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Portsmouth Naval Shipyard

Fitz John Porter Takes the Fall for the Battle of Bull Run

Tucked away in Haven Park in Portsmouth, N.H., there is an impressive equestrian statue of Fitz John Porter. He wears his Union Army uniform atop his horse, just as he would have appeared in battle. Nothing unusual about the statue, except it’s rare to create a monument to someone stripped of command and cashiered from the Army in disgrace.

Fitz John Porter (Library of Congress)

The story of Fitz John Porter’s military career has less to do with battlefield glory and far more with his battle for redemption.

Porter was born into a military family. His cousin was naval hero Adm. David Farragut, who coined the phrase “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” His father commanded the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Fitz John Porter, however, chose to enter the Army. Trained at West Point, he served in the Western territories, winning a brevet rank for bravery during the Mexican War.

Then the Civil War broke out. At age 40 he received a promotion to major general in charge of the Union Army’s 5th Army Corps.

In 1862 with a newly minted command, Porter allied himself with Gen. George McClellan. McClellan would rise to the rank of commanding general of the United States Army, the same position held by George Washington during the American Revolution. Later in the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant would rise to that role, with more success than McClellan.

But in 1862, the Union Army was run by men of strong personality, but limited experience. Those included Gen. John Pope, a favorite of President Lincoln. Porter and many of Pope’s critics considered Pope arrogant and stupid.

Fitz John Porter at Bull Run

Fitz John Porter (seated in chair). Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

At the second Battle of Bull Run on Aug. 29-30, the confederates routed Pope’s army in Manassas, Va., just outside of Washington, D.C. History has long concluded that Pope was over-matched in the battle. He didn’t know his enemy’s position and misinterpreted their actions and intentions throughout the fighting. But what he lacked in intelligence, he more than made up for in bluster and bravado.

Pope blamed Porter for the defeat. Had Porter responded in a timely manner to his orders, the battle would have gone differently, he charged. And Pope characterized Porter’s actions as insubordinate and cowardly.

Pope, a Republican, had allies within the Lincoln Administration. Porter, as a Democrat, made a perfect scapegoat for Pope’s failings.

In January, 1863, a court martial panel convicted Porter of disobeying an order and misbehavior in the face of an enemy — essentially cowardice. He was stripped of his command and cashiered, as humiliating a way to end a military career as there is.

Pope soon would drift downward in the ranks of the military as other generals rose to prominence and the Civil War raged on.

Porter, meanwhile, returned abruptly to civilian life. But he and his many friends refused to let the decision against him stand. A seesaw battle to clear his name then followed.

The Second Battle of Bull Run, Fought August 29, 1862

Porter personally mapped the entire Manassas battlefield to illustrate his case. President Rutherford Hayes then appointed the Schofield Commission to review the court martial of Fitz John Porter.

Exoneration at Last

In 1879 the Schofield Commission found that Pope had issued contradictory orders in the heat of battle. Unable to carry out two conflicting orders at the same time, Porter had sought clarity. And he didn’t delay because of cowardice, but rather because he, Porter, had a clearer understanding of the enemy’s position than Pope.

Rather than insubordination, the commission declared that Porter’s actions had actually minimized the Union Army loss at Bull Run. It placed responsibility for the loss squarely on Pope.

Even Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet contributed to Porter’s defense. Yet Hayes lacked the political support to pardon Porter. Then James Garfield succeeded Hayes as president. Garfield had served on the panel of judges that convicted Porter of wrongdoing. But when Garfield was assassinated and Chester Arthur assumed the presidency, Porter finally had an ally.

Statue of Fitz John Porter in Haven Park

In 1882 Arthur commuted Porter’s sentence, which restored his rights to citizenship and his right to hold office. And finally, in 1886, President Grover Cleveland signed a bill passed by Congress that restored 64-year-old Fitz John Porter to the position of colonel in the U.S. Army. Two days later, Porter resigned his position with the Army, vindicated at last.

Porter died in 1901 after an active civilian career in mining and construction. He also served as New York police commissioner, fire commissioner and public works commissioner. In 1906, the statue to his memory was dedicated in Portsmouth, paid for by his longtime friend R.H. Hadley.

Image of Fitz John Porter statue: By C. Carr, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49209431

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like Maine’s Elijah Lovejoy: The First Casualty of the Civil War.

This story was updated in 2022.

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6 Places That Used To Be Part of a Different State

For centuries, New England’s borders were anything but stable, and New Englanders didn’t agree on what they were. Maine was once part of Massachusetts, New Haven and Plymouth were separate colonies and Vermont belonged to New Hampshire – or was it New York? At least six places – cities, towns and parts of towns – used to belong to a different state until a border dispute was settled.

Of course all of Maine once belonged to Massachusetts, but that’s a separate story.

Here then, are six places that used to be part of a different state. Or so it was claimed.

Enfield and Suffield, Ct.

The Southwick Jog

Enfield and Suffield — two towns in Connecticut — began their American history as part of Massachusetts.

The two towns’ transition from Massachusetts to Connecticut took 162 years to fully accomplish.

The confusion about which state owned the towns dates back to 1642. With Connecticut seeking a charter from the King of England, Massachusetts officials decided it would be wise to survey the southern border of their territory.

To carry out the assignment, Massachusetts hired two English surveyors — Solomon Saffery and Nathaniel Woodward.

The two men had determined the border’s location by using the most southerly point of the Charles River for reference. From there, they established a point from which they could draw a line directly westward. But when they drew the line, the two surveyors actually placed one end of the line at the wrong location. The result was a diagonal line that extended some seven miles below where Massachusetts’ border was supposed to end.

This mistake set off the 162 years of fighting. Rightly or wrongly, people have pilloried Saffery and Woodward over the years. Some historians had said the pair were drunks, and that explained the mistake. Others have said they were unqualified — that they were sailors, not surveyors (though Woodward, at least, had a track record as a surveyor).

More charitable historians have suggested the instruments available to surveyors at the time were not the most reliable. Further, they note, Saffery and Woodward took a shortcut to their surveying — extrapolating from mathematical calculations rather than walking the land. They had to, in part, because they worked on land the Indians considered to be theirs.

Back and Forth to a Different State

Regardless, at first Massachusetts had the upper hand in the debate (Connecticut didn’t even have a charter). However, Massachusetts had one difficulty in maintaining its claim: it was clearly wrong. Every time surveyors from both Massachusetts and Connecticut investigated, they concurred Saffery and Woodward got it wrong in 1642.

In 1713, the two colonies got together and reached an agreement. Though the 1642 line was wrong, they both agreed to accept it with regard to the towns of Suffield, Enfield and the newer town of Woodstock. The towns would stay in Massachusetts. In return Connecticut would receive unsettled land in Massachusetts as payment.

A stake marks the southernmost point in the “Southwick jog” of the Massachusetts-Connecticut boundary. Seen from East Street in Granby, Conn.

The 1713 compromise satisfied everyone but the people who lived in the disputed towns. They still wanted to be part of Connecticut — probably because Connecticut had lower taxes and a more progressive government. In 1749, the disputed towns declared themselves part of Connecticut. This later prompted residents of Southwick, now bounded on three sides by Connecticut, to petition to join Connecticut, too.

This eroding away of Massachusetts was too much for its officials to accept. But negotiations had to be put on hold while the American Revolution was decided. Finally, in 1804 representatives from the two states got together and agreed that Southwick would stay in Massachusetts. The others would stay in Connecticut. The result was a small, square cutout in the border known to this day as the Southwick Jog. In Southwick today you can stand at the corner of Two States Road and Two States Avenue.

Seavey’s Island, Maine

Seavey’s Island

When Maine became a state in 1820, her 95,640 people lived in 232 cities and towns that had already been incorporated by Massachusetts.

Maine’s border disputes with Canada erupted in 1838 with the bloodless and often comical Aroostook War. The boundaries were famously settled by Daniel Webster.

But it was New Hampshire that caused the most recent border dispute.

The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, created in 1800, lies in the middle of the Piscataqua River between Portsmouth, N.H., and Kittery, Maine. It was cobbled together over the years from five islands, now called Seavey’s Island.

The federal government owns the island, and for decades the U.S. Navy viewed it as part of New Hampshire – hence the name, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

Different State

Shipyard workers come from New Hampshire, which doesn’t have an income tax, and from Maine, which does. New Hampshire shipyard workers had to pay Maine income tax because Maine claimed Seavey’s Island.

In 2001, New Hampshire went to the U.S. Supreme Court and tried to get Seavey’s Island back.

New Hampshire claimed it owned the Piscataqua River to the Maine shoreline. Maine claimed the boundary between the two states ran down the middle of the river.

Unfortunately for New Hampshire, it had agreed in a 1977 lawsuit over fishing rights that the border ran between the middle of the river.

Maine got Seavey’s Island.

Fall River, Mass.

Fall River. The pink section at the bottom was once Tiverton.

Fall River started out as a rural outpost of the Plymouth Colony. In 1694, its southern neighbor Tiverton was incorporated as part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, which by then had merged with Plymouth. In 1746, Tiverton was annexed to Rhode Island colony by Royal Decree. (So were Little Compton, Barrington, Bristol and Cumberland.)

In 1856, Tiverton decided to spin off its northern industrial section. It was called Fall River – Rhode Island. Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court moved the state boundary to create one Massachusetts city of Fall River.

Bellows Falls, N.H.

The International Paper Co. in Bellows Falls, Vt., starred in the final chapter of the border wars between New Hampshire and Vermont in 1934. These disputes had gone on for hundreds of years, predating Vermont’s creation as a state.

In the 1600s, governors of both New York and New Hampshire were merrily giving away sections of Vermont to their friends. The King of England intervened in 1624. He established the New Hampshire border as the western edge of the Connecticut River. This border was largely accepted, though a group of dissidents in New Hampshire decided to secede in the 1770s. In 1778, the 22 New Hampshire towns from Chester to Haverhill declared themselves part of the newly proclaimed Republic of Vermont (after toying with and rejecting the idea of creating a new state altogether called New Connecticut).

New Hampshire took the news badly. It threatened to withdraw support for the American Revolution and to send 1,000 troops into Vermont to restore its borders. Even George Washington had to get involved in whipping the towns back into line. Under pressure from the Continental Congress, Vermont announced it was rejecting the towns’ bid to secede and returning them to New Hampshire.

Bellows Falls at high flow.

When Vermont was granted admission to the union as a state, one condition was that it renounce all claims to any lands to the east of the western edge of the Connecticut River as measured at low water. That settled the matter for more than 100 years, but the Vermonters would once again challenge New Hampshire.

Power struggle

From 1909 on, New Hampshire towns tried to assess taxes on power plants, canals and the International Paper Company’s mill at Bellows Falls in Vermont. The logic was this: the mill was powered by water in the river and, to get access to that water, it had to extend part of its plant beyond the low-water mark and into the middle of the river. Hence the subject properties were in New Hampshire. Vermont sued. The correct location of the border, it now asserted, was the center of the river.

As the dispute dragged on, some novel solutions were proposed – including diverting the Connecticut River altogether to move the border with it.

But swift and steady are the wheels of justice. Well, steady at least. In 1934, the U.S. Supreme Court finally settled the matter, granting New Hampshire ownership of the entire river to the western low water mark. By that time, International Paper Co. had abandoned its Vermont plant, for unrelated reasons, and the Bellows Falls economy was in a tailspin.

Pawtucket, R.I.

Fall River’s neighbor Pawtucket, R.I., comes from the Algonquin name ‘River Fall.’ And when the U.S. Supreme Court in 1861 gave Fall River, R.I., to Massachusetts, it gave Pawtucket, Mass., to Rhode Island as a consolation prize.

The original Pawtucket actually consisted of several towns. Part of it was known as Rehoboth, east of the Blackstone River. Rehoboth was part of Plymouth Colony. West of the Blackstone River a thriving industrial town (thanks to Sam Slater) was part of North Providence.

In 1828, Massachusetts carved out part of Rehoboth and called it Pawtucket, Mass. Pawtucket, Rhode Islanders were not happy.

After the Supreme Court gave Pawtucket, Mass., to Rhode Island, the North Providence land west of the Blackstone River went to Pawtucket. The two towns – East Pawtucket and West Pawtucket — then incorporated as the city of Pawtucket.

A Different State 4X

Windham County, Vt. Vernon is circled in red.

Vernon, Vt., received a charter as Northfield in 1672 as part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. New Hampshire Gov. Benning Wentworth, who grabbed much of Vermont for his own state, gave part of Vernon to another town he chartered, Hinsdale.

By 1779, four states claimed Vernon (then Hinsdale) due to bad surveying and squabbling over ownership: New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Vernon has successively had the names Northfield in Hampshire County, Mass.; Hinsdale in Cheshire County, N.H.; Hinsdale in Cumberland County, N.Y.; and Hinsdale in Windham County, Vt.

But the Hinsdale in Windham County, Vt., had a problem On the other side of the Connecticut River sat a Hinsdale, N.H. The Vermonters wanted their own identity and voted in 1802 to change the name to Vernon. They supposedly chose it after President George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon.

This story about places that belonged to a different state was updated in 2022.

Image: Southwick Job By Dynzmoar – This file was derived from: Southwick-stake.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31670390

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The Sensational Surrender of Four Nazi U-boats at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard

On May 15, 1945, onlookers tried to glimpse the first of four Nazi U-boats towed up the Piscataqua River to surrender at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. The news media then went into a feeding frenzy.

U-234 surrendering to the USS Sutton.

Germany had surrendered to the Allies on May 7, 1945, bringing World War II closer to an end.

The excitement over the tangible evidence of U.S. victory increased as three more Nazi U-boats followed over the next five days. The shipyard then studied the technologically advanced Nazi subs and their cargo.

The Nazi U-boats

The U-boats, sophisticated and much-feared maritime predators, traveled together in wolf packs to sink their targets. They attacked commercial shipping in order to starve the Allies of supplies. At first they had remarkable success, sinking about 3,000 vessels, mostly merchant ships. They also killed more than 5,000 seamen and passengers.

More people died in attacks by Nazi U-boats than at Pearl Harbor.

“The only thing that really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril,” wrote British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Eventually the U-boat menace subsided by 1942 when the U.S. entered the war and developed effective anti-submarine measures. But their fearful reputation persisted, contributing to the drama on the Piscataqua River in May 1945.

One of the feared Nazi U-boats by Ferrer Dalmau

Fangs Yanked Out

The 245-foot U-805 was the first to arrive. She had surrendered in the North Atlantic and was towed into Portsmouth Harbor. Green dye marked the spot for the rendezvous with a tugboat carrying Navy officials and news reporters.

Three ‘surly, expressionless’ German officers appeared on board. They officially surrendered at 4:25 p.m. at the mouth of the harbor. The submarine was then taken to the shipyard for publicity photos. One caption read, “Its fangs yanked out, this prize U-boat will prey no more upon Allied shipping in the Atlantic.”

A bus took the prisoners to Portsmouth Naval Prison, commonly known as The Castle, where Office of Naval Intelligence interpreters interrogated them. They wanted technical details about jet aircraft, ballistic missile, guided bomb and nuclear weapons technology.

WHEB-AM reporter Charlie Gray scored an interview with a captain of one of the U-boats. He described Lt. Albert Finster as a ‘typical dyed-in-the-wool Nazi.’ Finster’s interview caused a stir because he blamed England for the war. He also said Allied bombing ruined his native town of Hamburg.

Two more Nazi U-boats arrived the next day: At 2 pm, U-873 was towed into the harbor, followed by U-1228. That night, a wire service report added to the excitement. The USS Sutton captured a U-boat near Newfoundland with three high-ranking German officials and two dead Japanese scientists aboard.

The Biggest Prize

Portsmouth Naval Prison, where prisoners from Nazi U-boats were first taken

On Friday, May 18, the public eagerly awaited the arrival of the fourth and last of the Nazi U-boats. Rumors circulated about its cargo. The submarine was headed to Japan, which was still in the war. Supposedly it carried personnel and materiel to help the Japanese war effort.

U-234 arrived in Portsmouth at 7:30 am on Saturday, May 19, greeted by swarms of journalists. The biggest prize of all the Nazi U-boats, the high-ranking officers aboard made it a major news story.

The submarine carried a disassembled Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter, prototypes, technical descriptions of new weapons and several senior weapons technicians. The two Japanese scientists were not on board. They had committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills, and the Germans buried them at sea.

The U.S. government kept the secret about part of U-234’s cargo: 1,232 lbs. of uranium oxide. Scientists later used it in the Manhattan Project for the Little Boy atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

German General Ulrich Kessler, assigned as the Luftwaffe liaison in Tokyo, made an impression as the stereotypical Nazi general. Tall and formal, he wore white gloves, a long leather greatcoat, polished leather boots and an Iron Cross around his neck. He seemed to enjoy the publicity, noted WHEB’s Gray.

Kessler spoke in fluent English with a British accent. When asked how he felt about surrendering, he said, “I was in the last World War. I’ve been through it before. I’ll probably go through it again.”

The Dark Side of the Story

The Germans complained of their treatment. A subsequent investigation by the U.S. Navy confirmed their abuse. Navy prize crews seized the possessions of the Nazi U-boat crews and saved them as souvenirs. They also distributed them to local boys in small boats as the Nazi U-boats made their way up the Piscataqua. Or they stockpiled them at the prison, where corrections officers looted and sold them.

Among those items taken: pep pills, revolvers, canned goods, parts of German uniforms and decorations. Under the Geneva Convention, the U.S. should have returned the prisoners’ property.

After the crewmen of U-873 were interrogated in Portsmouth, they were then taken to the Charles Street Jail in Boston. There, they awaited transfer to a prisoner-of-war camp in Mississippi. As military officers marched them through the streets in handcuffs, crowds pelted them with garbage and insults.

Their commanding officer, Friedrich Steinhoff, returned to his cell with his face bloody and swollen. An ONI interrogator had ordered a big, strong Marine to beat him. Steinhoff bled to death in his cell, possibly from slashing his wrists with his broken glasses.

Ironically, he had a brother, Ernst Steinhoff, a rocket scientist. Ernst Steinhoff also surrendered and helped the United States with its rocketry program.

Fate of the Nazi U-boats

The U.S. Navy then took U-805 on several ‘Victory Visits’ to ports on the U.S. East Coast before sinking her.

U-1228 was then sunk in 1946, and U-234 was torpedoed off the Cape Cod coast in 1947.

Finally, in 1948, U-873 was scrapped.

With thanks to SeacoastNH.com. This story about the surrender of Nazi U-boats was updated in 2023.

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