Category: History

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Bicentennial Moment

From my brother John, a good writeup (from the Associated Press, by way of MSNBC) on the upcoming bicentennial of the birth of a president who served from 1861 through 1865. No, not the one you’re thinking of.

“It hasn’t been easy getting people excited about celebrating the 200th birthday of that tall, gaunt, bearded, Kentucky-bred president who was born in a log cabin and went on to lead his people through a bloody civil war.”

Enough suspense. We’re talking about Jefferson Davis. Doing a quick Web sift for a related item, I stumbled across this item in the Andalusia, Alabama, Star-News. In a column of local goings-on, which is worth reading for the strong local flavor, there is an extended account of a recent Davis bicentennial event: a re-enactment of his swearing in as president of the Confederacy in Montgomery.

Among the many gently disquieting observations delivered in the Star-News column is this one:

“The program was a long one, presided over by Mrs. Napier, who runs the White House of the Confederacy and is a great-niece of Douglas Southall Freeman, most famous biographer of Robert E. Lee, whose bicentennial was celebrated last year.

“Mrs. Napier spoke of ‘presentism,’ which she defined as ‘imposing today’s values on the past’ as a means of judgment. She did not favor that.”

You know, I love the code. We are not to judge the past by today’s values. By which the speaker means “we shouldn’t judge slavery, and the South’s embrace of it, by the enlightened standards of 2008.” Slavery was just a fact of life in the South, and no one today has the right to judge that. Uh huh.

It’s true that we Americans are mostly a little shortsighted about slavery and its legacies. It thrived in the North, for instance, and was only gradually outlawed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It’s true, too, that when the Civil War came one of the great bastions of pro-Southern and anti-emancipation sentiment was New York City. The brutal reality of slavery darkened the entire Union.

But there I go, calling slavery “brutal.” That’s just modern values judging the well-meaning gentlefolk of yesteryear.

Except, of course, it’s not: The contemporary reality of antebellum America, and of the world beyond, was full of recognition that slavery was barbaric and ought to be ended. That doesn’t mean the question was ever simple. But revisionism aside, that’s why that damned war was fought–based on 19th century values, not something we ginned up in the 1960s.

Now: Applying 1860s values to today? That I have a problem with. (And so does novelist John Scalzi, who over the years has made a cause out of puncturing latter-day delusions about the nature of the Confederacy.)

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Infamous Scribblers

On the occasion of George Washington’s (Gregorian-corrected) birthday, this memorable description of the press:

“The hopelessness with which Washington ended his presidency was obvious in the way he described to [Alexander] Hamilton his plan to retire. He wrote that he had ‘a disinclination to be longer buffeted in the public prints by a set of infamous scribblers.’ He needed retirement, he told another correspondent, just to make bearable what he predicted would be a short trip to his death.”

(From: “Our Founding Lame Duck,” in the Times earlier this week.)

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Court of Special Sessions

In connection with my ongoing Irish-American research project, I’ve had occasion to peruse The New York Times archives at length. Looking for information on one case in an 1860s version of a police blotter column, I started reading accounts of cases brought on September 7, 1867, to the city’s Court of Special Sessions. The tribunal apparently tried petty crimes. But it didn’t regard them lightly. If someone made a credible enough accusation to get a police officer take you in, you’d have your hands full at the very least and stood a good chance of being sent to prison. On the other hand, looking respectable counted for something if you were a shoplifter. From the Times:

Court of Special Sessions.

Before Justice Dowling.

There were sixty-one cases tried yesterday at the Court of Special Sessions. The charges, in but very few of the cases, were of more than ordinary gravity. These we give:

A VICTIM TO SCIENCE.

John Shay was charged by Mr. Geo. W. Shaw with attempting to steal his watch on Broadway Bridge. The prisoner was leaning over the balustrade of the bridge, looking down the street. He turned when complainant was passing and made the effort with which he is charged. Counsel for the prisoner denied the direct statement of the complainant, saying that his client was on an errand connected with his employment, and that he merely stopped upon the bridge to see the operations of a photographer, shortly after which he was arrested and charged as complained. The complainant was so positive in his evidence, and as there was no rebutting testimony, the prisoner was found guilty and sentenced to three months in the Penitentiary.

A TALE OF A TUB.

Ellen Gallagher was found guilty of stealing a wash-tub from Thomas Mulholland. After gathering the tub from the door of the complainant while his back was turned, she endeavored to effect a sale to the daughter of Mulholland, whom she met on the next floor. Mrs. Mulholland recognized the tub, and the prisoner was arrested. Officer Cornelius Read was called, but stated that he knew very little of the case, only that the prisoner had confessed to him that she stole the tub. This “only” of the officer’s was sufficient to send the prisoner one month to the Penitentiary.

Under “Miscellaneous,” we find among other reports, this:

Mary Burke, a respectable looking lady, was charged with entering the store of Bertha Rosenberg, and stealing therefrom a roll of muslin containing five yards. Mrs. Burke entered the store and examined different articles but bought nothing. Mrs. Rosenberg suspected that something was wrong and stopped her on the way out, discovering the parcel. In consideration that it was her first offence, and that her connections were otherwise respectable, the prisoner was permitted to pay a fine of $50 and go.

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‘Inimical Forces’

A while back, I mentioned a book I’d like to read: “The Greatest Battle,” by Andrew Nagorski. It’s an account of the battle for Moscow in World War II. Although several of the blurbs on the back cover describe the book as gripping, I’d say it’s deliberate and workmanlike, almost plodding. But Nagorski does a thorough job relating the story of the German invasion, the Soviet defense, and Hitler’s and Stalin’s roles in the disasters that befell both armies and the calamity that was visited on the Soviet Union first through Stalin’s policies of purge and terror and second through Hitler’s determination to destroy the nation and its political system. I’d say go find it used or borrow it from your library if you like military epics.

Nagorski does talk a lot about the scale of the killing in the German-Soviet fighting. Of course, the entire war involved killing on a fearsome scale. You can read through the numbers, but I don’t think there’s any way to comprehend them. I always find myself thinking about the events that led to the catastrophe, and my thoughts always settle on Hitler and how he was able to move an entire nation to start in on such an enterprise.

Earlier today, Kate was reading a book of short pieces E.B. White wrote for The New Yorker. She read several of them, all from the 1930s, aloud. Here’s one — The New Yorker holds the copyright — published two months or so after Hitler came to power in 1933. It was titled “Inimical Forces”:

“Einstein is loved because he is gentle, respected because he is wise. Relativity being not for most of us, we elevate its author to a position somewhere between Edison, who gave us a tangible gleam, and God, who gave us the difficult dark and the hope of penetrating it. Not long ago Einstein was here and made a speech, not about relativity but about nationalism. ‘Behind it,’ he said, ‘are the forces inimical to life.’ Since he made that speech we have been reading more about those forces: Bruno Walter forbidden by the Leipzig police to conduct a symphony; shops of the Jews posted with labels showing a yellow spot on a black field. Thus in a single day’s developments in Germany we go back a thousand years into the dark, while a great thinker, speaking not as a Jew but as a philosopher, warns us: these are the forces inimical to life.”

[The book: “Writings from The New Yorker, 1927-1976.” At Amazon and many other fine retailers.]

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Guest Observation

By way of the Writer’s Almanac, which notes that this is the anniversary of Lincoln’s 1862 State of the Union address (actually, it appears to be a long, written report rather than a speech). Anyway, he had a way of summing things up. He closed his message this way:

“The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. … In giving freedom to the slave, we ensure freedom to the free, honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth.”

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Today’s Top Research

My foray into matters of Irish Americana tonight has me reading about the Irish community, German Americans, and World War I. Yes: Irish Americans and German Americans made common cause to try to keep the United States out of the war. Ireland’s longstanding grievances against Britain motivated the Irish; support for the Fatherland inspired the Germans. I’ve found lots of interesting and informative stuff on the topic, but I wound up searching the New York Times archives for stories about William Jennings Bryan’s role as an advocate of U.S. neutrality.

I found one precious item from June 1915, a week or so after Bryan had resigned as secretary of State because he could see by President Wilson’s reaction to the Lusitania sinking that his argument didn’t stand a chance in the administration. The item is about a speech that Bryan was supposed to make in Chicago to the Sons of Teutons. The group had invited Bryan, thinking he would inveigh against U.S. ammunition shipments to Britain and France and renew his call for an embargo. But when the Sons of Teutons found out that Bryan instead intended to urge the warring parties to enter peace negotiations, they met him at the train station and said the speech was canceled. At least that was the Times’s version of events.

I came across a more recent item, too: a March 1967 piece by historian Barbara Tuchman (“The Guns of August,” etc.) published in The New York Times Magazine and titled simply, “How We Entered World War I.” I haven’t read Tuchman’s books for decades, but this article is a reminder of why her histories are so accessible: she was a great writer (and yes, a capable historian, too). I found this in her description of the American and German diplomatic struggle over limits to submarine warfare: “Each time during these months when the torpedo streaked its fatal track, the isolationist cry to keep Americans out of the war zones redoubled.”

“… The torpedo streaked its fatal track.” I’ll remember that one for awhile.

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What Gives

After a rare four-day hiatus, I imagine my reader asking, “What gives?” This would be a swell intro to a heartachingly warm essay on Thanksgiving, but I’m in a charitable enough mood that I’ll spare my reader that pleasure.

Anyway, the four-day vacation was occasioned by a writing project — no, check that: a research project, mostly — on various figures in Irish-American history. The work, which I’d describe as incredibly rewarding except for the money, is for a pictorial history of Irish Americans that I believe is coming out next year. I’m one of a small group of writers doing mini-essays on a variety of subjects and people: Irish women in the (American) Civil War; the Irish-American lawyer who helped bring down (Scottish-American) Boss Tweed and his Tammany Hall cronies; the tensions between poor immigrant (“shanty”) Irish and striving, upwardly mobile (“lace-curtain”) Irish; Chicago newspaperman Finley Peter Dunne and his famous creation, Mr. Dooley; and Nellie Bly, whom you might call the first of the muckrakers.

The challenge of all this is to say a lot about remarkable people in very few words. To do that confidently, I feel like I need to have a good basic understanding of who they were and what they did. Which is where the research comes in; and of course that’s a joy, except for the money involved. I guess I already said that.

Still, beyond the money, there’s the chance encounter with some compelling person or story or piece of historical research (someone else’s) that is a reward in itself. Today’s best example: I noted that there’s a disagreement on the birth date of Nellie Bly (nee Elizabeth Jane Cochran): some sources give it as May 5, 1867, others as May 5, 1864. In trying to resolve this in poring over the sometimes poorly written and produced websites that mention Bly, I noticed that the Wikipedia entry goes with the 1864 date, a fact that was footnoted. The note, in turn, referred to “Kroeger;” that’s Brooke Kroeger, author of a 1994 Bly biography. I had come across her book, “Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist,” both on Google Books and at Amazon. But since the text wasn’t searchable, and my task allows scant time to do something radical like go to a library, I skipped over it for more accessible resources. After seeing the Wikipedia entry, I searched Kroeger as well as Bly and landed on the biographer’s website. And bingo: Kroeger includes the text of a beautifully written 1996 article she wrote for the Quarterly of the National Archives that lays out the state of Bly scholarship (virtually nonexistent) when she set out to write the biography as well as a wealth of absorbing detail on Bly’s life and career that she discovered by way of the Archives.

An editor I worked with once referred to the “pure pleasure” of reading a well-crafted story. That’s what I felt reading Kroeger’s story of discovering hidden dimensions of her subject’s life: a deep satisfaction and admiration at seeing someone conscientious and artful at work. Now I need to take the time to read her book.

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Liberal Arts Tuesday

Ancient advice

Athena — “clear-eyed,” “her eyes glinting,” “brimming with indignation,” and in disguise — to Telemachus at the opening of “The Odyssey”:

“For you,

I have some good advice, if only you will accept it.

Fit out a ship with twenty oars,, the best in sight,

sail in quest of news of your long-lost father.

Someone may well tell you something

or you may catch a rumor straight from Zeus,

rumor that carries news to men like nothing else. …

Now, if you hear your father’s alive and heading home,

hard-pressed as you are, brave out one more year.

If you hear he’s dead, no longer among the living,

then back you come to the native land you love,

raise his grave-mound, build his honors high

with the full funeral rites that he deserves–

and give your mother to another husband.

“Then,

once you’ve sealed those matters, seen them through,

think hard, reach down deep in your heart and soul

for a way to kill these suitors in your house,

by stealth or in open combat. …”

— From the Robert Fagles translation (and for bonus points, the transcript of a 1997 Fagles interview on the PBS “NewsHour”)

Go Bears

“There’s an old folk saying, ‘Life’s a dream; please don’t wake me up.’ That’s how I feel about my life, my years at Berkeley. When I hear UC Berkeley denounced for lawlessness, debauchery, free thinking, subversion, harboring communists and radicals, exposing students to radical ideas— whenever I hear those charges made, that’s when you’ll hear me, wherever I am, shout: Go Bears!”

–Leon Litwack, UC Berkeley history professor, upon retiring from teaching last spring (and for bonus points, the alumni magazine, California, carried a couple nice pieces on Litwack this fall: one on his career and final lecture, one from a former student).

Book I Want Got

Greatestbattle

“The Greatest Battle.” A friend of ours once had a job that required him to travel to Moscow several times. He recalled a remarkable sight on the road into the city from the airport: a monument-sized tank trap, built to commemorate the Red Army’s last-ditch defense of the capital against Hitler’s army in World War II. The battle’s denouement is a martial epic, with the invaders on the city’s outskirts, below-zero temperatures, and a fierce counterattack by troops rushed thousands of miles from Siberia. I heard the author of the book on NPR today. He got access to Soviet sources, both documentary and human, that were off-limits to western historians until recently.

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Prose on His Birthday

A friend notes, by way of The Writer’s Almanac, that today is Dylan Thomas‘s birthday. If you’re not familiar with him, Thomas attracted wide notice at a very early age — he was barely 20 — and, thanks to radio, became something of a celebrity poet both in Britain and the United States. If for nothing else, you know him for the lines, “Do not go gentle into that good night/Rage, rage at the dying of the light.” But he was also a self-destructive alcoholic, and he drank himself to a very early grave. He wrote a poem marking his thirtieth birthday, and another marking his thirty-fifth; he was dead before his fortieth.

Anyway, my friend pulled out a copy of “Quite Early One Morning,” a collection of short Thomas pieces. She read a funny number he wrote about reading poetry aloud. She said it made her angry that he was just allowed to drink himself to death. Which made me think how his story might have played out today, assuming a poet of his stripe might still be considered a person of public note.

The picture that comes to mind is celebrity rehab; lots of relapses; lots of People and EW items on his case; maybe a feature or two cataloging the squalls between him and his wife, Caitlin (who wrote a memoir that has the aggrieved and enraged title, “Left-over Life to Kill”); you could even imagine the tabloid headlines: “Dylan: Blotto Again!” or “Caitlin Says, ‘I Hate You!’ ” But Dylan might live through all this, at least long enough to go on a fortieth or fiftieth birthday reading tour or to embarrass himself with an attempted hip-hop turn on the “People’s Choice Awards” (a New York Times reviewer asks, “What do people still see in this bloated, flabby lump?”; the Post is more concise, “Fat, Not Phat”). He might survive the “has-been rhymester” headlines long enough for the rehab to finally stick; and then, unsurprisingly given his religious Welsh upbringing, he’s born again and puts out a volume of Christian poetry (“Songs of Praise to Him Who Made Me”; example first line: “Go ahead, go gentle into that good night/Jesus is waiting with a shiny new night-light”); the reception among the literati is scornful; hard-core born-agains distrust his history of dissipation and foreign accent; but Dr. Phil sees an inspirational story, welcomes him into the fold for “getting real,” and “Songs” is launched onto the lower rungs of best-seller lists along with the latest Dan Brown and Suze Orman offerings. Then follows a popular autobiography, “Singing in My Chains,” a children’s book, “A Wale of a Poet,” and a concert tour with Sting and Bono. Alas, even in the company of such spiritually attuned and clean-living rockers, the lures of the road catch up to him. He disappears from his hotel suite after a sold-out Meadowlands show. The next day, a fan sells TMZ a video of Thomas downing shots at New York’s White Horse Tavern and boozily denouncing “that wanker Dr. Phil”; the poet is arrested for public indecency after urinating in the doorway of a Manhattan fire station; from a Riker’s Island jail cell he apologizes to his fans and Dr. Phil. He goes back into rehab. And, after a tearful confession of error on Oprah, gets a new book deal.

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Recent Fascinating Find

Capitol

In the process of researching some recent legislative handiwork in the U.S. Senate — the absurd resolution condemning MoveOn.org for picking on poor little General Petraeus — I came across something much more interesting in the Defense Department appropriations bill now before Congress: an amendment, the Wartime Treatment Study Act, that would establish a commission to investigate and report on how alien European-Americans (the legislation’s term) were treated during World War II. The bill would also mandate a study into the measures the United States took to bar European Jews trying to escape the Nazis.

It’s a fascinating question. Most Americans now know that more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese-born residents were interned during the war. For many reasons — mostly the sweeping nature of the action that targeted a non-European ethnic group and the scale of the internment regime — the Japanese-American example stands out and is really without parallel in our history. But as this bill states, most of us aren’t aware of the actions the U.S. government took against German-Americans, Italian-Americans and others under Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, the same measure that called for action against the Japanese-Americans. Among other things, thousands were interned, many were involuntarily repatriated to Axis nations, and hundreds of thousands were identified as enemy aliens and required to carry special IDs.

Something interesting about this bill: This is the fourth or fifth Congress in which the original sponsor, Sen. Russell Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, has tried to get it passed. Among his cosponsors is a Democratic arch-liberal, Kennedy, and a Republican conservative, Grassley (also: the self-interested Nutmeg Stater, Lieberman). The bill has an interested sponsor and cosponsors in the House. But for some reason, it’s not moving. Feingold complained in 2004 that an unknown Republican was exercising a “secret hold” to keep the bill from coming to a vote. This year, he hitched it to the ill-fated Senate immigration legislation; even though Feinberg’s section was approved, the bill as a whole was killed. Now, he’s gotten it attached to the military appropriations bill. Nobody’s watching it or writing about it, so far as I can tell, so Feingold probably isn’t holding his breath for this one.

You wonder, though, what in the world would possess anyone to oppose such a measure. It costs very little. Nobody’s talking about monetary reparations. The bill merely aims to shed light on what we euphemistically term a difficult chapter in our history; God knows that, even as Ken Burns is reminding us how heroically the nation behaved during the war was that we might learn a thing or two from the less heroic moments. And perhaps we’d succeed in giving some abused survivors of the era a measure of peace, if not justice.

(In the Senate, the bill is S. 621; the identical House bill is H.R. 1185.)

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