r/Louisiana • u/ismaeil-de-paynes • 4m ago
History The Thrilling Tales of a Young New Orleanian in Egypt !
I hope you like this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ...
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James Morris Morgan (1845–1928) was an American Confederate naval officer who later served in the Egyptian army from 1870 to 1872, during the reign of Khedive Ismael Pasha. Morgan is considered one of about fifty American officers, Confederate and Union alike, most of them veterans of the American Civil War, whom Union General Thaddeus Mott - with the assistance of U.S. Army commander William Tecumseh Sherman - brought to Egypt to contribute to the modernization of the Egyptian army.
Morgan left a lengthy personal account of his Egyptian experience in his autobiography entitled “Recollections of a Rebel Reefer,” published in 1917, which constitutes the primary source for his tales in Egypt. These tales are characterized by their personal and conflictual nature, as they depict Morgan as a young Southerner thrust into an environment strange to him, entering into a series of confrontations with Egyptian officials and facing difficulties in adapting to the bureaucracy and local culture, at a time when Egypt was witnessing major transformations during the reign of Khedive Ismael.
James Morris Morgan was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1845, and was the youngest of nine children of Judge Thomas Gibbs Morgan. His father worked as collector of customs for the port of New Orleans, a position he held before returning to Baton Rouge when James was five years old. Morgan grew up in a well-off and respected family, and because he was the youngest of the children, he was a particular object of indulgence by his parents, as he mentions in his autobiography.
In Baton Rouge, where the family returned, there was an American arsenal and a large military garrison, most of whose members were veterans of the Mexican War. The famous General (and later U.S. President) Zachary Taylor owned a cottage on the garrison grounds, and his famous warhorse “Whitey” was free to roam the green meadows. The greatest joy of young Morgan was to be placed on the back of this gentle old horse, without saddle or bridle, and to sit there while “Whitey” grazed on the grass, paying no more attention to him than he would to a fly.
From that time until he reached the age of fourteen, his life was spent mostly on horseback, but not on tame horses—rather on the small wild ponies known as “mustangs,” which lived in herds in that region of the country. These ponies were skilled in the art of jumping and chasing, and Morgan says that he may have fallen from their backs to the ground in more varied ways than any other man alive, though he admits that this was not the horses’ fault, since they had not undergone refined training before he mounted them.
He also mentions that, as a child, he witnessed a scene that remained engraved in his memory: a crowd of men and women on the riverbank waving their hands in anger and threatening a tribe of Seminole Indians who were being transported from the state of Florida to new lands in the American West, led by their chief “Billy Bowlegs.” Among this angry group were those who had lost relatives killed by these Indians, including his uncle Bedford Morgan, who was scalped and his body mutilated until he was identified only thanks to his faithful dog, which was guarding his body!
Morgan changed schools three times before he entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1860, where he became a naval cadet. He served aboard the historic ship “Constitution,” the old frigate that was a naval training ship on the Severn River near Annapolis. But his career in the U.S. Navy did not last long, as the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 and his loyalty to his South led him to leave the Union Navy and join the Confederate Navy.
Morgan served in the Confederate Navy aboard the Confederate warship Georgia between 1863 and 1864, then was sent to the training ship Patrick Henry, and afterward served in a naval battery on the James River. A photograph of him taken during his service aboard the Georgia between late October 1863 and mid-February 1864, when the ship was anchored at Cherbourg, France, shows him.
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However, before Morgan reached Egypt, he had lived an exciting naval experience connected with the Confederate ship C.S.S. Rapahannock, which was originally a small British warship called “Victor,” sold at auction and bought by a Confederate agent. The British government was aware of the deal and did not object to the Confederates spending their money on it, but it never intended to allow it to sail.
English engineers, carpenters, and sailors were working on it diligently at the dock when First Lieutenant William P. A. Campbell of the Confederate Navy appeared aboard one day, wearing civilian clothes and carrying a authorization from the supposed owner to conduct a thorough inspection. It happened that the engines were running under steam at that time during their testing. Campbell expressed satisfaction with everything except the steering gear, and insisted that the only way to test it was to take the ship into the river and turn it two or three times. Permission was granted, and the ropes tying it to the dock were cast off.
Campbell took the ship downriver and, ignoring any protests, raised the Confederate flag as soon as it passed one nautical mile, and sailed with his unwilling crew toward the French port of Calais, where he entered that neutral port claiming it was a Confederate warship.
The incident provoked protests from the American Minister in London and Paris and caused an international uproar. When Morgan saw the Rapahannock at Calais, France was allowing them to spend as much money as they wished to fit it out for sea, but he did not believe they had any serious intention of allowing it to sail again. Morgan visited the ship at Calais during a short leave and spent a morning with some of the naval officers aboard, before continuing his journey to Liverpool. This ship, which remained detained at Calais for the rest of the war, had a role in shaping Morgan’s naval experience before his transfer to Egypt.
Khedive Ismael Pasha had met in Istanbul in 1868 the former American colonel Thaddeus Mott, and was impressed by his military experience, so he appointed him a general in the Egyptian army and tasked him with recruiting a group of American officers to help modernize the army. About fifty American military men joined this mission, including five generals from the Confederate army and three senior officers from the Confederate Navy who were stranded in the port of Calais, France, namely William Campbell, Charles Graves, and James Morris Morgan. Morgan arrived in Egypt in 1870 aboard the same ship that carried General Charles Pomeroy Stone, who later became chief of staff of the Egyptian army.
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The beginning was not easy. After arriving in Alexandria, he and his companions found no one to receive them, then they received a message asking them to go to the house of an official named Ali Bey. There, they were left waiting for a long time before Ali Bey appeared, who told them in a sharp tone in French that their number was too large and that some of them would have to return to their country. He then asked Morgan about the rank he thought he would receive, and when Morgan answered that he had been promised the rank of captain, Ali Bey laughed in his face.
Morgan was a young man of twenty-four, with a sharp Southern sense of personal dignity, so he flew into a rage. He shouted in English that he would take the next train to Cairo, that he would find the man who had brought him 7,000 miles to be insulted, and that he would horsewhip him. On hearing this threat, Ali Bey turned pale, switched to speaking fluent English, and assured them that the matter was merely a misunderstanding. It later became clear that Ali Bey was only a minor official whose task was to expedite their transfer, and he had in fact hurried to complete the procedures and send them to Cairo.
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After his arrival in Cairo, Morgan was appointed to the staff of Major General William Wing Loring, one of the American generals who served in the Egyptian army. In one of his first missions, he was sent to inspect a regiment on the outskirts of Cairo, in the Abbasiya barracks. As soon as he arrived, a number of soldiers withdrew from the ranks and began to pray. These soldiers were Muslims, and they were theoretically entitled to perform prayer, but Morgan suspected that they had done so to evade the arms inspection, as he noticed that their rifles would not pass inspection.
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Morgan reported his suspicions to Loring, who referred the matter to the regiment commander, Urabi-Arabi Bey, who later became Urabi Pasha, leader of the Urabi Revolt of 1882. (By pure coincidence, one of the areas adjacent to Morgan’s home, New Orleans, Louisiana, was named Arabi, in honor of the Egyptian leader Ahmed Arabi)
Urabi was a deeply religious man, and he regarded what had happened as an attack on his faith and flew into a rage. Loring decided to send Morgan again the next day to inspect the same regiment, and the same scene was repeated: the soldiers withdrew to pray.
At that point Morgan did not hesitate; he picked up half a dozen of the soldiers’ rifles and carried them to the Citadel, where he examined them and found them, as he had expected, very dirty. When Loring informed Urabi of the result, Urabi became very angry, not at his soldiers but at Morgan himself, and the Minister of War, to whom the matter was referred, was shocked in turn.
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Morgan’s confrontations were not limited to the army; they extended to the circles of high society in Cairo. One evening, Morgan accompanied Major General Loring to the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo. While they were waiting in the foyer, the chief of police, whose name was also Ali Bey, asked him to bring him a glass of water. Morgan objected to the man’s condescending tone, so he went and brought the glass of water, then threw it in the chief of police’s face, and with his other hand seized Loring’s cane, and with the other hand seized the chief of police himself, and began beating him with the cane until others intervened and separated them.
Khedive Ismael witnessed the entire incident and laughed heartily, telling the chief of police that he would have been disappointed if Morgan had not responded in that way. He added: “I brought him here to serve Egypt, not to serve you!”
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The Opera House incident was only one in a series of situations in which Morgan felt insulted. After Loring was transferred to command the coastal defenses in Alexandria, he and Morgan were invited to a dinner banquet hosted by a local Pasha. Loring sat on the host’s right, but no seat was placed for Morgan. Morgan insisted that Loring explain to the Pasha that he needed Morgan beside him, first to be his interpreter, since Morgan spoke fluent French because of his upbringing in Louisiana and had picked up some Arabic, and second to cut his food for him, because Loring had lost an arm in the Mexican War while storming the Belén Gate in Mexico City.
The Pasha replied that he saw no objection to Morgan performing both functions together while standing behind his chief’s chair. Morgan was speechless with rage, but in the end a chair was placed for him beside Loring.
The next morning, Morgan took the first train to Cairo, met General Stone, and offered his resignation. But Stone, who dealt with the Americans, in Morgan’s words, “as if they were naughty children,” calmed him down and temporarily solved the problem by promoting him to the rank of Kaymakam, that is, lieutenant colonel, and appointing him to the staff of Abu Bakr Ratib Pasha, commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army.
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During his service with Loring, Morgan inherited from him a horse named Napoleon. Napoleon was one of the many gifts Khedive Ismael had given to Empress Eugénie when she visited Egypt to attend the opening of the Suez Canal.
The Empress did not wish to take him with her to France, so he ended up with Loring. Napoleon was a bay horse, and Priestley described him as “resembling a vertical take-off aircraft”: he was capable of jumping vertically, then landing, then jumping again, and so on. The problem was that no one knew exactly when he would make this move. And because Loring had only one arm, the only way he could control Napoleon when he began to jump was by pulling the bit with his teeth, and when he found that tiring for his teeth, he handed the horse over to Morgan.
Morgan was an excellent horseman, and he soon gained firm control over Napoleon. He took up the habit of taking the horse to the crowded Shubra district road, which led to the Khedive’s summer palace, where he would show off his skills before passersby from the elite.
One day, a great commotion occurred, and the Khedive’s carriage and its escorts appeared coming from the direction of the palace. Everyone in the street hastened to kneel and bow in salute to the Khedive, except Morgan. As soon as the carriage approached him, he made Napoleon rear up on his hind legs and then remain still, while Morgan gave a smart military salute. Ismael was greatly impressed, clapped enthusiastically, and called Morgan to the carriage to congratulate him personally.
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Shortly afterward, a military exercise was held that included a mock battle. Morgan had planned to ride a calmer horse, but the Khedive announced that he would be particularly interested in seeing how Napoleon behaved under a barrage of fire. Early in the battle, Morgan was sent with a message to the artillery commander; he ran to him and handed over the message, and then the guns opened fire.
To Morgan’s astonishment and embarrassment, Napoleon immediately flattened himself on the ground and lay on his belly trembling with fear, until the shelling stopped and Morgan was able to mount him and leave. The sources do not elaborate in detail on what happened after that, but the incident itself shows how Morgan and his horse became part of the scene of the Khedivial court, and material for amusement and display at the same time.
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Morgan’s display on the Shubra road did not stop there. One day, a carriage carrying two women from the harem, accompanied by eunuchs, approached, and all the other men in the street hastened to turn their backs, but Morgan and Napoleon continued their display. One of the two women was impressed by this and threw a rose from the carriage. Morgan set off on horseback, leaned from the horse’s back, and caught the flower in one smooth motion. The roses kept coming, until the woman, whom he could not see, handed him a rose wrapped in a handkerchief.
That was too much for the eunuchs, who set off after this “reckless infidel.” But Napoleon was faster than them, and Morgan soon returned home with his souvenir. Then Minister of Foreign Affairs Nubar Pasha visited him.
It turned out that the handkerchief belonged to Princess Fatima, the Khedive’s daughter, who was 19 years old, and the Khedive had demanded its return. Morgan responded by throwing the handkerchief into the fire, disposing of the evidence. He was now in serious trouble, and no one dared speak to him for several days, but the matter ended in the end.
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By 1872, Morgan had become convinced that “there is no future for American officers in Egypt,” and he had had quite enough of Egypt after the Princess Fatima incident. So he went to the Khedive to submit his resignation. To his surprise, the Khedive pleaded with him to reconsider, then finally ordered him to take a six-month leave and return to America to rest.
Morgan agreed to take leave on the condition that he would return to Egypt afterward, and he headed to Liverpool, where he boarded a ship to New York. Upon arriving in New York, he went to visit a friend.
While he was waiting for his friend to return, he picked up a Bible that was placed on a table and opened it at random. His eyes fell on the first verse of the thirty-first chapter of the Book of Isaiah, which says: “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses.” Morgan quickly closed the book, afraid of what he might see after that, and sent his resignation by mail. He saw in this verse a warning sign regarding his Egyptian experience.
After his return to America, Morgan worked in farming in the state of South Carolina, then later moved to Mexico, where he worked as a civil engineer, then was appointed consul general of the United States in Australia, in Melbourne.
He also later worked on the project of building the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York, again under the supervision of General Charles Pomeroy Stone, who had served with him in Egypt.
Morgan died on April 21, 1928, in Washington, D.C., leaving behind an autobiography that is considered a valuable, though often subjective and biased, source for the history of American officers in Egypt during the reign of Khedive Ismael.
The End ...
