Category: History

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Hail to the Chiefs

There was a time — starting the moment George Washington left office — that being a military heavyweight wasn’t seen as one of the big qualifications for being president. The Civil War (six) and World War II (six) produced the highest number of president veterans–most who served as generals. If there’s a pattern here — military service or expertise turning into excellence as commander-in-chief in wartime or in peacetime — it escapes me.

George Washington: Trenton was one of his greatest hits.

John Adams: Learned to be commander in chief on the job.

Thomas Jefferson: Learned on the job.

James Madison: Learned on the job–fought actual war.

James Monroe: Learned on the job.

John Quincy Adams: Learned on the job.

Andrew Jackson: Knew his way around a battlefield. (References.)

Martin Van Buren: Learned on the job.

William Henry Harrison: Did someone say ‘Tippecanoe’?

John Tyler: Learned on the job.

James K. Polk: Learned on the job. Enthusiastically.

Zachary Taylor: Soldier.

Millard Fillmore: Learned nothing on the job.

Franklin Pierce: Mexican War combat veteran.

James Buchanan: Learned on the job.

Abraham Lincoln: Learned on the job (served in Illinois militia during Blackhawk’s War).

Andrew Johnson: Learned on the job.

U.S. Grant: The Civil War brought out the best in him and the blood out of everyone else.

Rutherford B. Hayes: Civil War combat veteran.

James A. Garfield: Civil War combat veteran

Chester A. Arthur: Civil War quartermaster.

Grover Cleveland: Avoided Civil War draft by paying a substitute. Learned on the job. Twice.

Benjamin Harrison: Civil War combat veteran.

William McKinley: Civil War combat veteran.

Theodore Roosevelt: Noted equestrian with enthusiasm for Cuba.

William Howard Taft: Learned on the job.

Woodrow Wilson: Learned on the job.

Warren Harding: Learned on the job.

Calvin Coolidge: Learned on the job.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: Former assistant secretary of the Navy.

Harry S Truman: World War I combat veteran.

Dwight D. Eisenhower: Ike. Mentioned something about a “military-industrial complex.”

John F. Kennedy: PT-109.

Lyndon B. Johnson: World War II combat veteran (Army).

Richard M. Nixon: World War II, Navy; played mean game of poker.

Gerald Ford: World War II combat veteran (Navy).

Jimmy Carter: Navy nucular engineer.

Ronald Reagan: Learned on the job (warmed up dispatching National Guard to Berkeley).

G.H.W. Bush: World War II combat veteran (Navy).

Bill Clinton: Otherwise engaged during Vietnam draft. Learned on the job.

G.W. Bush: Air National Guard (1970s); carrier landing (2003).

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Air Lines and A. Lincoln

The Library of Congress site–a dangerous place to explore. I actually started out with a purpose when I began searching the its collection of broadsides last night. Among knowledge nuggets gleamed: American railroads of yesteryear often called themselves “air lines.” Why? Were they towing zeppelins ‘cross the prairie? No. “Air line” (or “air-line”) described the shortest route between two points

I also happened across the item below: apparently a clever piece of Democratic campaign ephemera from 1864 that purports to be an Abraham Lincoln business card. March 4 refers to the date in 1865 that Lincoln would have left office had he lost the election. (Click the image for a larger, legible version of it. The library’s page on the item is here.

And the text says:

“To Whom It May Concern:

“My old customers, and others, are no doubt aware of the terrible time I have had in crossing the stream, and will be glad to know that I will be back, on the same side from which I started, on or before the Fourth of March next, when I will be ready to swap horses, dispense law, make jokes, split rails, and perform other matters in a small way.”)

Alincoln

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Paper

Some weeks back, I think I mentioned that I’m back in school, trying to earn my history degree at UC-Berkeley. I’ll talk more about it soon, I promise. About the dull class that has turned out to be much more engaging than I imagined it could be during that first week. About the very challenging class on linguistics that has me thinking about the merits of going for a pass/not pass grade. About the oddly off-putting experience of a sociology-type class looking at the phenomenon of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and how I’ve dropped that one.

But for now, this: The week before last, I had to turn in my first paper since the Carter administration. The class is Irish history–I half feel like the native Parisian taking Elementary French, but that’s another story. The paper was to be a reflection on the record that Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th century political sociologist, left of a trip he took through Ireland in 1835. (Do I hear pulses speeding up out there in blogland?)

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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.