Turning Points: Forgotten Conflicts That Molded America

By Douglas Smock

This book, the third in a series on forgotten battles, challenges some of the most sacred myths taught in American schools. One is the concept that the US Constitution was conceived by idealists for the public good. New research, however, shows that most of the Founding Fathers were strongly motivated by their own financial self-interest and a desire to suppress highly democratic state legislatures that had provided relief to citizens facing taxes that were triple the rate charged under British rule.

Turning Points also presents a fresh perspective on Indian tribes in Ohio and Indiana, who defeated two American armies sent to deny their claims to land that had been told was theirs forever. Modern archaeological research redefined the scope of a battle on the Ohio/Indiana line that represented the high water mark for Indian power in America.

Another chapter upends the way the story of the Pacific air war has always been told. Douglas Smock focuses on the role of the aircraft engineers and the amazing, rapid conversion of a General Motors assembly plant in Newark, New Jersey, to a factory that produced twenty-four redesigned Wildcat naval fighters a day. Another narrative flips the typical Civil War storytelling on its head by looking at the experiences of one battery of one hundred Maine farm boys and laborers. A fifth chapter reexamines the myth of Teddy Roosevelt and the Spanish-American War.

Each story represents a turning point in American history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9798891576919

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Turning Points

Forgotten Conflicts That Molded America

Douglas Smock

Copyright © 2024 Douglas Smock

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2024

Cover photos, clockwise from upper right: Rifled ordinance made for the Washington Artillery of New Orleans at the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia; Little Turtle’s peace pipe used at the Greenville Treaty. Courtesy of the Ohio Museum in Columbus, Ohio; photograph of the Grumman Wildcat FM-2.

Inside front cover photos: the Grumman Wildcat FM-2 (top), Mitsubishi Zero (bottom) on exhibit at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

Back cover photos: We the People inscription located on the facade of the National Constitution Center (Wikimedia), Principal archaeological investigators Kevin Nolan and Christine Thompson of Ball State University explain their work during a 2023 tour of the site of Little Turtle’s victory in 1791 in Fort Recovery, Ohio.

ISBN 979-8-89157-660-5 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-89157-691-9 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

For Nancy

Introduction

Author's Note

Chapter 1

Tax Revolts, Constitutions, and Historians

Chapter 2

The Forgotten War: Manifest Destiny and the Battle for Ohio

Chapter 3

The Civil War: Deliverance and the Fourth Maine Battery

Chapter 4

Imperialism, Racism, and Theodore Roosevelt's Bully War

Chapter 5

Wilder Wildcats, Impossible Odds, and Aircraft Engineers

Bibliography

About the Author

For Nancy

Introduction

This book is the third in a series that explores major events that shaped American history told through the lens of forgotten or long-neglected battles.

The first turning point was a farmers' rebellion in Massachusetts that forced America's Founding Fathers to craft a constitution that created a stronger federal government. The second was the Ohio Indian Wars, which opened the Midwest to settlement through a series of dubious agreements with subdued tribes. The most important turning point following the creation of the Constitution was the preservation of the Union and abolition of slavery as a result of the Civil War. I tell this story through a group of Maine farm boys who enlisted out of duty and were forged into a group of professional soldiers bonded for life. One of their most interesting engagements was a little-known, extremely intense duel of light artillery at Rappahannock Station, Virginia, that preceded the Second Battle of Bull Run.

An often overlooked story in America's creation is the Spanish-American War, which like the Mexican War was contrived by war-hungry, expansionist politicians. It marked America's entry into the world stage as an imperialistic power, albeit on a minor scale. The American people, however, had no interest in foreign interventions and were reluctant entrants in World Wars I and II, which catapulted America into the world's preeminent global power.

I tell the story of World War II in a way not told before—through General Motors and its role in the production of the carrier-based fighter the Wildcat, America's most effective naval fighter in the first two years of the war against the nimble Japanese Zero.

A recurring theme in my series on forgotten battles is that many Americans have been taught history poorly (sometimes on purpose) and often have a hard time accepting the truth about our national story. Politicians often have an important role in determining how history is taught. In addition, publishers of history textbooks are profit-making businesses that will remove or obfuscate historical facts if they diminish sales.

Historians are also to blame, a subject I explore in the first chapter. The interpretation of history is highly dependent on the bias of the historian, as well as prevailing political and religious sentiments. English historian Edward Gibbon acknowledged, Every man of genius who writes history infuses into it, perhaps unconsciously, the character of his own spirit. His characters…seem to have only one manner of thinking and feeling, and that is the manner of the author.

One result is that many historical accounts focus unduly on the accomplishments of famous White Americans at the expense of Black and Native Americans. Nowhere is that more egregious than in the common telling of the Spanish-American War, where yellow press New York newspapers lionized the role of future president Theodore Roosevelt. One of America's greatest generals, John J. Pershing, said of Roosevelt, It is safe to say that in the history of the country no man ever got so much reward for so little service. The brutalization of Indians catapulted William Henry Harrison into the presidency. Failure to provide context of issues involving Indians is explored in the second chapter. Even the National Park Service is changing.

I've approached these stories in a journalistic, not academic, style, although I use footnotes to allow follow-up.

North Weymouth, Massachusetts

January 2024

Author's Note

In the second chapter, the modern spelling of Pittsburgh is used to avoid confusion even though the h was often omitted in common usage before 1911. The original spelling was Pittsburgh to honor William Pitt and his Scottish heritage.

I refer to America's Indigenous people primarily by their tribal names. However, I generally use the odd Indian when describing them as a group. I am relying on research by the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. Its website states, In the United States, Native American has been widely used but is falling out of favor with some groups, and the terms American Indian or Indigenous American are preferred by many Native people.

Modern Civil War historians use the term horse artillery to refer to light artillery attached to the cavalry. But don't tell that to members of the Fourth Maine Battery. They considered themselves cavalry even though they were attached to the infantry. To back up their claim, they noted they were issued cavalry sabers. The term light artillery refers to horse-drawn cannons that could be maneuvered in the field, as opposed to heavy artillery, which is fixed in place in defensive positions. But all the definitions become murky at times. A thirteen-inch seacoast mortar nicknamed Dictator was mounted on a reinforced railroad car to accommodate its weight of 17,000 pounds. At the siege of Petersburg, Virginia, in 1864, the mortar lobbed 200-pound explosive shells.

Chapter 1

Tax Revolts, Constitutions, and Historians

Without an alteration in our political creed, the superstructure we have been seven years in raising, at the expense of so much treasure and blood, must fall. We are fast verging to anarchy and confusion.

—George Washington, November 5, 1786, in a letter to James Madison

Constitutionalism didn't burst from the head of James Madison, like Athena from Zeus, simply on account of all the books he'd read. Sure, constitutionalism flew from the pages of those books, but it was also shot out of the barrel of a gun.

—Historian Jill Lepore

Exeter, New Hampshire, 1786

Springfield, Massachusetts, 1787

Braddock's Field, Pennsylvania, 1794

Post-Revolutionary War Tax Revolts

On prominent display in the family library in the home of two US presidents in Quincy, Massachusetts, is a copy of the first constitution penned after the end of the Revolutionary War. It's the Massachusetts Constitution.

America's second president, John Adams, is credited as the principal author, although some of its most conservative provisions were written by a politician named James Bowdoin. It went into effect in 1780, nine years before the US Constitution, and is among the oldest constitutions in the world.

It's presented by National Park Service rangers as an almost sacred document, and it had a significant impact on the US Constitution. It was the first state constitution to propose three branches of government, creating checks on the legislative and executive branches. In other states, legislators, often elected annually from small districts, were often very responsive—too responsive in many framers' view—to the electorate.

The Massachusetts Constitution's protection of the rights of Boston's wealthy merchant class and imposition of taxes affecting farmers triggered an uprising later called Shays's Rebellion that raised alarm bells with George Washington and other leaders. After the protesters were subdued, the Massachusetts government softened many of the measures that had initiated the unrest. Most other states had already taken even more aggressive measures to relieve its citizens of debt burdens at the expense of speculators and other bondholders who held the massive postwar public debt.

The combination of unrest and anger among bondholders spurred demands for a new US Constitution. Issues involving Great Britain, Spain, and Native Americans also created interest in a stronger national government.

In the popular telling, the Founding Fathers were driven by idealism to codify democratic principles and protect individual rights. In reality, they also were trying to protect the rights of property owners and suppress the grassroots democracy of the postwar period.

The basic facts are not in dispute. There are significant records of the framers' thinking. But the interpretation of those facts by historians has swung wildly back and forth in the last two hundred-plus years and is still changing.

One of the most interesting examples is a prominent early-twentieth-century historian named Charles Beard, who emphasized the economic motives of the framers, particularly those who were bondholders. His ideas were widely accepted and even provided the early framework for part of Winston Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.

A copy of the Massachusetts Constitution on display at the library of the Adams house in Quincy, Massachusetts (Wikimedia).

In the era of McCarthyism and red-baiting in the 1950s, it was popular, if not necessary, to promote the idea that the American Constitution was based on idealistic motives and not class struggle. Beard was smeared as Marxist-leaning even though he rejected Marx and took great effort to demonstrate the differences in their thinking. Beard, who had been one of America's most respected historical thinkers for more than thirty-five years, was relegated to the ideological trash heap by 1960.

The next generations of constitutional historians, such as Gordon S. Wood, acknowledged the economic forces at play but distanced themselves from Beard. The result was euphemistically described as an intellectual approach to constitutional development.

More recently, a Southern historian named Woody Holton has upended the narrative again with extensive research showing the power of the bondholders and the efforts among the framers to subvert popular will.

In Holton's view, What set men like [James] Madison and [Alexander] Hamilton on the road to Philadelphia was not so much the farmers' revolts in themselves but the legislative indulgence that rebels managed to extract from local officials.

The protection of individual rights were added as amendments, starting with the Bill of Rights and extending through equal rights for Blacks and the right to vote for women. Many of the framers opposed the Bill of Rights. Many rights had been incorporated in state constitutions but were originally and deliberately omitted in the US Constitution.

Yale Law professor Akhil Reed Amar wrote in The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (1998) that the Bill of Rights passed in 1791 was primarily designed to impose limits on the new federal government.

It's ironic today that jurists try so hard to conjure the framers' intent when that intent remains so controversial.

Postwar Depression

The problems began with a severe economic slump that sank the American economy after the Revolutionary War ended in 1783. In addition, the new American government was massively in debt and was shackled by the weak Articles of Confederation from collecting taxes or tariffs or even raising an army to confront revolt or unrest on the frontier. Problems were compounded by a shortage of gold and silver coins to retire debts, particularly in rural areas.

The federal government needed nearly a million dollars a year to service its foreign and domestic debts. The responsibility to pay off the debt was assigned to the states. As a result, taxes in most states were more than triple prewar rates.

Much of the debt was financed through bonds and other notes that often offered the inducement of lucrative annual interest in gold or silver coins. Veterans of the Continental Army were particularly victimized.

Revolutionary soldiers were paid with notes issued by states that were promises to pay at a later date. Many soldiers, lacking basics such as clothing, sold them for immediate cash at a fraction of their stated value. They were scooped up by speculators who collected the interest and waited to cash them in.

This note was issued by Massachusetts in 1780 to help pay its quota of the Revolutionary War debt. It was issued in lieu of pay to Capt. Thomas Bolter, a participant in the Boston Tea Party, who became an artillery officer in the Revolutionary War. The bond offered 6 percent annual interest, redeemable for the principal of £275 in 1784. Many soldiers sold these bonds at a fraction of their face value to buy clothing and food. The value of the bond is stated in terms of commodities because of high inflation and lack of gold and silver coins (Heritage Auctions).

States then levied taxes to pay the interest on the notes. Cash-strapped veterans and many others struggled to pay the taxes. Adding further insult, soldiers were paying taxes to finance half-pay pensions to officers who had threatened a military coup against Congress. Able-bodied enlisted men were not entitled to a pension until 1818, and then only if they could demonstrate poverty.

Four ex-officers became leaders of the tax resistance in Massachusetts. One was Daniel Shays, who had been a captain in the Fifth Massachusetts Regiment and owned a sixty-eight-acre farm in central Massachusetts. Another was Luke Day of West Springfield, a former captain in the Seventh Massachusetts Regiment. Eli Parsons of Springfield was a lieutenant in the Continental Army who had served with George Washington in the defense of Philadelphia in 1777.

All three were veterans of the Battle of Saratoga. Job Shattuck, who participated in the siege of Boston as a militia member and was later promoted to captain, was the largest landowner and an elected official in the town of Groton, Massachusetts.

In 1781, Shattuck and seventeen others obstructed the tax-collecting efforts of two constables in what became known as the Groton Riots.

Debtors from South Carolina to Maine fought the collection of taxes and redemption of debts.¹ Woody Holton wrote, The long-standing assumption that the farmers acted irresponsibly is overdue for reassessment.

A riot erupted in New Hampshire after the state legislature levied a tax in 1785 aimed at paying off part of the state's share of national debt owed to bondholders. Local leaders asked for the right to pay the taxes in new paper money. Taxes could then be paid at the face value of the bills even though they quickly depreciated. Some two hundred farmers confronted a meeting of the legislature in Exeter but were driven off by militia. The Rhode Island legislature, however, did allow debts to be paid with paper money, avoiding violence but angering bondholders.

Historian Holton observed, For many Americans, Rhode Island's emission [of paper money], which quickly depreciated, became one of the most persuasive arguments in favor of the Constitution, which prohibited the states from printing currency.

The situation in Massachusetts didn't explode until 1785 when James Bowdoin replaced John Hancock as governor. Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, had gone easy on debt collection, raising the ire of Bowdoin, his lieutenant governor Samuel Adams, Revolutionary War general Benjamin Lincoln, and legions of bondholders.

Hancock stepped down as governor, citing health reasons. Bowdoin, Adams, and Lincoln all ran for governor in a race ultimately that was called for Bowdoin by the state senate. Bowdoin and the General Court (legislature) promptly moved to collect £270,000 in delinquent taxes and even enacted new taxes.

The 1780 state constitution made their work easy by making it difficult for dissenters to easily replace decision-makers they didn't like. The new constitution introduced several checks on the house. One was a senate that was designed to represent the interests of wealthier people. Another was the power of the governor, whose veto could be overturned only by a two-thirds vote in the house and senate.

Judges were appointed by the General Court and served multiyear terms. Western towns had lobbied for popularly elected judges who served short terms. The new state constitution also gave the governor the right to appoint militia officers, who previously had been elected by local soldiers.

Representation in the upper house was based on taxes paid, not population, and the lower house was weighted in favor of towns in the eastern part of the state.² In order to vote or hold office, candidates needed to meet new, higher property and personal wealth requirements.

While many state legislatures bowed to the popular will and eased the burden on taxpayers by valuing bonds at far less than face value, the new Massachusetts government went to the opposite extreme, valuing its debt at par.

This 1787 broadside shows a relief sketch of tax revolters Daniel Shays, left, and Job Shattuck (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution).

One concerned bondholder who profited from regular interest payments on national and state debt notes was Abigail Adams, who managed the family's money while her husband, John, was in Paris.

Massachusetts levied taxes to support a new debt redemption in March 1786, triggering widespread protests.

In September, Capt. Nathan Smith of Shirley, Massachusetts, attempted to stop a court in Concord, Massachusetts, from imprisoning debtors. He told a crowd on the Concord common:

As Christ laid down his life to save the world, so will I lay down my life to suppress the government from all tyrannical oppression, and you who are willing to join us in this here affair may fall into our ranks. Those who do not after two hours, shall stand the monuments of God's sparing mercy.

Retired general George Washington, observing events from his farm at Mount Vernon, Virginia, the day after Christmas in 1786, wrote to the secretary of war Henry Knox: There are combustibles in every state which a spark might set fire to… If the powers are inadequate to amend or alter them, but do not let us sink into the lowest state of humiliation.

The Dickinsons of Amherst were among the Massachusetts protesters, as were seventy former officers of the Massachusetts Line, the state's regular army in the revolution. Three were members of the prestigious Society of the Cincinnati, a fraternal organization of Revolutionary military officers, including Luke Day.

One farmer pleaded his case.

I have been greatly abused, have been obliged to do more than my part in the war, been loaded with class rates, town rates, province rates, Continental rates, and all rates…been pulled and hauled by sheriffs, constables, and collectors, and had my cattle sold for less than they were worth… The great men are going to get all we have and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors nor lawyers and I know that we are the biggest party, let them say what they will… We've come to relieve the distresses of the people. There will be no court until they have redress of their grievances.

The involvement of gentlemen and officers in the tax revolt pointed to a deeper problem in Massachusetts: anger at the perceived unfairness of the new Massachusetts Constitution according to historian Leonard L. Richards, whose research showed only some correlation between indebtedness and tax protest among Shays's followers.³

The rural protesters hated the General Court, which in their view unfairly expanded the power of the seacoast commercial interests, particularly in Boston. The same merchants were also the debt holders. Eighty percent of Massachusetts' debt had been bought by Boston-area speculators. Many were members of the General Court.⁴

The new Massachusetts Constitution was unpopular with