Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 103

Don't Know Much About® America's First Presidential Election

Back in 1789, America hadn't quite figured out the hang of the presidential election just yet. This new ABCNews.com video explains.

"Nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

Benjamin Franklin said that when the Constitution was written back in 1787. But Franklin knew one other sure thing: the first man to become America's president under the new Constitution was going to be George Washington.

Washington had presided over the Constitutional debates in Philadelphia in that steamy summer of 1787, rarely speaking to the issues. But as his fellow patriots worked in secret, inventing the American presidency, everyone in the room knew that when the time came, Washington was going to be First.

Hero of the American Revolution as commander of the Continental army, Washington was a born leader and the country's most famous and admired man.

Modern American elections and who gets to vote are all settled matters today. But with the ink barely dry. the ratified Constitution said "Electors" would cast the votes. But who the electors were and how they were chosen was one big improvisation.

For starters, the election took place in 1789—the only Presidential election year to end in an odd number. There were no political parties. Or caucuses, primaries or conventions.

There was no campaign and no "ticket." All of that would come later, as America took its first baby steps towards democracy. And there was no single election day. All of those details were left to the individual states, with an official deadline of January 7, 1789 for returning the results.

More curious still, our first national election involved only ten of the thirteen states: Rhode Island and North Carolina had not yet ratified the Constitution and couldn't vote. And New York's legislature couldn't decide on how to appoint its allotment of Electors and missed the deadline.

The method of choosing those Electors who actually voted for the President was also left to the states. Six states used a popular vote, with the states deciding which citizens could actually cast a vote –in New Jersey, some women voted– though that didn't last long. Four states chose their Electors in the state legislature. In the end, only about 1% of the population of about four million actually got to vote for President in 1789.

We know how it turned out. When the electoral votes were tallied, the decision was unanimous. George Washington was president. In second place was John Adams and under the original rules for selecting the presidency, he became the first vice president.

On April 14, 1789, Washington was formally notified of his election. Two days later, he left for New York City, then the nation's temporary capital.

©2012 Kenneth C. Davis

Don’t Know Much About® America’s First Presidential Election

Back in 1789, America hadn’t quite figured out the hang of the presidential election just yet. This new ABCNews.com video explains.

“Nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Benjamin Franklin said that when the Constitution was written back in 1787. But Franklin knew one other sure thing: the first man to become America’s president under the new Constitution was going to be George Washington.

Washington had presided over the Constitutional debates in Philadelphia in that steamy summer of 1787, rarely speaking to the issues. But as his fellow patriots worked in secret, inventing the American presidency, everyone in the room knew that when the time came, Washington was going to be First.

Hero of the American Revolution as commander of the Continental army, Washington was a born leader and the country’s most famous and admired man.

Modern American elections and who gets to vote are all settled matters today. But with the ink barely dry. the ratified Constitution said “Electors” would cast the votes. But who the electors were and how they were chosen was one big improvisation.

For starters, the election took place in 1789—the only Presidential election year to end in an odd number. There were no political parties. Or caucuses, primaries or conventions.

There was no campaign and no “ticket.” All of that would come later, as America took its first baby steps towards democracy. And there was no single election day. All of those details were left to the individual states, with an official deadline of January 7, 1789 for returning the results.

More curious still, our first national election involved only ten of the thirteen states: Rhode Island and North Carolina had not yet ratified the Constitution and couldn’t vote. And New York’s legislature couldn’t decide on how to appoint its allotment of Electors and missed the deadline.

The method of choosing those Electors who actually voted for the President was also left to the states. Six states used a popular vote, with the states deciding which citizens could actually cast a vote –in New Jersey, some women voted– though that didn’t last long. Four states chose their Electors in the state legislature. In the end, only about 1% of the population of about four million actually got to vote for President in 1789.

We know how it turned out. When the electoral votes were tallied, the decision was unanimous. George Washington was president. In second place was John Adams and under the original rules for selecting the presidency, he became the first vice president.

On April 14, 1789, Washington was formally notified of his election. Two days later, he left for New York City, then the nation’s temporary capital.

©2012 Kenneth C. Davis

Don't Know Much About® the Tulsa "Race Riots"

This report about last week's fatal shootings in Tulsa, Oklahoma and subsequent arrests included a reference to one of the most deadly race riots in American history. But many Americans have probably not heard of the wave of violence that left as many as three hundred of Tulsa's African Americans dead and thousands more homeless. This episode falls into the category of "America's Hidden History." And in this case, the concealment of the facts was very deliberate.

In the early 1920s, Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a boisterous postwar boom town, getting rich quick on oil that had recently been discovered there. It was a place where the postwar Ku Klux Klan recruiters found fertile grounds. The isolationist mood, or the America First movement also called "Nativism," was also flourishing. In the popular mood of the country, America was white and Christian, and it was going to stay that way. In 1921, when a black shoe shiner was arrested for assaulting a white girl in an elevator, the publisher of the local paper—eager to win a local circulation war—published a front-page headline screaming, "To Lynch Negro Tonight."

It was a familiar story in that era—a black man accused of sexually assaulting a white woman. Soon after the paper hit the streets on June 1, 1921, whites began to gather outside the

courthouse where the accused shoe shiner, Dick Rowland, was being held. (Rowland was eventually released when the woman did not press charges.) Blacks from the Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood, some of them recently discharged war veterans, also began to descend on the courthouse to protect Rowland from being lynched. Shots were fired and soon the wholesale destruction of an entire community began in hellish force. A mob of more than 10,000 whites, fully backed by the white police force, went wild. It was called a riot but in modern parlance there is a better term—"ethnic cleansing."

As historian Tim Madigan put it in his book on Tulsa, The Burning,

"It soon became evident that whites would settle for nothing less than scorched earth. They would not be satisfied to kill negroes, or to arrest them. They would also try to destroy every vestige of black prosperity."

When it was over, there were many dead blacks, some of them dumped into mass graves, and their neighborhood was in cinders, with more than 1,200 homes burned. Insurance companies later refused to pay fire claims, invoking a riot exemption.

To add to the crime, the story disappeared from local history. Even local newspaper files were eventually cleaned out to remove evidence of the incident. For decades, the riot and killings were hushed up, kept alive only by oral traditions of a few survivors. Only after nearly eighty years of silence did Tulsa and the Oklahoma legislature come to grips with the past. Historians looking into the city's deadly riot believe that close to 300 people died during the violence. In 2000, the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, a panel investigating the incident, recommended reparations be paid to the survivors of what is still considered one of the nation's most deadly race riots.

A report on the riots and the Tulsa Race Riot Commission report on reparations can be found at the Oklahoma Historical Society.

This post was adapted from Don't Know Much About® History

Don't Know Much About@ History (2011 Revised and Updated Edition)

Don’t Know Much About® the Tulsa “Race Riots”

This report about last week’s fatal shootings in Tulsa, Oklahoma and subsequent arrests included a reference to one of the most deadly race riots in American history. But many Americans have probably not heard of the wave of violence that left as many as three hundred of Tulsa’s African Americans dead and thousands more homeless. This episode falls into the category of “America’s Hidden History.” And in this case, the concealment of the facts was very deliberate.

In the early 1920s, Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a boisterous postwar boom town, getting rich quick on oil that had recently been discovered there. It was a place where the postwar Ku Klux Klan recruiters found fertile grounds. The isolationist mood, or the America First movement also called “Nativism,” was also flourishing. In the popular mood of the country, America was white and Christian, and it was going to stay that way. In 1921, when a black shoe shiner was arrested for assaulting a white girl in an elevator, the publisher of the local paper—eager to win a local circulation war—published a front-page headline screaming, “To Lynch Negro Tonight.”

It was a familiar story in that era—a black man accused of sexually assaulting a white woman. Soon after the paper hit the streets on June 1, 1921, whites began to gather outside the

courthouse where the accused shoe shiner, Dick Rowland, was being held. (Rowland was eventually released when the woman did not press charges.) Blacks from the Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood, some of them recently discharged war veterans, also began to descend on the courthouse to protect Rowland from being lynched. Shots were fired and soon the wholesale destruction of an entire community began in hellish force. A mob of more than 10,000 whites, fully backed by the white police force, went wild. It was called a riot but in modern parlance there is a better term—“ethnic cleansing.”

As historian Tim Madigan put it in his book on Tulsa, The Burning,

“It soon became evident that whites would settle for nothing less than scorched earth. They would not be satisfied to kill negroes, or to arrest them. They would also try to destroy every vestige of black prosperity.”

When it was over, there were many dead blacks, some of them dumped into mass graves, and their neighborhood was in cinders, with more than 1,200 homes burned. Insurance companies later refused to pay fire claims, invoking a riot exemption.

To add to the crime, the story disappeared from local history. Even local newspaper files were eventually cleaned out to remove evidence of the incident. For decades, the riot and killings were hushed up, kept alive only by oral traditions of a few survivors. Only after nearly eighty years of silence did Tulsa and the Oklahoma legislature come to grips with the past. Historians looking into the city’s deadly riot believe that close to 300 people died during the violence. In 2000, the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, a panel investigating the incident, recommended reparations be paid to the survivors of what is still considered one of the nation’s most deadly race riots.

A report on the riots and the Tulsa Race Riot Commission report on reparations can be found at the Oklahoma Historical Society.

This post was adapted from Don’t Know Much About® History

Don't Know Much About@ History (2011 Revised and Updated Edition)

Don't Know Much About® America's Most Important Book?

On March 20, 1852, the completed version of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly was published in book form. It had begun to appear in serialized form in June 1851 in the abolitionist weekly The National Era.

Since its first appearance in serial form and as a book 160 years ago, Stowe's novel –and its author– have been celebrated, criticized, lauded and vilified. When Lincoln met the diminutive Stowe at the White House after the Civil War began, he supposedly told her, "So you're the little lady who made this great war."

Whether Lincoln said it or not, there is no question that the book helped galvanize public opposition to slavery in America and deepened the growing split that led to the Civil War. It may not be America's greatest book. But few books have been as important in changing the course of America's history.

Stowe began writing the book in reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act, one of a group of laws enacted together and known as the Compromise of 1850. The law, which made the return of runaways a matter of federal policy and gave free rein to slave catchers to arbitrarily arrest any black person as a potential fugitive, stoked the fires of the Abolitionist movement in America.

What Harriet Beecher Stowe did with her book was put a human face on an issue that had been dominated by political catchwords and euphemisms like "servitude" and "states' rights." For the first time, she made Americans care about slaves as people with hopes, dreams, loves and loyalty.

Here are some resources for exploring Stowe, the book and its remarkable impact on American history.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford. Connecticut.

The Josiah Henson Historic site, home of the former slave and Underground Railroad organizer whose memoir Stowe credited as the source for the character of Uncle Tom, the hero of the novel.

Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, a multimedia archive at the University of Virginia on the publication history of the book.

You can also read more about Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin and the approach of the Civil War in Don't Know Much About® the Civil War

The paperback edition had been released with a new cover to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil war.

Don’t Know Much About® America’s Most Important Book?

On March 20, 1852, the completed version of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly was published in book form. It had begun to appear in serialized form in June 1851 in the abolitionist weekly The National Era.

Since its first appearance in serial form and as a book 160 years ago, Stowe’s novel –and its author– have been celebrated, criticized, lauded and vilified. When Lincoln met the diminutive Stowe at the White House after the Civil War began, he supposedly told her, “So you’re the little lady who made this great war.”

Whether Lincoln said it or not, there is no question that the book helped galvanize public opposition to slavery in America and deepened the growing split that led to the Civil War. It may not be America’s greatest book. But few books have been as important in changing the course of America’s history.

Stowe began writing the book in reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act, one of a group of laws enacted together and known as the Compromise of 1850. The law, which made the return of runaways a matter of federal policy and gave free rein to slave catchers to arbitrarily arrest any black person as a potential fugitive, stoked the fires of the Abolitionist movement in America.

What Harriet Beecher Stowe did with her book was put a human face on an issue that had been dominated by political catchwords and euphemisms like “servitude” and “states’ rights.” For the first time, she made Americans care about slaves as people with hopes, dreams, loves and loyalty.

Here are some resources for exploring Stowe, the book and its remarkable impact on American history.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford. Connecticut.

The Josiah Henson Historic site, home of the former slave and Underground Railroad organizer whose memoir Stowe credited as the source for the character of Uncle Tom, the hero of the novel.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, a multimedia archive at the University of Virginia on the publication history of the book.

You can also read more about Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the approach of the Civil War in Don’t Know Much About® the Civil War

The paperback edition had been released with a new cover to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil war.

When Irish Eyes Were Not Smiling-The Bible Riots

It is the day for the "wearing of the green," parades and an unfortunate connection between being Irish and imbibing. For the day, everybody feels "a little Irish." But it was not always a happy go lucky virtue to be Irish in America. Once upon a time, the Irish –and specifically Irish Catholics– were considered the dregs by "Native" Americans who leveled at Irish immigrants all of the insults and charges typical of every hated immigrant group: they were lazy, uneducated, dirty, disease-ridden, stealing jobs from Americans and dangerous.

One chapter in America's Hidden History left out of most textbooks, was the violently anti-Catholic "Bible Riots" of 1844.

In May 1844, Philadelphia –the City of Brotherly Love– was torn apart by a series of bloody riots. Known as the "Bible Riots," they grew out of the vicious anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment that was so widespread in 19th century America. Families were burned out of their homes. Churches were destroyed. And more than two dozen people died in one of the worst urban riots in American History.

The story of the "Bible Riots" is another untold tale that I explore in my book A NATION RISING

 

Andrew Jackson and an "American Braveheart" (A Don't Know Much About® Minute)

We don't celebrate Andrew Jackson's birthday today on March 15. But the ATMs we use spit out a lot of $20 bills with his portrait.

The question really is, does Andrew Jackson deserve his place on the twenty? Jackson was the dominant political force in American in the early 19th century. But he was also an unapologetic slaveholder and ruthless in his treatment of the Native American nations– both as a soldier and as president. Just ask William Weatherford.

Do you 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.

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

Andrew Jackson and an “American Braveheart” (A Don’t Know Much About® Minute)

We don’t celebrate Andrew Jackson’s birthday today on March 15. But the ATMs we use spit out a lot of $20 bills with his portrait.

The question really is, does Andrew Jackson deserve his place on the twenty? Jackson was the dominant political force in American in the early 19th century. But he was also an unapologetic slaveholder and ruthless in his treatment of the Native American nations– both as a soldier and as president. Just ask William Weatherford.

Do you 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.

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

Touch of Frost: A Videoblog

On March 7, 1923, Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" was published.

It is probably the first Frost poem you ever hear. But it shouldn't be the last.

When winter comes to New England, it is easy to bring to mind the name of Robert Frost. There is no more iconic winter New England poem that the one that begins,

Whose woods these are, I think I know.

And one of my favorite spots in Vermont is the Frost gravesite in the cemetery of the First Church in Old Bennington -just down the street from the Bennington Monument.

Apples, birches, hayfields and stone walls; simple features like these make up the landscape of four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost's poetry. Known as a poet of New England, Frost (1874-1963) spent much of his life working and wandering the woods and farmland of Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. As a young man, he dropped out of Dartmouth and then Harvard, then drifted from job to job: teacher, newspaper editor, cobbler. His poetry career took off during a three-year trip to England with his wife Elinor where Ezra Pound aided the young poet. Frost's language is plain and straightforward, his lines inspired by the laconic speech of his Yankee neighbors.

But while poems like "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" are accessible enough to make Frost a grammar-school favorite, his poetry is contemplative and sometimes dark—concerned with themes like growing old and facing death. Robert Frost –New England's poet of snowy woods, stone wall and apple trees.

I hope this "touch of Frost" will inspire you to read some of his work.

Here's a link to Robert Frost's page at Poets.org

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192

It includes an account of Frost and JFK

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20540

The first poet invited to speak at a Presidential inaugural, Frost told the new President:

"Be more Irish than Harvard. Poetry and power is the formula for another Augustan Age. Don't be afraid of power."

 

Hear Robert Frost for yourself at Poets Out Loud:

http://robertfrostoutloud.com

This link is to Middlebury College's online Frost exhibit

http://midddigital.middlebury.edu/local_files/robert_frost/index.html

This is the website of Frost House and Museum in Franconia, N.H. http://www.frostplace.org/html/museum.html

Robert Frost died on January 29, 1963. He had written his own epitaph, "I had a lover's quarrel with the world," etched on his headstone in a church cemetery in Bennington, VT.

Here is the NYTimes obituary published after his death.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0129.html#article

This material is adapted from Don't Know Much About Literature written in collaboration with Jenny Davis.