tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111770701403961812023-11-16T06:01:11.174-06:00The History InsiderStories seldom told ...Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.comBlogger68125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-66362808552424386602013-02-16T17:30:00.000-06:002013-02-16T22:26:33.154-06:00Lewis & Clark arrogance ... and "coppolating" grizzlies<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/George_Catlin_Attacking_the_Grizzly_Bear.jpg/512px-George_Catlin_Attacking_the_Grizzly_Bear.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="218" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/George_Catlin_Attacking_the_Grizzly_Bear.jpg/512px-George_Catlin_Attacking_the_Grizzly_Bear.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">American Indians hunting grizzly bears, <br />
by George Catlin (1796-1872)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Meriwether
Lewis and William Clark brought just a little arrogance with them as they
explored the undeveloped northwestern United States in the very early 1800s.
For example, familiar with only the relatively small black bear of the eastern
United States, they discounted Native American reports of a large, ferocious
brown bear – the grizzly. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lewis and his
men looked forward to meeting some of these brown bears. With an air of
superiority, he wrote that the Indians had only bows and arrows or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“the indifferent guns with which the traders
furnish them, with these they shoot with such uncertainty and at so short a
distance that they frequently miss their aim & fall a sacrifice to the
bear,”</i> as noted in Stephen Ambrose’s 1996 book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&field-keywords=undaunted%20courage&linkCode=ur2&tag=thehi07b-20&url=search-alias%3Daps#/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=lewis+%26+clark+courage&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Alewis+%26+clark+courage">Name Your Link</a><img src="https://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thehi07b-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />" target="_blank">Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West</a></i>. Lewis also noted that the Indians prepared for a
bear encounter with the same types of ceremonies in which they prepared for
battle against other men, but felt certain that the animals would be no match
for his men’s superior arms and expertise in using them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The
expedition’s first encounter with the grizzly was a little disconcerting. Lewis and another man, walking on the shore of the river on which their
boats traveled, shot two bears. One ran away, but the other charged Lewis and
pursued him for about 80 yards. He and the other man were able to reload their
guns and shoot the animal again, killing it. Although this bear was not
full-grown, it began to earn some respect for its species from Lewis, who wrote
that it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“astonishing to see the wounds
they will bear </i>[certainly he meant no pun?]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> before they can be put to death.”</i> He added, though, that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“in the hands of a skilled rifleman [the
bears] are by no means as formidable or dangerous”</i> as the Indians believe,
Ambrose reported in his book. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The next
encounter, a few days later, ended with the death of another bear, but it wasn’t
easy. Lewis described “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a most tremendious
</i>[correct spelling wasn’t Lewis’ strongpoint]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> looking anamal, and extremely hard to kill notwithstanding he had five
balls through his lungs and five other in various parts he swam more than half
the distance across the river to a sandbar & it was at least twenty minutes
before he died.”</i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The
expedition came across another grizzly a week later, but it ran away before it
could be attacked, to which Lewis wrote that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I find that the curiosity of our party is pretty well satisfied with respect
to this anamal.”</i> The bears’ size and ferocity <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“has staggered the resolution [of] several of [the men], others however
seem keen for action with the bear,”</i> Lewis added. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Of those who
looked forward to additional encounters with the grizzlies, Lewis added a bit
of humor:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I expect these gentlemen will give us some amusement shotly as [the bears]
begin now to coppolate.”</i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-63492691632438082182013-02-09T14:18:00.000-06:002013-02-09T14:18:00.173-06:00The swastika ... before Hitler and the Nazis<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/PostcardSwastica1910.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/PostcardSwastica1910.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The front of a postcard mailed from New York <br />
to Connecticut in 1910.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Before
Hitler and the Nazis made it their symbol beginning in the 1930s, the swastika was a favorable, positive
image among many cultures around the world for thousands of years. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>“The first appearance of the swastika was
apparently in the Orient, precisely in what country it is impossible to say,
but probably in Central and Southeastern Asia among the forerunners or predecessors
of the</em> [Hindus of India and Nepal]<em> and Buddhists,”</em> wrote Thomas Wilson,
curator of the U.S. National Museum, in his 1896 book titled <em>The Swastika: The Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migration; with Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in Prehistoric Times </em>(<a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AQM5ZS4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00AQM5ZS4&linkCode=as2&tag=thehi07b-20">The Swastika The Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migration; with Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in Prehistoric Times</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thehi07b-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B00AQM5ZS4" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />" target="_blank">free Kindle edition</a> or <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ZSMVAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=swastika&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zRIVUbqpKNKFyQHGwYGADg&ved=0CDIQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=swastika&f=false" target="_blank">free Google Books edition</a>).</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Geometric_kantharos_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_8501.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="168" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Geometric_kantharos_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_8501.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Swastikas adorn pottery, dating <br />
to about 780 B.C., from Greece.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The word
itself comes from the ancient Sanskrit language, still in use in Hindu
religious liturgies and Buddhist scholarly works. In Sanskrit, “svastika”
derives from the smaller words “su,” conveying something positive, such as
goodness or wellness or life (from what I can tell, there’s not really a direct
translation in English), and “asti,”meaning “to be.” Adding a “ka” on the end
makes it a noun – giving us “svastika” in Sanskrit today. And, of course, that
easily becomes “swastika” in English.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/GhanaSwastika.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/GhanaSwastika.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Swastikas embedded in the design <br />
of a weight used in Ghana <br />
to determine gold amounts.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">After
spreading throughout the world, and perhaps developing independently among
different cultures as well, the symbol became especially popular as a sign of
good luck in Europe and the United States at the beginning of the 20th century.
Some scholars trace that development to archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann’s 19th
century discovery of swastikas in the ruins of the ancient city of Troy. Noting
their similarity to swastikas he had seen at archeological sites in Germany,
and knowing of the symbol’s prevalence in ancient Indian civilization, Schliemann
concluded that all three cultures – advanced ancient civilizations in India and near the Mediterranean Sea (such as Troy) as well as the less-impressive ancient cultures in Germany – must be
closely related. Other Europeans took that to heart, too, as did the many Americans
with strong ethnic ties to Europe. Soon, the symbol was not uncommon throughout the U.S., and a U.S. Army division even used it as a logo before World War II.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Native_American_basketball_team_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Native_American_basketball_team_crop.jpg" width="283" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Swastikas on uniforms of the basketball team<br />
from the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, <br />
Oklahoma, in 1909.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Other
evidence that would seem to void that conclusion was overlooked, or perhaps
even inexplicably dismissed. For example, the swastika was known to American
Indian cultures long before Europeans arrived on American shores. So the
European-American pride in the swastika seemed to swell in the early 1900s, and
Hitler and his Nazi party took that to the extreme in their warped visions,
believing that they represented a master race that was the modern incarnation
of that ancient lineage. They co-opted the swastika, making a mockery of that
distinctive design’s long history as a symbol of good in the world.</span><br />
<br />
<em>“Regardless of its context, I still cringe every time I see the mark, yet I’m continually drawn to it – perhaps in the same way that others have been drawn to it over the millenia,”</em> writes Steven Heller, a long-time art director at the <em>New York Times</em>, in his 2008 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1581155077/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1581155077&linkCode=as2&tag=thehi07b-20"><em>The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption?</em></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thehi07b-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1581155077" style="border: currentColor !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />Food for thought.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
</div>
Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-73339928317957818312013-02-02T15:30:00.000-06:002013-02-02T15:30:01.211-06:00The North's General George McClellan ... and underestimating the South's Robert E. Lee<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Lee+McClellan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="232" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Lee+McClellan.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Confederate General Robert E. Lee (left) <br />
and Union General George B. McClellan (right)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As the Civil
War ramped up in 1862, Union General George B. McClellan was glad that Robert E.
Lee replaced the wounded Joseph Johnston as commander of the Army of Northern
Virginia, one of the major Confederate forces in the Civil War. McClellan had
known both Lee and Johnston when all three men served in the U.S. Army prior to
the war. McClellan believed that Lee would be a less formidable foe compared
to Johnston.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I prefer Lee to Johnston – the former is </i>too<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> cautious & weak under grave responsibility
– personally brave & energetic to a fault, he yet is wanting in moral
firmness when pressed by heavy responsibility & is likely to be timid and
irresolute in action,”</i> wrote McClellan to U. S. President Abraham Lincoln.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Although Lee
had a bit of experience as a field commander earlier in the war, he was serving
as an adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis when the appointment was
made. At that time, approximately 105,000 Union troops under McClellan were
advancing on the Confederacy’s capital city – Richmond, Virginia – which was
defended by approximately 60,000 men. After assuming command of the Confederate
Army, Lee initiated a series of surprise attacks and major counter-offensives
that kept McClellan off guard and ended the threat to Richmond. For
much of the rest of the war, Lee often out-maneuvered larger Union forces,
proving much of McClellan’s judgment of him to be far from accurate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-35139942359555508472013-01-26T11:00:00.000-06:002013-01-26T17:59:58.700-06:00Edwin M. Stanton ... greatly unimpressed upon meeting Lincoln<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Edwin_McMasters_Stanton_Secretary_of_War.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Edwin_McMasters_Stanton_Secretary_of_War.jpg" width="242" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Edwin M. Stanton, <br />
sometime between 1855 and 1865</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Within a
year after Republican Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as U.S. President in 1861,
he appointed the very competent but ill-tempered attorney Edwin M.
Stanton as Secretary of War. Not only was this appointment a surprise because Stanton
was a Democrat, but because of Stanton’s role in humiliating Lincoln years
earlier, when both men were supposed to be on the same side in an important
trial.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The year was
1855, and Cyrus McCormick, who had invented and patented a mechanical wheat
reaper, filed a lawsuit against John H. Manny, who had developed a similar
machine and was manufacturing it in Illinois. Manny hired two of the nation’s
most prominent patent lawyers – George Harding and Peter H. Watson, as well as
an up-and-coming attorney named Stanton (Lincoln’s future cabinet member).
Because the trial was originally set for Chicago, Watson – although not
tremendously impressed with the disheveled-looking Lincoln – hired him as a
local attorney who would be familiar to Illinois judges. Watson gave Lincoln a
$500 retainer and promised the future president that he would give the closing
argument in the trial.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Lincoln determined to give this case his
most careful preparation,”</i> wrote Ronald C. White Jr. in his 2009 biography
titled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812975707/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thehi07b-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0812975707"><em>A. Lincoln: A Biography</em></a>. But Lincoln
received no further word from other attorneys on the Manny team, even after
requesting copies of depositions that had been taken in the case. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Two weeks
before the trial was set to begin, it was transferred to Cincinnati, Ohio. Lincoln
received word of the change, and on the day the trial began, he tried unsuccessfuly to join
the other members of the Manny legal team as they entered the courthouse. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Lincoln at the time</span> was later described by Harding as <em>“a tall rawly
boned, ungainly back woodsman, with coarse, ill-fitting clothing.”</em> Stanton was arguably even less impressed, later reportedly describing to a friend the encounter with a <em>“long, lank creature from Illinois, wearing a dirty linen duster for a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had splotched two wide stains that, emanating from each armpit, met at the center, and resembled a dirty map of a continent.”</em> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">During the
week-long trial, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“the defense team never
included Lincoln in their deliberations, nor even</span> invited him to join them for
their meals at the hotel. Judge John McLean entertained all the lawyers at a
dinner at his home, but Lincoln was not invited,”</i> writes White.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If any doubt remained, Lincoln also learned that
he would not give the closing argument, that the brief he had prepared had not
been opened, and that he would have no role in the trial.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lincoln
watched the proceedings as a spectator. After the court ruled in favor of Manny, Lincoln
returned to his office and home in Springfield, Illinois and told his law
partner that he had been <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“roughly handled
by that man Stanton.” </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Following
the trial, the Manny legal team’s Watson sent Lincoln a check for his
participation. Lincoln returned it, saying he had contributed nothing to the
trial, but Watson sent it back to him. Ultimately, Lincoln cashed the check – and also recognized that Stanton's knowledge and skills, if not his conceit and arrogance, would be of great value to the country.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-84266794649639010072013-01-19T17:19:00.000-06:002013-01-19T18:38:06.742-06:00Paul Revere ... less successful than others on that night<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/6/6e/20120409121435!J_S_Copley_-_Paul_Revere.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/6/6e/20120409121435!J_S_Copley_-_Paul_Revere.jpg" width="255" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul Revere, circa 1768-1770<br />
(Painting by John Singleton Copley)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Paul Revere
today gets most of the credit for warning American patriots at Concord and
Lexington that British soldiers were marching toward them from Boston in April
1785, but Revere was among the least successful of many messengers on similar
missions that night. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Revere did reach
Lexington, where he told patriots Samuel Adams and John Hancock, but he was
captured by British soldiers as he rode to on to Concord. They took his horse
and released him, and he walked back to Lexington. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But many
others also rode or walked or rang bells or shot guns that night to successfully
spread word of the British advance (which was not unexpected). In his 2004 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595580735/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thehi07b-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1595580735">Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past</a>, historian Ray Raphael
cites the work of another historian, David Hackett Fischer, who in 1994
identified dozens of people who were involved in passing along that night’s
news through the New England countryside.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">To be sure,
Revere was a committed patriot who was involved in many of the events that led
to the American Revolution. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But why has
his Boston-to-Lexington ride, which was no great, singularly vital fete on a
night when so many others made equal or greater contributions, won so much
acclaim in popular American history? Revere himself made no special note of his
actions that night in later accounts, and neither did his 1818 obituary. And historians
over many decades didn’t mention it much, if at all, until the later 1800s –
after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Paul
Revere’s Ride”</i> was published in January 1861.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Paul Revere’s Ride”</i> is a stirring,
memorable piece of art, proof of Longfellow’s talent, from its very beginning:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Listen, my children, and you shall hear<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere …”<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And much for
that reason, it became – and remains – well-entrenched in American culture even
today. Unfortunately, its many historical inaccuracies have been repeated so
much that they are often mistaken for fact. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Although ‘Paul Revere’s Ride’ has enjoyed
more exposure than any other historic poem in American culture, it is riddled
with distortions,”</i> wrote Raphael. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“These
are not incidental – they are the very reasons the story has endured for almost
a century and a half.”</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So no, Paul Revere wasn't by any stretch the only person trying to warn other patriots that night, as Longfellow implies. And no, Paul Revere didn't reach his most important destination <span style="font-family: Calibri;">–</span> the village of Concord (although others did), as Longfellow wrote. And no, contrary to Longfellow, Paul Revere did not receive a signal from two lamps in the steeple of the Old North Church; Revere arranged for that signal to be sent. We could go on with troublesome parts of this supposed historical narrative set to the tune of great lyrical poetry ... but will end with a caution to avoid mistaking emotionally stirring art <em>–</em> whether in poetry, a novel, a painting, a film, or another medium <em>–</em> for historical fact.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span>Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-3401470234020104832012-12-23T10:10:00.000-06:002012-12-23T10:13:42.663-06:00When celebrating Christmas was illegal in America ...<span style="font-family: inherit;">The History Insider<em> offered this item before Christmas a year ago, but thought it worth mentioning again for those who missed it or those find it interesting enough to want to be reminded.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">____________________</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Were America’s early English settlements home to widespread mirth and joy during the Christmas season? Did many of America’s English settlers – especially the most pious groups, such as the Puritans -- have a strong affinity to Christmas celebrations and what they represent? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is no. In fact, some of those first people to successfully settle in the New England had a strong aversion to Christmas celebrations, notes historian Stephen Nissenbaum in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679740384/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thehi07b-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0679740384">The Battle for Christmas</a>.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>“In New England, for the first two centuries of white settlement most people did not celebrate Christmas,”</em> writes Nissenbaum. <em>“In fact, the holiday was systematically suppressed by Puritans during the colonial period and largely ignored by their descendants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>… It was actually illegal to celebrate Christmas in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681 (the fine was five shillings) …Puritans were fond of saying that if God had intended for the anniversary of the Nativity to be observed, He would surely have <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>given some indication as to when that anniversary occurred.”</em> Indeed, many scholars report that there is no biblical reference to December 25 as the date of Jesus Christ’s birth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nissenbaum also notes, among other interesting details, that </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Puritans had other reasons for opposing Christmas celebrations, too, based largely on what they had witnessed of those events – <em>“… rowdy public displays of excessive eating and drinking, the mockery of established authority, aggressive begging (often involving the threat of doing harm), and even the invasion of wealthy homes.”<o:p></o:p></em></span>Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-67526496491302536542012-12-08T16:14:00.003-06:002012-12-08T16:45:24.418-06:00Russian diplomats ... and American bread<span style="font-family: inherit;">Arkady N.
Shevchenko – who in 1978 became the highest ranking official of the Soviet
Union to defect to the United States – traveled to New York from Russia for the
first time in 1958, on a three-month assignment as part of a Soviet delegation
to the United Nations General Assembly.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In his 1985
book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001U456L8/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001U456L8&linkCode=as2&tag=thehi07b-20">Breaking with Moscow</a>, Shevchenko
wrote of meals he took as he lived with his countrymen in a compound owned by
his government in this first visit: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<em><span style="font-family: inherit;">“The cook
was from Russia, but the food didn’t taste Russian – milk and eggs, among other
foods, had different flavors. But it was the bread that gave us our biggest
shock:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>packaged white bread from a
supermarket had the flavor and texture of glue. We couldn’t get over the idea
that Americans really bought it and seemed to like it. If the bread was
disappointing, however, there was nothing better than Coca-Cola; we drank it by
the gallon during the warm autumn days.”<o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">By the time Shervchenko
defected 20 years after this initial visit to America, he had risen through the
Soviet and United Nations systems to become the U. N.’s Undersecretary General,
the No. 2 person in that body, behind only the Secretary General. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Shevchenko
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/11/us/arkady-n-shevchenko-67-a-key-soviet-defector-dies.html" target="_blank">died</a> at 67 in Maryland in 1998. He is buried in Washington, D.C.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-19129167197050178432012-11-10T15:30:00.000-06:002012-11-10T15:30:00.298-06:00Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis & Clark fame ... shot in the butt<span style="font-family: inherit;">Through its
unprecedented exploration of what is today northwestern America from 1804 to
1806, the Lewis and Clark expedition lost only one man (due apparently to
appendicitis, very early on the journey) of the 30-plus men, one woman, and an
infant who traveled more than 7,000 miles (from St. Louis to the Pacific and
back) over vast, undeveloped and uncharted territories occupied by unfamiliar
Indian tribes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the expedition came
close to losing one of its leaders – Meriwether Lewis – when he was shot in the
butt by one of his men in what seems to have been a hunting accident.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The incident
occurred on the return journey, just off the Missouri River in what is today
northwestern North Dakota. Lewis and the expedition’s other leader, William
Clark, had split up, each taking a part of their men on different paths so that
even more of the lands recently brought into the country through the Louisiana
Purchase could be explored. On August 11, 1806, as Lewis and his group traveled
down the Missouri, they stopped to go onshore and hunt for elk they had
seen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lewis took one of his men, a
Private Cruzatte, for the effort. The men became separated, and as Lewis raised
his rifle to his shoulder for a shot, he himself was hit by a rifle bullet that
entered his left butt cheek <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“an inch
below his hip joint”</i> and exited through his right butt cheek, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“leaving a three-inch gash the width of the
ball,”</i> wrote Stephen E. Ambrose in
his 1996 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684826976/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0684826976&linkCode=as2&tag=thehi07b-20">Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lewis called
out to Cruzatte, but got no answer. Fearing an Indian attack, the severely
wounded Lewis somehow made his way back to his other men on the river. He tried
to lead them back to site of the shooting to save Cruzatte, but his injury
became too painful and debilitating, so he told his men to leave him behind.
Lewis struggled back to the boats on the river and armed himself, later writing
that he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“determined to sell my life as
deerly as possible.” </i>After about 20 minutes, the men returned with
Cruzatte, who seemed oblivious to what had happened, and said he had not heard
Lewis call out to him after he had been shot. Cruzatte denied being the
culprit. But the bullet, which had lodged in Lewis’s leather breeches, was from
the same type of late-model U.S. Army rifle carried by Cruzatte, which was not a
weapon likely to be in the hands of a hostile Indian. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lewis himself
was the closest thing to a doctor on the expedition, although he had little
training in the field – only a two-week tutelage under one of America’s leading
medical experts, Dr. Benjamin Rush, as in preparation for the expedition. So
Lewis dressed his wound himself, placing roles of lint into the holes in his
butt. He was forced to lie on his stomach and the boats continued down the
river. The pain became so great that he couldn’t be moved, so he spent the
night, after the group made camp on the shore of the river, on his stomach in
one of the boats. He became feverish, but the application of a poultice of
Peruvian bark, seemed to control that, but not the pain. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lewis’ group
rejoined Clark’s group the next day. Lewis was still on his belly, and fainted
with pain when Clark changed the dressings on the wounds. Over the next days,
the wounds appeared to be healing, but still Lewis couldn’t walk. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Improvement was again noted on August 22, when
Clark wrote that Lewis <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“walked a little
to day for the first time. I have discontinued the [lint] in the hole the ball
came out.” </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the next day, Clark
wrote that Lewis <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“is recovering fast the
hole in his thy where the Ball passed out is Closed and appears to be nearly
well. The one where the ball entered discharges very well.”</i> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There were setbacks in Lewis’ recovery, though. Clark reported a few days later that Lewis<em>“hurt himself very much by takeing a longer walk ... than he had Strength to undergo, which Caused him to remain very unwell all night.”</em> The next morning, Clark wrote that Lewis<em>“had a bad nights rest and is not very well this morning.”</em> But by the time the expedition returned to St. Louis about a month later, in late September 1806, Lewis seems to have fully recovered.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span>Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-27064931956297087142012-10-27T15:30:00.000-05:002012-10-29T07:46:20.001-05:00George Washington ... "Cards & other Play"<span style="font-family: inherit;">As a
general, George Washington forbade gambling among his men, calling it “the
child of avarice, the brother of iniquity and the father of mischief.” But in
his private life, before being appointed head of the Continental Army, he
enjoyed betting on “Cards & other<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> P</span>lay” – the title he gave to a page of the extensive records he kept, in his own handwriting, of
all types of financial transactions he made during his life. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those entries in his so-called Ledger B note
<a href="http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mgw5&fileName=gwpage002.db&recNum=93" target="_blank">how much he won</a>, <a href="http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mgw5&fileName=gwpage002.db&recNum=94" target="_blank">how much he lost</a>, and where he played from 1772 to early 1775.
<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">During those
years, he recorded playing 64 times, coming out ahead – financially speaking –
28 times and behind 36 times. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His
biggest one-day (or perhaps one-night) losses were 6.5 pounds on two dates,
March 28, 1772 and April 6, 1772, when he played at Williamsburg, Virginia. The
most he earned came on October 7, when he played at Annapolis, Virginia and
earned a whopping 13.7 pounds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">During this
period, before the American Revolution, Washington was a well-known Virginia
planter and landowner, apparently enjoying the good life. He represented Fairfax
County in the Virginia House of Burgesses, which met in Williamsburg. As the
Burgesses took steps toward criticizing the British Crown, Virginia’s Royal
Governor dissolved the organization in 1774. In response to this and other
grievances, American patriots held their First Continental Congress, which met
in September and October of 1774. Washington was one of the representatives
from Virginia, and recorded “Cards & other Play” items in his ledger only
twice after that point, and never after he was appointed commander of the
patriots’ Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress in 1775. But it's hard to believe that he gave it up for good!</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-37427071795132740612012-10-20T16:30:00.000-05:002012-10-20T16:30:00.626-05:00President Truman ... backing his daughter's singing abilities<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Margaret_Truman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Margaret_Truman.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Margaret Truman <br />
(undated photo)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Margaret
Truman, an aspiring singer and daughter of President Harry S. Truman, was 26
when she performed at Washington’s Constitution Hall before 3,500 people in
December 1950. But her efforts were panned by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Washington Post</i> critic Paul Hume, who wrote that she had <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“a pleasant voice of little size and fair
quality … cannot sing very well … is flat a good deal of the time … has not
improved in the years that we have heard her … [and] still cannot sing with
anything approaching professional finish.”</i> <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Hume’s
review incensed President Truman, and he let Hume know about his anger in a
letter written the same day. In part, it said that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I’ve
just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert … It seems to me that you are
a frustrated old man </i>[Hume was 34]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock … it shows
conclusively that you’re off the beam and a least four of your ulcers are at
work. Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a
lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below! Pegler </i>[Westbrook
Pegler was a columnist disliked by President Truman]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope that you’ll
accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The letter itself
was sold by Hume in 1951, and has remained in private hands since, according to
the <a href="http://www.trumanlibrary.org/" target="_blank">Harry S. Truman Library and Museum</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Today, the letter is reportedly among the collections of the private
Harlan Crow Library in Dallas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Margaret
Truman, while finding little success as a singer, became an accomplished radio
and television host. She also authored an acclaimed biography of her father, a
personal biography of her mother, and nonfiction works about previous
presidents and families who lived in the White House. She also wrote numerous
works of fiction, primarily murder mysteries set in the Washington area,
remaining active into her 80s. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Margaret
married Clifton Daniel, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times</i>
reporter and later managing editor of that paper, in 1956. They had four
children – all boys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Margaret was 83
when she died in 2008. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-56213550660492474682012-10-13T15:00:00.000-05:002012-10-13T15:00:01.751-05:00The Lewis & Clark air gun ... and a dangerous demonstration
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As
Meriwether Lewis prepared for his early 19th century trip with William Clark to
explore what is today is the American Northwest, he bought an air gun – a rifle
that used compressed air, stored in its stock, to shoot a large, .46 caliber
lead ball about as well as any other gun of the day. Each air gun held about 22
of these balls in a magazine attached to the gun, which could be much more
rapidly fired (the entire magazine in about a minute) than any muzzle-loader.
The downside is that it took about 1,500 strokes of a small air pump, similar
to today’s bicycle pump, to fully pressurize the gun at 600 to 800 pounds per
square inch. Also, the effectiveness of the gun dropped as pressure was lost
with each shot. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Girandoni_Air_Rifle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="184" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Girandoni_Air_Rifle.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Girandoni air gun.<br />
(Photo courtesy of the U.S. Army)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lewis
enjoyed demonstrating the gun, and one of the first entries in his account of
the expedition mentions an incident that could have been an ominous beginning for
the trip. After Lewis demonstrated the gun to some “gentlemen” on August 30,
1830, he allowed them to inspect it. It discharged, with the ball from it
striking a woman bystander, as told in Lewis’ own words (and with his own
punctuation and spelling):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Left Pittsburgh this day at 11ock with a
party of 11 hands 7 of which are soldiers, a pilot and three young men on trial
they having proposed to go with me throughout the voyage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Arrived at Bruno's Island 3 miles below halted
a few minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>went on shore and being
invited on by some of the gentlemen present to try my airgun which I had
purchased brought it on shore charged it and fired myself seven times fifty
five yards with pretty good success; after which a Mr. Blaze Cenas being
unacquainted with the management of the gun suffered her [referring to the gun]
to discharge herself [again, referring to the gun] accedentaly<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the ball passed through the hat of a woman
about 40 yards distanc cuting her temple about the fourth of the diameter of
the ball; shee fell instantly and the blood gusing from her temple<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we were all in the greatest
consternation<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>supposed she was dead by
[but] in a minute she revived to our enespressable satisfaction, and by
examination we found the wound by no means mortal or even dangerous; …” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">During the
rest of the expedition to the West Coast, when Lewis and Clark encountered new
groups of Indians, they reported demonstrating the rapid fire of the air gun.
Many people who have studied the Lewis and Clark expedition believe that these
demonstrations of firepower suggested that the expedition was more formidable
that it was, helping ensure its continued well-being as it traveled through
lands occupied only by Indians. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Based on a written
description of the gun by a “gentleman” who saw it demonstrated by Lewis a few
days after the unfortunate shooting of the bystander described by Lewis above, it
was almost certainly a design developed earlier by G.C. Girandoni in Europe,
and adopted for use in the Austrian army from the late 1700s until the early
1800s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-10681493721449102502012-10-06T15:30:00.000-05:002012-10-06T16:31:37.138-05:00An escaped German P.O.W. ... finding a new life in America<span style="font-family: inherit;">Relatively
few of the hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war held in the U.S. during
World War II escaped from their prison camps. Most of them were easily captured
when they couldn’t blend into American society very well. By the end of the
war, when those prisoners were sent back to Germany, only 12 remained at large.
And by the 1960s, all but one – a man named Georg Gaertner – hadn’t been
accounted for.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Dennis_while.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Dennis_while.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Georg Gaertner, also known <br />
as Dennis Whiles, in 2009</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As the war
neared its end, Gaertner learned that his home town in Germany had been taken by
the Russian army. Russian revenge against the German population in such towns
was brutal, and most are now part of Poland. To avoid being sent back there and
face Russian wrath, Gaertner decided to try to remain in America. On September
21, 1945, he escaped from a prison camp in New Mexico and hopped onto a freight
train that took him to California. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Gaertner could
speak English and had served as a prison translator, and that skill would serve
him well. He took a series of odd jobs, working as a dishwasher and farm laborer
and keeping a low profile as he moved from town to town to avoid attention. As
he improved his English-language skills, he also learned how to fit into American
life. He carried a Social Security card under the name of Dennis Whiles, married
an American woman with two kids in the 1960s, and took on higher-paying jobs in
construction and sales, and even as a ski instructor and tennis instructor. In the
early 1980s, Gaertner’s wife – whom knew nothing of his past – became suspicious
when he refused good job opportunities that would have required background
checks. When she threatened to leave him, he told her the truth and decided to come clean.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Gaertner
knew that he had been mentioned in a book titled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812885619/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0812885619&linkCode=as2&tag=thehi07b-20"><em>Nazi Prisoners of War in America</em></a>, so in November 1983 he called the author –
Texas A&M University professor Arnold Krammer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">"The caller identified himself as
Dennis Whiles and commented that he had enjoyed reading my book,"</i>
Krammer was quoted in a <a href="http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1985_37445/last-german-pow-still-at-large-in-u-s-ends-his-sec.html" target="_blank">1985 Houston Chronicle article</a>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">"He also said that it was very accurate, admitting that he had
once been a German prisoner of war." </i>The men spoke for a long time,
and eventually Gaertner told Krammer who he really is. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p>Krammer and Gaertner collaborated to write another book, titled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812830075/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0812830075&linkCode=as2&tag=thehi07b-20"><em>Hitler's Last Soldier in America</em></a>, published in 1985. Gaertner reportedly obtained U.S. citizenship in 1989 and lives today in Colorado.</o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-16188859727840272842012-09-29T17:30:00.000-05:002012-09-29T17:30:00.148-05:00Jefferson ... on the "degeneracy of the human body"<span style="font-family: inherit;">Today’s
Americans are continually bombarded with messages urging them to get more
exercise, but even centuries ago, America’s Thomas Jefferson thought that the
domestication of the horse was to blame for reducing the health of the European-Americans
who rode them most often and regularly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He questioned whether the advantages of riding
were greatly outweighed, over the long run, by the disadvantages brought
through a reduction in the amount of exercise his countrymen enjoyed. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">His thoughts
were put on paper in an August 19, 1785 letter to his 15-year-old nephew,
Joseph Carr. Jefferson wrote: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“The
Europeans value themselves on having subdued the horse to the uses of man. But
I doubt whether we have not lost more than we have gained by the use of this
animal. No one has occasioned so much the degeneracy of the human body. An
Indian goes on foot nearly as far in a day, for a long journey, as an enfeebled
white does on his horse, and he will tire the best horses.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Several of Jefferson’s letters include
<a href="http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/exercise" target="_blank">his extensive thoughts on the value of</a> exercise – and walking in particular – are provided
on the website for <a href="http://www.monticello.org/" target="_blank">Monticello</a>, his home in Virginia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-53856299041636918222012-09-22T23:31:00.001-05:002012-09-23T18:26:06.745-05:00Washington's teeth ... not for the squeamish<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/ggbain/09400/09491r.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="236" src="http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/ggbain/09400/09491r.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of several sets of Washington's false teeth</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite his
efforts to take care of his teeth throughout his life, George Washington had
only a single remaining natural tooth by the time he was inaugurated as U.S.
president in 1798, according to several of his biographers. By that time, he also
had his first set of full dentures, made by dentist John Greenwood, who had previously
also supplied him with partial dentures that hooked to his natural teeth. All
of these various sets of false teeth were made primarily of a base carved from hippopotamus
ivory, into which human or cow teeth were attached. Small screws and springs
were also part of these state-of-the-art 18th century dentures. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Washington’s
apparently ongoing, painful problems with his teeth and these dental
contraptions over many years – issues that thankfully do not confront so many
Americans today – are noted in several letters he wrote. For example, at least
as early as May 1781 he wrote to another dentist, John Baker, seeking his help:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">“</span>Sir, A day or two ago I requested Col.
Harrison to apply to you for a pair of Pincers to fasten the wire of my
teeth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope you furnished him with
them. I now wish you would send me one of your scrapers as my teeth stand in
need of cleaning, and I have little prospect of being in Philadelph. soon.It will
come very safe by the Post & in return, the money shall be sent so soon as
I know the cost of it. I am Sir Yr Very Hble Serv. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>G. Washington<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">”</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In another letter,
to the dentist Greenwood and dated February 20, 1795, Washington offers his
thanks for a new set <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(his first complete
set?) of false teeth and writes that he is enclosing $60 in payment: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_vhosg0yu4OkTxta7nfrw5SAOksOPYtKsIaQV67U4eK34o_9CmyfgVrMMPI0mN1TNhVCU2uwNQ6VDZORWOwGdJONSBTbCO3nszwugdkjcLsD8OySbrrWh0otYS7ynIpLYWVAR2A-hldHA/s1600/presidents_washington_enl-d11dad82c21cd452a712ec06192788dff6f15934-s51.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_vhosg0yu4OkTxta7nfrw5SAOksOPYtKsIaQV67U4eK34o_9CmyfgVrMMPI0mN1TNhVCU2uwNQ6VDZORWOwGdJONSBTbCO3nszwugdkjcLsD8OySbrrWh0otYS7ynIpLYWVAR2A-hldHA/s320/presidents_washington_enl-d11dad82c21cd452a712ec06192788dff6f15934-s51.jpg" width="250" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Washington, with dentures seemingly in place, <br />
in portrait by Gilbert Stuart</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">“</span>Sir, Your last letter, with its
accompaniment, came safe to my hands on tuesday last. Enclosed you will receive
sixty dollars in Bank notes of the United States. In addition to which, I pray
you to accept my thanks for the ready attention which you have at all times,
paid to my requests, and that you will believe me to be, with esteem, Sir …
Your very Hble Serv. G. Washington<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">”</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The $60 cost
of those dentures was quite a sum in the late 18th century. In today’s dollars,
that amount would be roughly equivalent to $1,090. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Portraits of
Washington as an older man are notable for the puffy, slightly distorted appearance of his cheeks
and lips, which many historians have attributed to his false teeth. But you
have to wonder if … or why … he would have kept them inside his closed mouth,
which couldn’t have been comfortable, for the many hours that he stood or sat
still for a portrait. Was it that his lips and cheeks would have looked even worse
if he not worn his dentures in place of his nonexistent natural teeth?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-77487201234091917662012-09-15T15:58:00.000-05:002012-09-15T15:58:00.743-05:00President Hoover ... authorizing a break-in<span style="font-family: inherit;">As the Great
Depression continued in the early 1930s, U.S. President Herbert Hoover faced
growing criticism, and that bothered him greatly – so much that he went to
great, and illegal, attempts to stem it, writes Christopher Andrew in his 1996
book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060921781/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0060921781&linkCode=as2&tag=thehi07b-20"><em>For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush</em></a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It seems
that Lawrence Richey, Hoover’s personal assistant who previously worked closely with the Secret
Service, ensured that people on the president’s enemies list were
kept under surveillance as needed. And
possibly as a result of that effort, Hoover received a report indicating that New
York Democrats had collected some type of information – its nature unknown – that
would damage him politically.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Hoover
turned to a former aide, Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss, to find out more. Strauss
approached U.S. Navy intelligence officer Glenn Howell, who wrote in his log,
according to Andrew’s book: <em>“Strauss
told me that the President is anxious to know what the contents of the
mysterious documents are, and Strauss is authorized by the President to use the
services of any one of our various government secret services.”</em> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">When Howell
and another man broke into the office in which the damaging information was said
to be held, they found it vacant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So then
they identified and followed the former tenant, a Democratic operative named
James J. O’Brien.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>“We shadowed
him for a bit and then came to the conclusion that no President of the United States
need be afraid of a ham-and-egger [someone not possessing any particularly
striking qualities] like O’Brien,”</em> Howell later wrote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He added that after reporting their findings,
they received word to end the operation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The incident remained secret for many years, but became public after <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=vjkdAAAAIBAJ&sjid=3aUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6666,4632105&hl=en" target="_blank">Rutgers University history professor </a></span><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=vjkdAAAAIBAJ&sjid=3aUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6666,4632105&hl=en" target="_blank">Jeffrey M. Dorwart discovered evidence of it in the early 1980s</a>.</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
<o:p> </o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-8373982971309084142012-09-08T13:40:00.000-05:002012-09-08T13:40:00.187-05:00The 3 a.m. president ... not whom you might think<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Most of us who've worked in large organizations, whether public or private, know that the process for making big decisions can be surprising. No matter how many formal procedures are established, decision-making often comes down to the whims of people on whom the final choice depends. And the White House is no exception.</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In his 1997 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0895264331/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0895264331&linkCode=as2&tag=thehi07b-20">Confessions of a White House Ghostwriter: Five Presidents and Other Political Adventures</a>, former presidential speechwriter James C. Humes, who served in the Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, offered some interesting insight into this phenomenon:</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>“Sometimes – even if the general details of a legislative message have
been hammered out – unagreed matters remain because of fights between competing
departments. As the various drafts of the proposed message are relayed to
various cabinet heads for approval, one cabinet secretary knocks out one work
or item and his rival puts it back in. A change goes in – then it’s taken
out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>… The hours pass from late night
into the wee hours of the next day, when the president is scheduled to deliver
the message. Finally, the department heads to go bed and final decision is left
to the</em> (speech)<em>writer – hence the 3 a.m. president,"</em> Humes wrote.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>“I remember one message on mass transit by President Nixon. The bone of
contention was funding”</em> from either the gasoline tax or general revenues, he wrote. <em>“I
had to decide. I chose general revenues. </em></span></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>Strangely, my decision drew no backlash. Everyone assumed the president
had made the decision.”<o:p></o:p></em></span></span>Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-13900287758825960792012-09-01T14:13:00.000-05:002012-09-01T14:13:00.249-05:00Roosevelt ... the target of a hapless U.S. Navy ship
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Security might have been tight when U.S. President Franklin
Roosevelt traveled secretly across the Atlantic on an American battleship as the first part of a journey to
meet with Britain’s Winston Churchill and Russia’s Joseph Stalin in Tehran,
Iran for a discussion of the war in late 1943 – but that </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">mattered little when
another American warship providing “protection” sent a live torpedo toward the
ship carrying Roosevelt. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The story, relayed through a few <a href="http://wwiiscrapbook.tripod.com/images/clipping1.jpg" target="_blank">newspaper accounts</a> and a <a href="http://www.ussiowa.org/general/html/willie_d.htm" target="_blank">1994 article by naval historian Kit Bonner in <em>The Retired Officer Magazine</em>, reproduced on the USS Iowa Veteran's Association website</a>, goes something like this: </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Roosevelt was aboard the <em>USS Iowa</em>, which was accompanied by
three smaller warships for the voyage in November 1943. After the convoy</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> passed Bermuda, weather
balloons were launched from the <em>Iowa</em> for a demonstration of the big ship’s
anti-aircraft guns. Some of the balloons drifted into the area of the destroyer
<em>USS William D. Porter</em>, one of the escort ships. The <em>Porter</em>’s captain – Lt.
Commander Wilfred Walter – sent his crew to battle stations to join in the anti-aircraft
gun show for Roosevelt. Walter also decided, although it’s not clear from published accounts if
this was a planned part of the demo or not, to simulate a torpedo attack
against the Iowa.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The torpedoes were supposed to be disarmed before firing, but
one was not – and it quickly made its way toward the <em>Iowa</em> and Roosevelt, much
to the horror of Walter and his officers and crew. After a few frantic attempts
to contact the <em>Iowa</em> through signaling, the Porter broke the radio silence that
had been in force for the voyage and informed the <em>Iowa</em> of the mistake. The <em>Iowa</em>
turned in time to avoid the torpedo, which exploded behind the ship, after
hitting its wake.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Fearing an assassination attempt on Roosevelt, the <em>Iowa</em>
trained its guns on the <em>Porter</em>, but backed down after Walter told of the
mistake. But Walter and his entire crew were ordered back to Bermuda with their
ship. Ultimately, a crewman was found guilty in a court martial and sentenced
to 14 years of hard labor for his mistake and attempt to destroy evidence, but Roosevelt overrode that punishment. Walter and
at least some of his officers reportedly found themselves in dead-end Navy positions
after the incident, too. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Unfortunately, the <em>Porter</em> seemed to be jinxed, finding
itself on the wrong end of this and other mishaps throughout the war, as Bonner noted in the article referenced above. The ship met its end in an unusual way, too, in June 1945. A Japanese kamikaze, or
suicide, plane carrying a large bomb failed to hit the <em>Porter</em>, but crashed
alongside, without its payload exploding on impact. The plane slowly sunk under
the water, where its huge bomb finally exploded, ripping apart the <em>Porter</em>’s
hull under its waterline. The ship sank within hours.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-76487751956744515772012-08-25T22:48:00.000-05:002012-08-25T22:48:00.098-05:00Amelia Earhart ... a reluctant bride
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Six years
before aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart and her navigator mysteriously
disappeared over the South Pacific while attempting to fly a plane around the
world in 1937, she married publisher and publicist George Putnam after he asked for the sixth time – but not
before making it clear that she would in no way be a lesser partner in the union. On
their wedding day, she gave Putnam a note that he made public after her disappearance, calling it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“brutal in its frankness but beautiful in its
honesty.”</i> An objective reader might also wonder why Earhart went through
with the wedding, based on her words.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://earchives.lib.purdue.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/earhart&CISOPTR=2988" target="_blank">Putnam’s typed version of the letter</a>, dated February 7, 1931, is part of <a href="http://www.lib.purdue.edu/spcol/aearhart/index.php" target="_blank">Purdue University’s George Palmer Putnam Collection of Amelia Earhart papers</a>. It is
addressed to “GPP” and signed “A.E.”:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“There are some things which
should be writ before we are married – things we have talked over before – most
of them.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">You must know again my reluctance
to marry, my feeling that I shatter thereby chances in work which means so much
to me. I feel the move just now as foolish as anything I could do. I know there
may be compensations, but have no heart to look ahead.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On our life together I want you to
understand I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me, nor
shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. If we can be honest I think the
differences which arise may best be avoided should you or I become interested
deeply (or in passing) in anyone else.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Please let us not interfere with
the other’s work or play, nor let the world see our private joys or
disagreements. In this connection I may have to keep some place where I can go
to be myself, now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the
confinements of even an attractive cage.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I must exact a cruel promise and
this is that you will let me go in a year if we find no happiness together.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I will try to do my best in every
way and give you that part of me you know and seem to want.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The couple
must have found that level of happiness, because their union was still in place
when Amelia’s plane disappeared long after the ceremony.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-31525638487089561592012-08-18T22:07:00.000-05:002012-08-18T22:07:00.281-05:00Washington ... turning from politics to alcohol
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
When George Washington’s second term as president ended in
early 1797, his attention turned in large measure to a new endeavor – making
whiskey. The idea came from his farm manager James Anderson, who had previous
distillery experience in his native Scotland and Virginia. Anderson pointed out
to Washington that a distillery would be a big success, taking advantage of his
grist mill, a good supply of running water, and crops grown on Washington’s
Mount Vernon lands, according to information from the <a href="http://www.discus.org/heritage/distillery/" target="_blank">Distilled Spirits Council of the United States</a> (DSCUS).</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Initially, Washington had his reservations about the proposal, writing that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">“idlers
(of which, and bad people there are many around it) under pretence of coming
there with grist could not be restrained from visiting the Distillery, nor
probably from tempting the Distiller, nay more robbing the Still; as the Mill
would always afford a pretext for coming to that place.”</span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> But soon he came around, and authorized
Anderson to establish the distillery at the Mount Vernon estate’s grist mill. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The initial distillery
operation, overseen daily by Anderson’s son, with the help of a hired assistant
and six slaves, became successful quickly. By early 1798, a new, stone distillery
building was <span style="font-family: inherit;">completed, housing five stills with a total capacity of 616
gallons – a much bigger operation that the typical distillery of the time,
which had only one or two stills, according to the DSCUS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition, Washington’s distillery building
– measuring 75 by 30 feet – was the largest distillery in the country at the
time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Whiskey
production reached nearly 11,000 gallons in 1799, valued at about $7,500 then
(in the neighborhood of $100,000 in today’s dollars). The recipe called for 60
percent rye, 35 percent corn, and 5 percent malted barley. Because it wasn’t
aged, the whiskey was clear – looking similar to moonshine. But Washington’s
operation was legal, and he paid federal taxes on his stills. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After Washington
died in 1799, his will left the distillery to a relative, who leased the
operation to others. Production appears to have declined over the years, ending
by 1815. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">More recently,
archeologists began exploring the site in 1997. The effort received a
substantial boost in 2001, when the DSCUS supported the project with a $2.1
million grant that also allowed reconstruction of the distillery. The
reconstructed, working distillery opened to the public in 2007. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And yes, you can
buy whiskey produced by the distillery when limited amounts are produced today.
It was last available in April 2012, when 600 bottles (375 milliliters each)
were offered at $95 each. And you could only buy it by visiting Mount Vernon’s
gift shop or the nearby gristmill and distillery.</span></span></div>
Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-58846946308051492562012-08-11T15:51:00.000-05:002012-08-13T15:55:43.115-05:00John Adams ... "His Rotundity"<span style="font-family: inherit;">After George
Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the United States,
Congress – especially the Senate – witnessed heated debate on how he should be
addressed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vice President John Adams,
with a reputation for at least a bit of vanity in his personal view of life,
argued fervently for a grand title befitting his view of the great dignity of
the office and the respect that it should receive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He and a few others suggested titles including
the terms “His Majesty” and “His Excellency” in one form or another. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And a committee appointed to resolve the issue
seemed to agree, recommending “His Highness the President of the United States
of America and Protector of Rights of the Same.” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But others
in Congress, such as Virginia Representative and future president James
Madison, thought a less pretentious title would be better for the country. And
soon, Adams’ unyielding support for an imposing, majestic title soon made him
something of a joke on the issue, even among his friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One senator, Ralph Izard of South Carolina,
suggested that the rather short, heavy-set Adams be himself called “His
Rotundity,” and the joke spread throughout the chamber. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Members of
the U.S. House of Representatives also had fun at Adams’ expense. In his 2001 biography
entitled </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/141657588X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=141657588X&linkCode=as2&tag=thehi07b-20"><span style="font-family: inherit;">John Adams</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, author David
McCullough wrote that Representatives John Page of Virginia and Thomas Tucker
of South Carolina amused themselves with humorous notes to each other during
the too-long debates on the issue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Speaking
of Adams, Tucker wrote to Page, “In gravity clad, He has nought in his head,
But visions of Nobels and Kings.” Responded Page: “I’ll tell in a trice –, ‘Tis
old Daddy Vice, Who carries of pride as ass-load; Who turns up his nose,
Wherever he goes, With vanity swelled like a toad.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite his considerable prominence even among those who laughed at his personality quirks, Adams lost this battle. Both the House and the Senate voted to address Washington and future presidents as "The President of the United States." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-48159139316354902302012-08-04T16:04:00.000-05:002012-08-04T16:04:00.103-05:00The General who dissed Lincoln ...<span style="font-family: inherit;">As the Civil War began, U.S.
President Abraham Lincoln struggled to find a competent general to lead Union
forces against those of the Confederacy. His first choice was Robert E. Lee –
an option that evaporated when Lee declared his allegiance to his native Virginia
as it joined the Confederacy. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqzqfb10wX0iZtguEiRVX1R9IJSAAYRLTb0qD5-7ROP4WolYk2BJWOUyosE0IAY4BflmIr2xNa9LWZp5A9vQpt12RtN_XvvFjxY-tkzdUiwTQdDmki3nCuPgSeQdMFzeIkZ8KzOfpNPwlI/s1600/George_B_McClellan_-_retouched.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqzqfb10wX0iZtguEiRVX1R9IJSAAYRLTb0qD5-7ROP4WolYk2BJWOUyosE0IAY4BflmIr2xNa9LWZp5A9vQpt12RtN_XvvFjxY-tkzdUiwTQdDmki3nCuPgSeQdMFzeIkZ8KzOfpNPwlI/s320/George_B_McClellan_-_retouched.jpg" width="256" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">General George McClellan</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">By fall 1861, following a series
of battlefield disappointments, Lincoln turned to George McClellan, known
primarily for his organizational skills and abilities. McClellan was appointed
general-in-chief for Union armies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">McClellan’s contempt for civilian
leadership became apparent a mere two weeks later. On November 13, 1861, Lincoln,
Secretary of State William Seward, and Lincoln’s secretary John Hay went to
McClellan’s Washington home to discuss issues related to the war. In his diary,
Hay recorded the event:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>“I wish here to record what I
consider a portent of evil to come. The President, Governor Seward and I went
over to McClellan's home tonight. The servant at the door said the General was
at the wedding of Colonel Wheaton at General Buell's and would soon return. We
went in, and after we had waited about an hour, McClellan came in, and without
paying any particular attention to the porter who told him the President was
waiting to see him, went up-stairs, passing the door of the room where the
President and Secretary of State were seated. They waited about half an hour,
and sent once more a servant to tell the General they were there; and the
answer came that the General had gone to bed,”</em> Hay wrote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>“I merely record this
unparalleled insolence of epaulettes without comment. It is the first
indication I have yet seen of the threatened supremacy of the military
authorities,”</em> he continued.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>“Coming home I spoke to the
President about the matter, but he seemed not to have noticed it, specially,
saying it was better, at this time, not to be making points of etiquette and
personal dignity,”</em> Hay added.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite McClellan’s
insubordination, Lincoln did his best to support the General – who called the
President a <em>“baboon”</em> in letters to his wife – in coming months. But over time, Lincoln
became more and more disillusioned with the General, who tended to spend almost
all of his efforts preparing his army for a fight rather than meeting the enemy
on the battlefield.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when McClellan
did move against the Confederate Army, his efforts were weak, tentative, and
unimaginative, producing few if any victories, according to his many critics. He was very popular among his soldiers, however.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lincoln’s growing frustration
with McClellan’s military dithering reached a head in May 1862, and he demoted
McClellan from his general-in-chief position. A series of other generals followed,
none achieving much success for the Union until Ulysses S. Grant became
general-in-chief in late 1863.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">McClellan became the Democratic
nominee for president in 1864, but lost the race to Lincoln, who won his second
term. And Grant, of course, was elected President in 1868.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">An interesting side note, though probably of questionable value: McClellan ranked second among 59 students in his West Point military academy class, while Grant ranked 21st among 39 students in his class there.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-5362820097699008482012-07-28T16:00:00.000-05:002012-07-28T16:00:01.845-05:00Uh-oh ... Roosevelt didn't ride in the Capone carUh-oh. Ever heard the story about President Franklin Roosevelt using former crime boss Al Capone's armored car, which reportedly had been seized by the Internal Revenue Service upon Capone's conviction, to move around Washington when security concerns became a big issue as World War II began? The History Insider noted this supposedly well-documented item in a <a href="http://www.thehistoryinsider.blogspot.com/2011/12/franklin-roosevelt-and-al-capones-car.html" target="_blank">December 2011 entry</a>, but new research suggests that the story is only that -- a story. In other words, it's bogus. False. Myth.<br />
<br />
The car in question -- a 1928 Cadillac town car -- is being sold this weekend through <a href="http://www.rmauctions.com/FeatureCars.cfm?SaleCode=SJ12&CarID=r114" target="_blank">RM Auctions</a>. And research noted by RM suggests that the U.S. government never possessed the car, and might not have known that it existed. Instead, it appears that one of Capone's associates sold it in 1932 to a couple who worked for a traveling carnival. Their plan to make money by showing the car to through the carnival never paid off, and they sold it about a year later to someone else, who took it to England, where it was displayed. The car was sold and resold privately several times, and ended up back in the U.S.by the mid-1960s, where it's been since. <br />
<br />
Think you might want to bid on it this weekend? That'll set you back an estimated $300,000 to $500,000, according to the auction house's announcement.<br />
<br />Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-44475918236851720452012-07-21T13:06:00.000-05:002012-07-21T13:06:00.932-05:00The troubled history of the Washington Monument<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="400" src="http://www.nps.gov/storage/images/wamo/Webpages/originals/385.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="262" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stone of a slightly different shade <br />
completes the upper two-thirds <br />
of the Washington Monument.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> A close look
at the Washington Monument in our nation’s capital shows a subtle – but very
discernible – difference in color, or shade, of the stone beginning nearly
one-third of the way up this memorial to the nation’s first president. That’s a
testament to the troubled history of this structure.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Congress
authorized a monument to George Washington soon after his death in 1799, but
nothing came of it until 1832, when a group of private citizens established the
Washington National Monument Society. They raised funds for the project and
held a design competition for it in 1836. The winner was well-known and highly
recognized architect Robert Mills. His design included an obelisk (a tall,
four-sided column) with a nearly flat top, surrounded with columns at its base,
enclosing statues of 30 other Revolutionary War heroes. Although the $1 million
cost was well beyond what the Society had collected, work was begun on the
obelisk, in hopes that its construction would spur more people to donate money
to the project.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Design of the national Washington Monument" class="item" height="320" id="panhack" src="http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/pga/03700/03714r.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="254" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Only some elements of the<br />
Washington Monument's original design <br />
were ultimately put in place.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> As part of
its fundraising efforts, the Society also solicited the donation of large
commemorative stones to be used for the construction of the interior of the
monument. Many stones arrived at the site, but some were inscribed with
controversial statements, often without any reference to Washington.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And one stone, donated by Pope Pius IX,
appears to have be stolen and destroyed by members of a secretive political
organization called the Know-Nothings (based on their “know nothing” response
to questions about the organization’s anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic beliefs,
which were based on concerns that rising numbers of German and Irish immigrants
threatened native-born Protestants in the U.S.).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Construction
began in 1848 and continued until 1854, when private funding became exhausted,
leaving the obelisk somewhat less than one-third completed. Congress
appropriated $200,000 to the effort in 1855, but quickly rescinded the money
after members of the Know-Nothing organization engineered a takeover of the
Monument Society at about the same time. Ultimately, the Know Nothing-led
Monument Society funded only a bit of more work, which was of such low quality
that it was later replaced. By 1858, leadership of the Society returned to
people without the divisive beliefs of the Know-Nothings, but interest in
completing the monument fell victim to the political and other pressures that
led to the outbreak of the Civil War only a few years later. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="5. Photocopy of photograph (from collection of the Smithsonian Institution) sometime between 1855 and 1880 UNFINISHED SHAFT OF MONUMENT - Washington Monument, High ground West of Fifteenth Street, Northwest, between Independence & Constitution Avenues, Washington, District of Columbia, DC" class="item" height="320" id="panhack" src="http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/dc/dc0200/dc0261/photos/027186pr.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="254" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Washington Monument <br />
remained an unattractive, unfinished <br />
stub of stone for about 25 years.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> The unfinished,
neglected monument stood as an eyesore before, during, and after the war. Mark
Twain, writing just after the war, noted that it <em>“has the aspect of a factory
chimney with the top broken off…you can see cow-sheds about its base, and the
contented sheep nibbling pebbles in the desert solitudes that surround it, and
the tired pigs dozing in the holy calm of its protecting shadow.”<o:p></o:p></em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">After the
Civil War, interest in the monument renewed, but it wasn’t until 1876 that
Congress again appropriated money – again, $200,000 – for the effort. Before
work began, questions arose about design of the monument. Some people wanted to
proceed with the original Mills plan from 1836, but others sought or submitted
new plans. While these new designs were under consideration, Congress in 1879
ordered work to continue on the obelisk, and ultimately no additional
structures were added. The final two-thirds or more of the obelisk, taking it
to a height of just over 555 feet, were completed in December 1884 – but with
stones from a different quarry than when the lower part of the structure was
put in place some 25 years earlier. At first, the newer stones appeared to
match the color of the original stones. But over time, they have weathered
differently, producing the different shade we see today.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Since it was
completed, the Washington Monument has been closed to the public several times
for routine maintenance or restoration. A 2011 earthquake caused significant
damage, and the monument was closed again in July 2012 for repairs. Reopening
is expected in 2014.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-38976117920178399532012-07-14T22:28:00.000-05:002012-07-14T22:28:00.768-05:00Ben Franklin's son ... a Royal Governor and British loyalist<span style="font-family: inherit;">American
patriot Ben Franklin did his best to ensure the success of his son in colonial
America, but regretted it when the son became <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">too</i> successful and dedicated to meeting his professional
responsibilities … leading to an estrangement that never reconciled between the
father and son.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgihuZ-o1K-3zqGI_x6a-v-Icop3NBoO5_Ne4w2TKkevNHVxd2Kl0iCzXjdVAqdxf4F8SHa_WLolBwhrto9N-vG0EOJnPoXRSFe4dwK4O-dRFKf2_xvJBT6ZBclGpI1vaIZ6H1xIUoECub1/s1600/WilliamFranklin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgihuZ-o1K-3zqGI_x6a-v-Icop3NBoO5_Ne4w2TKkevNHVxd2Kl0iCzXjdVAqdxf4F8SHa_WLolBwhrto9N-vG0EOJnPoXRSFe4dwK4O-dRFKf2_xvJBT6ZBclGpI1vaIZ6H1xIUoECub1/s200/WilliamFranklin.jpg" width="193" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">William Franklin</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Born
illegitimately to a mother who is unknown to history, William Franklin grew up
with his father and a stepmother, Ben Franklin’s common-law wife Deborah. The
stepmother/stepson relationship tended to be strained. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As William
became a young adult, his father arranged for him to study law under a
respected Philadelphia attorney. And after Ben was appointed deputy postmaster
for pre-revolutionary America in 1751, he appointed William as postmaster of
Philadelphia, a post that the elder Franklin held previously. Father and son
appeared to be very close during this stage of their lives, not only in the
professional world, but personally as well, with William serving as Ben’s only
assistant for his famous kite experiment. Both men jointly speculated in
acquiring western lands, too, believing strongly in their growing value as the
colonies expanded.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">William
joined his dad on a trip to England in 1757. Ben had been appointed by the
Pennsylvania Assembly to approach the British government with concerns about
the Penn family’s control of the colony as its “proprietors.” At the time, the
Assembly could pass its own laws, but the Penn family, which technically owned
the colony based on the original land charter given to it by the British king more
than 75 years earlier, had final say on any such action by the Assembly. That
governance structure produced a considerable amount of conflict in the rapidly
growing colony. During his visit to England, Ben was unsuccessful in his
efforts to loosen the proprietors’ control.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But Ben –
and William – did enjoy another success that surprised almost everyone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks to the elder Franklin’s connections
with the British prime minister, Britain’s newly crowned George III appointed
William to be the Royal Governor of New Jersey. William took the position
seriously and never wavered in performing his responsibilities. He remained a dutiful
British loyalist even as his father and others moved toward revolution during
the late 1760s and early 1770s. William and Ben grew further and further apart
during those years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Away from his father, [William] had grown
into a man of his own, as convinced of the correctness of his principles as his
father was of his principles, and as stubborn in defending them,”</i> wrote H.
W. Brands in his 2000 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385495404/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0385495404&linkCode=as2&tag=thehi07b-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0385495404"><em>The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin</em></a>. <em>“The apple had fallen close to the tree in regard of character,
if not of politics.”
</em></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As
hostilities between the colonists and British broke out and continued for years,
colonial militiamen put William Franklin under house arrest in 1776. A few
months later, he was seized and taken to Connecticut, where he remained under control
of Governor Jonathan Trumbull. In contrast to William, Trumbull supported the
American cause despite his appointment to his position by the British crown. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Released as
part of a prisoner exchange in 1778, William lived among other loyalists in New
York. He then went to England about 1782, never to return to America. In 1784,
William wrote to his father, who was nearing the end of a stint as the American
ambassador to France, that he wished to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“revive
that affectionate intercourse and connexion which till the commencement of the
last troubles had been the pride and happiness of my life.”</i> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">On his way
back to America, Ben agreed to meet with William when he passed through England.
Ultimately, it became a business meeting to tie up legal and financial issues
involving land William owned in America and debts that he owed to his father. A
complicating issue was the presence of Temple Franklin, William’s own
illegitimate son (fathered prior to his marriage, also with a mother unknown to
history), who Ben had taken in and raised, although William later acknowledged
Temple as his own.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“The meeting of the three generations
occurred under inauspicious circumstances,”</i> wrote Brands in his Ben
Franklin biography. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“[Ben] Franklin’s
guests were coming and going … the three had scarce time and less privacy for
the sort of soul-searching a genuine reunion required. Doubtless Franklin
preferred it this way. Scars had formed over wounds he felt at what he
considered his son’s betrayal; better not to reopen them.”</i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“William found the encounter acutely
distressing,”</i> added Brands. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“His
hopes for reconciliation were dashed, his ties to his homeland severed.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
</div>Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511177070140396181.post-46574086684275492052012-07-07T14:36:00.000-05:002012-07-07T14:36:00.932-05:00The fascinating fate of the Bounty's mutineers ...<span style="font-family: inherit;">The story of
the mutiny on the British ship <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bounty</i>
in 1789 doesn’t end with the <a href="http://thehistoryinsider.blogspot.com/2012/06/captain-bligh-villain-or-hero.html" target="_blank">near-miraculous voyage to safety of Lieutenant William Bligh and the men loyal to him</a> after mutineers set them adrift in a
small boat. The fates of the mutineers are fascinating too.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">After the
mutiny, 27 men remained on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bounty</i>.
A small number of them had been loyal to Bligh, but were either kept on the
larger ship because their skills were needed or there was no room to put them
into the smaller craft with the captain. Still others still on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bounty</i> hadn’t been aligned with the
mutineers, but took no action to help Bligh. So the crew manning the troubled
ship wasn’t a tremendously harmonious group. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Fletcher
Christian, leader of the mutineers, first took the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bounty</i> to the island of Tubuai, about 350 miles south of Tahiti.
But within a week, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bounty</i> sailed
to Tahiti, remembered fondly by the crew as a paradise, for food. They returned
to Tubuai with some Tahitian women and men, and spent three months trying to
establish a settlement there. But arguments, especially over women, and other
differences doomed that endeavor. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bounty</i>
and its crew and the Tahitians returned to Tahiti once again. There, the crew
split, with some taking up life on the island while Christian and the eight
sailors most closely aligned with him left for the high seas on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bounty</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With them were nine Tahitian women, six
Tahitian men, and one Tahitian child.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXXopuwS-g4BsckJVw_0B1EdRJ_OLsLqZH2gQBIVSHlADUJOZxIjrIaR-meu69xB1z7p4mGXDqfZ5VN0FWb3Elroc00f2OCPTpYxv6Bt5R1SVQUmexS4dNbk87zss4f26e0dz_WBMP3ioH/s1600/628px-Edward_Gennys_Fanshawe,_Pitcairn's_Island,_Augt_12th_1849.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXXopuwS-g4BsckJVw_0B1EdRJ_OLsLqZH2gQBIVSHlADUJOZxIjrIaR-meu69xB1z7p4mGXDqfZ5VN0FWb3Elroc00f2OCPTpYxv6Bt5R1SVQUmexS4dNbk87zss4f26e0dz_WBMP3ioH/s320/628px-Edward_Gennys_Fanshawe,_Pitcairn's_Island,_Augt_12th_1849.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">Upon finding
lonely and small <a href="http://goo.gl/maps/OZtN" target="_blank">Pitcairn Island</a> at a different place than indicated on sea
charts, the mutineers decided to settle there – and ensured it by running the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bounty</i> aground, salvaging supplies and
equipment from her, and burning the ship. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">No one in
the rest of the world knew what became of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bounty</i> and the mutineers who sailed with her on that final voyage until
1808, when an American ship named the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Topaz</i>
stumbled across Pitcairn’s Island and noticed signs of habitation. Further
exploration by the Americans revealed a settlement led by one Alexander Smith
(whose real name was John Adams), the sole surviving mutineer, who told the
visitors of the others’ fate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“The colony … prospered, although two of the
mutineers died in the first two years, one of ‘sickness,’ one by jumping off
the towering rocks in a fit of insanity,”</i> wrote Caroline Alexander, author
of the 2003 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0142004693/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thehi07b-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0142004693">The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty</a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, </i>in summarizing Smith’s account. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Four or five years later, six of the seven
remaining mutineers, including Fletcher Christian, were killed in the night by
their ‘Otaheite [Tahitian] servants,’ who had risen against them. Only
[mutineer] Alexander Smith had been left alive, although badly wounded. The [Tahitian]
widows of the mutineers then in turn killed their Tahitian kinsmen in revenge,
and so Smith had been left with all the women, and their various offspring.”</i>
Of course, there’s no good way to verify Smith’s account, but no good reason to
doubt the gist of it either – although he reportedly offered conflicting details
in later retellings of his story. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The captain
of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Topaz</i> reported his find to
British authorities, but Britain didn’t pursue it. And a when couple of British
ships happened up the Pitcairn Island colony in 1814, they had no clue that it
had been discovered years earlier. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
re-discovery brought much attention, however, and John Adams [aka Alexander
Smith] was granted amnesty in 1825. Pitcairn and surrounding islands were made
part of the British Empire in 1838.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But many of the
mutineers who remained on Tahiti when the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bounty</i>
took its last voyage to Pitcairn weren’t as fortunate as Adams/Smith. After
Bligh returned to England and reported the mutiny, British authorities sent
another ship – the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pandora</i> – to hunt
down them down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fourteen former <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bounty</i> crewmen were found on Tahiti, arrested,
and placed in a cage on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pandora</i>’s
deck. A search for the other mutineers on neighboring islands proved fruitless,
so the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pandora</i> set sail back to
England. Tragedy struck when the ship ran aground and sank with the loss of 31
crewmen and four of the prisoners. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">When the ten
surviving prisoners finally arrived back in England, they were court martialed.
Three were found guilty and hanged, three were found guilty but pardoned, and
four were acquitted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Ray Grasshoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14255628100297737824noreply@blogger.com0