1797

 

__________ 

“Our government and people branded as cowards.” 

James Monroe

__________ 

 

A FRENCH TRAVELER in Philadelphia notes that among the ladies of that city, “beauty is general.” 

    Had he been interested he could, at that juncture, have visited Charles Wilson Peale’s museum. A popular exhibit was the skeleton of a mastodon. Even so learned a man as Thomas Jefferson would, a few years later, tell Lewis and Clark to be on the lookout for mastodons, still possibly living in the West.

Peale's museum. Picture not in blogger's possession.

 

* 

March 5: The meeting of the Fifth Congress opens. Harrison Gray Otis, a member from Massachusetts, will soon declare that he does “not wish to invite hordes of wild Irishmen, nor the turbulent and disorderly of all parts of the world” who might “come here with a view to disturb our tranquillity [sic].” 

    After leaving office, according to Bacheller and Kates, writing in 1932, Washington finds he has much work to do at home. 

    He found his mansion and his farms down-at-the-heel after his eight years as the nation’s Chief Executive, but an army of joiners, painters and gardeners soon put things to rights. So, at sixty-five, and world famous, he settled down with Martha and his grandchildren to the life of a Virginia farmer. He rose with the sun, breakfasted at seven, and then rode forth over his farms to whose management he gave nearly all of his waking hours. (109/157)

 

    Once again, there is no mention of slaves or slavery, in this second-to-last chapter in a book for adolescent readers. 

* 

Summer: When the story of Alexander Hamilton’s affair with Maria Reynolds, wife of James Reynolds, broke, Hamilton accused James Monroe of having a hand in revealing it. An eyewitness described the scene when Hamilton visited Monroe at his lodgings. Monroe had just returned from France, having been recalled by the new Federalist administration. “Colo. Monroe rising first and saying do you say I represented falsely, you are a scoundrel. Colo. H. said I will meet you like a gentleman. Colo. M. said I am ready get your pistols, both said we shall for it will not be settled in any other way.” 

    Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed, and a duel was prevented by the intervention of others. (24/159)

Maria Reynolds. Picture not in blogger's possession.

 

* 

November: James Monroe expresses his displeasure with the way foreign nations are treating the young Republic, and the Federalist leaders’ failure to take action. 

Our national honor is in the dust; we have been kicked, cuffed, and plundered all over the ocean; our reputation for faith scouted; our government and people branded as cowards, incapable of being provoked to resist. … Long will it be before we shall be able to forget what we are, nor will centuries suffice to raise us to the high ground from which we have fallen. (24/166)

     Says Harry Ammon: “Monroe was quite sincere in his belief that the Federalists were seeking an alliance with England not just in the interests of trade but, like the aristocrats of Europe, in the hopes of checking the onrushing tide of republicanism.” 

    On Washington’s part, he believed that Monroe’s subservience to France had led him to sacrifice U.S. interests. (24/166, 168) 

    Ammon also explains: “It was Jefferson’s firm opinion that it was of ‘immense consequence, that the states retain as complete authority as possible over their own citizens’ to combat the tendency of the central government to seize powers not specifically excluded from its sphere.” (24/170)

1804

A curious native tried to wipe the paint off York,
having never seen a black man.

(Picture not in blogger's possession.)

Lewis and Clark head West. Time-Life: 

Lewis was shy and awkward and had a frightening moodiness; a shadow hung over him. A seeker of the wilderness, rather than native to it like Clark, he found his innermost needs satisfied by the challenge of nature. Clark, outgoing, forthright, practical, was a wilderness craftsman and a born leader who understood both the woods and men. It was essential that these two get along. They did. In all the vicissitudes they shared, they differed only on the palatability of dog meat and the necessity for salt.

 

Lewis took his dog, Seaman; Clark took York, “a black giant of a man.” They were gone for twenty-eight months, and many gave them up for dead. On their return, Congress voted both captains 1,600 acres of land, each man 320. 

Paddy Gass, a veteran of the journey, fought in the War of 1812 and lost an eye in battle. He drank up his pension, married at 60, had seven children, and at age 90, wished the troops headed off to fight in the Civil War god speed. 

Rumors of what might be found in the Far West included: a lost tribe of Israel, and possibly a lost tribe of Welshmen. Jefferson thought there might be llama. 

And mastodon!

 

* 

THIRTY SLAVES from plantations near Natchitoches escape, headed for New Spain, with nine crossing the Sabine River. 

* 

THE FOLLOWING selections are from Charles Coffin: 

Alexander Hamilton fought at White Plains and also fought at Trenton, Princeton, and Yorktown. Coffin says Burr had been practicing with his pistols for weeks. Hamilton: 

He wrote a tender letter to his wife, and bought a beautiful bouquet for her, bade her an affectionate good-night, arose at daybreak, stole softly out of his beautiful home, walked down to the river, stepped into a boat with Mr. Pendleton and a doctor, and was rowed across the Hudson to Weehawken. The sun was just rising as he landed…

 

At the signal, Burr fired first, fatally wounding his foe. Hamilton fell, his pistol going off, the bullet cutting the twig from a tree. “I had no ill-will toward him; I did not intend to fire,” Hamilton told friends before he died.  

Ministers preached against dueling. Grand juries in New York and New Jersey indicted Burr. The Rev. Dr. Nott, of Schenectady, preached a sermon, calling dueling a sin. Other ministers joined the chorus. 

Afterwards, “men who gave or accepted a challenge, instead of gaining lost the respect of their fellow-men.” (72/134-138)

 

* 

ACCORDING to one Federalist newspaper, Alexander Hamilton’s death called forth “the voice of deep lament” save from “the rancorous Jacobin, the scoffing deist, the sniveling fanatic, and the imported scoundrel.” (2/303)

 

* 

WITH JEFFERSON running for a second term, Clement Clarke Moore publishes an anonymous pamphlet attacking the religious and racial views of the Virginian. His polemic, titled in full “Observations upon Certain Passages in Mr. Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, which Appear to Have a Tendency to Subvert Religion, and Establish a False Philosophy,” painted Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia (published in 1785) as an “instrument of infidelity” that “debases the negro to an order of creatures lower than those who have a fairer skin and thinner lips.” 

Today, Moore is remembered, if at all, for his poem, “A Visit to Saint Nicholas,” about “the night before Christmas.” (See: 1823.) 

1856

 __________ 

“Every immoral statute is void.” 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

__________

BENJAMIN BROWN FRENCH begins keeping a diary. He had moved to Washington D.C. in 1833, and continuing writing till his death in 1870. 

    Joanne B. Freeman uses his diary as a focal point for her book, The Field of Blood, reviewed by The New York Times. Freeman notes that between 1830 and 1860 there were more than 70 incidents of violence between members of Congress. 

May 22: The most famous, Preston Brooks vs. Charles Sumner, elicited gift canes to the assailant: inscribed “Good Job,” “Hit Him Again” and “Use Knockdown Arguments.” 

    Preston Brooks was naturally re-elected. 

    The reviewer notes: 

    In 1841, an exchange of insults between two representatives, Edward Stanly of North Carolina and Henry Wise of Virginia, led to a wild melee in which nearly all the members of the House pummeled one another. John B. Dawson of Louisiana “routinely wore both a bowie knife and a pistol” into the House and once threatened to cut a colleague’s throat “from ear to ear.” Angry over a speech delivered by the antislavery Ohioan Joshua Giddings, Dawson shoved Giddings and threatened him with a knife. Another time, Dawson pointed his cocked pistol at Giddings and was prevented from shooting him only when other congressmen intervened.

 

    Freeman notes that Giddings, an outspoken abolitionist, was attacked “at least seven times,” by pro-slavery defenders. In fact, he often goaded Southerners to fight; and Freeman says Southerners were easily goaded. Even minor insults could lead to violent reaction. 

    Freeman tells us of the fiery Mississippi senator Henry S. Foote, who fought four duels in his political career and was wounded in three. On the Senate floor, he raised a pistol toward an opponent, the Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, who bared his chest and invited Foote to shoot, yelling: “I have no pistols! Let him fire! I disdain to carry arms!” Another senator grabbed Foote’s weapon and locked it in a drawer. 

    French recorded in his diary his delight as a spectator. Describing the huge brawl of 1841, he wrote, “The Speaker & I had the best chance to see all the fun, & while he stood at his desk pounding & yelling, I stood at mine ‘calm as a summer’s morning’ — enjoying the sport, and keeping the minutes of the proceedings!”

 

    The absurdity of the code of honor is at times remarkable. Congressmen Jonathan Cilley of Maine and William J. Graves of Kentucky ended up facing off against each other in a fatal confrontation. As the NYT reviewer noted: 

Cilley, a Democrat, had charged a Whig editor, James Watson Webb, with having accepted a bribe. Outraged by the accusation, Webb wrote a letter in which he challenged Cilley to a duel. He sent the letter through Graves, a Whig friend. When Cilley refused to accept the letter, Graves felt insulted and made his own challenge to Cilley. The two men faced off with rifles on a dueling ground outside Washington. Both missed their targets in the first two rounds, but in the third Graves killed Cilley.

 

    What a bloody, idiotic code of “honor” to follow.

 

* 

JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE was a novelist, poet, and an abolitionist. Born in 1827, he had his first real success as a writer at age 29. 

    I can’t pin the date of publication for this poem down, but here it is:

 

Farmer John

 

Home from his journey Farmer John

Arrived this morning, safe and sound.

His black coat off, and his old clothes on,

“Now I’m myself!” says Farmer John,

     And he thinks, “I’ll look around.”

Up leaps the dog: “Get down, you pup!

Are you so glad you would eat me up?”

The old cow lows at the gate, to greet him,

The horses prick up their ears, to meet him.

     “Well, well, old Bay,

     Ha, ha, old Gray,

Do you get good feed when I am away?”

 

“You haven’t a rib!” says Farmer John,

“The cattle are looking round and sleek,

The colt is going to be a roan,

     And a beauty, too: how he has grown!

We’ll wean the calf next week.”

Says Farmer John, “When I’ve been off –  

To call you again about the trough.

And watch you, and pet you, while you drink,

Is a greater comfort than you can think,”

     And he pats old Bay,

     And he slaps old Gray,

“Ah, this is the comfort of going away.”

 

“For, after all,” says Farmer John,

“The best of a journey is getting home.

I’ve seen great sights but I would not give

This spot, and the peaceful life I live,

     For all their Paris and Rome,

These hills for the city’s stifled air

And big hotels all bustle and glare,

Land all houses, and roads all stones,

That deafen your ears and batter your bones!

     Would you, old Bay?

     Would you, old Gray?

That’s what one gets by going away.”

 

“There Money is king,” says Farmer John,

“And Fashion is queen, and it’s mighty queer

To see how sometimes, while the man

Is raking and scraping all he can,

     The wife spends, every year.

Enough, you would think, for a score of wives,

To keep them in luxury all their lives!

The town is a perfect Babylon

To a quiet chap,” says Farmer John.

     “You see, old Bay,

     You see, old Gray,

I’m wiser than when I went away.”

 

“I’ve found out this,” said Farmer John,

“That happiness is not bought and sold.

And clutched in a life of waste and hurry,

In nights of pleasure and days of worry.

     And wealth isn’t all in gold.

Mortgages, stocks and ten per cent,

But in simple ways, and sweet content.

Few wants, pure hopes, and noble ends,

Some land to till, and a few good friends,

     Like you, old Bay,

     And you, old Gray !

That’s what I’ve learned by going away.”

 

And a happy man is Farmer John —

O, a rich and happy man is he!

He sees the peas and pumpkins growing,

The corn in tassel, the buckwheat blowing,

And fruit on vine and tree,

The large, kind oxen look their thanks

As he rubs their foreheads and strokes their flanks,

The doves light round him, and strut and coo.

Says Farmer John, “I’ll take you too,

     And you, old Bay,

     And you, old Gray,

Next time I travel so far away.” 

(This punctuation is from Story Hour Readings, published for school children by the American Book Company, in 1921.)

 

*

 

CHAUNCEY DEPEW graduated from Yale in 1856. He remembers, “Our class of ninety-seven was regarded as unusually large.” “Athletics had not yet appeared, though rowing and boat-racing came in during my term.” (123/4)

 

    Two classmates, David J. Brewer and Henry Billings Brown, both served on the U.S. Supreme Court later, and at the same time. A third member of the class would have joined them, but died after being nominated.

 

    Depew spoke highly of his professors. Professor Woolsey “had the respect and affection of all.” “In his historical lectures he had a standard joke on the Chinese, the narration of which amused him the more with each repetition. It was that when a Chinese army was beleaguered and besieged in a fortress their provisions gave out and they decided to escape. They selected a very dark night, threw open the gates, and as they marched out each soldier carried a lighted lantern.” (123/6-7)

 

    A touch of nascent racism, ha, ha.

 

    The professor of Greek, Hadley, “had a caustic wit and his sayings were the current talk of the campus. He maintained discipline, which was quite lax in those days, by the exercise of this ability. Some of the boys once drove a calf into the recitation-room. Professor Hadley quietly remarked, “You will take out that animal. We will get along to-day with our usual number.”

 

    Depew remembers the tension at home when he returned from college. His father was an avid supporter of the Democratic Party; but the son became a convert,

 

and I became a Republican on the principles enunciated in the first platform of the party in 1856. When I came home from Yale the situation in the family became very painful, because my father was an intense partisan. He had for his party both faith and love, and was shocked and grieved at his son’s change of principles. He could not avoid constantly discussing the question, and was equally hurt either by opposition or silence.

 

    There had grown up among the young voters an intense hostility to slavery. The moral force of the arguments against the institution captured them. They had no hostility to the South, nor to the Southern slaveholders; they regarded their position as an inheritance, and were willing to help on the lines of Mr. Lincoln’s original idea of purchasing the slaves and freeing them. (123/16, 18)

 

    Depew was a huge fan of Dickens and was in attendance when he visited American and did readings in New York City.

 

    I was fresh from the country but had with me that evening a rather ultra-fashionable young lady. She said she was not interested in the lecture because it represented the sort of people she did not know and never expected to meet; they were a very common lot. In her subsequent career in this country and abroad she had to her credit three matrimonial adventures and two divorces, but none of her husbands were of the common lot. (123/12)

 

*

 

WOMEN’S HEALTH: Godey’s Lady’s Book begins pushing for more exercise and fresh air for women. Finley writes of Sarah Hale:

 

    Women, she insisted, would be happier if they were strong; they would be more beautiful, more intelligent, more able, she insinuated, to control their own destinies. Tooth and nail she fought the conventional Victorian idea that physical frailty in women was an asset, an attraction.

 

    Hale,

 

deplored tight corsets, airless sleeping-rooms, over-eating and pie for breakfast. She advocated bathing, not daily bathing, of course, but its forerunner the once-a-week Saturday night bath.

 

    In 1856 Mrs. Hale suggested that girls – young ladies, mind you – be taught so “tomboy” an art as swimming.

 

    She became a riding enthusiast, as well, describing it as “beautifying to the female figure.” Hale also became an advocate of the “pic nic,” not yet one word, and touted the joys of a “day spent in dancing, fishing, walking in the woods.” (113/132-133)

* 

“Are there seas in Heaven, Joshua?”

Captain Patten.

 

July 1: The clipper ship, Neptune’s Car departs New York bound for San Francisco. Captain Joshua Patten finds himself in command of a vessel known for speed, 216 feet long, 1,617 tons. His wife, Mary Ann Brown Patten, pregnant with their first child, has come along, on her second voyage at sea. Joshua and Mary Ann had married when she was only fifteen, and at age seventeen she had traveled round the world with her husband and learned the secrets of operating a ship on the great ocean. 

    In a book review, in The New York Times, we learn details from her story. How, for example, did she fare, as a female aboard her husband’s ship? 

The answer is: not easily. Life at sea was rigidly hierarchical. Ships’ captains “brooked no opposition,” and to question their decisions “was tantamount to insurrection.” The captain’s wife, should she choose to accompany him, was permitted to speak only to her husband, the couple’s steward, the first mate and the occasional passenger.

 

    It was an existence so isolated that it is perhaps not surprising that Mary Ann’s own sister-in-law was not the only captain’s wife known to have been sent to an asylum for “domestic insubordination.”

 

    Mary Ann was 17 when she first traveled with her husband, Joshua, on his clipper ship, Neptune’s Car. Stricken with seasickness, Mary Ann was unable to even walk the decks for fresh air, as it would have been considered shockingly improper to appear before the crew. They might not have enjoyed seeing her in any event – many sailors believed that having women aboard was unlucky. When her illness abated, Mary Ann would find that if she wished to leave the ship for shore, her large skirts required her being lowered from the deck via a precarious wicker swing. …

 

    Despite this, Mary Ann became a proficient sailor, quickly learning how to navigate with a sextant. She literally learned “the ropes” that managed the sails. She studied the medical books in the ship’s library and earned the sailors’ loyalty by nursing the sick and injured.

 

    Two years later, these skills and the affection of the crew would prove invaluable. As Neptune’s Car sailed the treacherous Drake Passage, Joshua was stricken with tubercular meningitis. Command would normally have fallen to the first mate – but he was, by any standard, an incompetent scoundrel who had repeatedly fallen asleep on watch and had therefore been shackled below deck. The second mate was wakeful but illiterate, and unable to navigate.

 

    Two months pregnant, Mary Ann informed the sailors that she would be taking control of the ship. To her surprise, “each man responded by a promise to obey her in every command,” making her the first female captain of a merchant clipper. 

 

    The voyage around Cape Horn, and up the western coasts of South, Central, and North America was often harrowing – with blizzards and fifty-foot waves threatening the clipper. Neptune’s Car reached San Francisco despite all perils, including an attempted mutiny, led by the disgruntled first mate. 

    When she returned from the voyage, The New York Times hailed her as “a mighty pretty woman and a heroine.” 

Suffragists cited her as an example of women’s skill and courage; men saw her as an ideal wife loyally defending her husband’s property. For some time after the voyage she was, in [Tilar J.] Mazzeo’s words, “everyone’s darling.”

 

But the triumph was tempered by tragedy. Joshua, left blind and brain-damaged by his illness, died in an asylum shortly after their return to Boston, never knowing his son. … Mary Ann … died at the age of 23, from tuberculosis.

 

On her gravestone is the inscription, “Are there seas in Heaven, Joshua/And is there such a vessel as our Neptune’s Car?/If there is, wait for me and we shall explore/the vast and boundless reaches of Eternity.”

    

*

Many Mormon pioneers traveled across the Great Plains pulling handcarts.
Statue in Salt Lake City.

“Peace and our rights – or the knife and tomahawk.”

 August: In Utah, Brigham Young makes his feelings clear, regarding relations with the U.S. government and the American people: “We do not intend to have any trade or commerce with the gentile world…I am determined to cut every thread of this kind and live free and independent, untrammeled by any of their detestable customs and practices.” 

    By August 1856, Young resolves: “That all the forces in said Territory hold themselves in readiness to march, at a moment’s notice, to repel any and all such threatened invasion.” He declares martial law; in his diary writes, “make every preparation to give the U.S. a Sound Drubbing.” He even writes to Mormon missionaries working with the Sioux and Cheyenne, suggesting an alliance, “for they must learn that they have either got to help us or the United States will kill us both.” To a friend he writes: “the deserts of Utah [will] become a battle ground for freedom.” 

    The choice will boil down to “peace and our rights – or the knife and tomahawk – let Uncle Sam choose.” 

    As pressure from the U.S. government grows, Heber Kimble, another leader of the Latter Day Saints, vows, “I will fight until there is not a drop of blood in my veins.” 

(Source: Time magazine review, I believe.)

 

    Like many Americans, in that era, Brigham Young believed the Second Coming was near. “The nation in which we dwell is surely ripening for destruction. Not many years will roll away before the sceptre will pass into the hands of the righteous, and the people who possess this land be governed by the oracle of the Almighty.” Another 3,000 Mormons, many from abroad, arrived in Utah every year, during the 60s. 

    Young once explained his position on the Bible: 

    I have heard some make the broad assertion that every word within the lids of the Bible was the word of God. I have said to them, “You have never read the Bible, have you?” “O, yes, and I believe every word in it is the word of God.” Well, I believe that the Bible contains the word of God, and the words of good men, and the words of bad men; the words of good angels and words of the devil…. 

(I failed to note the source for these quotes, above. Probably: Leonard J. Arrington, Mormon historian.)

* 

A STORY in The New York Times explains the significance of undergarments worn by all practicing Mormons: 

These garments – always white and generally snug, covering the shoulders and torso as well as the lower half of the body down to the knees – are worn at all times, with exceptions for sports, bathing and a few other activities. “If you can do the activity while wearing the garment, it’s recommended that you do,” Ms. [Ali] Larsen said. “Because it is a symbol of your love of the Savior and your faith in him.”

 

The garments can be thrown away or reused, but only after the four holy markings (a backward L-like shape on the right breast, a V-like wedge on the left breast and two dashes, one at the navel and one on the right knee) that are stitched or printed onto all such garments are cut out. 

* 

September 10: Watching violence explode, in Kansas as well as Congress, Ralph Waldo Emerson could stand no more. 

    In a speech, “On Affairs in Kansas,” delivered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he complained: 

    In the free states, we give a sniveling support to slavery. The judges give cowardly interpretations to the law, in direct opposition to the known foundation of all law, that every immoral statute is void. And here of Kansas, the President [Franklin Pierce] says: “Let the complainants go to the courts,” though he knows that when the poor plundered farmer comes to court, he finds the ringleader who has robbed him dismounting from his own horse and unbuckling his knife to sit as judge.  

NOTE TO TEACHERS: I had good success discussing with students the difference between law and morality. For example, Jim Crow laws made it legal to discriminate against African Americans. In Hitler’s Germany, the “law” was monstrous. My students would bring up the abortion question – which I merely moderated, never giving my opinion.