Category: Greatest American

To describe George Washington as enigmatic may strike some as strange, for every young student knows about him (or did when students could be counted on to know anything). He was born into a minor family in Virginia’s plantation gentry, worked as a surveyor in the West as a young man, was a hero of sorts during the French and Indian War, became an extremely wealthy planter (after marrying a rich widow), served as commander in chief of the Continental Army throughout the Revolutionary War (including the terrible winter at Valley Forge), defeated the British at the Battle of Yorktown, suppressed a threatened mutiny by his officers at Newburgh, N.Y., then astonished the world and won its applause by laying down his sword in 1783. Called out of retirement, he presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787, reluctantly accepted the presidency in 1789 and served for two terms, thus assuring the success of the American experiment in self-government.
…

Washington was, after all, a magnificent physical specimen. He towered several inches over six feet, had broad shoulders and slender hips (in a nation consisting mainly of short, fat people), was powerful and a superb athlete. He carried himself with a dignity that astonished; when she first laid eyes on him Abigail Adams, a veteran of receptions at royal courts and a difficult woman to impress, gushed like a schoolgirl. On horseback he rode with a presence that declared him the commander in chief even if he had not been in uniform.

Other characteristics smack of the supernatural. He was impervious to gunfire. Repeatedly, he was caught in cross-fires and yet no bullet ever touched him. In a 1754 letter to his brother he wrote that “I heard Bullets whistle and believe me there was something charming in the Sound.” During the Revolutionary War he had horses shot from under him but it seemed that no bullet dared strike him personally. Moreover, when the Continental Army was ravaged by a smallpox epidemic, Washington, having had the disease as a youngster, proved to be as immune to it as he was to bullets.

— Forrest McDonald in his review of Joseph J. Ellis’ His Excellency: George Washington.

… was born on February 11, 1731, 277 years ago today.

Our greatest president was born 200 years ago today. It seems a good reason to read, once again, some of his most meaningful words — read them slowly and meticulously, perhaps almost saying them aloud as he did.

The Address at Gettysburg (November 19, 1863):

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

And, from his Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865):

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

… was born 80 years ago today.

Many may question some of King’s choices and perhaps even some of his motives, but no one can question his unparalleled leadership in a great cause, or his abilities with both the spoken and written word.

There are 10 federal holidays, but only four of them are dedicated to one man: one for Jesus, one for the man given credit for discovering our continent, one for the military and political founder George Washington, and one for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
December 10, 1964
Library of Congress

Harry Truman was born on May 8th in 1884.

The Truman Library has the Truman diary online. The diary, which was just discovered in 2003, was kept intermittently by the President during 1947. It is fascinating reading.

The entry for January 3:

Byrnes & I discussed General Marshall’s last letter and decided to ask him to come home. Byrnes is going to quit on the tenth and I shall make Marshall Sec[retary] of State. Some of the crackpots will in all probability yell their heads off-but let ’em yell! Marshall is the ablest man in the whole gallery.

Mrs. Roosevelt came in at 3 P.M. to assure me that Jimmy & Elliott had nothing against me and intended no disparagement of me in their recent non-edited remarks. Said she was for me. Said she didn’t like Byrnes and was sure he was not reporting Elliott correctly. Said Byrnes was always for Byrnes and no one else. I wonder! He’s been loyal to me[.] In the Senate he gave me my first small appropriation, which started the Special Committee to investigate the National Defense Program on its way. He’d probably have done me a favor if he’d refused to give it.

Maybe there was something on both sides in this situation. It is a pity a great man has to have progeny! Look at Churchill’s. Remember Lincoln’s and Grant’s. Even in collateral branches Washington’s wasn’t so good-and Teddy Roosevelt’s are terrible.

The entry for January 8:

The Senate took Marshall lock, stock and barrell [sic]. Confirmed him by unanimous consent and did not even refer his nomination to a committee. A grand start for him.

I am very happy over that proceedure [sic]. Marshall is, I think[,] the greatest man of the World War II. He managed to get along with Roosevelt, the Congress, Churchill, the Navy and the Joint Chief of Staff and he made a grand record in China.

When I asked him to take the extrovert Pat Hurley[‘]s place as my special envoy to China, he merely said “Yes, Mr. President I’ll go.” No argument only patriotic action. And if any man was entitled to balk and ask for a rest, he was. We’ll have a real State Dep[artmen]t now.

The entry for July 6:

Drove an open car from Charlottesville to Washington-starting at 9:15 Washington time.

Had a V[irgini]a Highway Policeman in a car ahead making the pace at exactly the speed allowed by V[irgini]a law. He forced all the trucks to one side as I always wanted to do. Made the drive in 3 hours. Had Sec[retary] of Treas[ury] Snyder, Adm[iral] Leahy, and Doctor Brig[adier] Gen[eral] Graham as passengers. All said they enjoyed the ride and felt they needed no extra accident coverage!

David McCullough’s Truman is superb.

Mary Harris Jones was born on this date in 1830 (or, more likely, 1837). She is better known to us as Mother Jones. The magazine named after her has a nice biographical essay that begins:

The moniker “Mother” Jones was no mere rhetorical device. At the core of her beliefs was the idea that justice for working people depended on strong families, and strong families required decent working conditions. In 1903, after she was already nationally known from bitter mine wars in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, she organized her famous “march of the mill children” from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt’s summer home on Long Island. Every day, she and a few dozen children — boys and girls, some 12 and 14 years old, some crippled by the machinery of the textile mills — walked to a new town, and at night they staged rallies with music, skits, and speeches, drawing thousands of citizens. Federal laws against child labor would not come for decades, but for two months that summer, Mother Jones, with her street theater and speeches, made the issue front-page news.

The rock of Mother Jones’ faith was her conviction that working Americans acting together must free themselves from poverty and powerlessness. She believed in the need for citizens of a democracy to participate in public affairs.

NewMexiKen has known about Mother Jones since the eponymous magazine first came out in 1976. What amazes me is that I had no knowledge of her before that, despite majoring in American history, and even though “For a quarter of a century, she roamed America, the Johnny Appleseed of activists.”

The essay is well worth reading.

Ulysses Grant was born on this date in 1822.

HEADQUARTERS ARMY IN THE FIELD
Camp near Fort Donelson
February 16, 1862.
 
General S. B. BUCKNER,
Confederate Army.

     SIR: Yours of this date, proposing armistice and appointment of commissioners to settle terms of capitulation, is just received. No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
U.S. GRANT,
Brigadier-General, Commanding.
 

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13th in 1743. [It was April 2nd on the calendar when he was born, but it’s that old Julian-Gregorian thing again.]

Eight-three years later, at the end of his remarkable life, he wished to be remembered foremost for those actions that appear as his epitaph:

Author of the Declaration of American Independence of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom and Father of the University of Virginia.

At a White House dinner honoring 49 Nobel laureates in 1962, President Kennedy remarked, “I think this is the most extraordinary talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

Despite serious flaws, Jefferson remains one of the most remarkable Americans.

In addition to being a writer, Jefferson was also a hard-nosed politician, lawyer, naturalist, musician, architect, geographer, inventor, scientist, paleontologist, and philosopher. Jefferson filled his house with scientific gadgets and inventions, collected mastodon bones, and kept detailed notes on the most obscure details of his life, including the daily fluctuation of the barometric pressure. After he missed the start of the solar eclipse in 1811, he designed his own more accurate astronomical clock. He composed all his papers in later life with a device that allowed him to write with two pens at the same time, so that he could keep copies of all the papers he produced.

The Writer’s Almanac

It seems to NewMexiKen that the country could use a federal holiday during that long spell from Washington’s Birthday to Memorial Day — for shopping and sales and stuff. I propose that April 13th, Jefferson’s birthday, would be ideal.

Click on the image of the document to view Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence. The photo of Jefferson’s tomb above taken by NewMexiKen, 2001. Click to enlarge.

… was born in Los Angeles on this date in 1891.

Among the decisions the Supreme Court made under Warren as Chief Justice were those that:

• Outlawed school segregation.
• Enunciated the one-man, one-vote doctrine.
• Made most of the Bill of Rights binding on the states.
• Curbed wiretapping.
• Upheld the right to be secure against “unreasonable” searches and seizures.
• Buttressed the right to counsel.
• Underscored the right to a jury trial.
• Barred racial discrimination in voting, in marriage laws, in the use of public parks, airports and bus terminals and in housing sales and rentals.
• Extended the boundaries of free speech.
• Ruled out compulsory religious exercises in public schools.
• Restored freedom of foreign travel.
• Knocked out the application of both the Smith and the McCarran Acts–both designed to curb “subversive” activities.
• Held that Federal prisoners could sue the Government for injuries sustained in jail.
• Said that wages could not be garnished without a hearing.
• Liberalized residency requirements for welfare recipients.
• Sustained the right to disseminate and receive birth control information.

(Source: The New York Times)

Warren’s parents were born in Norway (father) and Sweden (mother). Elected governor of California three times (1942, 1946, 1950), Warren was so popular he won both the Democratic and Republican primaries in 1946. The darkest mark against Warren’s public service was the wartime internment of Japanese Americans.

President Eisenhower appointed Warren chief justice in 1953; he retired from the Court in 1969. NewMexiKen considers Warren the most significant historical figure I’ve ever seen in person (briefly at the 1964 New York World’s Fair) — and I’ve seen five presidents.

… was born on February 11, 1731, 276 years ago today.

… was born in Milan, Ohio, on this date in 1847.

Edison’s stature has diminished since his death; technology has evolved so much since then. But he was still a hero when he died in 1931. These are the sub-headlines from his obituary in The New York Times:

World Made Over By Edison’s Magic

He Did More Than Any One Man to Put Luxuries Into the Lives of the Masses

Created Millions Of Jobs

Electric Light, the Phonograph, Motion Pictures and Radio Improvements Among Gifts

Lamp Ended “Dark Ages”

He Held the Miracle of Menlo Park, Produced on a Gusty Night 50 Years Ago, His Greatest Work

The Undiscovered World of Thomas Edison is an informative and interesting essay from the December 1995 Atlantic Monthly.

Benjamin Franklin was born on this date in 1706.

As his most recent biographer, Walter Isaacson, states:

[Franklin] was, during his eighty-four-year-Iong life, America’s best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical, though not most profound, political thinkers. He proved by flying a kite that lightning was electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it. He devised bifocal glasses and cleanburning stoves, charts of the Gulf Stream and theories about the contagious nature of the common cold. He launched various civic improvement schemes, such as a lending library, college, volunteer fire corps, insurance association, and matching grant fund-raiser. He helped invent America’s unique style of homespun humor and philosophical pragmatism. In foreign policy, he created an approach that wove together idealism with balance-of-power realism. And in politics, he proposed seminal plans for uniting the colonies and creating a federal model for a national government.

But the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America’s first great publicist, he was, in his life and in his writings, consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity.

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

• The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money.
• He is not well-bred, that cannot bear ill-breeding in others.
• You may talk too much on the best of subjects.
• A good conscience is a continual Christmas.
• All would live long, but none would be old.
• One today is worth two tomorrows.
• Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
• Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
• Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
• Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
• Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.
• Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.
• I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.
• If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.
• I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.

All the above from Benjamin Franklin, born in Boston on this date in 1706.