In the Shadows

By Larry Stafford

"You Know Heroes are ordinary people that have achieved extraordinary things in life.".(1)Some of those ordinary people changed history but remained in footnotes of the history books.
An Iroquois Chief, Canasatego showed a practicing republic as an example .Founding father, George Mason, laid the ground work for a nation.The first ten amendments to the Constitution may not have happen, without him James Armistead was instrumental in starting a nation. He passed on a simple message that gave us Independence. Irena Sendler saved a generation of Warsaw Jews, gave hope for resistance and helped keep the culture alive. Joshua Chamberlain, a school teacher, saved a nation, with a military manuever, that rivaled the greatest military minds. Vasili Arkhipov saved the world from nuclear destruction, by shaking his head no. Aaron Aaronsohn had a dream to create a nation by way of sharing natural resources, possibly came within hours of achieving a coalition, that without it, has been the center earth's unrest. Edith Bolling Wilson kept a Presidency intact by performing duties a First Lady had never done before or since.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524537234

Larry Stafford

Larry Stafford wrote, the book, "In the Shadows". He had previously published articles in several magazines and newspapers, to include the Marine Corps Gazette. He was the first to write about the integration of women in the officer training program, at Quantico, Virginia. He also wrote about the Greensboro murder trial and aftermath in 1980-81. He is a graduate of Temple University and was an artillery officer in the US Marine Corps. He was a commodity, equity, and bond trader and wrote a series of articles for a National Bank on the fundamentals of the New York Stock Exchange. He was also an IRA specialist for a major bank, as well as serving Russian and Spanish speaking clients. He is currently a substitute teacher for elementary and high schools in Cecil County Maryland. He also coaches high School baseball at North East High, in Cecil County.

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Copyright © 2016 by Larry Stafford.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016913939

ISBN:      Hardcover           978-1-5245-3725-8

                Softcover            978-1-5245-3724-1

                eBook                 978-1-5245-3723-4

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Rev. date: 08/27/2016

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Contents

Prefix

The Southern Strategy For The British

Fire Keeper

The Bench Coach

Keeper Of The Defense

The Stewardship Of Edith Bolling Wilson

Bibliography

Paradise Lost

Zegota

A Cool Head In A Cold War

PREFIX

L ife in the United States and the way we viewed the world was much different then, as it is today. The threat of war was very much a reality rather than a what if. In elementary school, everyone went through civil defense drills in case of a nuclear attack. We would duck underneath our desks or go out into the hallway to kneel down and put our head against the wall.

Everyone was aware of the Cold War. Nearly every news event was somehow connected to the Cold War. The space race and missiles were common terminology. Alan Shepard’s first flight in space for the United States was broadcasted over the loud speaker at my school. We never heard anything about the Soviet first man in space.

Our way of life was much different than the Soviet’s. We were under the belief that the Soviets could not be trusted as they were of us. We didn’t know about the bread lines in the Soviet Union and the lines for nearly everything in Cuba. We just knew that socialism had not worked. George Orwell’s Animal Farm was a required reading. Underground bomb shelters were not uncommon though few people had them. They defined our period of history in the late ’50s and early ’60s. Those that had underground bomb shelters were not generally accused of being paranoid.

Many of the events during the Cuban Missile Crisis had truly faded to black and white, just as all television was in black and white, with only three channels available in 1962. We knew that the Cuban crisis was important as our source of information came from the morning and evening edition of newspapers and the evening news on the television.

The 1951 movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still, became a reality in October 1962, but we didn’t know how close we came to mutual destruction. The blessing that came from the Cuban missile crisis was that there became a direct line between Washington and Moscow, in the hope that it would avoid future miscalculations; I cannot remember who wrote that decades of history never follow the years that end in zero. The ’50s and our perceived threat of mutual destruction peaked with the Cuban crisis. The Cold War took a back seat to another crisis, which was the civil rights movement and Vietnam, a byproduct of the Cold War.

(1) William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and his Era, (W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), 535.

(2) Dido, 547.

(3) Svetlana Savrandkaya. (Journal of Strategic Studies January 24, 2007), 236.

(4) The Soviet Bloc Armed Forces and the Cuban Crisis, 152.

(5) CINCLANT Historical Account of Cuban Crisis April 29, 1963, 357.

(6) JFK Library

JFK Library

Roberts, Priscilla, ed. Cuban Missile Crisis. ABC-CIIO, 2012.

Nathan, James. The Anatomy of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Greenwood Press, 2001.

Taubam, William. Khrushchev. W. W. Norton & Co., 2003.

Farber, Samuel. The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered. UNC Press, 2010.

Library Congress, Washington, DC, July 2010.

Wilson, Edward. Thankyou Vasili Arkhipov. The Guardian, October 31, 2012.

PBS. Special Secrets of the Dead. October 24, 2012.

Zubok, Vladislay and Pleshakov, Constantine. Inside the Kremlin Cold War. Harvard College, 1996.

Fursenko, Aleksandr and Naftali, Timothy. One Hell of a Gamble. W. W. Norton, 1997.

The National Archive, May 23, 2001.

JBJ Library Declassified July 12, 1975.

CIA Internal Probe of the Bay of Pigs. June 27, 2008.

Kempe, Frederick. Berlin 1961. Penguin Publishing Group, 2012.

White House.org (Miller Center) tape 41 October 27, 1962.

The Soviet Bloc Armed Forces and Cuban November 1962 June 18, 1983 page 1

Savranskaya, Svetlana. Journal of Strategic Studies January 24, 2007.

Radio Swan Cuban Information Archives

Wilson, Edward. The Guardian. October 27, 2012.

Soviet Subs in the Caribbean Crisis of 1962 Military Parade, Moscow, 2002.

THE SOUTHERN STRATEGY FOR THE BRITISH

T he southern strategy for the British during the Revolutionary War began in late 1778. Sir Henry Clinton, frustrated with the military stalemate and loyalist support, devised a three-part strategy to end the revolt by the Americans against King George III. Clinton wanted to bring the southern states under control by destroying trade and commerce, enlisting loyalist support, and igniting a slave uprising. The middle states of Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey would be conquered next, leaving New York and the New England states isolated.

Savannah, Georgia, was a good naval base to work out off to stop the trade between the Americans and the West Indies, the present-day islands of the Bahamas to Trinidad. Savannah was captured easily on December 29, 1778, by Gen. Archibald Campbell. He had an almost a four to one superiority over the American defenders.

The British were successful in defending Savannah from the combined force of the French navy and the continental army forces. When the British established control of the Port in Georgia, Clinton set his sights on Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston was an American stronghold since the beginning of the war. Clinton believed that by taking Charleston, the army could move inland and secure enlistments of loyalist.

By the end of 1779, the British had captured Fort Augusta, Georgia, giving them total control of Georgia. General Clinton, encouraged by the southern victories and his strategy, poured more resources into the south. In March 1780, his army had surrounded Charleston and began the construction of fortifications to pound the port with artillery. Within two months, American Gen. Benjamin Lincoln surrendered his force of five thousand. It was the largest surrender of American troops in the war. The American military structure in the south was in disarray.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, in May 1780, Clinton had ordered Admiral George Collier to set up a naval base for attacks into the countryside of Virginia. Clinton and the British Army had another base to stop trade with the West Indies and squeeze the southern American armies from the south meeting in central Virginia. However, Collier did not move inland very far. Clinton had promised him additional troops, but they never arrived. Collier was recalled to England a few months later.

Clinton is his emancipation of the slaves in Virginia in 1779. He proclaimed that any slaves that took up arms for the British would be free. It didn’t have the effect that the commander anticipated, but it didn’t seem to matter anyway. The British generally had their way throughout Virginia in 1780. Thomas Jefferson, then governor of Virginia, abandoned Williamsburg and moved the capital to Richmond. British troops used ships to go up the James River, caused havoc in the immediate area, and returned to the base by the same means.

In the Carolinas, Lord Charles Cornwallis assumed command when Clinton returned to New York. Cornwallis overwhelmed Patriot forces at Camden, South Carolina. The Patriot force began to change tactics afterwards by attacking the flanking units of Cornwallis. They were much smaller and easier to use the new hit and run tactic.

By the end of 1780, Cornwallis declared that South Carolina was in British control despite the loss of one flanking units at King Mountain. Next for Cornwallis was North Carolina. Eventually, he would link up with the British commander in Virginia, which seemed to be vulnerable for a decisive victory for the British.

The beginning of 1781 started very badly for the Americans. At the same time, the British strategy of securing the south and moving northward seemed to be going as planned. Though General Cornwallis had a defeat at Kings Mountain, the British force was a small flanking unit, made up of loyalist fighter and only a few hundred of British regulars. Despite the defeat, Cornwallis had declared South Carolina secure. He had met the patriot army head on and crushed the army at Camden, South Carolina, a few months earlier.

There were early discussions within the British command about returning through South Carolina to Charleston. Cornwallis would have nothing to do with that course of action. He planned to seek out the patriot army and destroy it, as well as to enlist more loyalist. Besides, Cornwallis had the main body of the army at Charlotte, North Carolina. Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton still had a force in South Carolina. Cornwallis left South Carolina in Tarleton’s hands. Cornwallis received information from a loyalist spy, his counterpart Major General Nathaniel Greene had split his undermanned force against him.

On January 17, 1781, Tarleton’s force and the patriot force commanded by Col. Daniel Morgan squared off against each other. Tarleton wanted to crush the last elements of the patriot force in South Carolina and join the main body afterwards. Colonel Morgan made the conflict memorable for Tarleton. The battle at Cowpens, South Carolina, surprised the British with the new tactics by the patriots. Morgan’s force waited for the British to attack. The British did so, with the traditional gentleman’s European assault. The patriot force fired two shots and fell back. Tarleton was under the impression that he was going to rout the force. He ordered his men to follow and destroy. Tarleton led his force into a trap. His flank was punctured with overwhelming fire. When the British moved back to regroup, the other flank came under fire.

The battle of Cowpens, South Carolina, on January 17, 1781, proved to be the first decisive defeat in the British southern strategy. Morgan joined forces with Greene, who was preparing to do the same to Cornwallis. Both commanders had played a game of cat and mouse, the trail led to the middle of the state of North Carolina, at Guilford Court House, near the present-day Greensboro.

In Cornwallis’s pursuit of Greene through the low-lying hills of Western North Carolina, he left some of the supply wagons behind, vulnerable to sabotage and attack by patriot forces. Though it made Cornwallis’s army move faster, it proved to be a fatal mistake by Cornwallis after the battle of Guilford Court House.

Cornwallis had exhausted his troops but had found where Greene had his force. Cornwallis wanted to end all resistance in North and South Carolina. The defeat and capture of Greene’s command would accomplish that goal. Cornwallis knew that Greene was waiting for him, but even though his army was tired, they were supplied at that moment to fight against a superior force in numbers only. Cornwallis had not lost against the Americans in the southern campaign.

Greene had reinforcements from the states of Delaware and Maryland to give him troop strength of two to one over Cornwallis. Cornwallis attacked and eventually drove the American troops out of the area. But the loss of men and the damaged to his military hardware, especially the artillery, outweighed the victory. Greene got away and now the decision to abandon his supply wagons had come back to haunt him. His army was in need of rest and resupply. Then he ordered his army to go to Wilmington, North Carolina, under the safety of the British Navy.

On January 5, 1781, Benedict Arnold, in the second assignment since his defection from Washington’s army, sailed up the James River with Richmond, Virginia, as the destination. He had 1,600 loyalist troops, with orders from Clinton to capture the city of Richmond.

On his way there, he sent a letter to Thomas Jefferson, Governor of Virginia, that he would spare the city from destruction if the troops could return to their base at Hampton Roads without harassment. Jefferson refused to comply and fled the city, with the Virginian government to Charlottesville, seventy-five miles to the North West. Arnold took the supplies that his army needed and burned much of Richmond to the ground.

Jefferson was notified that Arnold was on his way by George Washington. Washington had warned Jefferson that the war was going to be aggressively pursued by the British and needed to get a defense against it. Jefferson announced a call for the Americans to form a defense. One of the men that answered the call was a slave to William Armistead. He got permission by William Armistead and reported to Lafayette, who arrived in January of that year with a small force to assist the existing force.

James Armistead was born around 1760, in Kent County, Virginia. William Armistead’s plantation was large enough for some slaves to learn how to read and write. What the slaves did and how they were treated on the Colonial plantations depended on the owner of the plantation. Generally, the larger the plantation, the better the slaves were treated. Some of the slaves on large plantations ran a part of the plantation’s business, such as distilleries, tobacco, and the organization of other slaves to work the fields.

Early in the independence conflict, the Royal Governor of Virginia, John Murray of Dunmore, announced the Dunmore Proclamation. The proclamation declared that all indentured servants, including slaves are free. He did this as his own political survival was in question in 1775. He wanted to stop the rebellion by causing a slave rebellion against the colonial gentry. His declaration sparked rebellion among the slave population in Virginia but not enough to save this job and the patriots’ resolve for independence.

The British commander in Virginia was also promising freedom to all slaves that took up arms against the patriot cause. However, Armistead had another plan. He assumed that by fighting for his homeland, he would get his freedom from the Virginian American government after his service.

British senior commander, Henry Clinton, upon hearing of the success of Arnold in Virginia and Cornwallis winning battle in the Carolinas, sent Gen. William Phillips to Virginia. He linked up with Arnold to double the size of the force. Clinton believed that when Cornwallis would arrive in Virginia, he may be already conquered for him.

The British force had their way in Virginia. They enlisted runaway slaves for tasks that support the army, such as cooks, carpenters, and aid driver. Some were used to guide the unfamiliar British through countryside. A number of slaves had revenge by taking crops and horses of the unsuspecting plantation owners.

Some of the slaves used the guise of runaway slaves to spy on the movements of the British. Lafayette could not and did not encounter the British in battle. His men were undermanned and