Christmas Wonder

Posted on December 25, 2019 by SUMPTER

a scholar and a poet

Way back in its August 14, 1869 issue, Harper’s Weekly profiled a famous American man of letters:

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

Now that LONGFELLOW — the most popular of American poets — is in England, the question is naturally asked, What do Englishmen
think of him? In reply it may he said that Longfellow is, in England, more popular than TENNYSON. It is also true that Tennyson is more popular in this country than Longfellow. This seems strange at the first glance; but the reason is obvious. Longfellow’s poems are cheaper in England than here; and Tennyson’s may be bought here at a nominal price as compared with their cost to an English reader. Is there not here a strong argument against an international copyright, which would exclude both TENNYSON and” LONGFELLOW from the poorest classes?

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW was born at Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807. He is now, therefore, nearly sixty-three years old. His father, the Hon. STEPHEN LONGFELLOW, was an eminent lawyer. He entered Bowdoin College at the early age of fourteen, and during his course he gave evidence of those abilities which have given him such high distinction both as a scholar and a poet. Among his productions at this period may be mentioned his “Hymn of the Moravian Nuns,” “The Spirit of Poetry,” “The Woods in Winter,” and “Sunrise on the Hills.” After his graduation he seems to have some vague idea of adopting the legal profession. But a more congenial occupation offered. He was appointed Professor of Modern Languages and Literature at Bowdoin College, with the privilege of residing some years abroad. In 1826 he sailed for Europe, and during that and the two following years he made a tour of France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. He returned home in 1830, and entered upon the duties of his professorship, which he held for five years, when he accepted a similar position in Harvard College, succeeding Mr. GEORGE TICKNOR. He, in 1835 and 1836, made another European tour through Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland. In 1854 he resigned his position, and has since resided at Cambridge. …

The article went on to analyze several of Mr. Longfellow’s works and concluded that “His countrymen may well be proud of him.” I don’t specifically remember reading any of the works mentioned but have certainly heard of many of them, for example, “The Courtship of Miles Standish.” I might have read that) But my question is, “What about the big one?” – What about “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”? Just as I enjoy reading and rereading about the Civil War, I enjoy hearing the same old Christmas carols every year – like “I Heard the Bells,” which was influenced by the American Civil War. The Harper’s Weekly piece didn’t really go into Mr. Longfellow’s personal life, but, according to Wikipedia, his life experiences were crucial to the poem:

within bell range?

In 1861, two years before writing this poem, Longfellow’s personal peace was shaken when his second wife of 18 years, to whom he was very devoted, was fatally burned in an accidental fire. Then in 1863, during the American Civil War, Longfellow’s oldest son, Charles Appleton Longfellow, joined the Union Army without his father’s blessing. Longfellow was informed by a letter dated March 14, 1863, after Charles had left. “I have tried hard to resist the temptation of going without your leave but I cannot any longer”, he wrote. “I feel it to be my first duty to do what I can for my country and I would willingly lay down my life for it if it would be of any good.” Charles was soon appointed as a lieutenant but, in November, he was severely wounded in the Battle of New Hope Church, Virginia, during the Mine Run Campaign. Charles eventually recovered, but his time as a soldier was finished.

Longfellow wrote the poem on Christmas Day in 1863. “Christmas Bells” was first published in February 1865, in Our Young Folks, a juvenile magazine published by Ticknor and Fields.”

“Christmas Bells” From The Complete Poetical Works of Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow at Project Gutenberg

war song

Charles wounded on November 27th

drowning out the carols

lots to ponder

____________________________

I think about Mr. Longfellow’s poem just about every Christmas. This year I also thought about the ending of Amanda Foreman’s book about British-American relations during the Civil War ((just ahead of the Epilogue). British-born Doctor Elizabeth Blackwell trained Union nurses throughout the American Civil War. She wrote to a friend about the suffering the war caused and how President Lincoln empathized with all the pain:

You cannot hardly understand and I cannot explain how our private lives have all become interwoven with the life of the nation’s. No one who has not lived through it can understand the bond between those who have. … Neither is it possible without this intense and prolonged experience to estimate the keen personal suffering that has entered into every household and saddened every life. … The great secret of our dead leader’s popularity was the wonderful instinct with which he felt and acted … he did not lead, he expressed the American heartbreak … it has been to me a revelation to feel such influence and to see such leadership. I never was thoroughly republican before … but I am so, thoroughly, now.[1]

“Christmas Bells” asks a couple questions that humans have been asking for millennia: Does God exist? If God exists, then why does x [something horrible] occur? Recently I’ve read a couple items that seem to have different takes those issues. From the April 1906 issue of Mother Earth:

Christmas isn’t for children

About 74 years ago Daniel Russell quoted Charles A. Beard:

I am convinced that life is not a mere bog in which men and women tangle themselves in the mire and die. Something magnificent is taking place here … and the supreme challenge … is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail.[2]

_____________________________________________

The December 28, 1919 issue of the New York Tribune pictured an institution founded in 1869 that was still going strong fifty years later:

feeding and forming foundlings

Here’s how Harper’s Weekly pictured Christmas in 1869:

no place like it

flag-festooned

wonder and awe

from real life

Those old Harper’s Weeklies are available at the Internet Archive – 1869 and 1870. According to page 7 in 1870, placing gifts around the Christmas tree was becoming more prevalent as fireplaces were being replaced with more modern heating mechanisms – Santa Clause wasn’t finding stockings hung at the fireplace as much. The street scene was based on real homeless and hungry people gathered at a London police station in search for food and shelter. Harper’s said there was now thousands in the same dire situation in America and urged some Christian charity to alleviate the suffering and to acknowledge “the Divine Master’s saying: ‘The poor ye have always with you.'”
American Battlefield Trust provides more details about the background of “Christmas Bells” and shows a photograph of the wounded Charles. You can read much more about Charles Appleton Longfellow at the National Park Service. Henry helped nurse his son back to health in the summer of 1863 after Charley was stricken with “Camp Fever”.
You can read the entire April 1906 issue of Mother Earth at Project Gutenberg. The same issue includes an article by anarchist and publisher Emma Goldman and “M.B.” about their travels in the northeast. What they have to say about Syracuse, New York sounds so modern, especially the dislike of coal:
The city where the trains run through the streets. With Tolstoy, one feels that civilization is a crime and a mistake, when one sees nerve-wrecking machines running through the streets, poisoning the atmosphere with soft coal smoke.
What! Anarchists within the walls of Syracuse? O horror! The newspapers reported of special session at City Hall, how to meet the terrible calamity.
Well, Syracuse still stands on its old site. The second meeting, attended largely by “genuine” Americans, brought by curiosity perhaps, was very successful. We were assured that the lecture made a splendid impression, which led us to think that we probably were guilty of some foolishness, as the Greek philosopher, when his lectures were applauded, would turn to his hearers and ask, “Gentlemen, have I committed some folly?”
The image of the Foundling Hospital was published in the December 28, 1919 issue of the New York Tribune, available at the Library of Congress. According to The New York Foundling three Sisters of Charity did indeed open the doors in 1869. Over the years some of the services have changed, but the organization continues “to share our founders’ belief that no one should ever be abandoned, and that all children deserve the right to grow up in loving and stable environments.” One of the three founders was Sister Mary Irene FitzGibbon. The photograph of Sister Irene and her charges is at the Wikipedia link and is part of a group at the Library of Congress by Jacob A. Riis called Poverty and tenement life in New York City, ca. 1890

“Sister Irene and her flock”

Elizabeth Blackwell

O Pioneer!

The December 28, 1919 Trib also reported the deportation of Emma Goldman and 248 other alien anarchists on the “Soviet Ark,” the U.S. transport Buford. The December 22, 1919 issue of The New York Times reported that the ship was bound for Kronstadt and headlined that “Emma Goldman Shows Bravado—Glad to Go, She Says, Predicting Triumphant Return.” Like Mahatma Gandhi, Ms. Goldman was born 150 years ago in 1869.
The quote attributed to Charles A. Beard didn’t specifically mention a personal, Christian God. Mr. Beard was an early 20th century historian who interpreted history through an economic lens. Writing with his wife Mary Ritter Beard, he saw the Civil War primarily as the result of class conflict: “The Beards downplayed slavery, abolitionism, and issues of morality. They ignored constitutional issues of states rights and even ignored American nationalism as the force that finally led to victory in the war. Indeed, the ferocious combat itself was passed over as merely an ephemeral event. … The Beards announced that the Civil War was really a “social cataclysm in which the capitalists, laborers, and farmers of the North and West drove from power in the national government the planting aristocracy of the South”. In their History of the United States (at Project Gutenberg) the Beards staed that bells and cannon worked together when South Carolina seceded: “As arranged, the convention of South Carolina assembled in December and without a dissenting voice passed the ordinance of secession withdrawing from the union. Bells were rung exultantly, the roar of cannon carried the news to outlying counties, fireworks lighted up the heavens, and champagne flowed. The crisis so long expected had come at last; even the conservatives who had prayed that they might escape the dreadful crash greeted it with a sigh of relief.”

Russian-born anarchist and feminist

it’s the economic conflict

Mary Ritter Beard

More from the Library of Congress: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s home in Cambridge, Mass; the poet sitting on a bench; portrait of Elizabeth Blackwell; the Confederate envelope; more portraits – Emma Goldman on a street car, Charles A. Beard, and his wife, Mary Ritter Beard, who was also a “a member of the Executive Committee of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage.”

Hal Jespersen’s map of the Mine Run campaign is licensed by Creative Commons – Hal Jespersen, www.CWmaps.com/. Amanda Foreman’s reference for the letter she quoted: “Columbia University, Blackwell MSS, Elizabeth Blackwell to Barbara Bodichon, May 25, 1865.” As of December 19, 2019 the New York State historical marker honoring Elizabeth Blackwell stood on South Main Street in Geneva, New York.
Daniel Russell quoted Charles A. Beard in a meditation about “Veiled Meanings,” in which he begins by considering the boy who chased arrows for Jonathan and David in 1 Samuel 20 and then goes on to say: “We all live in two worlds. One is the world of daily tasks where day by day we chase our arrows. But folded around that world is the world of the divine purpose.”
Merry Christmas (New York : Published by Currier & Ives, 125 Nassau St., [1876])

Hope it’s merry, “wild and sweet”

  1. [1]Foreman, Amanda A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War. New York: Random House, 2010. Print. pages 783.↩
  2. [2]Russell, Daniel Meditations for Men Brief Studies of Religion and Life. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1945. Print. page 383.↩
Posted in 150 Years Ago, Aftermath, American Culture | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

another flag controversy

Posted on December 16, 2019 by SUMPTER

From the December 28, 1919 issue of the New York Tribune:

capital riled

tricolors mixed

You can get a full-color view of the flag at WorthPoint. The three allies certainly didn’t make up all the world’s population, but they were fighting for all of humanity, à la Woodrow Wilson’s reason for entering World War I – to make the whole world safe for democracy. The controversy in Washington, D.C. occurred while the U.S. Senate was working out whether there was any possible way the Senate could ratify the peace treaty that created the League of Nations. The United States never joined the League; the League never had an official flag.

Nowadays Oskar Pernefeldt has proposed an International Flag of Planet Earth to represent Earth in outer space and to remind us that we all share the planet regardless of what nation we live on.

the big three +

You can see the League sheet music at the Library of Congress

.

Posted in 100 Years Ago, World War I | Tagged , | Leave a comment

world’s blessing?

Posted on November 28, 2019 by SUMPTER

On the day after Thanksgiving in 1869 The New-York Times devoted its entire front page to how the holiday had been observed the day before. This included over four columns (and counting) devoted to the services and sermons at various religious institutions in the metro area. Fifty years later the Times front pages on Thanksgiving and the day after didn’t even mention the holiday. The focus seemed to be on the coal strike, communists, and a huge meteor that plunged into Lake Michigan on Thanksgiving Day night.

However, like Ulysses S. Grant in 1869, President Woodrow Wilson had proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving and prayer to God. Besides being (unsurprisingly?[1] longer than Grant’s, President Wilson’s proclamation was much more involved with the world. While both presidents were thankful for abundant harvests, Mr. Wilson saw the harvest as good for the whole world: “Our harvests have been plentiful, and of our abundance we have been able to render succor to less favored nations.” Americans had a duty to mankind to ensure that the war victory was complete: “we should strive to aid by our example and by our cooperation in realizing the enduring welfare of all peoples and in bringing into being a world ruled by friendship and good will.”

From Pilgrim Hall Museum

THANKSGIVING DAY – 1919 BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA – A PROCLAMATION

Thanksgiving Day 1918: wounded American at Red Cross hospital in France

The season of the year has again arrived when the people of the United States are accustomed to unite in giving thanks to Almighty God for the blessings which He has conferred upon our country during the twelve months that have passed. A year ago our people poured out their hearts in praise and thanksgiving that through divine aid the right was victorious and peace had come to the nations which had so courageously struggled in defense of human liberty and justice. Now that the stern task is ended and the fruits of achievement are ours, we look forward with confidence to the dawn on an era where the sacrifices of the nations will find recompense in a world at peace. But to attain the consummation of the great work to which the American people devoted their manhood and the vast resources of their country they should, as they give thanks to God, reconsecrate themselves to those principles of right which triumphed through His merciful goodness. Our gratitude can find no more perfect expression than to bulwark with loyalty and patriotism those principles for which the free peoples of the earth fought and died. During the past year we have had much to make us grateful. In spite of the confusion in our economic life resulting from the war we have prospered. Our harvests have been plentiful, and of our abundance we have been able to render succor to less favored nations. Our democracy remains unshaken in a world torn with political and social unrest. Our traditional ideals are still our guides in the path of progress and civilization.

Thanksgiving Day 1918: Red Cross care packages for prisoners at Metz

These great blessings, vouchsafed to us, for which we devoutly give thanks, should arouse us to a fuller sense of our duty to ourselves and to mankind to see to it that nothing that we may do shall mar the completeness of the victory which we helped to win. No selfish purpose animated us in becoming participants in the world war, and with a like spirit of unselfishness we should strive to aid by our example and by our cooperation in realizing the enduring welfare of all peoples and in bringing into being a world ruled by friendship and good will.

Wherefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, hereby designate Thursday, the twenty-seventh day of November next, for observance as a day of thanksgiving and prayer by my fellow-countrymen, inviting them to cease on that day from their ordinary tasks and to unite in their homes and in their several places of worship in ascribing praise and thanksgiving to God the Author of all blessings and the Master of our destinies.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done in the District of Columbia this 5th day of November in the year of our Lord, one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and forty-fourth.

Wide World of Wilson: peace treaty

determining the fate of millions around the world

barnstorming San Diego: arriving at U.S. Grant Hotel

____________________

When the proclamation was issued on November 5th the United States Senate was debating whether to ratify the peace treaty that ended World War I and established the League of Nations; the Senate voted against the treaty three times on November 19th. Although Senate Republicans favored accepting the treaty with reservations, President Wilson “rejected this compromise and enough Democrats followed his lead to defeat ratification.”

And at the time Mr. Wilson was “seriously indisposed” because of a stroke he suffered on October 2nd. It had been quite a year for the president. For his work helping to hammer out the Paris treaty “Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize.” Back in the States he barnstormed the country trying to drum up support for the treaty and the League of Nations. Then the stroke. “Throughout late 1919, Wilson’s inner circle concealed the severity of his health issues.”

The New York City picture newspapers didn’t have a lot of Thanksgiving coverage either. Both papers showed a unique celebration in the nation’s capital, and the Tribune featured the traditional joy and gratitude of soldiers (and sailors) returning home. Most American military units returned from Europe in 1919.

sunrise cookout

marshmallows for dessert?

back over here

This is another one of those posts I find mysterious because of all I don’t know. President Wilson was “seriously indisposed” after his October 2nd stroke. Was he in good enough shape to compose the November 5th Thanksgiving proclamation? The words certainly seem to reflect Mr. Wilson’s view that the United States should be more involved in world affairs. You can also see the Thanksgiving proclamations at The American Presidency Project. The only Wilson Thanksgiving proclamation that is signed

“WOODROW WILSON

By the President:

ROBERT LANSING,

Secretary of State.”

is the 1919 one. The others are just signed by Mr. Wilson.

I almost had to get out a magnifying glass to find a blue-gray connection for this post. The picture of Theodore Roosevelt signing the 1902 Thanksgiving proclamation is definitely out there. It seems that there is an image of Sojourner Truth with Abraham Lincoln against the wall. Apparently this commemorates the October 1864 visit of Sojourner Truth to the White House. TR’s picture is a little different than the one at the Library of Congress. I can’t figure out who the man under the eagle in the other picture is. Over 100 years later the cartoon of the humane Theodore Roosevelt sort of reminded me of his “speak softly and carry a big stick” policy – he was pictured as caring about the turkey’s welfare but he went big game hunting in Africa in 1909. You can read the history of the presidential turkey pardons at The White House Historical Association. And then, happy coincidence, I just found the photo of President Wilson arriving at San Diego’s U.S. Grant Hotel. The president’s arrival was about two weeks before his stroke.
According to the National Archives, the U.S. State Department tried to encourage allied nations to celebrate Thanksgiving Day 1918 in the aftermath of the November 11th Armistice.

photoed in the act

Lincoln with Truth 1864

turkey tears

[November 29, 2019]I moved a sentence, made a change, added the reference to the 1868 Republican Chart, and added the following image links. From the Library of Congress: Thanksgiving Day 1918 hospital and prison at Metz; the big three allied leaders leaving Versailles; at the Grant Hotel; the New York Tribune – November 30, 1919 (the Grantland Rice’s poem illustrated by Ding Darling) and December 7, 1919; more cookout coverage at The New York Times for December 7th; T.R. signing; Truth and Lincoln viewing; turkey’s humane end. The Cornucopia comes from WPClipart.

Happy Thanksgiving!

  1. [1]The Republican Chart for the 1868 presidential race included the nomination acceptance letters. Veep Schuyler Colfax’s letter was much longer than that of the general at the top of the ticket↩
Posted in 100 Years Ago, American Culture, American History, World War I | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“soil is trod by none but freemen”

Posted on November 18, 2019 by SUMPTER

In his first year as Commander-in-Chief, President Ulysses S. Grant followed the tradition begun by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 by calling for a national day of Thanksgiving on a Thursday in November. The new president opted for a slightly earlier observance.

reasons to be thankful

less conflict, more liberty

And just like all Thanksgivings during the 1860’s, even before the official national observance, The New-York Times used its front page on November 19th to cover sermons at various churches and mention some of the charitable activities in the metro area.

Another publication explained how fitting it was that Thanksgiving was celebrated in November. From the November 20, 1869 issue of Harper’s Weekly:

THANKSGIVING.

thanks for the pestilence-free progress

AGAIN the night-season of the natural year has come round to us – the time when, her fruits having been gathered up, the earth folds up and puts aside her green garments, and lays down to her winter’s rest. At this time, when ripeness passes so quickly into decay, man snatches [eagerly?] to secure for himself so much as he can of nature’s gifts. This work having been accomplished, he has leisure for reflection. He can now look upon the process, by which the dead earth gives us back manifold what we have lent her, as the yearly wonder of God. It is fitting that this should be the season of Thanksgiving. But not only the agriculturalist finds this season an occasion of thanksgiving; the merchant and the manufacturer, also, have profited by the abundant harvests of the autumn. These are positive reasons for thanksgiving; but, besides these, we have to remember with gratitude, that no great pestilence, no wasting famine, no destructive natural convulsion, no financial panic have visited us.

The illustrations which we publish this week on pages 744 and 745, apropos to this national festival, need no interpretation on our part. That on page 744 is a typical representation of the season and of the occasions for thanksgiving. The engraving on page 745, “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving,” represents the larger and more cosmopolitan features of the occasion.

more seats at the table

You can find all the Harper’s Weekly content for 1869 at the Internet Archive. From the Library of Congress: General Grant’s portrait; Chattanooga’s national cemetery, c.1891. The cemetery “was established in 1863, by an order from Major General George Henry Thomas after the Civil War Battles of Chattanooga, as a place to inter Union soldiers who fell in combat.” And “It became Chattanooga National Cemetery in 1867.”

thanks for the sacrifice

Posted in 150 Years Ago This Week, Aftermath, American Culture, Postbellum Society, Reconstruction, The Grant Administration | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

so much service everywhere

Posted on November 11, 2019 by SUMPTER

John Ellis Wool, 85, died at his home in Troy, New York on November 10, 1869. Major-General Wool was a veteran of three major North American wars. After volunteering for the War of 1812 he made the U.S. Army his career for the rest of his career. He was wounded during the 1812 Battle of Queenston Heights; after recovering he was shot in the thigh. After recovering, John E. Wool was promoted and led the 29th U.S. Infantry with distinction at the 1814 Battle of Plattsburgh. During the Mexican–American War he commanded the Chihuahuan Expedition, which captured Saltillo; later he fought with General Zachary Taylor at the Battle of Buena Vista. “Wool’s leadership was recognized with a Congressional sword, a vote of thanks, and the brevet of major general. After the battle, he commanded the occupation forces of northern Mexico.”

Thanks for Buena Vista

As Wikipedia has also reported: “When the Civil War began in April 1861, Wool had just turned 77 years old, two years older than commander-in-chief of the US Army Winfield Scott. Unlike Scott, who suffered from obesity, gout, and other ailments, Wool was still reasonably fit and could mount a horse.”

He might have been 77, but he had a younger man’s fire. When citizens of Troy visited the general’s home after the rebel assault on and capture of Fort Sumter, he passionately pledged his all for the Union: “My friend, that flag must be lifted up from the dust into which it has been trampled, placed in its proper position and again set floating in triumph to the breeze.”

But according to documentation at the Library of Congress General Wool was involved before Fort Sumter. On January 11, 1861 he wrote to President-Elect Abraham Lincoln vowing to do everything he could to make sure Mr. Lincoln made it safely to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration:

elderly generals along the bottom

Head Quarters Dept of the East
Troy 11th January 1861
Dear Sir,
Presuming that I am not altogether unknown to you, I take the liberty of transmitting to you two printed letters, which in part indicate my views on the state of the Country. In a few days will be published in the City of New York a letter of mine to the Hon A. B. Olin, a representative in Congress from this City, in which will be found a condensed history of the causes which have induced the State of South Carolina to rebel against the Union. My object in saying this much to you is merely to apprise you that with me the preservation of the Union is paramount to all other considerations; and that I am prepared against all threats to see you safely placed in the Presidential Chair the 4th March next in the city of Washington, that is, if my services as military commander of the Department in such a case be deemed necessary.

Third Wool War

To the letters enclosed I have received responses from the States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland; all expressive of the most elevated patriotism and devotion to country, with a fixed determination to preserve the Union, “peaceably if it can, but forcibly if it must.” Any number of men, and any amount of money, can be had to sustain the union, and that flag, the stars and stripes, which is identified with all that has contributed to our greatness and renown as a nation, but recently trampled under the rebel feet of South Carolina without the slightest cause or justification.

In conclusion, allow me to say that I am no partisan, but a firm, decided and an uncompromising friend of the Union, “the whole Union and nothing but the Union”

considerations of the highest
respect your obt. servt
John E. Wool

P.S. Lest you may not know the part that I have acted in behalf of my country, I send you by mail a pamphlet which may interest you from the fact that several of the Regiments concerned in the [series?] of which t treats, were from Illinois.

W.

a team of generals

Mr. Lincoln responded on January 14th:

Springfield Ill Jany 14th 1861.

My dear Sir:

Many thanks for your patriotic and generous letter of the 11th inst. As to how far the military force of the government may become necessary to the preservation of the Union; and more particularly, how that force can best be directed to the object, I must rely chiefly upon General Scott and yourself. It affords me the profoundest satisfaction to know, that with both of you, judgment and feeling go heartily with your sense of professional and official duty, to the work.

It is true that I have given but little attention to the Military Department of government; but, be assured, I can not be ignorant as to who is Gen: Wool, or what he has done.

With my highest esteem
and gratitude I subscribe
myself
Your Obt. Servt.
A. Lincoln.

During the early days of Civil War General Wool secured Fort Monroe and in May 1862 he ordered the capture of the Norfolk Navy Yard. President Lincoln “personally witnessed the capture of Norfolk and afterwards rewarded Wool by promoting him to a full major general in the regular army thereby becoming only the 23rd man to hold this rank since its creation in 1791.” In July 1863 General Wool commanded a small force that helped contain the New York City draft riots, but on August 1st of that year President Lincoln ordered General Wool’s retirement after 51 years of army service.

letters for Lincoln

General Sherman breaks the news – The New-York Times
November 11, 1869

General Wool monument

It seems that in the 19th century career U.S. Army officers were often involved in managing the indigenous peoples as the United States manifestly filled up all the land between the Atlantic and the Pacific. John E. Wool “participated in the removal of the Cherokee from Georgia and Tennessee in the 1830s.” Between 1854 and 1857 General Wool commanded the Department of the Pacific; during that time he helped bring to Indian Wars in the Pacific Northwest by settling the tribes on reservations but having a more humane view of the native peoples. Wikipedia quotes from his letter to Governor Stevens of Washington Territory on February 12, 1856 – the general thinks he can protect the whites and bring peace to the region if white settlers don’t keep trying to exterminate the natives. You can read a good summary of General Wool’s work in the Northwest at The Oregon Encyclopedia.
As you can see above, the newspaper clipping John E. Wool included in his letter to President-Elect Lincoln praised the general for his actions while he commanded the Department of the Pacific.
Currently the United States observes Veterans Day to honor its servicemen and women and to commemorate the November 11, 1918 armistice between Germany and the Allies. So far I haven’t seen too much evidence that people officially remembered the one year anniversary of the armistice. Headlines in The New York Times focused on the U.S. Senate debate about joining the League of Nations, a coal miners’ strike, and communists. However, in its November 12, 1919 issue the Times reported on violence during Armistice Day activities in Centralia, Washington:
“Four former soldiers, members of the American Legion, were killed, two other service men were probably fatally wounded, and several other soldiers were less seriously hurt when members of the Industrial Workers of the World fired on an Armistice Day parade today as it passed the I. W. W. Hall.
“The marching veterans raided the hall, seized supposed snipers” … and escorted them to jail, protecting them from a mob that tried to seize them.”
Thanks again to Wikipedia – this time for all the information and quotes about John Ellis Wool and for the circa 1825 portrait. Matt H. Wade’s photo of the Wool obelisk in Oakwood Cemetery, Troy, New York is licensed under Creative Commons. The photo of sword and scabbard from Congress comes from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. From the Library of Congress: Virginia map; General Wool commanding Fort Monroe ; 1861 Council of War1919 issues of the New York Tribune – October 26th (Wikipedia has different numbers for the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery) and November 30th (John E. Sheridan was famous for all his posters, including those that supported the American war effort in World War I).

twenty acres in France

“In Flanders Field”

Posted in 150 Years Ago This Week, Aftermath, Veterans | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

what it is

Posted on November 6, 2019 by SUMPTER

a big stiff

Not exactly a mummy just in time for Halloween, but in October 150 years ago some folks south of Syracuse, New York dug up what appeared to be a well-preserved human being. The mysterious form didn’t seem to be preserved by mummification but by petrifaction – the process of organic matter turning to stone. And it wasn’t just any human being, it was a giant of a man, over ten feet tall! The find generated a lot of interest; it didn’t take long for a geologist who examined the object to determine that it had never been a living, breathing human, it was just a well-wrought statue.

From the December 4, 1869 issue of Harper’s Weekly:

THE CARDIFF GIANT.

On the 16th of October there was discovered on Mr. NEWELL’S farm in Onondaga County, New York, and about thirteen miles south of Syracuse, what what at first was supposed to be a petrified human form – a giant of the olden time. The first reports of this discovery excited the greatest interest among all classes, and especially among scientific men. The fossil was found about three feet below the surface while some persons were digging for a well.The soil was a sort of bluish [?] clay mixed with quicksand [?] and black loam, and organic remains were found about the body. The figure, when first discovered, lay in a very easy and natural position, horizontal, partly on the right side, with the right hand resting over the abdomen. It’s dimensions were as follow [sic]: From crown of head to hollow of foot, 10 feet 2 1/2 inches; crown of head to tip of chin, 1 foot 9 inches; length of nose, 6 inches; width of nostrils, 3 1/2 inches; width of mouth, 4 inches; point to point of shoulder, 3 feet; point of hip to knee-joint, 3 feet; diameter of calf of leg, 9 1/2 inches; diameter of thigh, 1 foot; length of foot, 1 foot 7 1/2 inches; width of palm, 7 inches; diameter of wrist, 5 inches. The veins, eyeballs, muscles, tendons of the heel, and cords of the neck were all fully disclosed.

hoisting 2990 pounds

As we have said, this figure was at first supposed to be a petrified human form. But it was soon found that this theory seemed hardly plausible. Though the figure had the appearance of stone, the outer surface could be shaved off with a knife without dulling the blade. Dr. J.F. BOYNTON visited the figure, and, after a careful examination, pronounced it to be a statue of a Caucasian. The features were finely cut, and excellent artists have remarked the symmetry of proportions characterizing the whole figure.

Dr. BOYNTON at first supposed that this statue was carved by the Jesuits who dwelt in this valley between 1520 and 1760. After a more thorough examination he declares it to be of gypsum, and of recent origin. He says, in a recent letter to Professor SPENCER, of the Smithsonian Institute, at Washington:

“I have stated that I thought his ‘origin would not carry us back over three hundred years;’ but I am not certain that the known principles of chemistry will justify me in asserting that the period between his burial and resurrection was over three years. Its antiquated appearance has been produced not by abrasion, as many have said, but by the dissolving action of water, which, I think, could have been accomplished in a few months. A more careful and accurate calculation, admitting the possible chance of some undiscovered error creeping into the calculation, may show the burial to have taken place about 370 or 371 days ago – as it may have happened between two days.”

northward bound

Mr. NEWELL, upon whose ground the statue was found, is said to have disposed of it for $40,000. The figure has been carried to Syracuse. Its weight is 2990 pounds. If it were solid stone it would not weigh so much by 500 pounds. A recent theory has been started, that it is a cast-iron figure covered with a coating of cement. The head, it is said, gives a ringing sound when struck, like that of a hollow, metallic body. But Mr. PALMER, the sculptor, states that there are marks of sculptor’s tools.

American Goliah, a pamphlet published shortly after the find (and republished at Project Gutenberg), included a letter from Dr. Boynton explaining his raionale for concluding that the object was not a fossil-man. But the pamphlet also included reasons to think it might have been petrified and included the contrasting opinions of Tom, Dick, and Harry. A letter to the editor explained that the Onondaga people believed the giant was the prophet who predicted long ago the coming of the pale-faces and that he would die and be buried but that later Onondagas would see him again. It seems that the pamphlet was published before the move to Syracuse – hackies were available to drive visitors from Syracuse to the site; “The average daily attendance for the first week was from three to five hundred persons.” The big thing inspired scientists to examine but also artists to write:

TO THE GIANT OF ONONDAGA.

Speak out, O Giant! stiff, and stark, and grim,
Open thy lips of stone, thy story tell;
And by the wondering crowd who pay thee court
In thy cold bed, and gaze with curious eyes
On thy prone form so huge, and still so human,
Let now again be heard, that voice which once
Through all old Onondaga’s hills and vales
Proclaimed thy lineage from a Giant race,
And claimed as subjects, all who trembling hear
Art thou a son of old Polyphemus,
Or brother to the Sphinx, now turned to stone—
The mystery and riddle of the world?
Did human passions stir within thy breast
And move thy heart with human sympathies?
Was life to thee, made up of joy and hope,
Of love and hate, of suffering and pain,
In fair proportions to thy Giant form?
Did ever wife, by whatsoever name
Or tie of union, with her ministries
Of love, caress and cheer thy way through life?
Were children in thy home, to climb thy knee
And pluck thy beard, secure, and dare thy power
Or, was thy nature as its substance now,
Like stone—as cold and unimpressible?
Over these hills, with spear like weaver’s beam,
Dids’t thou pursue the chase and track thy foe,
Holding all fear and danger in contempt?
And, did at last, some fair Delliah
Of thy race, hold thee in gentle dalliance,
And with thy head upon her lap at rest,
Wer’t shorn of strength, and told too late, alas,
“Thine enemies be upon thee?”
Tell us the story of thy life, and whether
Of woman born—substance and spirit
In mysterious unon [union?] wed—or fashioned
By hand of man from stone, we bow in awe,
And hail thee, GIANT OF ONONDAGA!

SYRACUSE, Oct. 20, 1869. D.P.P

“Tell us the story of thy life”? Well, it seems that the mystery man is still speechless, but Wikipedia explains that the Cardiff Giant was a giant hoax. Atheist George Hill wanted to have some fun with believers who read the Bible literally – Genesis 6:4 says that giants once lived on earth. P.T. Barnum was so enamored with the profit-making potential of the object he offered $50,000 for it; rebuffed, Mr. Barnum commissioned a plaster replica he showed off as the original fossilized man and claimed the specimen unearthed in the hamlet of Cardiff was the actual imposter.

The first scientist on the scene, John F. Boynton, was an early leader in the Mormon Church, who was later excommunicated. He seemed to have a wide range of scientific interests. “After parting ways with the church, Boynton traveled throughout the United States lecturing on natural history, geology, and other sciences. Between 1853 and 1854, he joined a U.S. government geological surveying expedition to California. During the American Civil War, Boynton was employed by the U.S. to design torpedoes and other weapons. He holds 36 patents in the U.S. National Patent Office.”

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

die like an Egyptian

shrimps

The Onondaga Nation still has land south of Syracuse. North of that near Onondaga Lake a replica of Sainte Marie among the Iroquois is part of the Onondaga County Parks system. It is “a 17th-century French Jesuit mission located in the middle of the Onondaga nation of the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois. It was located on Onondaga Lake near modern-day Syracuse, New York. The original mission was in use only from 1656 to 1658.” Now the “French Fort” is the Skä•noñh – Great Law of Peace Center

Mormon scientist
and torpedo developer

showed off hoax replica

Onondagas in the middle

The giant is currently lying in repose (a very long repose) at The Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Back on October 16th the museum held a 150th Birthday Party for the Giant: Non-members “must pay 50 cents admission (the same price people paid in 1869!)”

well-preserved

You can find all the Harper’s Weekly material from its December 4th issue and all of 1869 at the Internet Archive. Martin Lewison’s photo at the farmer’s Museum is licensed under Creative Commons. I also got the image of John. F. Boynton from Wikimedia, as well as R. A. Nonenmacher’s map of the original five Iroquois nations. From the Library of Congress: the photo of the reclining giant; the midway at the “Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York, 1901, includes Cardiff Giant display, American Inn, Lubin’s Cineography, and streets of Cairo.” – it looks like the giant was housed at the extreme left of the photo; Pharaoh Ramses II died in 1213 B.C. – his mummy has held up pretty well; Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn’s 1655 etching of David and Goliath, who probably stood about 6 feet 9 inches according to most known ancient sources. P.T. Barnum

tall tale

Posted in 150 Years Ago, 150 Years Ago This Month, Postbellum Society | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

peace clone

Posted on October 28, 2019 by SUMPTER

In the fall of 1917 a bit of a brouhaha broke out in the United States over Abraham Lincoln, or at least over his likeness. In 1913, to commemorate one hundred years of peace between the cousins, British-American Centenary Committee planned on building a statue of Abraham Lincoln in London. The statue was to be a replica of one by Augustus Saint-Gaudens that stood in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. The big war breaking out in Europe put the project on hold. In 1917 Charles P. Taft offered to pay for a different Lincoln statue to be erected in London. That statue would be a duplicate of one in Cincinnati by George Grey Barnard. Many people, including President Lincoln’s son Robert Todd, objected to that particular work being used for the commemoration. They found it too crass, too undignified, too un-presidential. Besides, did Abraham Lincoln really look like that with such extreme extremities – huge hands and feet?

The peace centenary committee must have worked out a diplomatic solution. According to the October 5, 1919 issue of the New York Tribune Mr. Barnard’s uncouth Lincoln was relegated to Manchester in England and dedicated that September:

over there too

Irish-born journalist William Howard Russell actually met Abraham Lincoln at the White House. From his diary entry for March 27, 1861:

un-disguiseable?

Soon afterwards there entered, with a shambling, loose, irregular, almost unsteady gait, a tall, lank, lean man, considerably over six feet in height, with stooping shoulders, long pendulous arms terminating in hands of extraordinary dimensions, which, however, were far exceeded in proportion by his feet. He was dressed in an ill-fitting, wrinkled suit of black, which put one in mind of an undertaker’s uniform at a funeral; round his neck a rope of black silk was knotted in a large bulb, with flying ends projecting beyond the collar of his coat; his turned-down shirt-collar disclosed a sinewy muscular yellow neck, and above that, nestling in a great black mass of hair, bristling and compact like a ruff of mourning pins, rose the strange quaint face and head, covered with its thatch of wild republican hair, of President Lincoln. The impression produced by the size of his extremities, and by his flapping and wide projecting ears, may be removed by the appearance of kindliness, sagacity, and the awkward bonhommie of his face; the mouth is absolutely prodigious; the lips, straggling and extending almost from one line of black beard to the other, are only kept in order by two deep furrows from the nostril to the chin; the nose itself — a prominent organ — stands out from the face, with an inquiring, anxious air, as though it were sniffing for some good thing in the wind; the eyes dark, full, and deeply set, are penetrating, but full of an expression which almost amounts to tenderness; and above them projects the shaggy brow, running into the small hard frontal space, the development of which can scarcely be estimated accurately, owing to the irregular flocks of thick hair carelessly brushed across it. One would say that, although the mouth was made to enjoy a joke, it could also utter the severest sentence which the head could dictate, but that Mr. Lincoln would be ever more willing to temper justice with mercy, and to enjoy what he considers the amenities of life, than to take a harsh view of men’s nature and of the world, and to estimate things in an ascetic or puritan spirit. A person who met Mr. Lincoln in the street would not take him to be what — according to the usages of European society — is called a “gentleman;” and, indeed, since I came to the United States, I have heard more disparaging allusions made by Americans to him on that account than I could have expected among simple republicans, where all should be equals; but, at the same time, it would not be possible for the most indifferent observer to pass him in the street without notice.

As he advanced through the room, he evidently controlled a desire to shake hands all round with everybody, and smiled good-humoredly till he was suddenly brought up by the staid deportment of Mr. Seward, and by the profound diplomatic bows of the Chevalier Bertinatti. …

I found out about Mr. Russell’s diary in Amanda Foreman’s A World on Fire. She writes that he was “the most famous journalist in the world”, known for his “honest and searing” accounts of the Crimean War. [1]One of the book’s themes is how close the American Civil War came to upending that century of British American peace: “Twice in four years Britain and the North were on the brink of war: the first time, in December 1861, British troops were halfway to Canada by the time the two governments backed down.”[2]
In some ways it would seem Manchester was a good choice for the more earthly Lincoln. During the Civil War the president corresponded with the “working-men of Manchester.” Besides in a speech on March 6, 1860 Mr. Lincoln wasn’t “ashamed to confess that twenty five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flat-boat — just what might happen to any poor man’s son!”
Judge Alton B. Parker, who delivered the dedication address in Manchester, lost the 1904 presidential race to Theodore Roosevelt. A The New York Times headline on September 16, 1919 suggests he signaled a major change in U.S. foreign policy: “PARKER PRESENTS STATUE OF LINCOLN; Tells of Friendship with Britain at Unveiling of Barnard Work at Manchester. “EXCUSABLY” LATE IN WAR But America, He Says, Realized That the Isolation Principle Applied No Longer.” Foreign entanglements on the upswing, but as it turned out the United States never joined Woodrow Wilson’s League of nations.
ManchesterHistory says the past century of pollution and weather have made the words on the Lincoln statue’s plaque almost unreadable.
According to Abraham Lincoln Online the Saint-Gaudens replica was dedicated in London July 28, 1920. It stands in Parliament Square, one of twelve statues of notables. And London Remembers that there are also duplicates in Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Barnard’s original

dignified in London

I wonder if anyone has tried to come up with an estimate of all the Abraham Lincoln monuments and images from around the world. Just the past couple weeks glancing through (old, digitized) newspapers I learned about a statue in Brooklyn and a bust in Hingham, Norfolk, England, U.K. Of course, old-fashioned Americans like me who still use cash see the famous visage all the time on $5 bills and the Lincoln-head penny minted since 1909. But cash is apparently on the way out, so there might be a little less Lincoln in the future.(It seems that Augustus Saint-Gaudens was hired to redesign the one-cent piece, but he died in 1907, too soon to finish the job).

Hingham Lincoln

150 years in Brooklyn

endangered specie

The political cartoon was published in the March 9, 1861 issue of Harper’s Weekly, which you can find at Son of the South. There was an alleged plot to assassinate the president-elect in Baltimore as he journeyed to his inauguration. Rick Dikeman’s 2006 photo of the Barnard statue in Cincinnati is licensed under Creative Commons. The image of the statue in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, which apparently still stands, was published in the November 13, 1869 issue of Harper’s Weekly at the Internet Archive. From the Library of Congress: The Saint Gaudens statue in London – with Westminster Abbey, on Memorial Day; the New York Tribune in 1919 – bootblack August 3; Manchester October 5, pennies November 2, Hingham November 9. I added the Library of Congress source links on October 29, 2020.

Saint-Gaudens’ Lincoln and Westminster Abbey

he’s got some some big shoes to dust

  1. [1]Foreman, Amanda A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War. New York: Random House, 2010. Print. pages 72,74.↩
  2. [2]ibid. page xxiv.↩
Posted in 100 Years Ago, Monuments and Statues, World War I | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

pre-columbian exposition

Posted on October 15, 2019 by SUMPTER

searching for land … any land

150 years ago an article considered a logical conclusion: either the ancestors of the humans Christopher Columbus found in the Americas auto-generated (a second Adam and Eve), or Mr. Columbus and crew weren’t the first people from the Old World to discover the New.

From the September 18, 1869 issue of Harper’s Weekly:

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY THE CHINESE.

Was Columbus the first discoverer of America, or did he only rediscover that continent after it had, in remote ages, been found, peopled, and forgotten by the Old World? It is curious that this question has not been more generally raised, for it is very clear that one of two things must be true: either the people whom Columbus found in America must have been descended from emigrants from the Old World, and therefore America was known to the Old World before Columbus’s time, or else the aborigines of the western hemisphere were the result of spontaneous human generation – the development of man from a lower species of animal, or descended from a second Adam and Eve, whose origin would be equally puzzling. Unless we are prepared to cast aside Holy Writ, and all our general notions of the origin of the human race, we must believe that there was at one time communication between the Old World and the New. Probably this communication took place on the opposite side of the world to ours, between the eastern coast of Asia and the side of America most remote from Europe; and I believe it is quite possible that the inhabitants of Eastern Asia may have been aware of the existence of America, and kept up intercourse with it while our part of the Old World never dreamed of its existence. The impenetrable barrier the Chinese were always anxious to preserve between themselves and the rest of the nations of the Old World renders it quite possible that they should have kept their knowledge of America to themselves, or at any rate, from Europe. The objection that the art of navigation in such remote times was not sufficiently advanced to enable the Chinese to cross the Pacific and land on the western shore of America is not conclusive, as we have no found that arts and sciences which were once generally supposed to be of quite modern origin existed in China ages and ages before their discovery in Europe. The arts of paper-making and printing, among others, had been practiced in China long before Europeans had any idea of them. Why then should not the Chinese have been equally, or more, in advance of us in navigation? The stately ruins of Baalbec, with gigantic arches across the streets whose erection would puzzle our modern engineers, the Pyramids, and other remains of stupendous works point to a state of civilization, and the existence of arts and sciences in times of which European historians give no account.

One fact, corroborative of the idea that the Old World, or at least some of the inhabitants of Asia, were once aware of the existence of America before its discovery by Columbus is, that many of the Arabian ulema with whom I have conversed on this subject are fully convinced that the ancient Arabian geographers knew of America; and in support of this opinion point to passages in old works in which a country to the west of the Atlantic is spoken of. An Arab gentleman, a friend of mine, General Hussein Pasha, in a work he has just written on America, called En-Nessr-Et-Tayir, quotes from Djeldeki and other old writers to show this.

There is, however, among Chinese records not merely vague references to a country to the west of the Atlantic, but a circumstantial account of its discovery by the Chinese long before Columbus was born.

A competent authority on such matters, J. Haulay, the Chinese interpreter in San Francisco, has lately written an essay on this subject, from which we gather the following startling statements drawn from Chinese historians and geographers.

Fu-Sang = Fusany?

Fourteen hundred years ago even America had been discovered by the Chinese and described by them. They stated that land to be about 20,000 Chinese miles distant from China. About 500 years after the birth of Christ, Buddhist priests repaired there and brought back the news that they had met with Buddhist idols and religious writings in the country already. Their descriptions, in many respects, resemble those of the Spaniards a thousand years after. They called the country “Fusany,” after a tree which grew there, whose leaves resemble those of the bamboo, whose bark the natives made clothes and paper out of, and whose fruit they ate. These particulars correspond exactly and remarkably with those given by the American historian, Prescott, about the maquay tree in Mexico. He states that the Aztecs prepared a pulp for paper-making out of the bark of this tree. Then, even its leaves were used for thatching; its fibers for making ropes; its roots yielded a nourishing food; and its sap, by means of fermentation, was made into an intoxicating drink. he accounts given by the Chinese and Spaniards, although a thousand years apart, agree in stating that the natives did not possess any iron, but only copper; that they made all their tools, for working in stone and metals, out of a mixture of copper and tin; and they, in comparison with the nations of Europe and Asia, thought but little of the worth of silver and gold. The religious customs and forms of worship presented the same characteristics to the Chinese fourteen hundred years ago as to the Spaniards four hundred years ago. There is, moreover, a remarkable resemblance between the religions of the Aztecs and the Buddhism of the Chinese, as well as between the manners and customs of the Aztecs and those of the people of China. There is also a great similarity between the features of the Indian tribes of Middle and South America and those of the Chinese, and, as Haulay, the Chinese interpreter of whom we spoke above, states, between the accent and most of the monosyllabic words of the Chinese and Indian languages. Indeed, this writer gives a list of words which point to a close relationship; and infers therefrom that there must have been emigration from China to America at some remote period, that at the time of the discovery of America by the Spaniards the Indian tribes on the coast of the Pacific, opposite to China, for the most part, enjoyed a state of culture of ancient growth, while the inhabitants of the Atlantic shore were found by Europeans in a state of original barbarism. If the idea of America having been discovered before the time of Columbus be correct, it only goes to prove that there is nothing new under the sun; and that Shelly [sic] was right in his bold but beautiful lines – “Thou canst not find one spot whereon no city stood.” Admitting this, who can tell whether civilization did not exist in America when we were plunged in barbarism? and, stranger still, whether the endless march of ages in rolling over our present cultivation may not obliterate it, and sever the two hemispheres once again from each other’s cognizance? Possibly, man is destined, in striving after civilization, to be like Sisyphus, always engaged in rolling up a stone which ever falls down.

Buddhist temple in China

Aztec idol Teoyaomiqui

This exact same article showed up other places. For example, according to Google Books it was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle, Volume 3 pages 333-335, apparently also published in 1869. The author is said to be Charles Wells
I’m in way over my head here, but it seems that the Chinese who were said to explore America about 500 AD were like Columbus – they found people who had “discovered” the New World well ahead of them. The map-diagram above was published in Ancient Chinese Account of the Grand Canyon, or Course of the Colorado by Alexander M’Allan (1913) (at Project Gutenberg); the book finds similarities between ancient Chinese accounts and American views of North America. Mr. M’Allan cites Edward P. Vining’s 1885 An inglorious Columbus, or, Evidence that Hwui Shăn and a Party of Buddhist Monks from Afghanistan Discovered America in the Fifth Century A.D. (at Project Hathi and the Internet Archive). Mr. Vining’s book includes on pages 612-613 a side-by-side comparison of the Javan elephant god Bitara Gana, or Ganesa and another look at the Aztec god Teoyaomiqui: “A comparison of the two will show many resemblances that the conclusion hardly seems far-fetched that the latter is merely a modification of the former, brought about by gradual changes, which have accumulated through many centuries.”

The books’s title page included this quote: “If Buddhist priests were really the first men who, -within the scope of written history and authentic annals, went from the Old World to the New, it will sooner or later be proved. Nothing can escape history that belongs to it.” – LELAND.
I don’t think it’s been proven, at least not yet. According to Wikipedia only the Norse colonization of Greenland and Newfoundland around the year 1000 A.D. is the only “historical case of pre-Columbian contact … widely accepted among the scientific and scholarly mainstream.” And
Scientific and scholarly responses to other claims of post-prehistory, pre-Columbian contact have varied. Some of these claims are examined in reputable peer-reviewed sources. Many others—especially those based on circumstantial or ambiguous interpretations of archaeological evidence, alleged out-of-place artifacts, superficial cultural comparisons, comments in historical documents, or narrative accounts—have been dismissed as fringe science, pseudoarchaeology, or pseudohistory.
The Wikipedia article mentions the Chinese Buddhist missionaries of Mr. Vining’s book. Another claim, that about 1000 years later Chinese Admiral Zheng He discovered America before Columbus has been debunked – apparently the claim was based on a fake map.
According to the July 9, 2015 online Daily Mail possibly ancient Chinese characters were discovered in the Southwest United States. “John Ruskamp, a retired chemist and amateur epigraph researcher from Illinois, discovered the unusual markings while walking in the Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, New Mexico.” Mr. Ruskamp considered the find evidence of Chinese visitors to America about 1300 B.C.
What about the people who were already in America when all the possible visitors discovered it? I think the scientific consensus is that the first humans got to the Americas about 14,000 years ago by walking from what is now Siberia to modern-day Alaska over the Beringia land bridge, which was visible and usable because of lower sea levels at the time. These people spread throughout the Western Hemisphere. Some of the details could probably change due to scientific advances and/or the next find. For example, see an article at Sapiens:”Indeed, no tidy, new framework has arisen to take the place of older theories. Instead, new data, including genetic findings, continue to complicate the story of how these continents came to be peopled.”
The used U.S. history text I found at the library book sale began by saying that the ancestors of the modern native Americans came here tens of thousands years ago over the land bridge. But they didn’t realize they found anything new. Although Leif Erikson was the first European to find the Americas and Amerigo Vespucci is the New World’s namesake, the authors seem to have agreed that Columbus should be honored as the discoverer of America because his adventures “inspired the European invasion and the development of the whole area between Hudson Bay and the Strait of Magellan.” [1]
In 1893 Chicago hosted a World’s Columbian Exposition to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage. You can read all about it at Travalanche. The John Brown souvenir is a bit of a blue-gray connection.

The Chinese Buddhists and Zheng He might not have visited America, but in 1869 America was very aware of China, probably at least in part because of the Chinese Embassy in 1868 and all the Chinese workmen who helped build the Transcontinental Railroad.

better a little late than never

1893 souvenir

headed west

Harper’s Weekly
June 12, 1869

Harper’s Weekly
September 25, 1869

Harper’s Weekly
September 4, 1869

Reader’s Digest reports that some U.S. states and cities no longer celebrate Columbus Day.
All the Harper’s Weekly material was published in 1869 (at the Internet Archive). You can find Marcel René Kalt alias Groovio’s photo of the Columbus statue at Wikimedia, which also has the stamp. From the Library of Congress: in 1843 John Sartain engraved J.M.W. Turner’s painting of Mr. Columbus looking for land;at the base of the Columbus statue on Manhattan; Buddhist altar c.1907 in Moukden (now Shenyang); Aztec idol Teoyaomiqui; the John Brown souvenir from Chicago’s World Columbian Exposition 1893; exposition overview
I added a couple links on October 16, 2019.

New York Tribune October 19, 1919

globalist icon?

hometown hero

_______________________________

  1. [1]Garraty, John A., and Robert A. McCaughey. The American Nation: A History of the United States, Seventh Edition. New York: HarpersCollins Publishers, 1991. Print. page 1.↩
Posted in 150 Years Ago, American Culture, American History | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

survivors still

Posted on October 3, 2019 by SUMPTER

After the Civil War the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was founded in 1866 as a fraternal organization for Union veterans. According to a web page at the University of Mississippi the Fifty-third National (GAR) Encampment took place September 7-13, 1919 in Columbus, Ohio. In its September 21, 1919 issue The New York Times provided a couple photographs of the reunion.

Quaker gun?

According to The Civil War in the East the 71st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment had a rather unique history because it was first known at the “California Regiment” and it’s nickname was the “First California Regiment.” When the Civil War started Edward D. Baker, A U.S. senator from Oregon, raised an infantry regiment in the Philadelphia area that counted toward California’s quota for recruits. By the time of the Battle of Ball’s Bluff in October 1861 the regiment had become part of Baker’s Brigade, but at that battle Baker was killed. After that the men were counted as part of Pennsylvania’s quota and the brigade seems to have been referred to as either the California Brigade or the Philadelphia Brigade. From the Peninsula through Cold Harbor the brigade was part of the Army of the Potomac’s Second Corps and was involved in most of the major battles.

Over a third of the 71st was lost at Antietam, and another third was lost at Fredericksburg “occupying a position all day in the open close to Confederate entrenchments.” The regiment helped repulse Confederate attacks on Cemetery Ridge on Day 2 at Gettysburg in July 1863; on Day 3 it was ordered forward to meet Pickett’s charge, but it retreated because of the Confederates’ overwhelming numbers. According to the 71st’s monument, “it fell back into line with the right, thus bringing the whole regiment into action.” After Cold Harbor in June 1864 the remaining men were transferred to the 69th Pennsylvania. On July 2 1864 it “Mustered out under Colonel R. P. Smith. Of the 2,200 men who had served with the regiment, only 153 men returned to Philadelphia to muster out.”

In his article at The American Battlefield Trust, Daniel Landsman writes that the California Brigade did indeed successfully help defend Cemetery Ridge on July 2, 1863 at Gettysburg. And then

On July 3rd, the California Brigade was charged with defending the same position at the Angle during Pickett’s Charge. The Confederate effort against the Angle was greater than any other part of the line. Described as “an advance of an acre of men”, the charging Confederates proved to be too great a force for the 71st Pennsylvania, formerly the 1st California, as they retreated upon seeing the great Rebel approach.

Despite the 71st Pennsylvania’s retreat, the 69th and 72nd Pennsylvania, formerly 2nd and 3rd California, held their position and proved to be instrumental in the defense of the Angle. …

The brigade as a whole didn’t do so well at Cold Harbor. Its new commander, Joshua Owen, and his men were sleeping on the morning of June 3, 1864 while the rest of the Second Division was already in line. The division commander, Brig. Gen. John Gibbon, woke the brigade and then pushed it to the front of line, but General Owen continued to make mistakes and the brigade failed to support Col. Thomas A. Smyth’s attack. The California Brigade was broken up after Cold Harbor. The three year term was up for most of 71st survivors.

71st monument at the Gettysburg Angle

71st fell back … way back?

from Ball’s Bluff to Cold Harbor

________________

It looks like Ike was there for it all, the good, the bad, and the agonizing. According to the 71st’s roster at the Civil War Index Isaac E. Tibben served as a First Sergeant. Apparently to finish up his three years he transferred to the 69th Pennsylvania on June 12, 1864.

Isaac E. Tibben

The regimental history included with the roster explains that the term of service for most of the 71st expired while it’s line was close to the Confederate position at Cold Harbor. Following orders, the regiment retreated from its position under cover of darkness and eventually mustered out.

That same history doesn’t deny that part of the 71st retreated on July 3rd at Gettysburg, but states that many of the men kept fighting and enfiladed the Confederate advance.

___________________
The other picture in the Times shows a group of veterans remembering and memorializing a battle out west about eleven years after the Civil War ended.

remember the Little Bighorn

bone collectors

bones collected

brass button in collection

It appears there was even enough brass left on the field at Little Bighorn for the National Park Service to have some in its “Objects from the Battle” gallery (see above left). There must have some sort of commemoration for the 50th anniversary of Custer’s last battle – The Library of Congress has a tiny image of about nine Sioux veterans on the battlefield in 1926.
There’s quite a bit of information out there about the Pennsylvania 71th; it even has its own Reenactment Unit.

According to the Wikipedia link up top, the GAR “was dissolved in 1956 at the death of its last member, Albert Woolson (1850–1956) of Duluth, Minnesota.” Other organizations serve more modern veterans. The American Legion is commemorating it centenary. According to its site, “The American Legion was chartered and incorporated by Congress in 1919 as a patriotic veterans organization devoted to mutual helpfulness.”

Actually, a real Quaker gun is a fake cannon.

From the Library of Congress: the September 21, 1919 issue of The New York Times; Carol M. Highsmith’s photograph of the 71st monument at Gettysburg, you can see and learn more at Stone Sentinels; “Capt. Sanderson’s camp at the ford, while gathering the bones and building the monument”; Angle handshake. Hal Jespersen’s map of Pickett’s Charge is licensed by Creative Commons: Map by Hal Jespersen, www.posix.com/CW. What’s left of the 71st’s regimental flag comes from Wikimedia Commons, as does the bone pile: “Scene of Gen. Custer’s last stand, looking in the direction of the ford and the Indian village.” A pile of bones–including the skeletons of cavalry horses–on the Little Big Horn battlefield–was all that remained, ca. 1877. From the National Archives.

October 4, 2019: I added the sheet music, which I found at the Library. The only exact Google return for “Legion Allied Veterans of the Great War” seems only to be this sheet music.

1913

Posted in 100 Years Ago, Veterans | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

stars and stripes and kisses

Posted on September 20, 2019 by SUMPTER

After the jubilation of Armistice Day and the haggling over the peace treaty, domestic contention seems to have gained more prominence during the summer of 1919. Although New York City celebrated the return of several military units from Europe, there were many headlines in The New York Times about race riots and work stoppages. In September, while President Woodrow Wilson was barnstorming the nation trying to drum up support for the peace treaty and the League of Nations, General John Pershing, commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Force, returned to America after almost two and a half years in Europe. The parade in Manhattan featured at least one horse-stopping moment when the general dismounted to kiss a pretty young woman bearing roses. During ceremonies at Central Park General Pershing kissed the Stars and Stripes. On the way to Washington, D.C. he stopped in Philadelphia and saluted the Liberty Bell. In the nation’s capital he addressed Congress and led the First Division down Pennsylvania Avenue in “the last great American parade of the World War.”

home of the brave fellows

flower power

American Beauties

flag kissin’

sacred salute

at the joint session

Penn Ave from airplane

further review with Asst. Sec. FD Roosevelt

___________________

Before he left France General Pershing paid his respects at Quentin Roosevelt’s grave

closing scenes over there

While General Pershing was deployed at Fort Bliss, his wife and three daughters died in a fire at the Presidio in San Francisco in August 1915. Only his son Francis Warren survived. “Colonel Francis Warren Pershing (1909–1980), John J. Pershing’s son, served in the Second World War as an advisor to the Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall.”
I had heard that Grantland Rice was a famous sportswriter; I didn’t know that he seems to have dabbled a bit in political satire. The Trib seems to have started using his work in its picture paper in late summer 1919. The “primate of Belgium”, Désiré-Joseph Mercier, had to have his picture in the papers almost as much as General Pershing at about the same time. He “is noted for his staunch resistance to the German occupation of 1914–1918 during the Great War” and also visited the Liberty Bell during his tour of the States. Reportedly many soldiers found Kitty Dalton attractive. The Leviathan was originally the German Vaterland. The United States seized her after it entered World War I. The ship transported over 119,000 troops to Europe before the Armistice and after that obviously returned a lot of “Sammies” back over here.
Somehow I doubt Nike is planning a 48-star U.S. flag retrospective any time soon.

The general’s ride back to the States

with “His Father’s Commission as General”

the wounded watched

All the newspaper clippings come from the Library of Congress: New York Tribune: September 14, 1919, September 28, 1919; The New York Times: September 14, 1919, September 21, 1919, September 28, 1919. Also at the Library – the flag sheet music cover. The portrait of the general as a young boy was published in 1919’s The Story of General Pershing by Everett T. Tomlinson the book’s available at Project Gutenberg. I added the information about Cardinal Mercier on September 23, 2019.

hat trick

presidential frustrations

the street of San Francisco

and kissin’ pretty girls isn’t bad either

beloved banner

Posted in 100 Years Ago, Veterans, World War I | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment