick it to" the very interests that paid for their campaigns. In effect, we require that our politicians lie to us. If they don't, we will refuse to vote for them.

To illustrate the "Lie to me or I won't vote for you," principle, consider my favorite cartoon show, The Simpsons. (Yes, more fun than South Park or Family Guy, though those shows are cool in their own way.)

Let's say Smithers is running for Mayor of Springfield and the conniving plutocrat and nuclear power broker, Montgomery Burns, is funding his campaign. Burns pays for Smithers' campaign because he wants Smithers, once in office, to eliminate all the government regulations that keep nuclear waste out of the local reservoir -- the source of the public's drinking water. This will boost the profits of Mr. Burns' nuclear power plant, but it is not necessarily good for the people who drink the reservoir water. (Burns presumably has his own water flown in from Evian, France.)









Just Go Ahead and Trust Me











Now Smithers is not going to say, "Vote for me and I will let the guy who is paying for this ad poison your water!" That would be honest, but probably not a winning strategy. So, he takes Burns' money and uses it to run ads saying, "Vote for me and I will clean out the special interests who control the Springfield city hall!" People will vote for him because he is telling them just the exact lie they want to hear.

This is why I can guarantee that once the new Congress is in place next year, though it will surely have dozens of newly minted office holders, it will not enjoy an enduring surge in its approval ratings. People will continue to complain about its incompetence and corruption as they have for years.

But don't blame the people we hire to represent us. We are, after all, their bosses. It's just that we haven't designed a campaign system that allows politicians to tell us the truth, one in which they can fund their own elections with adequate public money instead of needing to rely on money acquired from the very interests that are inclined to seek special favors.

So, next time you hear someone whining about how bad Congress is, maybe you should ask them what kind of nincompoops hired that pack of double-talking four-flushers in the first place.

A Great Week for America, Everybody

It was a great week for America last week (to quote Craig Ferguson, my favorite talk-show host). And I don't say this just because America's leading library science student got her first post-graduate job.

No, I'm talking about our sensibility regarding nuclear holocausts. Last Friday, for the first time ever, America’s ambassador to Japan attended the commemoration of the Hiroshima tragedy. The day the bomb was dropped, August 6, 1945, will be remembered longer by more people than the “Day of Infamy” that was Pearl Harbor. I say this not as a way of attacking the U.S., but rather as a way of saying we need to think about what nuclear weaponry implies for our world. One thing true of both Presidents Reagan and Obama is their stated belief that we can and should rid the world of nuclear weapons. Hats off to both of you, Sirs. Having America’s official participation in this year’s commemoration is a step in the right direction.






Hiroshima 1945













Hiroshima Today - An Enduring Reminder










 



Also last week, Warren Buffett, my favorite moneybags, helped organize a massive charity plan that has a passel of billionaires contributing half of their wealth to charity. Ever since the 1980s more and more of America’s wealth has moved into the hands of multimillionaires, and a charity giveaway like this is, I believe, a very good thing.

In my view, systems of justice -- economic and legal -- are like the circulatory system of a society. When these systems malfunction or get clogged up, a society is headed for collapse. A healthy society is a just society, and a just society is one in which people are rewarded in accordance with the contribution they make to the social body as a whole. Since the 1980s we have grown steadily less “just” in economic terms as more and more of the nation’s wealth has slipped away from ordinary working people who actually make and do things, into the hands of hedge fund managers and the like. So, if this charity giveaway is the beginning of a move in the other direction, I’m all for it. Of course it might just be a one-off gesture that puts the creepy guys who didn’t give away any of their wealth in stronger positions of influence. Hope not.

Finally there was a story in Sunday’s NY Times describing the anti-Muslim sentiment that is being pumped up by people of the same mentality that gave us Jim Crow and cross-burnings in the past. In those days the hostility was against blacks and Catholics, but now it’s Muslims that have attracted the bulk of America’s irrational prejudices.

The good news is that when the anti-Muslims take to the streets these days, open-minded Americans who support the Muslims’ religious freedom usually show up in even greater numbers.

This brings me to a complaint I have about someone I admire a great deal, Bill Maher. The thing is, he’s completely wrong about Muslims. I’ve heard him say that Islam is a religion that promotes violence, or something along those lines, but the truth is that Christians have certainly been more violent and death-dealing over the past millennium than have Muslims. I’m sure that if you add up all the killing done by Christians, including the bloodletting of the Second World War in which the Allies and some of their principal enemies – Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy – did most of the killing, you would find it is Christians that seem more bloodthirsty than any other religious group. In fact, I have 100 cool dollars right here in my hand (rustle, rustle) that I will give to anyone (including Bill Maher) who can prove that Muslims have committed more acts of violence than Christians in the last century or even the last millennium and a half. Of course the recent expressions of anti-Muslim prejudice by normally sensible people like Maher, are small affairs compared to the outright bigotry by the usual suspects on the political right, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, to name the most prominent of these.

To put this issue in perspective it’s worthwhile to consider the beginnings of the modern Muslim-Western conflict. They can be said to have been started by John Foster Dulles (the Dick Cheney of his day) and his brother Allen Dulles when these two conspired to destroy Iran’s fledgling democracy in 1953. The motive, of course, was corporate America’s interest in controlling Iran’s oil, and the story is well told in Stephen Kinzer’s book All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.

The 1953 coup that Kinzer describes resulted in the overthrow of Iran’s elected leader, Mohammad Mossadegh, and his replacement by the Shah. The Shah turned out to be a ruthless dictator who used torture and intimidation to control his country until, under the leadership of hard-line Muslim Ayatollah Khomeini, the people of Iran kicked the Shah out of the country. This revolution also involved the seizing of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the taking of embassy personnel as hostages. Naturally, since the CIA had put the Shah in power and we had trained his torture-happy police, the Iranians blamed the U.S. for the misery they had suffered under the Shah’s reign.

The success that Ayatollah Khomeini had in leading his rebellion under the banner of Islam led a number of other Middle Eastern leaders to turn to Islam as a political tool. As the title of Kinzer’s book implies, the roots of Middle Eastern terrorism can be found in the CIA coup of 1953. So, whose religion is responsible for all this violence? Well, Mr. Maher, now that the big money is on the table, you don’t seem to have much to say. Hmmph.

I hope that Park51 (known by anti-Muslim critics as “the Ground Zero Mosque”) will eventually rise from the ashes of the prejudice that now surrounds it and shine like a beacon of American open-mindedness. Those who oppose this construction seem to have bought the absolutely nutty arguments about Islam being America’s enemy.

I think New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg was on target when he said in a recent speech, “Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else.”

In the mosque debate we have an outstanding example of a religious leader who is on the side of peace and righteousness, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, “the man behind the mosque.” It’s good to see the Imam’s decency and patience enduring despite the mindless hostility of those whose only thought seems to be “Ground Zero Good; Muslims Bad.” To me it is the Imam who expresses what is best about America. And anyway, how evil could a man be whose wife is named “Daisy?”

Here’s more on the Imam.

I don’t often cite Time Magazine, but I think they did a good job on this story. Now, can we have a little open-mindedness and compassion here? It’s what Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King would surely have wanted.

How Great Great Grandfather Flynn Won the Civil War, Maybe

On Genealogy and Cavalry

It may be difficult to believe, but my father, William R. Moore, was a bona fide cavalryman who rode with the 102nd regiment in the late 1930s. Of course Dad became an Air Force pilot once World War II started, but before that, he had volunteered for the cavalry and wound up being stationed in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, with the 102nd.

Cavalryman William R. Moore (aka Dad), ca. 1939

But wait, there’s more. On our mother’s side of the family we also had a couple of cavalrymen, as sister Betsy’s diligent research on Ancestry.com has brought to light. One was Jacob Goerth, our Grandmother Yost’s maternal grandfather, who was a veteran of Grant's Vicksburg campaign and who later rode with the 5th cavalry out west, at one time serving as a scout with William “Buffalo Bill” Cody. One of his sons (our great great uncle) was Frank Goerth, who was stationed in the Philippines and also spent time in Panama. Betsy has done wonders digging up all this information, though from an anthropologist’s perspective, it’s a little embarrassing to see all these family connections to wars of imperialistic conquest.






Frank Goerth in the Philippines ca. 1900













Jacob Goerth who rode with the 5th Cavalry out west and with Buffalo Bill





My favorite cavalry ancestor was Patrick Flynn, who fought with the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War. According to stories handed down to us through our beloved Grandmother Yost, her grandfather, Patrick Flynn, brought glory to the family as a veteran of the Battle of Gettysburg - the turning-point of the Civil War.  Since my adolescence, I have had a longstanding fascination with that war and so, some years ago, when I had a chance to visit the Gettysburg battlefield I wrote the following account of Great Great Grandfather Flynn’s heroic actions.


Patrick Flynn and the Thundering Guns of Gettysburg

Part 1: Brandy Station

According to our family lore, Patrick Flynn of Lafayette, Indiana,  was a veteran of the Battle of Gettysburg. Consequently, when I visited the Gettysburg Battle site, I was anxious to find out all that I could concerning our ancestor’s acts of daring during his service with Company I of the 2nd New York Cavalry Regiment, (also known as the Harris Light Cavalry). The information below is based on historical materials and the records collected by Grandpa Yost. Since Patrick Flynn was a private, the historical records say nothing about him in particular, but the information I provide here follows the records of the units in which he served. Patrick Flynn was present and accounted for with his unit almost continuously from August 1861 until he was mustered out on June 23, 1865. Also, as noted in the Lafayette Daily Courier article included by Grandpa Yost in his Flynn-Goerth-Ullrich Genealogy, Private Flynn was among several Lafayette residents who received a medal for bravery for participation in the Battle of Gettysburg.

A medal for bravery! "What heroic exploits," I wondered, "could have warranted this honor?" The following account summarizes what my sleuthing revealed about Private Flynn.

In June of 1863 Patrick Flynn's regiment, as part of the Army of the Potomac, participated in the Battle of Brandy Station, one of the first battles on the eastern front of the Civil War in which the Union cavalry showed it could match the renowned Confederate cavalry in skill and tactics. In fact, I have on occasion overcome my natural modesty to point out (with no more than a little imaginative reconstruction) that on the basis of the Battle of Brandy Station we might say that Private Flynn actually won the Civil War for the North.

My reasoning is as follows: The famous and flamboyant Confederate cavalry commander, Jeb Stuart, had been spending some time in northern Virginia in the spring of 1863 gallivanting and parading about for the local citizenry, glorying in the laurels he had earned by making fools of his Union adversaries in recent campaigns.

On June 9 at Brandy Station, however, the scene changed dramatically when Stuart was rudely surprised by a strong contingent of Union cavalry that included Patrick Flynn’s regiment. Stuart’s Rebels were driven back and only managed to regain their footing after a bracing dose of fierce fighting -- something they had not been anticipating on the basis of their previous engagements with Yankee horse soldiers.

There are some writers familiar with the Battle of Brandy Station churlish enough to point out that Private Flynn’s 2nd NY did not entirely succeed in obtaining its objective in this fight. According to historian Edward G. Longacre, for example, when the 2nd NY regiment charged the Fleetwood Heights position where Jeb Stuart himself was personally trying to save his crumbling line, the New Yorkers were taken in flank, turned back and, “swerved to the right, broke and fled in utter rout.”

Still, the picture in my mind’s eye has Private Flynn riding up to Jeb Stuart in the heat of the assault (before Flynn and his fellow cavalrymen reconsidered the wisdom of continuing their attack on the heights), making a slash at the Rebel commander with his saber, missing his head only by inches and slicing off the Rebel general’s famed black ostrich plume in the process.

As an aside I would add that the New Yorkers’ less than fully successful charge on Fleetwood Heights was ordered by Colonel H. Judson Kilpatrick, an officer not lacking in bravery, but of whom it can certainly be said “his bravery far outshone his wisdom.” Kilpatrick is described by Civil War historian Longacre as “meagre of stature, shrill of voice, and looking like a weasel in sideburns.” He had earned the nickname “Kill-cavalry” from his tendency to order idiotic and pointless cavalry charges whose main aim seemed to be getting the name Judson Kilpatrick in the northern newspapers. He harbored dreams of becoming the Governor of New Jersey on the basis of an army career that he hoped would be brilliant, and eventually of running for President of the United States.

To get back to our main story, the Brandy Station cavalry engagement took place less than a month before the Battle of Gettysburg, and the embarrassment it caused Jeb Stuart (especially in light of the prancing and strutting he had been indulging in just prior to the fight), disrupted his judgment and caused him to make a fatal error during the Gettysburg campaign.

Stuart was so upset by the Brandy Station surprise attack--and the sharp criticism he was getting in the Confederate press because of it--that he was determined to overcome this humiliation with another great cavalry coup against the Yankee Army. Consequently, when Lee marched north into Pennsylvania, Stuart did not stay with him, but rather rode far to the east around the Army of the Potomac, capturing supply wagons as he went. Since cavalry usually provided a Civil War army with information about enemy movements, General Lee was badly handicapped by the absence of Jeb Stuart’s forces in the early phases of the Battle of Gettysburg - just when the Union army was most vulnerable. So, it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that this, the most crucial battle of the Civil War, was lost largely because Lee lacked the information about the enemy that Stuart’s cavalry could have provided had it been on hand. But Stuart’s wounded ego (and trimmed plumage?) had him off on a mission aimed more at restoring his own glory rather than supporting the aims of his commander in chief, Robert E. Lee.  Thank you, Private Flynn.


Part II: Gettysburg

Anyway, during my visit to Gettysburg, I made up my mind to find out exactly what crucial part Great Great Grandfather Flynn might have played in this historic battle. At Gettysburg, Private Flynn’s 2nd New York Cavalry was in the Second Brigade (under Colonel Pennock Huey) of the Second Division (under General David McMurtrie Gregg) of Pleasonton's Cavalry Corps. Though General Gregg was a courageous and competent man whose professionalism prevented him from currying favor with the press, Colonel Huey’s only redeeming quality seemed to be that he was not quite as big a jackass as Judson Kilpatrick. At a crucial point leading up to Gettysburg, when General Gregg’s division was in pursuit of Stuart’s raiders, both Gregg and the second ranking commander of the division fell gravely ill. This automatically made Colonel Huey the acting division commander, but so concerned about his lack of abilities were Gregg and his second-in-command that they decided not to inform Huey of his new responsibilities, figuring the division would be better off with no leader than with Huey in command. When Huey eventually was informed of his temporary promotion, he was, according to one observer, “so swelled up with importance” that he began rearranging the division staff to suit his own whims. This infuriated the second-ranking division commander to such an extent that his rage apparently killed his intestinal virus and he rose from his sickbed to take the reins from Huey’s hands.

But back to the Battle of Gettysburg: During the three-day battle, the Northern forces found themselves on the defensive from the outset.  For most of the fight, the Union line stretched in a fishhook shape from Culp’s Hill on the right, around through Cemetery Hill and Cemetery Ridge down to Little Round Top and Round Top on the extreme left.

The struggle for the strategic Culp’s Hill, which lasted for all three days of the battle, has been described as perhaps the most long-lasting, toe-to-toe slugfest in the Civil War. Since I knew that Gregg's cavalry division had been on the union right flank, it was here that I anticipated finding traces of Grandfather Flynn’s glory. So, almost as soon as we had arrived in Gettysburg, I set out for Culp's Hill to look for evidence of the 2nd New York's heroic participation.

On this hill, thousands lost life or limb as first the Yankees and then the Rebels seized and held strategic bulwarks on the wooded slopes which crucially anchored the Union right flank. From previous reading before my trip to Gettysburg, I had surmised that Patrick Flynn’s regiment was in the thick of this vital struggle. But, as I discovered on my quest, such was not the case. Culp’s Hill was an infantry battle, and General Gregg’s Cavalry Division, to which the 2nd NY belonged, was stationed much further east, protecting the extreme right of the Army of the Potomac. Private Flynn, in other words, missed the toe-to-toe slugfest on Culp's Hill.

The battleground far to the east of the Culp's Hill is known today as East Cavalry Field. It was here that General Gregg’s division along with George Armstrong Custer's brigade clashed with the superior forces of Jeb Stuart's late arriving Confederate cavalry. The fighting took place simultaneously with the renowned Pickett’s Charge, the Confederacy's high watermark according to most historians. Robert E. Lee's plan was to have Stuart’s cavalry support Pickett’s Charge by smashing into the Union rear just as the men of Pickett’s and Pettigrew's divisions hurled themselves against the Union front.

Pickett’s Charge was preceded by a deafening cannonade that was started by over 150 Confederate guns and was answered by a like number of Union guns. For hours on the afternoon of July 3 the two sides battered each other with thundering death that could be heard as far away as Baltimore and Washington--where Lincoln waited for news of the battle.

At this point Stuart wheeled around the Union right in order to strike at the rear, but he had not planned on running directly into Gregg’s and Custer's units, both of which had been stationed out on the right flank specifically to block just such an attack. The fighting at East Cavalry Field on July 3rd was one of the fiercest cavalry engagements of the Civil War. For hours men and horses charged against each other in demonstrations of valor made horrendous by the participation of artillery on both sides which bloodied the field with every volley. But Stuart might as well have charged against a brick wall as against these brave and sturdy Yankee horsemen who threw the Rebels back in disarray. Unfortunately Private Flynn cannot be counted among these brave and sturdy Yankee horsemen.

Huey’s brigade, which included Private Flynn’s regiment, had been detached from Gregg’s division and so was not engaged in the East Cavalry Field fight. Huey and his men had been sent about 20 miles off to the southeast to the town of Manchester, Maryland, in order to guard Union supplies there. Note that Maryland is right next to Pennsylvania and this would have placed Private Flynn within hearing range of the thundering guns of Gettysburg.

I should also add that after his defeat at Gettysburg General Lee sent a 17-mile-long wagon train loaded with wounded soldiers down one route while the bulk of his army retreated along another. According to Gettysburg Guide Charles Fennell, Huey’s Brigade saw action in attacks on that retreating wagon train. I have not yet confirmed whether or not Private Flynn’s regiment won glory as one of these ambulance-chasing units.

At any rate, we Yosts and Moores can definitely tell our descendants that in the summer of 1863, our ancestor, Great Great Grandfather Patrick Flynn, was in the 2nd NY Cavalry when that unit attacked Jeb Stuart’s position at Brandy Station on June 9, and that three weeks later during the Battle of Gettysburg his regiment was stationed in Manchester, Maryland. Assuming Private Flynn was not taking an afternoon nap during Pickett’s Charge (most unlikely considering the stern stuff of which the Flynns are made), he could, with little effort, have heard the mighty thundering guns of Gettysburg.



















Culp's Hill, site of fierce fighting in which Patrick Flynn did not take part 

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May 28, 2018 - final, humbling addendum: I discovered on looking more closely at Patrick Flynn's military records that he was in hospital for the second half of 1863 and so, missed the actual Battle of Gettysburg entirely. I'm guessing that he was wounded at Brandy Station or in a skirmish at Aldie, Virginia, about a week later where his regiment also suffered serious casualties. In any case my theory that he maybe won the war for us is not thereby undermined.