American History Revised (4 page)

But old sentiments don’t die easily. In the American Centennial celebration of 1876, the flag flying above Independence Hall in Philadelphia was not the flag showing the thirteen colonies, but the Grand Union Flag showing the Union Jack.

1776
On three occasions, the simple failure to deliver a message shaped the destiny of America. No great immutable forces of history here, just plain blind luck.

When George Washington decided to launch his daring crossing of the Delaware on Christmas Day 1776, he was down to his final out—and he knew it. “I fear the game will be pretty well up,” he confessed to his brother in despair. After eight months of fighting, he had lost almost all his battles, and the enlistment period of more than half his army was due to expire at the end of the year, leaving him with no resources to carry on the struggle. His crossing of the Delaware, as we all know, was a stroke of genius that breathed new hope into the revolutionary cause.

On the night of the Delaware crossing, however, things did not get off to a good start. A contingent of nervous American troops shot five Hessians, waking up the
Hessian guard. When the contingent caught up with Washington, Washington did not mince his words: “You, sir, may have ruined all my plans by putting them on their guard.” Fortunately, when the Hessians found the bodies of their dead comrades, Johann Rall, the Hessian colonel in charge of the British forces, dismissed it as the work of some local farmers. Then when he returned to his Trenton tavern, he neglected to leave an outpost to guard the river; advised to mount patrols all along the river, he said no, it could wait until the morning. For the rest of the night, he and his officers played cards and got drunk. Around midnight he received a visit from a loyalist farmer. Refused access because the colonel was busy playing cards, the farmer scribbled an urgent note to Rall alerting him that the Americans were about to cross the Delaware. Rall got the note, but never bothered to read it. He put it in his pocket and continued with his card game. Three hours later, drunk and asleep, he got a rude surprise. George Washington’s army had crossed the Delaware and was about to attack.

The year: 1862 The Civil War was beginning to look very bleak for the North. General Grant had just barely escaped defeat at the bloody Battle of Shiloh, where both armies lost more men than the total casualties in the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War put together. Robert E. Lee had taken command of the Confederate Armies of Northern Virginia and shown everyone why he was the most esteemed general in the nation, the man Lincoln had once tried to hire. In less than thirty days, Lee had beaten two Union armies, one under George McClellan and the other under John Pope, and proceeded all the way up to the outskirts of Washington, D.C. Lee was on a roll. On the offensive for the first time in the war, he prepared to take on the North at Antietam and then march into Washington. Panic set in at the Northern capital, and citizens began to pack their bags. Who was going to stop the invincible Lee now?

Fate intervened. Two Union soldiers, resting at a site where the Confederates had camped several days earlier, discovered a copy of Lee’s Special Orders #191 wrapped around three cigars, obviously lost by a careless Southern courier. In full detail, these orders presented a picture of Lee’s attack plan, allowing General McClellan to anticipate Lee’s moves. The advantage of the attacker—surprise—shifted from Lee to McClellan.

The odds against this incredible piece of luck? At least a million to one.

Several days later there occurred the three-day Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest of the war. McClellan, knowing what Lee was going to do, reorganized his forces and slugged it out with Lee, neither side able to win. His momentum blunted, Lee was forced to withdraw. Never again would he
mount a sustained offensive or come close to Washington, D.C.

What if the cigars had not been lost? The historian James McPherson outlines what might have happened if the cautious McClellan had had to cope with a massive Confederate army, whereabouts unknown. The Battle of Antietam would not have occurred. Instead, Lee, undetected by the Union, would have moved north into Pennsylvania to reprovision his army and settle in at Gettysburg. This time the result would not have been a draw, but a rout of the Army of the Potomac.

The hypothetical repercussions would have been swift. In the Northern congressional elections, the Democrats were in control of the House of Representatives and voters expressed their desire for immediate peace, even if it meant giving the Confederates their independence. Britain and France, lurking in the wings for a sign of Confederate victory, immediately came forth and offered to mediate an end to the war. The British, eager to avenge their humiliation in the American Revolution, rejoiced at the prospect of a large land grab. Recognizing the sorry state of the Union Army, the will of the voters, and the prospect of European meddling, the North gave in and the United States ceased to exist as “one nation, indivisible.” The peace candidate, George McClellan, went on to win the 1864 presidential election. It didn’t happen, of course, only because the cigars fell into the wrong hands.

Finally, there is World War II. Overconfidence breeds in people an inability to act on what they hear. In 1940 hardly anyone in America was concerned about a Japanese attack; most eyes were fixed on Europe. Said
Fortune
magazine in its August issue that year, “War with Japan is the only war for which the U.S. is prepared.” What
Fortune
really meant was that America was protected on the west side by a very large ocean.

Sitting in front of the radar screen on a Sunday morning in Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant Joseph McDonald had a job to do: make sure the “Japs” weren’t coming. Up since 5:00 a.m. the previous day, McDonald stayed beyond his 6:00 a.m. departure so his colleagues (against regulations) could go get some breakfast. Exhausted and barely still awake at 7:20 a.m., waiting for his colleagues to come back from breakfast, he got a call from an outlying radar base at Opana reporting a large contingent of planes headed toward Pearl Harbor. He rushed into the next room and found Lt. Kermit Tyler, on his second day of training in his new post. It was nothing to worry about, Tyler told him.

Upon calling back the Opana radar station to verify the situation, McDonald now heard emergency warnings: “Hey, Mac, there is a heck of a big flight of planes coming in and the whole scope is covered!” McDonald ran back to the other room, only to find the inexperienced lieutenant
cavalierly dismissing “the attacking planes” as a fleet of U.S. B-17 bombers expected to arrive that morning from the West Coast. Asked if he shouldn’t relay the frantic message to the admirals in charge of the base, the lieutenant told him, “Don’t worry about it.”

Unsure what to do and hesitant to “pull rank,” McDonald obeyed orders. Forty-five minutes later, the Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor.

It is remarkable how military analysts to this day gloss over the facts. Pontificates one historian for the U.S. government’s website about Pearl Harbor, “The use of radar was not fully incorporated into an integrated air defense system. While the technology of radar functioned as intended and detected the incoming planes, there was no way to accurately assess this information and communicate this knowledge to those in command.”

So, in other words, no one is to blame. This, of course, is complete nonsense. The Opana warning was crystal clear. For an equally clear assessment of what happened, we should listen not to government historians writing public-relations fluff, but to military officers risking their lives on the ground at the time. Testified one such officer, Corporal George Mooney: “I finally talked to him [Lieutenant Tyler] and told him to immediately call someone with authority and pass the word that we have picked up over 150 blips on our radar screen and get some action right away. He gave me a bunch of BS. As far as he was concerned, there was no action needed at this time. He had at least one and a half hours of time [to warn Pearl], but he chose to do nothing. The rest is history.”

Actually, history wasn’t finished yet. Within twenty-four hours another saga occurred thousands of miles away, this one a message that
was
delivered—only to be ignored. In the Philippines there was a large American base headed by General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur had been told all about Pearl Harbor and ordered to go on full alert, yet he did nothing. He kept all his planes on the ground. The result was a total wipe-out, capture by the Japanese, and the infamous march to Bataan in which almost 30 percent of the American prisoners died.
*

In all this there is a lesson to be learned: even with a vital message in their hands, people frequently do nothing. Says historian Ronald Spector about the twofold Pacific debacle of December 7–8, 1941: “The mere presence of accurate information among a mass of inaccurate or misleading information is no guarantee that the accurate information will be recognized or acted upon.”

1781
Observing nature can be a good way to discover new knowledge and technology. In the colonial days, the country that knew how to sail across the Atlantic the fastest would have a significant commercial and military advantage.

The observers were the whalers of Nantucket. Following the migration of whales, they became curious about the course and speed of the currents of the Gulf Stream. By dropping thermometers at regular intervals and measuring the speed of surface bubbles and noting changes in the color of the water, they were able to map the Gulf Stream. This knowledge enabled American sea captains to save days against their British counterparts by crossing over the Gulf Stream instead of sailing against it. Benjamin Franklin heard about this discovery from his cousin, a Nantucket whaling captain, and utilized it for his mail ships when he was postmaster general. In 1776 he tested it himself by taking an ocean voyage and dropping his thermometer two to four times a day from early morning to late night. His report on the Gulf Stream, kept secret until after the Revolutionary War, was shared with American and French sea captains.