Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 114

Don't Know Much About Minute: Presidents Day–Abraham Lincoln

Honest Abe. The Railsplitter. The Great Emancipator. You know some of the basics and the legends. But check out this video to learn some of things you may not know, but should, about the 16th President.

Here's a link to the Lincoln Birthplace National Park

http://www.nps.gov/ABLI/index.htm

This link is to the Emancipation Proclamation page at the National Archives:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/

Don't Know Much About® George Washington

When I was a kid, we got two holidays: one for Lincoln's Birthday and another for Washington's. Now, we have to make do with a three day weekend in February for Presidents Day.

Think you know about the Father of Our Country?

This video contains a few things that might surprise you.

Want to learn a little more?

Here is the website for the National Park Service's Birthplace of Washington site:

http://www.nps.gov/gewa/index.htm

And here is the National Park Service website for Fort Necessity, scene of Washington's surrender and "confession."

http://www.nps.gov/fone/index.htm

Today in History: The Birthday of the Confederacy

The Confederacy was officially born on February 4, 1861 when six breakaway states created the Confederate States of America.

(Corrected: An earlier version of this post used the date February 4, 1865.)

One week after Lincoln's first inaugural address, on March 11, the Confederacy adopted a constitution. Given the long-held arguments that the crisis was over such issues as federal power and states' rights, and not slavery, it might be assumed that the new Confederate nation adopted some very different form of government, perhaps more like the Articles of Confederation, under which the states operated before the Constitution was adopted.

In fact, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America was based almost verbatim on the U.S. Constitution. There were, however, several significant but relatively minor differences, as well as one big difference:

• The preamble added the words, "each State acting in its sovereign and independent character," and instead of forming "a more perfect Union," it was forming "a permanent federal government." It also added an invocation to "Almighty God" absent from the original.

• It permitted a tariff for revenue but not for protection of domestic industries, though the distinction between the two was unclear.

• It altered the executive branch by creating a presidency with a single six-year term, instead of the (then) unlimited four-year terms. However, the presidency was strengthened with a line item veto with which certain parts of a budget can be removed by the president. (Many U.S. presidents of both parties have argued for the line item veto as a means to control congressional spending. A line item veto was finally passed in 1996 and used first by President Bill Clinton. However, in 1998 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the line item veto was unconstitutional.)

• The major difference between the two constitutions regarded slavery. First, the Confederate version didn't bother with neat euphemisms ("persons held in service") but simply and honestly called it slavery. While it upheld the ban on the importation of slaves from abroad, the Confederate constitution removed any restrictions on slavery. Slavery was going to be protected and extended into any new territory the Confederacy might acquire.

In other words, while "states' rights" is a powerful abstraction, and the back-and-forth between federal power and the power of the states has been a theme throughout American history, there was really only one right that the southern states cared about. Examining the speeches by southern leaders and the Confederate constitution itself underscores the fact that the only right in question was the right to continue slavery without restriction, both where it already existed and in the new territories being opened up in the West.

Adapted from Don't Know Much About History

My complete history of the Civil War can be found in  Don't Know Much About the Civil War

Joyce, Jesus, Goddesses & Groundhogs

Today is an auspicious date on the literary and liturgical calendars. James Joyce was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882 and his masterpiece Ulysses was published this date in 1922. (For more on Joyce and his birthday and works, see the Joyce Center in Dublin.)



This got me to thinking about things Irish and the fact that this date (sometimes February 1st) is also the day on which the ancient Celts celebrated imbolc, a sacred day heralding the approach of spring, and a day which honors the Irish goddess Bridget, patron of fire and poetry. How Joycean!



And it is also St. Bridget's Day –Bridget being the second most prominent Irish saint after Patrick. But she may also be related to that much older figure in Irish mythology, the goddess Bridget.



On top of that it Candlemas and Groundhog Day.



So how do we tie all these pieces together?



To me — and possibly to James Joyce, lover of things mythic, Christian and Irish—it is a wonderful case of ancient myths colliding with Christianity.



First, to explain Candlemas. It is a Christian holiday that celebrates the day on which Jesus was taken to the temple to be presented as an infant. Adding 40 days to Christmas Day arrives at the date. It would have been the earliest date at which Mary could have entered the temple after giving birth to be ritually purified.  The words "candle mass" refers to the tradition of blessing of holy candles that would be used throughout the year. (Candlemas is also known variously as The Feast of the Presentation or the Feast of the Purification of Mary).



But in medieval Germany, it was on Candlemas Day that the groundhog was supposed to pop out of his hole to check for the weather. If the day was clear and he saw his shadow, he returned to hibernation. But if it was cloudy, the weather would moderate and spring would come early. German settlers brought that tradition to America and especially to Pennsylvania. (You know all about Punxsutawney Phil by now.) There are similar ancient traditions in Scotland and parts of England.



Back to Ireland where the pre-Christian Celtic imbolc celebrated the coming of spring as ewes began to lactate before giving birth to the spring lambs. But the Irish also believed that a serpent emerged on imbolc to determine if the winter would end. And on imbolc, the goddess Bridget walked the earth as a harbinger of the return of fertility, And it was day of a great bonfire that would purify the earth. As Ireland was Christianized, the goddess Bridget morphed into the legendary figure of Bridget, who was later sainted, and famed for keeping a sacred fire burning.



Put all these things together and you have a rich tapestry of pagan and Christian traditions that merge on February 2. Special animals forecast the coming of spring.  The earth is purified by bonfires.  Mary is purified and so are the holy candles. Spring and life are returning to earth and the lambs are about to be born, and the Lamb of God has been presented at the temple.



Whether you believe any of these traditions or none, it is fascinating to see all these threads come together on a day most Americans simply associate with men in top hats and fancy clothes watching for a large, furry rodent to emerge from a hole in the ground.

You can read more about Bridget, the goddess and the saint, in Don't Know Much About Mythology.

Don't Know Much About® "Lewis Carroll"

"O frabjous day"

Hard to believe, but the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland had a reputation for being dull and uninspiring at his day job: Mathematics Lecturer at Oxford University. But when Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, born on January 27, 1832, mathematician, took on the pen name "Lewis Carroll," he dreamed up fantastical stories that charmed children and adults alike.  Preferring the company of little girls throughout his adult life—a fact that has perplexed and concerned his critics—Dodgson wrote playful nonsense to delight young readers.  Among his best-loved works are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass (1871).  Are you growing "curiouser and curiouser" about the Wonderland Carroll created? Then follow Alice down the rabbit hole and take this quick quiz adapted from Don't Know Much About Literature.

1.    Was Alice based on a real person?

2.    Who says the famous line, "Off with her head!"?

3.    Which Wonderland character can vanish as he pleases, leaving his grin to disappear last?

4.    Which poem, included in Through the Looking Glass, introduced invented words like brillig, slithy, wabe, and mimsy?

5.    In Through the Looking Glass, what nonsensical poem do Tweedledum and Tweedledee sing?

6.    What Woodstock-era rock song used characters and symbols from Carroll's Alice books to describe the psychedelic effects of drugs like LSD?

The non-profit Lewis Carroll Society offers online links to FAQs, research and events.

Answers

1.    Though the stories were clearly works of imagination, their heroine was inspired by Alice Liddell, the daughter of one of Dodgson's Oxford colleagues.

2.    The Queen of Hearts—a playing card come to life in Alice's Adventures.

3.    The Cheshire Cat.

4.    "Jabberwocky."  Humpty Dumpty explains these foreign words to Alice.

5.    "The Walrus and the Carpenter."

6.    White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane.  The line "Go ask Alice" later became the title of an 1971 book, allegedly the diary of an anonymous teenage drug addict.

"Sicko Ants on a Crucifix"

A Connecticut newspaper has reported that a public library in Enfield, Ct. was forced last week to cancel a screening of Sicko, Michael Moore's documentary about America's health care system. It was made clear to the library's director, the article noted, that budget dollars, and possibly his job, were at stake. According to the report in Connecticut's Journal Inquirer, at least one council member believes that libraries are no place for such "controversial" materials:

We want it (the library) to be a place for relaxation and fun for the kids.

Bringing to light one more depressing example in a long, sad line of stories about censorship may simply make your eyes glaze over. But this Connecticut library story comes right on the heels of the Smithsonian's decision to pull a video, "A Fire in My Belly," from a recent show at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. because it included 11 seconds of footage of ants crawling on a crucifix.

Add these two incidents to the renewed threats to withdraw federal funding from by an emboldened Republican majority in the House, the attempted cancellation of an August Wilson play for its use of the word "nigger," and the related controversy over an expurgated version –subject of a previous blog– of Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Censorship is riding high. It is once again as American as apple pie, assassinations and anti-immigrant vitriol.

Perhaps this trend should come as no surprise. The last election seemed to suggest a swing to the right. Economic hard times also tend to produce a backlash against what is "unpopular" or "different." Public funding of "controversial art" has always been a bete noire for many Republicans, evangelical Christians and some Catholics. But in a time when the political discourse includes a church group that protests at soldiers' funerals and placing cross-hairs on political ads, the calls for censorship aren't limited to the right side of the political spectrum.

All of these developments demand a restatement and explanation of the First Amendment. So here it is, courtesy of the American Library Association:

CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF; OR ABRIDGING THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH, OR OF THE PRESS; OR THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES.

Of course, there is a long litany of weighty quotes from writers and jurists about the importance of free expression in an open, democratic society. One would hope that it need not be provided to Congress or the Town Council of Enfield, Ct.

But it is this simple — a group of radicals, who wanted to overthrow the society and government that ruled them, once wrote and said some very dangerous things. Today, we keep them in the National Archives. The Founders and Framers understood with complete clarity that it is the least popular ideas and expression that need the most protection.

Don't Know Much About® Poe

On the anniversary of his birth in 1809, a quick quiz in honor Edgar Allen Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) wrote some of the darkest, strangest poems and stories in the English language.  His narrators, who generally speak in the first person, have led many readers to confuse Poe with his deeply disturbed characters: opium users, sufferers of paranoia and delusions, sinister murderers. Aspects of the author's strange life and death add to that confusion. In October, 1849, Dr. J.E. Snodgrass, a friend of Poe's, was summoned to a Baltimore tavern where he found Poe half-conscious and dressed in someone else's clothes. Speculation on the cause of his death has ranged from delirium tremens to injuries sustained during a beating to rabies. Think you know Poe?  Take this quiz, and you shouldn't need to "ponder weak and weary."

1.    How old was Edgar Allen Poe's cousin, Virginia Clemm, when the author married her in 1836?

2.    In which of Poe's stories does the narrator hear "a low, dull, quick sound – much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton"?

3.    In which story does Montresor kill Fortunado by immurement—walling him in and leaving him to die?

4.    What is the name of Poe's brilliant and extremely rational detective, who appears in "The Purloined Letter," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt"?

5.    The first Halloween special of the cartoon The Simpsons featured a segment based on Poe's famous poem, "The Raven."  Instead of "Nevermore," what phrase did the raven (a Bart Simpson look-alike) repeat incessantly?

Here are links to the Edgar Allen Poe house and the Poe Museum

Quiz excerpted from

Coming in July 2009!

Answers

1.    Thirteen. He was twenty-seven.  After her death eleven years later, he addressed the poem "Annabel Lee" to her.

2.    "The Tell-Tale Heart."

3.    "The Cask of Amontillado."

4.    C. Auguste Dupin.

5.    "Eat My Shorts."  Although Poe died in 1849, he was credited as a writer for this 1990 television show.

MLK Day-2011

Thinking about Martin Luther King, Jr. –on the eve of his actual birthday on January 15, 1929– I came across the presentation speech given when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. In it, Gunnar Jahn, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, said of Dr, King:

He is the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle can be waged without violence. He is the first to make the message of brotherly love a reality in the course of his struggle, and he has brought this message to all men, to all nations and races.

Today we pay tribute to Martin Luther King, the man who has never abandoned his faith in the unarmed struggle he is waging, who has suffered for his faith, who has been imprisoned on many occasions, whose home has been subject to bomb attacks, whose life and the lives of his family have been threatened, and who nevertheless has never faltered.

On Monday January 17, 2011, Dr. King's life will be marked by a federal holiday (3d Monday in January) celebrating his life and achievements. It is now a day that many try and set aside as a Day of Service in honor of Dr. King's memory. The "Dream Speech" will be televised and talked about.

But Martin Luther King's Dream seems very far away after Tucson. (It is perhaps worth noting that Arizona was a state in which the newly-elected Governor Evan Mecham revoked the state's King holiday in 1987 and it was only reinstated after a national outcry and the NFL pulled the Super Bowl from its Arizona site in 1993.)

According to a recent poll, as reported on National Public Radio, "

Despite having their first black president, Americans are no more certain than before that the country is closer to the racial equality preached by Martin Luther King Jr.

The killings in Tucson and the ugly wash of words that have unfortunately followed in their wake seem to have left little room for thoughts of Martin Luther King –also gunned down by an assassin. But his fundamental ideas are always worth remembering, particularly in the face of this deadly violence.

These words come from his Nobel lecture:

Nonviolence has also meant that my people in the agonizing struggles of recent years have taken suffering upon themselves instead of inflicting it on others. It has meant, as I said, that we are no longer afraid and cowed. But in some substantial degree it has meant that we do not want to instill fear in others or into the society of which we are a part. The movement does not seek to liberate Negroes at the expense of the humiliation and enslavement of whites. It seeks no victory over anyone. It seeks to liberate American society and to share in the self-liberation of all the people.

Don't Know Much About® "Common Sense"

You know that saying about the pen being mightier than the sword? As the American Revolution haltingly began, an anonymous writer helped prove it true.

The battles at Lexington and Concord in 1775, the easy victory at Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775, and the devastating casualties inflicted on the British army by the rebels at Bunker (Breed's) Hill in June 1775 had all given hope to the patriot cause a full year before independence was declared.

But the final break—independence—still seemed too extreme to some. It's important to remember that the vast majority of Americans at the time were first and second generation. Their family ties and their sense of culture and national identity were essentially English. Many Americans had friends and family in England. And the commercial ties between the two were obviously also powerful.

The forces pushing toward independence needed momentum, and they got it in several ways. The first factor was another round of heavy-handed British miscalculations. First the king issued a proclamation cutting off the colonies from trade. Then, unable to conscript sufficient troops, the British command decided to supplement its regulars with mercenaries, soldiers from the German principalities sold into King George's service by their princes. Most came from Hesse-Cassel, so the name Hessian became generic for all of these hired soldiers.

The Hessians accounted for as much as a third of the English forces fighting in the colonies. Their reputation as fierce fighters was linked to a frightening image—reinforced, no doubt, by the British command—as plundering rapists. (Ironically, many of them stayed on in America. Benjamin Franklin gave George Washington printed promises of free land to lure mercenaries away from English ranks.) When word of the coming of 12,000 Hessian troops reached America, it was a shock, and further narrowed chances for reconciliation. In response, a convention in Virginia instructed its delegates to Congress to declare the United Colonies free and independent.

The second factor was a literary one. On January 10, 1776, an anonymous pamphlet entitled Common Sense came off the presses of a patriot printer. Its author, Thomas Paine, had simply, eloquently, and admittedly with some melodramatic prose, stated the reasons for independence. He reduced the hereditary succession of kings to an absurdity, slashed down all arguments for reconciliation with England, argued the economic benefits of independence, and even presented a cost analysis for creating an American navy.

With the assistance of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine had  come to America from London and found work with a Philadelphia bookseller. In the colonies for only a few months, Paine wrote, at Franklin's suggestion, a brief history of the upheaval against England.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the impact and importance of Common Sense. Paine's polemic was read by everyone in Congress, including General Washington, who commented on its effects on his men. Equally important, it was read by people everywhere. The pamphlet quickly sold 150,000 copies, going through numerous printings until it had reached half a million. (Approximating the American population at the time, including slaves, at 3 million, a current equivalent pamphlet would have to sell more than 35 million copies!)

For the first time, mass public opinion had swung toward the cause of independence.

The Library of Congress page on Common Sense.

Scott Liell's 46 Pages (Running Press, 2004) offers an excellent, brief history of the pamphlet, the pamphleteer and its impact.

This post is adapted from Don't Know Much About History which discusses the Revolution and Thomas Paine's unhappy fate.

Are you Teddy for some football?

I love history. And I love football.

That's what led me to put the two together in this recent New York Times op-ed about the violence and scandals that threatened American football back in 1905.

In it I discuss how it took the hands-on involvement of President Theodore Roosevelt to help keep football from being banned out of existence.

As you watch the NFL Playoffs, and the BCS National Championship, take a look back at football when helmets were few and far between.

(And go J-E-T-S Jets, Jets, Jets!!!)