The Engine of National Growth and Prosperity

“No Irish need apply,” screamed the job ads.

 They “have no standard of morals,” thundered labor organizer, Samuel Gompers, himself a Jewish immigrant from England, attacking Chinese immigrant-workers.

 Italians came to America, “to cut throats, throw dynamite, and conduct labor riots and assassinations,” screeched anti-immigrant fearmongers.

German immigrants “are generally the most stupid sort of their own nation….and will soon outnumber us,” complained Benjamin Franklin in 1753.   Ben was grumpy because he was taking a hit in his wallet.  His printing press in Philadelphia was losing business to a German-run printing press 70 miles west at the Ephrata Cloister. 

Ben Franklin’s complaint is at the heart of hostility towards immigrants.  Every new immigrant group is accused of stealing jobs from Americans.  That fear oozes into distrust of anything “different”, whether it is skin color, language, clothing, or religion. 

Most of the earliest immigrants from Europe were Protestants, notably the joyless Puritans in New England.  Although Catholics and Jews were present, their numbers were negligible.  Thus, was born the myth that the U.S. is a “Protestant” nation.

That began changing in the 1840’s when Irish Catholics arrived by the thousands escaping starvation and economic misery caused by the potato blight.  Starvation became inevitable when landowners who controlled Parliament refused to reduce tariffs on imported agricultural products so that they could protect the profits generated from their vast farming estates.  

In the decade from 1845 to 1855, 20% of Boston became Irish. In 1884, Boston elected its first Irish mayor.  The Irish were followed by Italians, east Europeans, and Jews.  By 1900, 400,000 Bostonians from a population of 560,000 had at least one foreign-born parent. 

Boston mirrored the country. In the 1890’s, 3.7 million Europeans arrived in U.S.  From 1900 – 1910, another 7.6 million immigrants arrived.  These immigrants came for the same reasons that motivated our families to come to America.  They were seeking religious freedom, economic opportunities, escape from political oppression, or some combination of these reasons.

Europe was a mess at the end of the 19th century.  Industrialists, like modern oligarchs, used their money to ensure that laws protected their privileges and wealth, while a permanent underclass of workers lived in poverty and periodically starved.  Asia was also a mess. China’s economy never recovered from the Opium Wars of the 1840’s, when Europeans forcibly dumped copious amounts of opium and other goods on the Chinese market.   With no jobs at home, Chinese men emigrated to the U.S. where they built the western end of the transcontinental railway while sending most of their earnings home.  (Countries around the world today rely on money sent by documented and undocumented immigrants working in the U.S.)

3rd Class Berth

Europeans could buy steerage class tickets on steamships at ports in western Europe. (Many east Europeans traveling west passed through a Polish rail junction called Auschwitz.)   Steerage class was invented by steamship companies who needed a “backhaul” from Europe to the U.S., where they loaded American products bound for Europe.  Immigrants were stuffed into the holds of ships and half-starved during the two-week journey to America.  The steamship companies made profits almost as outsized as modern tech companies.

Steamship

Boston Brahmins (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) who traced their families back to the Puritans watched in alarm.  They were a living, breathing version of an Edith Wharton novel and they fretted that their “tribe” was facing extinction. 

They discovered that between 1850 and 1890, the family size for Harvard graduates shrunk by 30%; and at nearby Wellesley College, women were averaging 0.86 child per graduate.  (Economic research shows that as incomes rise, families have fewer children. In addition, girls who get an education are older before they have their first child, and they have fewer but healthier children.)

Theodore Roosevelt criticized the “willful sterility” of white Protestants which was causing a decline in white Americans.  He complained to a friend that the “Finnegans, Hoolihans, Antonios, Mandelbaums, and Rabinskis had 8 – 9 children.”   His complaint lives on in the “white replacement” fiction.

Some of the alarmed Boston Brahmins banded together in the Immigration Restriction League (IRL) in 1894. They were funded anonymously by John Murray Forbes, who had made his fortune in the Chinese opium trade.  Their mouthpiece was Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, another Boston Brahmin, who devoted his political career to passing a restrictive immigration law. 

Henry Cabot Lodge

Beginning in the 1890’s, Lodge pushed a literacy test which required immigrants to read five lines of the U.S. Constitution translated into their native language.  But the test only applied to males over the age of 16. Women were exempted to ensure there would be a steady supply of cooks and domestic servants for the Edith Wharton set. 

Not surprisingly, the steamship companies were the most vocal critics of American immigration laws.  They lavished money on lobbyists who pressured politicians at federal and state levels to vote against any restrictions on immigration. Truth, as usual, was the first casualty in the fight.  The lobbyists claimed that restricting European immigrants would mean increasing immigration of “negroes and half breeds.” 

Slowly, the nativists won. In 1882, the overtly racist Chinese Exclusion Act became law, banning all Chinese immigrants. To avoid a similar fate, in 1908, a “Gentlemen’s Agreement” with the U.S. required Japan to restrict emigration of their nationals. 

Other laws added restrictions, such as banning anarchists, epileptics, polygamists, lunatics, people with poor physiques or contagious (trachoma, tuberculosis) or loathsome (syphilis, gonorrhea, leprosy) diseases.  But even with these restrictions, only 1% of European immigrants were denied entry between 1880 – 1914.

Meanwhile, Lodge’s literacy test was splitting the Republican Party. Their infighting threw the 1912 presidential election to a misogynist and racist, Woodrow Wilson.  As a parting shot, lame duck President Howard Taft vetoed Lodge’s literacy test immigration bill.   

Wilson later vetoed another version of Lodge’s bill after someone explained to him that a sizable chunk of voters hailed from eastern and southern Europe, and some had even voted for him.  Wilson decided they were white enough to stay (and vote).  In revenge, Lodge crushed Wilson’s presidential legacy by ensuring the Senate voted against joining the League of Nations. 

Finally, in 1917, an immigration law passed with a literacy test. The test excluded children under the age of 16 or women accompanied by a literate husband or adult son.  Asians were barred entirely.  This law also gave the federal government broad authority to deport alien “radicals” even if they acquired their radical views long after arriving in the U.S.

The nativists scored their biggest victory with the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 which set an annual quota of 155,000 immigrants.  The law also set a 2% quota for each nation based on that country’s representation in the 1890 census (i.e., before millions of immigrants arrived).  A West Virginia Representative hailed the law as necessary for “keeping pure the blood of America”.

Since 1924, the U.S. has lurched through various iterations of laws restricting immigration.  Everyone agrees the system is broken but can’t agree on a solution.   Meanwhile, immigrants tend to be younger than the average American and more entrepreneurial.  They pay taxes, regardless of their immigration status, while generally being ineligible for social welfare programs, such as Food Stamps, Social Security benefits, and Medicaid.  That means, whether documented or undocumented, their labor and taxes support everyone else.   

At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, James Madison argued that immigrants were the engine of national growth and prosperity.  He was right.

To learn more about this nativist period in American history and its shocking connections to eugenics (a racist pseudoscience created in America and adopted by the Nazis), see The Guarded Gate, by Daniel Okrent (2019). 

Brave to the Edge of Destruction

It was raining and he didn’t want to get wet, so David Ruggles bought a ticket to sit inside the coach. Ruggles was something of a dandy, wearing a long, double-breasted jacket, white pants, a cravat (tie), and a stovepipe hat. He was traveling on business to sell newspaper subscriptions.

But the driver ignored his ticket and ordered him to ride outside, away from the white passengers. Ruggles refused. The coach driver dived into the coach and grabbed David, preparing to throw him out. Clothes ripped; buttons went flying. Ruggles was dragged bodily from the coach and forced to walk to his destination.

In 1833, more than one hundred years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, a black man in western Pennsylvania refused to give up his seat in a horse-drawn stagecoach. He lost because the laws and public sentiment were against him. But he wrote about the event in news articles and pamphlets. His articles opened a window on the daily injustices perpetrated against black Americans and persuaded more people to become abolitionists.

David Ruggles was brave to the edge of self-destruction. He fought fist fights, escaped from lynch mobs, was tossed off trains, canal boats, and stagecoaches, and survived the firebombing of his home and business. He never once considered backing down.

He was one of the earliest black entrepreneurs in the country, but he lived in poverty because every penny went to his cause. He ran a grocery store until a lynch mob burned it to the ground. He ran a bookstore in New York City’s Five Points neighborhood with the only reading room available to blacks until it was trashed by a racist mob. He wrote pamphlets and articles for abolition newspapers. He travelled constantly selling subscriptions to abolitionist newspapers.

It was a lonely fight. New York City and other northern cities practiced Jim Crow segregation long before the post-Civil War southern states engaged in the practice. The Five Points area in lower Manhattan was the only area where all races mixed freely and intermarried. That’s where Ruggles lived and worked as a serial entrepreneur.

Even the abolition movement was segregated in the north, with upper class whites rarely welcoming black people, regardless of income, into their own organizations. Ruggles was one of the few to cross the color line. However, his philosophy soon diverged from the white abolitionists.

In the 1830’s, white abolitionists advocated pacificism and thought the south could be persuaded to give up slavery because it would be the moral (Godly) thing to do. But they didn’t offer an alternative economic model, and besides, southerners weren’t interested in a preachy message delivered by a bunch of snotty do-gooders whose own businesses depended on the cotton and food produced by slaves.

David Ruggles knew that pacificism didn’t help black people. Federal and state laws allowed bounty hunters to come north of the Mason-Dixon Line to snatch any black person they found and smuggle them south into slavery. A variation involved kidnapping a black person and going before a judge with a fraudulent warrant or a witness to falsely swear that the defendant was an escaped slave. Northern judges tended to be pro-slavery or racist or both; most kidnapped victims ended up enslaved.

Another injustice was rampaging mobs. Black neighborhoods across the north were repeatedly devastated by racist mobs while the police stood by or joined in the attacks. In many cases, black victims were prosecuted for disturbing the peace. Meanwhile, the attackers were rarely charged and almost never convicted for the destruction of property or the murders they committed.

Ruggles believed that black citizens should be self-sufficient and avoid relying on a political and legal system that was stacked against them. He advocated self-defense as the path to dignity and self-determination. Imagine Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X combined into one man.

His most important creation was the Committee of Vigilance in New York City. The Committee paid private investigators to dig up evidence showing that bounty hunters were using fraudulent documentation to “prove” an individual was an escaped slave. They paid lawyers to represent the black defendants in court. One cadre of black committee members surveilled bounty hunters and the police so that they could rescue kidnapped victims before they could be shipped south into slavery. The victims were then smuggled out of the city and relocated to a safe place.

Soon Committees were formed in most cities and towns in the north. These committees soon became stops on the Underground Railroad. Ruggles was one of the earliest conductors on the Underground Railroad. One of the runaways David Ruggles helped was a man calling himself Frederick Bailey. We know him better today as Frederick Douglass.

But all the brawls, arrests, dodging lynch mobs, and constant struggles to find money, took a toll on Ruggles. His entire body began shutting down and his eyesight was failing. He moved to Florence, Connecticut for a water therapy treatment. He found it so beneficial that he created his own treatment spa. David Ruggles died in 1849 at the age of 39.

David Ruggles is largely forgotten today, whitewashed out of American history. He laid the groundwork for abolition societies in unfriendly white towns across New York and Pennsylvania but white abolitionists who later visited those same areas are the ones credited in the history books with turning the locals into abolitionists. Trying to restore Ruggles’ importance in American history today would doubtless be deemed as “wokeness”. He would not be surprised, only disappointed at how little seems to have changed in almost 200 years.

For more on this incredible man, check out The David Ruggles Center for History and Education

To read more of this fascinating time in American history, see The Republic of Violence, by J.D. Dickey (2022). The book is exceptionally well researched but would have benefited from a better chronology of events. The story tends to leap from one abolitionist to another without clearly indicating the year when the events happened. That makes it difficult to follow the sequence of events.

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Mud, Blood and Hope

March 4, 1865, began with torrential downpours that turned Pennsylvania Avenue into a sea of mud. The canal used to ferry supplies to the Capitol, whose central dome was still under construction, stank like a sewer. But the soaked crowds remained upbeat as they slogged through ankle-deep mud. Washington overflowed with politicians, hangers-on, and excited citizens gathered to witness President Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration.

As the big day dawned, Lincoln was sitting in a small space near the Senate Chamber. The outgoing Congress had worked through the night to pass legislation. As each new bill was passed, a scribe recorded the final wording and handed it to a clerk to carry to the president for signature.

When not busy signing bills into new laws, Lincoln was talking with visitors. Some were friends congratulating him on his reelection; some were individuals begging for government jobs; and some were politicians trying to ingratiate themselves with the man they had been undermining because they thought he was unelectable.

Lincoln was unpopular during his presidency. He won the election in 1860 only because the pro-Southern vote split between two candidates. Southerners despised Lincoln as pro-abolitionist while many Northerners thought he was a hick from the sticks who would destroy the country in a needless war.

Both viewpoints could be supported by facts. By 1864, the Union had bankrupted itself spending $1.4 billion a year on the war. To manage the huge deficit, the government borrowed extensively and imposed the first federal income tax. None of the expense seemed worth it as the body count rose and the Union continued losing battles.

During the 1864 campaign, even Lincoln didn’t think he could win reelection. He was opposed by General George B. McClellan, whom he had fired, and by Salmon P. Chase, a former Cabinet member with a bad case of Potomac (i.e., political) fever. But then, the unexpected happened.

The war swung decisively in favor of the Union. Four years of carefully calculated patronage had put Lincoln’s allies in key positions in Congress, in federal departments and in state governments. A groundswell of support carried Lincoln over the line in the Electoral College.

A relieved but exhausted Lincoln occasionally cracked jokes on the morning of March 4th as he finished signing the new laws at the Capitol. Outside, the crowd swelled to an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 spectators, of which perhaps half were African Americans, some newly freed from slavery. Black soldiers of the Colored Troops guarded federal buildings and watched over the crowd.

Vice President Andrew Johnson arrived at the Capitol around 10 a.m., nursing a hangover from a celebratory party the previous evening. Johnson hailed from east Tennessee and owed his nomination to Lincoln’s desire to balance the ticket with a VP from a slave border state.

Johnson was jittery as he waited for his big moment and asked for whiskey to calm his nerves. Unfortunately, he didn’t stop at one drink. By noon when he was escorted into the Senate Chamber, he was flushed and drunk as skunk.

Johnson slurred through the oath of office. He then ignored the seven minutes allotted for his acceptance speech and embarked on a lengthy drunken screed bragging of his humble roots and implying that other Cabinet members lived in a privileged bubble. It was so embarrassing that even Lincoln’s enemies prayed to God to preserve Lincoln so that Johnson would never become president.

Lincoln waited down the hall until Johnson was finally herded back to his seat. Then he appeared in the Senate Chamber to take the oath of office before heading out the door to the Capitol steps to give the inaugural address. As they walked down the hall, Lincoln told an aide, “Don’t let Andy speak outside.”

Closely following the president as he walked down the hall was John Wilkes Booth. Booth was the Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt of his day, a famous actor who had fans on both sides of the political divide. He used his connections to obtain a VIP pass that allowed him inside the Capitol, where he planned to shoot Lincoln. As he pushed through the crowd around Lincoln, his erratic behavior caught the eye of the security guards. They detained him. Lincoln walked outside to give his address.

After all the anticipation, Lincoln’s address was deemed a dud. The gist of it was that the war’s suffering was God’s punishment on the North and the South for the sin of slavery. But having punished all Americans, Lincoln said, it was time to “bind up the nation’s wounds” and work together for a brighter future in a free and equal society.

That’s not what anyone expected to hear. Northerners wanted to hear jingoistic triumphalism about finally beginning to win the war. Black spectators couldn’t believe they were hearing the president advocate for racial equality. Southerners hated anything said by Lincoln.

Lincoln’s second inaugural address is now ranked with the Declaration of Independence for encapsulating our country’s aspirations. The speech is carved into the wall of the Lincoln Memorial next to the Gettysburg Address. The final paragraph begins, “With malice toward none; with charity for all.”

Many of today’s politicians claim the mantle of Lincoln. None of them comes close. They lack his wit and his political skills when negotiating with their political opponents. Most of all, their petty bickering and obsession with plans of revenge against their “enemies” is a desolate message; the polar opposite of Lincoln’s message of hope for a brighter future.

Additional fascinating details of Lincoln’s second inauguration can be found in Every Drop of Blood, by Edward Achorn (2020), a lively book crammed with vivid details.

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Why Does History Matter?

For most people, history is dull, boring and irrelevant. That attitude usually begins in a history class where the past becomes a slog through dates and events, often presented in the most boring way possible. Traumatized by dull lectures and duller history books, people routinely abandon the study of history. That is such a sad waste.

Understanding history is vital to our understanding of the world we live in today. First, history is full of role models, both good and bad. Second, history is our guide to understanding and (hopefully) avoiding the mistakes of the past. We should screw up in new ways so that our descendants have more choices when they study us.

Role models are easy to find since history is the written record of people and how they lived. History is full of heroes and villains unmatched by any video game, anime story, or movie. But it can be difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys in history because no one is ever all bad or all good.

A perfect example is George Armstrong Custer, the subject of almost as many books and movies as Adolf Hitler. Custer was a spoiled brat who managed to get an appointment to West Point where he apparently spent more time with women of a certain class than studying for exams. A recent biography hypothesizes that he was infected with syphilis while at West Point, the symptoms of which led to the dire consequences at Little Bighorn.

George A. Custer

Custer was cited for bravery as a Union Army general of cavalry troops during the Civil War. He was also a self-promoting braggart. In 1868, troops under his command attacked a peaceful Cheyenne encampment in the “battle” of the Washita, leaving the Indians without food or shelter in the middle of winter. In 1874, he led a military expedition to survey the Black Hills, an area sacred to the Lakota. Based on his fictionalized account of the expedition, whites swarmed the Black Hills seeking gold, in violation of several treaties with the Lakota (enforcement of the treaties continues in court to this day).

In June 1876, he ignored his orders, failed to do adequate reconnaissance and attacked an encampment at Little Bighorn (known to the Lakota as the Greasy Grass). Within hours, Custer was dead, along with most of his command, including a brother and a nephew. His widow, Elizabeth “Libby” Custer spent every day until her death in the 1930’s blaming everyone except her husband for the debacle. She even served as an advisor for a movie about Little Bighorn.

Or consider Vlad Dracul, of Wallachia, who committed unspeakable crimes against his subjects. But Vlad the Impaler is also a hero in eastern Europe because he successfully fought off the Ottoman Turks. As a result, Wallachia (now part of Romania) remained relatively peaceful while territory conquered by the Ottomans ripped itself apart in the 1980’s shattering into Muslim (Bosniak) and Orthodox Christian pieces.

Vlad Dracul

People are too complex to be simply good or bad. But history is written by the winners who want to present themselves in the best light possible while also demonizing their real and perceived enemies. That’s why every knucklehead out there wants to fight about what “history” is contained in the history books. The current battle revolves around whether women and minorities should get equal billing with white men when telling the story of our country.

Therefore, it is wise to always consider an author’s background and purpose for writing a book. A perfect example is the English translation of a biography of Oswald Boelcke, a World War I flying ace whose aerial combat tactics are still taught today. The original biography was written in the early 1930s so it harps on Oswald’s loyalty to Germany and obedience to his parents (traits that were important to Nazi control of Germany). Ignore the book’s Nazi propaganda and learn about the guy who taught the Red Baron how to fight.

The other reason to study history is to have a guide to understand our world today. Nothing happens in a vacuum. For every threat or opportunity that we face today, there is a parallel situation in the past. Looking at these past parallel events enables us to avoid making the same stupid mistakes – if we’re smart enough to figure it out.

In 2008, the American economy imploded under the weight of consumer debt. The consumer loans were packaged into bulk sales and sold as (mostly unregulated) securities. But overloaded consumers couldn’t keep up with debt payments and defaulted on the underlying loans, mostly mortgages. That meant the bulk sale “securities” didn’t provide sufficient dividends to cover the loan payments of investors who had borrowed to buy shares in the bulk sale “investment” products. The market crashed.

Then Bear Stearns, a New York based investment bank, collapsed. From Main Street to Wall Street, financial institutions suddenly didn’t trust each other because it was impossible to tell who was still solvent. Since the U.S. has the largest and deepest securities market in the world, it didn’t take long for the panic to spread to bourses around the world.

Fortunately for the U.S. and the global investment markets, the Federal Reserve was led by Ben Bernanke, a man who studied history. His PhD thesis examined the causes of the Great Depression of the 1930s and how the U.S. government’s reactionary (i.e., stingy) policies prolonged the financial mess. He applied the lessons learned to ensure that the financial collapse of 2008 didn’t turn into a 1930’s financial mess.

Ben Bernanke

For those workers (like me) who lost their jobs and whose 401(k)’s never recovered, it is heartbreaking. However, it could have been so much worse. After all, the 1930’s crash led directly to the rise of protectionism with high tariffs which further impoverished consumers and political populism which culminated in the rise of Hitler and the destruction that followed World War II. Bad policies cause horrific outcomes.

Why does history matter? We can’t live in the present or make plans for our future without understanding how the past affects our choices.

As you celebrate the holidays, I encourage you to stop by your local public library and pick up a book (not yet banned by the morals police) about an historical person or event. I guarantee it will be worth the investment of your time.

Happy holidays! Happy reading!

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Election Shenanigans

Before the 1960’s, there was no Republican Party in the old Confederate states.  There was only the Democratic Party; future Republican Party members were known as conservative Democrats.  So political fights revolved around factions of the Democratic Party.

The fights usually pitted rural interests against urban interests, conflicts that date back to the earliest days of the U.S.  It’s baked into the Constitution which requires each state to send two people to the U.S. Senate.  The original intent was to mitigate the risk of majoritarianism in the House of Representatives where states are allotted seats based on their population.  Political parties quickly realized that they could get around these checks and balances through election shenanigans. 

Election shenanigans in Tennessee from the 1930’s to the 1960’s were controlled by a crook from Memphis named Edward H. “Boss” Crump.  He decided who got elected to county offices and the state legislature, who became governor, and who went to Washington.

Boss Crump took a cut of all the state’s crooked activities, from bootleg whisky sales to kickbacks on government contracts.  Politicians got elected by turning a blind eye to the corruption of Boss and his boys.  The few courageous enough to object were beaten up by Boss’s thugs. Or they were arrested on bogus criminal charges and trotted in front of a Crump-elected state judge who would fine them or jail them.

Edward H. “Boss” Crump

When Boss needed extra votes to swing an election, his goons would round up black adults who were too poor to pay the poll tax.  The poll tax was a facially neutral law because poor whites were subject to it (they were never asked to pay it) that suppressed the black vote (who were forced to pay it if they wanted to vote).  Boss Crump’s men would pay the poll tax for their “voters” and then help them complete their paper ballots.  After voting, the black voters were carted back to their neighborhoods to be ignored until the next election needed to be stolen.  

But Boss Crump and his boys were beginning to feel the heat from a group of reformers based in Nashville. The reformers had already achieved a few successes, like implementing a system for permanent voter registration.  They also advocated the use of mechanical voting machines rather than paper ballots. Electronic voting eliminated stuffing the ballot box and stealing an election.  (Today’s election “integrity” idiots want to bring back paper ballots.)  

The reformers had also managed to eliminate the poll tax in some local elections. Their next challenge came in the 1946 election. The reformers planned to register World War II veterans as voters and select a few war heroes to run against Crump’s stooges. 

Crump’s machine set about ensuring the result they wanted.  That was easy since they controlled the state election commission. They moved the Democratic Party’s primary to November 1945 from the spring of 1946, hoping the reformers wouldn’t have time to organize.

In 1945, Davidson County and Nashville were two separate legal entities and a microcosm of the state’s rural voters squaring off against the big city. The rural Davidson County machine belonged to Boss Crump. The city machine accepted support from the reformers because they expected it to help their electoral prospects, not because they believed in reforming politics.

On the day of the primary, the hottest contest was for the office of Davidson County sheriff.  When the polls closed at 7 pm, each precinct tallied their ballots and telephoned the county election commission with the final numbers.  For most of the evening, the reformer’s candidate was in the lead. 

The last precinct to report was Hopewell. Hopewell was a primarily black neighborhood near Old Hickory Village, across the river from Nashville on the east side of Davidson County.  At 7 pm, the Hopewell ballot box had been collected by a couple of state troopers who worked for Boss Crump.  They drove around for hours drinking whiskey and periodically telephoning the election commission (controlled by Boss’s men) to get an update on the vote count.

Finally, late into the night, the Hopewell results were received by the election commission.  Boss Crump’s man had carried that precinct and won the primary. Some reformers noted that the voter turnout in Hopewell was suspiciously high, especially when compared to the overall low voter turnout.

That left the reformers with a dilemma.  If they sued to set aside the fraudulent votes, they would disenfranchise the black voters of Hopewell who had been duped, bribed, or intimidated into voting for Boss Crump’s candidate.  That would undo all their efforts fighting the Jim Crow voter suppression laws aimed at disenfranchising black voters.

Instead, the reformers sued claiming the results were invalid because the primary was held at the wrong time.  Crump’s machine owned the election commission lawyers who argued that it was only the primary; nobody was elected to office yet. No harm, no foul. The Crump judge agreed, conveniently ignoring the fact that in a one-party state, winning the Democratic primary was the same as being elected.

The reformer’s candidate decided to run as an independent against Boss Crump’s man. Boss’s men weren’t about to let voters decide the outcome.  In one precinct, the mechanical voting machines mysteriously failed and over 200 voters had to leave without voting to get to work.  During the noon rush, electrical power failed for an hour and a half.  These shenanigans ensured that Crump’s man became the Davidson County sheriff.

Today, the Hopewell community no longer exists.  Boss Crump’s political machine was eventually taken down in a series of corruption trials brought by the U.S. Department of Justice.  In 1962, Davidson County and Nashville merged into one legal entity, Metro Nashville.

Boss Crump’s vote stealing methods are out of fashion.  Today’s, election shenanigans revolve around gerrymandering in which political parties carve up their states’ voters into absurdly shaped districts to ensure their party perpetuates itself in power.

Tennessee is again a one-party state, now controlled by the Republican Party.  The state consistently ranks among the lowest for voter registration and voter turnout.   

This account of political corruption is based on, The Secrets of the Hopewell Box, by James D. Squires (2012).  Mr. Squires grew up in a family aligned with the Old Hickory branch of Boss Crump’s machine.  His book also describes the racial integration of Nashville in the early 1960’s, naming a veritable who’s who of the Civil Rights movement.    

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The Seductive Power of Victimhood

Everyone was mad about everything.  Society was changing with independent women demanding equal opportunities in education, jobs, politics, and sports.  Workers worried that new technology and immigrants were stealing their jobs.  The wealthy were getting richer while everyone else was struggling to pay their bills.

Britain in the 1930’s was a chaotic mess of seething fears as everyone was convinced that they would be the biggest losers in a changing society.   One group with deep-seated fears were the aristocrats.  The upper crust of England was in deep trouble.  

Aristocrats had been struggling for generations to keep up appearances.  They didn’t want to “smell of the shops” by getting a paying job. However, a centuries-old tradition of alcoholism (“drunk as a lord”) and gambling didn’t help their bank accounts.

Maintaining the family pile, whether a Georgian mansion or a castle, was hideously expensive.  Finding servants was difficult. The prestige of being “in service” was no longer attractive when workers could move to the city and make money working in a factory.  Much of the land was entailed, meaning held in trust for the next generation, but still subject to inheritance taxes that could bankrupt a family.

Then World War I killed off a generation of aristocrats who served as military officers. The empire they fought for began to crumble as their colonies demanded independence.  Voters were increasingly restless, feeling that the aristocrats running the country were out of touch with everyday problems. 

Aristocrats could feel their power and privileges oozing away.  On top of all their other troubles, they felt threatened by communism.  Lenin wanted to spread Russian communism around the world which scared the hell out of those paying attention to the rising body count as Russia purged enemies of the state.  England wasn’t facing the level of violence seen in Germany where communists and fascists fought street wars with military grade weapons, but every labor strike was viewed as the first domino falling in a communist takeover.  

Who could the aristocrats turn to for answers to their fears? In 1933, Mein Kampf was published in England.  Adolf Hitler’s book explained that nothing was their fault because they were victims of an international Jewish conspiracy. 

 In the 1930’s, Jews comprised about 0.65% of England’s population. Despite this, a group of aristocrats saw Jewish conspiracies everywhere.  Like the QAnon conspiracies of today, their conspiracies ranged from laughably ridiculous to scarily nihilistic.  Jews controlled the British film industry. Jewish bankers controlled the world by lending money at high interest rates so that the whole world was in hock to them.  Jews controlled English newspapers that pumped out fake news about honest, pure-hearted fascists. Jews in New York were plotting to start another world war.   

 For fascists, like QAnon believers today, a lack of actual evidence was proof that the conspiracies were true.  It allowed them to believe that they were victims of circumstances beyond their control.  The fact that Hitler blamed Jews supported the existing world view of English aristocrats who were already prone to anti-Semitism. 

Hitler was a chameleon like all populist politicians, telling his audience what they wanted to hear.  One English newspaper praised Hitler for being “definitely Christian in his ideals”. 

Carefully stage-managed interviews portrayed him as being opposed to war, even as he began rearming Germany.   

The English fascists continued to support the policy of appeasement even after England declared war in 1939.  They blamed Jews for starting World War II and believed that Nazi Germany would win easily because its military was superior to England’s.  Their rationale is eerily similar to the U.S. and European politicians who blame Ukraine for Putin’s invasion and who have been shocked by Ukraine’s spirited defense.

 The English fascist movement revolved around a small group of right-wing aristocrats who met for country house weekends and dinners at their London houses, living in an echo chamber of complaint about how Jews were destroying the world.  They tended to be members of a few families or of the same social clubs.  A well-known example are Unity and Diana Mitford who were raised in a rightwing, anti-Semitic household.   

Diana Mitford was the mistress of Sir Oswald Mosely, an aristocrat and Member of Parliament who founded the British Union of Fascists (BUF), also known as the Black Shirts.  Diana used her first husband’s money to fund BUF activities.  In 1936, Diana married Mosely in Berlin after they had dumped their cuckolded spouses.   

Unity Mitford moved to Munich and chased after Hitler like a groupie chasing the lead singer of her favorite rock band.  In her eyes, Hitler could do no wrong. When Hitler ordered the murder of Ernst Rohm and other leaders of the Sturm Abteilung (SA), Unity wrote that it was so sad for Hitler to have been betrayed by Rohm. 

English fascism never caught on.  They blamed their lack of popular support on “fake news” that vilified them, never mind that they had their own newspapers spreading their “truths”.  When England declared war, they were arrested. After the war, Oswald and Diana Mosely moved to Paris where they lived near their old friends, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.  Unity Mitford was repatriated from Germany in 1940 and died of meningitis in 1948. 

Victimhood continues to be attractive socially and politically. Victimhood allows believers to never take responsibility for their own actions; they can simply blame every real and perceived setback and loss on others. (If it sounds tedious and depressing, that’s because it is.)

For a quick read about English fascists and Unity Mitford’s pursuit of Hitler, see Hitler’s Girl, by Lauren Young (2022).

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Pandemics Then and Now

In October 1347, a ship with a crew of dead and dying sailors slipped into the harbor at Messina, Sicily. The infected sailors were covered with stinking, oozing sores and they were delivering an unexpected cargo, the Black Death.

The Black Death had two varieties. One strain infected the bloodstream causing swelling (buboes) in the lymph nodes and internal bleeding. It killed within a few days. The other strain was pneumatic, infecting the lungs. There were no government mandates requiring masks, so coughing people spewed their infection on everyone in their vicinity. The respiratory version could kill within 24 hours.

Europeans had been hearing stories for more than a year about a dreadful disease with hideous symptoms that killed almost instantly. The stories that passed along the Silk Road and other trade routes were so horrifying they sounded like a fairytale. Most Europeans thought death on such a scale was impossible.

The disease spread faster than a wildfire across Europe, as more ships with infected crews arrived at European ports. International trade shut down as port cities began refusing ships permission to dock in a doomed effort to stop the spread of the disease.

The Black Death gyrated around Europe, infecting one region, then moving to another region. During winter, it seemed to disappear only to start killing again the following spring. As dead bodies piled up, officials had difficulty finding volunteers sufficiently healthy and willing to dig the graves. In Avignon, France, bodies were simply tossed into the Rhone River.

Jean Froissart, the medieval French chronicler, claimed that a third of the world died from the disease. Tax rolls indicate that about half the people died in many places. Major cities suffered the most thanks to the wretched sanitary conditions. (The modern equivalent of medieval city life are the slums around great cities in Africa, India and South America; places full of small businesses and entrepreneurial people who are neglected by the politicians living in gated communities with guards and flushing toilets.)

As people died, the medieval social contract collapsed. The medieval world was hierarchical, with a king (or sometimes a queen), sitting atop a pyramid of land-owning aristocrats which included the Catholic church, and agricultural workers who were literally owned by their liege lords. Everyone owed allegiance to the tier above them. But with so much death, allegiance meant nothing.

Those who didn’t die were left in a fog of anxiety and gloom. To alleviate their fears of death, many people stopped working and indulged in a frenzy of partying, fornicating, and thievery. (Thucydides records similar behavior during the great plague of Athens in 430 B.C. Another example is Berlin in 1945 when Nazi functionaries drank, fornicated, and stole whatever they could before the Russians arrived.)

Farmers stopped farming as they sank into a numbed apathy caused by the death of friends and family. As much as half the arable land was abandoned because there was no one to work in the fields. Since the harvest of one year was critical for winter food supplies and the seed needed for the following year’s crops, much of Europe faced the threat of famine.

After a couple of years, the Black Death subsided and a new “normal” took over. The new normal looked a bit like the aftermath of the covid pandemic with bargaining power swinging to the workers. Nothing helps to raise wages like killing off half the workforce.

In 1349, the tanners of Amiens demanded huge wage rises to compensate them for the extra work caused by staff shortages. Textile workers in northern France received three pay raises within a year after the Black Death laid waste to their region. It wasn’t just labor shortages; the price of everything was rising.

At first, merchants had taken a huge hit as they marked down excess inventory. Then goods became scarce due to slow production caused by a lack of workers and supply chain interruptions. Prices soared leaving many people unable to afford necessities, like food.

When the Black Death arrived, Europe was already transitioning to a new economic model based on money rather than barter. The new economy shifted power to the cities and their guilds. The Italian banking houses were amassing vast sums of money that greased the wheels of commerce. Now, with a shortage of workers and peasants transitioning to paying jobs in the cities, the relative losers were kings who collected taxes from fewer taxpayers and aristocrats who had land but no money. (Fans of Downton Abbey will recognize the theme of genteel poverty.)

The kings and aristocrats naturally objected to their relative loss of power and passed laws suppressing wage rises. England’s Statute of Laborers issued in 1345 was used until the 20th century as the basis for “conspiracy” charges against union organizers. The reactionary laws caused rising resentment and friction between rich and poor, aristocrats and peasants. Aristocrats may have lacked cash, but they were still one-percenters in the eyes of the peasants.

In 1381, rising taxes in England and France led to open revolts. The kings and aristocrats eventually won, but at the cost of many more lives and vast stretches of ruined land and cities. It was an exercise in futility. The old Medieval social contract was gone for good. After the Black Death, cities steadily gained power as everyone transitioned to a money-based economy.

This account is based on A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, by Barbara W. Tuchman (1978). For those wanting a deeper dive into the transition to a money-based economy try Feudal Society, by Marc Bloch (1939). In the public TV series Secrets of the Dead, (Season 3, 2002), a geneticist studied an English village which escaped the Black Death due to a genetic mutation. Interestingly, the mutation seems to also create an immunity to the modern scourge of HIV/Aids.

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A Moral Man in an Immoral Society

Is it possible to remain ethical while working for a government built on corruption and violence?  That is the dilemma faced by Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin, a German general in World War II.

Senger was born in 1891 in Bavaria.  He could easily have become a scholar rather than a soldier.  In 1912, he attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where he became fluent in French and English.  But when World War I began in August 1914, he returned to Germany and joined the German Army.

FRIDOLIN VON SENGER UND ETTERLIN

His war record was meritorious enough to ensure he was selected as one of the 100,000 soldiers allowed by the Versailles Treaty during the Weimar Republic.  The rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis must have been a depressing shock.  Senger was a devout Catholic and a lay Benedictine who hated Hitler as the immoral demagogue he was.

In 1934, Hitler changed the oath of allegiance for the military.  Where the military had sworn allegiance to the German Constitution and the country, the new “Hitler” oath required them to swear unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler. 

The new oath was one of the earliest moral tests experienced by Senger.  Whatever his personal feelings, and those of the other anti-Hitler officers, they all took the oath.  They may have believed they could mitigate the damage inflicted by Hitler and his sycophantic entourage by staying on the job. It was also the only way to keep their jobs, although most ended up watching individuals with fewer moral qualms get promoted ahead of them. 

Senger was never promoted above the level of a corps commander despite serving well in the 1940 campaign against France and the invasion of Russia.  In 1943, he was transferred to the relative backwater Italian front where he served until the end of the war.   He is remembered today for what he did – and didn’t do – in Italy.

The Italian theater of operations began in September 1943 when the British and Americans crossed over from Sicily.  The Allies thought they could be in Rome within weeks because they expected the Italians to surrender (they did) and the Germans to retreat to the Alps (they didn’t). 

Invading Italy from the south is militarily stupid.  The Apennines Mountain chain runs up the spine of the peninsula with a fringe of low-lying ground on each coast.  The mountains are broken up by valleys and rivers.  The Germans usually held the high ground, choosing when to fight and when to fall back to the next line of defense. They were able to defend every inch of ground despite being outmanned, outgunned, and lacking air support. 

The Allies suffered huge losses as the Germans retreated slowly from one fortified position to the next.  Senger was the key tactical architect of these defensive maneuvers as the commander of the XIV Corps.  His corps had orders to delay the Allied advance as long as possible to allow time to strengthen the main defensive line south of Rome. 

The main defensive line was the Gustav Line, stretching across the narrowest point of Italy and blocking the road to Rome.  It consisted of a series of fortifications across the mountains near the great Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino.  Although Senger built many strongpoints around the Abbey, he ordered his troops to avoid the Abbey itself.  As a Catholic and an amateur historian, he made it clear that he didn’t want to weaponize the Abbey. 

In January 1944, the Allies bombed the Gustav Line, reducing the great Abbey to ruins.   The Allies argued that the Abbey was a fortified defensive position for the Germans; the Germans retorted that they only moved into the ruins of the Abbey after it was flattened by the Allies.  This operation remains controversial, in part because it destroyed a cultural monument.  (The United Nations has since adopted rules that make the destruction of cultural monuments a war crime. War causes moral dilemmas on many levels.)

The Italian campaign had other controversies related to the rules of war.  As the Germans retreated, Italian partisans attacked their supply lines and troops.  In a fit of rage, Hitler ordered reprisals against civilians in the areas where partisans operated.  (A war crime.)

Senger refused to obey, and he ordered all the troops under his command not to engage in reprisal attacks or murders of civilians.  Senger managed to avoid being fired by Hitler, probably because his tactical skills were needed as the Germans continued to retreat toward the Alps through a seemingly endless series of improvised defensive positions.   When the Germans in Italy finally surrendered in May 1945, Senger represented the German Army. 

Senger’s dilemma resonates today as populists are once again lying, cheating and bullying their way into power.  Populists and dictators (two sides of the same coin) know their positions are morally and ethically bankrupt. That’s why they hate, and fear, moral people who see through their demagoguery.  While it’s popular to talk about “speaking truth to power”, few people have the suicidal courage exhibited by Alexei Navalny who did and was murdered on Putin’s orders.  

Senger managed to stay alive and remain a moral man while serving an immoral regime led by a paranoid megalomaniac.  He died in 1963. 

For a philosophical view on this topic, I recommend, Moral Man and Immoral Society, by Reinhold Niebuhr, continuously in print since 1932.  Niebuhr was an optimist; he believed that individual morality could overcome an immoral society.

MORAL MAN AND IMMORAL SOCIETY

This account of Senger’s life is based on, Fatal Decision, by Carlo d’Este (1991), a well-researched account of the Italian campaign focusing on the flawed Anzio-Nettuno operation.   

FATAL DECISION

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Death and Business

In February 1722, a Seneca Indian man named Sawantaeny died, struck down by John Cartlidge, a white trader.  Sawantaeny lived near Conestoga, Pennsylvania in an area that was home to a mix of tribes pushed off their ancestral lands in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Virginia by the new English colonists.  Conestoga was a major hub for Indians trading furs and pelts for English goods, like cloth and guns and ammo.

Cartlidge was negotiating the purchase of Sawantaeny’s annual haul of furs and pelts.  As usual, Cartlidge offered rock bottom prices and served copious amounts of rum during their negotiation. White traders routinely underbid the value of the furs and pelts while demanding exorbitant fees for the English products they sold.  This practice was considered acceptable because the white settlers believed the Indians were racially inferior.

Sawantaeny protested that he was being cheated out of a fair price for his hard work. (Ask any gig worker how it feels to be low-balled on a project fee.)  The argument degenerated into a fist fight.  According to the Indian witnesses, John threw the first punch, making it murder. (Their testimony would never have been allowed in court because Indians were legally barred as witnesses, as were women and blacks.)  According to John, his brother Edmund, and John’s indentured servants, Sawantaeny was the aggressor, making it a case of manslaughter.    

Since Sawantaeny was a Seneca, the Iroquois Confederation had an interest in the outcome.  The Iroquois Confederation had sufficient economic and political, meaning military, power to command attention.  They wanted Governor Keith to meet with them because the Indians were “covered with night and wrapped in darkness”, meaning deeply grieved by the loss of Sawantaeny. 

Indian tradition required that the victim’s family and the perpetrator should meet face to face so that the perpetrator could express regret, gifts could be exchanged, everyone could share a meal, and the social fabric could be restored.  The underlying theme was not punishment, but acknowledging the loss so that harmony could be restored.

That was contrary to the English tradition of punishing wrongdoers.  Pennsylvania Governor, Sir William Keith had just agreed to Quaker demands for a new criminal code that made more crimes punishable by hanging.  The new criminal code was intended to uphold morality, in the lower classes, of course.  The Quakers running the colony believed their wealth was a result of their moral superiority, ignoring the fact that their wealth was built on the labor of Indian hunters, white indentured servants, and Indian and African slaves (facts airbrushed out of the Pennsylvania state history I was taught years ago in 5th grade).

Governor Keith was an ambitious man looking to rebuild his family’s fortunes in the new colony.  He was also an Anglican in a colony founded and controlled by Quakers.  Keith’s early years as Governor were spent trying to out-maneuver the Quakers on the colonial Council.   Keith didn’t believe that he was above the law (the last Englishman to argue that was King Charles I, who lost his head) but he didn’t like having his activities scrutinized by a bunch of moralistic Quakers

Keith’s main Quaker adversary was James Logan, Colonial Secretary (akin to a modern corporate Secretary, keeping the minutes of official meetings).  Logan used confidential sources to keep tabs on Keith’s business dealings and sent regular reports to the Penn family claiming that Keith was trying to steal property owned by the Penns. 

One of Governor Keith’s business deals involved building a copper mine near Conestoga with his business partner, John Cartlidge. The land was owned by either the Indians or the Penn family, but that didn’t stop them.  This clandestine deal may explain why Governor Keith slow walked the investigation into the death of Sawantaeny, including questioning whether Sawantaeny was dead since no body had been found.  (He wasn’t searching.) 

A series of meetings were held over the following months at Conestoga, at which the Indians and colonists talked past each other due to their differing approaches to crime and punishment.  At one of the meetings, John Cartlidge served as the lead interpreter for Governor Keith, even though he was the accused murderer.   

After months of diplomatic chatter, the Iroquois leaders demanded that Governor Keith come to Albany to meet with them.  In diplomacy (and business), the more powerful party chooses the meeting place.  They finally met in Albany six months after the death of Sawantaeny. 

The Iroquois requested that John Cartlidge should be released without a trial because his death would not restore harmony.  Keith was happy to release Cartlidge on the grounds that there could not be a murder without a body.  The Indians were satisfied because they got a face-to-face meeting at which Governor Keith expressed regret for the death of Sawantaeny, gifts were exchanged, meals were shared, and harmony was restored.

Governor Keith was satisfied because the Indians gave up ownership of the land where he planned to build a copper mine. In exchange for an (empty) promise to stop price gouging by white traders, the Iroquois ceded ownership to lands in western New York and Pennsylvania.  The parties memorialized their agreement in the Great Treaty of 1722. 

The treaty remains in effect today because it is the basis for white ownership of land in much of New York and Pennsylvania.  Governor Keith never found copper and died broke. John Cartlidge was jailed several times on a charge of murder and died of disease soon after the case was dismissed.  James Logan became mayor of Philadelphia and the patron of a young printer named Benjamin Franklin.  

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The Man in the Middle

Joseph was literally in a hole, in a cave beneath the town of Jotapata (modern Yodefat, near Nazareth) where he was the military commander.  In 67 AD (CE), the Romans surrounded Jotapata and slaughtered most of the inhabitants as they tried to escape.  When the Romans began searching the town for him, Joseph jumped into a dark hole and landed in the cave.  Several other townsmen were already hiding there.  They began debating what to do next.

Their options were limited.  In the ancient Roman Empire, conquered people who rebelled against Roman rule were usually crucified.  Those not killed were sold into slavery, a lucrative source of income for Roman commanders.  Joseph and the others huddled in their cave and debated whether to surrender and face death or slavery; or kill themselves. 

They decided to die by their own hand.  They divided into pairs, chose lots and then one man killed the other with a sword.  The survivors formed new pairs and repeated the desperate action. Eventually, only Joseph and one man remained.

At that point, Joseph suggested that rather than dying, they should try their luck with the Roman commander.  The other man agreed.  They emerged from their hole to surrender.  The other man’s fate is unknown, but Joseph’s education saved his life.  Luck helped, too.

JOSEPHUS

Joseph was a 1st century AD (CE) nepo baby from one of the most powerful families in Jerusalem.  His family’s wealth and status meant he received a splendid education. In addition to becoming a rabbi, he was a scholar fluent in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.    He added skills as a military leader when the Jews rebelled against Roman rule in 66 AD.

However, he soon became disenchanted with the vicious in-fighting among the various Jewish factions.  Instead of focusing on the Roman enemy, Jewish zealots harassed and murdered Jews who they considered insufficiently pious.  Military leaders were selected based on their political connections and ideological purity rather than their competence.  His complaints made Joseph a target for the zealots and those who resented his family’s power.

When Joseph was cornered in Jotapata, he escaped from his Jewish enemies.  Due to his military abilities and his family’s prominence, he was a big prize for the Roman commander, Vespasian.

Vespasian was an ambitious general who wanted to be emperor.  His life was a race to amass the fortune he needed to buy support to become emperor before the current emperor, Nero, ordered his death in a fit of paranoia.  Looting Palestine was a perfect opportunity.

Vespasian couldn’t believe his luck when Joseph surrendered.  Each man apparently realized they could be of use to each other.  Vespasian hinted that Emperor Nero might require him to ship Joseph to Rome for an unspecified horrible end.  Joseph figured out that Vespasian had Tiber River fever and really wanted to be emperor.

VESPASIAN

Serendipitously, Joseph had a vision in which he saw Vespasian triumphantly returning to Rome to become emperor.  Joseph’s vision was believable because he was a rabbi and Judaism has a tradition of mysticism. Ancient Romans believed in omens.  If Joseph said he had a religious vision, Vespasian was inclined to believe him, particularly since it coincided with his own desires.

TITUS FLAVIUS

Vespasian left his son, Titus, in charge of subjugating Palestine while he dashed off to Rome to become emperor in 69 AD (CE).  Titus went on to sack Jerusalem, carrying off the treasures of the Temple which later funded building projects in Rome, including the Colosseum. 

Meanwhile, in honor of his contributions to the cause of Vespasian, Joseph ben Mattathias became Titus Flavius Josephus.  Josephus remained in the entourage of Titus, witnessing the sacking of Jerusalem and the mass suicide at Masada.  In 71 AD (CE), Josephus sailed to Rome to join the new Flavian emperor, Vespasian. 

Josephus never returned to Palestine, or used his birth name, or spoke Hebrew again.  He spoke Latin exclusively and wrote his books in Greek, the preferred language for scholarly works.  His book The Jewish War is the only chronicle we have of the Jewish rebellion of 66 – 70 AD (CE).

Josephus survived a turbulent life surrounded by enemies.  Jews considered him a traitor and Romans didn’t trust him because he was a former Jewish rebel.  He survived by using his education and quick wits to make himself indispensable to his patrons, Vespasian and Titus.  But he never forgot that they had the power to decide whether he lived or died. 

Josephus lived a reclusive life in a villa near Rome and never revealed his innermost thoughts, even in his autobiography. It was the price he paid for moving between two cultures in conflict.  No contemporaneous painting or sculpture of him exists.  He died in 100 AD (CE) aged 62 or 63.

This account is based on A Jew Among Romans, by Frederic Raphael (2013), which contains many fascinating details in the extensive footnotes of life in the first century AD (CE).  One fascinating factoid is that Nero’s wife, Poppaea, was friends with Christians and attended their religious services.

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King of Earth and Heaven

On July 8, 1850, the King of Earth and Heaven donned a paper crown adorned with gold tinsel stars which he had designed.  A few hundred supporters braved hordes of mosquitoes to watch the ceremony on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan.  So began the short-lived kingdom of James Jesse Strang, one of the most brazen con men in U.S. history.  

Strang was born in the early 1800’s in upstate New York.  He was a sickly, undersized child who spent most of his childhood in bed, reading and fantasizing about a better world.   His childhood fantasies were excellent practice for his adult activities of grifting, cheating, and lying.  If there’s a sucker born every minute, Strang easily attracted the gullible and stupid.

In the 1800’s, the U.S. was awash in ethically challenged businessmen looking to exploit every avenue to make a quick buck.  Strang tried his hand at many things, from running a local post office to practicing law to aiding and abetting his father-in-law on shady canal projects.  

Eventually, Strang decided that crooked canal deals were less lucrative than the religion biz.  Strang’s gift of gab created a truth distortion around the people in his vicinity, inducing them to believe his lies.  Religious folks wanted to believe his fantasy of a better world at a time when the country seemed to be falling apart economically, culturally, and politically.  Non-religious people liked to cheer him on in a 19th century version of “sticking it to the man”, not realizing they were also marks in his con games.

Strang’s crooked career took off when he joined the Mormons in Nauvoo, Illinois.  The Mormons were despised as interlopers and weirdos who offended God by practicing polygamy.   Brigham Young was attempting to move the Mormons away from Illinois when the founder, Joseph Smith was lynched.  That gave Strang an opening to run his first truly successful con job.  

First, he claimed that Joseph Smith had written a letter appointing Strang to lead the Mormons. When Brigham Young challenged the (forged) letter, Strang claimed an angel visited him in a dream and told him to dig at a particular oak tree.  He led a group of followers to the tree where they dug (Strang could always find someone to do the dirty work) until they uncovered some brass plates covered with an unknown script.  By a wonderful coincidence, Strang was the only one the angel entrusted to translate the script.  Years later, one of Strang’s associates described exactly how they managed this con job. 

The con job split the Mormons between the followers of Brigham Young who headed for the Great Salt Lake and Strang who headed for northern Michigan.  Eventually, Strang found what he was looking for on Beaver Island, the largest island in Lake Michigan.

In the 1840’s when Strang arrived, Beaver Island was sparsely populated and accessible only by boat.  For much of the year, the island was snowed or iced in.  It was perfect for Strang.  His bully boys ran a terror campaign against the Indians and white settlers who already lived on the island.  Theft, arson, and horsewhipping have a way of clearing out the neighborhood.

Then Strang set about building his Mormon paradise.  Money was tight so he sent his bully boys to “consecrate”, meaning to steal, the property of non-Mormons.   Eventually, the brazen thievery was too much and Strang, along with his bully boys were arrested.  Strang’s knowledge of the law allowed him to delay proceedings while witnesses disappeared, changed their stories, or the opposing parties simply gave up.  

Being arrested infuriated Strang so he rigged the next election to ensure he was voted in as justice of the peace.  After that, he presided at the trials of his bully boys and amazingly they were always found innocent of the charges.  He later rigged elections affecting much of northern Michigan in an attempt to control the Michigan legislature.  That still didn’t satisfy his ego, so he created his own kingdom. 

As with all con men, Strang eventually sank beneath the weight of his own contradictions.  He opposed polygamy. Until he wanted a couple of new wives.  He ordered his followers to give all their worldly goods to the community.  Then he used their property to build vanity public projects.  He expected his followers to give him unquestioned loyalty even as he cast them aside when they had served his purpose. 

If you can tell the worth of a person by their associates, then Strang was the lowest of the low.  He surrounded himself with horse thieves, rapists, fake medical doctors, snake oil salesmen, and every other sort of ne’er-do-well.  They were bound together by their criminal activities.  

But when you’re a con man, you make more enemies than friends.  Some of his former friends who he had banished from Beaver Island began plotting to kill him.  Other former associates began ratting him out to save themselves from severe prison sentences.  

In 1865, the federal district attorney for Michigan obtained a warrant against Strang for selling timber owned by the federal government and counterfeiting money. (Both of these charges would most likely have been proven in court.)  In June 1865, after the spring thaw, a ship sailed into Beaver Island’s harbor with a federal warrant for Strang’s arrest.  

After some negotiations, Strang agreed to come quietly.   As he walked toward the harbor shots rang out. Strang dropped dead, shot by one of his own bully boys who felt betrayed by the prophet, king, con man.  

There is so much more to the life of J.J. Strang and his many cons, described in The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch, by Miles Harvey (2020).  The book is a fast read with an incredible amount of background information that provides cultural context for the life and crimes of Strang. 

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Burning Down the Church

Culture wars have been a feature of our country from the beginning.  These wars arise from fear of loss as political and economic power is shared with more people.  Fear of loss is natural and needs to be addressed. Instead, it is exploited by zealots who blindly believe the misinformation spewed by cynical opportunists seeking attention and power.  

Bible – by Aaron Burden

One such culture war happened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the 1840’s.  Philadelphia was a major seaport and primary point of entry for new immigrants. The unwanted immigrants of that day were Irish Catholics.  Some folks were convinced that Irish Catholics would destroy America’s Protestant heritage.  Most folks believed the Irish would undercut wages and steal the jobs of native-born Americans. 

Pennsylvania was founded on religious tolerance, so naturally the 1840’s culture clash morphed into a religious war closely tied to anti-immigrant hysteria.  In the 1840’s, every public-school day began with a Bible reading.  Protestants insisted that the schools use the King James Bible while Irish Catholics wanted to use the “Catholic” or Douay Bible.   Both sides tried to seize control of the school board during elections. Eventually a compromise was agreed but like all good political compromises, it would be undermined by the rabblerousers.

A bunch of populist blowhards decided to get their 15 minutes of fame.  On the nativist side was Lewis C. Levin.  Levin was a charismatic man who never had any trouble talking other people into giving him money, despite his history of bankruptcies and lawsuits alleging he misused investors’ money.  

Lewis C. Levin – from Wikepedia

Levin smooth-talked his way into being the editor of a Philadelphia newspaper.  His hobby horse was temperance, which was ideal for attacking Irish Catholics.  Irish Catholics were caricatured as drunken, lazy (but job-stealing) threats to the American way of life.  He cynically stoked the anti-immigrant rage through editorials and speeches, hoping to parlay it into a political career.

On the immigrant and Catholic Irish side of the fight was Bishop Francis Patrick Kenrick.  He negotiated the Bible readings compromise and built several Catholic churches, including St. Michael’s.  Although he vigorously defended the interests of Irish Catholic immigrants, he counseled his flock to avoid violence.   

But violence became inevitable in July 1844 when everyone was sweating in the summer heat and humidity.  July was speechifying and marching season.  Every civic and political group sponsored a July 4th parade, followed by speeches.  

Levin decided the nativists would show the Catholics who was boss by marching into a city ward that was predominantly Irish Catholic and delivering hours of anti-immigrant speeches.  Angry Catholics heckled the orators. Pushing and shoving degenerated into bricks, clubs and fists.  A few wild shots were fired by unknown persons and the nativists were chased out of the ward. 

Catholic mass – by Josh Applegate

Nativist leaders screeched that the Catholics were stockpiling weapons and planning to attack Protestants and nativists.  Young men of the nativist movement were eager to believe these lies because it gave them political cover for working off excess energy in a riot.  After consuming too much alcohol, the nativist bully boys began attacking Catholic neighborhoods. They were quickly joined by an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant mob who torched St. Michael’s Church. The church burned to ruins while the mob prevented the fire brigades from dousing the flames.  

Levin and other populists had stirred up a mob they couldn’t control.  Sheriff Morton McMartin, an Irish Protestant immigrant, lacked a dedicated police force to restore order. He could only appeal for volunteers to serve on a posse, but few men were interested in becoming a target for the mob. 

McMartin appealed to the governor for state militia help.  State militias were volunteer forces of dubious military value in the 1840’s and it was unclear whether they could legally be used against a riotous mob of citizens.  The governor appealed to Washington for federal troops, but his request was declined. The federal government was gridlocked over whether to allow slavery in the new western states. 

Eventually the governor authorized using the 1st Division, Pennsylvania Militia to protect Catholic churches from arson.  The mob initially welcomed the militia since many militia officers were pro-nativist.  The mob’s mood changed when they realized the soldiers would follow orders to protect Catholic property.  They attacked the soldiers who defended themselves with guns and cannons.  That ended the culture war in Philadelphia.  

In the aftermath, Levin managed to win election to Congress despite being charged with treason.  He accomplished nothing and was not reelected. He died broke. Bishop Kenrick created an English translation of the Douay Bible before dying in 1863.  

Culture wars never end but they also never succeed because society evolves.  Bible readings are no longer part of the daily routine at public schools.  In 1960, John F. Kennedy, an Irish American Catholic, held a Douay Bible when taking his presidential oath.  Camelot began. Until the next culture war started.

Image of book – from Amazon

To read all the gory details, see The Fires of Philadelphia, by Zachary M. Schrag (2021).  The book is exceptionally well researched but has the feeling of being rushed into print without sufficient proofreading.  Fortunately, the typos don’t distract from a fascinating story.  

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Scary Times in New England

Betty and Abigail were not normal little girls. They never had a childhood because childhood didn’t exist in Puritan New England.  Children were just miniature adults who needed to get taller.  Nine-year-old Betty was the daughter of Reverend Samuel Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams was her cousin.   

They arrived in Salem Village, Massachusetts around 1689 when Rev. Parris became the minister at the local church.  He turned to preaching after failing at business.  He negotiated a mediocre salary and the loss of the fringe benefit of firewood.  He had to forage for his own wood to heat his home.  

Abigail and Betty lived like little princesses in the parsonage because the Parris household had two slaves to do the hard work.  One of those slaves was a black woman named Tituba.  Tituba told the girls about her childhood in Barbados and performed voodoo spells.  Abigail and Betty spread Tituba’s tales to their girlfriends.  

Girls in Puritan New England endured lives of unbelievable drudgery.  They received only enough schooling to be able to read the Bible. They spent their days learning to become mommies, the only role they were allowed in life. They cooked, cleaned, sewed and cared for younger siblings and aged relatives.  

Stealing away to sit in the Parris kitchen and listen to Tituba’s stories and watch her voodoo parlor tricks broke the monotony.  Voodoo is a respected religion today in parts of west Africa and the Caribbean.  But in 1690’s New England it was devil worship.  

Witch on way to gallows

People were already on edge in 1680’s and 1690’s New England. A smallpox epidemic had killed many people.  Indian attacks were on the rise. Worse, the royal governor had revoked the Bay Colony charter, invalidating all the deeds granted under the charter.  Until the charter was reinstated, no one owned their homes or farms.  

As all people do in calamitous times, the Puritans searched for the cause of their ill fortune.  Many prayed; some believed the end of times had come. Others looked for scapegoats. The social chaos set the stage for the Salem girls.  

It began with Betty who sometimes sat staring at nothing rather than working and shrieked in fear when called by her mother.  Soon she was making choking sounds during family prayers and barking like a dog.  Abigail developed the same symptoms. At first, Rev. Parrish and his wife tried to hide the news but soon the neighbors’ teenage girls were afflicted.  

Cotton Mather

Excitable crowds gathered to watch the girls writhe and shriek in a 17th century version of The Exorcist.  Medical doctors couldn’t cure the girls. Preachers prayed for the girls, but it made no difference. Most villagers agreed the girls were a textbook example of the possessions  described in Cotton Mather’s book about witches.  

The girls were having a high old time with their 15 minutes of fame. Suddenly they were the headline news!  But eventually, Rev. Parris got a dim clue that strange things had been happening in his kitchen.  When questioned, Betty sobbed incoherently about Tituba.  

Tituba and two other women were the first to be accused of witchcraft. Sarah Good was the wife of a day laborer.  Sarah Osborne was a widow rumored to have slept with her overseer before they married.  A slave, trailer trash and a slut.  They were throwaway women on the fringes of society.  

Senator Joseph McCarthy

Between February 1692 and May 1693, scores of people were investigated for witchcraft.  Like the 1950’s communism investigation by Senator McCarthy, every Salem defendant was pressured to simultaneously prove they weren’t guilty and to identify their accomplices.   

Tituba played her moment in the spotlight to perfection. She talked freely and offered to perform a few voodoo spells.  She was eventually released from prison and faded into obscurity.

Witch services

Others were not so lucky.  Sarah Good and 18 others were hanged as witches. Sarah Osborne died in prison of ruined health from her ordeal. One man was crushed to death under a pile of rocks as his interrogators tried to press a confession out of him. 

As in all such events, the victims were people whose status made them easy targets.  When people of social standing began to be accused, the witch hunt was shut down. 

The Devil in Massachusetts, Marion L. Starkey

To get the full story on this fascinating study in mass hysteria and prejudice, see The Devil in Massachusetts, by Marion L. Starkey.

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Election Shenanigans

Quill Pen

Contentious elections have always been a feature of American politics starting with the very first presidential and Congressional elections in 1789. The election almost didn’t happen because Rhode Island, North Carolina and New York had not yet ratified the brand new Constitution.

The Constitution was cooked up by the Continental Congress, a group of top 1% white men who owned real estate or businesses or both.  Fortunately for American democracy, these men were both pragmatic and visionary.  They aspired to create the most perfect democracy in the world.  But they pragmatically gave up on perfection by compromising on the issue of slavery in order to induce the slave owners from the southern states to support ratification. 

Even with the compromises, the new Constitution was controversial.  Many people feared that giving too much power to a central government would inevitably lead to dictatorship.  To win support for ratification, a public education campaign was implemented.  The Federalist Papers were op-ed pieces in which each installment explained the rationale behind the powers outlined in the Constitution.  The authors were Alexander Hamilton (1st Treasury secretary), James Madison (4th president), and John Jay (1st chief justice of the Supreme Court).

The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter

The Federalist Papers were published in newspapers, the 18th century version of CNN and Fox News.  But soon the op-ed campaign was jeopardized by a new post office regulation that slowed the distribution of newspapers across the country.  Federalists, including George Washington, cried foul play because they feared the slowdown would give the upper hand to anti-federalists.  

In the end, New York ratified the Constitution and the new government was secured.  But the federalists remained twitchy going into the first congressional elections. The country was evenly divided and federalists worried that Congress would be dominated by anti-federalists. If anti-federalists gained control of both houses of Congress, the new model of democracy would be killed off before it could take root. 

When the votes were counted, the House had a pro-federalist majority and the Senate was balanced between pro- and anti-federalists. Congress set to work on two important tasks.  The first task was to ensure that the Electoral College properly voted on a president.

Washington Monument

On February 4, 1789, the Electoral College unanimously elected George Washington as president.  Although Washington didn’t campaign to become president, he was the most widely respected man in the country and there was never any doubt he would be elected president.  He was officially notified on April 14, 1789.

The second task for the first term of Congress was to hash out the details of how the government would actually function.  Today, regulatory agencies handle the details. One hot topic was a Congressional veto. Half the Senate distrusted a powerful presidency and wanted the power to retain Cabinet members who opposed the president’s policies. The Senate vote was a tie, leaving Vice President John Adams to break the deadlock by voting “no”. The President continues to control the Cabinet.

John Adams

Having worked all summer, Congress adjourned on September 30, 1789. That’s when the politicking really took off.  The founders of the U.S. were avid letter writers, the social media of their day, and they exchanged lengthy letters seeking allies.  Before long, the members of Congress were self-selecting into groups based on their vision of the country.

Federalists wanted a strong central government and an economy based on industry while states-rights advocates wanted a weak central government and an economy based on agriculture.  Basically, that translated into northern states with factories against southern states with slave plantations.  That regional breakdown continues to influence elections today.

Polling Station

Washington retired in 1797 after his second presidential term. That was the cue for the new political parties to contest the presidential and Congressional election of September 1797.  Voting was a raucous affair. Most polling locations were taverns. The political candidates offered each voter free whiskey and empty political promises.  Voters publicly announced their choice then bellied up to the bar for another round on the house.  The candidate who supplied the most whiskey won.

Washington: The Indispensable Man, by Flexner

The Great Decision, by Sloan & McKean

If you would like a readable one volume biography of George Washington, see Washington: The Indispensable Man, by James Thomas Flexner (1974 edition).  For a description of whisky voting, see The Great Decision, by Cliff Sloan and David McKean (2009)   

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Death of the First Democracy

Thucydides

A democracy is the most difficult form of government to run because it depends upon compromises and trust. Voters must trust that the politicians are deciding the tough, divisive issues in the best interests of everyone. 

Greek city ruins

When times get tough, demagogues appear with false promises that encourage the voters to distrust the government.  Distrust is followed by the death of democracy.  This fate was experienced in the first democracy, ancient Athens.

In ancient Athens every adult male was eligible to vote.  Their democracy supported an extensive trade network that made Athens wealthy.  But Athens was threatened by the rise of Sparta. Both cities wanted to be the world power controlling the Greek city-states and trade routes around the Mediterranean. 

Athens Acropolis

In 431 BC Athens enthusiastically went to war with Sparta, no doubt believing they’d be home for the holidays. Each side bribed and intimidated smaller city-states to join the fight.  The war alternately favored each side as allies double-crossed the low bidders.  One of the worst double-crossers was Alcibiades who eventually sold out everyone.  (See my September 9, 2018 blog about Alcibiades: https://www.normashirk.com/history-by-norma/2018/9/9/schemer-traitor-betrayer) 

Alcibiades fled his home town of Athens and showed up in Sparta offering to help them defeat Athens.  Before long, the Spartans smelled a rat and Alcibiades on the road again. He went to the Persian territory of Lydia.  While hiding in Lydia, Alcibiades concocted a brilliantly fiendish scheme that would allow him to return to Athens as a hero.

Tissaphernes coin

First, he convinced the Persian ruler of Lydia, Tissaphernes, to sit on the sidelines while the Greeks killed each other, as this would leave a power vacuum to be filled by the Persians. Then he contacted friends in Athens and offered them a deal they couldn’t refuse.  He would convince Tissaphernes to support Athens in exchange for the Athenians allowing him to return and agreeing to end democracy.

At the time, the war was going poorly for Athens. They had just suffered the loss of most of their army and navy invading Sicily.  Even though they were able to quickly rebuild the navy the loss was traumatic because Athens prided itself on its sea power.

Greek soldier

The losses in Sicily eroded trust in the government. Athens was being beaten by autocratic Sparta.  Poor decision-making by the Athenian politicians eroded support for democracy.  That distrust provided an opening for Alcibiades’ friends. 

In 411 BC, Alcibiades’ friends, led by Pisander, argued that the only way Athens could win the war was to convince the Persians to enter the war on the side of Athens. The only way that would happen was to use Alcibiades as the negotiator because he had the relationship with Tissaphernes.  But Alcibiades would only agree to help Athens if the city ditched its democracy and allowed him to return home.

Athens Acropolis

The offer stank to high heaven as far as most Athenians were concerned.  Many people argued that Alcibiades was a low-down skunk who had double-crossed them before and couldn’t be trusted. Besides, inviting him to return would violate existing Athenian law and religious omens.  Others were unwilling to give up on democracy.

Pisander won the argument by asking the equivalent of “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”  He asked the Athenians if they thought they could win the war when Sparta had a navy equal to theirs, had more allies, and was receiving financial support from the Persians.  

Overwhelmed by fear of the unknown future, the Athenians caved.  Their decision was eased when Pisander implied that they could revert to a democracy when the immediate crisis was over.  Of course, that’s not what happened. Once a small group of oligarchs had control, they sidelined all their political and religious opponents.  

History by Peloponnesian War, Thucydides

Pisander went to Lydia to negotiate a treaty with the Persians. But Tissaphernes realized that Sparta was in the ascendancy which meant allying with Athens didn’t make political sense.  Alcibiades took over the negotiations when he realized that Tissaphernes was wavering. Alcibiades made outrageous demands that he knew the Athenians couldn’t accept. Then he blamed the Athenians for the failed deal.

In 404 BC, a hit squad finally terminated Alcibiades’ treachery.  In 403 BC, Sparta won the war. Democracy disappeared for over 1000 years.   

I relied on the History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides (1954 translation by Rex Warner, Penguin Classics edition).  Thucydides is considered the first professional historian for his efforts to separate fact from fiction and to present both sides of the war.  

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Green Jackets at Badajoz

Today’s elite soldiers look like the Green Berets or the Navy SEALs.  But 200 years ago, the elite soldiers were sharpshooting riflemen in the 95th Regiment of Foot.  Instead of the usual infantry red coats, the 95th wore green jackets.  The unit became legendary during the Napoleonic wars.

Fortress tower

The rise of Napoleon Bonaparte threatened to upset the global balance of power.  Napoleon wanted to reshape Europe and the world in the image of revolutionary France with himself in charge.  Britain wanted to stop him. 

One hotly contested area was the Iberian Peninsula. Spain was under French control with Napoleon’s brother, Joseph, imposed as the Spanish king.  Portugal was controlled by the British who helped the Portuguese royal family flee to Brazil. 

The 95th Regiment was sent to Portugal where they became famous for their new tactics. Unlike regular British infantry who stood in a long, thin line facing the enemy, the riflemen were mobile.  They moved into forward positions between the French troops and the main British line. 

As the French advanced, the riflemen aimed at officers and the artillery crews shooting at the main British line. Their rifles allowed them to accurately shoot up to 200 yards.  After wreaking havoc, the riflemen withdrew to the main British position where they were used as conventional troops, holding a position in the British line.

Siege of Badajoz

An excellent example of the dual roles of the 95th Regiment can be seen in the 1812 siege at the fortress city of Badajoz, Spain.  Badajoz had a medieval wall which had to be weakened in order for the British attack to succeed.  But French defenders on the wall could blast the British troops trying to build a trench from which British mortars could pound the walls.

To protect the soldiers digging the trench, the riflemen infiltrated close to the city walls and began picking off the French officers and soldiers who showed themselves on the wall.  The defenders were forced to take cover which allowed the British to finish their trench and undermine the wall.

Battle of Badajoz

That set the stage for the next phase of battle known as a forlorn hope. The forlorn hope was the initial assault against the enemy’s position and as the name implies, few participants were expected to live.  A modern example of a forlorn hope is the airborne troops that parachuted into France before the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944. Seven of ten parachutists were expected to die. 

A forlorn hope consisted of volunteers but there was never a shortage because of the potential rewards.  Participants could expect past lapses of military rules to be forgiven.  Survivors could also expect to move to the top of promotion lists.    

At Badajoz, the 95th Regiment was assigned one of the forlorn hopes. Their attack started poorly with many of them dying in a ditch at the base of the wall.  The few who managed to climb the assault ladders were killed by French defenders atop of the wall. 

95th Rifle enlisted man

While the 95th struggled, the wall was breached nearby and British troops began streaming into Badajoz.  That was the other reward for participating in a forlorn hope. Survivors of a forlorn hope had tacit permission to loot a fallen enemy city.  Looting was recompense for lousy pay and frequent flogging for minor infractions. Being first meant richer pickings.   

 What followed was a sickening rampage similar to the Russians in Berlin in 1945. An orgy of looting, murder, drunken rioting and raping ensued in Badajoz.  It took three days to restore order.  The lack of military discipline outraged the Duke of Wellington and he changed the rules on looting to prevent the excesses at Badajoz.

Gen. Sir Harry Smith

One notable exception to the ugly scenes in Badajoz involved Lieutenant Harry Smith, of the 95th Regiment.  He saved the daughters of the de Leon family from the mob.  A few days later, he married 14-year-old Juana and she stayed with him at every military posting for the remainder of the war. Decades later when Smith was the Governor of Cape Colony, the city of Ladysmith, South Africa was named in her honor.  

Learn more about the tactics and history of the 95th in Wellington’s Rifles, by Mark Urban (2004). For a fictionalized account of the Peninsular Wars, I highly recommend the Sharpe’s Rifles series by Bernard Cornwell. His books include a description of what you’ll see today at the battle sites.

Wellington’s Rifles

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A Murderous Mother

In Imperial Rome, women could never formally hold power because Roman law didn’t give legal rights to women.  So an ambitious woman had to find other means for gaining power.  Agrippina used sex, lies, and murder to get what she wanted.  

Agrippina

Agrippina (Agrippina II or Younger to distinguish her from her mother, Agrippina) was a granddaughter of Emperor Augustus and a sister to Emperor Gaius Caesar (Caligula).  Caligula was a serial killer who was so erratically unstable the Praetorian Guard murdered him in self-defense.  

The Guard chose Claudius as the next emperor because he was the least offensive member of Augustus’ family.  But Claudius was susceptible to predatory gold-diggers. His wife, Messalina, was a vain, shallowly clever woman who apparently was willing to sleep with any man who told her she was beautiful.  Her indiscretions soon gave Agrippina the opening she wanted.

Claudius

Agrippina convinced two of Claudius’s closest advisors, Narcissus and Pallas, to help her instigate adultery and conspiracy charges against Messalina. Agrippina apparently persuaded Pallas by committing adultery with him. The men easily convinced Claudius that Messalina was a cheap tramp who was conspiring with her lovers against Claudius. In a fit of rage, Claudius ordered Messalina brought to him so that she could be accused in person.

To avoid any unnecessary hitches, like having Messalina successfully beg for her life, Narcissus sent a hit squad to execute her. That left Narcissus and Pallas looking for a replacement wife for Claudius.  Agrippina maneuvered to be the next wife on the grounds that she had a son who could become heir to Claudius.

This claim conveniently ignored the fact that Claudius and Messalina had a daughter, Octavia, and a son, Britannicus.   So Agrippina proposed her teen-aged son as a spare heir in case anything happened to Britannicus who was a child.   (If this were a Netflix series, you’d be hearing ominous music.) 

Agrippina crowns Nero

Agrippina had another problem, though.  Claudius was her uncle and their marriage would violate Roman law prohibiting incest.  That was a mere speed bump for Agrippina. She conspired with an ambitious government officer to convince the Senate to change the incest law. 

After that legal fix, she married Claudius.  She immediately abandoned her kindly stepmother act and replaced Britannicus’ tutors and servants with handlers loyal to her.  She also ensured the demise of Octavia’s fiancé, freeing Octavia to marry her son. With the domestic household under her thumb, Agrippina set her sights on others.

Tacitus book

Lollia Paulina was fabulously wealthy which had made her an attractive wife-candidate to Claudius until Agrippina changed his mind.  Now Agrippina connived to have Lollia Paulina charged with sorcery and sent an assassin to convince Lollia Paulina to commit suicide.  On another occasion, Agrippina intimidated a wealthy man into committing suicide because she envied his beautiful garden.

When she wasn’t conspiring to murder people, Agrippina was busy promoting her son as the next emperor.  She connived to have her son appointed to a consulship even though he was too young for such a position. That put him in the pole position to be the heir to the throne.  To underscore the point, Agrippina gave gifts to the troops and staged games in her son’s name. 

But for all Agrippina’s intrigues, she could never feel safe because Roman women lived at the whim of their fathers, husbands, and sons.  She learned that Claudius had drunkenly said at a banquet that his destiny was first to endure his wives’ misdeeds, then to punish them.  That scared Agrippina so much she decided to strike first.

Nero

She researched poisons that could make Claudius’ death appear to be from natural causes.  Legend says she put the poison on a mushroom which Claudius ate. When he dropped dead in agony, she had his body wrapped in robes and dumped in his bedroom.   After placing Octavia and Britannicus under house arrest, she summoned the Senate and priests to pray for Claudius.

For several days she provided false updates on Claudius’ health. Then one morning she appeared with the guard commander to declare that her son was the new emperor.  His name was Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus but we know him as Nero.  Nero was even crazier than mommy dearest.  One of his first victims was Britannicus. Nero later sent assassins to kill his mother after his paranoia convinced him that she was trying to kill him. 

Suetonius book

This account of Agrippina comes from The Annals of Imperial Rome, by the historian Tacitus.  If you want the gossipy, tabloid version, I recommend The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius or the PBS Masterpiece Theatre series, I, Claudius, starring Derek Jacobi.

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Another Vietnam

The American Revolution was Britain’s Vietnam.  Like the Americans two hundred years later, Britain had the larger, better trained army and the largest navy in the world.  Just like the Americans in Vietnam, the British repeatedly won battles while failing to win the war.  

A perfect example is the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777. (There’s no brandy involved, unfortunately.)   After two years, the British had chased the Americans out of Boston, Long Island, New York City and New Jersey.  The next big northern city was Philadelphia which was also the home of the Continental Congress.  If the British could capture Philadelphia quickly, they might also nab the American government.

Lt. General Sir William Howe was the overall commander of the British forces. Howe knew that Washington had used the early months of 1777 to rebuild and train his motley forces while allowing small units to harass the British, attacking and fading away like the VC in the jungle.  Washington avoided a set piece battle which he knew the Americans would lose.

Howe was losing patience, as were his political bosses in London.  He placated London by promising to send troops to help Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne take upstate New York so that New England would be split from the other colonies. But he also decided to pursue his own campaign toward Philadelphia. It was Howe’s Vietnam moment because it muddled the British military strategy.

In July, Howe loaded 16,500 men aboard ships commanded by his brother Admiral Richard Howe.  The fleet sailed from New York City headed for the Delaware Bay intending to land near Philadelphia.  New York City is about 95 miles from Philadelphia. Howe’s troops spent six weeks at sea trying to find a suitable place to land.

Eventually, they sailed into the Chesapeake Bay and came ashore in Maryland.  The seasick soldiers headed for Philadelphia hindered most of the way by American skirmishers.  On September 11th, they arrived at Chadds Ford, 25 miles southwest of Philadelphia.

Chadds Ford was one of about eight fords on Brandywine Creek.  The creek varies between three to five feet deep and would have been relatively easy to wade across.  However, the Continental Army was guarding the ford as well as others along a six mile stretch of the creek.  The Americans held the high ground which should have been an advantage.  Luckily for the British, the American artillery had lousy aim and was of little effect early in the battle. 

Seeing Washington’s deployment, Howe decided to split his forces. A force of about 5,000 soldiers attacked Chadds Ford to hold the Americans in place.  Meanwhile, the bulk of the British forces marched around the Americans and crossed at another ford, moving into position to hit the Americans in the rear.

The battle began early in the day after the fog lifted so that soldiers could see what they were aiming at.  Around 11 am, garbled reports reached Washington that most of the enemy was flanking his position.  That’s when Washington had his Vietnam moment. 

First, he ordered two of his commanders to move northeast to prepare to defend against the British flanking forces.  Then he decided to leave the high ground, cross the creek and attack the British holding force at Chadds Ford, perhaps planning to defeat them before wheeling to face Howe’s main force.  Then he canceled both orders and awaited developments.

By 2 pm, Washington finally had confirmation that his position was effectively screwed because Howe was preparing to attack him from the rear.  While the Americans were trying to get into a new defensive position, Howe attacked.  Luckily for the Americans, their artillery had finally dialed in their aim and provided support to the soldiers.

Around 5 pm the American line began to collapse.  Major General Nathanael Greene arrived and threw his troops into the line to stop it from disintegrating. Unfortunately, for the Americans they were trapped between Howe to the north and the British forces at Chadds Ford.  Outnumbered and outgunned, the Americans finally retreated.

The Battle of Brandywine cost the British fewer than 600 casualties. The Americans suffered 1,100 casualties and lost 11 cannons.  But just like the Viet Cong 200 years later, the Americans absorbed the loss and kept on fighting.  The war went on until 1783.

I learned of the Battle of Brandywine while growing up in eastern Pennsylvania and refreshed my recollections with A Guide to the Battles of the American Revolution, by Theodore P. Savas and J. David Dameron (2006).  However, there are countless books and biographies about the battles and people in the American Revolution.  

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