 In 1987, the Indiana legislature displayed what I consider to be one of the greatest acts of legislative arrogance you can find. The Indiana House of Delegates unanimously approved a bill to change Pi, mathematical Pi 3.1416 to 3.2. The bill was drafted by a guy named E.J. Goodwin based on a new formulation for calculating the area of a circle that he fully admitted to have come to him through supernatural revelation. I'm not exaggerating this, in fact I have a short article on it on Mises.org if you want some more details that I'm going to give you here, but in brief he published a book in 1892 titled Universal Inequality is the Law of All Creation, and in it he claimed quote, the author was supernaturally taught the exact measure of the circle. These revelations were due in fulfillment of scriptural statements and promises, end quote. He actually went so far as to get his formulation copyrighted in eight different countries, one of which was the United States, obviously, which is absurd in itself. Even if he had been right and he did genuinely overturn thousands of years of mathematics, the idea that a mathematical truth could be copyrighted strikes me as quite silly. Should Newton have copyrighted the laws of gravity, right? But even for people who believe that intellectual property needs to be protected, this should be absurd. But the greater absurdity was in the fact that the Indiana legislature voted on a bill that Goodwin himself drafted to change the way the state of Indiana taught mathematics, abandoning traditional geometry in favor of his new formulation of Pi. I won't go into the details of it here. Like I said if you want those you can read the article on Mises.org, but to summarize the bill itself is so mathematically confused that his explanation in section one of the bill suggests that the correct formulation for Pi should be four. So Goodwin isn't even consistent within his own fallacy. But the Indiana House of Delegates unanimously voted to approve this bill, now known as the Indiana Pi Bill. The superintendent of public instruction in the state endorsed it. The state senate was on the brink of approving the bill until finally a Purdue mathematics professor stepped in to explain what was wrong with Goodwin's ideas. And even then it nearly passed. It failed by only one vote. So the Senate tabled the bill and never came back to it. But even though this bill never passed and even though it is nothing compared to the massively destructive laws that have been passed throughout history, the Indiana Pi Bill strikes me as one of the most startling displays of legislative arrogance of all time because the massive support for the bill implicitly rested on the notion that Fiat law law dictated by politicians could overturn scientific law. It would be almost as if legislators thought they could save suicide jumpers by decreeing that gravity should only pull objects downward at a survival rate of acceleration. There was apparently one state senator who said that the legislature did not have the power to declare truth and the bill never did get passed, but the fact that it was unanimously supported in the House and nearly passed in the Senate is still telling. The hubris of politicians is simply unmatched. When the United States Senate formed its joint select committee on the conduct of the war at the end of 1861, a reaction to the fiasco at Balls Bluff that we talked about in the previous two episodes, these politicians showed similar arrogance. They did not try to legislate away the natural laws of science, but they did find in themselves fit to lecture experienced military leaders about their failures on battles in which they took no part. Ultimately, the committee was looking for scapegoats to explain the union failures in the first year of the war, and it evolved into a witch hunt in a smear campaign. I'm Chris Calton, and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. In the last two episodes, we covered the story of the union defeat at Balls Bluff, a small battle that held very little military significance, but Balls Bluff is worth talking about because it would have significant political ramifications in the form of the joint committee on the conduct of the war, which will be the topic of today's episode. The joint committee is often overlooked in the history of the war, but it's important to include. For one thing, it's another example of union politicians getting drunk on power during a moment of crisis, much like the episodes I devoted to the political oppression in northern states carried out predominantly by William Seward. But it also helps us better understand a turning point in the war that is a matter of contention, the role of slavery and emancipation as a war aim. Many members of the joint committee were radical Republicans, these being among the few people who believed in immediate emancipation of the slaves. Public school history seemed to give the impression that emancipation was Lincoln's goal from the very beginning, but no serious historian believes that to be true. As I've already detailed in the length, the only objective at the outset of the war was the preservation of the union, and many compromises were attempted to preserve the union by guaranteeing the protection of slavery where it already existed. For the course of 1862, however, the subject of emancipation started to be more seriously considered, most importantly by Abraham Lincoln. Professional historians note Lincoln's transformation on the matter, but they often treat it as if Lincoln led the way in making emancipation a war aim. Two points of clarification are worth noting on this matter. The first is that, for Lincoln and the vast majority of Northerners, emancipation was never a war aim. That would only be true for a small percentage of abolitionists and radical Republicans. But most people, as support for emancipation grew, saw it as a tool for the war effort. Depriving the southern states of their slaves was a way of crippling their ability to conduct the war as they depended on slave labor not just to support domestic production, but to help build fortifications. And what I'm saying here, contrary to some naysayers, is not a neo-Confederate interpretation of the move toward a policy of emancipation. This is the entire subject of the book The Union War by historian Gary Gallagher, a very well-respected mainstream historian endorsed by all the greats in this field of history. He wrote this book to show that not only was unionism the objective of the war at the outset of the conflict, but that it was the objective of the war throughout the conflict. That never changed. Emancipation of the slaves for the vast majority of Northerners who came to support it was never more than a tool that could be used to help defeat the south and achieve the goal of reunification. However, there were some congressional Republicans, the radicals, who did actually want to see the abolition of slavery as an end in itself, and they believed that unionism was a means to the higher goal of emancipation of the slaves. These Republicans were a small minority in Congress, but the Joint Committee gave a seat to enough of them that they became an influential minority. It is thus in the early hearings by the Joint Committee that we can identify the first concerted political effort to establish a policy of emancipation as part of the war aims, and this movement was not led by Lincoln, but one that he was pulled into by people more radical than himself, so that's part of why this committee deserves its own episode. This was an in session when the Battle of Balls Bluff took place, so Republican congressmen had time to simmer as the reports of the incident spread through the north. The theories explaining the fiasco are best encapsulated by Adam Gorowski, who wrote in his diary, quote, the massacre at Balls Bluff is the work of either treason, or of stupidity, or of cowardice, or most probably all three united, end quote. This would be the theme of the committee hearings, as politicians would accuse military leaders of all three of these qualities. Combined with the failure of Balls Bluff, which many people took as being even worse than the defeat at Bull Run, partially because there were no civilian spectators to blame, Republicans started to become suspicious of Democrats who held a union officer commissions, chief among them being George McClellan, who was already losing face with Congress for his inaction. And the radical Republicans were also upset about Lincoln's decision to remove John Vermont as commander of the Department of the West. Vermont was more anti-slavery than Lincoln, and the radicals wanted to see fewer Democrats in positions of military authority, and more anti-slavery men holding those titles instead. Lincoln wasn't exactly in the good graces of these Republicans at this point either. He was still far too compromising on the issue of slavery, and not just because he overturned Vermont's Emancipation Proclamation in Missouri. When Simon Cameron, Lincoln's Secretary of War, published his annual report for the War Department in November, he advocated the arming of former slaves. Lincoln instructed Cameron to remove this endorsement from the report. The president was not yet ready to let blacks fight, even though other people were already embracing the idea. One man referred to Lincoln's decision to remove Cameron's endorsement of arming former slaves as, quote, another evidence of that weak fascination which has characterized all his actions in this war, end quote. So while Congress was at a session, many Republicans, particularly the radicals, were stewing over these matters. When Congress convened in December of 1861, the mood had shifted significantly from when they'd previously adjourned. Emancipation was now being vocally advocated in several northern newspapers. Again, this was not seen as the moral goal, it was a tool in defeating the South. The Chicago Tribune called for more anti-slavery generals saying they had better track record. Though this early in the war, that really couldn't be established as the only battles that were really anything much more than skirmishes were union defeats. Senator Charles Sumner, one of the most radical anti-slavery politicians, received a letter from a Massachusetts constituent arguing that the opponents of Emancipation were making the war harder to win. Letters like this were not uncommon. And a lot of these congressmen had far more political experience than Lincoln, which factored into their lack of faith in his ability to lead the country, especially during a time of crisis. When Lincoln gained the Republican nomination, he was chosen largely because he was not a radical on slavery and because he had earned some national attention during his debates with Stephen Douglas. He was not selected for his experience or really any perceived merit. And I don't say this is an argument that Lincoln had no abilities as a leader, he obviously was, at the very least, a skilled politician and incredible orator. But just that he was effectively a nobody when he was chosen as the Republican nominee. And his nomination was made based on practical considerations regarding the ability to win the election rather than his perceived abilities to lead the country while in office. So coming into December, several Republican politicians had lost confidence in Lincoln's ability. This was just stewing in the pot. The catalyst for the committee was Ball's Bluff. On December 2, Roscoe Conkling, a New York Republican, introduced a resolution to the House of Representatives to demand information about the disaster at Ball's Bluff from the War Department. Days later, Senator Zachariah Chandler, another of the most radical Republicans, offered a similar resolution, but his would give the Senate the authority to conduct an investigation into the matter itself. Lincoln people started tacking their own interests onto the resolutions. If you remember James Lane from the Kansas episodes in the previous season and the Missouri episodes not too long ago, he was a senator at this point, and he said that they should add an investigation into the Battle of Wilson's Creek to the resolution. But Senator James Grimes from Iowa made the move to turn the resolution into a sweeping investigation of all of the military failures up to that point, chiefly in order to add Bull Run to the list. Not everybody believed that an investigation of Bull Run was necessary, but Grimes pointed out that many people cast to the blame for the battle's outcome at the feet of a handful of congressmen who were spectators at the battle. But the resolution wasn't done escalating. John Sherman, the brother of William Tecumseh, stepped in next and proposed widening the bill so that the committee would investigate any and every aspect of military affairs. Sherman was not a radical Republican, but he was very unhappy with the Lincoln administration and he wanted the committee to be able to inquire into matters such as the removal of John Fremont as commander of the Department of the West, among other things. This then is the committee that was formed on December 10th, 1861. The committee was small, which means that given its broad scope of involvement, the people on the committee had significant levels of political power. The committee consisted of seven members, three senators to be chosen by Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, and four representatives to be chosen by House Speaker Galusha Gros. The senators that Hamlin chose were Benjamin Wade, Zachariah Chandler, and Andrew Johnson. Wade and Chandler were among the most radical anti-slavery senators at the time, but the more compelling reason that the vice president selected them is because Wade and Chandler shared Hamlin's skepticism about Lincoln's abilities as commander-in-chief. The selection of Andrew Johnson is more interesting. He was a Democrat. The committee wanted to look at least somewhat bipartisan, but Johnson actually came from a Confederate state, Tennessee. It was from East Tennessee, which, like Western Virginia, was largely Unionist, so Johnson actually retained his seat in the United States Senate even as his state joined the Confederacy. It seems most likely that he was chosen because of his strong anti-Southern rhetoric, which carried particular weight for a politician from a slave state. The four representatives were John Covey, George Washington Julian, Daniel Gooch, and Moses Fowler O'Dell. Covey became famous for spearheading the investigation into the corrupt Buchanan administration prior to Lincoln's election, which I talked about a little bit in my episode on the election of 1860 if you haven't listened to it. He was also a radical Republican who joined Benjamin Wade in advocating harsh actions against the South. Although it doesn't matter for the time being, it's also interesting to note that in 1868 it would be John Covey who had introduced the resolution to impeach Andrew Johnson, his fellow committee member. George Washington Julian was an abolitionist with Quaker roots. This means that he was actually the most radical person on the committee. Generally, historians classify radicals as people who wanted to end slavery immediately, but only if they used constitutional means to do so, whereas abolitionists wanted to abolish slavery regardless of the constitutionality of the policy. When Lysander Spooner sent a scathing letter to Charles Sumner in 1864, one of the points of criticism against Sumner, who was one of the most well respected opponents of slavery in the country, was that if Sumner genuinely believed that the Constitution supported slavery, as he claimed, then he should not have supported the Constitution as any document that upheld slavery was not worth one drop of blood shed in its defense. The George Washington Julian may not have been quite as radical as Lysander Spooner, few people in world history have been, but he is classified as an abolitionist rather than just a radical Republican, so the distinction between these two groups is worth understanding. Daniel Gooch was not a radical, and he would be one of the committee members to uphold Lincoln's decision to remove Framont, but he was a skilled lawyer and he led many of the interrogations as he was the most adept at slinging tough questions that the people being interviewed. And finally, Moses Fowler O'Dell was the lone Democrat from the House committee members. He was a Douglas Democrat and he was not opposed to slavery, but he was a staunch Unionist and had no compunction about using the force of the military to compel the South to rejoin the Union. So they picked a token Democrat basically from both the Senate and the House. So the seven-man committee was not entirely radical, but more than half of its members were either radical Republicans or an outright abolitionist, meaning that the minority voice of the radicals in Congress became a lot more influential. Benjamin Wade was also selected as the chair of the committee, put in control over the committee hearings in the hands of one of the radicals. It is for this reason that the committee was able to start pushing emancipation as a war aim well ahead of Abraham Lincoln. And let me add, as if it even needs to be said, that whatever evils we might highlight as part of the Civil War, the move toward emancipation was undeniably a good thing from the modern perspective. Even if emancipation was, for most people, merely a means to achieve the ultimate goal of reunification, it's very difficult to criticize the radical influence on the war effort to push the abolition of slavery. But that being said, there is little else about the committee that speaks well of its members. And this is also an important perspective to have when thinking about the Civil War. If I may again offer a bit of personal commentary, being anti-slavery is probably what we should consider the lowest standard for what it takes to be considered a decent human being. As an historian, obviously, you have to take people in the context of the time in which they lived. And in that regard, anti-slavery folks in the 1850s deserve credit. But to treat such people as if their anti-slavery views is enough to excuse all other moral failings is ridiculous. You can be anti-slavery and still be a crummy person. If that's true today, as it obviously is, then applying any other criteria to people in the past is literally just cultural and moral relativism. So I want to acknowledge that these men led the way in making emancipation a war aim. And that's important not just because it helps us understand the historical change that took place over the course of 1862 in regards to the Union policy on slavery, but also because it is important to give credit where do. But as we look at the investigation proceedings, it's going to be very difficult to see these people in a positive light unless you want to adopt this absurdly morally relativistic position that somebody need only be anti-slavery to be a good person and all other terrible deeds are thereby excused. Historians, I think often have a hard time breaking away from this habit because nobody wants to be the guy that tells a history that's critical of anti-slavery politicians prior to the 13th Amendment. But with that said, I'm not here to criticize these guys. My goal is to tell history as accurately as I can. I only offer this aside because I recognize that as I talk about this history, these proceedings will quite naturally be perceived in a negative light. And the only way I can avoid that is to actually whitewash them, which would be a distorted narrative. I talked a little bit about the Joint Committee hearings during the Battle of Bull Run, and I said that the primary blame for the Union defeat was directed toward Robert Patterson, the general-in-command of the Army of Pennsylvania, who failed to prevent Joseph Johnston from moving to Manassas Junction to reinforce Beauregard. After the battle, Patterson was smeared in the Republican press, and many people started to express doubts about his loyalty. He wasn't from a slave state, but when he was in command of the Army, he upheld the fugitive slave law by returning slaves to their owners. This was used as evidence of his Southern sympathies, but in reality this was actually the officially mandated policy of Abraham Lincoln. Patterson was doing what he was ordered to do. So by November, Patterson started asking Washington for a formal inquiry, which he believed would exonerate him. When the Joint Committee formed, he was elated. He trusted that the investigation process would be conducted honestly and fairly. He was eager to plead his case. He later said, quote, at the time I was much gratified, supposing, of course, that the investigation would be full, fair, and candid, end quote. He would be disappointed, later referring to the committee as a quote, unquote, star chamber proceeding, referring to legal proceedings that are conducted in secret and come to decisions arbitrarily or according to political agendas. And Patterson said that the committee's purpose was quote, to prepare a report setting all fair play and truth at defiance, end quote. Now, as I said in the episodes on Bull Run, Patterson probably does deserve a good chunk of the blame for the defeat. He was reluctant to attack Johnston, believing grossly exaggerated estimates of his army, and he did allow Johnston to make it to Manassas, which did not guarantee Confederate victory, but probably did prevent a guaranteed Union victory. In his defense, he also made claims about his decision in minor victories that were simply contrary to fact. So Patterson may have been naive in thinking that an inquiry into his role in the battle would have helped him even if it had been unbiased. But his loyalty was above reproach. And the committee danced around the issue, leaving it a matter of public speculation and rumors that Patterson was a traitor to the Union cause, something that harmed his personal reputation. But the bigger issue was the arrogance that the committee displayed on military matters. The committee members had zero military experience, but they genuinely believed they knew better than the Union generals about matters of strategy, logistics, and civilian policy. This wasn't just implied. They vocally criticized West Point, seeing it as a place that cultivated Southern sympathy. And they believed that West Point graduates were actually less capable military leaders than people who received no formal training, such as themselves. Benjamin Wade, by 1863, was pushing to have West Point shut down, in fact. Benjamin Wade, Zachariah Chandler, and George Washington Julian were the most opinionated on military matters. They still adhered to the opinion that the entire war could be one with a single decisive battle. Some of the Union's actual experts disagreed, including William Tecumseh Sherman, who said that the North needed to understand, quote, that the entire South, man, woman, and child are against us, armed and determined. It will call for a million men in several years to put them down, end quote. This was said in a letter to his senator brother during the committee hearings. Sherman understood that the defensive nature of the Southern war effort gave them an advantage that would compensate for their smaller population and fewer resources. But the committee members, with Benjamin Wade taking the lead, thought that they needed to fight an aggressive war. They believed that the reluctance to make a quick assault against the Confederacy was a matter of cowardice, not strategic prudence, even after that strategy had ended in disaster at Bull Run. Remember, by the way, that both Benjamin Wade and Zachariah Chandler were present during the Battle of Bull Run. And when the retreating Union soldiers started to rush past the spectators, Wade picked up a rifle and threatened to shoot any soldier who continued to retreat. While Chandler pulled out his revolver, waved it at the defeated soldier and called them quote, fools and cowards. I talked about this in part five of my episode in Bull Run. And remember also what I said earlier in the episode where the reason one congressman wanted to include Bull Run was to try to disabuse people of the notion that these congressmen and their presence at Bull Run was part of the reason for the military defeat, which is kind of an absurd explanation anyway. The idea that their presence was the reason the Union lost the battle is silly. But if that's what you're trying to disprove, it doesn't seem very unbiased to include two of the present congressmen on the seven man committee to determine the cause of the Union defeat, right? So this is hardly an objective committee right at the outset, and this is evidence of it. So here these congressmen are again, Benjamin Wade and Zachariah Chandler, calling the people who had been in battle cowards while they remained safely removed from combat. When officers pointed out the effect of the rifle, a significant military innovation and the need for defensive fortifications to deal with it, Wade responded that quote, you can set your West points graduates to digging, end quote, while dismissing the desire to build defenses as the product of cowardice. Cowardice and wanting to build defensive trenches and incompetence in battlefield decisions were not the only points upon which the committee members impugned the character of the Union military leaders. Military men, particularly West pointers, were not only cowardly, but they were also disloyal. At the very outset of the committee, still in December of 1861, Zachariah Chandler said, quote, why, sir, I am informed that a very large number of your generals in command today have more sympathy with the enemy than they have with the loyal cause, end quote. When they interrogated McClellan, Wade asked the general why he did not immediately confront the Confederates. Now, even among historians today, McClellan is criticized for his reluctance to attack as he constantly overestimated the enemy forces, and those criticisms seem to be fair. But in this case, McClellan's explanation for his reluctance to wage an immediate assault across the Potomac was reasonable. There were only two bridges, which were hardly enough to allow for a retreat, if need be. And after the shortage of boats at Balls Bluff, the desire to leave room for retreat should have been painfully apparent. After the dozens of water bloated corpses of Union soldiers who took their chances in a river, they had no means of crossing while being fired on by Confederates. But this explanation wasn't acceptable to the committee members. Zachariah Chandler cut McClellan off before he was even finished giving his explanation, saying, quote, General McClellan, if I understand you correctly, before you strike at the rebels, you want to be sure of plenty of room so you can run in case they strike back, end quote. Benjamin Wade jumped into ad quote, or in case you get scared. The level of condescension is hard to imagine when reading these accounts. When McClellan left the room, Chandler said to Wade, quote, I don't know much about war, but it seems to me that this is infernal and mitigated cowardice, end quote. McClellan may have been overly reluctant to attack from a military perspective, but these politicians were more than ready to throw away the lives of thousands of young men while they sat in the Capitol building, calling the people who fought cowards. Even with the blame that Patterson deserved, the committee was undeniably biased in their inquiry toward him. They dismissed evidence that helped to defend Patterson against claims that he had given General Winfield Scott no notice about Johnston's movements. But Patterson actually did send Scott a dispatch keeping him informed about Johnston, and he showed it to the committee who neglected to include it in their report. It simply didn't fit their agenda, which was to find a scapegoat for the battle's failure and impugn the loyalty of Democrat officers. So Patterson certainly played a role in the defeat at Bull Run, but the committee's treatment of him was driven by a political agenda, and they threw Patterson under the bus. But their treatment of Patterson was nothing compared to their treatment of General Charles Stone, commander of the forces of Balls Bluff, and Lincoln's behavior in this investigation reflects poorly on the president as well. In December of 1861, Charles Sumner gave a powerful speech on the floor of the Senate in condemnation of General Stone, who read an account of the speech on December 23rd and immediately drafted a reply to the senator, claiming that Sumner had issued, quote, a slander and a falsehood against him. Stone was angry, and he did not temper his words in the letter he sent to Sumner. In it, he said, quote, there can hardly be better proof that a soldier in the field is faithfully performing his duty than the fact that while he is receiving the shot of the public enemy in front, he is at the same time receiving the vituperation of a well known coward from a safe distance in the rear, end quote. Sumner actually showed the letter to Lincoln who said, quote, I don't know that I would have written such a letter, but if I wanted to, I thank under the circumstances. Under the circumstances, mind you, I would have had the right to do so, end quote. When Stone was brought in front of the Joint Committee a couple of weeks later, now January 5th, Benjamin Wade asked him about the allegations that Stone had returned fugitive slaves in the state of Maryland. Now again, this demonstrates the positive trend that the Committee was pushing the war aim toward emancipation, but it was entirely disingenuous on the part to use this policy as a basis to question an officer's loyalty because this was the order that had been given by President Lincoln and the Committee members were aware of this. During the investigation, the Committee was entirely prejudiced in regard to the witnesses they called and whose testimony they valued. The first witness was Colonel Wistar, who if you remember from the previous episode was the direct subordinate of Colonel Edward Baker, Lincoln's close personal friend who was killed in the battle. Wistar and Baker were very close as well, and Wistar had also taken direct part in the battle. But he defended Stone and said that the disaster at Balls Bluff was the result of mistakes made by Baker. This was an honest testimony as Wistar himself had tremendous affection for Baker, who was now dead, but the Committee simply chose to ignore his testimony. The second witness was Francis Young. Young testified that the Maryland secessionists loved General Stone and said that quote, General Stone is pretty unanimously regarded as not a true loyal man, end quote. But Young's testimony was unquestionably suspect. Stone had actually dismissed him for misconduct two weeks before the testimony was given. He had a grudge against the general. Nonetheless, the Committee chose to believe his testimony over Wistar's because it fit their agenda. The other testimony that the Committee chose to believe was made by a contractor named James Brady, who was also part of one of the New York regiments in Stone's second brigade. After General Stone denied Brady's request for leave, Brady resigned from the Army, holding a grudge against Stone. He testified that the letters had been passed across the river between soldiers who had friends on the other side of the conflict. When asked if the letters were treasonous, Brady said quote, they were treasonable in character, certainly. No doubt about that. But there was no information except personal, that such and such persons were alive and well, that such and such were killed in the action at Bull Run, etc. End quote. So he told the Committee what they wanted to hear. The letters were treasonable. But then what he described as being in the letters was anything but treasonable. Other soldiers testified that there was no important information contained in the letters and they vouched for Stone's loyalty and character. But the testimonies by Young and Brady, two soldiers who were harboring personal grudges against Stone, were the ones the Committee chose to believe. The investigation against Stone ultimately had little to do with the battle of Balls Bluff and focused almost entirely on the question of Stone's loyalty. In fact, their interrogation of Stone's men lasted for more than a month before they even asked questions about Balls Bluff, at which point Stone was again readily defended. It didn't matter. The Committee had already decided he was a traitor. When they finally gave their verdict to Stone, we should compare it to their calls of cowardice against McClellan to highlight the vindictive and political nature of the Committee hearings. When Senator Wade explained his reasons for the Committee's condemnation of Stone, he first listed, quote, your conduct in the Balls Bluff Affair, your ordering your forces over without sufficient means of transportation, and in that way, of course, endangering your army in case of check by not being able to reinforce them, end quote. Now, on the one hand, this criticism of Stone ignores a lot of relevant details about the fiasco at Balls Bluff that I detailed in the previous two episodes, including McClellan's poor communication with his subordinate officers. But referring back to the interrogation of McClellan, where they called him a coward for not wanting to cross the Potomac when there was no adequate means of retreat, it seems like the Committee is being hypocritical. Their criticism of Stone and crossing the Potomac without sufficient means to move troops is exactly what they said McClellan should have done in regards to his two bridges. This investigation was unequivocally agenda driven. Senator Wade also brought up the earthworks constructed by the Confederates on the Virginia side of the Potomac, which he alleged could have been easily prevented by General Stone. In reply, Stone offered to give them in a tour of the battlefield so they could see the situation for themselves. Wade answered quote, we are not military men, any of us. Stone replied quote, but you judge military men, to which Wade responded quote, yes sir, but not finally. We only state what in our opinion tends to impeach them when the evidence seems to do so and then leave it to better judges to determine. Stone tried to explain the matter to the committee. Using artillery to bombard undefended earthworks was futile and a waste of precious ammunition, which cost five dollars per shell. It would not just be pointless to bomb these earthworks, it would have been detrimental to their own position by wasting ammunition that might be needed later. Wade replied to Stone quote, when the evidence comes point blank from military men that the enemy are erecting formidable works that might have been prevented. Of course, we are bound to notice it. End quote. Stone asked to the senator if any of the committee's informants on the matter were artillery officers. Wade replied, I do not know about that. This was a lie. Wade was well aware that the informants were not artillery officers. Stone correctly guessed that the informants were not artillery experts and suggested that they probably naively believed that the cannons had better range and precision than they actually did. But his explanation was pointless. The committee's ignorance and bias took authority over Stone's expertise. Wade continued on to tell Stone that the committee suspected his loyalty. But this was a ridiculous claim. There were few people in the union who were so clearly loyal to it. And it is on this point that Lincoln shows a weakness of character in failing to defend Stone. On February 5th, Abraham Lincoln invited Stone to a reception at the White House where he was a guest along with several politicians. Senator James McDougall from California observed how the politicians interacted with Stone saying quote, he was receiving as much attention and as much consideration from all about him as any man present. I'll smiled upon him that at least appeared before his face. End quote. Three days later, just after midnight, Stone was arrested for treason. After Stone's arrest, a number of union men stepped up to defend him. I'm not going to list them all here because this episode is already getting long. But we are talking prominent, well known men from highly unionist states. But they were all ignored and the War Department refused any requests to provide Stone with a copy of the charges levied against him. Stone languished in prison for several months. But the one person who did not step forward to defend Stone was President Lincoln. And on the matter of Stone's loyalty, Lincoln knew Stone was trustworthy better than almost anybody. Stone claimed to have been the very first volunteer for the United States Army for the coming Civil War. And this may have been the case. He volunteered his services to General Winfield Scott in December of 1860. Scott asked Stone to prepare the defense of Washington DC. And General Stone went about energetically recruiting people and organizing a defense of the Capitol. When Lincoln was inaugurated, it was General Stone who organized the security for him. And while President Lincoln and Senator Edward Baker, soon to be Stone, supported an officer, wrote in a carriage to the inauguration, General Stone personally rode alongside it, leading the cavalry that was on the lookout for potential assassins. Lincoln knew this and he knew Stone. And there is no way that the loyalty of Stone could have been a matter of dispute in the president's eyes. But when the committee decided to have Stone arrested and held in prison for the better part of a year, the president adopted a head in the sand policy. Part of this might be explained by personal matters that the president was dealing with. Two of his children were sick, and one of them passed away only a couple of weeks after Stone's arrest. Some historians have suggested that the president may also have blamed Stone, perhaps subconsciously, for the death of his friend Edward Baker. Whether or not this exonerates the president for his handling of the situation and historians generally agree that Lincoln handled the matter poorly, even as they defend him. But whether or not Lincoln's personal matters exonerate him is more than I care to say. I certainly don't know how I'd handle the situation like that dealing with a sick child and grieving the recent loss of a close friend, along with other presidential obligations. But even if we believe that Lincoln's humanity excuses his behavior, it seems clear that the right thing would have been to come to Stone's defense. Instead, when Lincoln was finally informed of Stone's arrest, he said, quote, I suppose you have good reason for it. And having good reason, I'm glad I knew nothing of it until it was done, end quote, head in the sand. It's harder to defend Lincoln when more than a year after Stone's arrest and several months after his release, Major General Nathaniel Banks sent a letter to the president on Stone's behalf, in which Stone begged that quote, some act, some word, some order may issue from the executive, which shall place my name clear of reproach, end quote. At this point, Stone may have been released from prison and had his charges dropped, but his reputation had been destroyed and his career had been ruined. Lincoln never sent a response to Banks, but he did start to write one. In it, he justified the arrest of Stone, even knowing of his innocence, saying quote, to hold one commander in prison untried is less harmful in times of great national distress than to withdraw several good officers from active battlefields to give him a trial, end quote. This was a poor argument. There were several officers in Washington DC that were available to testify in Stone's trial without having to remove any from the battlefield. Perhaps Lincoln's realization of how unconvincing this letter was is what compelled him to leave it unscent. But as with many things, we can never know what was going through Lincoln's mind. In February of 1863, Stone was called before the joint committee one last time. In this hearing, the committee allowed him to read the transcripts from the testimonies levied against him, something that was refused him when he was originally being accused. And Stone was able to explain each accusation point by point. When he was done, Senator Benjamin Wade, who was most responsible for dragging Stone's reputation through the mud, said quote, Why did you not give us these explanations when you were here before? End quote. Stone reminded the senator that the committee had refused him the opportunity to do so. The committee now wanted to act as if it was not responsible for destroying the reputation and the livelihood of General Stone, one of the Union's most loyal soldiers. But the damage had already been done, all in the name of a political agenda. The committee would survive throughout the war, and I suspect I'll come back to it in regards to other matters. But for now, we will close here. The war was moving toward a policy of emancipation, the one unequivocally positive element of the committee. Congress had resolved to involve itself more directly in military affairs and Unionist Democrats who held officer commissions were under increasing suspicion of treason. The civil war was very much a political war. In the next two episodes, we will look at the early attempts at Union diplomacy, resulting in another Union fiasco, known as the Trent Affair. Historical Controversies is a production of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. If you would like to support the show, please subscribe on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher and leave a positive review. You can also support the show financially by donating at Mises.org slash supportHC. If you would like to explore the rest of our content, please visit Mises.org. That's M-I-S-E-S dot O-R-G.