Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 7

July 31, 2025: Echoes of Bad Presidents: Andrew Johnson

[On July31, 1875, Andrew Johnson died. Johnson is one of our worst presidents,which means he also remindsme a lot of our current and very worst one. So this week I’ll AmericanStudyechoes of some of our worst presidents in Trump 2.0!]

On how ourworst prior president both does and doesn’t echo our very worst one.

In this August2018 Saturday Evening Post Considering History column I made thecase for some of the many reasons to define Andrew Johnson as the worst presidentin American history. Once again I’d ask you to check out that prior piece andthen come on back for further thoughts.

Welcomeback! As I hope every detail of that column made very clear (even if I didn’tsay it overtly, which is my Post editor’s preference and one I respect),impeachment proceedings are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to thelinks between Johnson’s historic awfulness and Trump’s strong competition withhim for the crown of worst president ever. Moreover, it’s my understanding thatTrump doesn’t drink, which makes his nonsensical rambling speeches even morestriking than those of the (apparently, at least occasionally) inebriatedJohnson. Also, Johnson’s finalpublic remarks (during his brief time as a Senator before hisdeath from a stroke 150 years ago today) were an extremist, whitesupremacist attack on his successor, President Ulysses S. Grant, and who amongus can imagine Trump going out any other way?

As thatSenate service indicates, Johnson didn’t go quietly into that good night whenhe lost his reelection bid to Grant in 1868. But he also didn’t run for presidentagain, limiting the catastrophic damage of his historically awful presidency toone term (and an abbreviated one at that, since he took office in April 1865when Lincoln was assassinated). I’ve writtenelsewhere in this space about what we lost when we were denied a secondLincoln term and got Andrew Johnson instead, so it’s only fair to note what we werespared when Grant helped his departed friend Abe out and made sure we only gotone Johnson term. Unfortunately, neither Joe Biden nor anyone else were able todo the same when it came to a second Trump term, and so here, 150 years afterthe death of our other worst president, we fucking are.

Lastbaddie tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

July 30, 2025: Echoes of Bad Presidents: William McKinley

[On July31, 1875, Andrew Johnson died. Johnson is one of our worst presidents,which means he also remindsme a lot of our current and very worst one. So this week I’ll AmericanStudyechoes of some of our worst presidents in Trump 2.0!]

On howtariffs reflect multiple layers of bad presidents, past and present.

Onceagain, I’ll ask you to start this post by checking out a prior one: this November2015 post on William McKinley’s badnesses. Take a look if you would, andthen come on back.

Welcomeback! As I traced in that post, much of the worst of McKinley’s presidency canbe connected to his full embrace of imperialism, whether in thePhilippines (and everywhere else the Spanish-AmericanWar was fought) or in Hawaii.Such global imperial goals were relatively new for the US in the era, at leastas official federal foreign policy, and it’s impossible to separate them fromanother central emphasis of McKinley’s administration: tariffs.McKinley had been a champion of that restrictive type of trade and economicmeasure since his authorship of the McKinleyTariff Act of 1890 while serving in the House of Representatives, and he broughtthat perspective with him to the White House in 1897, dubbinghimself “a tariff man, standing on a tariff platform.”  

As thatlast hyperlinked article notes, that phrase could easily have been uttered byour current president about his own, even more extreme reliance on tariffs herein the opening months of his second term (a perspective Trump overtly linked toMcKinley in his secondinaugural address). Which is particularly ironic and telling given that inthe past Trump has criticized imperialist ventures like the 2nd IraqWar and made the case for less U.S. involvement in the world beyond ourborders. This time around, from noises about annexing Canada and Greenland toplans to retake the Panama Canal, Trump has revealed himself to be afull-throated imperialist, and his extremist tariff policies have to beseen as part of that larger project, just as they were for William McKinley 125years ago. Shortly before his assassination, however, McKinley dramatically changedhis tune on tariffs. Hard to imagine this even worse president doing the same.

Nextbaddie tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

July 29, 2025: Echoes of Bad Presidents: James Buchanan

[On July31, 1875, Andrew Johnson died. Johnson is one of our worst presidents,which means he also remindsme a lot of our current and very worst one. So this week I’ll AmericanStudyechoes of some of our worst presidents in Trump 2.0!]

On onemore obvious and one more subtle echo of Buchanan in 2025.

I imagine eachfirst paragraph this week will be a request to check out a prior post, and that’strue today. Please take a look at this October2022 post on Buchanan’s badness if you would, and then come on back formore.

Welcomeback! I don’t actually believe (other than in my darkest, doomscrollingestmoments, anyway) that the U.S. is headed for a second Civil War here in 2025,but that’s not because we don’t have the kinds of violent conflicts and divisionsthat could produce (or, paceJeff Sharlet, are already producing) such an internal schism; I just don’tthink most of us have the stomach for actual warfare (a good thing, to beclear). And in any case, I do believe that in such periods of heightened andpotentially violent internal conflict our leaders can either work to unite usor lean way, way into the divisions; James Buchanan frustratingly andtragically chosethe latter, and from his extremist first term to his Big Lie electoral conspiraciesto every part of his unfolding, even more extremist second term, Trump has doneso even more fully and destructively still.

The comingCivil War wasn’t really the focus of that prior post of mine, though. Instead,I made the case there, as I did throughout my recent podcast (in the postI called it my next book, but it became the podcast instead), for resisting andchallenging narratives of historical inevitability, especially when it comes toour worst histories. I’ve seen a lot of responses to Trump 2.0 along the linesof “Stop saying ‘This isn’t who we are.’ This is who we’ve always been,” and Iunderstand and to a degree share that desire to push past naïve idealism andrecognize our foundational and enduring worst characteristics and histories. Butif we see our worst as simply inevitable, it becomes almost impossible to keepon, much less to find our way to any hope and optimism. There will always bepresidents who embody our worst, from James Buchanan to Donald Trump. Whichmakes it that much more important for all of us who believe in our best toresist seeing them and their ilk as inevitable.

Nextbaddie tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

July 28, 2025: Echoes of Bad Presidents: Andrew Jackson

[On July31, 1875, Andrew Johnson died. Johnson is one of our worst presidents,which means he also remindsme a lot of our current and very worst one. So this week I’ll AmericanStudyechoes of some of our worst presidents in Trump 2.0!]

On how Icompared Trump to Jackson in 2017, and how I’d extend the comparisons today.

First, I’llask you to check out thisMarch 2017 post on the comparison, and then come on back for my thoughtshere in July 2025.

Welcomeback! In that post I argued that one striking similarity between the two presidentsand men is “thin skins and violent tempers,” and for Trump 2.0 I would extendthat comparison in a particular and extremely consequential way: Jackson’ssuccessful 1828 presidential campaign was motivated (both for him and hisextremist supporters) by perceived grievancesabout the 1824 election; and of course Trump and MAGA’s BigLie about the 2020 presidential election played a significant role in the 2024one. These electoral grievances have only made even clearer the central rolethat self-fulfilling narratives of victimization play for both Trump and his extremistbase: from “DEI hires” to “trans athletes” to “invading” immigrants who areintended to “replace” white Americans, virtually every core MAGA belief isdriven by a sense that they are under threat, and that Trump is their championin those fights. I have to imagine that an infamousdueler like Jackson was perceived in similar ways by his supporters.

In thatprior post I also sought to distinguish Jackson from Trump based on the former’sat least somewhat more genuine emphasis on “the common man.” While I do believeJackson cared more about that community than does Trump (whose embrace of billionairesin this new administration only drives home whom he sees as his true base), I didn’tsay there nearly as clearly as I should have that Jackson meant only “thecommon white man.” From hisslaveowning and “Indiankiller” days to his defining IndianRemoval policy, Jackson was unquestionably white supremacist in both hispersonal and political actions, motivated by a vision of the United States as essentiallyand enduringly white in its identity and ideals. Perhaps the late 1820s was tooearly for a slogan like “Make America Great Again,” but I have no doubt Jacksonwould have signed onto that mythic patriotic project—and even less doubt that oneof the most central goals of Trump 2.0 is an extension of the Indian Removalproject to every non-white American.

Nextbaddie tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

July 26-27, 2025: A Tribute to the U.S. Postal Service

[On July 26,1775, the Second Continental Congress establishedthe United States postal system. So this week for the 250thanniversary I’ve AmericanStudied that moment and other histories and stories ofthe USPS, leading up to this weekend tribute to these vital federal workers!]

Back inMarch, around the90th anniversary of President Roosevelt’s Executive Ordercreating the Works Progress Administration (WPA), I focused a SaturdayEvening Post Considering History columnon the many federal workers whom that program created and supported, and mostespecially on their enduring legacies for all Americans. That momentrepresented one of the biggest amplifications of the federal workforce in ourhistory, while the U.S. Postal Service is very much the opposite: a communityof dedicated federal workers that has endured for 250 years, doing its work inevery moment, no matter what else has been unfolding (forget rain or hail orsnow, I’m talking depressionsand warsand naturaldisasters). And, even more impressively and importantly still, doing so forevery corner of this ginormous country, from the heart of our most crowdedcities to the quietest roads in our most rural spaces. Hell, for a long time Alaskanmail carriers used sled dogs to deliver the mail! The recent spate ofattacks on federal workers, led by the Trump administration and its DOGEextremists, has reflected just how fully and frustratingly we take thatcommunity of workers’ efforts and legacies for granted, and I don’t think that’sanywhere more obvious than with postal workers. May we better remember andappreciate this longstanding, enduring, and crucial community of workers!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Postal histories or stories you’d share?

July 25, 2025: The U.S. Postal System: Cultural Representations

[On July 26,1775, the Second Continental Congress establishedthe United States postal system. So this week for the 250thanniversary I’ll AmericanStudy that moment and other histories and stories ofthe USPS, leading up to a weekend tribute to these vital federal workers!]

Ontakeaways from four prominent cultural representations of the USPS (in additionto the obvious best one, the Snail in the Frog &Toad story "The Letter,” although he is more of a commissioned mailcarrier than a federal employee).

1)     “Please Mr. Postman” (1961):First of all, I’m obviously talking about The Marvelettes’s original; nooffense to The Carpenters, whose 1975 version is finetoo, but it would be mail fraud (and at least a little bit racist) not to go tothe source. Second, I really like how this song captures (as does the Frog& Toad story, come to think of it) one of the best parts of the USPS, apleasure that kids today might not know: the anxious excitement of waiting foran expected but uncertain (at least in timing, but possibly at all, as seems tobe the case with this song’s situation) mail delivery. I also like that the lastverse concludes with “deliver the letter, the sooner, the better,” a quotewhich also appears in…

2)     DearMr. Henshaw (1984): … Beverly Cleary’s Newbery Medal-winning YA novel.If anyone ever tries to argue that epistolarynovels are either a) from the distant literary past or b) generally notsuccessful, please point them to Henshaw, which uses letters as well asany literary text I’ve ever read. While in some definite ways Cleary’s youthfulprotagonist Leigh Botts is writing to and for himself (the famous author Mr.Henshaw to whom he is writing doesn’t write back more than a couple times, andthe structure evolves into a diary as the book goes along), Dear Mr. Henshawnonetheless reflects how the mail can connect us to other people and worlds inways that can be very helpful, if not indeed necessary, for navigating our own livesand stories.

3)     Newman from Seinfeld(1989-1998): As that particular hyperlinked clip illustrates succinctly, WayneKnight’s mailman neighbor and nemesis of Jerry Seinfeld’s character on theiconic sitcom was generally portrayed as an over-the-top villain, one for whom themail was (when it was mentioned at all) largely a mechanism for his sinisterplots. But I really enjoyed this moment, when Newmanwas given a bit more complex humanity through his righteous rant about why somany postal workers “go postal.” I have to think the writer of that particular speecheither had worked as a mail carrier (or other postal employee) or was close tosomeone who had, and in any case I love that the “showabout nothing” featured a moment that was so much about something real and important.

4)     Dear God (1996): Fulldisclosure: I haven’t seen this film, and based on the reviews I don’t imagineI ever will (my favorite line, from James Berardinelli:“At least after seeing this movie, I understand where the title came from—startingabout thirty minutes into this interminable, unfunny feature, I began lookingat my watch and thinking, ‘Dear God, is this ever going to end?’”). But I dobelieve its premise—Greg Kinnear’s convicted con artist Tom Turner works at thepost office’s dead letter office for his court-ordered community service and beginsresponding to letters sent to God—opens up two other layers of the USPS: thevery idea of “deadletters,” and specifically of what happens to all the mail sent to God andSanta and so on; and the question of whether and how the postal service canbecome part of our identities and communities far beyond mail delivery. More onthat in my special weekend post!

That tributepost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Postal histories or stories you’d share?

July 24, 2025: The U.S. Postal System: Mailed Threats

[On July 26,1775, the Second Continental Congress establishedthe United States postal system. So this week for the 250thanniversary I’ll AmericanStudy that moment and other histories and stories ofthe USPS, leading up to a weekend tribute to these vital federal workers!]

On onemoment when the mail was falsely perceived as threatening, other moments whenit genuinely was, and how we can put them in conversation.

I highlightedthe pernicious and profoundly un-American Espionage and Sedition Acts as partof thisJuly 2020 post, but didn’t specifically address there a main way that thosetotalitarian acts were enforced: through monitoring and censorship of the mail.In Chapter Five of mybook Of Thee I Sing I write about one such example from 1917: “The PostmasterGeneral refused to mail copies of The Jeffersonian, a newsletter publishedby the Southern populist and anti-war activist TomWatson; when Watson fought back in court a federal judge called thepublication and its pacifist sentiments ‘poison.’” Even if we agree with that assessmentof Watson’s particular political perspective and points—and obviously I verymuch do not agree—this action of the USPS would in any case, at least to mymind, represent a striking and significant overreach, the use of perceived,ideological “threats” to abdicate its core responsibility to deliver American mail.

I used scarequotes around “threats” deliberately there, not only because I don’t believe TheJeffersonian comprised a threat of any kind, but also and especially becausewe do have definitive, recent historical examples of the mail posing a threatto Americans: “Unabomber”Ted Kaczynski’s multi-decade domestic terrorist attacks largely conducted throughthe use of mailbombs; and the four anthrax-lacedletters that were sent (apparentlyby government scientist and embittered anthrax vaccine developer Dr. BruceIvins, although Ivins took his own life in 2008 before the investigation couldfully conclude) to journalists and government officials in October 2001. In theconcluding couplet of the beautiful song “You’re Missing” from hispost-9/11 album The Rising (2002) Bruce Springsteen expresses themindset of collective anxiety created by such threatening acts of postalterrorism quite succinctly and powerfully: “God’s drifting in heaven, devil’sin the mailbox/I got dust on my shoes, nothing but teardrops.”

The moststraightforward, and certainly the most accurate, way to put those twoparagraphs in conversation is to note that the existence of mail bombs and anthrax-lacedletters makes clear just how non-threatening a newsletter is in comparison (even,again, if said newsletter contained ideas that I disagreed with). Unless amailing’s content is far more blatantly and unquestionably illegal—child pornography,for example—it simply should not be the case that the USPS refuses to mailsomething on ideological grounds. But I would take the contrast a significantstep further—one of the best things about the USPS (as I’ll discuss more in myweekend tribute post) is the ways it can connect Americans across this incrediblylarge and disparate nation of ours; and yet of course, as with anything Americanincluding (if not especially) our best things, that element can also connect andall too often has been connected to our worst characteristics and impulses, ofwhich domestic terrorism is frustratingly exemplary. The best and worst of America,in our mail.

LastUSPStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Postal histories or stories you’d share?

July 23, 2025: The U.S. Postal System: Stamps

[On July 26,1775, the Second Continental Congress establishedthe United States postal system. So this week for the 250thanniversary I’ll AmericanStudy that moment and other histories and stories ofthe USPS, leading up to a weekend tribute to these vital federal workers!]

On sixtelling stamps that help trace the history of this essential postal element.

1)     Franklinand Washington (1847): Nearly 75 years after the founding of the USPS, thesystem began using federally-issuedpostage stamps (privately-produced stamps had been available for some time). Ashighlighted by Monday’s post, Ben Franklin makes a lot of sense for one ofthose first federal stamps; and George Washington, well, is George Washington.In any case, those were the first two, and we’ve been stuck with stamps eversince.

2)     Queen Isabella(1893): You could win a lot of trivia contests by betting your friends thatthey can’t guess the first woman to appear on a USPS stamp—and you could give themquite a few guesses at that. (One of their guesses might be Martha Washington,and she was indeed the first American woman to appear, in 1902.)Part of the iconic 1892-93 Columbian anniversary celebrations that also gave ustheChicago Exposition and the Pledgeof Allegiance, the Isabella stamp is quite the surprising pioneer.

3)     BookerT. Washington (1940): Washington was the first African American to dinepublicly at the White House, and it only took four more decades (that’s sarcasm,to be clear) for him to become the first African American to appear on a USPSstamp. (Indeed, only one other African American, George Washington Carver, gota stamp of his own foranother 25+ years.) With the nation just emerging from the GreatDepression, Washington is a particularly telling choice, one focused oneconomic and educational emphases rather than (for example) civil rights.

4)     Liberty Bell(2007): I could keep going with otherfirst figures, but I do think that the “Forever” stamp represented a particularlyimportantinnovation, if not indeed the most significant USPS change since the firststamps 160 years prior. And clearly many other folks agree, as the initial LibertyBell “Forever” stamp debuted on April 12, 2007 and by July of that year theUSPS had sold 1.2 billion (that’s not a typo, billion with a “b”) of them.

5)     Repealof the Stamp Act (2016): This one is a suggestion from my wife, and reallyjust a damn funny (in the ironic, wry smile way) fact: that for the 250thanniversary of the repealof the Stamp Act, the USPS issued, you guessed it, a stamp. What else do Ineed to say?

NextUSPStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Postal histories or stories you’d share?

July 22, 2025: The U.S. Postal System: The Pony Express

[On July 26,1775, the Second Continental Congress establishedthe United States postal system. So this week for the 250thanniversary I’ll AmericanStudy that moment and other histories and stories ofthe USPS, leading up to a weekend tribute to these vital federal workers!]

On threefigures who helped shape the short-lived but enduringly iconic Westernmail route.

1)     AlexanderMajors: The Pony Express was founded by a trio ofMissouri businessmen, co-owners of a freight and drayage company: WilliamRussell, Alexander Majors, and William Waddell. But it was Majors who broughthis distinct identity and perspective most fully to the enterprise: he wasdeeply religious, and required every Pony Express rider to carry a special-editionBible and signan oath “before the Great and Living God” that they would “under no circumstances,use profane language, … drink no intoxicating liquors,” and so on. Given the stereotypesof the Wild West and its occupants, images to which I would argue our cultural collectivememories of the Pony Express have oftenbeen connected, this founding fact reminds us that histories are alwaysdistinct from the mythos.

2)     JohnsonWilliam “Billy” Richardson: The identity of the first Pony Express rider isdisputed by historians, with Johnny Fry the othermost likely candidate. By even if he wasn’t the definitive “first,” BillyRichardson was unquestionably one of the handful of riders who inaugurated theWestbound route (from Missouri to California) in April1860, after a formal ceremony in St. Joseph, Missouri which featuredspeeches by Russell and Majors along with St. Joseph Mayor M. Jeff Thompson. Moreover,Richardson rode for the Express for its entire 18 months of operation, andthen, coincidentally but symbolically, passed away from pneumonia just a fewmonths after the Express went out of business in late 1861. He was buried atFort Laramie, a Pony Express station in Wyoming, one more telling connectionbetween this foundationalrider and the route’s iconography.

3)     WilliamF. Cody: That hyperlinked Wyoming History article traces two equally trueyet also directly contradictory facts: William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody iswithout question the most famous Pony Express rider; and yet Cody never rodefor the Pony Express. As with so much of Cody’smythos, and of course the Wild West mythos overall, this particular mythwas very much self-constructed, with Cody frequently telling and retelling thestory of an iconic Pony Express ride he undertook at the tender age of 14. Andthat story became an enduring one in the legacies of both Cody and the PonyExpress, as illustrated by author Elmer Sherwood’s1940 children’s biography BuffaloBill and the Pony Express. Perhaps including Cody in this post willmean that the fictitious association continues, but I don’t think we canAmericanStudy the Pony Express without including such defining and enduringmyths.

NextUSPStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Postal histories or stories you’d share?

July 21, 2025: The U.S. Postal System: Ben Franklin

[On July 26,1775, the Second Continental Congress establishedthe United States postal system. So this week for the 250thanniversary I’ll AmericanStudy that moment and other histories and stories ofthe USPS, leading up to a weekend tribute to these vital federal workers!]

On innovationsfrom three stages in the career of the firstPostmaster General of the US.

1)     Postmasterof Philadelphia: In 1737, when Franklin was only 30 years old, he wasappointed postmaster of his adopted home city of Philadelphia. In his Autobiographyhe freely admitted that he took the job largely to support his ownnewspaper, the Gazette, writing, “tho’ the salary was small, itfacilitated the correspondence that improv’d my newspaper, increased the numberdemanded, as well as the advertisements to be inserted, so that it came toafford me a considerable income.” But even if Franklin was mercenary about thisnew role, he was too much of an inventor not to innovate in it as well,and his most lasting such innovation was printing in the newspaper lists ofpeople who had letters waiting for them at the post office, a practice thatmany other papers would take up for decades to come.

2)     Joint Postmaster General for the Crown: Aftera decade and a half in this role, Franklin was apparently ready to move up, andwhen Postmaster General for the Crown ElliottBenger became ill in 1753, Franklin lobbied for the role. Eventually he andVirginia’s WilliamHunter were chosen as JointPostmasters for the Crown, a role that Franklin would hold for the next twodecades. He would bring a number of his Philly innovations to that nationalrole, including the aforementioned printed newspaper lists (which he instructedpostmasters around the country to do); but would also add new ones, such asimplementing nighttime service that led to far faster mail delivery. Ever thesuccessful businessman, Franklin had the British Crown Post registeringits first profit by 1760.  

3)     Postmaster General of the US: In 1774, the Britishgovernment dismissed Franklin from his role for being too sympathetic to the colonies;but as they so often did, things worked out fine for Ben, as just a year afterwardhe was partof the Second Continental Congress and, on July 26th, 1775, was appointedby that body to be the first Postmaster General of the newly created UnitedStates Postal Service. In that role, overseeingall post offices “from Falmouth in New England to Savannah in Georgia,” Franklintruly nationalized the postal service for the first time, building on theseprior experiences with both a city’s and a royal postal system but helpingcreate the federally organized institution that has endured to this day (andhopefully will continue, on which see the weekend post).

NextUSPStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Postal histories or stories you’d share?