Category Archives: On This Day

Daily observations on events past and present.

A Personal Recollection of Pearl Harbor

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My friend Dan Cheatham was born in 1936 on the island of Kauai in what was then the Territory of Hawaii. Although he was a small child on 7 December 1941, he has distinct memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor on neighboring Oahu. Dan was kind enough to share some recollections of this day seventy years ago.

It is hard to believe that 70 years ago today I was sitting down to our usual Sunday morning waffle breakfast, at the end of the row of plantation houses on the road leading from Lihue to Nawiliwili harbor. (Hacha, our three-lagged dog, always got the first waffle.)

On sundays, radio station KGMB, Honolulu, would act as the net control station and link together the mini 500 watt local radio stations – you know, the ones with the tall transmission towers – on the outer islands into something called the All-Islands Radio Network. We would then get local, outer-island, small town news: “The round-the-island county road was extended another 50 yards this week … Plantation Manager Jones hosted his cousins from Connecticut … Hawaiian Airlines open its new airfield at Port Allen … ” or whatever, island by island.

But on this this day, commentator Webly Edwards was saying, “Attention. This is no exercise. The Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor!….All Army, Navy and Marine personnel to report to duty”.

It meant nothing to me, at age five, but it did to my parents.

On New Year’s Eve a Japanese submarine surfaced at the entrance to Nawiliwili and shelled the port. A shell went through a large gasoline storage tank and bounced back from the adjacent cliff and did not explode. On my last visit the tank was still there. I wonder if the shell is still in there.

We were located right next to the water tower at the railroad cut for the trains taking the harvested cane to the mill. Later, when they stationed a fighter squadron at Port Allen, the planes would buzz the water tower on their way back to the landing strip. Conversation stopped and it sounded as if they were taxiing up our shingled roof.

The Japanese community was long ago integrated into the local community – including my classmates. I am aware of no hostilities toward that community. They were one of “us”, compared to the treatment they received from Coast Haoles on the mainland … internment camps, et cetera.

It is a long story but this Aloha attitude was the origin of the 100th Infantry Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the nation’s most highly decorated military unit, and the Military Intelligence Service – translators who served in the Pacific Theater.

The phrase, “Go for broke” was well integrated into our Pidgin English and went on to become famous as the motto of the 442nd.

Our house is gone. The railroad cut is filled in, or maybe it is the basement of the big store.

It is now fun for me to say that I was born in the parking lot of an Ace Hardware store.

Norden H. “Dan” Cheatham
Walnut Creek, California

Remember Pearl Harbor! Seventy Years On

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It was exactly seventy years ago this day that the United States was attacked by the Naval and Air Forces of Imperial Japan at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack caused more American Naval casualties than had been incurred in all of the First World War. The results were devastating: the bulk of the U.S. Pacific Fleet was destroyed or rendered useless. The day occasioned great heroism upon the part of U.S. forces defending Pearl Harbor, yet also raised the question: HOW? How had his enormity come to happen?

In hindsight, it was obvious: a daring, extremely risky exposure of the cream of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s forces far into the sphere of United States Navy control to permit hundreds of aircraft to attack unready and unprotected military targets on Oahu. So obvious, in fact, that for the previous decade such a scenario was taught in classes at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, and at least three major naval war games around the Hawaiian Islands in the 1930’s were based upon that premise.

With diplomatic negotiations between the United States and Japan unravelling in late 1941, and with Japan’s history of unannounced, preemptive attacks followed by a declaration of war (China, 1894; Russia, 1905) the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 certainly seems to have been a foregone conclusion. So why were the U.S. military forces caught off guard?

Over the years there has been a vociferous minority view that the whole thing was a setup by the U.S. government in order to get the United States into the “hot war” of World War II. In retrospect, there are many acts and events that do seem hard to understand, notably the failure to prepare the forces on Hawaii for the real possibility of an attack. But it is never quite explained how the Japanese were gulled into acting as American stooges for their own ultimate defeat. (Unexplained as well is how allowing the vast bulk of the U.S. Pacific fleet to be disabled or destroyed would confer an advantage upon the U.S. in waging a Pacific war.)

However in the past decade, we have a fresh example of how a devastating enormity can happen even in the face of self-evident intelligence data with clearly interpretable information as to an enemy’s intentions. No credible observer has seriously proposed that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were intentionally permitted to occur. It is not believable that the government of a free and open, democratic republic, would blithely allow such a spectacular horror to happen. Whatever the motives, no government would be likely to accept such losses, if only because such a scale of death and destruction would not be needed to justify whatever aims were allegedly being sought.

The notion that the astronomically vast amounts of intelligence data preceding either 9/11 or Pearl Harbor were “self-evident” or “clearly interpretable” can only come form that most well-focussed of lenses, hindsight. Once the inconceivable has happened, it’s obvious. And while both the attack on Pearl Harbor and the possibility of terrorist attacks using commercial aircraft were literally conceived of, the real debility in predicting either attack was simply this: whatever was imagined that our enemies could do was blunted by our expectation of what they would do. Just as very few analysts imagined that terrorists would be so reckless as to attack the Unites States within its borders, very few analysts in 1941 imagined that Imperial Japan would be so suicidal as to draw the United States into a hot war.

The lesson that should be learned from these two catastrophes is that it is insufficient to think about what one’s enemies are likely to do, it is necessary to examine and expect the worst they can do. Not so very pleasant a message for this season when Christians celebrate the birth of The Prince of Peace. But this is the lesson of history, if only we could learn from history.

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Jamie Rawson
Flower Mound, Texas

The Stories Of Two Christmas Classics

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This is a pair of tales well suited to Christmas Eve, but I do hope few of us will be tending to our electronic tethers on such a day, though many will be, of course. Whatever one makes of the religious significance of the day, we all need a day off now and then, and these days most of our holidays seem somehow to involve some work. So relax, and enjoy the day if you can. In the spirit of the season, I offer the following tales of the unusual origins of two Christmas Classics. True, it’s fairly long, but many a good tale suffers when abbreviated, so here goes:

Surely it can come as no surprise that many well-known and greatly-loved Christmas carols received their first performance on Christmas Eve. I feel fairly certain that most all of us have, at one time or another, heard the famous and wonderful tale of how Silent Night was composed 200 years ago come this Christmas Eve under stressful circumstances on Christmas Eve of 1818 in the tiny hamlet of Oberndorf, Austria by the parish priest, Josef Mohr, and the church organist, Franz Gruber. But it bears repeating:

Stille Nacht, “Silent Night”, a simple, lullaby-like melody, may be the most beloved Christmas song in all the world. It has been translated into more than 200 languages, and it has been played and sung in almost limitless variety, from soloists on penny-whistles to massed symphony orchestras, sung by small children learning their first song or by famous artists at the top of their careers. And the powerful appeal of Silent Night comes through time and time again, no matter the presentation. (Well, personally, I draw the line at those irritating “musical” Christmas cards with out-of-tune, 7-note range straining to play Silent Night on a tiny, tinny piezo-electric speaker, and which, thankfully, seem to have been eclipsed by superior technology … but I digress …)

In a tale that might have been written by Horatio Alger, the creation of Silent Night features no famous composers, no publishers of widely read musical periodicals, no locally famous poets, and no well-known singers to give the premiere. The story is, in fact, as plain and unadorned as the beautiful melody and simple words of the song itself.

A few facts about Silent Night are now clearly known: the original German words were written by Josef Mohr, curate of the tiny parish church in Oberndorf, Austria. Fittingly, the church was dedicated to Saint Nicholas! The melody was composed by Franz Gruber, an organist and music teacher in a nearby village. The song was first performed for midnight mass at the little church in Oberndorf, accompanied only by guitar, Christmas Eve of 1818. The graceful melody was composed by Gruber in a matter of a few hours after Mohr had approached him early in the day on Christmas Eve. After almost two centuries of digging, these facts consistently bear up to scrutiny.

It was not always so. For decades the authorship of the song was unknown, and there was a great deal of serious speculation that the touching melody must have been created by a widely known musical genius such as Mozart, Haydn, or Beethoven. The lyrics were thought to be a Tyrolean folk song. This misunderstanding arose because sometime about 1820 or 1821, master organ builder Karl Mauracher journeyed to Oberndorf to maintain and expand the organ in the small parish church. During his time in Oberndorf, Mauracher either heard or simply read Stille Nacht. In any case, when he returned to his home in the Ziller Valley, he took with him a copy of the words and music, very likely with the permission of Father Mohr.

In the Ziller Valley, as elsewhere in the Tyrol, there were many families who made their living as travelling singers (one thinks of the Trapp Family Singers of The Sound Of Music fame.) Mauracher shared Stille Nacht with some of these clans, and it quickly began to spread across the Tyrol, and then across the German-speaking heart of Europe. The first recorded performance was in Leipzig in 1832, and the song was simply identified as a “Tiroler Lied,” a Tyrolean song. As the song became more and more popular, people began to speculate about its origins. Everyone wanted to know who had written this wonderful song.

By the mid-1830s, French and Italian translations of the work appeared. In 1839, the song was first sung in the United States near Trinity Church by Wall Street in lower Manhattan. In the 1840s, the King of Prussia was so moved by the song that he launched a search for its authors. Several people claimed to have written the work, but for various reasons these claims were obviously unsupportable. Respected academics now entered into the speculation. Josef Mohr died in 1848 without ever learning of the quest to discover the authors of Stille Nacht. When friends informed Franz Gruber that no less a personage than the King of Prussia wanted to find out who had written Silent Night, he penned a letter to the authorities in Berlin describing the origins of the song and asserting his authorship. Sadly, Gruber’s claim was dismissed as so many others had been. The legitimate author’s clam had been obscured by a sea of false claimants.

But soon, the researchers who followed up on the claims were able to verify the details of Gruber’s letter: names, dates, and locations all checked out. Karl Mauracher also revealed that he had copied the song in Oberndorf in 1820 or 1821. In 1854, after much debate, the authorship was finally fixed upon Gruber and Mohr, though some quarters continued to dispute the matter until an original manuscript copy of the music to Stille Nacht was discovered in 1997! The work is in Mohr’s hand, and his notation includes: “Melodie von Fra. Xav. Gruber.” This document has been confirmed to date from 1820 (it is not the first draft from 1818) and so it predates all other possible claimants’ versions, confirming beyond doubt Gruber and Mohr’s authorship.

But with the question of authorship finally settled, various myths grew up about the origins of the song, some more fanciful than others. The most common story concerns the supposed fact that on the morning of Christmas Eve, 1818, Father Mohr discovered that the organ of his church was broken beyond the abilities of local craftsmen to restore. The details in this tale can be amazingly precise; one version has the organ’s bellows being eaten away by mice! According to this tale, Father Mohr rushed to his friend Franz Gruber with a poem he dashed off for the occasion to have Gruber set it to music, and write it for guitar and choir.

Once Hollywood got hold of this basic legend, more details were added, with romances, scheming businessmen, and all sorts of stock characters populating the screen and television versions of the myth. Yet it is all so unnecessary: there is really no reason to add color to the story, for it stands by itself, in no need of adornment.

Josef Mohr said he wrote the words of Stille Nacht in 1816, before he had been posted to Oberndorf. Franz Gruber wrote that Mohr did indeed come to him the morning of Christmas Eve 1818 to ask if he could set his poem to music for guitar and choir. Gruber also wrote that he created the desired song in a matter of hours. There is no reason to doubt this account, and there is no mention of a broken organ or mice or any Hollywood trappings. The organ could have been out of order, of course, but no one now can say for sure. I suspect that part of the story arose from Karl Mauracher’s involvement. The song’s origin is no less moving, nor less inspiring, for the fact that Father Mohr simply loved guitar music.

To me it is rather inspiring that a young priest with no particular literary talent, and a small-town organist who was unknown outside his locality combined to create one of the best-loved and most widely performed, most frequently heard songs in all the world. Whatever inspired Mohr to pen the poem, and whatever inspired Gruber to devise so perfect a melody so quickly are now beyond our ability to know. But as I say, the story need no mythologizing; the truth stands on its own.

STILLE NACHT

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles schläft, einsam wacht
Nur das traute, hochheilige Paar,
Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh’!
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh’!

John Freeman Young, second Episcopal Bishop of Florida from 1867 until his death in 1885, created the English translation most widely sung today:

SILENT NIGHT

Silent night, Holy night,
All is calm, all is bright,
‘Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.

Another well-loved Christmas carol has an equally unlikely and interesting history. This is the tale of how O Holy Night, came to be.

On 3 December 1847, the Curé (“cure-EH,” the pastor of the Church) of Roquemaure, a small wine-trading city on the banks of the river Rhone in the South of France, approached one of the town’s most reputable wine-traders, Placide Cappeau; Monsieur Cappeau had been the official inspector of wines as well as mayor of the town and he had a local reputation as a poet. The Curé, Eugene Nicolas, (appropriately, we find “Nicholas” again and again in these tales!) was in charge of the local parish church in Roquemaure. He had an unusual request for Cappeau: he wished for Cappeau to create a poem celebrating the birth of Jesus, a poem which could be incorporated into the upcoming Christmas services.

This request was unusual because Cappeau was a decidedly odd choice to seek a Christmas poem from: he was a “Voltairean” (we might call him a secular humanist today) who rarely attended services, and who entertained great questions about religion in general and Christianity in specific. His reputation as a poet, however, encouraged Père Nicolas to approach him. Cappeau was initially disinclined to honor the Curé’s request. He felt thoroughly unqualified to undertake such a task. But a few days later, as he journeyed from Roquemaure to Paris, on the road between Macon and Dijon, he experienced a sense of inspiration and began writing. By the time his coach had reached Paris, Cappeau was convinced that he had a poem that was worthy of a great musical setting.

Cappeau had made the acquaintance of eminent civil engineer Pierre Laurey when Laurey and his wife Emily resided in Roquemaure during the construction of a suspension bridge across the Rhone. The Laureys lived in Paris where Emily Laurey was a singer of some skill who was well known to the famed comic opera composer Adolphe Adam. Adam had originally aimed to become a composer of serious opera, but his attempts had met with no success, while his humorous operas and ballets such as Le Postillon de Longjumeau, (1836) and Giselle (1841) earned him both fame and fortune. His reputation for devising light-hearted and spirited tunes grew, even as he more strongly desired to create a more profound legacy.

Cappeau arranged to be introduced to Adam. He hoped to pursuade Adam to set his poem, Minuit Chrétiens (“Midnight, Christians”) to suitable music. Adam and Cappeau met, it is said, in a Parisian Cafe about six days before Christmas, 1847. Their conversation was not recorded at the time, and the later accounts of it differ. But a few details remain consistent, and seem believable enough to be convincing: Adam admired Cappeau’s verses, and approved their sentiments, but he insisted that he could not be the one to set such stirring words to music. For one thing, Adam pointed out, he was a composer of light, diverting fare, and not one to create powerful, religious music. Too, Adam insisted that he was too busy to undertake even a small additional commission at the time. It is sometimes alleged, that, finally, Adam felt he had an overwhelming argument that could trump any persuasion that Cappeau attempted: Adam pointed out that he was himself Jewish, and did not celebrate Christmas nor did he acknowledge Christ as the Redeemer and Son of God.

This is a truly fascinating irony, and it makes for such a wonderfully good tale that it is often repeated, and I myself have repeated it in previous postings of this story. Unfortunately, I had propagated an apparent myth. A splendid notion is vaporized by a persistent fact: Adolphe Adam was buried with a Catholic service in the Cemetery of Montmarte in Paris; his obituary in La France Musicale of May 4, 1856, reads:

Les obsèques de M. Adolphe Adam auront lieu lundi 5 mai, à 11 heures, en l’église de Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, sa paroisse.

(The funeral of Monsieur Adolphe Adam will be held Monday, May 5, in the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, his parish.)

It is also noteworthy that neither of Adam’s two memoirs make any mention of Jewish heritage or Jewish faith. His near contemporary biographer, Arthur Pougin, makes no mention of Adam’s religious affiliations in his 1877 book about Adam, nor does Baker’s Biographical Dictionary Of Musicians in the 3rd edition of 1919. Since these sources are both closer in time to Adam, and come from an era when a person’s religious association was generally considered far more “newsworthy” than it usually is today, it seems odd, if Adam were Jewish, that all of these sources would make no mention of it. And the 1995 edition of The Oxford Companion To Music is similarly silent. So I conclude, based on a good deal of follow-up research, that Adam was not, in fact, Jewish.

So how did this fable start? Well, for one thing, it just makes for a darned good, ironic tale. But another, somewhat more chilling possibility exists. According to The Oxford Companion To Music, in the 1930s, one French bishop after another banned Adam’s setting of Cappeau’s poem – known in in France as Un Cantique de Noel – from their sees. These bishops were among the most reactionary churchmen of their day, and at a time when Fascism was firmly established at France’s three major borders, it seems they were capitalizing on a wave of anti-Jewish sentiment to ban a tune which had “vulgar” origins. Claiming that Adam was Jewish simply furthered their aims.

In any case, in 1847, Adam was somewhat reluctant to turn his talents to religious music, for he had no experience in the field. There was no way he could hope to compose an appropriate melody for Cappeau’s words. But Cappeau continued to press him, and he assured Adam that he had the gifts necessary to do justice to the poem. Apparently, this argument won over Adolphe Adam; in any case, he agreed to set Cappeau’s poem to music. Three days later, Adam had the finished drafts of Un Cantique de Noël, (simply: “A Song of Christmas”) ready for performance. Cappeau invited the Laureys to return to Roquemaure with him so that Emily could debut the new song at the Midnight Mass in Roquemaure. They joined him on his journey.

The premiere of Un Cantique de Noël, was an instant success. Word of the new and haunting Christmas song spread quickly through the South of France, and by Christmas of 1848, Un Cantique de Noël was being sung in Paris, and from Cherbourg to Grasse, Strasbourg to Toulon. One popular musical magazine declared that Cappeau and Adam had written “La Marseillaise religieuse,” a religious national anthem. The song was enthusiastically embraced in churches throughout France, and its popularity in France has never faded, though, strangely enough, as early as 1850, senior clerics in France were criticizing the song as being “unmusical” and “without religious spirit.”

One wonders how such a claim could be made:

Minuit, chrétiens, c’est l’heure solennelle,
Où l’Homme-Dieu descendit jusqu’à nous
Pour effacer la tache originelle
Et de Son Père arrêter le courroux.
Le monde entier tressaille d’espérance
En cette nuit qui nous donne un Sauveur.
Peuple à genoux, attends ta délivrance.
Noël, Noël, voici le Rédempteur,
Noël, Noël, voici le Rédempteur!

Midnight, Christians, it is the solemn hour,
Where the God-made-man descends among us
To erase the original sin
And with his Father halts the damage.
The whole world expects in hope
On this night when we are given a savior.
People, on your knees, await your deliverance!
Christmas, Christmas, here comes the Redeemer!
Christmas, Christmas, here comes the Redeemer!

By 1856, a former Unitarian minister from Massachusetts, John Sullivan Dwight, had heard the beautiful song and he determined that it needed to be brought to America. Dwight was the founder and publisher of Dwight’s Journal Of Music, which would become the most influential musical publication in 19th Century America. As a leading music critic in the United States, Dwight continually looked for new music from Europe that would appeal to an American aesthetic. When he came upon Un Cantique de Noël, Dwight was sure he had discovered something that simply had to be published in America. As a Unitarian and ardent abolitionist, Dwight was especially moved by the words of the third verse of the song:

Le Rédempteur a brise toute entrave,
La Terre est libre et le Ciel est ouvert.
Il voit un frère où n’était qu’un esclave,
L’amour unit ceux qu’enchainait le fer.

The Redeemer has broken every shackle,
The Earth is free and Heaven is open.
He sees a brother where was not but a slave,
Love unites those whom iron enchains.

The familiar English words which we today know as O Holy Night are Dwight’s translation. Because he faithfully translated Cappeau’s anti-slavery sentiments, Dwight’s O Holy Night was unpopular in the South, and one large and influential Southern church convention officially forbade its use in their churches. This ban was formally lifted only within surprisingly recent memory, but was no more effective in Dixieland than it had been in France. The beauty of the song naturally endeared it to listeners despite its anti-slavery bent.

O Holy Night!

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining;
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born!
O night, O holy night, O night divine!

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His Gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother
And in His Name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy Name!
Christ is the Lord! O praise His name forever!
His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim!
His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim!

Thus was written one of the most touching and beautiful of Christmas songs, by a most unlikely trio of an agnostic, a comic opera composer, and a Transcendentalist. That its authors were so diverse in no way detracts from the song and its message. Indeed, it seems to me, such a stunningly beautiful product of such an unlikely grouping makes the song and its sentiments all the more universal.

SOURCES:

I had no idea of just how interesting the tale of O Holy Night was when I started researching it. I wondered, since Silent Night is so well-known, whether there might be something worth telling about O Holy Night. I quickly learned that Dwight was a Unitarian – I am always fascinated to find how much American Christmas music has been written by Unitarians – and I thought that was a possible point of interest. As I read further, I discovered that the tale was even more interesting than I had ever imagined.

Most descriptions of the history of this beloved Christmas carol are too brief to offer the depth that I have tried to provide. To learn the details of this tale, I had to look at many websites. There are really too many to list, but a search for “Cantique de Noel” and/or “O Holy Night” and/or “Adolphe Adam” and/or “Placide Cappeau” should provide ample data. However, to further fill in the details of the story I had to look into several French language websites. A search for “Minuit Chrétien” should provide a great deal of information. Any errors in the above details are most likely due to my own limitations in reading the French of these sites:

About Adam: “http://www.musimem.com/adam.htm”

About Cappeau: “http://www.nemausensis.com/Gard/cappeau.htm”

The translations contained herein are my doing; if there are mistakes or corrections that need to be made, I would gladly receive them. I have done my level best to provide an accurate and documentable account of this fascinating tale, and I would be pleased to ensure even greater accuracy. I had far rather be right than consistent!)

While there are several websites in both English and French which repeat the tale of Adam as Jewish, I cannot find one which offers independent verification (other than links to similarly undocumented sites!)

For more detail about Adam’s non-Jewishness, there are several reputable sources which make the tale implausible by complete absence of the topic; the ones I have referenced above are:

Adolphe Adam, Sa Vie, Ca Carriere: Ses Memoires Artistiques; Arthur Pougin, G. Charpentier – Paris, 1877; (Available on Google Books.)

Baker’s Biographical Dictionary Of Musicians, 3rd edition; Alfred Remy, ed.: G. Schirmer, 1919; (Available on Google Books.)

The Oxford Companion To Music, 10th edition; John Owen Ward, ed.: Oxford University Press, 1995; ISBN: 0193113066

Sources for Silent Night include the D’Aulaire’s 1994 article in the December edition of Reader’s Digest, the above mentioned Oxford Companion, and innumerable Christmas songbooks as well as numerous, well-documented websites, including Oberndorf’s informative official site which offers its presentation many languages:

About Oberndorf “http://stillenacht-oberndorf.at/en/start/index.asp”

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Jamie Rawson
Flower Mound, Texas

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

The Dawn Of The Nuclear Age

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On this day in 1942, underneath the bleachers of the unused Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, Enrico Fermi produced the first man-made nuclear chain reaction. The crucial hurdle to making use of the potential of nuclear power had been leapt.

Fermi had received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938. Though Mussolini’s fascist government had forbidden Fermi to leave the country, he was granted a special exit visa so that he could attend the prize ceremony in Stockholm for the glory of Italy.

Fermi took advantage of the trip to defect to the United States. He was not merely opposed to the fascist ideology, he had a more pressing, personal concern: his wife was Jewish, and Hitler’s Germany had been pressing Italy to address its “Jewish Problem.”

The institutionalized intolerance and oppressive actions of the fascist regimes in Italy and Germany cost both countries many of their best and brightest scientists. The flight of these scientists to the freedom of America permitted the United States to develop the first nuclear weapons. And though such awful weapons be loathesome, surely it would have been a ghastly world in which Hitler developed nuclear weapons first.

Dogmatic oppression weakens even powerful, militaristic regimes; Freedom truly is strength.

Jamie Rawson
Flower Mound, Texas

Taking A Stand

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Can one individual make a difference? In our vast and complicated world, can the actions of one person make any impact at all? Of course the answer is a resounding yes!

It was fifty-six years ago this very day, on 1 December 1955, that the late Rosa Parks took her stand by keeping her seat, and thereby changed America.

In 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, city ordinance and state law required that black citizens must take seats at the back of public busses. Adding further insult to this burden, blacks were also required to yield their seats in the restricted section of the bus if a white person wished to sit down.

Coming home from work on the evening of 1 December 1955, 42 year old Rosa Parks was tired. She had taken a seat in the first row of the restricted section of a Montgomery city bus. When the front section filled up, a white man – no “Southern Gentleman,” he – demanded that Parks give up her seat.

Over the years, the precise reason for Rosa Parks refusal to do so has been told and retold in varying versions, but it seems certain that she was basically tired; she was tired from a long day at her job, and more: she was tired of the blatant injustice and unfairness of the Montgomery ordinances and Alabama laws.

Parks’ decision to keep her seat was made on the spur of the moment, it seems, but she had already become involved in the nascent Civil Rights movement and challenging the bus rules had been discussed at meetings which Parks attended. Nevertheless, she was completely alone that chilly December evening in 1955 when she defied the system. She was arrested and jailed.

Almost immediately leaders of the Civil Rights movement called for a boycott of Montgomery city busses. This boycott had a seriously negative impact on the city bus service, for black citizens had accounted for almost three-fourths of the ridership! The boycott lasted for more than a year, ending after a Supreme Court ruling in the wake of which Montgomery finally declared that city busses were no longer to be segregated. The boycott had another impact as well: in coordinating the boycott and rallying Alabama’s black citizens to the cause of Civil Rights, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rose to the forefront of the movement, and became a national and international leader and spokesman for Civil Rights.

Rosa Parks did not achieve her victory alone, of course. Millions of people were involved. But her act of defiance, her refusal to bend to an absurd, unfair, and hugely unjust law, and her personal courage did change the world. That change is still on-going, and Rosa Parks was not the only individual whose courage had an impact. But Rosa Parks, as one solitary individual, did make a difference.

Think of Rosa Parks today. She always said that she did not consider herself to be a titan, just a plain, ordinary person who simply took a stand; but what a profound chain of events was sparked by her spontaneous courage! Yes, others deserve our respect and honor as well, but Rosa Parks made a difference and in her own small way helped o make an immense change in the world ever after. Toast her courage and her achievements. And, perhaps, think of how you will change the world!

Jamie Rawson
Flower Mound, Texas

A 3-Minute Speech With A 148-Year Impact

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On Thursday November 19, 1863 — 148 years ago this day — in the small, war-battered Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln delivered the renowned “Gettysburg Address.”

The occasion was the dedication of the battlefield cemetery which was to be the final resting place of more than 6,000 casualties from the fierce fighting that took place from July 1 – 3 that year. The Civil War Battle of Gettysburg proved to be the decisive turning point of that great war; Lincoln’s brief speech proved to be a turning point in the development of this great nation.

Lincoln was a man of great personal courage, drive, vision, and oratorical skill, and a savvy-enough politician to know that his speech which extolled not merely the dead, but the sacred cause they died for, had certain political risks. But he delivered the speech because he felt that it was necessary.

In a day and age when orators were valued for the lengths of their speeches, Lincoln’s address was a mere jot; it lasted less than 3 minutes. Some of those present were unimpressed by the speech, and there is a popular tale that claims the speech was scorned by the audience, but there is no evidence that this was so. True, one can find editorials written after that day which criticize the speech, but these were from distinctly anti-Lincoln papers. The vast majority of pieces written about the speech were decidedly positive. The renowned orator Edward Everett who preceded Lincoln that day, said to Lincoln, “I wish I had come as near to capturing the meaning of today in two hours as you did in two minutes.”

The United States survived that war as a stronger nation, and one that was more truly free, though there was and is more work to be done.

In September of 2003 I visited the Lincoln Memorial with a colleague. He took the time to read both the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address which are carved into the stone walls on the memorial. After he had finished he observed: “Maybe if I knew more history, I wouldn’t despair so much for the present.” And I have to think that in times such as these it is more important than ever to look back upon Lincoln, his vision, his courage, and remember that there is reason to be hopeful for our future. Always.

I know you’ve read it and heard many times before, but I think it does bear repeating:

LINCOLN’S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

— Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s message remains meaningful even to this very day.

Jamie Rawson
Flower Mound, Texas

If I turn my enemy into my friend, have I not slain my enemy?

— Lincoln

FURTHER READING:

More books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than any other figure in American history except, perhaps, Benjamin Franklin. My own small collection of Lincoln books runs to 17 volumes, some fairly hefty. In 1992, Garry Wills published Lincoln At Gettysburg about Lincoln’s most famous speech. This treatment started something of a trend, and subsequently several historians have published books devoted to just a single one of Lincoln’s speeches or proclamtions. Herewith, my own sampling:

Lincoln At Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, Garry Wills; Simon & Schuster, 1992: ISBN: 0671769561

This is a detailed history of Lincoln’s speech and its impact. Wills includes analysis of the speech from the perspective of 19th Century oratorical standards, and he discusses the effect of Lincoln’s brief and concise style upon later oratorical trends. The other speeches delivered at Gettysburg that day are included in the extensive appendices.

Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural, Ronald C. White, Jr.; Simon & Schuster, 2002: ISBN: 0743212983

White examines Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, and assesses its unique place among all of Lincoln’s speeches; it was, as Frederick Douglass observed, “more like a sermon than a state paper.” This relatively short book (about 200 pages) is by no means the last word on this important speech, but White provides an interesting and thought provoking contribution to the discussion of Lincoln’s speeches.

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End Of Slevery In America, Allen G. Guelzo; Simon & Schuster, 2004: ISBN: 0743221826

Guelzo received the Lincoln Prize for his 2000 biography of Lincoln. This work, despite its rather glib subtitle, is by no means so simple as to assume that Lincoln’s proclamation actully itself ended slavery. Indeed, Guelzo looks carefully at the politics which influenced the proclamation, and the results, both political and social, which the proclamation produced.

Lincoln At Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President, Harold Holzer; Simon & Schuster, 2004: ISBN: 0743224663

Because Lincoln’s speech at Cooper Union in February 1860 has faded from modern memory, Holzer felt it was time to give a book-length treatment of the speech which Lincoln and his contemporaries identified as the one that gained him his party’s nomination. The speech contains many well-known Lincoln quotations, but its overall importance is given its due in the entertaining and enlightening work. I like Holzer’s emphasis on Lincoln’s political courage in carrying his campaign platform into New York City and the heart of his rival William Seward’s strong home base. (I obviously admire Lincoln’s political courage.)

The “Real” First President? Washington, Of Course!

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In yesterday’s posting I offered:

SOMETHING TO PONDER: who really deserves to be known as “The First President of The United States of America?”

Is it George Washington, who served as the first president under the present Constitution? That’s what is usually said, and with excellent reason: George Washington was indeed the first chief executive of The United States, for no such position existed under The Articles.

But what about the first holder of the office of President to serve a full term after The Articles were ratified in March of 1781? Or, for that matter, what about the first holder of the office after The Articles were ratified, whether or not he served a full term? How about the man who held the title when The Articles were adopted in 1777? Consider as well the first holder of the title “President” when the United Colonies became the United States? And, while every American school child knows of George Washington, who were these other folks?

I would be most neglectful if I failed to offer up the names in question.

The first holder of the title “The President Of The United States In Congress Assembled,” who served a full term after the ratification of The Articles Of Confederation And Perpetual Union, was Maryland’s John Hanson, whose name sometimes shows up as a trivia contest spoiler in answer to “Who was the first president of the Unites States?”

Hanson is offered as the “first” because he was the first holder of that title to use it in official correspondence with other nations. But note that Hanson and the others above were each president of Congress, and not an executive of any sort, and not at all “president” in the sense we know the office today. The President of Congress was basically a super-committee-chair, who managed the meetings of Congress (and therefore had some power in setting the agenda) but whose position was more akin to the modern Speaker Of The House, though less powerful, actually. As I say, the office had no executive powers. (Look at the title itself: a president *presides*. Before the United States adopted its present tripartite government, no notion of executive function was associated with the title of president. The framers of the present constitution, in fact, struggled with what to call the chief executive of the new government: some favored “Consul,” after the highest office in the Roman Republic [and upon which our presidency was modeled] while others suggested “First Minister.” Finally, the more egaliterian-sounding “President” was selected, suggesting an office of lesser potency than the Constitution gave it [can you say “spin”?] And in a rare linguistic evolution, the word grew in importance to mean most any chief executive [rare because words’ meanings more often decline in importance in common usage.])

But Hanson was the third holder of the title “The President Of The United States In Congress Assembled” to serve after The Articles were ratified. Samuel Huntington of Connecticut served at the time that Maryland ratified The Articles and at last made them the binding constitution of the Land.

South Carolina’s Henry Laurens was President at the time that Congress approved The Articles, 15 November 1777. He later spent time imprisoned in The Tower Of London as a traitor when the ship upon which he was sailing to Europe was captured by the Royal Navy. Though he was acting with diplomatic status, Britain did not recognize it. He was redeemed in an exchange of British and American prisoners after Yorktown. Laurens was traded for General Cornwallis, which shows how highly the British valued him at the time. After he was freed, Laurens served in the peace talks ending the Revolutionary War, though his son – a great friend of Alexander Hamilton – was killed in a skirmish during the relative lull between Yorktown and the final peace.

And last, but not least – and I am sure you know this one – the first person to hold the title of President at the time The United Colonies transformed into The United States, by means of an unprecedented declaration of independence, was none other than John Hancock, whose big, bold signature (“I want fat George to be able to read it without his glasses!”) on The Declaration Of Independence is so familiar that folks to this day use “my John Hancock” as slang for “my signature.”

So there are a few of history’s footnotes. More food for thought.

Jamie Rawson
Flower Mound, Texas

Always do more than is required of you. — George S. Patton

The United States Get A Government: The Articles Of Confederation

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If you learned all your American History in an American high school, this subject was probably glossed over in a paragraph or two, being seen as either unimportant or embarrassing. Who wants to know that these United States stumbled and very nearly fell before they truly took off on their path to world prominence? Or to admit that this virtuous and temperate nation played fast and loose with its creditors, and little adhered to the very alliance by which it was born? Then again, what child matures to adulthood without its adolescent errors? And, more, what erring youth ever so quickly righted its faults?

It was on this date in 1777 that the Continental Congress formally adopted The Articles of Confederation, the first constitution of the newly formed United States of America (final ratification would not be completed for another three and a half years.) Most importantly, The Articles provided for a perpetual union; this idea shows up no fewer than six times in The Articles, including right in the preamble. The Articles clearly envisioned the growth of the new nation, and allowed additional colonial territories to be admitted to the union if nine of the original thirteen colonies gave consent. There was an explicit exception to this clause: Canada was to be permitted to join the United States automatically whenever she might choose to!

The articles provided for a notably weak central government, for the colonists feared creating a new King, and they placed the key powers with the states. Within a decade the manifest problems with the Articles would prompt a call for a major revision of them, which in turn led to the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

One aspect of The Articles which proved to look good in principle but which turned out very poorly in practice was widespread limitations on time in office. With the aim to keep any one man or group from acquiring significant power, the limitations for service were quite short, and very restrictive as to repeat service: three years for the delegates to the unicameral Congress, one year for the President, and no office holder could immediately follow himself or his successor in that office. The authors of The Articles believed that such restrictions would ensure that no one gained significant power (largely true, in fact) and thereby would ensure “good” government (which turned out to be untrue.) The frequent turnover of officials meant that at any given time, only a few members of the government were experienced (imagine running a major corporation with 66% of the management being newhires!) The result was that The Articles government was barely functional. Foreign powers despaired of accomplishing anything with the new nation. A Spanish diplomat observed that European nations delayed and stalled to gain advantage, while America simply delayed and stalled.

Perhaps worse still for the long-range prospects of the country, the newly organized United States were particularly bad about repaying the massive war debts they had accrued during the revolution, because the central government had no power to tax, only to request funds from the individual states. This inability to tax was designed to keep the central government quite weak, and it was successful in attaining that goal. Too successful. In London, John Adams noted that America was not taken seriously in Europe, save among a few intellectuals; from Paris, Thomas Jefferson observed that he had been unable “to discover the smallest token of respect for the United States in any part of Europe.” The reason? Bad credit.

The United States still owed France for the tens of millions of pounds that were borrowed during the revolution, some of which was never repaid (the rapidly deteriorating political situation in France at that time being a convenient excuse to avoid the obligation, though amends were later made by the United States’ powerful support of France through two World Wars.) Ironically, the United States were better about settling up with all other creditors, though it was France and France alone who made the revolution possible with her generous loans and outright gifts. More than 70% of the money borrowed to fund the American revolution was French (the Americans disliked the notion of collecting taxes to support their war, and preferred to borrow from European allies, much to France’s understandable dismay.) It would take Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury, to set the new nation on a sound financial footing by honoring its debts, but by that time France’s own revolution was in full swing – a revolution in part fomented by the financial strain the American Revolution had put upon France’s treasury – and France’s revolutionary government was quite uncertain and quite unpredictable.

Frequent turnover and turmoil, plus bad credit seriously reduced the effectiveness of the United States government under The Articles. Even with these significant debilities, however, much was accomplished under the Articles of Confederation, including the peace treaty with Britain ending the Revolution and recognizing full independence.

Perhaps the greatest, most enduring accomplishment under the Articles was the Great Northwest Ordinance which organized the territory that became the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Importantly, The Ordinance provided for the establishment of new states that would become co-equal with the original thirteen. Such a granting of equal power to newly settled lands was unprecedented in history, and represents a key contribution of the Articles government to the current form and character of the United States.

And the Ordinance also left an indelible mark upon the American landscape. The newly organized lands were to be surveyed and divided into parcels of square miles and sub-parcels of quarter square miles (“quartersections.”) This division of the land is clearly visible from the air when one flys over the old Northwest Territory, and it’s also apparent in some of the unimaginative yet descriptive road names one finds in, say, Michigan: Five Mile Road, Six Mile Road and so forth.

This parceling out of the land was so useful, and so successful, that it was carried on into the lands of the Louisiana Purchase, and so a vast swath of the United States displays, when viewed from the air, a regular, square, and very extensive pattern of roads and property lines. Though as you head north or south, about every ten miles you’ll encounter a small east/west jog in the otherwise straight road: the surveyors had to adjust for the longitude at regular intervals.

Though the Articles of Confederation lasted barely ten years, they paved the way for America as we know it today. And though the Perpetual Union that the Articles established was sorely tested in the 1860’s, it nevertheless endured, and does to this day, in large measure because Abraham Lincoln and his supporters took the notion of Perpetual Union very seriously. We still have our mile-square real estate lines, and we still have our Union and its government. I appreciate the landscape, and I cherish these United States.

Jamie Rawson
Flower Mound, Texas

If you don’t know history, you don’t know anything.
You’re a leaf that doesn’t know it’s part of a tree.

— Michael Crighton

SOMETHING TO PONDER: who really deserves to be known as “The First President of The United States of America?”

Is it George Washington, who served as the first president under the present Constitution? That’s what is usually said, and with excellent reason: George Washington was indeed the first chief executive of The United States, for no such position existed under The Articles.

But what about the first holder of the office of President to serve a full term after The Articles were ratified in March of 1781? Or, for that matter, what about the first holder of the office after The Articles were ratified, whether or not he served a full term? How about the man who held the title when The Articles were adopted in 1777? Consider as well the first holder of the title “President” when the United Colonies became the United States? And, while every American school child knows of George Washington, who were these other folks?

Think about it …

Remembering Veterans On Armistice Day

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AT 11:00am on 11 November 1918, an armistice took effect which effectively ended World War I – or “The Great War” as it was then known. The world had never seen carnage on such an immense, global scale. So great were the number of the dead that Europeans basically abandoned the ancient traditions of open mourning, of donning black and retiring from society for a term, because virtually every family had lost someone, and so much ritual mourning could not be sustained, neither emotionally nor economically.

Too, the world had never seen valor on such a scale; a mere parade would not do to honor the people who had served in “The War To End All Wars.” And so throughout the world, a day of remembrance was instituted. In the United States it was originally called Armistice Day. But the hopeful epithet, “The War To End All Wars,” has proven too hopeful, and as we well know, many, many wars followed, including the far vaster enormity of World War II. In the wake of that conflict and others, the United States renamed the holiday “Veterans Day,” to include ALL who have served.

While we do rightly deplore war, it is nevertheless still a human reality, and I am deeply grateful to those who have served in the military and uniformed services. For all that some conflicts may stir political and social upheaval, and for all that some conflicts may seem unwise, nevertheless, those who serve do so for all of us, and they do also merit our gratitude. We in America have what we have today because our forebears not only wrote about freedom: they fought for it.

Jamie Rawson
Flower Mound, Texas

FURTHER READING:

Guns of August, Barbara W. Tuchman; Ballentine Books, 1994 ed.: ISBN: 034538623X

Absolutely EssentialL

Tuchman’s history of the start of World War I was first published in 1962. It was re-issued in 1994 on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the start of that War. This book has been called “the best history book ever written.” Masterfully researched and documented, it is as scholarly as any such work need be, yet it retains a readability — and excitement — that makes it as entertaining as any fictional thriller. Even after the passage of 50 years, this book remains essential reading for those who wish to learn about World War I.

The First World War, John Keegan; Vintage, 2000: ISBN: 0375700455

A Must

I am of the opinion that anything by Keegan is worth reading (I’ve not been wrong yet, to my way of thinking.) This is a highly readable and complete account of World War I from start to finish. Perhaps the best one-volume coverage of that war we have.

Of Interest:

In 2004, on the 90th anniversary of the start of World War I, there was a remarkable amount of publishing activity. All the following are good, but these are not aimed at the casual reader.

Europe’s Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?, David Fromkin; Knopf, 2004: ISBN: 0375411569

In this minutely researched volume, Fromkin answers his title question. The result is the well-known tragedy of a war that many wanted, but from which none saw the ultimate outcome. I must confess that though this book was well-regarded in the review I read in August 2004, I find it fairly tedious in its presentation. Scholarly, to be sure. But not an entertaining read.

Cataclysm: The First World War As Political Tragedy, David Stevenson; Basic Books, 2004: ISBN: 0465081843

This one-volume history of World War I is complete and as scholarly as can be, but at times the reading feels a bit too much like slogging along with those foot soldiers of the era, knee-deep in mud and growing ever wearier. Still, it is worth the effort, because Stevenson offers some fresh insights which offer a new perpective on the well-known truisms about World War I.

The First World War, Hew Strachan; Viking Adult, 2004: ISBN: 0670032956

Strachan’s one-volume distillation of his unfinished trilogy on World War I, this effort has many of the same virtues and limitations that I identify in Stevenson’s book: it is not “popular history” (whatever that might really be) and so it is not light reading. But it is likewise worth the effort.

The First World War: To Arms, Hew Strachan; Oxford University Press, 2003 ed.: ISBN: 0199261911

This is the first volume of a yet-to-be-completed trilogy about World War I. Strachan is a foremost authority on that war, and this book is a definitive account of the build-up to World War I. It is, however, so thorough and so comprehensive that it can be both daunting and — at times — almost tedious.

Kristallnacht

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It was 73 years ago this very day that the Nazis finally dropped all pretense and declared open warfare on Germany’s Jewish minority. After five years during which greater and greater legal debilities were placed upon the Jews by the Nazi government, all the masquerade of legality was dropped and mob violence was unleashed with the infamous Kristallnacht, or “Glassnight”, the night of shattered glass. The name derives from the smashed windows of Jewish homes and businesses, but also has a sense of breaking glass to release something, in this case the fury of bigotry.

Thousands of Jewish shops, offices, and places of business were looted and burned; tens of thousands of Jews were arrested and deported to concentration camps “for their own safety.” At least a hundred Jews were killed by the mobs than night – the actual number is likely to have been far greater – and thousands were brutally beaten or raped. No one was prosecuted for either vandalism or murder, but rapists, perversely enough, were prosecuted by the Nazis; in their racist ideology, a rapist risked contaminating the Aryan purity of German blood, and could not be tolerated!

The situation for germany’s Jews rapidly worsened after “Kristallnacht.” Jews and other “inferior races” were deported in vast numbers to labor camps and death camps. Their property was confiscated – in some cases to help pay for the damages wrought in Kristallnacht! Though these people were still tax-paying German citizens, they were stripped of all rights and protections; as Harald Wertmuller noted, “because ALL Germans wished it so.”

By the time the Nazi regime had embarked upon its program of the subjugation of all Europe, no further question of laws nor of rights arose. They had power, and they had precedent within the nation and state of Germany. Some six million Jews and six million Gypsies, Slavics, homosexuals, cripples, insane, chronically ill, and other people labelled “Undesirable” perished in the Nazi death camps. One can understand the label “Holocaust,” “all-consuming fire.”

Kristallnacht was not authorized by any law, though burdensome legal restrictions had already been emplaced upon German Jews; it was sufficient for the legally elected government to simply ignore the mob barbarity. Kristallnacht was an almost inevitable outcome of a government which progressively debased and disenfanchised its own productive citizens.

I am deeply thankful that we in the United States of America have our Constitution, which – though it irritates many – specifically protects against an unrestrained tyranny of the majority. Letting the majority have its way without limit looks pretty good … until you find yourself in the minority.

Jamie Rawson
Flower Mound, Texas