TASKER H. BLISS AND THE CREATION
OF THE MODERN AMERICAN
ARMY, 1853-1930

_________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board

__________________________________________________________ in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

__________________________________________________________ by
Thomas R. English December 2014

Examining Committee Members: Richard Immerman, Advisory Chair, Temple University, Department of History Gregory J. W. Urwin, Temple University, Department of History Jay Lockenour, Temple University, Department of History Daniel W. Crofts, External Member,The College of New Jersey, Department of History, Emeritus ii

©
Copyright

2014 By
Thomas R. English All Rights Reserved iii

ABSTRACT

A commonplace observation among historians describes one or another

historical period as a time of “transition” or a particular person as a “transitional figure.” In the history of the United States Army, scholars apply those terms especially to the late- nineteenth century “Old Army.” This categorization has helped

create a shelf of biographies of some of the transitional figures of the era. Leonard Wood, John J. Pershing, Robert Lee Bullard, William Harding Carter, Henry Tureman Allen, Nelson Appleton Miles and John McCallister Schofield have all been the subject of excellent scholarly works. Tasker Howard Bliss has remained among the missing in that group, in spite of the important activities that marked his career and the wealth of source materials he left behind.
Bliss belongs on that list because, like the others, his career demonstrates the changing nature of the U.S. Army between 1871 and 1917. Bliss served for the most part in administrative positions in the United States and in the American overseas empire. Seeing hardly any combat and spending only a few years commanding

troops, Bliss contributed instead to the creation and development of the army’s post-

graduate educational system, and he was deeply involved in the Elihu Root reforms of the army and the War Department. Thus what makes his career especially noteworthy, more than many of the soldiers on that list of biographies, is that Bliss helped to create the changes that laid the foundations for the modern army. iv
During the First World War, Bliss worked more closely with the Allied leadership than any other American with the possible exception of Edward M. House. President Woodrow Wilson named Bliss as one of the five commissioners leading the U.S. delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. In this position he influenced many members of the American delegation who would remain leaders in the foreign policy elite into the 1940s, and he helped to create the Council on Foreign Relations, an important organization for the foreign policy elite.
For Frederick Palmer, the author of the family-authorized biography, the

Great War and the Peace Conference were the climax of Bliss’s career. A substantial modern scholarly literature exists on Bliss’s service in the Great War and the Peace

Conference, but none of those works present his earlier career in any detail. As a result, when planning this dissertation with the late Professor Russell F. Weigley, we

decided to concentrate on Bliss’s activities before 1917.

Bliss helped shape the institutions the United States needed as it became a world power, and he trained some of the leaders who would exercise that power. He left a legacy of thoughtful consideration of the organizational, political and moral issues that the exercise of power posed for the United States. It was a life that still teaches us how to face the issues involved in the exercise of world power. v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people have contributed to the completion of this dissertation in ways great and small. The late Dr. Russell F. Weigley suggested the topic and guided my work in the early stages. He contributed many insights into the history of the military and war, and he was a caring and considerate person – a Philadelphia gentleman in the best sense of the term. I am grateful to Dr. Richard Immerman for his willingness to pick up the task of advising and see the project through to completion. Not only did he make numerous suggestions and corrections to improve the work, he offered support when medical and work-related issues made the task seem impossible. Dr. Gregory Urwin read the dissertation with an eye for grammar, style and diction that led to many improvements. The errors of any kind that remain are my responsibility entirely. Dr. Jay Lockenour is a fine teacher who taught me the most efficient way I know to keep records of books read, while Dr. Dan Crofts of The College of New Jersey offered helpful suggestions and considerable encouragement.
Numerous research institutions helped me with my research. The staff at the
Library of Congress Manuscript Division made it a pleasure to do research there. The staff at the National Archives, especially Dr. Timothy Nenninger, made helpful suggestions about sources and helped me to find materials in their vast collections. The archival staff at the Naval War College showed me great hospitality during a short visit. vi
No archivist runs a more researcher-friendly facility than Dr. Richard J.

Sommers of the Army’s Military Heritage Center in Carlisle, Pa. Not only did he

guide me to several collections beyond the Tasker H. Bliss Papers, but also he readily shared his inexhaustible knowledge of the late-nineteenth century army and especially the Civil War veterans among its officer corps. I was never able to come up with a

name for which he could not supply detailed information about the officer’s Civil

War record.
Both the U. S. Army Center of Military History and the Military Heritage
Center supported my research with grants, and George School provided both a fullyear and a term sabbatical to make available the time for research and writing. The Temple University History Department deserves my thanks for its decision to schedule graduate classes in the evening so that full-time pre-college teachers have the opportunity for graduate study. Dr. Shawn Schurr in the Deans Office of the College of Liberal Arts blended encouragement with deadlines in a helpful manner.
My late parents encouraged my interest in history and the military from grade school on; they would be proud to see the finished dissertation. Victor H. English loved the army and his fellow veterans, especially the 35th Infantry Division and General George S. Patton, Jr. My long-suffering wife Renukha has lived with this project for a majority of the time since our marriage. I thank her for her tolerance as well as her support.
Finally, the dedication of this work is taken from the works of Johann

Sebastian Bach: Sola Dei Gloria.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………………………………………… v PREFACE ………………………………………………………….. viii

CHAPTER 1. JOINING THE PROFESSION OF ARMS ……….. 1
2. BUIILDING A REPUTATION ……………………. 41 3. AIDING THE COMMANDING GENERAL …… 66 4. COLLECTING FOR CUBA …………….………. 122 5. REFORMING THE WAR DEPARTMENT ………. 182 6. ESTABLISHING THE WAR COLLEGE …………. 226 7. THINKING AS A PROFESSIONAL …………….. 256 8. GOVERNING THE MOROS …………………… 293 9. GUARDING THE SOUTHERN BORDER ………. 328 10. FIGHTING, THEN NEGOTIATING ……………. 369 11. WORKING FOR PEACE ………………………. 402 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………… 464

viii

Preface

A commonplace observation among historians describes one or another

historical period as a time of “transition” or a particular person as a “transitional figure.” In the history of the United States Army, scholars apply those terms especially to the late- nineteenth century “Old Army.” This categorization has helped

create a shelf of biographies of some of the transitional figures of the era: Leonard Wood, John J. Pershing, Robert Lee Bullard, William Harding Carter, Henry Tureman Allen, Nelson Appleton Miles and John McCallister Schofield have all been the subject of excellent scholarly works.¹ Tasker Howard Bliss has remained among the missing in that group, in spite of the important activities that marked his career and the wealth of source materials he left behind.
Bliss belongs on that list because, like the others, his career demonstrates the changing nature of the U.S. Army between 1871 and 1917. Bliss served for the most part in administrative positions in the United States and in the American overseas empire. Seeing hardly any combat and spending only a few years commanding

troops, Bliss contributed instead to the creation and development of the army’s post-

graduate educational system, and he was deeply involved in the Elihu Root reforms of the army and the War Department. Thus what makes his career especially noteworthy, more than many of the soldiers on that list of biographies, is that Bliss

1

Biographies of these officers are cited in several chapters and included in the bibliography.

vii helped to create the changes that laid the foundations for the modern army. Graduating from the Military Academy in 1875, Bliss soon returned to teach at West Point. His work attracted the attention of Major General Schofield, the Superintendent, and when Schofield became Commanding General of the Army, he selected Bliss as one of his aides. Serving under Schofield from 1888 to 1895, Bliss gained a broad knowledge of the issues facing the military, with a special emphasis on the importance of professional education and training for officers and the impact of changing weapons technology on every part of the army. Schofield consciously

prepared his staff for future high positions, and as an “incremental reformer,”² he

taught Bliss about the politics that was an essential part of military service in a democratic republic.
When Schofield retired, the Secretary of War, Daniel S. Lamont, retained
Bliss in Washington, D.C., to help him with special projects until Bliss was assigned as military attaché at the U.S. legation in Madrid. Returning from Spain when war broke out in 1898, Bliss served in the brief Puerto Rico campaign. In the newlyacquired American colonial empire, Bliss served as Collector of Customs in the Military Government of Cuba. Most of the reforms the occupation government brought to Cuba depended on the customs service because tariff collections provided

the bulk of the government’s revenue. When the effort to create a tariff reciprocity

2

Donald B. Connelly, John M. Schofield and the Politics of Generalship (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 301.

viii treaty between the United States and newly-independent Cuba failed, Bliss returned to Cuba and successfully negotiated a new treaty that won approval from Congress. His outstanding performance administering the Cuban customs earned him national notice and promotion to brigadier general. It was one indication of the new nature of military service that an army officer could reach the grade of brigadier general with almost no combat experience.
From 1902 to 1905, Bliss served in Washington, D. C., playing an important role in the Elihu Root reforms. He became the workhorse of the Army War College

Board, Root’s de facto general staff. When Congress passed Root’s reform

legislation, he served on the original general staff and was the founding president of

the Army War College. As president, Bliss guided the creation of the school’s initial curriculum, employing the students’ talents in writing the first comprehensive war plans the United States ever developed. As the army’s chief planner, he became the service’s leading voice on strategic questions as a member of the Joint Army and

Navy Board. He helped to shape the institutions that trained the U.S. Army’s leaders as the United States became a great power.
From 1905 to 1915, with brief interludes in other duties, Bliss commanded troops in the field, first in the Philippines, then in California, and finally along the Mexican border. His service placed him in some of the most challenging positions that an American general could face during that tumultuous decade. Almost everything about the U.S. colonial administration in the Philippines was controversial, especially in the Moro Province where Bliss spent the bulk of his time. ix
When he commanded troops along the border, Mexico writhed in the throes of revolution and civil war. American soldiers had to protect the border while dealing delicately with the various Mexican factions and trying to prevent cross-border arms trafficking.
From this politically sensitive duty, Bliss returned to Washington, D.C., serving as Assistant Chief of Staff while the First World War raged in Europe. When the United States entered the war, Bliss remained in the same position, became Acting Chief of Staff when Major General Hugh Scott left for Russia, and eventually Chief in his own right. Bliss spent little of his time in the capital city, because President Woodrow Wilson appointed him as the American representative on the Supreme War Council, the international body created to give coherence to Allied

strategy. Bliss generally supported John J. Pershing’s efforts to create an independent

American army, and he argued consistently for a concentration of Allied and American forces in France to fight the Germans in the decisive theater. This service required Bliss to function as much as a diplomat as he was a soldier, another unusual experience for an American general.
During the First World War, Bliss worked more closely with the Allied leadership than any other American with the possible exception of Edward M. House. It was a sensible decision when President Woodrow Wilson named Bliss as one of the five commissioners leading the U.S. delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. In this position he influenced many members of the American delegation who would remain leaders in the foreign policy elite into the 1940s, and he helped to xcreate the Council on Foreign Relations, an important organization for the foreign policy elite. Although Bliss believed Wilson did not utilize his knowledge effectively during the negotiations, he nonetheless remained an ardent Wilsonian and served as

an honorary pallbearer at Wilson’s funeral. A deeply reflective man, Bliss found the

destruction and barbarism of the First World War a stunning example of the worst aspects of human nature; the experience turned this general and former Army Chief of Staff into a crusader for arms limitation and for American membership in the League of Nations.
For Frederick Palmer, the author of the family-authorized biography, the

Great War and the Peace Conference were the climax of Bliss’s career. ³ Palmer took

an almost teleological approach in his life of Bliss, devoting nearly three-quarters of

his book to those events and presenting everything else in his hero’s career as

preparation for that supreme service. There is also a substantial modern scholarly literature on Bliss’s service in the Great War and the Peace Conference, but none of those works present his earlier career in any detail.⁴ As a result, when planning this dissertation with the late Professor Russell F. Weigley, we decided to concentrate on Bliss’s activities before 1917, since there were numerous excellent works available on the war years.

3

Frederick Palmer, Bliss, Peacemaker: The Life and Letters of General Tasker Howard Bliss

(New York: Dodd, Meade & Company, 1934).

4

For instance, see these works of David F. Trask, The United States in the Supreme War Council: American War Aims and Inter-Allied Strategy, 1917-1918 (Middletown, Ct: Wesleyan University

Press, 1961); General Tasker Howard Bliss and the “Sessions of the World:” 1919. Philadelphia:

American Philosophical Society, 1965; and The AEF and Coalition Warmaking, 1917-1918

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993).

xi
For most of those who knew him, Tasker H. Bliss was an appealing personality, and for subsequent scholars, he displayed many traits unusual in a general officer. As Donald Smythe commented in his biography of John J. Pershing,

Bliss “would have ornamented any university faculty.” Fluent in five foreign languages, Bliss could read Greek “as easily as his native English.”⁵ This

accomplished man served his country for fifty-six years in a wide range of tasks and assignments, on active duty and in retirement. He helped shape the institutions the United States needed as it became a world power, and he trained some of the leaders who would exercise that power. He left a legacy of thoughtful consideration of the organizational, political and moral issues that the exercise of power posed for the United States. It was a life that still teaches us how to face the issues involved in the exercise of world power.

5

Donald Smythe, Pershing: General   of the Armies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1986), 7.

1

CHAPTER 1

JOINING THE PROFESSION OF ARMS

“Hold your head up, Tad!” That was Mary Ann Bliss’s most frequent

injunction to her son Tasker.⁶ Well ahead of his peers he had grown to be big and big, and as many young people do in that situation, he slouched. His parents would not allow it. Personal discipline was important the Old Testament household maintained by the Rev. Dr. George R. Bliss and his wife, Mary Ann. Their seventh child, a son, Tasker Howard, entered this world on the last day of December 1853.
The home he joined was both scholarly and biblical. The Rev. Dr. Bliss was graduated from Madison (now Colgate) University in Hamilton, New York, from which he went on to the Hamilton Theological Seminary.⁷ After serving as a university tutor for three years and then as a parish pastor for six, Dr. Bliss became professor of Greek at the newly-established University at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (now Bucknell University) in 1849.⁸ He would spend the next quarter century in that position.

6

Frederick Palmer, Bliss, Peacemaker:   The Life and Letters of General Tasker Howard Bliss

(Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970, reprint of 1934 edition), 14.

7

Pennsylvania Baptist State Convention, Annual Report, 1893, 7-8. Palmer, Bliss, Peacemaker, gives the date as 1850, but according to J. Orin Oliphant, The Rise of

8

Bucknell University (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, A Division of Meredith Publishing Company, 1965), 36, it was 1849.

2
In the autumn of 1849, the Rev. George W. Anderson joined the faculty as
Professor of Latin. The two men worked together on curriculum, the rules for students, and the student catalog, and while Dr. Bliss served as librarian, the Rev. Anderson belonged to the library committee. In 1851, the two jointly recommended a change in the course in English, suggesting the program lead to a Bachelor of Philosophy degree. This close collaboration ended in 1854, when the Rev. Anderson resigned, but their friendship continued.⁹ It would have important consequences for Tasker.
When Tasker Bliss was eight years old, the sectional conflicts of the 1850s led to civil war, and Tasker had many memories of the political turmoil of his boyhood and the martial scenes of the war years. The impact of these struggles was especially

important in the Bliss family. George Bliss’s father had been an upstate New York

farmer and an ardent Jeffersonian; he raised his son to continue in the Democratic path. Ultimately, the slavery issue forced George Bliss to abandon the political faith of his father, becoming instead a Republican and eventually an enthusiastic supporter of Abraham Lincoln.¹⁰ Yet there were limits to his dislike of the South. When Confederate General Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia into

Pennsylvania, Tasker’s father left for the front lines, not as a soldier but in the “Biblical role of the Good Samaritan.” For the rest of his life, he would tell the story

9

Oliphant, Bucknell University, 40-44, 55, and 71.

Palmer, Bliss, Peacemaker, 5-9.

10

3of the wounded Alabama soldier for whom he found food and water. The lad, a

victim of his misguided political leaders, “was a fine boy.”¹¹
The Rev. Dr. Bliss had found a “fitting companion” for the “notable educational work to which he gave his life.”¹² She was Mary Ann Raymond, who

had been born into a substantial middle-class family in New York City in 1821. At

the age of fifteen, she “professed Christ and was baptized.”¹³ It must have required a

substantial adjustment to move from her urban, middle-class home to become the wife of a professor at a small and struggling university, but Mary Ann Bliss learned to manage her household. Eventually she gave birth to thirteen children, and – remarkably, for that time – only one of them died in childhood, while she herself lived to be ninety-one.¹⁴
Because a local Baptist church needed a minister but could not afford one, Dr.
Bliss added those duties to his work at the university, without any extra pay. The family had to make do with his annual salary from the university, which was five hundred dollars; doing so of course became more difficult as the family grew. Perhaps it was not so difficult to get by on that income in a household where religious and personal discipline were essential parts of the daily routine. Dr. Bliss was strict in his theology, and such strictness carried over to the home. As one acquaintance

wrote after Dr. Bliss’s death:

He was the strictest close communionist I ever knew.

He held the Lord’s Supper to be an institution of the

11

Ibid., 9. Ibid, 7-8.

12 13

Pennsylvania Baptist State Convention, Annual Report, 1912, p. 349.

Palmer, Bliss, Peacemaker,14.

14

4individual church; and, when a pastor, he did not invite to participation in it, as almost all Baptist

pastors do, “members of the same faith and order,”

any more than he invited them to vote in church meeting.¹⁵
One of the rules of the household was a modified primogeniture. Only the oldest child of either sex could have new clothes; the rest had to live with remodeled handme-downs.¹⁶
Another of the family rules was that mother administered discipline except in the most severe cases. One of those arose when Mary, the eldest daughter who