Two Days in Washington: August 1814

Perhaps you heard that there was a little break-in at the US Capitol Building (for the love, "capital" is the city, it's the "Capitol Building") this week that has caused a slight kerfuffle around the, well, the world. We're not talking about that today, because this web site tends not to deal with the current century. Today we're talking about the last time that such a direct assault on the seat of American government. 

Do not get me wrong: I know that the attacks on Oklahoma City, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11, among others were far more devastating than what happened on Wednesday at the Capitol, but those attacks were not directly on the buildings that house the American government (though it appears the White House was a possible target of Flight 93). However, let's talk about Washington in 1814. 

The War of 1812...it wasn't going so well for the Americans.

[As a quick aside, the purpose of this here blog is to do deep-dives on the rhyming couplets of history, but by no means a comprehensive re-telling. Ideally, something you read here catches your fancy and you go read further about it. I'm a history teacher. I get, like, eight hours of class time to teach World War II. But maybe you read something here that you want to go further into, and that's where you hit up your library or whichever way do some investigating on your own.]

Having been a country for about 30 years, the United States was ready for some respect, and they weren't really getting it from Great Britain. That's what's important (to me) to remember about the War of 1812: respect, and the United States feeling like they deserved it. How was the US being disrespected? 

Great Britain was trying to deal with Napoleon. They needed sailors. And so they "impressed them," and not in, like, an "Anyway, here's 'Wonderwall'" sense of impressing them. Impressment was a thing that Great Britain did between 1793 and 1812 in which the British Navy would board merchant vessels and essentially force/kidnap sailors to serve the Crown, mainly to beef up their efforts to defeat Napoleon. Lest we think the British improper for this practice, they did say that they could only kidnap a sailor for five years, and then they couldn't do it again. So there's that. The British impressed over 15,000 American sailors in the aforementioned timespan. 

The British were also violating maritime laws bargained by the Treaty of Paris (1783) and further clarified by Jay's Treaty (1794). They were also encouraging Native Americans to fight back against the United States (and one can easily see why the Native Americans would do so). All of these ingredients combined together were seen by some members of Congress as the equivalent of taking their own hands and slapping their own face with them and saying, "Stop hitting yourself, innit?"

Who were these Congressmen? They were known as the War Hawks, and this is where I feel as though we should instead look at the War of 1812 like a massive duel between the United States and Great Britain. The War Hawks were led by men like Kentucky's Henry Clay, South Carolina's John C. Calhoun, and Tennessee's Solomon Felix Grundy. Well, if you're a Southern/Western gentleman and feel as though you have been disrespected and/or your honor has been attacked, what do you do? You challenge them to a duel, a duel that the War Hawks referred to as the "second war for independence." It's worth mentioning that this was bitterly opposed by the Federalist set of Congress, who valued trade with Great Britain. It's interesting to me that while it was New England who advocated for the Revolution over the hems/haws of the Southern colonies, it was the Southerners (and now-Westerners) who were agitating for Round Two over the objections of New England. 

Anyhow, despite not having much in the way of a standing army (thanks to the Anti-Federalists, led by Thomas Jefferson, who saw a standing military as the greatest threat to a government) the Americans were feeling their oats and were all, "Yeah, let's go take Canada. How hard can THAT be? Look at it. It's so Canadian!"* The United States tried to invade Canada and it went...extremely poorly. Every single attempt was repelled. As it turned out, much to the surprise of the Americans, a lot of former colonists went to Canada to stay under British rule, and weren't terribly interested in being Americans.

*paraphrasing

Now we get to the point of the post. The British were able to turn their attention to the United States in 1814, once Napoleon abdicated the throne. It starts with the Chesapeake Campaign, which was a diversionary invasion to take American attention away from Canada. On August 19, 1814 the British landed on Maryland's Patuxent River and Secretary of War John Armstrong, who wasn't exactly the best at his job in this country's history, didn't think the British would attack Washington because it simply wasn't of all that much strategic, military, or economic importance, especially what with the much more "valuable" Baltimore just, I mean, *right there*. Still, military leadership thought Baltimore was the target. Armstrong:

They would not come with such a fleet without meaning to strike somewhere. But they certainly will not come [to Washington]! What the devil will they do here? No! No! Baltimore is the place, Sir. That is of so much more consequence.

Little did he know that the British were all, "Why not both!?" It was pretty clear when five days later, on August 24, the British arrived at Bladensburg, Maryland, about seven miles northeast of the White House. The British wanted to take out the symbolic importance of Washington, D.C. As the British crossed the Anacostia River, the militia quickly set up three lines of defense. Madison borrowed some pistols and rode out to watch the battle, but not before almost riding directly into the hands of the British. While the Americans outnumbered the British, the British were superior in tactics and, you know, general military expertise. "Commanded" by Brigadier General William H. Winder, the first line of defense quickly retreated into the second, gumming up the strategic works and causing confusion within the American ranks. Winder would actually be court-martialed for his "leadership" at Bladensburg and, though he was acquitted, Winder was demoted. 

The third line of defense was led by Commodore Joshua Barney. Barney looked at the War of 1812 like it was a reputation rehabilitation mission. He joined the cause for American independence at the age of 16. In 1794 the United States revived its military to deal with threats from Great Britain, France, and [squints] Algeria and appointed six new commanders for the new frigates commissioned by the government. Barney placed fourth out of six, appealed to be third, was denied, and then turned down the commission and went and fought for France. This would prove to be disastrous to Barney when the United States and France kinda-sorta got into a war in the late 1790s and the press started to refer to Barney in the same breath as Benedict Arnold, which is decidedly what one is not looking for. When the War of 1812 broke out, Barney quickly saw it as his opportunity to save his reputation.

Barney's third line held up more admirably than Winder's first two, delaying the British long enough to allow President James Madison to tell First Lady Dolley Madison to save as many possessions as she could before fleeing. Barney got shot in the thigh and was captured by the British, who released him on the spot in honor of his bravery. British Rear Admiral George Cockburn said of Barney and his men, "They have given us the only fighting we have had." With Barney wounded, the British broke through towards Washington. Madison was unimpressed by his fleeing defense, reportedly saying, "I could never have believed that so great a difference existed between regular troops and a militia force, if I had not witnessed the scenes of this day."

With no defenses available, the Commandant of the Washington Navy Yard Thomas Tingey, set fire to the Navy Yard's vessels and supplies rather than let them fall into British hands. Senior administration officials fled into the countryside. James Madison and his Secretary of State James Monroe were nearly captured, and spent the night of August 26 at the home of Caleb and Henrietta Bentley in Brookeville, Maryland, giving Brookeville the eternal nickname of "U.S. Capital For A Day."

Meanwhile, the British had free rein in the nation's capital which...wasn't that impressive of a city. Washington hadn't even been the capital of the United States for 25 years at this point. A British soldier wrote of the city:

It possesses no leading features, by catching which I might hope to convey to a person who has not seen it, something like an accurate notion of the whole. It...is, I believe, still in its infancy, few of the streets being finished, and many containing not more than three or four houses, at wide intervals from each other...Like other infant towns, Washington is but little ornamented with fine buildings; except the Senate-house, I really know of none worthy to be noticed.

Sending a message to the apparently-one nice building in the city was appropriate to the British, who set fire to everything they could. While the Capitol dome hadn't yet been built, the original chamber of the House of Representatives was thought to be "the most beautiful room in America," according to the historian emeritus for the Architect of the Capitol. It was fireproof, except - and this is a pretty massive "except" - the ceiling, which was wooden. Catch the roof - with 100 skylights - on fire, and it'll collapse and destroy everything, which is, of course, what happened. William Allen:

The heat was intense. The glass in the skylights melted, became molten, and fell down in large chunks.

A 24-year old Senate clerk named Lewis Machen, assisted by Tobias Simpson, a Black messenger, commandeered a wagon and began loading Senate records onto the wagon as the fire raged in the Capitol building. Machen and Simpson didn't save all of the records, but they did save a large number of important ones. Unfortunately for the Capitol Building, the wooden floors and the remaining records and books served simply as kindling, especially the Senate side of the building. Machen and Simpson, after a hilariously arduous journey that included a wagon wheel flying off and the wagon itself just turning over resulting in hours of gathering the spewed papers, delivered the papers they were able to save to Madison at Brookeville.

He wasn't the only one thinking of preserving the past in the face of an uncertain future: Senior State Department clerk Stephen Pleasonton put the original Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Constitution, and George Washington's correspondence in some linen bags and personally escorted them 35 miles to the northwest, to Leesburg, Virginia.

The British moved on to the Presidential Mansion (it wasn't known as the White House until 1901) and set fire to it, but not before eating the dinner that had been prepared for Madison and 40 other people - which is just massively disrespectful. The British burned the Library of Congress and pretty much every government building they could find, including the State Department, Treasury Department, and War Department. You could see the glow of the fire from Baltimore, 40-ish miles away.

The British mostly left the few private residences in the city alone. While the British had a (mostly) no-looting policy, one British soldier took Madison's traveling medicine chest. This chest passed to a British soldier, which descended through his family until it was returned to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939.

The following morning, with the fires still burning in Washington, the British searched the city for other stuff to burn. They found an ammunition store but, after a little accident with some gunpowder barrels that resulted in the death of 30 British soldiers, decided to bounce, fires still raging behind them. And then? A miracle. A massive thunderstorm complete with a tornado hit Washington in early afternoon of August 25. The National Weather Service said that the strong tornado struck northwest Washington and downtown and did "major structural damage to the residential section of the city," noting that more British soldiers were killed by flying debris than by American guns. The aforementioned British soldier, Robert Glieg, wrote:

Of the prodigious force of the wind it is impossible for you to form any conception. Roofs of houses were torn off by it, and whisked into the air like sheets of paper, while the rain which accompanied it resembled the rushing of a mighty cataract rather than the dropping of a shower...[it was] the most appalling effect I had ever, or probably shall ever witness.

Two British cannons were picked up and spun around in the most intense part of the afternoon. The roof of the General Post Office was ripped off. Houses were wrenched off of their foundations, and trees were uprooted all of the city. Thirty Americans were killed in the storm, which lasted for over two hours, dropping such an immense amount of rain that it put the fires out. However, it also created enough confusion to allow the British to slink off towards Baltimore. 

When Washingtonians woke up the next morning they found the city smoldering, houses destroyed by the storm, the army was nowhere to be found, no one knew where President Madison or his cabinet was, and the Union Jack flew over the capital. That's a rough day.

Madison wrote on September 1, 1814 complaining that the British operations in Washington were Extremely Bullcrap, given that peace talks had already been offered by the British when they sacked Washington:

Whereas, these proceedings and declared purposes, which exhibit a deliberate disregard of the principles of humanity, and the rules of civilized warfare, and which must give to the existing war a character of extended devastation and barbarism, at the very moment of negociacions [sic] for peace, invited by the enemy himself, leave no prospect of safety to any thing within the reach of his predatory and incendiary operations, but in a manly and universal determination to chastise and expel the invader.

It took three years to rebuild the Presidential Mansion, an undertaking led by the Irish-American James Hoban. We don't know all that much about Hoban's life as his papers were destroyed, ironically, in a fire in the 1880s. James Monroe was able to live there beginning in 1817. Thomas Jefferson sold his  book collection to the government to restock the Library of Congress.

James Madison's Congress met on September 19, 1814 at Blodgett's Hotel, at Eighth Street and E Street NW, which also housed the Patent Office. An impressively-quick-thinking superintendent said the building contained patent models from inventors, which qualified the building as private property. This was good enough for the British, who left the building alone. Congress would meet there until they adjourned in March 1815 and approved Madison borrowing money to rebuild the damaged buildings on their existing sites. 

There was only one (non-storm) casualty of the British assault on Washington: John Lewis, George Washington's grand-nephew. Lewis and his brother had been impressed into the service of the Royal Navy and had only just been released, so he was ready to kick some heads. Lewis saw a group of British soldiers, hopped on his horse with his sword drawn and, after shouting "a volley of epithets" at the British began to attempt to remove some British heads from their respective bodies when he was shot and killed. 

So, yeah. This week in American history was pretty wild. 

Why Are There Nine Supreme Court Justices?

For absolutely no reason at all I thought we'd spend a little time talking about the Justices of the Supreme Court, specifically, why are there nine of them? 

The Constitution...well, the Constitution isn't a foolproof document. It's not, you know, the Bible. The Constitution doesn't address the rights of people of color, or women. As it relates to the function of the Supreme Court the Constitution doesn't even outline what the exact power of the Supreme Court would be, nor does it explain how the Judicial Branch should be organized, nor does it even set out how many justices should sit on the Supreme Court, their qualifications, age, experience, or even citizenship. The only reason there's a Chief Justice at all comes from Article 1 Section 3 in which it says, in reference to impeachment proceedings:

When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no person shall be convicted without the concurrent of two thirds of the members present. 

Like a lot of issues the United States would encounter - be it slavery or women's rights - if you look to the Constitution for guidance, you're likely to find that the Founding Fathers (in all their infinite wisdom) kicked the can down the road for someone else to deal with. The Constitution of the United States was ratified so as to replace the Articles of Confederation because, buddy, the Articles of Confederation sucked.

So when the Washington administration and the 1st Congress took office, figuring out the judiciary system was fairly important - the first bill to come before the Senate was "An Act to Establish the Judicial Courts of the United States," or Judiciary Act of 1789. It established the "structure and jurisdiction of the federal court system," as well as creating the office of the Attorney General. The basic system established with the Judiciary Act of 1789 is basically the same today, with a few changes here and there. We'll get into those in a minute.

The Judiciary Act of 1789 divided the country into 13 judicial districts (one for each state) which were then organized into an Eastern, Middle, and Southern District. Initially there was a Chief Justice and five Associate Justices. That makes six - two for each District. Until 1890 the Justices of the Supreme Court were obligated to "ride circuit" and hold court twice a year in each judicial district. What about 3-3 ties? Maeva Marcus, a research professor at George Washington University and the director of GWU's Institute for Constitutional History, said they weren't worried about that because they were all Federalists, anyway.

After declining Washington's offer to become his first Secretary of State, New York's John Jay accepted the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court hoping that the judicial branch would be on equal footing with the executive and legislative branches. The first real test was 1793's Chisholm v. Georgia. The State of Georgia had purchased supplies from South Carolina merchant Captain Robert Farquhar during the Revolutionary War, but later refused to pay because Farquhar was a British loyalist. After Farquhar died, Alexander Chisholm became executor of Farquhar's estate, and promptly sued the State of Georgia in the Supreme Court for the unpaid amount (this was A Thing at the time). Upon notice of the lawsuit, Georgia said it was immune from lawsuits because it was a sovereign state, and just...didn't show up. 

On its face, Georgia's was a preposterous argument. Article III Section 2 of the Constitution says federal courts can decided cases "between a State and citizens of another State." They ruled in Chisholm's favor, ordering Georgia to pay up. Remember that - at the time - there were two political parties: Federalists (like Alexander Hamilton and John Jay) and Anti-Federalists (like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison), whose entire platform was to support the opposite of whatever the Federalists wanted. As soon as the Supreme Court ruled against Georgia, it led to an outcry against the overreach of the federal government - precisely what the Anti-Federalists feared. Georgia still said they wouldn't pay. John Jay quit the Supreme Court to be the governor of New York, angry over the lack of respect for the judiciary as well as the demands of riding the circuit, given the transportation quality of late-18th century American roads. By 1795 Congress had passed and the states had ratified the 11th Amendment, which said the judicial branch's power doesn't extend to lawsuits brought against a State by a citizen of another state or foreign country. Congress neutered the Supreme Court...for a while.

There were three Chief Justices in the first eleven years of the Supreme Court from 1789-1800: Jay, John Rutledge (who lasted just over four months because he served in an interim capacity during a Congressional recess. When Congress returned from recess, the Senate didn't confirm him and his nomination was withdrawn. Nevertheless his four months count) and Oliver Ellsworth (who wrote the Judiciary Act of 1789). Ellsworth's term lasted the duration of the Adams administration, and retired because of "the gravel and the gout" in his kidneys.

This is where things get a little weird with the executive branch and the judiciary. Over the course of the campaign for the presidency in 1800, the incumbent Federalist John Adams and Secretary of State/OG Anti-Federalist (who by this point went by the Republicans) Thomas Jefferson waged a bitter war more reminiscent of recent political campaign history than what you would expect. 

The Federalists called Jefferson an "atheist in religion, and a fanatic in politics" (history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme). Yale President Timothy Dwight said a Jefferson presidency would result in the Bible being "cast into a bonfire, our holy worship changed in a dance of Jacobin [frenzy], our wives and daughters dishonored, and our sons converted into the disciples of Voltaire...Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of distress, the soil will be soaked with blood, the nation black with crimes."

Federalist newspapers warned prospective voters (i.e., White Dudes) with excessive use of All-Caps:

Shall I continue in allegiance to GOD - AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT; or impiously declare for JEFFERSON - AND NO GOD!

Thomas Jefferson - or, rather, James Callender (who is responsible for spilling the beans about Jefferson and Sally Hemings), a friendly newspaper editor, fired back by saying that Adams had a "hideous hermaphroditical character which as neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." Devastating. The election of 1800 is deserving of a separate post. Basically, Jefferson and his proposed vice president Aaron Burr tied in the electoral college. After some shenanigans from Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton convinced his fellow Federalists that it was better to give their vote to a Jefferson, who at least was somewhat consistent and seemed to believe in something, rather than Burr, the guy who (wait for it) "would do anything to get his hands on power." 

By December 1800 Adams didn't know who would be president, but he knew it wouldn't be him. he was trying to find a new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to replace Ellsworth. Congress was soon to debate reducing the number of Supreme Court Justices from the six that Washington had set to five, in order to avoid ties, and Adams thought it improper to nominate a sixth member of the Supreme Court while Congress was debating such a bill. He nominated Secretary of State John Marshall, mainly so that Jefferson wouldn't get to do it. The Senate wasn't happy, as it was a surprise nomination, but they didn't have much time before the Jefferson Administration was running the show, and figured that even a bad Federalist was still better than a Jeffersonian Republican. John Marshall was confirmed as Chief Justice on February 4, 1801. They still did not know who would be president, but for a month (the inauguration was then on March 4) Marshall served both as Adams' Secretary of State and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

On February 17, 1801 Jefferson prevailed over Burr on the 36th ballot. Burr would be Jefferson's vice president for the next four years which was likely extremely awkward. John Adams finished 3rd. He and his son John Quincy Adams would be the only one-term presidents until 1840. 

While Adams peacefully left office after such a bitter campaign, he and the Federalists did do one thing that would eventually give the Supreme Court the power John Jay so desperately desired: they installed as many Federalist judges as they could until the day of Jefferson's inauguration, which Adams did not stay to attend, so as to place a check on the Jefferson Administration.

On March 2, 1801 - two days before Jefferson's inauguration - Adams submitted 42 judicial appointments to the Senate, which they confirmed on March 3, with Jefferson's inauguration on March 4. When Jefferson saw the commissions for these "Midnight Judges" (or Midnight Appointments) he told his Secretary of State (and future president) James Madison to simply not deliver the commissions to four of the intended judges. Later that month Jefferson wrote Henry Knox [edited for clarity]:

This outrage on decency shall not have its effect, except in the life appointments which are irremovable, but as to the others I consider the nominations as nullities & will not view the persons appointed as even candidates for their office, much less as possessing it by any title meriting respect.

One of these commission-rich but appointment-poor judges was named Stephon William Marbury, appointed to be the Justice of the Peace in Washington, D.C. When Marbury did not receive his commission, he appealed to the Supreme Court, led by...Chief Justice - and Adams' Secretary of State - John Marshall. Marbury v. Madison, which was handed down on February 24, 1803, is the first truly landmark case in Supreme Court history. 

Marshall decided, through some actually brilliant legal analysis, that the Supreme Court's power was too narrow under the powers vested by the Constitution to decide the fate of Marbury's appointment. I'll turn it over to Kent State:

The Constitution, [Marshall] concluded, allowed the Supreme Court 'original jurisdiction' in only a limited number of specified situations, and they did not include the kind of order Marbury asked for. Since Marbury was only following the guidelines of a provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789, Marshall concluded that this provision was unconstitutional. 

Jefferson was pissed, but Marshall's ruling didn't give anything for Jefferson to punch at, since the Court itself was refusing to grant the power under the Judiciary Act. Marbury v. Madison also established the precedent of Judicial Review - in which the Supreme Court now had the power to rule laws passed by Congress as unconstitutional. 

In a clap-back by Jefferson's Republicans, they impeached Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase in 1805 for politicizing his seat on the bench, "tending to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested, to the low purpose of an electioneering partizan," having continually referred to Jefferson and the Republicans as atheists. The Senate, which consisted of 25 Jeffersonian Republicans and nine Federalists, acquitted Chase - because being combative isn't necessarily treason - and he remained on the Supreme Court until his death in 1811. Regular reminder that successfully impeaching anyone is hard, and that's on purpose. 

After Marbury v. Madison and the acquittal of Samuel Chase, finally the Supreme Court was on equal footing with the other branches of government. That was a very long aside, but it's important to know how the Supreme Court was elevated from a branch that Georgia could just drop like 3rd Period French to being the Scissors in Governmental Rock, Paper, Scissors. 

Anyhow, the number of Supreme Court justices changed six times before 1869. One of those times was another lame-duck Adams/Federalist attempt to reduce the power of Jefferson with the Judiciary Act of 1801, which reduced the number of Supreme Court justices from six to five...beginning with the next vacancy meaning that Jefferson would have to wait for two vacancies before he could nominate a Republican. Petty af. That act was repealed almost immediately, returning the number of justices to six. 

As the United States expanded west, however, it increased the number of circuit courts. In 1837 the number of district circuit courts were expanded, which resulted in Andrew Jackson nominating two additional Justices. By 1857 there were nine circuit courts, meaning there were nine Supreme Court Justices. Who establishes the number of these particular courts? Congress. In 1863 a 10th court was added to cover California/Oregon and, frustrated over Dred Scott v. Sandford, Lincoln added a 10th Supreme Court justice to ensure an anti-slavery majority. After Lincoln was assassinated and the extremely problematic Andrew Johnson had already vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Congress reduced the number of Supreme Court justices to seven in an effort to make sure he couldn't fill a vacant seat. With the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1869, the number of Supreme Court justices was increased from Johnson's seven back to nine, including one Chief Justice, as a gift to President Ulysses S. Grant. Nine Supreme Court Justices has been the number ever since, though there were some challenges.

By the 1930s the Supreme Court was extremely Republican, which wasn't exactly what President Franklin D. Roosevelt was looking for when he was trying to get New Deal legislation passed. Four of the nine members of the Supreme Court: Pierce Butler (confirmed 1922), James McReynolds (confirmed 1914), George Sutherland (confirmed 1922), and Willis Van Deventer (confirmed 1903) - straight-up hated the New Deal. Known as the Four Horsemen, they gained a majority when the Herbert Hoover-appointed Owen Roberts, in his Age 60 season was the youngest of that particular iteration of the Supreme Court, started to vote with the elder statesmen to make a conservative majority on the Court, started to invalidate key pieces of FDR's New Deal. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes was the Secretary of State for Republican presidents Warren G. Harding and Herbert Hoover, struck down an impressive amount of New Deal legislation - including a minimum wage for women and children, for God's sake. 

Roosevelt was tired of it. Thanks to the vagaries of the Constitution he didn't need an amendment to change the composition of the Supreme Court but he did need Congress. The 75th Congress (1937-1939) enjoyed a Democratic super-majority thanks to the popularity of FDR and the New Deal. In February 1937, emboldened at the outset of a 2nd term as president, FDR proposed adding an additional Justice for any Supreme Court justice over the age of 70. That number, at the time, would bring six additional Justices to the Supreme Court - of his choosing - resulting in a Supreme Court of 15 members. This was FDR's infamous Court-Packing Scheme. Eventually FDR backed down after two justices upheld the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act, but that was the last major effort to change the very structure of the Supreme Court. 

I know we all like to think that this country is based on hallowed traditions, but one of those traditions is the petty tinkering with institutions based on how it benefits the party in power in that particular instance. That said, the precedent for an equal number of Supreme Court Justices for every district court has long been established. And right now? There are 12 regional circuits.

A Few Words about the Battle of Belleau Wood

On September 3, 2020 The Atlantic published a story written by Jeffrey Goldberg in which President Trump claimed that he could not travel to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery outside of Paris because it was raining, and the helicopter wouldn't fly and the Secret Service wouldn't drive him there. Both of these statements, according to Goldberg, were not true. 

In the article, Goldberg quotes sources who said that the president said, "Why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with losers," before referring to over 1,800 marines who are buried in the cemetery as "suckers," for getting killed fighting the Germans. 

The Aisne-Marne American Cemetery is a 42.5-acre memorial that sits at the foot of Belleau Wood. There are 2,289 graves and over 1,060 soldiers who are still missing, over 100 years later. 

World War I is a complicated story for the United States. The History Teacher in me wants you to know that there are four main reasons for why World War I was even fought: Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, and Nationalism. Thankfully we don't have to worry about that today [eyes roll completely out of my head]. 

When the United States finally declared war (President Wilson ran for re-election in 1916 under the slogan "He kept us out of war") in April 1917, the military was woefully unprepared. The Germans, and even the US' allies, were doubtful about how actually helpful the United States would be. The United States had never maintained a large standing army, following Thomas Jefferson's belief that a large standing army was a threat to peace. Jefferson helped draft and approve and promote the Military Peace Establishment Act (1802) which reduced the size of the military, yet also established a military academy north of New York City at West Point. In his 6th Annual Message (1806), Jefferson wrote:

Our duty is, therefore, to act upon things as they are, and to make a reasonable provision for whatever they may be. Were armies to be raised whenever a speck of war is visible in our horizon, we never should have been without them.

As the events of World War I unfolded across Europe, the United States continued to resist building up for the possibility of entering the War. The last major wars the United States were even involved in relied on cavalry, which wasn't going to help in this particular war, what with mustard gas, trench warfare, machine guns, and tanks. 

The Russians bounced from World War I in early 1918, after the Bolsheviks overthrew Czar Nicholas before (probably!) assassinating him and his wife Alexandra and their children. This freed up a not-insignificant number of German troops, who decided to mobilize on the Western Front in April 1918, hoping to win the war before whatever the US could throw at them was fully operational.

At the Third Battle of the Aisne, the Germans (they weren't Nazis yet) launched a massive surprise attack with over 4,000 pieces of artillery on May 27, 1918 at Aisne. French General Auguste Duchene was in charge of the defense, and ordered British soldiers to huddle together in the front trenches, which made them a much-easier target for the German artillery. Then they dropped poison gas on the trenches, and followed that up with an infantry assault. The Germans, under Erich Ludendorff (who would go on to be an early Hitler supporter, gaining notoriety for his completely false "Stab-In-The-Back" theory which blamed Jews, liberals, communists, democrats, and war profiteers for Germany's defeat in World War I), took advantage of a 25-mile gap in defense and advanced to within 35 miles of Paris. The Allies didn't stand a chance. Over 50,000 Allied soldiers and 800 Allied guns were captured.

On June 6, 1918 the German assault was neutralized. 137,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded while the Germans had 130,000 casualties. This was the first major action American soldiers - mainly the US 3rd Division - had seen in World War I, and they impressed their counterparts. 

This is where the battles overlap. Five days earlier the Germans had secured Chateau-Thierry and Vaux, and the Germans moved into Belleau Wood. The Marne River is a little over 300 miles long and runs behind Belleau Wood, which is about 60 miles northeast of Paris. The US 2nd Infantry Division (containing a brigade of Marines), the 9th Infantry, and the 6th Marine regiments all joined to plug the gap in the defense. There were French troops between them and the Germans. General James Harbord overrode an order from the French to dig trenches further back and instead ordered the Marines to "hold where you stand" and use their bayonets to dig a shallow trench that would allow them to fire at the advancing Germans from a prone (laying down, facing-forward) position. On the afternoon of June 3, 1918 the Germans attacked. US troops waited until the Germans were within 100 yards before opening fire, cutting down wave after wave of German soldiers until they retreated into the woods.

The Germans dug in, then they attacked. A French colonel told the US troops to retreat, to which Marine Captain Lloyd W. Williams replied, "Retreat, hell. We just got here." June 6, 1918 (a date that echoes through history) saw the heaviest single-day losses in Marine Corps history. On June 11, 1918 Capt. Williams led an assault on the Germans in which only one in 10 German officers and 16 of 250 German troops survived or escaped injury. Told to withdraw by a French major, Capt. Williams told him to "Go to hell." The next day, after getting gassed and injured by shrapnel, Capt. Williams responded to approaching medics, "Don't bother with me. Take good care of my men." He died on June 12. The building which holds Virginia Tech's Depts of Political Science, History, Geography, Philosophy, and Foreign Language and Literatures is named after him.

1st Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates said during the battle:

I have only two men out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold.

24-year old 1st Lt. Cates wrote his mother:

It has been a living hell. We were shelled all night with shrapnel and gas shells...It was mustard gas and a lot of the men were burned.

Marine Fred W. Stockham died of gas poisoning and was given a posthumous Medal of Honor for giving his own gas mask to a fellow soldier whose mask had been shot off.

44-year old Marine sergeant Dan Daly allegedly yelled at his men, "Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?" Colonel Albertus W. Catlin, who was shot in the chest during The Battle of Belleau Wood, later wrote:

The minute they got into the woods our boys found themselves in a perfect hornets' nest of...gunners, grenadiers, and riflemen. There were machine gun nests everywhere - on every hillock...every ravine...and every gun was trained on the...Marines.

Bayonet and hand-to-hand combat ensued. At the end of it at least 1,600 German soldiers were captured. The Americans had 9,777 casualties and over 1,800 killed. After the Battle of Belleau Wood had ended, the French renamed it "Bois de la Brigade de Marine" or "Wood of the Marine Brigade." General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing said after the Marines' performance, "the deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and his rifle." An official German report said, after the battle, that the Marines were "vigorous, self-confident, and remarkable marksmen."

We could really get into some strong military strategy stuff here, but you can click on any of these links to really get into it. Basically, like the rest of World War I, the Battle of Belleau Wood was a bloodbath. Over 10,000 Americans were dead, wounded, or missing in action. Marine Corps Commandant General Charles C. Krulak referred to Belleau Wood as the "Marines' first crucible," and said:

The flower of America's youth fought and bled to wrest this wood from the Germans....I walked toward the tree line through waist-high wheat, just as they did 80 years ago. History books describe that 800-yard advance, but I never fully appreciated it until I walked it myself. The Germans had every square inch of that field covered by machine gun and artillery fire. The Marines paid dearly with every step they took.

Army General James G. Harbord, who was after the fact made an honorary Marine said in 1923:

Now and then, a veteran...will come here to live again the brave days of that distant June. Here will be raised the altars of patriotism; here will be renewed the vows of sacrifice and consecration to country. Hither will come our countrymen in hours of depression, and even of failure, and take new courage from this shrine of great deeds.

In April 2018 French president Emmanuel Macron commemorated the battle by saying at a ceremony, "The blood [of Americans] was spilled to defend France."

The result is the temporary defeat of Germany as a threat to world peace. It's also the rebirth of the Marine Corps, who may or may not have earned the "Devil Dogs" nickname at the Battle of Belleau Wood. Or, you know, "losers," and "suckers," according to the 45th president of the United States.