Bruce > Recent Status Updates

I'm in the Be's now, but every time I see a cross-reference I go read it, so I like to think I'm actually much deeper in than this. I've also cherry-picked most of the entries from the Algonquin Round Table and 20th century poets, Groucho Marx, Mark Twain, etc. I mean, come on... before such a full table, what penalty in being a one-marshmallow guy?

"The speech was, in essence, telling the Indians that to survive they had to… cease to be Indians and become white men. At bottom lurked the unspoken threat that, if they flouted this advice, harm would follow." Ouch. Never let it be said that Washington lacked the gift of (self-fulfilling) prophecy.

"Washington's Indian policy was a tragedy of noble intentions.… [I]n his 'Address to the Cherokee Nation,' which attempted to define a way for Americans and Native Americans to coexist in harmony... he again advised the Indians to abandon traditional hunting and gathering and to imitate the civilization of white settlers by farming and ranching... [using] Mount Vernon as a model." -->

"After parading by the President's House [the future White House, as yet unfinished], the gathering settled down to celebrate by dining on the barbecued remains of a five-hundred-pound ox." C'mon, Chernow. Let's not get all fancy. They enjoyed good ol' fashioned ribs! Anyone for some Rocklands?

This is also where conspiracy theories regarding the founders as illuminati (through participation in Masonic rituals) takes off, but the author argues that Washington saw them entirely for their civic merit as a community-building, "happiness-promoting" organization. Anyway, social clubs are just fun, aren't they?

W didn't just champion the creation of the federal district, he oversaw its development and personally spread cement over the cornerstone of the Capitol building. Washington literally built Washington.

One drawback of having the temporary capitol in Philly (for southerners) were local laws which freed slaves resident for more than 6 months at a time. "Not taking any chances, Washington decided to shuttle his slaves back to Mount Vernon for brief stays before their six-month time limits expired... resort[ing] to various ruses so they would not know why they were being sent home temporarily." Where's the trust?

For Washington's first term, Chernow is rehashing events (and possibly much of the same text) he covered in greater detail elsewhere. Here he repeats the thigh surgery scene from p. 283 of Hamilton, Dr. John Bard hacking into the president while exclaiming, "Cut away... Deep--deeper--deeper still. Don't be afraid. You will see how well he bears it!" Just as good the second time around.

Unsought pomp & circumstance on the way to inauguration as Trenton "erected a magnificent floral arch in his honor with the words 'December 26, 1776' sewn from leaves and flowers. Another flowery sentence proclaimed, 'The Defenders of the Mothers will also Defend the Daughters.' As he rode closer, thirteen young girls, robed in spotless white, walked forward with flower-filled baskets, scattering petals at his feet."

Good question: "Even as Rochambeau humored Washington and initialed a document saying that New York held top priority, he secretly relayed word to de Grasse that he should think about sailing to Chesapeake Bay instead.... In the coming weeks R. pretended to lend credence to W's plans, while focusing his real attention on quite a different strategy. Why did W botch this major strategic call?"

Small wonder W outlived his robust ancestors/siblings: "During that Morristown winter [of the Revolutionary War] Washington stressed the importance of clean clothing and sanitary quarters and a nutritious diet with vegetables and salads." He also had all new soldiers regularly inoculated for smallpox.

Washington the pol at 29: "He urged the sheriff who oversaw the election [for House of Burgesses]... to favor his candidacy with a blatantly unfair tactic. Because there was no secret ballot and people openly voiced their votes, it was hugely advantageous for candidates if the first voters favored them, stimulating a bandwagon effect." 14 of the first 15 people to announce votes were Washington partisans. Landslide!

Washington the pol at 29: "He urged the sheriff who oversaw the election [for House of Burgesses]... to favor his candidacy with a blatantly unfair tactic. Because there was no secret ballot and people openly voiced their votes, it was hugely advantageous for candidates if the first voters favored them, stimulating a bandwagon effect." 14 of the first 15 people to announce votes were Washington partisans. Landslide!

Washington's early life a prime example of "If you die, we all move up in rank." He succeeds to half-brother Lawrence's estates (Mt. Vernon) on the successive deaths of Lawrence and his heir-less widow Ann Fairfax Lee, while securing his finances through marriage of Martha Custis, a wealthy widow in her own right. "Once again he was the lucky beneficiary of a death in the family."

Veep Aaron Burr on the run: "As president of the Senate, Burr was to preside over the impeachment trial of Samuel Chase, an... associate justice of the Supreme Court who had... been charged... under the Sedition Act.... In other words, 'a man under indictment for MURDER presided at the trial of one of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, accused of a petty misdemeanor!' Did a good job, too.

Washington asked James Madison to draft up a farewell speech for him he didn't use in 1796, then turned to Hamilton to rewrite it from scratch in 1800. That one, he (contributed to and) used, to lasting credit and fame. Now, there's a man that knew how to delegate and to whom.

Defending the Jay Treaty: "Hamilton was not content to write as Camillus alone. Two days after his second essay appeared, he began to publish... a parallel series as 'Philo Camillus.' For several weeks, Philo Camillus indulged in extravagant praise of Camillus and kept up a running attack on their Republican adversaries. The prolific Hamilton was now writing pseudonymous commentaries on his own pseudonymous essays."

Confronting Hamilton with charges of corruption, Congressmen Muhlenberg, Venable, and (James!) Monroe are instead treated to overshares of 'exculpatory' evidence of adultery and blackmail. Awkward! "At least one of them 'delicately urged me to discontinue it as unnecessary... I insisted upon going through the whole and did so.'" So they leave embarrassed and in a hurry.

Hamilton's report on native manufacturing is a bit pollyanna-ish: "Of the productive British cotton mills, he commented: 'It is worthy of particular remark that, in general, women and children are rendered more useful, and the latter more early useful by manufacturing establishments than they otherwise would be." Meh. What was good for the goose?

Hamilton founds the 1st Bank of the US (in Philadelphia), triggering a speculative bubble & (barely averted) crash. Yeah, he pulled it out through behind-the-scenes buys by his own Bank of NY, but US has yet to learn from this. Hamilton didn't. And how might history have been different had he proposed placing it in Charleston, SC or Atlanta, GA? Forget "pure" capitalism. Managed economy is really hard to get right.

To curb smuggling and bring customs duties into federal coffers, Hamilton invents the Coast Guard, in the process issuing a directive against overbearing searches and seizures. "So masterly was Hamilton's directive about boarding foreign vessels that it was still being applied during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis."

Surgeons operate sans anesthetic to remove a 'malignant carbuncle' from Washington's left thigh in June of 1789, the presiding surgeon exclaiming, "Cut away... Deep--deeper--deeper still. Don't be afraid. You will see how well he bears it!" An event all would-be stoics would do well to anticipate.

Founder shock: In Virginia, "['Give me freedom or give me death'] Patrick Henry, the leading antifederalist, warned delegates who supported the Constitution, 'They'll free your niggers.'" Henceforward, I don't want to hear any strict constructionist citing Henry in defense of the Constitution. That louse opposed it on the basest of terms.

Founder fun: "John Jay wrote of the randy Morris, 'Gouverneur's leg has been a tax on my heart. I am almost tempted to wish he had lost something else. Morris's peg leg did not seem to detract from his sexual appeal and may even have enhanced it."

PA delays in sending its militia against the post-war Bonus army, forcing Congress to pull up stakes: "The Philadelphia mutiny had major repercussions in American history, for it gave rise to the notion that the national capital should be housed in a special federal district where it would never stand at the mercy of state governments." Can't DC's suffrageless citizens at least now be returned to MD?

American history textbooks suck: "[A]lthough the lopsided Franco-American victory at Yorktown put the eventual outcome of the war beyond dispute, the British still occupied New York City, fighting persisted in the West Indies, and the war was to drag on for another two years."

Small consolation for Benedict Arnold's British enabler (Arnold's Tory wife escaped by putting up a mad scene): "If Andre was a spy, he would hang from the gallows like a common criminal; whereas if he was merely an unlucky officer, he would be shot like a gentleman."

1780: "In NY Bay, the ice froze so thick that the British Army was able to wheel heavy artillery across it.. A January blizzard piled snow in 6' high banks. For Washington, [Morristown] was the war's nadir, a winter even more depressing than the one at Valley Forge. The snowstorms shut off roads and blocked provisions, leading to looting among troops freezing in log huts. Men mutinied and deserted in large numbers."

"Let us pause briefly to tally the grim catalog of disasters that had befallen these two [bastard] boys between 1765 and 1769: their father had vanished, their mother had died, their cousin and supposed protector had committed bloody suicide, and their aunt, uncle, and grandmother had all died. James, 16, and Alexander, 14, were now left alone, largely friendless and penniless."

According to a local Anglican minister, Hamilton's home island of Nevis consisted of slaves and "whole shiploads of pickpockets, whores, rogues, vagrants, thieves, sodomites, and other filth and cutthroats of society... not bad enough for the gallows and yet too bad to live among their virtuous countrymen at home." "Hamilton grew up in a tropical hellhole...."