Category: History

Brief narratives about people and events in the American past.

America’s Blinders

Historian Howard Zinn reminds us that if we knew the history of the U.S. — no, really knew it — George Bush’s lies that got us into Iraq would have been seen three years ago for what we now know. It’s an excellent, if strident essay. An excerpt:

If we don’t know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. I am not speaking of the history we learned in school, a history subservient to our political leaders, from the much-admired Founding Fathers to the Presidents of recent years. I mean a history which is honest about the past. If we don’t know that history, then any President can stand up to the battery of microphones, declare that we must go to war, and we will have no basis for challenging him. He will say that the nation is in danger, that democracy and liberty are at stake, and that we must therefore send ships and planes to destroy our new enemy, and we will have no reason to disbelieve him.

But if we know some history, if we know how many times Presidents have made similar declarations to the country, and how they turned out to be lies, we will not be fooled. Although some of us may pride ourselves that we were never fooled, we still might accept as our civic duty the responsibility to buttress our fellow citizens against the mendacity of our high officials.

We would remind whoever we can that President Polk lied to the nation about the reason for going to war with Mexico in 1846. It wasn’t that Mexico “shed American blood upon the American soil,” but that Polk, and the slave-owning aristocracy, coveted half of Mexico.

We would point out that President McKinley lied in 1898 about the reason for invading Cuba, saying we wanted to liberate the Cubans from Spanish control, but the truth is that we really wanted Spain out of Cuba so that the island could be open to United Fruit and other American corporations. He also lied about the reasons for our war in the Philippines, claiming we only wanted to “civilize” the Filipinos, while the real reason was to own a valuable piece of real estate in the far Pacific, even if we had to kill hundreds of thousands of Filipinos to accomplish that.

President Woodrow Wilson—so often characterized in our history books as an “idealist”—lied about the reasons for entering the First World War, saying it was a war to “make the world safe for democracy,” when it was really a war to make the world safe for the Western imperial powers.

Harry Truman lied when he said the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima because it was “a military target.”

10 pivotal dates in American history

May 26, 1637
January 25, 1787
January 24, 1848
September 17, 1862
July 6, 1892
September 6, 1901
July 21, 1925
July 16, 1939
September 9, 1956
June 21, 1964

The History Channel is showing a 10-hour series this coming Sunday through Thursday (two hours each night) — “10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America.” The 10 dates are listed above. How many of the events can you identify from the date?

Answers here.

Resistance worthy a better cause

The second day of the battle known as Shiloh was fought on this date in 1862. It was the first great battle of the American Civil War. The following is from a contemporary report in The New York Times:

Gen. Buell having arrived on Sunday evening, in the morning the hall was opened at daylight, simultaneously by Gen. Nelson’s Division on the left, and Major-Gen. Wallace’s Division on the right. Gen. Nelson’s force opened up a most galling fire on the rebels, and advanced rapidly as they fell back. The fire soon became general along the whole line, and began to tell with terrible effect on the enemy. Generals McClernand, Sherman, and Hurlburt’s men, though terribly jaded from the previous day’s fighting still maintained their honors won at Donnelson, but the resistance of the rebels at all points of the attack was worthy a better cause.

But they were not enough for our undaunted bravery, and the dreadful desolation produced by our artillery, which was sweeping them away like chaff before the wind. But knowing that a defeat here would be the death blow to their hopes, and that their all depended upon this great struggle, their Generals still urged them on in the face of destruction, hoping by flanking us on the right to turn the tide of battle. Their success was again for a time cheering, as they began to gain ground on us, appearing to have been reinforced; but our left, under Gen. Nelson was driving them, and with wonderful rapidity, and by eleven o’clock Gen. Buell’s troops had succeeded in flanking them and capturing their batteries of artillery.

They however again rallied on the left, and recrossed another right forced themselves forward in another desperate effort. But reinforcements from General Wood and Gen. Thomas were coming in regiment after regiment, which were sent to Gen. Buell who had again commenced to drive the enemy.

About three o’clock in the afternoon Gen. Grant rode to the left, where the fresh regiments had been ordered, and finding the rebels wavering, sent a portion of his body-guard to the heart of each of five regiments, and then ordered a charge across the field, himself leading, as he brandished his sword and waved them on to the crowning victory, while cannon balls were falling like hail around him.

The men followed with a shout that sounded above the roar and din of the artillery, and the rebels fled in dismay, as from a destroying avalanche, and never made another stand.

Shiloh

… the first great battle of the American Civil War began on this date in 1862. The Union Army, under Grant, was encamped in a poorly chosen position at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee,. They were attacked by Confederates under Johnston and Beauregard early Sunday, April 6. By the end of the day, Confederates had catured the key position of Shiloh church and driven Union lines nearly to the Tennessee River. Grant, reinforced by Buell, counter attacked Monday morning, regained the lost ground, and forced the Confederates to retreat to Corinth, Mississippi. It was ostensibly a Union victory, though Grant was faulted for a lack of precaution that led to the first day’s disaster. Under criticism to remove Grant, Lincoln replied, “I can’t spare this man, he fights.”

According to James M. McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom:

The 20,000 killed and wounded at Shiloh (about equally distributed between the two sides) were nearly double the 12,000 battle casualties at [First] Manassas, Wilson’s Creek, Fort Donelson, and Pea Ridge combined.

Shiloh was the beginning of total war.

Mostly Mozart’s Money

Mozart wasn’t poor; he just wasn’t much of a money manager. That is the suggestion of scholars who scoured Austrian archives for an exhibition that opened yesterday at the Musikverein in Vienna, The Associated Press reported. At a time when successful professionals were living comfortably on 450 florins a year, Mozart was earning about 10,000 florins — at least $42,000 in today’s terms, a sum that would have put him in the top 5 percent of wage earners in late-18th-century Vienna. “Mozart made a lot of money,” said Otto Biba, director of the Archive of the Friends of Music in Vienna. For centuries, nevertheless, Mozart has been portrayed as poor, and letters on display at the exhibition, devoted to his later years in Vienna, show that he repeatedly borrowed money from friends to pay for travel and social obligations; whatever wealth he had was long gone by the time he died at 35 in 1791. Although unable to buttress their suspicions, some experts believe that gambling debts bit heavily into his income, much of it, Mr. Biba said, derived from teaching piano to aristocrats.

— Arts, Briefly – New York Times

Gettysburg Battles Over Gambling

There’s another battle brewing in Gettysburg, and this one has to do with whether gambling is fitting and proper for the historic Pennsylvania community.

The area, site of the most decisive battle of the Civil War more than a century ago, is fighting over a proposal to build a 3,000- slot machine parlor about two miles from its center.

The New York Times

“These people have risen up to protest this really bad idea because they believe that this is a national historic treasure,” [Susan Star Paddock] said. “They believe that Gettysburg is sacred.”

Hear. Hear.

Union troops

… entered Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, on this date in 1865. The Confederate government and army had fled the night before. According to historian James M. McPherson, “Southerners burned more of their own capital than the enemy had burned of Atlanta or Columbia.”

The following day, April 4, President Lincoln, who had been “vacationing” at City Point, Virginia, near the front since March 24, toured Richmond (much of it on foot) with his 12-year-old son Tad (it was Tad’s birthday). At the capitol, Lincoln sat in Jefferson Davis’ chair.

Lincoln returned to Washington on April 9th (the date of Lee’s surrender). He was assassinated just five days later.

The Pony Express

… began operation on this date in 1860.

Pony Express Station

The Pony Express National Historic Trail was used by young men on fast paced horses to carry the nation’s mail across the country, from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California, in the unprecedented time of only ten days. Organized by private entrepreneurs, the horse-and-rider relay system became the nation’s most direct and practical means of east-west communications before the telegraph. Though only in operation for 18 months, between April 1860 and October 1861, the trail proved the feasibility of a central overland transportation route, and played a vital role in aligning California with the Union in the years just before the Civil War.

Most of the original trail has been obliterated either by time or human activities. Along many segments, the trail’s actual route and exact length are matters of conjecture. However, approximately 120 historic sites may eventually be available to the public, including 50 existing Pony Express stations or station ruins.

Pony Express National Historic Trail

Team of Rivals

NewMexiKen recommends Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals to all interested in the American Civil War, 19th century politics and Abraham Lincoln.

Though NewMexiKen has read many other books about Lincoln and long considered him to be the greatest of American presidents, Goodwin has put me even more in awe of this extraordinary human being.

His conviction that we are one nation, indivisible, “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” led to the rebirth of a union free of slavery. And he expressed this conviction in a language of enduring clarity and beauty, exhibiting a literary genius to match his political genius.

But beyond even that, as Tolstoy wrote:

Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country—bigger than all the Presidents together.

Goodwin tells the story convincingly — in 754 pages of text with 121 pages of notes. At times it moves slowly, but ultimately the detail proves valuable. There is much about Lincoln’s political rivals (who become his cabinet) and their families. William Henry Seward is shown as the great politician and gentleman he was. Mary Todd Lincoln comes off in a positive new light.

Caveat: Though it touches on the main battles and a few of the leading military personnel, this is not a military history. A reader looking for military history should look elsewhere. The best general history of the Civil War remains Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson. McPherson reviewed Goodwin’s book for The New York Times.

The best biography of Lincoln is, I think, David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln.

Stand-up comedy based on history

A review of HBO’s ‘Assume the Position With Mr. Wuhl’. It begins:

He confesses to having studied “nothing” while an undergraduate at the University of Houston. But last year, the comedian and actor Robert Wuhl decided that he wanted to become a college professor. Not a real one, but a humorous substitute, backed by an HBO crew, who would amuse a packed lecture hall with a curriculum proposing that American history was popular culture — and a lot of gossip.

“The key to history is who tells the story,” Mr. Wuhl said in an interview. “Tolstoy said, ‘History is a wonderful thing, if only it were true.’ If O’Reilly and Franken see the same event, you’ll get two different stories. A guy writes a book that says Lincoln is gay, so is he gay because someone says so?”

In “Assume the Position With Mr. Wuhl” (tonight at 10 on HBO), he asks a hall full of university students to consider the piffle perpetrated by Washington Irving in the early 19th century: that Christopher Columbus had discovered that the earth was round.

Or the nonsense that Paul Revere, and not the little-known postal rider Israel Bissell, deserved Longfellow’s lionization for warning about British troop movements. But, he says, Bissell, who galloped much farther than Revere, did not suit the poet’s stirring legend-making. He rights the wrong with a quick ditty about Bissell.

Take Mr. Wuhl’s quiz.

What’s missing from this language?

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

That’s the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, formally adopted on this date in 1870.

What’s missing is on account of “sex.” That came about in the 19th Amendment, 50 years later.

Best line of the day, 1862 edition

NewMexiKen has been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s masterful Team of Rivals.

Union General George B. McClellan surely ranks among the most arrogant, self-important a**-holes in American history. His insubordination amounted to treason some thought; the way he dissed his superiors including President Lincoln was incredible. He did have a way with words though. After his own failure in the Peninsula campaign, McCleallan wrote to his wife Mary Ellen the following about Secretary of War Edwin Stanton:

So you want to know what I thought of Stanton, & what I think of him now? I think that he is the most unmitigated scoundrel I ever knew, heard or read of; I think that…had he lived in the time of the Saviour, Judas Iscariot would have remained a respected member of the fraternity of Apostles & that the magnificent treachery and rascality of E. M. Stanton would have caused Judas to have raised his arms in holy horror & unaffected wonder.

North to Alaska

Secretary of State William H. Seward agreed to purchase Alaska from Russia for $7 million on this date in 1867. The Senate eventually approved the treaty by just one vote.

He got it for 1.65 cents an acre.

Earl Warren

… 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 four presidents.

Today

Bruce Willis is 51 today, Glenn Close is 59 and Ursula Andress is 70.

Congress approved Daylight Saving Time on this date in 1918. Word hasn’t reached Indiana and Arizona.

Bob Dylan’s first album was released on this date in 1962.

Wyatt Earp was born on this date in 1848. He died in 1929, age 80. Larry McMurtry has an essay on Wyatt, Back to the O.K. Corral, in the current New York Review of Books.

I am talking, of course, about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which, for starters, wasn’t fought in the O.K. Corral—the shooting occurred across the street in a vacant lot adjacent to the local photographer Camillus Fry’s rooming house. Some say the shooting only lasted fifteen seconds; others give it twenty seconds, or even thirty. Local estimate was that some thirty shots were fired, at close if not quite point blank range. Three men were killed and three wounded. The shoot-out at the O.K. Corral was neither more nor less violent than a number of shootings that had occurred in Tombstone or its environs in the few short years of the community’s existence. It solved nothing, proved nothing, meant nothing; and yet, 123 years later, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral is reenacted every day in Tombstone, Arizona, to paying customers—lots of paying customers.

The most recent O.K. Corral movie stars Kevin Costner as Wyatt; the next most recent, released a few months earlier, stars Kurt Russell as Wyatt, with Val Kilmer as Doc. There are so many gunfight-at-the O.K.-Corral movies that they constitute a kind of subgenre of the western. In the most lyrical version, John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946), Henry Fonda plays Wyatt Earp.

What I’m wondering is why, in this day and time, anyone should care about Wyatt Earp, or any Earp, or the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, either. The Battle of the Little Bighorn at least offers heroism, spectacle, and mass, whereas the gunfight at the O.K. Corral was merely a bungled arrest. Virgil Earp, not Wyatt, was the peace officer in charge that day. How do we get from a bungled arrest to Henry Fonda, Hugh O’Brian, Burt Lancaster, Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell, and all the other movie land Wyatts? I’d like to know.

It’ll cost you $3.00 to read the whole thing unless you subscribe, but it’s worth it.

[Reposted from 2005 with some added items.]

James Madison

… was born on this date in 1751.

No government any more than an individual will long be respected without being truly respectable.

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

[I]t is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.

James Madison

Beware the Ides of March

Julius Caesar was assassinated on the ides of March in 44 B.C. A group of Roman senators led by Cassius and Brutus thought Caesar was becoming arrogant and tyrannical, and they devised a plot to assassinate him at a senate meeting on March 15. Many of the conspirators were close friends of Caesar, including Brutus. At the meeting, the group of senators circled around Caesar and pretended to submit a petition. Suddenly, one of them grabbed Caesar’s robe and yanked it off his neck, which was the signal to begin the attack. All of the conspirators were hiding daggers, and they each stabbed him as he staggered across the floor.

The Writer’s Almanac

Ides

American historians, official daughters of NewMexiKen, reenact the assassination of Julius Caesar with a ballpoint pen on the steps of the Roman Curia (Senate) 1997.

The February Revolution

… began in Russia on this date in 1917.

The February Revolution was the first stage of the Russian Revolution. Mostly bloodless, it led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. Ultimately, the regime begun in the February Revolution was replaced during the October (Bolshevik) Revolution.

[Russia was still using the Julian Calendar in 1917. Hence, March 8 elsewhere was February 23 in Russia; November 7 was October 25 .]

Boston Massacre

On March 5, 1770 the Twenty-Ninth Regiment came to the relief of the Eighth on duty at the Customs House on King (now State) Street [Boston]. The soldiers, led by Captain Thomas Preston, were met by a large and taunting crowd of civilians. Captain Preston was unable to disperse the crowd and as they chanted “Fire and be damned” he ordered his troops “Don’t Fire!” With all the commotion the soldiers probably did not hear his orders and they opened fire on the crowd killing three men instantly and another two who died later.

It all started March 5 by a couple of boys throwing snowballs at British soldiers. A crown soon gathered throwing ice and making fun of them. Soon after, the British started firing wildly. Other weapons were clubs, knives, swords, and a popular weapon, your own bare hands.

The people that died are: Crispus Attacks, one of the more famous people who was an African American sailor, Samuel Gray, a worker at rope walk, James Caldwell, a mate on a American ship, Samuel Maverick, who was a young seventeen year old male, and Patrick Carr, a feather maker.

Both excerpts from the Boston Massacre Historical Society, which has a wonderful web site with everything about the “Massacre.”

A most significant date

March 4th is among the most significant days of the year in the history of the United States Government.

The Constitution was approved on September 17, 1787. The required ninth state, New Hampshire, ratified the Constitution on June 21, 1788. On September 13, 1788, the Confederation Congress approved an act that called for “the first Wednesday in March next to be the time for commencing proceedings under the Constitution.”

The first Wednesday the following March was the 4th day of March, and hence the terms of the President and Vice President and members of Congress began on March 4, 1789. As it turned out, the first Congress convened on March 4, but did not actually have a quorum in either house until early April. Washington did not take the oath of office until April 30, 1789.

But officially the Constitution went into effect on March 4, 1789.

Thirty-two times March 4th was inauguration day. Four times — 1821, 1849, 1877, 1917 — March 4th occurred on Sunday and the inauguration was postponed until the next day.

The 20th Amendment changed inauguration day to January 20 effective in 1937.

Witches

The examination of witnesses at the Salem Meeting House began on this date in 1692. Before the 17-month ordeal was over, 25 had died — nineteen executed by hanging, one man tortured to death, and five who succumbed to conditions while in jail. More than 160 people were accused, most jailed and many deprived of property and legal rights. Those who confessed and accused others were saved; those who maintained their innocence were executed.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Last year NewMexiKen had more information on Salem from the Library of Congress, Witch way did they go?

B & O

On February 28, 1827, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became the first U.S. railway chartered for commercial transportation of freight and passengers. Investors hoped a railroad would allow Baltimore, the second largest U.S. city at that time, to successfully compete with New York for western trade. New Yorkers were profiting from easy access to the Midwest via the Erie Canal.

Construction began at Baltimore harbor on July 4, 1828. Local dignitary Charles Carroll, last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, laid the first stone.

The initial line of track, a 13-mile stretch to Ellicott’s Mills (now Ellicott City), Maryland, opened in 1830. The Tom Thumb, a steam engine designed by Peter Cooper, negotiated the route well enough to convince skeptics that steam traction worked along steep, winding grades.

Library of Congress

The railroad finally connected Baltimore to the Ohio River (at Wheeling) in 1852.