Remembering the U.S.-Mexico War (1846-1848): A Soldier’s Story

http://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2016/04/GettyImages-113492973-E.jpeg

Sometime at the end of September, 1846, blacksmith John Gallagher of New York received distressing news about the United States’ war with Mexico, a conflict that would eventually carry him to the distant reaches of North America. Gallagher remembered when he heard U.S. General [Zachary] Taylor (1784-1850) “with his Regulars and Volunteers, had been so roughly handled by [General] Santa Ana’s men, in Mexico, I, then a young man under twenty-one, threw down my blanketing implements and joined Colonel Jonathan D. Stevenson’s First New York Regiment of Volunteers.”[1] Gallagher was likely referring to the Battle of Monterrey, fought from September 21-24, 1846. There U.S. forces under Taylor fought Mexican forces led by General Pedro de Ampudia (1805-1868) for control of the city of Monterrey, located in the northeastern state of Nuevo León, Mexico. After a series of skirmishes, both armies sustained high casualties. Taylor, with no formal ability to do so, negotiated a truce with Ampudia. During this two-month armistice, the Mexican Army was permitted to evacuate with their equipment in exchange for surrendering the city to Taylor. Had Taylor been bolder and eschewed a truce in favor of a forcing a decisive victory at Monterrey, the Mexican government likely would have been toppled, or at least would have been forced into favorable peace talks with the United States. But Taylor was not bolder at that moment and the war continued for another sixteen months.[2] It was this state of affairs that compelled young John Gallagher of New York to enlist in the United States Army. 

          

The narrative of John Gallagher’s experiences in the U.S.-Mexico War come to us from a single source, his 1903 typescript letter Personal Reminiscences of the War in Upper and Lower California between the American and Native Troops. This unpublished letter was addressed to a family friend, Rt. Rev. Msgr. Joseph Gleason, who served as Pastor of the St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Palo Alto, California. Gleason had previously worked the U.S. Army as a chaplain during the Spanish-American War (1898), and was known for his lectures on history at nearby Stanford University, which may help explain why Gallagher submitted his reminiscences to him.[3]

          

Gallagher’s letter is valuable not only because its sheds light on first-hand experiences of an enlisted American soldier (especially in Baja California), but also because it complicates our understanding of American soldiers’ behavior and conduct with Mexican civilians during the war. Gallagher was neither a historian nor a published author, yet his candid memories nearly fifty years later offers the modern reader important insight into the “Forgotten War.” Of singular importance are Gallagher’s encounters with Californio and Mexican civilian populations and how those interactions contrasted with U.S. Army experiences elsewhere during the war. 

          

The Mexican Army posed no existential threat to New York. What promoted Gallagher to risk life and limb in faraway Mexico? Like most Americans, he likely would have explained the justification for American involvement by alluding to President James K. Polk (1795-1849). Polk’s infamous 1846 message to Congress reasoned that war was thrust upon the United States because Mexico, as Polk claimed, “has invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil.” Polk was referring to military engagements between American and Mexican forces over disputed borderlands in Texas between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. This “defensive rationalization” veiled a deeper desire for a larger war which would enable the Polk to seize a much wider expanse of Mexico’s northern territories. Republic of Texas President Anson Jones (1798-1858) charged that Polk’s ultimate plan, in accordance with Manifest Destiny, was to annex Mexico alongside Texas and thus “avoid the onus of initiating an aggressive war to acquire California and other provinces of Mexico.”[4] Polk drew critical congressional support from Southern Democrats, many of whom supported westward territorial expansion and the geographic extension of slavery. 

          

John Gallagher makes no mention of Manifest Destiny, the defense of American borders in Texas, the “justifiable” U.S. acquisition of Mexican provinces, or the potential expansion of slavery. Instead, he offered a simpler explanation for war’s allure. “Fired by a spirit of adventure,” he wrote, “the young men composing [the U.S.] army had abandoned homes, trades and professions to enroll under the standard of the Colonel [Jonathan D. Stevenson (1800-1894)].” The adventure seeking New York Regiment soon boarded the Thomas H. Perkins, which alongside the Loochoo and Susa Drew, had been called to reinforce the U.S. Navy’s “Pacific Squadron” in Alta California. Rounding Cape Horn, Gallagher arrived in San Francisco over six months later. The city’s humble appearance did not temper the soldiers’ patriotic arrival. “The principle settlement of Yerba Buena, the San Francisco of present day,” Gallagher observed, “was at Portsmouth Square. A small collection of adobe houses was around the enclosure, and a liberty pole stood in the center, with the stars and stripes flung to the breeze.”[5] After resupplying, Gallagher’s regiment boarded a smaller ship for a trip down the coast to Santa Barbara.

Figure 1: The Thomas H. Perkins, circa 1837.[6]

Locating the Enemy

Upon arrival in Santa Barbara, local Californio women and children threatened the U.S. troops, ominously warning that General Castro “was coming to cut [their] throats.” Gallagher assures the reader that their throats remained whole for a while longer as Castro failed to make an appearance. Gallagher is referring to José Antonio Castro (1808-1860), one time acting governor of Alta California and later Commadante General of the Mexican Army from the time of the “Bear Flag Revolt” in June, 1846. Castro was outraged by the U.S. policy of military aggression in Alta California. Earlier that summer Castro denounced “the contemptible policy of the United States” who had “induced a portion of adventurers [led by U.S. Major John C. Frémont (1813-1890)] who…have daringly commended an invasion. The defense of our liberty, the true religion which our fathers possessed, and our independence, calls upon us to sacrifice ourselves.”[7] As Gallagher was soon to discover, the lines that separated friend from enemy proved to be less than clear. 

          

American troops arrived in Santa Barbara expecting a fight, but instead encountered civilian preparations for the Feast of Corpus Christi, a Catholic celebration of the Eucharist. The commander of Gallagher’s 1st Regiment of New York Volunteers, Lt. Col. Henry Stanton Burton (1819-1869), instructed the troops that “[we] have nothing to do with the religious sentiment of the people, but it only proper that we show becoming respect for the faith of our enemies.”[8] Gallagher noted the soldiers saluted the “beloved Padres” and as several the soldiers were Catholic, some even attended the church service. This moment of social amity was critical for the way Gallagher would remember the war. Burton’s requirement that U.S. soldiers respect the “enemy” Californio civilian population had, in Gallagher’s view, long lasting consequences. The diplomatic actions of the soldiers changed “the sentiments of the people toward us,” Gallagher recalled. The Californios, he wrote, “pronounced the ‘Americanos’ to be ‘Gentleman and Christians,’ and from that day forth there was peace and good-will between the natives of Santa Barbara and ourselves.”[9] This event stood as an important precursor to the 1st Regiment of New York Volunteers’ experiences throughout the war. 

         

Leaving Santa Barbara, the regiment marched to Mission San Buenaventura to deliver ammunition to troops stationed there. On the way, they came across stragglers returning from Los Angeles who had been discharged without payment from Frémont’s army and were making their way up to Monterey. They informed Gallagher’s men that American forces stood in imminent danger of being attacked in Los Angeles, the regiments’ new destination. It was there Gallagher encountered the Mormon Battalion. “Upon our arrival,” he wrote, “we found a battalion of Mormons, recently arrived. They appeared to be good men and fine soldiers.”[10] While bigotry against Mormons was common in the United States, Gallagher appreciated not only their helpful assistance, but their soldierly comportment. Like Santa Barbara, however, there was no battle awaiting. Leaving Los Angeles, Gallagher embarked on the ship of the line, the USS Lexington, bound for La Paz, Baja California, where the war was being fought in earnest.

Figure 3: USS Lexington, circa 1825.[11]

From Alta to Baja California

Gallagher and the army landed in La Paz, Mexico, although by that time the main U.S. force was reduced from three to two companies. The army examined an abandoned citadel nearby, but not finding it to their liking, took over a local church and made camp. During an ensuing battle with Mexican forces, Gallagher wrote again on the fundamental difference between the Mexican military and civilian populations. The military are unequivocally the “enemy” while the Mexican civilians, in Gallagher’s estimation, seem to “prefer” the governance of the United States. One such instance occurred following a round of shelling between American and Mexican armies near La Paz. Gallagher observed how the “Governor, the Alcalde, and other prominent citizens swore allegiance to our government and came to live with us in our camp.”[12] While these citizens were technically the enemy, war-time exigencies turned erstwhile enemies into practical allies. Little of this goodwill was extended by American officials to Californio populations after the war, but on this point Gallagher is silent. When U.S. reinforcements arrived from Alta California, the U.S. army, with Gallagher’s approval, “forthwith turned the place [the army camp] over to our new friends.”[13] The invading army, at least in Baja California, was doing its level best to win over the sentiment and allegiance of the local population.

       

Gallagher’s regiment heard from some American stragglers that U.S. prisoners were being held at a Mexican citadel in San Antonio, home to some 600 soldiers. A group of thirty men, including Gallagher, blatantly defied orders and headed out to San Antonio to free their comrades. Utilizing the element of surprise, they successfully freed the prisoners. Energized, the U.S. troops also took Mexican prisoners, a captain and a lieutenant, but the biggest prize alluded them. “Our next attempt was to take General Panada [Colonel Manuel Pineda Munoz (1804-1891)], but our search for the brave commander proved fruitless. We afterward understood he had taken refuge in a bake-oven.”[14] Just as Gallagher takes every opportunity to compliment Mexican civilians, he typically characterized the Mexican Army with bemusement or disdain.

         

After the rescue from San Antonio, Gallagher’s troops hurried back to camp in La Paz. There they engaged with Pineda’s men in the Battle of Todos Santos, which proved to be both the end of hostilities in Baja California and the last significant engagement of the war. While marching toward the Mexican Army, the U.S. soldiers came to the small town of Todos Santos where “with no opposition from the inhabitants, [they] took possession of the church and the buildings.”[15] Once again, Gallagher’s regiment conspicuously avoided potential violence with the local population. 

      

Due to excessive marching in the torrid weather, the army’s horses were too tired to proceed. A commanding officer suggested a requisition of horses from the local padre. Gallagher learned the padre had “belonged to one of the first families of the peninsula.” “In this youth,” Gallagher added, “[the padre] had been educated for [the] priesthood, but it soon became evident that the vocation was lacking [as later] he evinced such evil propensities that he became an object of terror and hatred throughout the country.”[16] Despite this unsavory reputation, he was nevertheless styled as “padre” by the local people and servants under his employ. Gallagher’s lieutenant asked the padre for fresh horses. The padre dithered and complained that he had none to offer. The lieutenant replied that his soldiers would patiently wait and avail themselves to the padre’s goods. Wasting no time, a sergeant found “a large receptacle filled with liquor, which he distributed among [the regiment’s] thirty men, and to those of the household who stood near.”[17] This act, to Gallagher’s reckoning, reflected how the U.S. Army were less imperial conquerors than friendly liberators. 

       

The day after seizing the liquor, Gallagher and his men insisted the padre’s servants help themselves to the ill-gotten goods of their master’s house. In the padre’s provision stores the soldiers found ample quantities of green cheese and brown sugar cookies, both of which had been manufactured by the servants, but never made available to them. Gallagher recalled that “we generously urged the natives to help themselves to all they wanted, as everything was ours, we assured them, knowing as we did that nothing could have induced them to touch anything belonging to their master, the ‘Padre,’ as they invariably styled him.”[18] Another instance, Gallagher proudly cited, of liberal American generosity. What may seem like minor incidents between the U.S. Army and local civilian populations contrasted drastically with other theaters of war in Mexico. 

      

Finally able to procure fresh horses, the despondent padre helplessly watched as part of the regiment left for battle while others continued to garrison his town. Gallagher wrote approvingly of the “commendable” behavior of the American soldiers while stationed in Todos Santos. “They left a good record,” lauded Gallagher, “for they disturbed nothing belonging to the people.”[19] Separating the belongings of the people from those of the padre required no leap in logic for either the U.S. Army or Gallagher the chronicler. In his view, it would have been all too easy for the invading American army to “disturb” valuables belonging to “the people.” In Todos Santos, Gallagher remembered that in “the church hung valuable paintings brought from Old Spain hundreds of years ago.” “These masterpieces,” he recorded, “were left none the worse by even so much as a scratch from any of our men.”[20] As to whether this was the particularly meritorious behavior of the 1st New York Regiment, or common practice among the larger army contingent in Baja California, Gallagher does not say. 

        

Even among these well-behaved troops, not all were above the allure of plunder. Gallagher included a counterexample of dishonorable behavior. Ultimately victorious in a battle near La Paz which saw “General Panada” [Captain Manuel Pineda Munoz] captured, discomfiting news greeted Gallagher as “tidings from San Antonio…gave us considerable concern. They were to the effect that the church had been robbed, and although the natives gave us assurances to their belief that no American soldier had had a hand in the affair, we nevertheless regretted to learn of the sacrilege, and made efforts to discover the culprit.”[21] Gallagher could have omitted this event, but he presumably wanted to acknowledge that individual outliers were not representative of his regiment. Moreover, the power of American justice was given an opportunity at San Antonino to show its quality. The culprit turned out to be deserter from the U.S. Army. The thief had attempted to befriend a fellow soldier, offering to divide the realized value of the plunder in exchange for assistance with smuggling it back into the United States, but the thief was instead revealed to military police. After a three-day trial, the location of the stolen goods was discovered, the deserter found guilty and banished from camp, and the property restored to its rightful ownership to the church. 

One Adventure Ends, Another Begins

This instance proved to be last chapter of the war as peace was soon thereafter declared following the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848. Gallagher proudly reported that his 1st Regiment of New York Volunteers held Alta and Baja California from March, 1847 until the end of hostilities. Gallagher then boarded the USS Ohio at La Paz to make the trip north to an Alta California that was now annexed (as Anson predicted) to the United States. 

Figure 4: USS Ohio, circa 1848.[22]

Leaving La Paz was something of a mixed blessing. Glad to know the war was over, the future political status of the local citizens of Baja California vexed Gallagher. “The people we had come to conquer,” he wrote, “regretted that our government had relinquished Lower California.”[23] Many of the leading Mexican citizens of the area, whom Gallagher now considered his friends, accompanied the army to Monterey. Even as war segued to peace, Gallagher’s penchant for being present at pivotal historical moments continued. As the Ohio pulled into Monterey, California, recent news that gold had been discovered in Coloma at Sutter’s Mill moved like electricity through the ship. The soldiers no sooner having been discharged and “settled up” with Uncle Sam, “exchanged the musket for the pick and shovel.”[24] Gallagher makes no mention of his adventures in searching for gold, but he did stay in California for the remainder of his life, recording his occupation as “farmer” in an application to the California Society of Pioneers decades later. 

       

The end of John Gallagher’s Reminiscences details a selection of soldiers he fought with who went on to notable careers as politicians, surveyors, and leading officers in the American Civil War. True to his narrative arc, Gallagher returned once more to his fond memories with the Mexican civilian populations he encountered. “From the natives, we received the kindest treatment,” he recalled. “Never pausing to inquire as to one’s religion or nationality, they provided good nurses in sickness, and would at any time, divide their last tortilla with us.” “In all my time with them,” he adds favorably, “I never saw one intoxicated.”[25] A final anecdote of his regiment’s behavior is worth noting. Gallagher recalled that inside the church at La Paz, upon the statue of the Virgin Mary, was a string of pearls worth “at least $900.00” (roughly $26,000 in 2016 dollars). Despite being stationed at this church for over three weeks, and having every opportunity, “no one dreamed of touching the necklace, or anything else belonging to the people…More might be added to what I have written,” Gallagher wistfully concluded, “but perhaps in this modern day few will care with me to lift the curtain of half a century.”[26] John Gallagher would be pleased to know that historians today care deeply about lifting the curtain of time, with his letter serving as a critical window into the often forgotten past of the U.S.-Mexican War.

Conclusion

Modern readers might scoff at Gallagher’s purple prose regarding his regiment’s experiences with Mexican civilian populations. Surely, the justification of western imperialism has ever been to “uplift” indigenous people by supplanting and replacing tyrannical leaders only to exploit their resources and people afterward. However, I do not think an imperialist project can be justifiably read into Gallagher’s letter. He sought adventure and opportunity rather than “civilizing uplift” or conquest and made it a point how well Mexican civilians were treated by his regiment throughout. It was evident that the army’s commendable behavior in Baja California be remembered by posterity.

       

The significance of respecting the enemy’s religion and culture was more than just the practice of Gallagher’s regiment, however. As historian David Cleary has shown, President Polk possessed a “disgust” for religious bigotry. “Polk,” Cleary argues, “wanted to relieve Mexican fears about threats to their religion, and asked Archbishop John Hughes to persuade Mexicans that there were no ‘hostile designs [by the U.S.] on their religion’.”[27] The leading American military commander, General Zachary Taylor, also worried about the implied threat of a “holy war” between the largely Protestant United States against Catholic Mexico. Taylor had a proclamation distributed throughout Mexico which stated, “Your religion, your altars, and churches, the property of your churches and citizens, the emblems of your faith, shall remain inviolate.” The proclamation assured Mexicans of the U.S. government’s sincerity as “hundreds of our [army], and hundreds of thousands of our people are members of the Catholic Church.”[28] John Gallagher was an Irish immigrant, although we can only infer his affiliation to Catholicism.[29] The dominant faith of any given U.S. Army unit appears to be the determining characteristic in how Mexican civilian populations were treated during the war. Clearly argues that Catholics may have made up a majority of the enlisted army (which Gallagher was part of), while the volunteer army units were nearly all Protestant. The atrocities committed by many of the Protestant volunteer units were legion, as they “devoted special attention to the Mexican Church, robbing and killing priests, raping nuns, looting altars, and desecrating holy buildings.”[30] While Taylor issued orders against this kind of behavior, little was done within the army to stop it. Polk’s volunteer armies “inspired lingering hatred in Mexico toward los Gringos malditos (damned Gringos).”[31] Further complicating the politics of religious affiliation was the infamous San Patricios Battalion, composed mostly of Catholic deserters from the United States Army, many of whom were born in Ireland. Following the Battle of Churubusco in August, 1847, over seventy of the St. Patrick’s Battalion were captured by U.S. forces and tried for treason. Fifty of those tried were executed by hanging. Their leader and founder, John Riley (1817-1850), had his sentence commuted, but was branded with a “D” on his face (for deserter) and received fifty lashes across his back. Undaunted, Riley later rejoined the Mexican Army and reformed the San Patricio’s Battalion, whose service remains celebrated in Mexico today.[32]

     

Of significant value to future historiography of the U.S.-Mexican War would be a demographic analysis of the U.S. Army soldiers’ religious backgrounds and their deployment alongside a comparative analysis of Mexican perspectives on the behavior of the U.S. Army during the war. In which cases did Catholic and Protestant affiliation correlate to wartime atrocities? Problematizing the United States’ conduct, on what is understood today to be an unabashedly aggressive war for empire, can help contextualize the differential lived experience of American soldiers and Mexican civilian populations. Gallagher’s 1st Regiment of New York Volunteers, who collectively took Polk and Taylor’s wartime proclamations to heart, may serve as an indicator of larger transnational Protestant and Catholic sectarian strife within the U.S. Army as it played out across the battlefields of Mexico. 

                       ---------------------------------
[1] John Gallagher, Personal Reminiscences of the War in Upper and Lower California between the American and Native Troops, (Typescript: 1903), 2. BANC MSS 71/186c, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 21 February 2017.
[2] Joseph Wheelan, Invading Mexico: America’s Continental Dream and the MexicanWar, 1846-1848 (New York: Carrol and Graf Publishers: 2007), 199.
[3] “Father Gleason to Lecture Tuesday,” accessed March 12, 2017, stanforddailyarchive.com, Stanford Daily, Volume 52, Issue 3, 4 January 1918: http://stanforddailyarchive.com/cgi-bin/stanford?a=d&d=stanford19180104-01.2.9&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------#
[4] Glenn W. Price, Origins of the War with Mexico: The Polk-Stockton Intrigue (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), vii.
[5] Gallagher, Personal Reminiscences, 2.
[6] “Legendary Ships of Salem,” accessed March 12, 2017, https://storiesfromipswich.org/2015/07/11/legendary-ships-of-salem/.
[7] David A. Clary, Eagles and Empire: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle for Empire (New York: Bantam Books, 2009), 91.
[8] Gallagher, Personal Reminiscences, 3.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid., 4.
[11] “Sloop-Of-War USS Lexington (1825),” retrieved March 18, 2017, http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMT51F_Sloop_Of_War_USS_Lexington_1825_Lexington_MA
[12] Gallagher, Personal Reminiscences, 10.
[13] Ibid., 11.
[14] Ibid., 14.
[15] Ibid., 18.
[16] Ibid., 19.
[17] Ibid., 20.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid
[21] Ibid., 26
[22] “U.S. Ship of the Line Ohio, 104 Guns,” accessed March 18, 2017, http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/86/098600801.jpg.
[23] Gallagher, Personal Reminiscences, 27.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid., 32.
[26] Ibid.
[27] David A. Clary, Eagles and Empire, 141.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Gallagher’s application to the Society of California Pioneers records indicates that he was born in Ireland in 1804 (Online Archive of California) http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8xk8d8b/entire_text/. Measured against the Gallagher family friendship with Father Gleason at the Palo Alto Church of St. Thomas Aquinas strongly suggests Gallagher identified at least culturally as Catholic.
[30] David A. Clary, Eagles and Empire, 141. See also: Ted C. Hinckley, “Anti-Catholicism during the Mexican War,” Pacific Historical Review 31 (May 1962): 121-138.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Christopher Conway, “U.S. and Mexican Accounts of the Execution of the San Patricios (September 10-13, 1847),” in The U.S.-Mexican War: A Binational Reader, ed. Christopher Conway (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2010), 95-96.

Reviewed: Eric Foner’s A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877

Foner, Eric. A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877. New York: Harper Perennial, 1990. Pp. 297.

T

he story of the Civil War has captivated Americans for generations. It is perhaps the one historical event, along with the American Revolution, that remains foregrounded in collective memory. Most Americans tend to celebrate the grand personalities of the era and the valor displayed on memorialized battlegrounds more than the war’s causes and legacies. If the story of the Civil War has remained alive through public memory, then the consequences of the war, the era of Reconstruction, have largely been forgotten. Without the obvious framing of pitched battles and heroic sacrifice, the sometimes noble, sometimes violent, but always complicated story of the readmittance for Confederate states into the Union has gotten short shrift.

Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, is arguably the preeminent Reconstruction historian  today. His 1990 publication, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877, is among the landmark examinations of the post-Civil War era. The first systematic study of Reconstruction, by William Dunning (also of Columbia University) in the early twentieth century, condemned Reconstruction policy as a failure because of the twin problems of the corruption of Republican rule and black political incompetence and malfeasance. This failure was corrected, the story went, when the South was “redeemed” by the Democratic Party (with help from the Ku Klux Klan) and blacks were relegated to second-class citizenship. Modern scholarship has repudiated this theory as racist and incomplete. Unlike the Dunning School, modern scholars, especially since the 1960s, have tended "to view emancipation itself as among the most revolutionary aspects of the period” (xiv). To that end, The Short History of Reconstruction presents four unifying themes: 1) the centrality of the black experience, 2) the ways Southern society as a whole was remodeled, 3) the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations and the complex interconnection of race and class in the post war South, and 4) the emergence of the modern nation-state. 

Professor Eric Foner
Source: https://www.college.columbia.edu

The South, Foner indicates, was “…never a single white [community]; in the nineteenth century, the region as a whole, and each state within it, was divided into areas with sharply differing political economies” (5). While most states were led by a conservative planter elite, some non-slave owning white yeoman farmers welcomed political reform, but nearly all whites were united in their repugnance of black suffrage. This indicates why northern Republicans initial, if limited, success in integrating blacks into the political community was eventually repulsed by an overwhelming wave of white supremacy and growing northern disinterest in combating political violence.

Blacks, as Foner argues, were not invisible or passive observers of Reconstruction. Emancipation was only the first step in building an independent black community through the reuniting of family members previously separated by slavery. Black men then looked to reclaim authority in family affairs long dominated by slave-owners. Outside the family, black-led churches became the central institution of the freed community. There blacks could discuss issues like education and land reform that predicated their collective vision of freedom. Lastly, political mobilization into the Republican Party was of paramount significance. The Republican Party, Foner argues, “…became an institution as central to the black community as the church and the school. Long after (blacks) had been stripped of the franchise, blacks would recall the act of voting as a defiance of white superiority and regard ‘the loss of suffrage…as the loss of freedom’” (128).

There were two reasons why the North could intervene so comprehensively in the political and social life in the South: the South was in shambles after the Confederacy’s collapse in 1865; and there had been an unprecedented expansion of federal authority wrought by the exigencies of the Civil War. “The federal budget,” Foner argues, “amounting to $63 million in 1860, rose to well over $1 billion by 1865. At war’s end the federal government…was the largest employer of the nation” (10). Armed with these enhanced human and fiscal resources, the federal government worked to rebuild the South’s economy and society through the policies of the Radical Republicans in Congress. 

The antebellum federal government rarely waded into political issues such as citizenship and equality as they were thought to belong to state jurisdiction. After Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew Johnson, a southern sympathizer and avowed racist, became president. He proposed to readmit the Confederate states as quickly as possible with little concern for the well-being of millions of former slaves freed by the Thirteenth Amendment. Eventually this drew the ire of northern Republicans who thought this would mean the war had been fought in vain. Overriding Johnson’s veto power, the Radical Republican faction of Congress worked to completely overhaul Southern society by making it an interracial democracy. By 1877, however, the waning power of the Radical Republicans, the resistance of Southern whites, and the eventual indifference of Northern whites to the plight of blacks, indicated declining support for Reconstruction. An “official” end to Reconstruction is typically associated with the contested presidential election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, the latter of whom won the popular vote but controversially lost the electoral vote. Eventually a deal was struck between Democrats and Republicans in Congress where Hayes would take the presidency in exchange (among other things) for the removal of all U.S. forces from the South, and with them the protection of Republican state governments and the return of the overtly racist Democratic Party to local and state power.

“Despite all its limitations,” Foner maintains, “Congressional Reconstruction was indeed a radical departure, a stunning and unprecedented experiment in interracial democracy” (122). Radical Reconstruction, that combined effort by white and black Americans in the South to give African-Americans political power and economic security, retreated in significance as most Americans became more concerned with economics than social equality. The end of slavery, it was argued, was all the federal government owed to blacks. Economic concerns, for all races, ought to be left to the market. To this end, the Democratic Party consolidated control by limiting access to political power on strict class-based criteria. “[The] return to [southern] rule by ‘intelligent property-holders’,” Foner writes, “meant the exclusion of many whites from government, while implicitly denying blacks any role in the South’s public affairs except to vote for their social betters” (182). Crippled by the rampant violence perpetrated by white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the once “noble” experiment of Reconstruction morphed into the rigid apartheid of Jim Crow inequality.

Foner argues this process played out against a backdrop of increasingly vocal classical liberals during the 1870s. Classical liberalism was predicated on limited state intervention, since the rampant corruption of the time, especially in the South, was presumed to be the result of excess governmental interference in the marketplace. Without land and labor reform, blacks would be left powerless and dependent, and most southern whites agreed this was “natural.” “Nearly all [these classical liberal] reformers,” Foner observes, “had been early advocates of emancipation and black suffrage…[yet] if all Radical [Republicans] agreed the state should embrace the principle of civil and political equality, liberals increasingly insisted it should do little else” (210).           

The realization of full citizenship and economic access and opportunity was denied to blacks at the close of Reconstruction, and in that respect, Foner concludes, the process can only be judged a failure. It was a failure not because Republicans erroneously or vindictively elevated blacks—and working class whites—in the South (as Dunning had argued), but rather because the counter-revolution of exclusionary “home-rule” by the Democratic Party set into motion decades of racial inequality. Nonetheless there were some aspects of accomplishment. “The tide of change” Foner notes, “rose and then receded, but it left behind an altered landscape. The freedman’s political and civil equality proved transitory, but the autonomous black family and a network of religious and social institutions survived the end of Reconstruction” (254). By giving agency to and centralizing the experiences of blacks alongside whites in the narrative of Reconstruction, Foner’s work yields a comprehensive history of the revolutionary and pivotal time following the Civil War. His work remains critically important because the legacy of Reconstruction, with its central challenge of interracial democracy, still resonates today.

Concerning the Longue Durée, universal history, and “big history”

A

 central concern of historians is what the appropriate time-scale of history ought to be. David Armitage indicates that most historians find themselves working in an interval between five and fifty years. This was not always the case. Prior to the professionalization of the history field in the late nineteenth century, historians freely cast a long net in time to capture the so-called “grand historical narrative,” seeking out broad patterns of history in centuries or even millennia. As professional history became both more specialized and widespread, shrinking periodization became micro-history and case studies until the grand narratives of history—human or otherwise—were relegated to cosmology and anthropology. Armitage argues for a return to the longer view of history: the Longue Durée, or "long term."

In “The Return of the Longue Durée: An Anglo-American Perspective (2015),” Armitage explores why the Longue Durée initially retreated in the historical professional, its current revival, and the questions about how the Longue Durée informs the questions historians ask. The Longue Durée, he argues, “allows [historians] to step outside the confines of national history to ask about the rise of long-term complexes, over many decades, centuries, or even millennia; only by scaling our inquiries over [such] duration can we explain and understand the genesis of contemporary global discontents.” The problem is that historical work has become too dependently tied to “events.” Unlike economists, historians must “untether” themselves from such limitations. Worse still, the professionalization and specialization of history has led to the diminished capacity of historians to have an audience with policy makers as their “grand narrative” ancestors had. The inquiries of micro-history are undoubtedly rich and complex, but without a larger context such questions became “irrelevant” to non-experts. Armitage calls for the return of the Longue Durée to act as an inspiration for historians “to return history to its mission as a social science.”

 

The Observable Universe
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2MASS_LSS_chart-NEW_Nasa.jpg)

           

David Christian, in “The Return of Universal History (2010)” evokes a similar sentiment when he calls for a return to “universal history,” defined “as the attempt to understand the past at all possible scales, up to those of cosmology, and to do so in ways that do justice both to the contingency and specificity of the past and also to the large patterns that help make sense of the details.” He writes that in the nineteenth century, “[historians] lowered their sights, insisting that factual rigor must precede high theory.” The grand narratives of historical scholarship were thus marginalized and the contraction of scope was further encouraged by the development of the nation-state and nationalism, which offered “the discipline of history an artificial sense of wholeness.” The project of uncovering the overlooked, repressed and the many “others” of history is made possible, Christian argues, because of the data now available to draw upon. Lastly, he sees the expansion of universal history as a way to encourage collaboration between historians and scientists, collaborations which have been sorely lacking due to specialization and departmental professionalization. He sees universal history, in its “whole” sense as occupying three interrelated patters: 1) the increasing control of “biosphere” resources by humanity, 2) the slow but accelerating increase in the human population, and 3) after initial massive global migrations, the eventual settling of humans into dense communities. Much like the early universe, early human history started off rather simply and has since been increasingly complex, just as the patterns of stars and galaxies from the early matter of the universe. But humans are unlike every other species on earth for the simple reason that they do not solely adapt over generations, but within generations. It is this “[continuous] adaptation [that] provides the species as a whole with more resources than are needed simply to maintain a demographic steady state.”

Universal history for Christian also has a pedagogical component. He argues that it will impact education in three ways: 1) it will help students grasp the underlying unity of modern knowledge, 2) it should help people to better understand the complex relationship between humanity and the biosphere, and 3) when understood in the scope of universal history, the underlying unity of humanity as a whole can be understood. For both the professional historian and the consumer of history, the return of universal history, he argues, “is the possibility that it may provide the framework within which we can create histories that can generate a sense of human solidarity or global citizenship as powerfully as the great national histories once created multiple national solidarities.”

From the Big Bang to Humanity
From: https://www.commonsense.org/education/website/big-history-project

David Christian, in his 1991 paper, “The Case of “Big History,” argued for pursuing the scholarly inquiries of history to its absolute capacity. Moving past the Longue Durée and universal history, the logical ending point is “big history,” which is “the whole of time.” Historians, he argues, have “failed to find an adequate balance between the opposing demands of detail and generality.” This tension yields histories rich in detail but fragmented and parochial. Nothing short of an anthropological understanding of the human species is required to achieve a full understanding of “modern” humanity. “Big history” is just such an endeavor; the exploration of time-scales even up to and including the scale of the universe itself. The objection to such a pursuit, he notes, is that the scale of such time makes details irrelevant, to which Christian replies that the very notion of what comprises a “detail” is relative. “As one shifts from the smaller to larger scales,” he argues, “the loss of detail is, in any case, balanced by the fact that larger objects come into view, objects so large that they cannot be seen whole from close up.” Furthermore, “big history” by asking such far-ranging questions about the experience not just of humanity but all of existence, may actually even speak to the future, a taboo that Christian sees as limiting historical scholarship. The pursuit of “big history” is nothing short of reconciling the relationships between humanity and the biosphere and determining whether the historical evidence implies an option toward equilibrium or the succumbing to the forces of entropy. 

NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs 2016: Finals Preview

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CeW1bXlWEAEgpc_.jpg

A

nd then there were two. The long slog of the NHL playoffs will culminate in a final series between Sidney Crosby's Pittsburgh Penguins and Joe Pavelski's San Jose Sharks. Sportswriters (this blogger included) tend to write story-lines around things like "redemption" and readers look to those sorts of instructive headlines, especially around championships. Sport seasons, or campaigns as our European brethren prefer, have all the rising and falling actions of any story. Heroes and villains, upsets and fulfillment, selfishness and teamwork all vying for a place at the top at the zero sum game of professional sports. One winner means winner takes all. For all the effort of the second place team, all but the most die hard fans will have forgotten of them in three months at best. So who will raise the Cup this year?

The Stanley Cup 
https://livewithmyself.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/stanley-cup.jpg

San Jose Sharks vs Pittsburgh Penguins

The Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, heralded as "The Next One" since a teen, has not had the number of championships that were expected. While consistently in the top 10 of regular season scoring, the Crosby's Penguins have not been to a Finals in eight years, so this team qualifies for the redemption tale. If Crosby wins again, he will add a second Cup to his gold medals and cement himself as a sure fire first ballot Hall of Famer, as well as putting his nemesis Alexander Ovechkin further back in his rear view mirror. The Penguins will try to use their team speed and power play against the Sharks and if Malkin and Kessel are scoring, San Jose looks to be in trouble. The Sharks are also a perfect candidate for redemption. Year after year writers saw the Sharks as the sweetheart pick to win the Stanley Cup, and year after year they would disappoint and not make the Finals. This year they were not such a pick, and managed to barely make the playoffs finishing third in the Pacific behind their California rivals. While Joe Pavelski is by far their best performing player, the redemption that would befall Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau, both felled captains of San Jose's losing past, would be palpable. Expect fawning stories featuring quotes like "I always believed in myself even when the media did not." And would they be wrong? These are multi-million dollar players, All-stars, and faces of their teams that for whatever reason fell short on the way to the Cup, a position held by many great players over the years. And called "losers," which by all other socio-economic metrics, they most assuredly are not. But in the winner take all redemption story of professional sports, those bitter years of disappointment will give way to a "went out on top" tale to make even the most ardent Sharks hater blush. Joe Pavelski, a goal scoring captain and leader is playing with a Mark Messier like determination. All Marleau and Thornton need to do is follow his lead.

Sharks will win the Stanley Cup in 7 games, giving the republic of California the Stanley Cup three of the last six years.

Next redemption story in the queue: Canadian teams will be shut out of the Cup for twenty three years running. Who will break the mold and redeem the nation who invented the game? 

https://images.totalhockey.com/img.aspx?pic_id=62948&pic_type=5

NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs 2016: Round 3 Preview

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CeW1bXlWEAEgpc_.jpg

A

nd then there were four. The Conference Finals begin tomorrow for the chance to play for the Stanley Cup. What are the story lines heading into the penultimate series of the Stanley Cup Playoffs?

The Stanley Cup 
https://livewithmyself.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/stanley-cup.jpg

Eastern Conference Finals:

Tampa Bay Lightning vs Pittsburgh Penguins

The Lightning have shown incredible resiliency in advancing to their second consecutive Easter Conference Finals. Victor Hedman, the towering Lightning defender, has even garnered some talk for Conn Smythe consideration. If their captain Steven Stamkos, who has yet to play a minute in these playoffs, has sufficiently recovered, that makes Tampa Bay all that more formidable. Their opponent, the Penguins, are finally looking like the team most pundits predicted before the season began. Although Pittsburgh finally got their identity together at the end of the regular season, there has been no lull in the playoffs and they are going in as a four line team rather than having to depend on Crosby or Malkin to carry the offensive load. This series should be excellent entertainment with both sides featuring speed and skill. Stamkos is really the wild card. If he can play and make a difference, especially on the power play, I think Tampa Bay takes the series in 7 games.

San Jose Sharks vs St. Louis Blues

This series has a number of intriguing story lines. First is the breakthrough for a Blues team that has long been a solid regular season team only to founder in the playoffs. Not this year. Led by captain David Backes and goaltender Brian Elliot, the Blues are now thinking seriously about their first Stanley Cup championship. The Sharks of San Jose are all that stand in their way. Just like the Blues, the Sharks have been a steady regular season power in the NHL, only to lose their way year after year in the playoffs. But likely Hall of Famers Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau, alongside dynamic defender Brent Burns have the Sharks thinking about the organizations first Stanley Cup as well. Which team will vanquish their postseason ghosts? This series is very hard to predict, as the teams seemed so balanced and both were comprehensive winners in their respective Game 7s to get here. If the Blues can stay out of the box and keep the lethal San Jose power play at bay, 5 on 5 would be to their advantage, particularly through Vladimir Tarasenko. St. Louis in 7 games.

Drop the puck: this blog-series returns prior to the start of the Stanley Cup Finals! 

https://images.totalhockey.com/img.aspx?pic_id=62948&pic_type=5

Blood-stained Phantoms: What Ambrose Bierce Saw at Shiloh

de Thulstrup, Thure. Battle of Shiloh. (1888).

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1281915

T

his past April 7th marked the 154th anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh, fought during the American Civil War. The spring of 1862 found Union General Ulysses S. Grant and 45,000 troops of the Army of the Tennessee making their way down the Tennessee River following successful victories over Confederate forces at Forts Henry and Donelson earlier in the year. They arrived at Pittsburgh Landing and made their encampment a few miles inland, near Shiloh, named after a church of the same name in the vicinity. Grant’s eventual objective was Corinth, Mississippi, a strategically important railroad junction. It was from Shiloh that they were preparing for their march south to Corinth. Little did they know that 40,000 Confederate troops led by General Albert Sidney Johnston were creeping their way towards the unsuspecting Union troops. The battle began in earnest on Sunday morning as the Union army was caught off guard and the Confederates surged forward, forcing the federal army from their camps in a chaotic retreat toward Pittsburgh Landing.

Battle of Shiloh, April 6, 1862 

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shiloh_Battle_Apr6am-2.png

Despite their hard-won advances into Union territory—where hungry Confederate soldiers dined on federal foodstuffs after looting their tents—the day-long battle had taken its toll on the soldiers, and they were forced to halt their momentum and recuperate. The Confederate Army also suffered an especially damaging blow as its beloved overall battle-field commander, Albert Sidney Johnston, died of a gunshot wound suffered earlier in the day. General P.G.T. Beauregard took over command of southern forces. Meanwhile, the Union forces licked its own wounds and awaited Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio to provide reinforcements. It was the next day where a 20-year-old Union lieutenant Ambrose Bierce, a member of Buell’s Army of the Ohio, arrived on the scene to find the Union army reeling.

Ambrose Bierce, circa 1866(?) 

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Abierce.jpg

In 1881, nineteen years after the battle, Bierce published “What I Saw at Shiloh,” in the San Francisco newspaper, The Wasp. Its first lines declare both his object and limitations, as well as those of the audience: “This is a simple story of a battle; such a tale as may be told by a soldier who is no writer to a reader who is no soldier.”[1]  Despite this caveat, Bierce was by then a well-regarded writer as well as an accomplished soldier. He was especially renowned as a topographer, and his memoirs on Shiloh reflect his careful analysis of the terrain of the battle. But unlike many of his fellow author-veterans, who by the 1870s were publishing their purportedly heroic exploits from the war, Bierce repeatedly sought to puncture the myth of war as noble, gallant, or heroic. Many of his short stories were set against the backdrop of the Civil War, where he frequently explored the disconnect, madness, and horror experienced by individual soldiers. In the case of “What I Saw at Shiloh,” we have a rare example of a non-fictional treatment of his war experience, very likely published as a corrective to his more glory-seeking contemporaries.

Shiloh National Military Park 

Source: https://www.tnvacation.com/sites/default/files/styles/slider_image_large/public/vendor/images/shiloh-national-military-park_media_1769_3.jpg

Bierce describes looking upon the scene at Shiloh early on the morning of April 7th: “Presently the flag hanging limp and lifeless at headquarters was seen to lift itself spiritedly from the staff. At the same instant was heard a dull, distant sound like the heavy breathing of some great animal below the horizon. The flag had lifted its head to listen.” However, there is no alluring metaphor or sentiment to cloak what Bierce and his regiment witnessed as it passed through where the Union army had retreated. Bierce recalled that:  

[Grant’s men] were mostly unarmed; many were wounded; some dead…Not one of them knew where his regiment was, nor if he had a regiment. Many had not. These men were defeated, beaten, cowed. They were deaf to duty and dead to shame. A more demented crew never drifted to the rear of broken battalions. They would have stood in their tracks and been shot down to a man by a provost-marshal's guard, but they could not have been urged up that bank. An army's bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching. 

Bierce also takes a moment to observe the juxtaposition of Shiloh Church: “The fact of a Christian church…giving name to a wholesale cutting of Christian throats by Christian hands need not be dwelt on here; the frequency of its recurrence in the history of our species has somewhat abated the moral interest that would otherwise attach to it.” It was in this same spirit of cynicism that Bierce would relate the gore—rather than the glory—that the battlefield rendered. Upon viewing a wounded Union soldier, Bierce reported on the scene with a brutal honesty that was jarringly un-Victorian: “A bullet had clipped a groove in [the soldier’s] skull, above the temple; from this the brain protruded in bosses, dropping off in flakes and strings. I had not previously known one could get on, even in this unsatisfactory fashion, with so little brain.” Bierce’s black humor is what gave him notoriety and success as a journalist, but this was not the fashion in which most veterans chose to publicly recount the suffering of their fellow soldiers. 

Tennessee War Memorial at Shiloh National Park
Source: http://www.civilwar.org/photos/galleries/shiloh/tennessee-monument-at-jones.jpg

The Union Army by the end of the following day had taken back Grant’s original camp position, driving the Confederate Army from the field, where it retreated to Corinth. Much like the Confederates the day before, the Union army was unable to follow up on its victory due to the high cost paid on the field. In these two days of battle, there were an unheard of 24,000 casualties, at the time the most in American history, only to be eclipsed several times in other battles as the war dragged on. Despite these horrific numbers, the grim carnage of death was often subdued or omitted entirely in memoirs of the war, which instead tended to highlight the heroism and valor demonstrated by soldiers of both armies for the all-American goal of “freedom.” This played into a larger spirit of reconciliation between white Americans, especially after the end of Reconstruction in the South. Bierce had no qualms breaking from that convention in relating the gruesome nature of battle without the pretense of justification or rationalization. As he surveyed the aftermath of the crimson landscape of Shiloh, he depicted this grisly scene: “[The soldiers’] faces were bloated and black or yellow and shrunken. The contraction of muscles which had given them claws for hands had cursed each countenance with a hideous grin. Faugh! I cannot catalogue the charms of these gallant gentlemen who had got what they enlisted for.” The rage militaire of 1861-1862 found its punctuation at Shiloh. 

But topography, gore, and cynicism were not all that Bierce recalled of his complicated experiences at this battle. In the most tender reflection of “What I Saw at Shiloh,” Bierce laments what a cruel burden of war the survivors had to endure: the obliteration of youth and the gruesome legacy of war. The concluding passage features some of most elegiac prose written about the war: 

O days when all the world was beautiful and strange; when unfamiliar constellations burned in the Southern midnights, and the mocking-bird poured out his heart in the moon-gilded magnolia; when there was something new under a new sun; will your fine, far memories ever cease to lay contrasting pictures athwart the harsher features of this later world, accentuating the ugliness of the longer and tamer life? Is it not strange that the phantoms of a blood-stained period have so airy a grace and look with so tender eyes? - that I recall with difficulty the danger and death and horrors of the time, and without effort all that was gracious and picturesque? Ah, Youth, there is no such wizard as thou! Give me but one touch of thine artist hand upon the dull canvas of the Present; gild for but one moment the drear and somber scenes of to-day, and I will willingly surrender another life than the one that I should have thrown away at Shiloh. 

Without illusion to the war’s causes or consequences, and without deference to honor, valor, or freedom, lies a simple story of a battle told by a soldier. That soldier became a writer who helped contextualize for his readers what was won and lost by one man at Shiloh in the spring of 1862.

_____________________________

[1] Bierce, Ambrose. “What I Saw at Shiloh.” The Wasp [San Francisco, CA] December 1881. Print. Retrieved from: http://www.classicreader.com/book/1165/1/ Web. 2 May 2016. 

NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs 2016: Round 2 Preview

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CeW1bXlWEAEgpc_.jpg

D

ue to a scheduling quirk,  the 2016 NHL Playoffs for Round 1 ends tonight, the same night Round 2 begins. Sixteen teams will be reduced to eight (pending the Game 7 match-up tonight between Anaheim and Nashville). Which teams will make it to the Conference Finals?

The Stanley Cup 
https://livewithmyself.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/stanley-cup.jpg

Eastern Conference Round 2:

Washington Capitals vs Pittsburgh Penguins

This is an exciting match-up for story lines as Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin, the respective captains of the Penguins and Capitals, have long been compared to each other. While Ovechkin has been proven to be the greater pure goal scorer, Crosby has a Cup championship and a gold medal, while the Great 8's NHL playoff career has fizzled in the past. Of course this second round match-up is more than just two players, but about two teams. The Penguins dispatched the Rangers in Round 1 with relative ease, including outscoring the Rangers 14-4 in the last 3 games of the series. Pittsburgh's dynamic offense will be a handful for the Capitals. Washington beat an over-matched but spirited Flyer team 4 games to 2 in the first round, but mostly by defense. One presumes that the loaded Caps offense will need to be less profligate to beat the Penguins. I still see the Caps as the favorite here, although this series seems primed for 7 games. Caps in seven, Holtby as series MVP.

Tampa Bay Lightning vs New York Islanders

The Lightning showed a great deal of moxie and pride in beating the Detroit Redwings 4 games to 1, without their All-star captain Steven Stamkos. Most of their lineup also has playoff experience from losing the Cup only just last year to the now eliminated Chicago Blackhawks. The Islanders are an easy team for a neutral to root form having won their first playoff series since 1993 in beating another upstart team, the Florida Panthers. Islander goal-tending and defense and timely scoring, especially from their captain John Tavares, will be a challenge for the Lightning. Who knows how far the Islanders can ride their storybook post season? I see these teams as evenly matched and see another 7 game series, with the Islanders taking Game 7 in Cinderella fashion. 

Western Conference Round 2:

Dallas Stars vs St. Louis Blues

The St. Louis Blues, long a strong regular season team that wilted in the playoffs, finally shed some of that criticism by ousting the defending Cup Champions, the Chicago Blackhawks, in a thrilling seven game series. The Blues have an array of talent in depth, but will it be enough to keep up with the high scoring offense of the Dallas Stars, who defeated an over-matched but prideful Minnesota Wild squad in 6 games? This despite the Wild's nearly heroic comeback in Game 6. Even without Star forward Tyler Seguin, Dallas top-ranked regular season offense shows no signs of abating. Will the Blues be able to continue to silence critics with another round of playoff success? Or can Star's captain Jaime Benn and crew relegate the Blues to another playoff flame-out?  I think the intense series with Chicago may have taken something out of St. Louis and a rested Stars team should win this series in 6 games.

Nashville Predators* vs San Jose Sharks

The one wild card situation is who the Sharks will be playing. The Sharks had a nearly perfect opening round series against a seemingly gassed Kings team, which likely went a long way to put their 2014 playoff implosion in the distant past. Shark's captain Joe Pavelski continues to show his leadership alongside a Shark's power play unit that is lethal. As for the opponent in Round 2, the Ducks would seem like the favorite hosting Game 7, but their last three Game 7's have also been in the Honda Center, all being losses. Ducks leaders Getzlaf, Perry, and Kesler have a lot of pressure to win this match-up, while the Predators, having never been in a Game 7 in their brief organizational history, should be playing loose. I think the Ducks skill finally breaks their recent spate of Game 7 losses and will see the Ducks host the Sharks in Round 2, which should be a hard-hitting series, going 7 games, also to the Ducks, having home ice for the last game.

*Edit: The Predators have held on for a 2-1 victory in Game 7 over Anaheim, extending the Ducks' Game 7 misery another season. Now that the Predators play the Sharks, I will make the alteration to the previous prediction that the Preds will win the series oer the Sharks in 7 games, based off Pekke Rinne looking locked in and Nashville getting uncannily timely, if limited offense.

Drop the puck: this blog-series returns prior to the start of Round 3. 

https://images.totalhockey.com/img.aspx?pic_id=62948&pic_type=5

NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs 2016: Round 1 Preview

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CeW1bXlWEAEgpc_.jpg

Another entertaining NHL regular season came to a close on April 10th and hockey fans everywhere—and especially those whose favorite team qualified for the postseason—are eagerly anticipating the start of the 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs this Wednesday. The Stanley Cup, a 34 lb. trophy awarded to the tournament champion, is revered among fans and players alike. Professional players make unofficial vows to not even touch it unless they win it. 

The Stanley Cup 
https://livewithmyself.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/stanley-cup.jpg

As a quick refresher, the NHL regular season is played by thirty teams in two conferences over an eighty-two game regular season. The highest ranking sixteen teams—eight representing each geographic conference—qualify for the playoff tournament and a chance hoist Lord Stanley’s famous silver and nickel alloy trophy. The first three rounds determine a conference champion, the fourth round pitting the respective conference champions for the Cup Final series. All rounds follow a best-of-seven game format.

Frederick Arthur Stanley, later Lord Stanley of Preston 

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Stanley,_16th_Earl_of_Derby#Stanley_Cup)

At the beginning of each playoff round, I will predict a winner of each series and provide some brief commentary on what to expect from each team. Let’s start with the match-ups in the Eastern Conference:

Washington Capitals vs Philadelphia Flyers

The Capitals enter the playoffs as the President's Trophy winners having been the best team in the NHL during the regular season. The Capitals boast Alex Ovechkin, the league leader in goals, alongside a formidable offense that includes Evgeny Kusnetsov, Niklas Backstrom, T.J. Oshie, Jason Chimera, and three-time Cup winner Justin Williams. In front of the net the Caps will start Braden Holtby, who tied Martin Brodeur’s regular season record for goalie wins with 48. The Flyers, who struggled over the course of the regular season but played well enough in the final weeks to qualify, feature Claude Giroux, Brayden Schenn, Jakub Voracek, and Wayne Simmonds. The Flyers will look to unsettle the offensive minded Caps with physical play, but they will not have the depth or skill to slow the Capitals. Washington in 5 games. 

Tampa Bay Lightning vs Detroit Redwings

This series is notable as much for who is in as who is out. The Lighting will be missing leaders Tyler Johnson and Stephen Stamkos which puts amazing pressure on their lineup, or perhaps opens the door for a role player to step up in the intense playoff lime-light. Ben Bishop, the 6’ 7” Tampa Bay goalie, will need to play at an All Star level. The Red Wings, seemingly an aging team that was destined to miss the playoffs for the first time in twenty-five years, silenced critics and made the post-season, although as a lower seed. With former Cup winners Pavel Daytsyuk—in possibly his last season in the NHL—and Henrik Zetterberg, the Wings can draw on their wealth of leadership and experience. The big question is can Detroit's rookie sensation Dylan Larkin continue his charmed All Star campaign into the post-season? This is a tough series to call, but I am going with the experience of the Wings and the injuries of the Bolts resulting in Detroit winning in 6 games.

Florida Panthers vs New York Islanders

The Panthers are surely the surprise of the NHL’s regular season. Led by the ageless wonder Jaromir Jagr, a young offensive core of Jonathan Huberdeau and Alexander Barkov, and sure fire Hall of Fame goalie Roberto Luongo, the Panthers have re-established themselves in the NHL elite. The Islanders, playing their first season in Brooklyn (still on Long Island) are led by the trio of John Tavares, Kyle Okposo, and Frans Nielsen. The Islanders will get after you with arguably the most physical 4th line in the NHL featuring league hits leader Matt Martin and super pest Cal Clutterbuck. Unfortunately, their starting goalie Jaroslav Halak is injured. The Panthers, who have played solid two-way hockey all year should dispatch the Islanders in 5 games. 

Pittsburgh Penguins vs New York Rangers

The Pittsburgh Penguins, despite their expensive acquisition of mercurial winger Phil Kessel in the off-season, fizzled through most of the 2016 campaign. However, despite missing an injured Evgeni Malkin for the last part of the season, the Penguins come roaring into the playoffs as the NHL’s hottest team. The Rangers feature a long list of playoff tested skaters with All Star pedigrees, led by all world goalie Henrik Lundquist. Missing heart and soul captain Ryan McDonagh is going to hurt the Rangers though. Does mid-season trade acquisition Eric Staal have enough left in the tank to win another Cup? Will Rick Nash earn his hefty paycheck with a signature performance against the Penguins? I say no. The Penguins, led by captain Sidney Crosby, are riding high even with significant injuries and should defeat the Rangers team in an entertaining 7 games, if only because Lundquist steals a game or two.

And now the match-ups in the Western Conference:

Dallas Stars vs Minnesota Wild

Dallas is the first seed in the Western Conference and boasts considerable offensive firepower, led by captain Jaime Benn, Jason Spezza, and offensive-minded defenseman John Klingburg. Second leading scorer on the club, Tyler Seguin, is currently injured, but might be back in time for a second round, should Dallas get there. The Star's offensive juggernaut is ranked first in goals per game and fourth in power play, which will seal the Wild’s doom. The Wild, despite high priced stars like Ryan Suter and Zach Parise, are simply out of their depth against the Stars. With all due respect to the Wild for making the playoffs, I don’t see the Stars losing a game in this series. Only round one sweep goes to Dallas, 4 games to nil.

St. Louis Blues vs Chicago Blackhawks

The Blues and Blackhawks feature two of the best teams in the league facing off in the first round. The Blues are led by goal scoring virtuoso Vladimir Tarasenko, Paul Stastny, Alexander Steen, and captain David Backes. Backes suffered an injury at the end of the season, but claims he is ready for the Blackhawks. They will need him, since the Blackhawks are the defending Cup champions, and are led by NHL scoring leader (the first time for an American born player) Patrick Kane, dynamic rookie Artemi Panarin, and always dependable, “Captain Serious” Jonathan Toews. They are however without standout defenseman Duncan Keith for Game 1, due to a suspension late in the regular season. With all the talent the Blues can muster, the Blackhawks will be pushed to Game 7, which will be in St. Louis. Almost a toss-up, but somehow Toews and Kane will find a way, as they’ve done through three Stanley Cup campaigns. Hawks in 7 games over the Blues.

Anaheim Ducks vs Nashville Predators

The Anaheim Ducks stumbled out of the blocks this season but have been the strongest team in the NHL since Christmas. With the archival Kings losing at home 4-3 in overtime against the Winnipeg Jets in their finale, the Ducks seized the opportunity to win the Pacific Division for the fourth consecutive year by winning a makeup game over the Capitals. With the best special team play in the league, ranking first in penalty kill and power play (a feat last achieved by the 1983 Islanders), the Ducks are the clear favorite in this series. Led by longtime Team Canada veterans Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf, alongside gritty two-way center Ryan Kesler, the Ducks are primed for a long playoff run. The Predators, led by elite defensemen Shea Weber and Roman Josi and forwards Filip Forsberg and James Neal, will not go quietly, but can’t match the depth of the Ducks. Pekka Rinne, the Predator’s world class goalie, has the talent to win a game on his own, but it won’t be enough. Ducks in 6 games.

Los Angeles Kings vs San Jose Sharks

Last—but not least—we come to the Kings and Sharks. Full disclosure: I am a dyed-in-the-wool Kings fan since 1988, the year the Great One himself was traded to Los Angeles. That being said, I am duty bound to call the series as objectively as I can. The Kings will in 6 games. I’ll explain why. The Sharks, who had a quietly strong regular season, feature a host of gifted forwards in Joe Thornton, Joe Pavelski, Patrick Marleau, Tomas Hertl, as well as All Star defenseman Brent “Chewbacca” Burns. Not to be forgotten, the last time these teams matched up, in 2014, the Sharks held a seemingly insurmountable three games to zero lead, but collapsed over the final four games in one of most epic implosions in NHL playoff history. The Sharks and their raucous fans are eager to avenge that heartbreaking loss. While I expect this series to be the most physical of all the first round match-ups, I believe the Kings' combination of centers Anze Kopitar and Jeff Carter are going to ultimately control puck possession in this series, which will be critical. And while I expect each game to be close, with at least two overtime games in the series, I predict the Kings' veteran goaltender Jonathan Quick will provide the “difference maker" saves and carry the Kings to a first round victory in 6 bruising games.

Drop the puck: I'll be back to update this blog-series before the start of Round 2. 

https://images.totalhockey.com/img.aspx?pic_id=62948&pic_type=5