C. A. L. Totten

Charles A. L. Totten

Charles Adelle Lewis Totten (February 3, 1851 - April 12, 1908) was an American military officer, a professor of military tactics, a prolific writer, and an influential early advocate of British Israelism.

Charles Totten was born in a military family (his father, James Totten was a Brigadier-General, and his uncle, Joseph Gilbert Totten was Chief of the United States Army Corps of Engineers). He graduated from West Point (where he had been an honor student), and taught military science and tactics at Massachusetts Agricultural College (now known as the University of Massachusetts Amherst), (briefly) at West Point, and served with the Missouri Artillery before taking a post as Professor of Military Tactics at Yale University from 1889 to 1892. Charles Totten and W. R. Livermore are variously credited with being the first to bring the practice of wargaming from Germany to the United States. Totten's book on Kriegspiel was published in 1880.

He patented a system of weights and measures in 1884.

He resigned his commission in 1892, and devoted most of his remaining life to writing, chiefly on biblical chronology, biblical prophecy, pyramidology, and British Israelism. He was a prolific author, writing over 180 books and articles, including a massive 26 volume series entitled "Our Race" defending British Israelism, and his writings continue to exert influence in some Christian Zionist circles.

Some works

• Laws of Athletics and General Rules
• The gospel of history;: An interwoven harmony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, with their collaterals, jointly and severally re-translated and consolidated word-by-word into one composite truth
• Joshua's Long Day and the Dial of Ahaz, a Scientific Vindication and "a Midnight Cry"(1890)
• The seal of history : our inheritance in the great seal of "Manasseh," the United States of America : its history and heraldry; and its signification unto "the great people" thus sealed (1897)
• An Important Question in Metrology: Based Upon Recent and Original Discoveries: A Challenge to "The Metric System." and an Earnest Word with the English-Speaking Peoples on Their Ancient Weights and Measures (1884)
• The Romance of History: Lost Israel Found; Or, Jeshurun's Pilgrimage Towards Ammi, from Lo-Ammi
• The Riddle of History, a Chronological Itinerary Through the Period of the Judges: Together with Other Biblico-Literary Excursus (1892)

See also

Biography portal

• British Israelism
• Lost Ten Tribes

External links

• Totten's Legacy: UMass Fencing from 1875 to the Present
• Joshua's Long Day and the NASA Computers (traces a popular urban legend based in part on one of Totten's books)

Persondata
Name	Totten, C. A. L.
Alternative names
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Date of birth	February 3, 1851
Place of birth
Date of death	April 12, 1908
Place of death