Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 101
August 1, 2012
Don’t Know Much About Melville
Born August 1, 1819 in New York City, Herman Melville.
In New York’s West Village, where I live, the streets are filled with literary “ghosts” –reminders of the great writers who lived and worked in this historic district of New York. Every day that I walk around the neighborhood, is like getting a literary education. It’s one of reasons I love to live here.
Nearby is Grove Street, which is where Tom Paine once lived. They say the locals called it “Raisin Street” back then because Paine had recently written the Age of Reason –its French raison sounded like “raisin.”
And around the corner from Grove is winding, narrow Commerce Street and the Cherry Lane Theater, where Waiting for Godot had its premiere.
But one of my favorites is Herman Melville, who worked in the Customs House on Gansevoort Street –in what is now the white hot center of the “Meatpacking District.”
Melville’s early success did not last and he took the Customs House job to make a living. He died on September 28, 1891, in New York City. His unpublished work, the novella Billy Budd was discovered after his death and published in 1924, 33 years after his death.
Find out more about Melville at his home in the Berkshires, Arrowhead and the Melville Society
July 26, 2012
Truman Ends Discrimination in the Military
On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman issued an Executive Order that ended official discrimination in the United States military.
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After Truman’s order. the U.S. military was desegregated and integrated units fought in Korea. (Photo: U.S. Army-November 1950)
It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale.
Coming in an election year, it was a daring move by Truman, who still needed the support of southern segregationists. It was also a controversial decision that led to the forced retirement of the Secretary of the Army when he refused to desegregate the Army.
As historical documents and pronouncements go, “Executive Order 9981″ doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Emancipation Proclamation” or “New Deal.” But when President Harry S. Truman issued this Executive Order, he helped transform the country. This order began the gradual official process of desegregating America’s armed forces, which was a groundbreaking step for the American civil rights movement. (It is worth noting that many of the arguments made at the time against integration of the armed services –unit cohesion, morale of the troops, discipline in the ranks– were also made about the question of homosexuals serving in the military, a policy effectively ended when “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was overturned in 2011.)
In a Defense Department history of the integration of the Armed Forces, Brigadier General James Collins Jr. wrote in 1980:
The integration of the armed forces was a momentous event in our military and national history…. The experiences in World War II and the postwar pressures generated by the civil rights movement compelled all the services –Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps — to reexamine their traditional practices of segregation. While there were differences in the ways that the services moved toward integration, all were subject to the same demands, fears, and prejudices and had the same need to use their resources in a more rational and economical way. All of them reached the same conclusion: traditional attitudes toward minorities must give way to democratic concepts of civil rights.
Here is the text of the Executive Order 9981 (dated July 26, 1948)
A Chronology of events leading to the Order and more information can be found at the the Truman Library.
You can learn more about Truman in my forthcoming book Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents
Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents
(Hyperion Books/September 18)
July 16, 2012
War Within a War (A Don’t Know Much About® Minute)
As the nation marks the 200th anniversary of the beginning of the War of 1812, many Americans remain puzzled over what that war was about. Fought between the United States and Great Britain, it was a conflict over the British policy of forcibly taking American sailors off of American ships and “pressing” them into service in the Royal Navy, border issues, the future of American territory in the West and a number of other minor issues. They were all issues that could have and should have been settled without bloodshed. The War of 1812 was, in other words, avoidable and unnecessary.
But one of the other issues that inflamed Americans was England’s support for native nations that were still attempting to stop the westward expansion of American settlers. This was the hidden “war within a war” fought as part of the larger War of 1812. One of the most devastating of these conflicts was the Creek War fought largely in what is now Alabama. That war began in August 1813, when a group of Creek Indians, led by a half-Creek, half-Scot warrior named William Weatherford, or Red Eagle, attacked an outpost known as Fort Mims north of Mobile, Alabama. The attack turned into the most deadly frontier massacre in American history.
And it was an event that shocked the nation. Soon, Red Eagle and his Creek warriors were at war with Andrew Jackson, the Nashville lawyer turned politician, who had no love for the British or Native Americans. You know the name of Andrew Jackson, the future hero of the Battle of New Orleans and future 7th president of the United States., But you don’t know the name William Weatherford. You should. He was a charismatic leader of his people who wanted freedom and to protect his land. Just like “Braveheart,” or William Wallace of Mel Gibson fame.
Only William Weatherford, also known as Red Eagle, wasn’t fighting a cruel King. He was at war with the United States government. And Andrew Jackson.
This video offers a quick overview of Weatherford’s war with Jackson that ultimately led the demise of the Creek nation. You can read more about William Weatherford, Andrew Jackson, and Jackson’s role in American history in A NATION RISING
PBS also offers a good look at the different sides of Andrew Jackson
July 12, 2012
Don’t Know Much About® Thoreau
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Born in Concord, Mass. on July 12, 1817, Henry David Thoreau was the son of a pencil-maker. Thoreau attended Harvard and later was befriended by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who eventually gave him a job as a gardener and tutor, while encouraging Thoreau’s writing.
Then, in July 1845, he moved to the cabin at Walden Pond, where he lived for the next two years, two months and two days. The Walden site of Thoreau’s cabin.
Compressing those two years into a single year, he wrote Walden, his now-revered account.
It is not an “easy” book. It is not a simplistic “back to Nature” book. Even though Thoreau’s work has often been reduced to bumper sticker aphorisms –“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”–the book is far more complex. Part memoir, part practical guide, it is really more about a sense of self-discovery –a spiritual search. Writing in a time of growing industrialism and mechanism, he did urge, “Simplify, simplify.”
In an Introduction to a 2004 edition of Walden, the late novelist John Updike wrote:
A century and a half after its publication, Walden has become such a totem of the back-to-nature, preservationist, anti-business, civil-disobedience mindset, and Thoreau so vivid a protester, so perfect a crank and hermit saint, that the book risks being as revered and unread as the Bible. Of the American classics densely arisen in the middle of the 19th century – Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter (1850), Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851), Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855), to which we might add Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1854) as a nation-stirring bestseller and Emerson’s essays as an indispensable preparation of the ground – Walden has contributed most to America’s present sense of itself.
Thoreau eventually published several books and essays, including his classic “Civil Disobedience” in opposition to the war against Mexico.
From “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau (1849):
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority?Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? . . . Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?
An ardent abolitionist, Thoreau gave a speech, “A Plea for Captain Brown” (later published as an essay), in honor of John Brown, whose 1859 raid on a federal arsenal was intended to provoke a massive slave insurrection and deepened the nation’s divisions. Thoreau was uncompromising in his defense of Brown, despite his own image as the spokesman for nonviolent civil disobedience.
He contracted tuberculosis and suffered from it sporadically. Thoreau died in May 1862 at age 44.
An excellent collection of resources on Walden, Thoreau and his other writings can be found at the Thoreau Society website.
Thoreau and his era of the mid-19th century leading up to the Civil War are discussed in Don’t Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition.
July 4, 2012
The Don’t Know Much About® Online Video Series With ABC News
The latest video from ABC News celebrates the Fourth of July:
In partnership with ABC News, I have begun a new series of videos that will explain presidential history and explore the presidents as well as have some fiun with other aspects of America’s Hidden History.
The first in this series explains the Electoral College.
“The Electoral College Explained”
The second video looks at the curious first presidential election… Who did elect George Washington?
“America’s Funky First Election”
The third installment asks: Why do we have political parties if the founders didn’t like them?
“Party Poopers: The Founders Didn’t Like Political Parties”
June 29, 2012
Don’t Know Much About® the Declaration
We hold these truths to be self evident
In the run-up to the nation’s birthday, here are some things you “need to know” about the Declaration of Independence.
-It’s not a “piece of paper.” The original version of the Declaration was “engrossed” (a word for preparing an official document in a large, clear hand) on parchment (which is an animal skin, stretched and treated to preserve it). The Declaration was probably “engrossed” by Timothy Matlack, an assistant to Charles Thompson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress.
–”Inalienable” or “unalienable“?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Jefferson’s drafts shows he wrote “inalienable.”
The parchment and printed versions use “unalienable.”
According to The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style from Houghton Mifflin:
The unalienable rights that are mentioned in the Declaration of Independence could just as well have been inalienable, which means the same thing. Inalienable or unalienable refers to that which cannot be given away or taken away.
–Why didn’t George Washington sign? Washington was otherwise engaged. At the moment that the Congress voted on the Declaration, Washington was commanding his ragtag Continental Army in New York City, about 90 miles from Philadelphia. Washington had been appointed Commander of the Army in June 1775 and taken command in Boston. On July 9, 1776, he had the Declaration of Independence read aloud to his men. After hearing the Declaration read, a mob of enthusiastic New Yorkers tore down a statue of King George III in the Bowling Green and melted the lead for musket balls.
For Washington, the date of July 4 was bittersweet. In 1754, as the young and untested commander of a Virginia militia unit, he had been surrounded and forced to surrender by a French army in the Pennsylvania wilderness. Washington’s surrender came after his men and some Native American allies attacked and massacred a group of French soldiers on a diplomatic mission. Washington’s surrender included what was a “confession” of murdering a French diplomat and the incident helped sparked the Seven Years War (known in North America as the French and Indian War). This was the first and only time he surrendered in his military career. But the sting of that defeat must have made July 4th an unhappy anniversary for Washington for years to come.
--How many Declarations are there?
Jefferson’s draaft document, which was later lost, went to printer John Dunlap who prepared 26 (known) copies of the Declaration of Independence on the night of July 4th. Their present location –including two in England– and more information on the history of the Declaration and its travels over the centuries can be found at the National Archives.
Three years ago, I wrote about seeing a handwritten copy of Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration made a few days after the Declaration was adopted. You can read that post here.
Don’t Know Much About History (Anniversary Edition, paperback)
June 27, 2012
Don’t Know Much About® Helen Keller
Helen Keller, circa 1920
Photo: Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive (UCLA Library)
Born on June 27, 1880. Helen Keller.
You probably know the story of her childhood from The Miracle Worker. But her life was much more than that. And they certainly didn’t tell you that she was a Socialist. And a feminist. And a pacifist.
This is from a letter she wrote to Eugene V. Debs, labor leader and presidential candidate, while he was in jail for advocating draft resistance during World War I, and whom she addressed as “Dear Comrade” (March 11, 1919). {Excerpted in Don’t Know Much About History.}
I write because I want you to now that I should be proud if the Supreme Court convicted me of abhorring war, and doing all in my power to oppose it. When I think of the millions who have suffered in all the wicked wars of the past, I am shaken with the anguish of a great impatience. I want to fling myself against all brute powers that destroy the life, and break the spirit of man.
. . . We were driven onto war for liberty, democracy and humanity. Behold what is happening all over the world today! Oh where is the swift vengeance of Jehovah that it does not fall upon the hosts of those who are marshalling machine-guns against hungry-stricken peoples? It is the complacency of madness to call such acts “preserving law and order.” What oceans of blood and tears are shed in their name! I have come to loathe traditions and institutions that take away the rights of the poor and protect the wicked against judgment.
What most people know of Helen Keller (1880-1968) comes from the play and film The Miracle Worker which tells the remarkable story of the relationship between Helen Keller, who became blind and deaf at the age of two, and her teacher Anne Sullivan. That story stops with Keller’s triumph in learning to sign. With Sullivan as her companion, Keller went on to Radcliffe, then Harvard’s female counterpart, from which she graduated in 1904 with honors. Born into a conservative Alabama family, Keller eventually became both an outspoken feminist and pacifist. In 1909, she joined the Socialist Party and became friends with party leader Eugene V. Debs, who had been imprisoned for expressing his antiwar views at the time Keller’s letter was written.
Helen Keller died on June 1 1968 In Connecticut.
And here’s a quick quiz about Keller from Don’t Know Much About Anything:
She was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama on June 27, 1880. After an illness destroyed Helen Keller’s sight and hearing as an infant, she lived for the next five years as a kicking, screaming wild child. In 1887, Anne Sullivan (1866-1936), child of poor Irish immigrants and nearly blind herself, was hired to tutor the uncontrollable Helen. Through touch, Sullivan was able to reach Keller. Using a manual alphabet in which words were spelled out in her hand, Keller gradually learned to read and write Braille, eventually learned to speak and went on to college. As a writer and speaker, she crusaded to improve conditions for the blind and deaf-blind until her death in 1968. What do you know about this heroic conqueror of physical disabilities? Take this quick quiz.
1. What famous American inventor advised Helen’s father to seek help at Boston’s Perkins Institution for the Blind?
2. What college did Helen Keller attend ?
3. How did Helen Keller “listen” to people?
4. In the 1962 film of Helen’s story, The Miracle Worker, Helen was played by Patty Duke, who won an Oscar, and Anne Bancroft portrayed Anne Sullivan. Who played the Sullivan role in a 1979 television remake?
Answers
1. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, whose wife was also hearing impaired.
2. She went to Radcliffe in Cambridge, Mass., and graduated in 1904 with honors. Sullivan assisted her through her college years, interpreting lectures.
3. She “read” lips by touching the lips and throat of people as they spoke.
4. Patty Duke. The role of Helen was taken by Melissa Gilbert.
June 23, 2012
The Don’t Know Much About® Online Video Series With ABC News
In partnership with ABC News, I have begun a new series of videos that will explain presidential history and explore the presidents as well as have some fiun with other aspects of America’s Hidden History.
The first in this series explains the Electoral College.
“The Electoral College Explained”
The second video looks at the curious first presidential election… Who did elect George Washington?
“America’s Funky First Election”
The third installment asks: Why do we have political parties if the founders didn’t like them?
“Party Poopers: The Founders Didn’t Like Political Parties”
June 18, 2012
Don’t Know Much About® Juneteenth
A Senator from Texas wants to create a new national holiday out of an old tradition: celebrating Emancipation on a day called Juneteenth.
It is a holiday still unfamiliar to many Americans. I explain its roots here:
“America’s birthday is fast approaching. But let’s not wait for July 4th to light the fireworks. There is another Independence Day on the horizon.
Juneteenth falls on June 19 each year. It is a holiday whose history was hidden for much of the last century. But as the nation now observes the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s onset, it is a holiday worth recognizing.”
June 13, 2012
Flag Day and Mr. Madison’s War
America is preparing to mark the 200th anniversary of one of the most unnecessary and avoidable wars in its history– the War of 1812, or “Mr. Madison’s War, declared by Congress on June 18, 1812.
It is also appropriate to note that today – June 14– is Flag Day, the day that the Continental Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the nation’s flag in 1777. These two landmarks come together because it was during the War of 1812 that American got the words that eventually became its national anthem –with music borrowed from an old English drinking song. Almost from the outset, the song has been butchered at baseball games and Super Bowls.
It was September 13, 1814. America was at war with England for the second time since 1776. Francis Scott Key was an attorney attempting to negotiate the return of a civilian prisoner held by the British who had just burned Washington DC and had set their sights on Baltimore. As the British attacked the city, Key watched the naval bombardment from a ship in Baltimore’s harbor. In the morning, he could see that the Stars and Stripes still flew over Fort McHenry. Inspired, he wrote the lyrics that we all know –well, at least some of you probably know some of them.
But here’s what they didn’t tell you:
Yes, Washington, D.C. was burned by the British in 1814, including the President’s Mansion which would later get a fresh coat of paint and come to be called the “White House.” But Washington was torched in retaliation for the burning of York –now Toronto—in Canada earlier in the war.
Yes, Key wrote words. But the music comes from an old English drinking song. Good thing it wasn’t 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. Here’s a link to the original lyrics of the drinking song To Anacreon in Heaven (via Poem of the Week).
The Star Spangled Banner did not become the national anthem until 1916 when President Wilson declared it by Executive Order. But that didn’t really count. In 1931, it became the National Anthem by Congressional resolution signed by President Herbert Hoover.,
Now here are two other key –no pun intended– events related to Flag Day, June 14:
•In 1943, the Supreme Court ruled that schoolchildren could not be compelled to salute the flag if it conflicted with their religious beliefs
•In 1954 on Flag Day, President Eisenhower signed the law that added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.
Learn more about Fort McHenry, Key and the Flag that inspired the National Anthem from the National Park Service.
The images and music in this video are courtesy of the Smithsonian Museum of American History which has excellent resources on the flag that inspired Key.
This version of the anthem is on 19th century instruments:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/mp3/song.ssb.dsl.mp3
