Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 104

Don’t Know Much About® Memorial Day

(Images Courtesy of the Library of Congress and Flanders Cemetery image Courtesy of the American Battle Monuments Commission)

Every year at this time, I spend a lot of time talking about the roots and traditions of Memorial Day.

It’s not about the barbecue or the Mattress Sales. Obscured by the holiday atmosphere around Memorial Day is the fact that it is the most solemn day on the national calendar. This video tells a bit about the history behind the holiday.

One way to mark Memorial Day is by simply reading the Gettysburg Address. Here is a link to the Library of Congress and its page on the Address:

I also discussed Memorial Day in a previous post.

Have a memorable Memorial Day

Don’t Know Much About® Harry S. Truman

Born on May 8, 1884, Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president.

He was, as a New York Times obituary would put it: “a hitherto minor national figure with a pedestrian background as a Senator from Missouri.” But few presidents have changed history as Truman did.

He ordered the use of the atomic bomb. He desegregated America’s military forces. (Photo Source: White House Historical Association)

He oversaw a policy of “containment” of Communism. He recognized Israeli independence in spite of objections by advisers. He won one of the most extraordinary elections in modern presidential history. He led America into the Korean War and paid a steep political price.

And he had done it after taking on one of the most difficult tasks in history –replacing Franklin D. Roosevelt while the Second World War was still being fought on two fronts and the specter of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe was rising. He became president 82 days after becoming vice president.

Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don’t know whether you fellows had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.

—Harry. S Truman

Remarks to reporters, April 13, 1945

Born in Missouri on May 8, 1884, Truman grew up near Independence, outside Kansas City, the son of a mule trader. A lover of history as a boy, he dreamed of going to West Point, but his poor eyesight kept him out. He served in World War I as the commander of an artillery unit and returned to Missouri to eventually wind his way through state politics into the Senate where he was serving when he was tapped as FDR’s vice president in 1944.

Truman died on December 26, 1972. You can learn more about Truman’s life and presidency at the Truman Library and Museum

Truman’s controversial decision to use the atomic bomb to prevent massive casualties an invasion of the Japanese mainland would produce, and the anti-Communist Cold War era and McCarthyism are discussed in the newly revised and updated Don’t Know Much About History.

Don't Know Much About History (Revised, Expanded and Updated Edition)

An in-depth portrait of Truman’s personal life and presidency will be presented in greater depth in my forthcoming book, Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents: Everything You Need to Know About the Most Powerful Office on Earth and the Men Who Have Occupied It to be published on September 18, 2012 by Hyperion Books.

“By the Rude Bridge…”

“Listen my children, and you shall hear/of the midnight ride of . . . Joseph Warren?”

Okay, that doesn’t scan quite like Longfellow’s original “Paul Revere’s Ride.” But that’s the problem. In making sure we “hear” about “Revere,” Longfellow –an abolitionist who wrote that poem in 1861 as a call to rally the Union as the Civil War began– ignored the man whose name should be as familiar as those of John Adams or John Hancock. A man who deserves to be honored as we mark the first battles in America’s Revolution at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775

A successful physician and progressive thinker, Joseph Warren was born a farmer’s son in 1741 in Roxbury, outside Boston. Warren chose his profession when he saw his father die after a fall from a tree. Later, he became an outspoken advocate of inoculations to battle the plague of smallpox sweeping colonial America and vaccinated his most famous patient, John Adams.

But medicine was not his only passion. As the colonies began to clash with Mother England, Warren was drawn to the red-hot center of Boston’s patriot inner circle. He became a propagandist, spymaster and orator who modeled himself on Cicero, martyr of the Roman Republic, occasionally appearing in a toga to deliver incendiary speeches.

Most likely, it was Warren who led those men disguised as Indians to the “party” where they tossed a shipload of British tea into Boston Harbor. And he was the crucial go-between, linking Boston’s upper crust patriots –who got most of the glory– and the workingmen and artisans – like Paul Revere – who did most of the dirty work. But Warren was left out of our poems. And our schoolbooks. And that’s too bad, because his story is compelling.

It was Warren who issued Revere’s “riding orders” on that night in 1775, setting the stage for the fateful April 19th morning at Lexington and Concord. A few weeks later, Warren took to the front lines at the battle called “Bunker Hill.” An enemy ball caught him in the head and he fell.

For the British, Warren’s death was a coup, celebrated by tossing the rebel doctor’s body into a mass grave. But for the patriot cause, the loss of Warren cut deep. Abigail Adams mournfully wrote to husband John:

“Not all the havoc and devastation they have made has wounded me like the death of Warren. We want him in the Senate; we want him in his profession; we want him in the field. We mourn for the citizen, the senator, the physician, and the warrior. When he fell, liberty wept.”

Paul Revere later returned to the battleground to locate the rebel leader’s body. He was able to identify his compatriot’s remains because Revere had fitted the false teeth that Warren wore, one of the first known cases of forensic dentistry.

Yet, Joseph Warren’s story remained buried, overshadowed by the more illustrious Founders with better biographers –and admiring poets. He became the most important Founding Father most of us never heard of.

His story is told more fully in my book America’s Hidden History.

America's Hidden History (Harper)

And while thinking of grade school poetry, here are the opening lines of another poem you should have read and learned about: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn”

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

Franklin’s Farewell

Surely America’s most fascinating Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin died on April 17, 1790 at the age of 84. Shortly before his death, he wrote a letter to Rev. Ezra Stiles, the President of Yale, summarizing his religious beliefs.

Here is my creed. I believe in one God, creator of the universe.

That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render him is doing good to his other children . . . That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. . . . As to Jesus of Nazareth. I think the system of morals and his religion . . . the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have . . . some doubts as to his divinity though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon. having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. ” He added, “I have ever let others enjoy their religious sentiments.

He was, as biographer Walter Isaacson wrote, “an apostle of tolerance.” (Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, page 468)

By most estimates, some 20,000 people attended his funeral in Philadelphia on April 21 –about half of the city’s population at the time, and the largest public gathering in America to that date.

The Library of Congress offers an extensive selection of resources on Franklin’s life and impact.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Jefferson

That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate: …. (Kings) are the servants, not the proprietors of the people. Open your breast, sire, to liberal and expanded thought. Let not the name of George the third be a blot in the page of history.

–Thomas Jefferson

A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

Born on April 13, 1743 at Shadwell, his father’s estate in Albermarle County, Virginia, Thomas Jefferson was the son of a planter and surveyor, Peter Jefferson and his wife, Jane Randolph Jefferson, who came from the Randolphs, one of Virginia’s wealthiest families. Thomas Jefferson’s father had moved the family to the Tuckahoe plantation owned by William Randolph, which Peter Jefferson managed as executor. The third child in a family of ten, Thomas was a bookish boy who studied with a local clergyman and later at a school in Fredericksburg with Reverend James Maury who taught Jefferson the classics in their original languages. The oldest son, Thomas was fourteen when his father died, leaving the boy head of an estate with about 2,500 acres and thirty slaves.

The Declaration’s author distinguished himself early as a scholar at The College of William and Mary, and gained admission to the Virginia bar in 1767. His literary prowess, demonstrated in A Summary View of the Rights of British America, prompted John Adams to put Jefferson forward as the man to write the Declaration, a task he accepted with reluctance.

Most of the war years were spent in Virginia as a legislator and later as governor, a period of some controversy as he was criticized for failing to aggressively defend Virginia against British attacks.

After his wife’s death, in 1783, he joined the Continental Congress and served as ambassador to France, where he could observe firsthand the French Revolution. Returning to America in 1789, Jefferson became Washington’s secretary of state and began to oppose what he saw as a too-powerful central government under the new Constitution, bringing him into a direct confrontation with his old colleague John Adams and, more dramatically, with the chief Federalist, Alexander Hamilton.

Running second to Adams in 1796, he became vice president, chafing at the largely ceremonial role. In 1800, Jefferson and fellow Democratic-Republican Aaron Burr tied in the Electoral College vote, and Jefferson took the presidency in a tense and controversial House vote that required more than 30 ballots.

While President, Jefferson engineered the Louisiana Purchase and wrote what may be his second most famous lines in a letter addressing religious freedom under the new American government.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

–Thomas Jefferson

Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, (January 1, 1802)

After two terms, he returned to his Monticello home to complete his final endeavor, building the University of Virginia. As he lay dying, Jefferson would ask what the date was, holding out, like John Adams, until July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration.

With the advantage of hindsight, cynicism about Thomas Jefferson is easy. But the baffling question remains: How could a man who embodied the Enlightenment keep black slaves –and it is widely assumed, father children by one of them?

There is no truly satisfying answer. Earlier in his life, as a lawyer and member of the Burgesses, he had unsuccessfully argued against aspects of slavery. At worst, Jefferson may not have thought of slaves as men, not an unusual notion in his time. And he was a man of his times. He was completely dependent upon slavery for his financial life and the political power of his southern slave-holding class. Like other men, great and small, he was not perfect.

Jefferson’s life, writings and politics are discussed in Don’t Know Much About History from which this material is adapted.

Jefferson's Gravesite Photo credit: Kenneth C. Davis ©2012

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.