Posted on 09/20/2004 7:04:58 AM PDT by olde north church
I keep hearing and for some reason it seems to emanate from the left, is some presidents who served in the military make very poor war presidents, while very good wartime presidents have no military experience. They hold up FDR and Abraham Lincoln as examples of the latter. Well, I'm not positive about Roosevelt, so I won't go any further on him.
On the other hand, I'm quite tired of yelling "The Blackhawk Wars, dammit, the Blackhawk Wars!", to the conceding, typically ineffectual Republican talking head. Abraham Lincoln not only served in the military, he was an officer, a Captain, in the Illinois militia or NATIONAL GUARD!!
Maybe those who complain about the number of vanities on FR should stop and think about the non-news information available here. Maybe it's also time for the Republican talking heads to stop here first thing in the morning for effective information to defeat the DNC shills.
On the muster roll were such names as Obadiah Morgan, Royal Potter, Pleasant Armstrong, Michael Plaster, Isaac Guliher, Robert S. Plunkett, Travice Elmore, Usil Meeker, and Joseph Hoheimer.
Their military unit was officially designated as " Captain Abraham Lincoln's Company of the First Regiment of the Brigade of Mounted Volunteers commanded by Brigadier-General Samuel Whiteside." And though officially they were mounted volunteers, they had no mounts as yet. All were afoot, including Captain Lincoln.
The first military order he gave as captain got the reply, "Go to hell." He knew his company could fight like wildcats but would never understand so-called discipline. Other volunteer companies, also the regular army soldiers and officers, said they were "a hard set of men."
As their captain was drilling them one day with two platoons advancing toward a gate, he couldn't think of the order that would get them endwise, two by two, for passing through the gate. So he commanded, "This company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on the other side of the gate." At Henderson River, with horses swimming the stream, it was a camp rule that no firearms should be discharged within fifty yards of the camp. Somebody shot off a pistol inside the camp; the authorities found it was Captain Lincoln; he was arrested, his sword taken away, and he was held under arrest for one day.
At another time his men opened officers' supplies and found a lot of whisky; on the morning after, the captain and his sergeants had a hard time rousing the men out of their blankets; some were dead drunk, others straggled on the march. A court martial ordered Captain Lincoln to carry a wooden sword two days.
Source: Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years at 155.
This message has been brought to you by Black Hawk Veterans for Truth (www.blackhawkvets.org), a 527 group not affiliated with the Stephen Douglas Campaign Committee (www.douglas1860.org. Honest.
I thought FDR served in the Navy. I know he was Secretary of the Navy, but I thought he also served int he Navy.
He couldn't. He had polio as a child and actually could not walk without assistance.
As he was born in 1882, he would have been 39 in 1921.
Thanks for the correction.
I wasn't sure about FDR so I left him out. I knew T. Roosevelt (the good Roosevelt) was a Secretary of the Navy, a real "prick" in that position. etc, etc,
No problem. :)
He contracted polio as an adult, while he was Secretary of the Navy.
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