Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War
David Detzer. New York: Harcourt, 2001. 367 pp. Illus. Notes. Bib. Index. $27.00 ($24.30).
Reviewed by Richard M. McMurry
In the months between the secession of South Carolina on 20 December 1860 and the outbreak of the Civil War on 12 April 1861, the weight of the North-South crisis came to rest most heavily on the shoulders of Major Robert Anderson. Fifty-five in 1860, a Kentuckian, and a career Army officer, Anderson commanded the U.S. troops assigned to the military installations at Charleston, South Carolina. Shortly after the state declared itself out of the Union, Anderson took his small force out to Fort Sumter, a formidable defensive work on a tiny man-made island in the harbor. There, the Federal troops would be relatively safe from attack by the Secessionists. There, too, as it turned out, they would prove a constant irritant to those who regarded South Carolina, and then the Confederacy, as independent.
For more than three months Anderson and his men remained in Sumter, often subsisting on a scanty, unhealthful diet, laboring constantly to put their fort in a condition for defense should it come under attack, and—most frustrating of all—waiting, hoping, begging that their government in far-off Washington would decide its policy regarding military posts in the seceded states. In truth, neither outgoing Democratic President James Buchanan nor incoming Republican President Abraham Lincoln knew what to do. The result was a series of half measures, unofficial statements, and general confusion. Meanwhile, the Secessionists busied themselves organizing a national government of their own and strengthening the military works around Charleston to use in an attack on Fort Sumter.
Finally, in early April 1861, matters came to a head. Lincoln proclaimed his unalterable intention not to recognize secession and to maintain Federal property in the Southern states. The new Confederate government came under intense pressure from haughty South Carolina to do something to relieve the state of the hated Yankee troops at Fort Sumter. To top it off, Anderson notified the Washington authorities that his garrison soon would exhaust its food supply.
Forced to the wall, Lincoln finally decided to send relief supplies to Sumter and so notified the authorities at Charleston. The Secessionists, their bluff called, had to react, and they did so by bombarding the fort and compelling its surrender. Allowed to go north, Anderson and his men received a hero’s welcome from a public now aroused to defend the Union.
The basic story of Fort Sumter is well known, and David Detzer adds little new information in this book. Detzer does, however, give us an interesting and usually well-done account of the events at Charleston and, to a much lesser extent, of those in Washington and in the Confederate capital at Montgomery, Alabama. By focusing so much on Anderson, Detzer offers a compelling portrait of a good, decent human being caught in a crisis created by others and of a competent, conscientious Army officer more or less abandoned by his government without much in the way of policy guidance upon which to base his conduct.
Such intense scrutiny on Anderson and the garrison sometimes leads Detzer to shortchange the larger picture. Readers who desire such coverage (and, I think, a better overall account of these events) should turn to Maury Klein’s Days of Defiance (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), a work not cited in Detzer’s book.
Waiting for Dead Men’s Shoes: Origins and Development of the U.S. Navy’s Officer Personnel System, 1793-1941
Donald Chisholm. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. 883 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bib. Index. $125.00 ($118.75).
Reviewed by Vice Admiral Gerald E. Miller, U.S. Navy (Retired)
This book purports to be a study that will help large institutions solve their many problems. When it comes to large institutions, few are as large as the armed services. The problems the services face, particularly with regard to manpower, are monumental compared to those of the average conglomerate. So it makes some sense to study a book such as this if you are looking for better ways to do the job at hand. In this book the author uses the Navy’s officer personnel system as a means of presenting a series of problems and how they were solved.
A significant value of this book is the extraordinarily detailed presentation of how the Navy built a system for the manning of its ships and stations. Covered are such interesting aspects as duties of officers at sea and ashore, specialization, numbers and titles of officer grades, pay scales and structures, distribution by pay grades, recruitment, education, promotion, retention, mobilization, reduction in force, and retirement. The Navy devised the first retirement system used by the federal government. The author has relied on records of manpower problems and solutions in both Navy and congressional libraries as his primary sources of information. As a result, not only does the book cover the evolution of an excellent officer personnel system, but it also provides a record of the political parties and politicians that were in power from 1793 to 1941.
The author focuses on three “value premises” of the officer personnel problem. The first is equity, which means being fair to the officers involved. It usually is attained by granting seniority (and authority) to those having served the longest (hence the reference to “dead men’s shoes”; someone had to die before any could be promoted). The second premise is efficiency, where priority in assignment and promotion is given to the “best”—something of paramount importance in times of combat. The third premise deals with economy, or accomplishing the mission with the least possible cost. This objective always rises to high priority during prolonged periods of peace. Anyone who has spent enough time in the armed services to experience at least one cycle of the “peace- war-peace” process will understand these premises.
In short, this book is a detailed account of how the Navy started with a crude method for manning its ships and created (along with the other services) a remarkably equitable, efficient, and economical system that has stood the test of massive military combat. Fortunately, the essential elements were in place at the start of World War II. There have been many modifications since, but they have been relatively minor in nature compared to the major actions taken during the first 150 years.
The price and size of this book will dictate it serve primarily as a reference tool. With history being the best teacher of all, this is an excellent source of lessons to be learned. Both civil and military authorities involved in developing plans for amendments to the personnel systems of the armed services should have this book to explore previous experiences with the problems they are trying to solve and to generate solutions to them. As with most major problems in management and leadership, corporations can learn from the experience of the armed services.
The Wicked Trade
Jan Needle. Ithaca, NY: McBooks, 2001. 382 pp. $16.95 ($15.25).
Kydd: A Novel
Julian Stockwin. New York: Scribner, 2001. 254 pp- $24.00 ($21.60).
Reviewed by Commander Tyrone G. Martin, U.S. Navy (Retired)
In the second of his William Bentley series, Jan Needle continues his tale of a midshipman in the Royal Navy during the 18th century. To date, the author has declined to reveal more than that the enemy is France. As the story opens, young Bentley is being returned to active duty after two or three years of inactivity, a return initiated by his uncle, the Royal Navy captain who figured so prominently, and negatively, in the first novel, A Fine Boy for Killing (published in 2000). Bentley is ordered to join the crew of a chartered collier employed by the Impress Service and operated out of Deptford. A dilettante lieutenant is on board as captain, but the ship’s owner is employed as master, and his crew provides the muscle. The single bright spot for Bentley is the presence of Midshipman Samuel Holt, the only person on board who seems to have more on his mindthan impressing unsuspecting seaman.
The two perceptive young men soon find themselves on the fringes of a number of nefarious activities, and they inevitably are drawn into them. Events take them up and down the Thames between London and Deptford, and across the south of England to the Channel coast. They gradually uncover activities that combine smuggling with espionage, and that somehow involve both their lieutenant commanding and Bentley’s uncle. As is the author’s wont, most of the characters are vile and brutal. Overall, however, the mood is a slightly lighter shade of black than the first of the series.
Julian Stockwin’s entry into the genre is the simple story of a young wig maker impressed into the Royal Navy of the 1790s. It is a straight-forward tale of Thomas Paine Kydd’s introduction into the service, with the usual harassments and missteps of an initiate, happily limited and eased by the presence of a sympathetic seaman who ameliorates his situation. Through a series of adventures on and off the ship, Kydd learns the ropes and earns a position of trust with his superiors and acceptance by his peers. It is a modest, unchallenging tale that makes for a pleasant read, and it is a welcome change from some of the more convoluted works that have appeared in recent years. Stockwin’s second volume, Artemis, already is at the publisher.
