Category: History

NewMexiKen has begun reading American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work by Nick Taylor. It seemed pertinent.

I am only 60 pages into this 530-page historical narrative, so this reaction is somewhat preliminary. Put another way, I haven’t even gotten through the 1932 election yet. That said, it’s proven quite good so far. The style is anecdotal-narrative, relatively fast-paced. And there are enough parallels to today to elevate your interest. For example, just today President-elect Obama called for a 2.5 million person jobs program.

I have noticed a few errors by Taylor — for example, saying FDR was 53 in 1932, when in fact he was 51. This is absolutely unimportant, but when I see these kind of things I do wonder if more significant details are carefully researched and described.

But, more importantly, the book is good enough that I wanted to mention it. And being reminded about MacArthur’s reaction to The Bonus March was enough to give me chills all over again.

Taken 45 years ago today. Click image to see larger version from The Smoking Gun.

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864

Dear Madam, –I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln.

[As it turns out, this letter, made even more famous when read in the film Saving Private Ryan, may have been written by John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary. Further, only two of Mrs. Bixby’s five sons had died in battle. One was honorably discharged, one was dishonorably discharged, and another deserted or died in a prison camp. Not that losing three sons in whatever way isn’t horrible enough.]

Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, the marquis d’ Arlandes, flew in a untethered hot air balloon over Paris for 20 minutes on this date in 1783. The balloon was made of silk and paper and was constructed by Jacques Étienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, who first took notice that smoke (i.e., hot air) would cause a bag to rise. The Montgolfiers experimented with paper bags before sending a balloon aloft with a sheep, a rooster and a duck (September 19, 1783). De Rozier went up in a tethered balloon on October 15.

But 225 years ago today, November 21, 1783, is the date man first flew, untethered to the earth.

The winds have welcomed you with softness,
The sun has blessed you with his warm hands
You have flown so high and so free,
That God has joined you in laughter,
And set you gently again,
Into the loving arms of mother earth.

The Balloonists Prayer

With today’s big losses, the S&P 500 has dropped 51.9% since the Bull Market peak 58 weeks ago.

The 1929 crash was 47.9%.

The 1973-1974 oil crisis crash was 48.2%.

The 2000-2002 dot com crash was 49.1%.

Ultimately, after some recovery in 1930, the 1929-1932 Depression crash bottomed after two years, three months, down 89.2%.

Calculated Risk updated the chart.

President Abraham Lincoln, 145 years ago today:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on 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 on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, 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 cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot 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 it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 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 gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Library of Congress Exhibition on The Gettysburg Address

Gettysburg Cemetery Dedication (PowerPoint Version)

At exactly noon on this day [in 1883], American and Canadian railroads begin using four continental time zones to end the confusion of dealing with thousands of local times. The bold move was emblematic of the power shared by the railroad companies.

The need for continental time zones stemmed directly from the problems of moving passengers and freight over the thousands of miles of rail line that covered North America by the 1880s. Since human beings had first begun keeping track of time, they set their clocks to the local movement of the sun. Even as late as the 1880s, most towns in the U.S. had their own local time, generally based on “high noon,” or the time when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. As railroads began to shrink the travel time between cities from days or months to mere hours, however, these local times became a scheduling nightmare. Railroad timetables in major cities listed dozens of different arrival and departure times for the same train, each linked to a different local time zone.

Efficient rail transportation demanded a more uniform time-keeping system. Rather than turning to the federal governments of the United States and Canada to create a North American system of time zones, the powerful railroad companies took it upon themselves to create a new time code system. The companies agreed to divide the continent into four time zones; the dividing lines adopted were very close to the ones we still use today.

Most Americans and Canadians quickly embraced their new time zones, since railroads were often their lifeblood and main link with the rest of the world. However, it was not until 1918 that Congress officially adopted the railroad time zones and put them under the supervision of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

This Day in History

Don’t let Arizonans read about this “sun time” thing; surely they’d want to reinstate it.

It was on this date in 1865 that Andersonville prison commander Henry Wirz was hanged. The Library of Congress tells us:

Henry Wirz, former commander of the infamous Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia, was hanged on November 10, 1865 in Washington, D.C. Swiss-born Wirz was assigned to the command at Andersonville on March 27, 1864. When arrested on May 7, 1865, he was the only remaining member of the Confederate staff at the prison. Brigadier General John Winder, commander of Confederate prisons east of the Mississippi and Wirz’s superior at Andersonville, died of a heart attack the previous February.

A military tribunal tried Wirz on charges of conspiring with Jefferson Davis to “injure the health and destroy the lives of soldiers in the military service of the United States.” Several individual acts of cruelty to Union prisoners were also alleged. Caught in the unfortunate position of answering for all of the misery that was Andersonville, he stood little chance of a fair trial. After two months of testimony rife with inconsistencies, Wirz was convicted on all counts and sentenced to death.

View a photograph taken just before the hanging and another just after the trap was sprung.

… went down off Whitefish Bay, Lake Superior, 33 years ago today.

The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald
©1976 by Gordon Lightfoot and Moose Music, Ltd.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they called “Gitche Gumee.”
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
when the skies of November turn gloomy.
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty,
that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
when the “Gales of November” came early.

The ship was the pride of the American side
coming back from some mill in Wisconsin.
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
with a crew and good captain well seasoned,
concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
when they left fully loaded for Cleveland.
And later that night when the ship’s bell rang,
could it be the north wind they’d been feelin’?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
and a wave broke over the railing.
And ev’ry man knew, as the captain did too
’twas the witch of November come stealin’.
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
when the Gales of November came slashin’.
When afternoon came it was freezin’ rain
in the face of a hurricane west wind.

When suppertime came the old cook came on deck sayin’.
“Fellas, it’s too rough t’feed ya.”
At seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in; he said,
“Fellas, it’s bin good t’know ya!”
The captain wired in he had water comin’ in
and the good ship and crew was in peril.
And later that night when ‘is lights went outta sight
came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does any one know where the love of God goes
when the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
if they’d put fifteen more miles behind ‘er.
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
they may have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
in the rooms of her ice-water mansion.
Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams;
the islands and bays are for sportsmen.
And farther below Lake Ontario
takes in what Lake Erie can send her,
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
with the Gales of November remembered.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
in the “Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral.”
The church bell chimed ’til it rang twenty-nine times
for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they call “Gitche Gumee.”
“Superior,” they said, “never gives up her dead
when the gales of November come early!”

The ship was thirty-nine feet tall, seventy-five feet wide, and 729 feet long.

Lightfoot’s lyrics had one error — the load was bound for Detroit, not Cleveland.

There were waves as high as 30 feet that night; so high they were picked up on radar.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was only 17 miles from safe haven (Whitefish Point).

The captain and a crew of 28 were lost.

Today is the 233rd anniversary of the founding of the United States Marine Corps.

A colleague — a Marine — at the U.S. Department of State brought in a large birthday cake every November 10th. Before we could have cake we all had to sing “The Marine Hymn.” A lot of us would have honored the marines even without the cake.

I thought Obama’s victory speech was good. James Wood helps me discover just how good.

I mentioned that I was reading David Hackett Fischer’s Champlain’s Dream. I found this passage interesting. It describes the scene in the hours before a battle in 1609 between Champlain’s Indian allies and the Mohawk. They were on the shores of the lake Champlain had named for himself just days before.

“We were on the water,” he wrote, “within bow-shot of their barricades.” Songs and cries pierced the night. The Mohawk shouted insults at their enemies. “Our side was not lacking in repartee,” Champlain recalled, “telling them that they would see feats of weaponry that they had never known before, and a great deal of other talk as is usual at the siege of a city.”

In other words, trash talking has been around for a while.

[It’s interesting to learn from Fischer that according to Champlain’s reports, woodland Indians at that time entered battle pretty much as Europeans did — mass, coordinated movements, armored warriors (albeit wooden armor). It was, he says, firearms that caused the Eastern Indians to adopt the type of warfare historians (and novelists) associate with them, the hit-and-run, hiding in the woods, kind of warfare.]

As I was putting my older son to sleep last night, I had just heard about Ohio. I explained to the boy that Obama was going to win the election and become the first African-American President of the United States. The boy looked up at me, eyes filled with wonder, as one’s kids will on occasion, and said, “Really? The first? How can that be?”

ari — The Edge of the American West

And Then They Wept

And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

In an effort to address the problem of voter fraud in presidential elections, Congress passed legislation in 1845 requiring the simultaneous selection of presidential electors in each state. Prior to the enactment of this law, states selected presidential electors on different dates. The new law stipulated that presidential electors be selected on the “Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November of the year in which they are to be appointed.” The 1848 election was the first presidential election in which Americans in every state voted on the same day.

In 1872, legislation was passed that moved election day for the House of Representatives to the same Tuesday in November. The act was amended to include Senate elections after the Seventeenth Amendment was enacted.

Library of Congress

It’s our 56th presidential election and the first time since 1952 that neither the sitting president nor vice president is on the ballot. We’ve only ever elected two sitting senators to be president — Harding and Kennedy.

Cleveland, Eisenhower and Reagan were each elected to their first term on November 4th.