Stupid Wars : A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous Revolutions

by Ed Strosser

  But once again the brave Brackenridge stepped into the breach. He was performing a delicate and perilous dance. When Bradford finally got around to ordering the march on Pittsburgh after a day of drunken speeches and a whole lot of riding around firing random shots into the air, Brackenridge recklessly inserted himself at the head of the rebel column. He knew he would be vulnerable to accusations of being a rebel himself but hoped he could defuse the impend­ing bloodshed.

  The Pittsburgh militia played their role perfectly. They marched out and pretended to be on the rebels’ side, then quickly turned around and marched back into Pittsburgh with the rebel army led by Brackenridge. As they passed through, the townspeople served them free, untaxed, whis­key (fully warned that the thirsty rebels were on the way) and gently guided them toward ferries to send them back across the river. They had hit the backwoods army right in their weak spot: free liquor.

  Back in Philadelphia, Hamilton was eager to march. The rebels had proved to be beyond control of the power of his prodigious pen, and now they must finally submit to the sword. The governor of Pennsylvania caused trouble by re­fusing to call out the militia against his own citizens, but this was a trifling inconvenience to Hamilton. He pulled out the Militia Act, found a willing Supreme Court Justice to verify that a rebellion was taking place, without actually conduct­ing an independent investigation, and since Congress was not in session, Hamilton finally had his war.

  Secretary of War Henry Knox dutifully called up the mili­tias on August 7 but suddenly found himself with some land problems in Maine, where he had been speculating. Knox faced an important decision: he could leave office and tend to his personal financial situation, or he could lead a large army in attacking fellow Americans in Pennsylvania. At Hamilton’s urging, Knox begged off and Washington let him go. Casting about for a substitute Hamilton found the perfect candidate, himself. Surprise! Hamilton took the job as acting secretary of war and drew up postdated orders for his very own, brand-new army while Washington attempted one last peace gambit — a presidential commission.

  The commission (including Washington’s soon-to-be land agent in western Pennsylvania) galloped west over the Alleghenies to negotiate with the congress of 226 rebel dele­gates and the hundreds of armed men on August 14 at Parkinson’s Ferry. One sight of the armed gathering con­vinced the commission that their situation was hopeless. They opened negotiations with the rebel leaders and took the hard line Hamilton had laid down, knowing full well that war plans were being drafted back in Philadelphia. They had the rebels up against the wall, although the rebels didn’t real­ize it. The rebels would escape Hamilton’s wrath only if ev­eryone in the region signed an oath of submission to the law, starting with the standing negotiating committee of sixty rebels.

  Brackenridge-the-peacemaker and the other moderate rebels on the committee were eager to cave in to the commis­sion’s demands. They sensed the strength and unalterable determination of the institutional forces gathered by the in­visible hand of Hamilton to crush them all should any seri­ous resistance continue. The moderates tried to convince the radical rebel leaders to yield, but they were as divided and ornery as ever. The cockeyed rebels saw it for what it was, total surrender. Bradford was in no mood to surrender. He was out to conquer.

  At first, the standing rebel committee of sixty voted to not vote, in a classic example of evasive leadership (all votes in the rebellion had usually been open-vote affairs, the better to intimidate any weak links, of course). But the moderates pressed on, determined to make their final stand, and they convinced the radicals to take a secret vote. The stark choice was between signing an oath of submission and facing trea­son charges pressed at the point of a bayonet.

  The vote was 34 to 23 in favor of capitulation. But even one dissenter was too much for Hamilton, who had ordained that only total submission could forestall the invasion. De­spite the charges of imperialism that were already flying from his political foes, who saw this as yet another power-grab­bing attempt by the monarchically minded Hamilton, he ea­gerly pressed on. The army would march. Hamilton would lead.

  On September 30 Washington and Hamilton rode out from Philadelphia in a carriage. Four days later they met up with the army at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where Washington reviewed the troops, gravely nodded his approval, and left them in the all-too-eager hands of Hamilton. Militia from Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey had been added to Pennsylvania militiamen, making a grand total of 13,000 troops. It was an army larger than the American forces at the battle of Yorktown. Hamilton led the northern wing of the army concentrated in eastern Pennsylvania. “Light-Horse” Harry Lee led the southern wing coming up from Maryland. Lee, the father of Robert E., was a stout Federalist and a revolutionary hero from Virginia. He had once lusted after the command of the western army tasked to crush the Native Americans but had been passed over due to his propensity to be an optimistic overreacher, especially in financial matters. He was happy to swing back into the saddle.

  And so was Hamilton, finally in his glory at the head of an army, fighting a war completely of his own making. As secre­tary of war he had ordered the supplies, even down to the details of the uniforms for his troops. He had whipped the eastern populace into a patriotic frenzy, writing under the pseudonym “Tully” in public papers over the summer of 1794 in order to stir patriotism against what he felt was a rebellion — not against the tax but against the entire govern­mental structure he himself had created. Hamilton, the bril­liant young man of the Revolution, only thirty-nine, and a long way from his lowborn roots in the Caribbean, was pre­pared to sacrifice everything to lead this hastily called-up army, including his own life and that of his pregnant wife and seriously ill child.

  LIGHT-HORSE (“LIGHT-WALLET”) HARRY LEE

  When Light-Horse Harry Lee returned from doing his duty leading the troops during the Whiskey Rebellion, he learned he had been relieved of the governorship of Virginia by citizens who viewed his partnership with the Federalist Hamilton in a very different light. Scion of a famous Virginia family, Lee’s revolutionary career never reached the heights of his own ambition, despite a distinguished war record as a leader of his own free-ranging cavalry legion. The Whiskey Rebellion was the beginning of the end for him as the en­suing years saw his encroaching bankruptcy (he was invested in Washington’s ill-fated Potomac Company, and bought some of Washington’s unpromising land as well). In an abortive attempt to defend Federalism on the eve of the war of 1812, he caught a beat­ing by a mob in Baltimore and retired to the Caribbean to nurse his wounds.

  Unfortunately, the army he led was barely an army, deri­sively called the “watermelon army” by its detractors. Once on the march Hamilton was forced to upbraid sentries for their lax behavior and found the general state of the militia­men to be bad enough to cement his opinion that the govern­ment needed a standing army. Even the frenetic Hamilton hadn’t been able to work fast enough to entirely provision the bloated force gathered to crush the rebellion. As the long columns strung out over the Alleghenies in the depths of a cold fall season, the supply situation became a problem, and the hungry soldiers were forced to rob local farms, despite a flogging order for anyone caught stealing laid down by Washington.

  Hamilton, not about to let the bad supply situation slow his march, countermanded Washington’s flogging order and authorized the quartermaster corps to impress whatever supplies the army needed from the local populace, without restitution. The government’s army was legally stealing from the citizens they were supposedly protecting. The New Jersey horse troop was particularly effective, fitted out in glorious uniforms atop big chargers and intimidating the locals.

  The law-abiding citizens of Pennsylvania couldn’t hide from Hamilton’s army, but the rebels could. When Hamilton arrived on the western side of the Alleghenies during the first week of November, there were no rebels to fight. They had simply melted away. There was no rebel army spoiling for a showdown in a field, no revolutionary terror à la France, no p
easant uprisings. Nothing. Many leaders who hadn’t signed the amnesty apparently floated away down the Ohio to escape. Of course, the phantom war didn’t stop young offi­cers of Hamilton’s army from comparing their exploits to Hannibal’s crossing the Alps.

  With no fighting, the army milled aimlessly while Hamil­ton flung himself into action, determined to crush something, anything. Until Hamilton was convinced a citizen had signed the amnesty resolution, he was fair game for arrest. A mid­night sweep of suspects at bayonet point resulted in a raft of indiscriminate arrests where everyone was tossed into make­shift jails to await interrogation. A federal judge had been dragged along to aid the judicial process, but since they were in a war zone, (although there was actually no war) grand juries were conveniently ignored. There were charges of rough treatment and nights spent in freezing barns as sus­pects waited to be interrogated, many of whom Hamilton questioned personally. The master multitasker easily donned the extra role of inquisitor in chief.

  The peacemaker Hugh Brackenridge was put under ex­treme scrutiny due to his position at the head of the rebel march into Pittsburgh. But Brackenridge managed to con­vince Hamilton after two days of desperate pleading that he wasn’t actually a rebel and was released, cleared of all charges. Eventually just about everyone arrested was cleared and released.

  The same governmental momentum that had decreed the useless invasion demanded a show trial back in Philadelphia. On Christmas morning 1794, Hamilton paraded the rebels through the streets of Philadelphia and into jail cells after a long, brutal trudge over the mountains. He prepared cases against twenty prisoners. Twelve cases were finally brought, and two were found guilty. The ever-reticent President Wash­ington then pardoned the pair. It all wrapped up over a year later.

  Federal armed suppression of the rebellion had worked. The rule of law would no longer be widely flouted, at least in Pittsburgh. Taxes and rents would be paid. Land values rose. Absentee landlords had nothing to fear. The whip had been cracked. The federal government was here to stay.

  WHAT HAPPENED AFTER

  When Washington left office in 1797, Hamilton returned to New York to practice law and assume the role of political big shot. In 1801 Thomas Jefferson became ascendant and was elected president, placed there by Hamilton, who chose him over his even-more bitter enemy Aaron Burr, who was relegated to the vice presidency, even in those early days firmly established as a stupid and useless office. Hamilton and Burr worked themselves into a gentlemanly lather and met in 1804 in Weehawken, New Jersey, to settle their differ­ences. Burr shot Hamilton during the duel and the would-be king died a few days later. As a consolation for his early death he got his face on the $10 bill. Jefferson ranked only the ever-elusive $2 bill.

  As the first former president, George Washington retired to make money. Long after his death he got a monument, a university, a city, and a state named after him. Despite that, he could get his face only on the $1 bill, plus the quarter thrown in.

  David Bradford fled into the wilderness to avoid Hamil­ton’s soldiers, floated down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and eventually surfaced in Spanish-controlled Louisiana. In 1799 President John Adams pardoned him for his role in the rebel­lion. In 1959 his house in Pennsylvania was converted into a museum.

  For the most part, the rebels fled Pennsylvania and moved farther out into the frontier to continue making their whis­key, free from government interference. One of the most popular places they landed was Kentucky, turning that state into the whiskey-making center of the United States.

  In one of the most ambitious quick-stepping surges of power in American history, Hamilton relocated the U.S. capital, rejiggered the debt for the federal and state govern­ments, created the country’s first internal tax, raised its first army to quash opposition to his scheme, and invaded Penn­sylvania. All before his fortieth birthday. He achieved a stag­gering number of accomplishments in a short amount of time, but the whiskey tax was not destined to be one of his lasting legacies.

  One of Jefferson’s first acts as president in 1801 was to repeal the whiskey tax.

  FOUR.

  THE WAR OF THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE: 1865

  Some dictators work alone. Others need the love of a good woman to fully ripen their true evil.

  In the nineteenth century, Francisco Solano López, Para­guay’s megalomaniacal, misshapen ruler, provoked a war with the country’s three larger, richer, and more powerful neighbors for no reason other than to gain fame and respect for himself and his mistress. Eliza Lynch, a former Parisian prostitute, was his full partner in a tango of craziness that resulted in Paraguay suffering such a beat-down that 150 years later the country still reels from the pounding it en­dured.

  This loving couple tortured, killed, and robbed the entire population of Paraguay. It’s one of the most twisted love sto­ries of all time.

  THE PLAYERS

  Francisco Solano López — The dictator of Paraguay, he started the war to gain respect and somehow convinced his people to fight until more than half of them were dead.

  Skinny — Compared himself to Napoleon and Alexander the Great. It would have been true if Napoleon and Alexander had been fat, igno­rant failures from obscure countries.

  Props — Started the first telegraph line in South America.

  Pros — On a Grand Tour to Paris he had a private audience with French Emperor Louis Napoleon and Empress Eugénie.

  Cons — When López tried to kiss the empress, she was so dis­gusted she turned away and threw up.

  Eliza Lynch — dedicated mistress to her man and mother of his seven children, she stayed with her beloved dictator to the bitter, bitter, incredibly bitter end.

  Skinny — Parisian prostitute of lowly Irish birth, she slept her way to the middle of Parisian society, snared López, and sailed away to her dream world as the despised mistress of an impoverished and war-wracked South American country.

  Props — Wore a gown to López’s burial. An odd choice, not least of all because she was forced to dig his grave with her own hands.

  Pros — Bounced back well from devastating defeats such as the de­struction of her adopted country due largely to her own efforts.

  Cons — Robbed the country blind and shipped the booty off to her European bank account.

  THE GENERAL SITUATION

  Paraguay is a landlocked, isolated, and widely acknowledged unimportant country — half jungle, half desert, and poor all over. It has always been this way. Its isolation has made it a magnet for foreigners looking to disappear from the beaten track. And its isolation forms perhaps the perfect breeding ground for maniacal and homespun dictators, able to prey on an ignorant and secluded people who are largely unaware that life is not always miserable and filled with swarms of ambitious parasites. They consider their country an island in a sea of land.

  Originally discovered by Portuguese explorers searching for gold, Paraguay was settled in 1537 by a group of Spanish conquistadores under the leadership of Domingo Martínez de Irala, who stopped beside a hill on the Plate River and fought a short battle with a distressed local band of Guarani Indians. With their leader killed, the natives offered the Spanish a small harem of young women as a sign of peace. The Spanish, horny and quite far from home, readily agreed and snuggled down for two decades of baby making with the locals. Irala is now one of the most common surnames in Paraguay.

  The country settled into nearly three centuries of consis­tently minor-league status within the Spanish Empire. It achieved independence in 1811 during South America’s re­volts against Spain. Happy times were short-lived, however; in 1814 the country came under the thumb of the ruthless dictator José Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, known as “The Supreme One.” For the next twenty-six years he closed the borders and had his way with his lonely country; killing per­ceived opponents, seizing church property, dominating all commerce, and treating the people like badly behaved chil­dren. The result was a country filled with politically enfee­bled citizens with little knowledge of th
e outside world. After the death of their dear leader in 1840, the people of the pathological country referred to him as “The Defunct One.”

  He was succeeded by the corpulent Carlos Antonio López in 1840, who added to the miseries of Paraguay by treating the entire country as if it were his own property and bringing into the world his eldest son, Francisco Solano López. De­spite the heavy hand of Antonio, life for the docile popula­tion was generally good. Antonio opened schools, built railroads, made sure everyone had enough to eat, and the country lived in peace.

  To further educate his eldest son, and to recruit foreign talent to work in Paraguay, Antonio López sent Francisco on a whirlwind Grand Tour of Europe in 1853. A secondary goal was to remove his son from Asunción so he would stop raping the virginal daughters of the aristocracy. The trip proved a turning point in South American history as the twenty-six-year-old spent like Michael Jackson on a shop­ping spree at Disneyland. The prizes the obese, epauletted dictator-in-training dragged home included military cos­tumes, seventy pairs of patent leather boots, and an Irish-born prostitute named Eliza.

  While in Paris Solano López met and was instantly smitten by the astounding beauty of Eliza Alicia Lynch, then eighteen and on the prowl for a rich sugar daddy to take her away from her stressful life as a Parisian courtesan. She was a refu­gee from the Irish famine whose family had married her off as a teenager to a French army officer in 1850. After a few years at African army posts, her marriage dissolved, and Lynch made her way to Paris and became one of the city’s leading female companions to the rich. When she heard of the glorious spending by the Paraguayan prince, she arranged to meet him. After a few meetings between the sheets they discussed their future, and he wowed her with stories of ram­pant illiteracy and hungry ringworms in his home country. She was soon pregnant, and Solano López invited her to live with him in Paraguay. They arrived in Asunción in early 1855; the city turned out to welcome their prince home but were left stunned by the sight of the red-haired, blue-eyed, very pregnant Lynch hauling crates of finery bought on shop­ping sprees in Europe with her besotted man.