It's the end of another year and a crowd of people whose size can only be referred to as "Shocking" and "Anxiety-inducing" will gather in midtown Manhattan to watch a ball drop as a clock counts down to midnight. (An aside: my wife and I have Leveled Up as parents and discovered you can stream the BBC on YouTube so your kid can watch it "turn midnight" and go to bed at A Reasonable Hour)
Why do people do this?
It goes back to Adolph Ochs. ACTUALLY, it goes back to Greenwich, England, where the Royal Observatory (home of "Greenwich Mean Time") dropped a ball at 1pm every day so that nearby captains could set their ship's chronometers. They still do it.
NOW it goes to Adolph Ochs. Born in Cincinnati in 1858, the son of German Jewish immigrants, Ochs grew up delivering newspapers in Knoxville, Tennessee. Adolph's father was a leader in Knoxville's small Jewish community and Adolph worked at the Knoxville Courier to supplement the family income. In the late 1870s, at 19 years old, Ochs borrowed $250 to buy a controlling interest in the Chattanooga Times where he became a leader in southern journalism.
By the 1890s the New York Times, which had been printing since 1851, had fallen on hard, uh, times. The newspapers losses were mounting thanks to the economic collapse of the Panic of 1893, and the sheer number of daily newspapers in New York City were cutting into the Times' readership. After being told that Chattanooga was the next Pittsburgh and investing a ton of money in real estate, the aforementioned depression happened and he lost almost anything. Rather than declare bankruptcy, Ochs decided to go all-in on publishing newspapers. In 1896, Ochs bought the Times for $75,000. Under Ochs' ownership/editorship, the Times' circulation rose from 9,000 to 780,000 by the 1920s.
Most newspapers of the time were openly one-sided in how they reported the news, according to their political leanings. Ochs provided a down-the-middle voice for "all the news that's fit to print," a phrase he added to the Times' masthead.
Longacre Square was once the site of William Vanderbilt's American Horse Exchange. The "Longacre Square" moniker was a nod to "Long Acre," the center of London's horse and carriage trade. John Jacob Astor made "a fortune" selling lots to hotels and other developers taking advantage of New York City's rapid expansion in the middle of the 19th century as immigration ramped up.
Ochs persuaded NYC Mayor George B. McLellan, Jr. (son of Civil War general George B. McLellan, Sr. and a mayor whose most notable act was in December 1908, when he cancelled the licenses for a new innovation in entertainment called "motion pictures," claiming that they "degrade or injure the morals of the community" and due to the fire hazard of celluloid.) to build a subway station. In 1904 Ochs moved the headquarters of the Times to Longacre Square. The Times' headquarters was a 25-story structure modeled after Giotto's campanile for the cathedral in Florence. Five stories were underground to accommodate the printing presses and the subway. At the time of its completion, it was the tallest building in the world.
On April 8, 1904 Longacre was officially renamed "Times Square" in honor of, but not due to the influence, the presence of the New York Times. Ochs said, "I am pleased to say that Times Square was named without any effort or suggestion on the part of The Times," and that the building was "the first successful effort in New York to give architectural beauty to a skyscraper."
Anyhow on December 31, 1904 Ochs had fireworks guys put on a show at One Times Square. 200,000 people were in attendance and at the stroke of midnight the sound emanating from Midtown could be heard 30 miles away, in Croton-on-Hudson. The tradition had begun.
In 1907 a ball dropped from a flag pole, the first innovation in the celebration. The ball was made of iron and wood, decorated with 100 25-watt light bulbs. It was 5' in diameter and weighed 700 pounds. It was made by Jacob Starr, founder of the company that would become Artkraft Strauss. Artkraft Strauss was responsible for many of Manhattan's iconic advertisements including the Camel Cigarettes billboard which blew smoke rings over Times Square. On December 31, 1907 waiters in hotels around Times Square were given battery-powered top hats that blinked "1908." When they "flipped their lids" at midnight, "1908" emblazoned the parapet of One Times Square.
Even though the Times moved to 229 West 43rd Street in 1913, the New Year's Eve festivities continued at One Times Square. Each year since, crowds have gathered in Times Square for the famous ball drop. For two years, however, there was no ball. 1942 and 1943 saw the United States observing the wartime "dimout" of lights in major cities. Still, crowds gathered in those years to ring in the new year, though with a minute of silence "followed by the ringing of chimes from sound trucks parked at the base of the tower - a harkening back to the earlier celebrations at Trinity Church, where crowds would gather to 'ring out the old, ring in the new.'"
In 1920 the original wooden ball was replaced by a 400-lb wrought-iron ball. In 1955 that ball was replaced by a 150-lb aluminum ball, which remained in place until the 1980s. For New Year's Eve 2000, the ball was redesigned by Waterford Crystal and Philips.
The 100th anniversary of that original ball drop - 2007 - saw Waterford Crystal and Philips create a new LED crystal ball that increased the brightness and color of the Ball (capitalized now, like "Bono" or "Cher."). The Centennial Ball weighs nearly six tons and is 12' in diameter featuring 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles and 32,256 Philips Luxeon LEDs. It sits above Times Square year-round, waiting for tonight.
A "Time-Ball" drops from a flagpole at the United States Naval Observatory every day at 12pm.
Ochs and his wife, Effie Wise Ochs, had one child, a daughter whom they named Iphigene. Iphigene married Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who assumed publishing of the New York Times from August Ochs' death in 1935 until 1961. A Sulzberger has published the Times ever since.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
The Guano Crazy 1904 Summer Olympics
Some of the most celebrated sporting events do not happen every year. Sure, the World Series (the 2019 version of which this Astros fan will not speak) is held every year. The Super Bowl, the Indianapolis 500, the Tour de France, the Boston Marathon? Yep, every year. The World Cup? The Olympics? Every four years. This adds a little something to the splendor and glamour. Sports is not simply about sports. There's a winner and a loser, sure, but sports are reflective of society at any given time. Sometimes sporting events are just insane. Enter the 1904 Olympics.
Of course the Olympics as a spectacle dates back to ancient Greece. The modern Olympics, similarly, returned to its roots when the Games of the I Olympiad were held from April 6-15, 1896 in Athens. 241 athletes from 14 nations competed in 43 events. The happiest moment for the host country came when a Greek goat herder-turned-water carrier named Spyridon Louis won the marathon (which started in, uh, Marathon) by seven minutes wearing shoes that had been donated by his townspeople. The Olympic Stadium in 2004 - also hosted in Athens and surrounding areas - was built in Amarousi, Louis' birthplace, and named after him.
Other events in 1896 were more problematic. For the 1200m (approximately 3/4 of a mile) swim a boat dropped the contestants 1200 meters from shore and had them swim back on their own. Hungarian swimmer Alfred Hajos later said that his "will to live completely overcame [his] desire to win." He won. And while stories like these are fairly typical of the early Olympic games, none was as wild as the 1904 Olympics - the Games of the III Olympiad - in St. Louis, Missouri. This marked the beginning of the whole St. Louis-Chicago rivalry.
First of all, after being held in Athens (1896) and Paris (1900), how in the world did St. Louis end up with the 3rd modern Olympics? Chicago and St. Louis both had bid for the Games, and the organizers also considered New York City and Philadelphia. Chicago won. The Chicago Tribune wrote: "St. Louis tried to get the Olympian games but the International committee seems to have decided that St. Louis wouldn't know what to do with them" before remarking that beating "a small city like St. Louis is nothing to be specially proud of."
But The Louisiana Purchase Exposition aka The World's Fair was already being planned for St. Louis to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Organizers of the 1904 World's Fair threw a fit and told the Chicago Olympic Committee that anything they had planned would be upstaged by the World's Fair, including a separate track & field championship. Pierre de Coubertin, the "Father of the Modern Olympic Games" stepped in and ultimately moved the Games to St. Louis, though he didn't attend and later said, "I had a sort of presentiment that the Olympiad would match the mediocrity of the town."
St. Louis hosted the last major World's Fair until after World War I. Over the course of the seven-month run, some 12 million people visited St. Louis to see the wonders it had to hold: the Liberty Bell was brought from Philadelphia, India built a replica of the Taj Mahal, Ireland a replica of Blarney Castle. Geronimo would give you an autograph for ten cents. The 1904 Democratic National Convention took place alongside the Fair in the summer. Teddy Roosevelt visited and said it was "fine." The ice cream cone - though patented in 1903 - became a nationwide hit at the St. Louis World's Fair. Iced tea was invented. There were re-enactments of the naval battles of the Spanish-American War (which happened in 1898), as well as "villages" built by the Igorrote tribe of The Philippines, the most recently-acquired American colony thanks to the outcome of the Spanish-American War. It was pretty racist.
How racist? In August Games organizers showcased "Anthropology Days" in which "uncivilized tribes" took part in a two-day athletic contest of various events such as the greased-pole climb and mud-slinging. These events took place while they participated in what was known as the "Human Zoo" exhibit, so World's Fair visitors could gawk at the participants. There was a Model School live exhibit, in which Native Americans showed off their successful assimilation into white culture. Anyway, Ainus, Patagonians, Pygmies, the aforementioned Igorrotes, and Sioux were all paid to participate in the Olympic events, but weren't shown how to actually play the games. Predictably, it didn't go well. Organizer and AAU founder James Sullivan said the lesson was that "the savage has been a very much overrated man from an athletic point of view."
De Coubertin said the Anthropology Days were "an outrageous charade," and that "it will of course lose its appeal when black men, red men and yellow men learn to run, jump and throw, and leave the white men behind them."
In all, 62 countries were represented at the World's Fair of 1904 - far more than would participate in the 1904 Olympics. Thanks to the rising tensions in Asia with the Russo-Japanese War (sometimes known as World War Zero due to the participation of the empires involved, all their colonies, and the worldwide attention the war received) and the cost and difficulty of even getting to St. Louis at all, the Olympics brought amateur athletes from just 12 nations and only 62 of the 651 Olympic athletes were from somewhere other than North America. This number, however, includes cyclist Frank Bizzoni, whom the United States claimed despite Buzzoni maintaining Italian citizenship until 1917.
239 of the 280 medals awarded went to the United States. The country with the second-highest number of medals was Germany, with 13.
The 1904 Games were held at five locations around St. Louis at various points over the year, to better appeal to tourists who could see both the Games and the World's Fair. While their heart was in the right place, it was difficult to maintain rabid interest in a five-month long contest. It didn't help that the World's Fair organizers tended to refer to basically every sporting showcase that was part of the Fair an "Olympic event."
Three of the five locations were on the grounds of the World's Fair. 1904 was the first instance of the Olympics awarding Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals to the three top finishers, and also marked the debut of boxing, dumbbells, freestyle wrestling, and the decathlon. There was an event known as the Vault, which included jumping over a pommel horse longways without a springboard.
George Eyser, born in Germany and who had moved to Denver at 14 years old, lost his left leg as a child when it was run over by a train. Eyser moved to St. Louis in the early 1900s and worked as a bookkeeper. His new left leg was wooden. Eyser won six medals in one day - three gold, two silvers, and a bronze. It would be 104 years before another amputee competed in the Olympics.
In Swimming, there was a showdown between two powerhouses: Hungarian Zoltan Halmay and American John Scott Leary. Leary was the first American to swim 100 yards in 80 seconds and had won 17 straight races. Halmay would be the first athlete to medal in five separate Olympic Games. Halmay won the 100 meter event in 1904. But in the 50m swim, Halmay apparently beat Leary by a foot. An American judge said Leary won after Leary yelled that Halmay had interfered with him. How do you solve this conundrum in an era before video? Well, after the Hungarian judge and the American judge got into a literal fight, they issued a rematch. Halmay won.
George Poage was born in Hannibal, Missouri but grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin where he was the salutatorian of the Class of 1899 and the school's first African-American graduate. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in 1900 and ran track (the first black athlete to run track at UW). Poage graduated in 1903 with a degree in History and enrolled to take graduate classes in History, as well. In June 1904 Poage became the first African-American Big Ten track and field champion, winning the 220-yard hurdles and the 440-yard dash.
Of course the Olympic crowds were segregated. African-American leaders encouraged Poage to boycott the Games but, for whatever reason, he chose to run where he became the first African-American to medal at the Olympics, taking bronze medals in the 200-meter and 400-meter hurdles. He retired from running after the 1904 Olympics and was a principal and teacher in St. Louis before moving to Chicago and working for the Postal Service.
The marathon was particularly bizarre. The course wasn't closed off for the entire distance, so runners had to dodge delivery wagons and pedestrians. It was 90 degrees at 3pm, when the race started, so 18 of the 32 competitors withdrew from exhaustion. It was a dirt course, and all the support vehicles kicked up dust all over the place. The only watering station was a well at about the 11-mile mark, part of a "purposeful dehydration" research project initiated by Sullivan. Since it was well water, a lot of runners got sick, unaccustomed to it. California runner William Garcia's esophagus was so coated in dust that it ripped the lining of his stomach and he was hospitalized with hemorrhaging. South African's Jan Mashiani, a black South African, was chased off the course by a pack of wild dogs.
Felix Carvajal de Soto was a Cuban mailman who had never run in a race before. Naturally he competed in the marathon in St. Louis after sailing to New Orleans and losing all his money on a dice game. He had to hitchhike his way up the Mississippi River as a result. The start of the marathon was delayed while race organizers determined if his long pants and street shoes were acceptable to run in. They weren't, and a fellow runner got a pair of scissors and cut his trousers at the knee. He stopped numerous times along the course to chat with onlookers and practice his English. Carvajal ran past an apple orchard, where he picked a few apples and got stomach cramps that caused him to lay down on the course for a few minutes. He finished fourth.
Carvajal returned to the Olympics in 1906 (again held in Athens) and had his expenses paid by the Cuban government. He landed in Italy but never showed up in Athens. Feared dead, the Cuban newspapers published his obituary. Carvajal showed up later in Havana aboard a Spanish steamer, and then turned pro.
Thomas Hicks, a clown by profession who dabbled in distance running (6th at the 1900 Boston Marathon, 5th in 1901, 2nd in 1904), bonked at 16 miles. With ten miles remaining he was given a dose of strychnine and egg whites - the first confirmed use of doping in modern Olympic history. He got another dose of strychnine (keep in mind this is rat poison) and several shots of brandy over the course of the race. Hicks started hallucinating, begging for something to eat as he thought the finish line was 20 miles away, not the one mile it actually was. One more dose of strychnine would have been fatal. When Hicks eventually staggered across the finish line he saw Fred Lorz - a New York City bricklayer whose job forced him to do his training runs at night - taking photographs with Alice Roosevelt, Teddy's daughter.
Word spread along the spectators that they didn't actually see Lorz running and it was soon discovered that Lorz cramped up at nine miles and his manager drove him back to the stadium where the finish line was. The car broke down about five miles from the finish line so Lorz got out, ran the final section and crossed the finish line. Lorz was banned for life by the AAU and was reinstated after apologizing for his "joke," saying that he had gone "temporarily insane." Lorz won the 1905 Boston Marathon. Hicks was named the winner of the 1904 Olympic Marathon. He lost eight pounds over the course of the race and it took four doctors an hour of medical treatment for Hicks to even be able to leave the course. Hicks later said, "Never in my life have I run such a tough course. The terrific hills simply tear a man to pieces."
The 1904 Olympic games were an absolute mess, a side-show to the World's Fair which was a tribute to American imperialism and technological advances. But it was pretty hilarious, as well.
Of course the Olympics as a spectacle dates back to ancient Greece. The modern Olympics, similarly, returned to its roots when the Games of the I Olympiad were held from April 6-15, 1896 in Athens. 241 athletes from 14 nations competed in 43 events. The happiest moment for the host country came when a Greek goat herder-turned-water carrier named Spyridon Louis won the marathon (which started in, uh, Marathon) by seven minutes wearing shoes that had been donated by his townspeople. The Olympic Stadium in 2004 - also hosted in Athens and surrounding areas - was built in Amarousi, Louis' birthplace, and named after him.
Other events in 1896 were more problematic. For the 1200m (approximately 3/4 of a mile) swim a boat dropped the contestants 1200 meters from shore and had them swim back on their own. Hungarian swimmer Alfred Hajos later said that his "will to live completely overcame [his] desire to win." He won. And while stories like these are fairly typical of the early Olympic games, none was as wild as the 1904 Olympics - the Games of the III Olympiad - in St. Louis, Missouri. This marked the beginning of the whole St. Louis-Chicago rivalry.
First of all, after being held in Athens (1896) and Paris (1900), how in the world did St. Louis end up with the 3rd modern Olympics? Chicago and St. Louis both had bid for the Games, and the organizers also considered New York City and Philadelphia. Chicago won. The Chicago Tribune wrote: "St. Louis tried to get the Olympian games but the International committee seems to have decided that St. Louis wouldn't know what to do with them" before remarking that beating "a small city like St. Louis is nothing to be specially proud of."
But The Louisiana Purchase Exposition aka The World's Fair was already being planned for St. Louis to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Organizers of the 1904 World's Fair threw a fit and told the Chicago Olympic Committee that anything they had planned would be upstaged by the World's Fair, including a separate track & field championship. Pierre de Coubertin, the "Father of the Modern Olympic Games" stepped in and ultimately moved the Games to St. Louis, though he didn't attend and later said, "I had a sort of presentiment that the Olympiad would match the mediocrity of the town."
St. Louis hosted the last major World's Fair until after World War I. Over the course of the seven-month run, some 12 million people visited St. Louis to see the wonders it had to hold: the Liberty Bell was brought from Philadelphia, India built a replica of the Taj Mahal, Ireland a replica of Blarney Castle. Geronimo would give you an autograph for ten cents. The 1904 Democratic National Convention took place alongside the Fair in the summer. Teddy Roosevelt visited and said it was "fine." The ice cream cone - though patented in 1903 - became a nationwide hit at the St. Louis World's Fair. Iced tea was invented. There were re-enactments of the naval battles of the Spanish-American War (which happened in 1898), as well as "villages" built by the Igorrote tribe of The Philippines, the most recently-acquired American colony thanks to the outcome of the Spanish-American War. It was pretty racist.
How racist? In August Games organizers showcased "Anthropology Days" in which "uncivilized tribes" took part in a two-day athletic contest of various events such as the greased-pole climb and mud-slinging. These events took place while they participated in what was known as the "Human Zoo" exhibit, so World's Fair visitors could gawk at the participants. There was a Model School live exhibit, in which Native Americans showed off their successful assimilation into white culture. Anyway, Ainus, Patagonians, Pygmies, the aforementioned Igorrotes, and Sioux were all paid to participate in the Olympic events, but weren't shown how to actually play the games. Predictably, it didn't go well. Organizer and AAU founder James Sullivan said the lesson was that "the savage has been a very much overrated man from an athletic point of view."
De Coubertin said the Anthropology Days were "an outrageous charade," and that "it will of course lose its appeal when black men, red men and yellow men learn to run, jump and throw, and leave the white men behind them."
In all, 62 countries were represented at the World's Fair of 1904 - far more than would participate in the 1904 Olympics. Thanks to the rising tensions in Asia with the Russo-Japanese War (sometimes known as World War Zero due to the participation of the empires involved, all their colonies, and the worldwide attention the war received) and the cost and difficulty of even getting to St. Louis at all, the Olympics brought amateur athletes from just 12 nations and only 62 of the 651 Olympic athletes were from somewhere other than North America. This number, however, includes cyclist Frank Bizzoni, whom the United States claimed despite Buzzoni maintaining Italian citizenship until 1917.
239 of the 280 medals awarded went to the United States. The country with the second-highest number of medals was Germany, with 13.
Three of the five locations were on the grounds of the World's Fair. 1904 was the first instance of the Olympics awarding Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals to the three top finishers, and also marked the debut of boxing, dumbbells, freestyle wrestling, and the decathlon. There was an event known as the Vault, which included jumping over a pommel horse longways without a springboard.
George Eyser, born in Germany and who had moved to Denver at 14 years old, lost his left leg as a child when it was run over by a train. Eyser moved to St. Louis in the early 1900s and worked as a bookkeeper. His new left leg was wooden. Eyser won six medals in one day - three gold, two silvers, and a bronze. It would be 104 years before another amputee competed in the Olympics.
In Swimming, there was a showdown between two powerhouses: Hungarian Zoltan Halmay and American John Scott Leary. Leary was the first American to swim 100 yards in 80 seconds and had won 17 straight races. Halmay would be the first athlete to medal in five separate Olympic Games. Halmay won the 100 meter event in 1904. But in the 50m swim, Halmay apparently beat Leary by a foot. An American judge said Leary won after Leary yelled that Halmay had interfered with him. How do you solve this conundrum in an era before video? Well, after the Hungarian judge and the American judge got into a literal fight, they issued a rematch. Halmay won.
George Poage was born in Hannibal, Missouri but grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin where he was the salutatorian of the Class of 1899 and the school's first African-American graduate. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in 1900 and ran track (the first black athlete to run track at UW). Poage graduated in 1903 with a degree in History and enrolled to take graduate classes in History, as well. In June 1904 Poage became the first African-American Big Ten track and field champion, winning the 220-yard hurdles and the 440-yard dash.
Of course the Olympic crowds were segregated. African-American leaders encouraged Poage to boycott the Games but, for whatever reason, he chose to run where he became the first African-American to medal at the Olympics, taking bronze medals in the 200-meter and 400-meter hurdles. He retired from running after the 1904 Olympics and was a principal and teacher in St. Louis before moving to Chicago and working for the Postal Service.
The marathon was particularly bizarre. The course wasn't closed off for the entire distance, so runners had to dodge delivery wagons and pedestrians. It was 90 degrees at 3pm, when the race started, so 18 of the 32 competitors withdrew from exhaustion. It was a dirt course, and all the support vehicles kicked up dust all over the place. The only watering station was a well at about the 11-mile mark, part of a "purposeful dehydration" research project initiated by Sullivan. Since it was well water, a lot of runners got sick, unaccustomed to it. California runner William Garcia's esophagus was so coated in dust that it ripped the lining of his stomach and he was hospitalized with hemorrhaging. South African's Jan Mashiani, a black South African, was chased off the course by a pack of wild dogs.
Felix Carvajal de Soto was a Cuban mailman who had never run in a race before. Naturally he competed in the marathon in St. Louis after sailing to New Orleans and losing all his money on a dice game. He had to hitchhike his way up the Mississippi River as a result. The start of the marathon was delayed while race organizers determined if his long pants and street shoes were acceptable to run in. They weren't, and a fellow runner got a pair of scissors and cut his trousers at the knee. He stopped numerous times along the course to chat with onlookers and practice his English. Carvajal ran past an apple orchard, where he picked a few apples and got stomach cramps that caused him to lay down on the course for a few minutes. He finished fourth.
Carvajal returned to the Olympics in 1906 (again held in Athens) and had his expenses paid by the Cuban government. He landed in Italy but never showed up in Athens. Feared dead, the Cuban newspapers published his obituary. Carvajal showed up later in Havana aboard a Spanish steamer, and then turned pro.
Thomas Hicks, a clown by profession who dabbled in distance running (6th at the 1900 Boston Marathon, 5th in 1901, 2nd in 1904), bonked at 16 miles. With ten miles remaining he was given a dose of strychnine and egg whites - the first confirmed use of doping in modern Olympic history. He got another dose of strychnine (keep in mind this is rat poison) and several shots of brandy over the course of the race. Hicks started hallucinating, begging for something to eat as he thought the finish line was 20 miles away, not the one mile it actually was. One more dose of strychnine would have been fatal. When Hicks eventually staggered across the finish line he saw Fred Lorz - a New York City bricklayer whose job forced him to do his training runs at night - taking photographs with Alice Roosevelt, Teddy's daughter.
Word spread along the spectators that they didn't actually see Lorz running and it was soon discovered that Lorz cramped up at nine miles and his manager drove him back to the stadium where the finish line was. The car broke down about five miles from the finish line so Lorz got out, ran the final section and crossed the finish line. Lorz was banned for life by the AAU and was reinstated after apologizing for his "joke," saying that he had gone "temporarily insane." Lorz won the 1905 Boston Marathon. Hicks was named the winner of the 1904 Olympic Marathon. He lost eight pounds over the course of the race and it took four doctors an hour of medical treatment for Hicks to even be able to leave the course. Hicks later said, "Never in my life have I run such a tough course. The terrific hills simply tear a man to pieces."
The 1904 Olympic games were an absolute mess, a side-show to the World's Fair which was a tribute to American imperialism and technological advances. But it was pretty hilarious, as well.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
The Impeachment Process and How It Works
For no reason at all, I thought we'd spend a little time talking about how the process of impeaching a president actually works. A lot of my students are surprised to find that "Getting Impeached" doesn't automatically mean that a president is removed from office. It's happened twice to a sitting president - Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton - and both survived their trials in the Senate. It is extremely difficult to remove a sitting president - and that's by design.
First, the roots of the idea of impeachment are found in 14th century England. Under medieval British law, the House of Commons was the prosecutor and the House of Lords acted as the judge of Baron William Latimer, the first person to be impeached. What did Latimer do? Atlas Obscura has the story, but basically he sold a castle to the enemy, released enemy ships after taking a bribe, had the Crown repay loans that never actually existed, and kept fines that were meant to go to King Edward III. He essentially enriched himself through his position and disrespected the Crown. As a result Latimer lost his seat on the Royal Council and went to prison before King Edward III died and one of his buddies used his influence to release him. That was pretty much it for impeachment in England until the 17th century when Parliament put the 1st Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Strafford, Archbishop William Laud, the Earl of Clarendon, and Thomas Osborne (Earl of Danby) on trial. Some were removed, some weren't, but impeachment was a deterrent against bad behavior by public officials.
Of course the British-leaning Alexander Hamilton (you know him: there's a million things he hasn't done, but just you wait...) would have known about all of this. In the 65th installment of the Federalist Papers, Hamilton outlined why having impeachment as a check against the Executive Branch was necessary:
A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elected. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are not of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.
Hamilton deemed the Senate as the perfect venue for the trial as the Senate is basically the Colonial American version of the House of Lords. Hamilton:
What other body would be likely to feel CONFIDENCE ENOUGH IN ITS OWN SITUATION, to preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the necessary impartiality between an INDIVIDUAL accused, and the REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE, HIS ACCUSERS?
(Emphasis Hamilton's).
And so the process is virtually the same in the United States, as the only body of the government that can impeach a president is the House of Representatives, while the trial is held in the Senate. However, a number of steps must be taken in order to get from the House's impeachment to the Senate's verdict.
Today the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi (Democrat from California) announced that there would be a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. It's going to take a while to see any kind of conclusion, and here's why:
-There must first be an impeachment resolution introduced into the House of Representatives. This will presumably take place very soon.
-Then Speaker Pelosi has to direct the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, or a special committee, to hold a hearing on the resolution to decide whether to put the measure to a vote by the full House of Representatives, and when to hold such a vote.
The House Judiciary Committee is currently chaired by Jerry Nadler (D-NY). There are 23 Democratic members (including Rep. Nadler) and 16 Republican members of the committee. It would take a minimum 20 votes in favor of impeachment for the resolution to move to a full vote in the House of Representatives.
-The House of Representatives is currently controlled by the Democrats, with a 235-199 lean. There is one Independent representative - Michigan's Justin Amash, who famously left the Republican Party on July 4. A simple majority of representatives in the House is required to approve an article of impeachment, meaning it would take 218 votes in order to officially impeach the president. If 218 members of the House of Representatives vote to impeach President Trump, he's impeached. Gone, yeah? Simple, right? Haha no. Then things get Weird.
-The impeachment process then moves to the Senate, who officially "tries" President Trump to determine if he committed a crime. But "a crime" is somewhat misleading. Regard:
The first president to be impeached was Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, in 1868. Why? Well the official reason was because he removed Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton from his position without the approval of the Senate as dictated by the Tenure of Office Act which he was trying to challenge, anyway (this is a longer story for another time). Johnson was on a mission to essentially block the Radical Republicans' attempts to upend white supremacy in the American South following the Civil War.
The House charged Johnson with "disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt, and reproach of the Congress of the United States" and impeachment passed 126-47. 53 members of the 40th Congress did not vote but, there were 47 Democrats in the 40th Congress. Please note how the Democrats and Republicans switched platforms between basically this moment and the mid-20th century. Would a civilian be convicted of violating the Tenure of Office Act? I don't think a civilian can be charged with violating the Tenure of Office Act.
-Anyway, there is no set procedure by the Senate for the trial of the President. Those details are determined by the Senate leadership. The Senate currently has a Republican majority by a 53-45 margin.
-Members of the House of Representatives are still involved in the trial, even though it takes place in the Senate, serving as "managers" like prosecutors would do, presenting evidence in a normal criminal trial.
-President Trump would have special counsel represent him in the trial with John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, presiding over the trial.
-The actual proceedings look like an actual criminal trial, but with the Senate as the jury. After closing arguments Senators can retire to deliberate and reconvene to vote "Guilty" or "Not Guilty." It takes a two-thirds majority of the Senate (67 Senators) voting "Guilty" in order to convict. If 67+ Senators vote "Guilty," then the president is removed from office and the vice president (Mike Pence) is sworn in as president.
-Again, Republicans enjoy a 53-45 advantage over the Democrats, with two Independent senators: Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Both caucus with the Democrats. In order to remove President Trump from office, it would take all 45 Democratic senators plus both Independents (which isn't a stretch) plus twenty Republican senators to vote "Guilty."
How long will this whole [waves hands around head] thing take?
We only have two real precedents to go by here: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. Richard Nixon resigned the presidency before the House of Representatives could vote to impeach over the Watergate scandal.
President Andrew Johnson went from dismissing Secretary Edwin Stanton on February 21, 1868 to being formally impeached on February 24. The trial began on March 4, 1868 - exactly one year before the winner of the 1868 presidential election would be inaugurated - and lasted eleven weeks, with Johnson escaping "conviction" on May 16 by one vote. Johnson did not seek reelection in 1868. This entire process took 83 days.
The House of Representatives began impeachment proceedings into President Bill Clinton (whose impeachment story is much more Rated R and, thus, interesting, and is definitely for another time) on October 8, 1998 - almost precisely in the middle of Clinton's second term - and formally voted to impeach Clinton on December 19, 1998. The actual trial in the Senate for Clinton was much quicker than it was for President Johnson. Clinton's trial began on January 7, 1999 and ended with his acquittal on February 12. All 45 Democratic senators voted Not Guilty, along with ten Republican senators. Clinton's removal failed by 22 out of 100 votes. From start to finish this process took 128 days. But there were some holidays in there.
Who knows how long it will take this time around? Months, likely, especially as 2020 is an election year.
First, the roots of the idea of impeachment are found in 14th century England. Under medieval British law, the House of Commons was the prosecutor and the House of Lords acted as the judge of Baron William Latimer, the first person to be impeached. What did Latimer do? Atlas Obscura has the story, but basically he sold a castle to the enemy, released enemy ships after taking a bribe, had the Crown repay loans that never actually existed, and kept fines that were meant to go to King Edward III. He essentially enriched himself through his position and disrespected the Crown. As a result Latimer lost his seat on the Royal Council and went to prison before King Edward III died and one of his buddies used his influence to release him. That was pretty much it for impeachment in England until the 17th century when Parliament put the 1st Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Strafford, Archbishop William Laud, the Earl of Clarendon, and Thomas Osborne (Earl of Danby) on trial. Some were removed, some weren't, but impeachment was a deterrent against bad behavior by public officials.
Of course the British-leaning Alexander Hamilton (you know him: there's a million things he hasn't done, but just you wait...) would have known about all of this. In the 65th installment of the Federalist Papers, Hamilton outlined why having impeachment as a check against the Executive Branch was necessary:
A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elected. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are not of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.
Hamilton deemed the Senate as the perfect venue for the trial as the Senate is basically the Colonial American version of the House of Lords. Hamilton:
What other body would be likely to feel CONFIDENCE ENOUGH IN ITS OWN SITUATION, to preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the necessary impartiality between an INDIVIDUAL accused, and the REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE, HIS ACCUSERS?
(Emphasis Hamilton's).
And so the process is virtually the same in the United States, as the only body of the government that can impeach a president is the House of Representatives, while the trial is held in the Senate. However, a number of steps must be taken in order to get from the House's impeachment to the Senate's verdict.
Today the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi (Democrat from California) announced that there would be a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. It's going to take a while to see any kind of conclusion, and here's why:
-There must first be an impeachment resolution introduced into the House of Representatives. This will presumably take place very soon.
-Then Speaker Pelosi has to direct the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, or a special committee, to hold a hearing on the resolution to decide whether to put the measure to a vote by the full House of Representatives, and when to hold such a vote.
The House Judiciary Committee is currently chaired by Jerry Nadler (D-NY). There are 23 Democratic members (including Rep. Nadler) and 16 Republican members of the committee. It would take a minimum 20 votes in favor of impeachment for the resolution to move to a full vote in the House of Representatives.
-The House of Representatives is currently controlled by the Democrats, with a 235-199 lean. There is one Independent representative - Michigan's Justin Amash, who famously left the Republican Party on July 4. A simple majority of representatives in the House is required to approve an article of impeachment, meaning it would take 218 votes in order to officially impeach the president. If 218 members of the House of Representatives vote to impeach President Trump, he's impeached. Gone, yeah? Simple, right? Haha no. Then things get Weird.
-The impeachment process then moves to the Senate, who officially "tries" President Trump to determine if he committed a crime. But "a crime" is somewhat misleading. Regard:
The first president to be impeached was Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, in 1868. Why? Well the official reason was because he removed Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton from his position without the approval of the Senate as dictated by the Tenure of Office Act which he was trying to challenge, anyway (this is a longer story for another time). Johnson was on a mission to essentially block the Radical Republicans' attempts to upend white supremacy in the American South following the Civil War.
The House charged Johnson with "disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt, and reproach of the Congress of the United States" and impeachment passed 126-47. 53 members of the 40th Congress did not vote but, there were 47 Democrats in the 40th Congress. Please note how the Democrats and Republicans switched platforms between basically this moment and the mid-20th century. Would a civilian be convicted of violating the Tenure of Office Act? I don't think a civilian can be charged with violating the Tenure of Office Act.
-Anyway, there is no set procedure by the Senate for the trial of the President. Those details are determined by the Senate leadership. The Senate currently has a Republican majority by a 53-45 margin.
-Members of the House of Representatives are still involved in the trial, even though it takes place in the Senate, serving as "managers" like prosecutors would do, presenting evidence in a normal criminal trial.
-President Trump would have special counsel represent him in the trial with John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, presiding over the trial.
-The actual proceedings look like an actual criminal trial, but with the Senate as the jury. After closing arguments Senators can retire to deliberate and reconvene to vote "Guilty" or "Not Guilty." It takes a two-thirds majority of the Senate (67 Senators) voting "Guilty" in order to convict. If 67+ Senators vote "Guilty," then the president is removed from office and the vice president (Mike Pence) is sworn in as president.
-Again, Republicans enjoy a 53-45 advantage over the Democrats, with two Independent senators: Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Both caucus with the Democrats. In order to remove President Trump from office, it would take all 45 Democratic senators plus both Independents (which isn't a stretch) plus twenty Republican senators to vote "Guilty."
How long will this whole [waves hands around head] thing take?
We only have two real precedents to go by here: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. Richard Nixon resigned the presidency before the House of Representatives could vote to impeach over the Watergate scandal.
President Andrew Johnson went from dismissing Secretary Edwin Stanton on February 21, 1868 to being formally impeached on February 24. The trial began on March 4, 1868 - exactly one year before the winner of the 1868 presidential election would be inaugurated - and lasted eleven weeks, with Johnson escaping "conviction" on May 16 by one vote. Johnson did not seek reelection in 1868. This entire process took 83 days.
The House of Representatives began impeachment proceedings into President Bill Clinton (whose impeachment story is much more Rated R and, thus, interesting, and is definitely for another time) on October 8, 1998 - almost precisely in the middle of Clinton's second term - and formally voted to impeach Clinton on December 19, 1998. The actual trial in the Senate for Clinton was much quicker than it was for President Johnson. Clinton's trial began on January 7, 1999 and ended with his acquittal on February 12. All 45 Democratic senators voted Not Guilty, along with ten Republican senators. Clinton's removal failed by 22 out of 100 votes. From start to finish this process took 128 days. But there were some holidays in there.
Who knows how long it will take this time around? Months, likely, especially as 2020 is an election year.
Monday, August 19, 2019
Saturday Night at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Just after midnight on Sunday, March 18, 1990 - as St. Patrick's Day parties were winding down - in Boston a red Dodge Daytona parked to the side of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Out from the car stepped two men in Boston Police Department uniforms. 81 minutes later they drove off, taking 13 works of art valued at just over $500 million with them.
Isabella Stewart Gardner is an under-studied (by me, anyway) fascinating character in American history. She was powerful, unfathomably wealthy, and - for her time - really, really weird. She knew how to set Boston Society ablaze, and did it as much as she possibly could. The theft at the Gardner museum is simply another twist in a life full of them.
Born April 14, 1840 in New York City, Isabella (or "Belle" or "Donna Isabella" or "Isabella of Boston" or "Mrs. Jack") was the daughter of David and Adelia Smith Stewart. David Stewart was an extremely wealthy linen and iron merchant in Manhattan. The family could reportedly trace the paternal lineage through the royal Stuart family of Scotland. Her mother's family arrived in Boston in 1650 before settling on Long Island.
Her education was fairly typical (for the very wealthy): private tutors at home, private school in New York at the Miss Okill School where she demonstrated a penchant for sketching and watercolors, finishing school in Paris, studying music, dance, and foreign languages. Through Julia Gardner, her roommate in Paris, Isabella met Julia's brother Jack, Boston's "most eligible bachelor."
Jack Gardner's maternal grandfather was Joseph Peabody, a prominent Salem shipowner who went on to become one of the wealthiest men in America by importing pepper from Sumatra. Jack, a descendant of the Brahmin Peabody, Lowell, and Gardner families, was 23 and Isabella was almost 20 when they married at Grace Church in lower Manhattan. Matthew Hale Smith, a Unitarian minister and newspaper correspondent wrote in 1869 - nine years after the Stewart/Gardner wedding - that "to be married or buried within [Grace Church] has been ever considered the height of felicity."
After their marriage, Jack and Isabella moved to Jack's hometown - Boston - and settled into a house at 152 Beacon Street in Boston's posh Back Bay. The house was a wedding gift from Isabella's father. It was the eve of the Civil War, though you wouldn't know it from any of her diaries or letters.
In 1863 Jack and Isabella had a son, John Lowell Gardner III, whom they called "Jackie." Both were absolutely devastated when Jackie died of pneumonia shortly before his 2nd birthday. After two years of a spiraling depression Jack took Isabella abroad, first to northern Europe and Russia (where Isabella had to be carried up the gangway on a mattress) and later all over the continent, Egypt and the Middle East, and Asia. This is where Isabella re-discovered her love of art, and she kept extensive journals of her travels. If she didn't come out of her depression (because the death of a child isn't something you just Get Over), traveling and collecting at least muted the dark days.
Doctors advised her to not attempt another pregnancy. Now freed from the social construct of the "woman's place" in the mid-19th century, Isabella lived as she pleased.
Boston has always been - for better or for worse - an intellectual center of America, and Isabella was drawn to it. She attended readings by Charles Eliot Norton, Harvard's very first professor of art history, in 1878, and he invited her to join the Dante Society which was formally organized in 1881 under the leadership of Norton, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell. The editor William Roscoe Thayer said of Norton:
To read Dante with Norton was almost an act of worship. There was in his voice something wonderfully stirring and wholly incommunicable. As he reached a favorite passage his face became radiant and his tones more tender. He explained fully from every side - verbal, textual, literary, spiritual.
How could Isabella resist? Under Norton's urging, she began collecting rare books and manuscripts. That year Henry James, drawing upon his time and experiences with Isabella, published Portrait of a Lady, Isabella was the inspiration for the lady, as well as serving as inspiration for "The Spoils of Poynton's" Mrs. Gareth, Milly Theale in "The Wings of a Dove," and "The Golden Bowl's" Charlotte Stant. James said of Isabella that she "is not a woman. She is a locomotive with a Pullman car attached." Essayist John Jay Chapman described her as "a fairy in a machine shop."
Also emerging was Boston's "gay subculture of the time," according to Isabella's biographer Douglass Shand-Tucci. Isabella's coterie included numerous young gay men. Some of her closest friends were art critic Charles Loeser, philosopher George Santayana, and essayist Logan Pearsall Smith. All were gay. Years prior, in 1875, Jack's brother Joseph committed suicide, and Jack and Isabella adopted his three orphaed teenage sons. The oldest - Joseph Junior - committed suicide at age 25 with some evidence (uncovered by Shand-Tucci) that the reason was the "unrequited love for another man." Another of her nephews was rumored to be gay. It certainly could have been out of sympathy for the two that Isabella formed an attachment to gay men. Shand-Tucci dramatically wrote that "the gay mist that surrounded the chatelaine of Fenway Court is unmistakable."
Whether or not Isabella was actually an "early gay icon," she would have loved the gossip. She famously told a friend who had mentioned a rumor about her, "Don't spoil a good story by telling the truth." Isabella also saved newspaper clippings written about her. She just didn't care what anyone thought.
In 1884 Jack and Isabella took a trip to Venice and visited the Palazzo Barbaro, owned by Bostonians Daniel Sargent Curtis (whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower) and his wife Ariana Randolph Wormeley. The Palazzo Barbaro became a meeting place for high-minded expats and travelers. Notable visitors included John Singer Sargent (who would later produce a portrait of Isabella), Henry James, Robert Browning, James Whistler, Claude Monet, Edith Wharton, and the aforementioned Charles Eliot Norton. The building, and the company within it, inspired Isabella to think about replicating it back in Boston.
In 1886 Isabella met 21-year old Bernard Berenson, then a student at Harvard who had also studied Dante under Norton and who spoke English, German, Italian, (probably) French, as well as Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic, Latin, and Greek. Berenson (not gay) was also buddies with Ray Bradbury. Berenson became Isabella's chief art advisor, and helped acquire some of the more notable pieces in her collection. Berenson said of Isabella, "she lives at a rate and intensity, with a reality that makes other lives seem pale, thin, and shadowy."
Isabella's father passed away in 1891, leaving her an estate worth $1.75 million (over $45 million today). With this sudden influx of money, Isabella and Jack began to focus on their art collection. Some of the more notable acquisitions - with Berenson's assistance - were Rembrandt's Self-Portrait, Age 23, Titian's Rape of Europa (for a then-world record price of £20,000), and Vermeer's The Concert. For the Vermeer, she outbid the Louvre and London's National Gallery, firmly establishing her as one of the world's foremost art collectors. After acquiring the Rembrandt, Isabella and Jack began to plan the museum they had wanted since spending holidays at the Palazzo Barbaro.
On December 10, 1898 Jack died suddenly of a stroke. He was 61. Six weeks after Jack's death, Isabella hired architect Willard T. Sears to design Fenway Court, which would become the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. Sears and his architectural partner Charles Amos Cummings had designed Brechin Hall and the Stone Chapel at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and the Old South Church in Copley Square in Boston. At the time, there were basically no other buildings in the Fens, in Boston's Back Bay, near where Jack and Isabella lived.
Construction on the museum began in 1899 and was completed in 1901. Isabella lived on the 4th floor, while the 1st-3rd floors were devoted to her art collection. She arranged the displays herself and Fenway Court opened at 9pm on January 1, 1903 for 150 of her closest friends while she served donuts and champagne, and 50 players from the Boston Symphony Orchestra welcomed her guests through the gate. Edith Wharton - who had traveled to Boston via a private railcar from New York specifically for the opening - said of the food served at the opening that it was what you would expect from a provincial rail station in France. As Wharton got up to leave, Isabella thanked her for coming and jabbed that she shouldn't expect another invitation to eat at her railroad restaurant. The museum opened to the public in February 1903.
That same year, the Boston Americans - known officially in 1908 as the Boston Red Sox - broke ground on the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds, located at the present-day site of Northeastern University. In 1903 the Americans won the best-of-nine World Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-3. They played at Huntington Avenue until Fenway Park was built in 1912, about 1.4 miles from Isabella's house in the Back Bay. Isabella bought season tickets, where she "loudly encouraged all the Boston players by name."
The 1912 Red Sox, in their first season at Fenway Park, won the World Series, this time beating the New York Giants, with a rare tie in Game 2 (game called after 11 innings due to darkness). The 1912 World Series is generally regarded as one of the greatest World Series in baseball history (I'll take 2017, for obvious reasons). Isabella loved it.
Two months after the Red Sox beat the Giants, Isabella attended a performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra wearing a white headband with "Oh you Red Sox" written in red letters. A Boston gossip columnist wrote:
It looked as if the woman had gone crazy...almost causing a panic among those in the audience who discovered the ornamentation, and even for a moment upsetting [the musicians] so that their startled eyes wandered from their music stands.
Why was polite Boston society freaking out? "Oh you Red Sox" was a popular song of the Royal Rooters, a Boston baseball fan club, to put it mildly. The Rooters were led by Michael T. "Nuf Ced" McGreevy, owner of Third Base Saloon. Why "Third Base?" Because it was the last stop before home, and it was America's first sports bar. Boston Mayor John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald - maternal grandfather of John F. Kennedy, was a chairman of the Royal Rooters for a time (though the position may have been politically-motivated, as Honey Fitz tried to mobilize the Irish vote). Seeing as how baseball, at the time, wasn't exactly for High Society, Isabella's fandom was a veritable scandal. There is a provision in her will stipulating that anyone who comes in wearing Red Sox gear gets a discount on their admission.
Independently wealthy, Isabella was freed from any concern for social convention. She was known for smoking cigarettes and driving at excessive speeds through Boston. Isabella was seen at boxing matches, horse races, anything that featured a sporting event. She was once spotted taking the Boston Zoo's lions for a walk through the park. In an era when many women didn't drink in public, Isabella drank beer and smoked a cigarette. Again, she didn't care what anyone thought of her. The more scandalous, the better. Isabella burned her letters in an effort to shape her own narrative going forward.
Over the next 20 years, Isabella used the museum as a living, breathing artistic space. John Singer Sargent painted for the public in the Gothic Room. Ruth St. Denis performed her famous dance The Cobra in The Cloisters. Australian opera superstar Nellie Melba performed from the balcony of the Dutch Room into the Courtyard. She organized concerts, lectures, and exhibitions for the public, which were admitted on special days.
In 1919, a year after the Red Sox won their last World Series until 2004, and months before Boston sold Babe Ruth to New York, Isabella had a stroke - the same affliction that took her husband's life. She recovered, somewhat, and continued to receive visitors at her home/museum. This 1922 John Singer Sargent portrait shows a "frail but alert" Isabella. She passed away on July 17, 1924 at the age of 84 and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery next to her Jack, and her son, Jackie.
In her will, she left an endowment for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and stipulated that nothing in the galleries should be changed. No pieces were to be bought or sold. The galleries remain as they were when Isabella climbed ladders to oversee the installation of various pieces. In the event that some curator comes in and starts making changes to the collection, her will says that the entire museum is to be sold and the money given to Harvard University. Also, anyone named Isabella gets in for free.
Her will left a not-insignificant amount of money to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the cringely-named Industrial School for Crippled and Deformed Children, the Animal Rescue League, and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
The night of March 18, 1990 was a security mess from the beginning. The two men pushed the Museum's buzzer, identified themselves as Boston police who were responding to a disturbance. The two security guards inside let them come in through the employee entrance. The two men asked the guard at the watchdesk to step away, whereupon he and the other security guard were immediately handcuffed and tied up in the Museum's basement. They disarmed the security cameras
Over 81 minutes, these two men took 13 pieces of art worth over $500 million - though they left other, more valuable pieces alone. Titian's The Rape of Europa, for instance, is still on display. Vermeer's The Concert - Isabella's first major acquisition - was among the 13. Rembrandt's Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee and A Lady and Gentleman in Black were cut from their frames. Five Degas drawings were taken, as well as a French bronze eagle finial and a Chinese gu. The two men made two trips to the car before departing at 2:45am, telling the handcuffed guards, "You'll be hearing from us in about a year." Police arrived at 8:15am to find the guards still handcuffed. They didn't, in fact, hear from them in about a year.
Initially a $1 million reward was offered to anyone who had information that would lead to the recovery of the stolen art "in good condition" to the Museum. Then it was bumped to $5 million, which was later doubled to $10 million (I did the math for you). In accordance with Isabella's will, the frames from which the works were stolen remain on display, empty, "as a placeholder for the missing works and as symbols of hope awaiting their return. After almost 30 years, none of them have been returned.
There were leads. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum director Anne Hawley got a letter in 1994 promising the return of the pieces for $2.6 million, but the museum had to get the Boston Globe to publish a coded message in the business section. They did. Nothing came of it after law enforcement got involved.
A video released in 2015 showed what seemed to have been a dry run taking place at the Museum the night before. One of the two men was Richard Abath, one of the two security guards on duty on the night of the actual robbery. Abath was the one who buzzed the disguised-as-cops robbers in.
Among the theories as to the motive or actors: the thieves were professionals, the thieves were amateurs (given how roughly the paintings were cut from their canvases), one of the guards was involved, Whitey Bulger was involved, they were sold to the IRA. Whitey Bulger sold the art to the IRA.
(Note: for a remarkable, in-depth examination of the facts and theories surrounding the theft, check "Last Seen," a podcast collaboration between the Boston Globe and WBUR. If you like Serial or true crime podcasts, this will be right up your alley.)
In 2017 the Boston Globe reported that key pieces of evidence, mainly the handcuffs and duct tape used to immobilize the guards and could be tested for traces left by the robbers were missing from the evidence files.
One New England musician who had performed with Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash (!?) before discovering his love for stealin' art - Myles J. Connor, Jr. - was in jail for, yep, stealing art. He had robbed museums before, dressed as a police officer. Connor made a statement to the FBI saying he didn't commit the robbery (he was in jail, after all, and also noted that he totally would have taken the Rape of Europa if he was behind it), but he absolutely knows who did: "I know emphatically and beyond any doubt who stole the art." But he wanted the cash reward, and to be released from prison. He said the mob did it. He might be right. He could also be blowing smoke. Myles Connor released an album under the name "Myles Connor & Friends." Here's the cover:
Note that it's titled "I Was The One..." and in the bottom left hand corner, in tiny script, reads "Rembrandt."
It's been almost 30 years since the heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The $10 million reward is still active, as is the FBI's investigation. Ultimately, the theft of 13 invaluable pieces of art is as remarkable as Isabella's life, itself.
Isabella Stewart Gardner is an under-studied (by me, anyway) fascinating character in American history. She was powerful, unfathomably wealthy, and - for her time - really, really weird. She knew how to set Boston Society ablaze, and did it as much as she possibly could. The theft at the Gardner museum is simply another twist in a life full of them.
Born April 14, 1840 in New York City, Isabella (or "Belle" or "Donna Isabella" or "Isabella of Boston" or "Mrs. Jack") was the daughter of David and Adelia Smith Stewart. David Stewart was an extremely wealthy linen and iron merchant in Manhattan. The family could reportedly trace the paternal lineage through the royal Stuart family of Scotland. Her mother's family arrived in Boston in 1650 before settling on Long Island.
Her education was fairly typical (for the very wealthy): private tutors at home, private school in New York at the Miss Okill School where she demonstrated a penchant for sketching and watercolors, finishing school in Paris, studying music, dance, and foreign languages. Through Julia Gardner, her roommate in Paris, Isabella met Julia's brother Jack, Boston's "most eligible bachelor."
Jack Gardner's maternal grandfather was Joseph Peabody, a prominent Salem shipowner who went on to become one of the wealthiest men in America by importing pepper from Sumatra. Jack, a descendant of the Brahmin Peabody, Lowell, and Gardner families, was 23 and Isabella was almost 20 when they married at Grace Church in lower Manhattan. Matthew Hale Smith, a Unitarian minister and newspaper correspondent wrote in 1869 - nine years after the Stewart/Gardner wedding - that "to be married or buried within [Grace Church] has been ever considered the height of felicity."
After their marriage, Jack and Isabella moved to Jack's hometown - Boston - and settled into a house at 152 Beacon Street in Boston's posh Back Bay. The house was a wedding gift from Isabella's father. It was the eve of the Civil War, though you wouldn't know it from any of her diaries or letters.
In 1863 Jack and Isabella had a son, John Lowell Gardner III, whom they called "Jackie." Both were absolutely devastated when Jackie died of pneumonia shortly before his 2nd birthday. After two years of a spiraling depression Jack took Isabella abroad, first to northern Europe and Russia (where Isabella had to be carried up the gangway on a mattress) and later all over the continent, Egypt and the Middle East, and Asia. This is where Isabella re-discovered her love of art, and she kept extensive journals of her travels. If she didn't come out of her depression (because the death of a child isn't something you just Get Over), traveling and collecting at least muted the dark days.
Doctors advised her to not attempt another pregnancy. Now freed from the social construct of the "woman's place" in the mid-19th century, Isabella lived as she pleased.
Boston has always been - for better or for worse - an intellectual center of America, and Isabella was drawn to it. She attended readings by Charles Eliot Norton, Harvard's very first professor of art history, in 1878, and he invited her to join the Dante Society which was formally organized in 1881 under the leadership of Norton, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell. The editor William Roscoe Thayer said of Norton:
To read Dante with Norton was almost an act of worship. There was in his voice something wonderfully stirring and wholly incommunicable. As he reached a favorite passage his face became radiant and his tones more tender. He explained fully from every side - verbal, textual, literary, spiritual.
How could Isabella resist? Under Norton's urging, she began collecting rare books and manuscripts. That year Henry James, drawing upon his time and experiences with Isabella, published Portrait of a Lady, Isabella was the inspiration for the lady, as well as serving as inspiration for "The Spoils of Poynton's" Mrs. Gareth, Milly Theale in "The Wings of a Dove," and "The Golden Bowl's" Charlotte Stant. James said of Isabella that she "is not a woman. She is a locomotive with a Pullman car attached." Essayist John Jay Chapman described her as "a fairy in a machine shop."
Also emerging was Boston's "gay subculture of the time," according to Isabella's biographer Douglass Shand-Tucci. Isabella's coterie included numerous young gay men. Some of her closest friends were art critic Charles Loeser, philosopher George Santayana, and essayist Logan Pearsall Smith. All were gay. Years prior, in 1875, Jack's brother Joseph committed suicide, and Jack and Isabella adopted his three orphaed teenage sons. The oldest - Joseph Junior - committed suicide at age 25 with some evidence (uncovered by Shand-Tucci) that the reason was the "unrequited love for another man." Another of her nephews was rumored to be gay. It certainly could have been out of sympathy for the two that Isabella formed an attachment to gay men. Shand-Tucci dramatically wrote that "the gay mist that surrounded the chatelaine of Fenway Court is unmistakable."
Whether or not Isabella was actually an "early gay icon," she would have loved the gossip. She famously told a friend who had mentioned a rumor about her, "Don't spoil a good story by telling the truth." Isabella also saved newspaper clippings written about her. She just didn't care what anyone thought.
In 1884 Jack and Isabella took a trip to Venice and visited the Palazzo Barbaro, owned by Bostonians Daniel Sargent Curtis (whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower) and his wife Ariana Randolph Wormeley. The Palazzo Barbaro became a meeting place for high-minded expats and travelers. Notable visitors included John Singer Sargent (who would later produce a portrait of Isabella), Henry James, Robert Browning, James Whistler, Claude Monet, Edith Wharton, and the aforementioned Charles Eliot Norton. The building, and the company within it, inspired Isabella to think about replicating it back in Boston.
In 1886 Isabella met 21-year old Bernard Berenson, then a student at Harvard who had also studied Dante under Norton and who spoke English, German, Italian, (probably) French, as well as Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic, Latin, and Greek. Berenson (not gay) was also buddies with Ray Bradbury. Berenson became Isabella's chief art advisor, and helped acquire some of the more notable pieces in her collection. Berenson said of Isabella, "she lives at a rate and intensity, with a reality that makes other lives seem pale, thin, and shadowy."
Isabella's father passed away in 1891, leaving her an estate worth $1.75 million (over $45 million today). With this sudden influx of money, Isabella and Jack began to focus on their art collection. Some of the more notable acquisitions - with Berenson's assistance - were Rembrandt's Self-Portrait, Age 23, Titian's Rape of Europa (for a then-world record price of £20,000), and Vermeer's The Concert. For the Vermeer, she outbid the Louvre and London's National Gallery, firmly establishing her as one of the world's foremost art collectors. After acquiring the Rembrandt, Isabella and Jack began to plan the museum they had wanted since spending holidays at the Palazzo Barbaro.
On December 10, 1898 Jack died suddenly of a stroke. He was 61. Six weeks after Jack's death, Isabella hired architect Willard T. Sears to design Fenway Court, which would become the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. Sears and his architectural partner Charles Amos Cummings had designed Brechin Hall and the Stone Chapel at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and the Old South Church in Copley Square in Boston. At the time, there were basically no other buildings in the Fens, in Boston's Back Bay, near where Jack and Isabella lived.
Construction on the museum began in 1899 and was completed in 1901. Isabella lived on the 4th floor, while the 1st-3rd floors were devoted to her art collection. She arranged the displays herself and Fenway Court opened at 9pm on January 1, 1903 for 150 of her closest friends while she served donuts and champagne, and 50 players from the Boston Symphony Orchestra welcomed her guests through the gate. Edith Wharton - who had traveled to Boston via a private railcar from New York specifically for the opening - said of the food served at the opening that it was what you would expect from a provincial rail station in France. As Wharton got up to leave, Isabella thanked her for coming and jabbed that she shouldn't expect another invitation to eat at her railroad restaurant. The museum opened to the public in February 1903.
That same year, the Boston Americans - known officially in 1908 as the Boston Red Sox - broke ground on the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds, located at the present-day site of Northeastern University. In 1903 the Americans won the best-of-nine World Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-3. They played at Huntington Avenue until Fenway Park was built in 1912, about 1.4 miles from Isabella's house in the Back Bay. Isabella bought season tickets, where she "loudly encouraged all the Boston players by name."
The 1912 Red Sox, in their first season at Fenway Park, won the World Series, this time beating the New York Giants, with a rare tie in Game 2 (game called after 11 innings due to darkness). The 1912 World Series is generally regarded as one of the greatest World Series in baseball history (I'll take 2017, for obvious reasons). Isabella loved it.
Two months after the Red Sox beat the Giants, Isabella attended a performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra wearing a white headband with "Oh you Red Sox" written in red letters. A Boston gossip columnist wrote:
It looked as if the woman had gone crazy...almost causing a panic among those in the audience who discovered the ornamentation, and even for a moment upsetting [the musicians] so that their startled eyes wandered from their music stands.
Why was polite Boston society freaking out? "Oh you Red Sox" was a popular song of the Royal Rooters, a Boston baseball fan club, to put it mildly. The Rooters were led by Michael T. "Nuf Ced" McGreevy, owner of Third Base Saloon. Why "Third Base?" Because it was the last stop before home, and it was America's first sports bar. Boston Mayor John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald - maternal grandfather of John F. Kennedy, was a chairman of the Royal Rooters for a time (though the position may have been politically-motivated, as Honey Fitz tried to mobilize the Irish vote). Seeing as how baseball, at the time, wasn't exactly for High Society, Isabella's fandom was a veritable scandal. There is a provision in her will stipulating that anyone who comes in wearing Red Sox gear gets a discount on their admission.
Independently wealthy, Isabella was freed from any concern for social convention. She was known for smoking cigarettes and driving at excessive speeds through Boston. Isabella was seen at boxing matches, horse races, anything that featured a sporting event. She was once spotted taking the Boston Zoo's lions for a walk through the park. In an era when many women didn't drink in public, Isabella drank beer and smoked a cigarette. Again, she didn't care what anyone thought of her. The more scandalous, the better. Isabella burned her letters in an effort to shape her own narrative going forward.
Over the next 20 years, Isabella used the museum as a living, breathing artistic space. John Singer Sargent painted for the public in the Gothic Room. Ruth St. Denis performed her famous dance The Cobra in The Cloisters. Australian opera superstar Nellie Melba performed from the balcony of the Dutch Room into the Courtyard. She organized concerts, lectures, and exhibitions for the public, which were admitted on special days.
In 1919, a year after the Red Sox won their last World Series until 2004, and months before Boston sold Babe Ruth to New York, Isabella had a stroke - the same affliction that took her husband's life. She recovered, somewhat, and continued to receive visitors at her home/museum. This 1922 John Singer Sargent portrait shows a "frail but alert" Isabella. She passed away on July 17, 1924 at the age of 84 and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery next to her Jack, and her son, Jackie.
In her will, she left an endowment for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and stipulated that nothing in the galleries should be changed. No pieces were to be bought or sold. The galleries remain as they were when Isabella climbed ladders to oversee the installation of various pieces. In the event that some curator comes in and starts making changes to the collection, her will says that the entire museum is to be sold and the money given to Harvard University. Also, anyone named Isabella gets in for free.
Her will left a not-insignificant amount of money to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the cringely-named Industrial School for Crippled and Deformed Children, the Animal Rescue League, and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
The night of March 18, 1990 was a security mess from the beginning. The two men pushed the Museum's buzzer, identified themselves as Boston police who were responding to a disturbance. The two security guards inside let them come in through the employee entrance. The two men asked the guard at the watchdesk to step away, whereupon he and the other security guard were immediately handcuffed and tied up in the Museum's basement. They disarmed the security cameras
Over 81 minutes, these two men took 13 pieces of art worth over $500 million - though they left other, more valuable pieces alone. Titian's The Rape of Europa, for instance, is still on display. Vermeer's The Concert - Isabella's first major acquisition - was among the 13. Rembrandt's Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee and A Lady and Gentleman in Black were cut from their frames. Five Degas drawings were taken, as well as a French bronze eagle finial and a Chinese gu. The two men made two trips to the car before departing at 2:45am, telling the handcuffed guards, "You'll be hearing from us in about a year." Police arrived at 8:15am to find the guards still handcuffed. They didn't, in fact, hear from them in about a year.
Initially a $1 million reward was offered to anyone who had information that would lead to the recovery of the stolen art "in good condition" to the Museum. Then it was bumped to $5 million, which was later doubled to $10 million (I did the math for you). In accordance with Isabella's will, the frames from which the works were stolen remain on display, empty, "as a placeholder for the missing works and as symbols of hope awaiting their return. After almost 30 years, none of them have been returned.
There were leads. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum director Anne Hawley got a letter in 1994 promising the return of the pieces for $2.6 million, but the museum had to get the Boston Globe to publish a coded message in the business section. They did. Nothing came of it after law enforcement got involved.
A video released in 2015 showed what seemed to have been a dry run taking place at the Museum the night before. One of the two men was Richard Abath, one of the two security guards on duty on the night of the actual robbery. Abath was the one who buzzed the disguised-as-cops robbers in.
Among the theories as to the motive or actors: the thieves were professionals, the thieves were amateurs (given how roughly the paintings were cut from their canvases), one of the guards was involved, Whitey Bulger was involved, they were sold to the IRA. Whitey Bulger sold the art to the IRA.
(Note: for a remarkable, in-depth examination of the facts and theories surrounding the theft, check "Last Seen," a podcast collaboration between the Boston Globe and WBUR. If you like Serial or true crime podcasts, this will be right up your alley.)
In 2017 the Boston Globe reported that key pieces of evidence, mainly the handcuffs and duct tape used to immobilize the guards and could be tested for traces left by the robbers were missing from the evidence files.
One New England musician who had performed with Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash (!?) before discovering his love for stealin' art - Myles J. Connor, Jr. - was in jail for, yep, stealing art. He had robbed museums before, dressed as a police officer. Connor made a statement to the FBI saying he didn't commit the robbery (he was in jail, after all, and also noted that he totally would have taken the Rape of Europa if he was behind it), but he absolutely knows who did: "I know emphatically and beyond any doubt who stole the art." But he wanted the cash reward, and to be released from prison. He said the mob did it. He might be right. He could also be blowing smoke. Myles Connor released an album under the name "Myles Connor & Friends." Here's the cover:
Note that it's titled "I Was The One..." and in the bottom left hand corner, in tiny script, reads "Rembrandt."
It's been almost 30 years since the heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The $10 million reward is still active, as is the FBI's investigation. Ultimately, the theft of 13 invaluable pieces of art is as remarkable as Isabella's life, itself.
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Bleeding Kansas
In the wake of two separate mass shootings within 12-15 hours in the United States, both seemingly racially-charged (to put it as mildly as humanly possible), the History Nerd in me had been thinking about Bleeding Kansas.
1850s America was rough, man. Congress for, oh, about 80 years had refused to do anything definitive on the issue of slavery, preferring instead to kick the can down the road hoping for a solution from...literally anywhere/anyone else. Congress just couldn't afford to run the risk of taking a stand that would alienate a group of rich Southern land- and slave-owners. The Union had to preserved, I suppose.
In 1850 Henry Clay introduced legislation that would end up as five separate bills known as the Compromise of 1850. Another effort to thread the needle in keeping the pro- and anti-slavery crowds happy, it admitted California to the Union as a free state, but strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act. It organized the New Mexico and Utah territories, and allowed popular sovereignty to determine how each territory would address slavery, essentially leaving it up to the residents of the territory to vote on whether or not they would allow slavery.
The Compromise of 1850 also banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C. There were enough concessions to each group that a coalition of Whigs and Democrats gave the bills enough votes to pass. While Henry Clay introduced it, it was Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL) who pushed it through Congress. And since California's admittance to the Union officially gave free states a majority, California agreed to send one anti-slavery senator (John C. Fremont) and one pro-slavery senator (William Gwin) to Congress to keep the balance.
The territory west of Missouri, which was admitted to the Union as a slave state as part of Henry Clay's Missouri Compromise in exchange for Maine's admittance to the Union as a free state and prohibited slavery north of 36° 30', was essential to Douglas' desire for a transcontinental railroad (which would obviously help the people of Douglas' Illinois). Ah! But this territory was north of 36° 30', and the Missouri Compromise dictated that those would have to be free states. Southern Congressmen just couldn't abide by that, as it would upset the precarious balance between free states and slave states they had worked so hard to maintain.
Enter the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, introduced by Douglas. Here's the gist of it:
-Organize the territory west of Missouri into two territories (Kansas, and Nebraska).
-Allow popular sovereignty to determine slavery's future in each territory, in which it was pretty much assumed that the Nebraska would oppose slavery, and Kansas would approve it, given its next-door status to Missouri.
But it wasn't enough for southern congressional leaders, particularly David Rice Atchison, a slave-owning lawyer/senator from Missouri who lived near the Missouri-Kansas border (Atchison's highest-profile client was Mormon founder Joseph Smith). Atchison led the charge for this compromise to repeal the Missouri Compromise and would go on to write "The Voice of Kansas, Let the South Respond," which urged Southerners to move to Kansas in order to pack the popular sovereignty vote in favor of slavery.
Because Douglas viewed the railroad as "the onward march of civilization," the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was ultimately included in the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Thank God someone thought of the railroads.
Douglas received some push-back. In "Appeal of the Independent Democrats" (January 1854), a coalition of congressmen - among them Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner - wrote:
At the present session a new Nebraska bill has been reported by the Senate Committee on Territories, which, should it unhappily receive the sanction of Congress, will open all the unorganized Territories of the Union to the ingress of slavery...
...We arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge, as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own States, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.
Douglas made an impassioned speech in favor of...railroads:
You must provide for continuous lines of settlement from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific Ocean...[do not] fetter the limbs of this young giant.
Charles Sumner, one of the authors of the Appeal of the Independent Democrats, said of Douglas:
Alas! too often those principles which give consistency, individuality, and form to the Northern character, which render it staunch, strong, and seaworthy, which bind it together as with iron, are drawn out, one by one, like the bolts of the ill-fitted vessel, and from the miserable, loosened fragments is formed that human anomaly - a Northern man with Southern principles (emphasis his). Sir, no such man can speak for the North. (Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing 1852-1857.)
The Kansas-Nebraska Act passed the Senate, 37-14. It passed in the House 113-100, with Southern Democrats voting in favor of it a 57-2 margin. President Franklin Pierce signed it into law on May 30, 1854.
Then things got really wild.
Pro-slavery advocates and abolitionist activists rushed to Kansas. You really had three different political groups: Pro-Slavery, Free-Staters (or Free-Soilers), and Abolitionists. The Pierce Administration appointed the pro-slavery Andrew Horatio Reeder as the first territorial governor. There were rampant rumors of abolitionists and other Northeners flooding into Missouri, which led to Southern pro-slavery activists also moving to Kansas in an effort to sway the elections, scheduled for November 1854. It worked.
About five thousand "Border Ruffians" - led by ol' boy David Rice Atchison (a sitting Senator, may I remind you) who said "The prosperity or the ruin of the whole South depends on the Kansas struggle." - descended on Kansas to intimidate Free-Staters and abolitionists. In the November 1854 election, pro-slavery candidate John W. Whitfield won. But there was a slight issue: out of 2,833 votes cast, 1,729 were cast illegally. According to William G. Cutler's History of the State of Kansas (1883), there was one location in which only 20 of the 604 votes were actually cast by residents of Kansas. When the findings of the report into the Kansas elections were presented to President Pierce, he ignored them and ordered the results to stand, and then removed Governor Reeder from office.
On March 30, 1855 Kansas held the elections for its first territorial legislature. Again the Border Ruffians came (again led by Atchison). They seized at gunpoint the ballot boxes, and again cast thousands of fraudulent votes. In one case, Border Ruffians simply destroyed the ballot box at Bloomington. Territorial Governor Reeder voided the results in six of the districts that protested and ordered new elections in May. When the first Kansas legislature convened, the other representatives ousted the May winners in favor of the March winners, leading the whole group to be known as the Bogus Legislature. Tensions weren't exactly easing in Kansas.
Two old coots - pro-slavery Franklin Coleman and Free-Stater Charles Dow - had argued for years about a plot of land that both had claimed. On November 21, 1855 Coleman shot Dow nine times in the back. That it seemingly wasn't about slavery was irrelevant - shots had been fired. This is the unofficial beginning of the Wakarusa War, and Bleeding Kansas as a whole. Douglas County Sheriff Samuel J. Jones - himself a pro-slavery man and the leader of the group that destroyed the aforementioned ballot box, which earned his appointment as Sheriff - arrested a Free-Stater named Jacob Branson for "disturbing the peace." Free-Staters quickly got Branson released, but were so alarmed by law enforcement that they raised a militia to strengthen the town of Lawrence, which had become a Free-State stronghold. Jones responded by raising 1,500 of his own men, most of them from Missouri, to invade Lawrence and get rid of the Free-Staters. The town planned for a war, but the governor was able to make peace in December 1855.
Sheriff Jones returned in April 1856 to rid Lawrence of the Free-State movement and George W. Brown's Herald of Freedom, a leading Free-State newspaper. Jones' very presence riled up the people of Lawrence, who surrounded Jones where he got "grabbed by the collar" and "punched in the face." (Schultz, Duane (1997). Quantrill's War: The Life & Times Of William Clarke Quantrill, 1837–1865)
On May 19, 1956 Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner began an epic two-day speech that became known as his "Crime Against Kansas" speech. He had been preparing for this speech for two months, and it showed. It was 112 pages long, he had memorized it, and no one was spared:
-Sumner exposed Atchison on the Senate floor for his role in the troubles in Kansas, comparing him to Roman emperor Catiline, who had betrayed his country to overthrow the existing order. Sumner had documentation from newspapers to back up his claims. (Despite Sumner's speech being published, Atchison had no idea he had been sonned. Two days later he gave his own speech to some men from Texas he had hired specifically to kill anti-slavery activists and loot Free-State towns. It wasn't a good look).
-The framer of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas was "a noise-some, squat, and nameless animal...not a proper model for an American senator."
-South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, he said "[Butler] has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight I mean the harlot, Slavery." Sumner would go on to mock the way Butler spoke, though Butler had recently suffered a stroke.
This last one resulted in one of the most astounding acts in Congressional history: Preston Brooks, a congressman from South Carolina and Butler's second cousin, had taken offense to Sumner's words. Had Brooks considered Sumner a gentleman, he would have challenged him to a duel. Instead, Brooks picked a cane that he would use to discipline a dog, and on May 22, 1856 proceeded to beat the ever-loving piss out of Sumner. For over a minute Brooks hit Sumner over the head with a cane. Sumner, who lost his sight with the first blow, had fallen between his seat and his desk and couldn't get up, was helpless as the rest of the Senate was too stunned to move. Brooks calmly walked out of the Senate. Brooks survived a censure resolution in the House and resigned. He was immediately re-elected in a special election and served in the House until he passed away at age 37 of croup. Both Brooks and Sumner were hailed as heroes by their respective stances on slavery and the deep divisions of the country were solidified as even Congress couldn't find civil ground.
The day before Sumner's beating, Sheriff Jones Jones returned to Lawrence with a small outfit of soldiers and a gun battle ensued, leaving Jones partially paralyzed, but not before he destroyed the printing press of the Herald of Freedom as well as the Kansas Free State, burned the Free State Hotel, burned the house of Charles Robinson - the Free-State militia leader, and looted the rest of the town. This became known as the Sacking of Lawrence. Jones recovered and tried to win support from the governor to jail his adversaries but when it was clear that the governor was trying to win peace rather than further escalate tensions, Jones resigned and moved to New Mexico.
On the morning of May 26 an Ohio abolitionist named John Brown (who would father 20 children), four of his sons, and two additional men rode into Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas - a pro-slavery town. Brown and his posse forced five pro-slavery men out of their homes and proceeded to hack them to death with broadswords in front of their families.
Religious leaders started to get on board. Prominent clergyman Henry Ward Beecher started sending rifles to Kansas in crates labeled "Bibles" (the rifles became known as Beecher's Bibles, which is as solid a band name as you could ask for).
Nine years prior to the Pottawatomie Creek Massacre, John Brown met Frederick Douglass in Springfield, Massachusetts. Douglass said of Brown:
Though a white gentleman, [Brown] is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery.
At this 1847 meeting Brown outlined to Douglass his plan to lead a war to free the slaves.
On July 4, 1856 proclamations from President Pierce led 500 U.S. Army troops from Fort Leavenworth and Fort Riley to descend on Topeka, where the large Free-State Legislature had set up their own government. They approved a constitution and everything (rejected by Congress). The troops brought cannons and with lit fuses pointed at Constitution Hall in Topeka ordered the dispersal of the Free-State Legislature. Colonel Edwin Vose "Bull Head" Sumner - cousin of the recently-beaten Charles Sumner - led the effort to disperse the Free-Staters (nicknamed "Bull Head" due to the legend that a musket ball bounced off his head, Sumner would later serve as the oldest commander in the Union Army).
In August 1856 between 250-400 Border Ruffians led by John W. Reid, a lawyer, had information that John Brown was in Osawatomie and moved his men towards the town, which was largely deserted out of a fear of what was exactly about to happen. Brown's son Frederick was leading an advance party towards the town when a pro-slavery Baptist preacher named Martin White was leading a group of Border Ruffians as a guide. White shot and killed Frederick Brown. When John Brown heard his son had died, he led an attack of 40 abolitionists against the Border Ruffians that only ended when they ran out of ammunition. Four Free-Staters had died, as well as two Border Ruffians. After the Battle of Osawatomie, Brown wrote:
God sees it. I have only a short time to live - only one death to die, and I will die fighting for His cause. There will be no more peace in this land until slavery is done for. I will give them something else to do than extend slave territory. I will carry this war into Africa.
Brown would spend the rest of the year in Kansas, and then move back East and begin plotting what would become the raid on Harpers Ferry, resulting in his execution and yet another turning point that set out the country's path towards war.
After the Battle of Osawatomie, Pierce named John W. Geary, who had been the first mayor of San Francisco (and would later be governor of Pennsylvania), as the third territorial governor of Kansas in September 1856. Geary didn't stop the violence in Kansas in his six months as governor, but he rejected the pro-slavery contingent in the territory and spent the next few years in Washington warning people of the danger in Kansas. He served in the Union Army during the Civil War and died of a heart attack shortly after his term as Pennsylvania governor ended.
With the elections of 1856 the old Whigs had disintegrated as a political party and gave rise to a new party: the Republican Party, which would become the party of abolitionism, or at least the party to stop the spread of slavery in the United States. Please keep in mind how the Republican Party and the Democratic Party essentially switched platforms over the 100 years from the 1850s to the 1950s. The election of Abraham Lincoln brought about the actual split between the states, but the roots had been there for years.
1850s America was rough, man. Congress for, oh, about 80 years had refused to do anything definitive on the issue of slavery, preferring instead to kick the can down the road hoping for a solution from...literally anywhere/anyone else. Congress just couldn't afford to run the risk of taking a stand that would alienate a group of rich Southern land- and slave-owners. The Union had to preserved, I suppose.
In 1850 Henry Clay introduced legislation that would end up as five separate bills known as the Compromise of 1850. Another effort to thread the needle in keeping the pro- and anti-slavery crowds happy, it admitted California to the Union as a free state, but strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act. It organized the New Mexico and Utah territories, and allowed popular sovereignty to determine how each territory would address slavery, essentially leaving it up to the residents of the territory to vote on whether or not they would allow slavery.
The Compromise of 1850 also banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C. There were enough concessions to each group that a coalition of Whigs and Democrats gave the bills enough votes to pass. While Henry Clay introduced it, it was Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL) who pushed it through Congress. And since California's admittance to the Union officially gave free states a majority, California agreed to send one anti-slavery senator (John C. Fremont) and one pro-slavery senator (William Gwin) to Congress to keep the balance.
The territory west of Missouri, which was admitted to the Union as a slave state as part of Henry Clay's Missouri Compromise in exchange for Maine's admittance to the Union as a free state and prohibited slavery north of 36° 30', was essential to Douglas' desire for a transcontinental railroad (which would obviously help the people of Douglas' Illinois). Ah! But this territory was north of 36° 30', and the Missouri Compromise dictated that those would have to be free states. Southern Congressmen just couldn't abide by that, as it would upset the precarious balance between free states and slave states they had worked so hard to maintain.
Enter the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, introduced by Douglas. Here's the gist of it:
-Organize the territory west of Missouri into two territories (Kansas, and Nebraska).
-Allow popular sovereignty to determine slavery's future in each territory, in which it was pretty much assumed that the Nebraska would oppose slavery, and Kansas would approve it, given its next-door status to Missouri.
But it wasn't enough for southern congressional leaders, particularly David Rice Atchison, a slave-owning lawyer/senator from Missouri who lived near the Missouri-Kansas border (Atchison's highest-profile client was Mormon founder Joseph Smith). Atchison led the charge for this compromise to repeal the Missouri Compromise and would go on to write "The Voice of Kansas, Let the South Respond," which urged Southerners to move to Kansas in order to pack the popular sovereignty vote in favor of slavery.
Because Douglas viewed the railroad as "the onward march of civilization," the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was ultimately included in the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Thank God someone thought of the railroads.
Douglas received some push-back. In "Appeal of the Independent Democrats" (January 1854), a coalition of congressmen - among them Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner - wrote:
At the present session a new Nebraska bill has been reported by the Senate Committee on Territories, which, should it unhappily receive the sanction of Congress, will open all the unorganized Territories of the Union to the ingress of slavery...
...We arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge, as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own States, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.
Douglas made an impassioned speech in favor of...railroads:
You must provide for continuous lines of settlement from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific Ocean...[do not] fetter the limbs of this young giant.
Charles Sumner, one of the authors of the Appeal of the Independent Democrats, said of Douglas:
Alas! too often those principles which give consistency, individuality, and form to the Northern character, which render it staunch, strong, and seaworthy, which bind it together as with iron, are drawn out, one by one, like the bolts of the ill-fitted vessel, and from the miserable, loosened fragments is formed that human anomaly - a Northern man with Southern principles (emphasis his). Sir, no such man can speak for the North. (Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing 1852-1857.)
The Kansas-Nebraska Act passed the Senate, 37-14. It passed in the House 113-100, with Southern Democrats voting in favor of it a 57-2 margin. President Franklin Pierce signed it into law on May 30, 1854.
Then things got really wild.
Pro-slavery advocates and abolitionist activists rushed to Kansas. You really had three different political groups: Pro-Slavery, Free-Staters (or Free-Soilers), and Abolitionists. The Pierce Administration appointed the pro-slavery Andrew Horatio Reeder as the first territorial governor. There were rampant rumors of abolitionists and other Northeners flooding into Missouri, which led to Southern pro-slavery activists also moving to Kansas in an effort to sway the elections, scheduled for November 1854. It worked.
About five thousand "Border Ruffians" - led by ol' boy David Rice Atchison (a sitting Senator, may I remind you) who said "The prosperity or the ruin of the whole South depends on the Kansas struggle." - descended on Kansas to intimidate Free-Staters and abolitionists. In the November 1854 election, pro-slavery candidate John W. Whitfield won. But there was a slight issue: out of 2,833 votes cast, 1,729 were cast illegally. According to William G. Cutler's History of the State of Kansas (1883), there was one location in which only 20 of the 604 votes were actually cast by residents of Kansas. When the findings of the report into the Kansas elections were presented to President Pierce, he ignored them and ordered the results to stand, and then removed Governor Reeder from office.
On March 30, 1855 Kansas held the elections for its first territorial legislature. Again the Border Ruffians came (again led by Atchison). They seized at gunpoint the ballot boxes, and again cast thousands of fraudulent votes. In one case, Border Ruffians simply destroyed the ballot box at Bloomington. Territorial Governor Reeder voided the results in six of the districts that protested and ordered new elections in May. When the first Kansas legislature convened, the other representatives ousted the May winners in favor of the March winners, leading the whole group to be known as the Bogus Legislature. Tensions weren't exactly easing in Kansas.
Two old coots - pro-slavery Franklin Coleman and Free-Stater Charles Dow - had argued for years about a plot of land that both had claimed. On November 21, 1855 Coleman shot Dow nine times in the back. That it seemingly wasn't about slavery was irrelevant - shots had been fired. This is the unofficial beginning of the Wakarusa War, and Bleeding Kansas as a whole. Douglas County Sheriff Samuel J. Jones - himself a pro-slavery man and the leader of the group that destroyed the aforementioned ballot box, which earned his appointment as Sheriff - arrested a Free-Stater named Jacob Branson for "disturbing the peace." Free-Staters quickly got Branson released, but were so alarmed by law enforcement that they raised a militia to strengthen the town of Lawrence, which had become a Free-State stronghold. Jones responded by raising 1,500 of his own men, most of them from Missouri, to invade Lawrence and get rid of the Free-Staters. The town planned for a war, but the governor was able to make peace in December 1855.
Sheriff Jones returned in April 1856 to rid Lawrence of the Free-State movement and George W. Brown's Herald of Freedom, a leading Free-State newspaper. Jones' very presence riled up the people of Lawrence, who surrounded Jones where he got "grabbed by the collar" and "punched in the face." (Schultz, Duane (1997). Quantrill's War: The Life & Times Of William Clarke Quantrill, 1837–1865)
On May 19, 1956 Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner began an epic two-day speech that became known as his "Crime Against Kansas" speech. He had been preparing for this speech for two months, and it showed. It was 112 pages long, he had memorized it, and no one was spared:
-Sumner exposed Atchison on the Senate floor for his role in the troubles in Kansas, comparing him to Roman emperor Catiline, who had betrayed his country to overthrow the existing order. Sumner had documentation from newspapers to back up his claims. (Despite Sumner's speech being published, Atchison had no idea he had been sonned. Two days later he gave his own speech to some men from Texas he had hired specifically to kill anti-slavery activists and loot Free-State towns. It wasn't a good look).
-The framer of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas was "a noise-some, squat, and nameless animal...not a proper model for an American senator."
-South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, he said "[Butler] has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight I mean the harlot, Slavery." Sumner would go on to mock the way Butler spoke, though Butler had recently suffered a stroke.
This last one resulted in one of the most astounding acts in Congressional history: Preston Brooks, a congressman from South Carolina and Butler's second cousin, had taken offense to Sumner's words. Had Brooks considered Sumner a gentleman, he would have challenged him to a duel. Instead, Brooks picked a cane that he would use to discipline a dog, and on May 22, 1856 proceeded to beat the ever-loving piss out of Sumner. For over a minute Brooks hit Sumner over the head with a cane. Sumner, who lost his sight with the first blow, had fallen between his seat and his desk and couldn't get up, was helpless as the rest of the Senate was too stunned to move. Brooks calmly walked out of the Senate. Brooks survived a censure resolution in the House and resigned. He was immediately re-elected in a special election and served in the House until he passed away at age 37 of croup. Both Brooks and Sumner were hailed as heroes by their respective stances on slavery and the deep divisions of the country were solidified as even Congress couldn't find civil ground.
The day before Sumner's beating, Sheriff Jones Jones returned to Lawrence with a small outfit of soldiers and a gun battle ensued, leaving Jones partially paralyzed, but not before he destroyed the printing press of the Herald of Freedom as well as the Kansas Free State, burned the Free State Hotel, burned the house of Charles Robinson - the Free-State militia leader, and looted the rest of the town. This became known as the Sacking of Lawrence. Jones recovered and tried to win support from the governor to jail his adversaries but when it was clear that the governor was trying to win peace rather than further escalate tensions, Jones resigned and moved to New Mexico.
On the morning of May 26 an Ohio abolitionist named John Brown (who would father 20 children), four of his sons, and two additional men rode into Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas - a pro-slavery town. Brown and his posse forced five pro-slavery men out of their homes and proceeded to hack them to death with broadswords in front of their families.
Religious leaders started to get on board. Prominent clergyman Henry Ward Beecher started sending rifles to Kansas in crates labeled "Bibles" (the rifles became known as Beecher's Bibles, which is as solid a band name as you could ask for).
Nine years prior to the Pottawatomie Creek Massacre, John Brown met Frederick Douglass in Springfield, Massachusetts. Douglass said of Brown:
Though a white gentleman, [Brown] is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery.
At this 1847 meeting Brown outlined to Douglass his plan to lead a war to free the slaves.
On July 4, 1856 proclamations from President Pierce led 500 U.S. Army troops from Fort Leavenworth and Fort Riley to descend on Topeka, where the large Free-State Legislature had set up their own government. They approved a constitution and everything (rejected by Congress). The troops brought cannons and with lit fuses pointed at Constitution Hall in Topeka ordered the dispersal of the Free-State Legislature. Colonel Edwin Vose "Bull Head" Sumner - cousin of the recently-beaten Charles Sumner - led the effort to disperse the Free-Staters (nicknamed "Bull Head" due to the legend that a musket ball bounced off his head, Sumner would later serve as the oldest commander in the Union Army).
In August 1856 between 250-400 Border Ruffians led by John W. Reid, a lawyer, had information that John Brown was in Osawatomie and moved his men towards the town, which was largely deserted out of a fear of what was exactly about to happen. Brown's son Frederick was leading an advance party towards the town when a pro-slavery Baptist preacher named Martin White was leading a group of Border Ruffians as a guide. White shot and killed Frederick Brown. When John Brown heard his son had died, he led an attack of 40 abolitionists against the Border Ruffians that only ended when they ran out of ammunition. Four Free-Staters had died, as well as two Border Ruffians. After the Battle of Osawatomie, Brown wrote:
God sees it. I have only a short time to live - only one death to die, and I will die fighting for His cause. There will be no more peace in this land until slavery is done for. I will give them something else to do than extend slave territory. I will carry this war into Africa.
Brown would spend the rest of the year in Kansas, and then move back East and begin plotting what would become the raid on Harpers Ferry, resulting in his execution and yet another turning point that set out the country's path towards war.
After the Battle of Osawatomie, Pierce named John W. Geary, who had been the first mayor of San Francisco (and would later be governor of Pennsylvania), as the third territorial governor of Kansas in September 1856. Geary didn't stop the violence in Kansas in his six months as governor, but he rejected the pro-slavery contingent in the territory and spent the next few years in Washington warning people of the danger in Kansas. He served in the Union Army during the Civil War and died of a heart attack shortly after his term as Pennsylvania governor ended.
With the elections of 1856 the old Whigs had disintegrated as a political party and gave rise to a new party: the Republican Party, which would become the party of abolitionism, or at least the party to stop the spread of slavery in the United States. Please keep in mind how the Republican Party and the Democratic Party essentially switched platforms over the 100 years from the 1850s to the 1950s. The election of Abraham Lincoln brought about the actual split between the states, but the roots had been there for years.
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
A Short-ish History of Breckinridge Long and the Issue of Allowing Immigrants into the United States
Samuel Miller Breckinridge Long was born in St. Louis, Missouri on May 16, 1881, a member of the storied Breckinridge family (who earlier spelled it "Breckenridge," but that's neither here nor there). Notable Breckinridges include:
-Robert Breckinridge: Virginia militia captain during the French & Indian War.
-Alexander Breckinridge: Son (John Floyd) was the 25th governor of Virginia.
-Robert Breckinridge, Jr.: Ratifier of the Constitution and later Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives.
-John Breckinridge: Senator from Kentucky and later Thomas Jefferson's Attorney General (1805-1806).
-James Breckinridge: Virginia House delegate (1789-1802, 1806-1808), member of the House of Representatives (1809-1817), Virginia House delegate (1819-1821, 1823-1824).
-Letitia Breckinridge: Second husband was Peter B. Porter, twice New York representative to the House and U.S. Secretary of War (1828-1829).
-John Cabell Breckinridge: U.S. Army Major, U.S. Representative from Kentucky (1851-1855), Vice-President under James Buchanan (the youngest ever VP), Candidate for President in the 1860 Election.*
*Breckinridge, a native Kentuckian, had the support of the Southern Democrats thanks to his stance on preserving slavery. He split the Democratic vote with Stephen Douglas (see previous "When did Republicans/Democrats switch platforms?" post), who favored Popular Sovereignty, or letting each state make their own decision on slavery. This split paved the way for Lincoln to take 180 electoral votes and the presidency, and for the South to secede from the Union.
-William Campbell Preston Breckinridge: U.S. Representative from Kentucky (1885-1895). Married Lucretia Hart Clay, granddaughter of Henry Clay.
-Ethelbert Dudley Warfield: President of Miami University, Lafayette College, and the director of Princeton Theological Seminary.
-John Cabell Breckinridge II: New York attorney, married Isabella Goodrich, daughter of B.F. Goodrich, founder of the B.F. Goodrich Company.
-Henry Skillman Breckinridge: One of Charles Lindbergh's lawyers during the Lindbergh kidnapping trial. Henry S. Breckinridge was the only serious (though not, like serious serious) challenger to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1936 Republican primaries, running against the New Deal.
That's a lot of family history, but the Breckinridges are a storied family in American political history.
Charles Lindbergh's involvement with the family is somewhat notable, as Lindbergh would go on to be the face of the America First movement, advocating for the U.S. foreign policy of "leave Nazi Germany alone." Henry Breckinridge, a longtime friend of Lindbergh and his personal attorney, was the first person Lindbergh called when he discovered that his son had been kidnapped. Lindbergh would later write Breckinridge after touring Germany, in regards to Nazi Germany:
(There is) a spirit in Germany which I have not seen in any other country. There is certainly great ability, and I am inclined to think more intelligent leadership than is generally recognized. A person would have to be blind not to realize that they have already built up tremendous strength.
It's hard to determine how close Henry Breckinridge was with Breckinridge Long, but they were only five years apart in age, and both involved in government affairs.
Anyhow, to Breckinridge Long. Long graduated from Princeton in 1904, Washington University School of Law, and got a Master's from Princeton in 1909. Long was admitted to the Missouri bar and opened a law office in St. Louis. Long supported Woodrow Wilson (and is credited with coining Wilson's successful 1916 re-election campaign slogan, "He kept us out of war," which Wilson did...for about another year). Shortly after Wilson won re-election, Long joined the State Department as Third Assistant Secretary of State but left in 1920 to unsuccessfully run for Senate (and took another L in 1922). While working for Wilson, Long became familiar with Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy (it was not lost on FDR that his 5th cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, was also Assistant Secretary of the Navy in McKinley's administration.).
Long supported FDR's candidacy for president in 1932 and was rewarded with an ambassadorship to Italy in 1933. While in Rome, Long wrote back to Washington praising Mussolini and his regime for their "well-paved streets," the "dapper" black-shirted stormtroopers, and their seemingly always on-time trains.
He returned to private life in 1936, but still had some Opinions. Long said of the Anschluss (the German annexation of Austria in 1938), that it was cool because "the Germans were the only people with the intelligence and courage to bring peace between the Rhine and Black Sea."
Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book "No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II" that Long kept a diary "filled with invectives against Jews, Catholics, New Yorkers, liberals, and, in fact, anyone who was not of his own particular background."
In 1939 FDR asked Long to return to the State Department. Long oversaw the Immigrant Visa Division, essentially formulating the policy of allowing immigrants into the United States as well as transfer visas in foreign consulates. This is where Long's history becomes problematic.
Long basically promoted U.S. National Security over humanitarian concerns. After the Anschluss, and then Kristallnacht in 1939, over 300,000 Germans (mostly Jews) applied for an immigration visa to the United States. Even as Hitler ramped up his efforts to dominate Europe throughout the 1930s, the United States - still reeling from the Great Depression - maintained the immigration quotas established by the Johnson-Reed Act.
The Johnson-Reed Act (passed in 1924) was an extremely restrictive immigration policy that targeted immigrants of specific "undesirable" countries or origins. Visas were limited to 2% of the total population of a given country according to their population in the United States as of the 1890 census.
Oh and wouldn't you know it, on January 10, 1921 a fire in the Commerce Building destroyed 25% of the 1890 census, with another 50% "destroyed by water, smoke, and fire." So...there wasn't exactly a back-up on a floppy disk. Census Bureau Clerk T.J. Fitzgerald:
(The records were) certain to be absolutely ruined. There is no method of restoring the legibility of a water-soaked volume.
What records did remain were destroyed in 1935.
The Johnson-Reed Act excluded all Asian countries as well as significantly limiting visas for prospective immigrants from Southern & Eastern European countries while increasing available visas for Northern & Western Europe. As a result, only 27,370 visas from Germany would be approved each year. There was about an 11-year waiting list to get into the United States in 1939 from Germany. A Hungarian applying for an immigrant visa faced a 40-year wait.
Eleanor Roosevelt once remarked of Long to FDR: "Franklin, you know he's a fascist." To which FDR responded, "I've told you, Eleanor, you must not say that."
Emanuel Celler, a Democratic representative from Brooklyn from 1923-1973, described Long as
Cold and austere, stiff as a poker, highly diplomatic in dress and in speech...and anti-Semitic.
Long reviewed Hitler's terrible book Mein Kampf as "eloquent in opposition to Jewry and Jews as exponents of Communism and chaos." In a 1940 diary entry, Long said that those sympathetic to the plight of those targeted by the Nazis were "largely concentrated along the Atlantic seaboard, and principally around New York" who had "joined up with the small element in this country which wants to push us into this war."
Long's views on Jews and basically all non-Americans reflected what was actually a popular opinion in the United States at the time. Two weeks after Kristallnacht, 72% of respondents to a Gallup Poll said the United States should not allow larger numbers of German Jews into the United States. 54% of respondents said the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis was their own fault. 67% of Americans opposed a bill proposed in Congress to admit child refugees from Germany, and the bill never made it to the floor for a vote. A lot of Americans thought Germany and the Soviet Union were using Jewish refugees as spies. Let's not forget that there was another recession in the Great Depression. Unemployment hit 20%. "Economic Anxiety" has been around for a while.
A June 26, 1940 memorandum from Breckinridge Long detailed the following regarding potential immigrants from the United States:
We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States. We could do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone the granting of the visas. However, this could only be temporary. In order to make it more definite, it would have to be done by suspension of the rules under the law by the issuance of a proclamation of emergency - which I take it we are not yet ready to proclaim.
The State Department - remember this is Long's doing - "cautioned consular officials to exercise particular care" in screening applicants for visas. In June 1941, the State Department issued a "relatives rule," which denied visas to immigrants with close family still in Nazi territory which, by June 1941, was pretty much all of Western Europe. And by that point, most American consulates in German-occupied territories were closed (under German orders, to which the United States complied). On June 22, 1941 the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa - the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
On July 1, 1941 the State Department centralized all alien visa control in Washington. All applicants needed to be approved by a review committee in Washington, and then were required to submit additional paperwork, including a second affidavit proving their finances were in order. Basically after July 1941 it was virtually impossible to leave Nazi-occupied Europe for the United States.
This was Long's goal, as he was terrified of "radicals" and "the Jewish press" for his efforts to prevent immigration to the United States. He saw himself besieged by "communists, extreme radicals, Jewish professional agitators, and refugee enthusiasts...all woven together in the barrage of opposition against the State Department which makes me the bull's eye."
Emanuel Celler, on Long:
Long said that he refused to grant visas for security reasons. Well, what is meant by security reasons - he felt that if he granted a visa to a refugee, the relative of the refugee might be held as a hostage in Germany and...they might force him to behave in a way that involved the security of the United States and therefore he would not grant him a visa. Which was a lot of hooey.
Eleanor Roosevelt found Long "not only unsympathetic but also opposed to the policies she supported and, as much as possible, she tried to work around Long."
For many applicants trying to escape the Nazis, many of the documents the State Department required were simply impossible to acquire. One of these applicants was Otto Frank, who wrote to his old college buddy Nathan Straus, Jr. asking him to put up $5,000 (just over $87,000 in today's dollars). It was a good ask: Straus was the son of a Macy's co-owner, head of the U.S. Housing Authority, and a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. Otto Frank and his family, including his daughter Anne, would never make it to the United States.
FDR could have removed Long. He didn't. Ultimately, only 10% of the immigration quota from Germany was filled under Long. Most of those who didn't receive visas died during World War II.
Emanuel Celler said of the State Department's division under Long:
There unquestionably were a number of anti-Semites in the State Department, and I know that personally...The normal attitude of the State Department in those days, and I suspect it still exists, that you don't do anything to rock the boat. You keep things calm. And the fact that the millions of Jews were being murdered while they were delaying, I don't think that troubled most of them, frankly.
Breckinridge Long came from a rich, political family with a history of turning its back on pretty much anyone who didn't look like them. In that way, they represented most of America. Breckinridge Long is a wide-angle view on how things don't change all that much.
-Robert Breckinridge: Virginia militia captain during the French & Indian War.
-Alexander Breckinridge: Son (John Floyd) was the 25th governor of Virginia.
-Robert Breckinridge, Jr.: Ratifier of the Constitution and later Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives.
-John Breckinridge: Senator from Kentucky and later Thomas Jefferson's Attorney General (1805-1806).
-James Breckinridge: Virginia House delegate (1789-1802, 1806-1808), member of the House of Representatives (1809-1817), Virginia House delegate (1819-1821, 1823-1824).
-Letitia Breckinridge: Second husband was Peter B. Porter, twice New York representative to the House and U.S. Secretary of War (1828-1829).
-John Cabell Breckinridge: U.S. Army Major, U.S. Representative from Kentucky (1851-1855), Vice-President under James Buchanan (the youngest ever VP), Candidate for President in the 1860 Election.*
*Breckinridge, a native Kentuckian, had the support of the Southern Democrats thanks to his stance on preserving slavery. He split the Democratic vote with Stephen Douglas (see previous "When did Republicans/Democrats switch platforms?" post), who favored Popular Sovereignty, or letting each state make their own decision on slavery. This split paved the way for Lincoln to take 180 electoral votes and the presidency, and for the South to secede from the Union.
-William Campbell Preston Breckinridge: U.S. Representative from Kentucky (1885-1895). Married Lucretia Hart Clay, granddaughter of Henry Clay.
-Ethelbert Dudley Warfield: President of Miami University, Lafayette College, and the director of Princeton Theological Seminary.
-John Cabell Breckinridge II: New York attorney, married Isabella Goodrich, daughter of B.F. Goodrich, founder of the B.F. Goodrich Company.
-Henry Skillman Breckinridge: One of Charles Lindbergh's lawyers during the Lindbergh kidnapping trial. Henry S. Breckinridge was the only serious (though not, like serious serious) challenger to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1936 Republican primaries, running against the New Deal.
That's a lot of family history, but the Breckinridges are a storied family in American political history.
Charles Lindbergh's involvement with the family is somewhat notable, as Lindbergh would go on to be the face of the America First movement, advocating for the U.S. foreign policy of "leave Nazi Germany alone." Henry Breckinridge, a longtime friend of Lindbergh and his personal attorney, was the first person Lindbergh called when he discovered that his son had been kidnapped. Lindbergh would later write Breckinridge after touring Germany, in regards to Nazi Germany:
(There is) a spirit in Germany which I have not seen in any other country. There is certainly great ability, and I am inclined to think more intelligent leadership than is generally recognized. A person would have to be blind not to realize that they have already built up tremendous strength.
It's hard to determine how close Henry Breckinridge was with Breckinridge Long, but they were only five years apart in age, and both involved in government affairs.
Anyhow, to Breckinridge Long. Long graduated from Princeton in 1904, Washington University School of Law, and got a Master's from Princeton in 1909. Long was admitted to the Missouri bar and opened a law office in St. Louis. Long supported Woodrow Wilson (and is credited with coining Wilson's successful 1916 re-election campaign slogan, "He kept us out of war," which Wilson did...for about another year). Shortly after Wilson won re-election, Long joined the State Department as Third Assistant Secretary of State but left in 1920 to unsuccessfully run for Senate (and took another L in 1922). While working for Wilson, Long became familiar with Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy (it was not lost on FDR that his 5th cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, was also Assistant Secretary of the Navy in McKinley's administration.).
Long supported FDR's candidacy for president in 1932 and was rewarded with an ambassadorship to Italy in 1933. While in Rome, Long wrote back to Washington praising Mussolini and his regime for their "well-paved streets," the "dapper" black-shirted stormtroopers, and their seemingly always on-time trains.
He returned to private life in 1936, but still had some Opinions. Long said of the Anschluss (the German annexation of Austria in 1938), that it was cool because "the Germans were the only people with the intelligence and courage to bring peace between the Rhine and Black Sea."
Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book "No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II" that Long kept a diary "filled with invectives against Jews, Catholics, New Yorkers, liberals, and, in fact, anyone who was not of his own particular background."
In 1939 FDR asked Long to return to the State Department. Long oversaw the Immigrant Visa Division, essentially formulating the policy of allowing immigrants into the United States as well as transfer visas in foreign consulates. This is where Long's history becomes problematic.
Long basically promoted U.S. National Security over humanitarian concerns. After the Anschluss, and then Kristallnacht in 1939, over 300,000 Germans (mostly Jews) applied for an immigration visa to the United States. Even as Hitler ramped up his efforts to dominate Europe throughout the 1930s, the United States - still reeling from the Great Depression - maintained the immigration quotas established by the Johnson-Reed Act.
The Johnson-Reed Act (passed in 1924) was an extremely restrictive immigration policy that targeted immigrants of specific "undesirable" countries or origins. Visas were limited to 2% of the total population of a given country according to their population in the United States as of the 1890 census.
Oh and wouldn't you know it, on January 10, 1921 a fire in the Commerce Building destroyed 25% of the 1890 census, with another 50% "destroyed by water, smoke, and fire." So...there wasn't exactly a back-up on a floppy disk. Census Bureau Clerk T.J. Fitzgerald:
(The records were) certain to be absolutely ruined. There is no method of restoring the legibility of a water-soaked volume.
What records did remain were destroyed in 1935.
The Johnson-Reed Act excluded all Asian countries as well as significantly limiting visas for prospective immigrants from Southern & Eastern European countries while increasing available visas for Northern & Western Europe. As a result, only 27,370 visas from Germany would be approved each year. There was about an 11-year waiting list to get into the United States in 1939 from Germany. A Hungarian applying for an immigrant visa faced a 40-year wait.
Eleanor Roosevelt once remarked of Long to FDR: "Franklin, you know he's a fascist." To which FDR responded, "I've told you, Eleanor, you must not say that."
Emanuel Celler, a Democratic representative from Brooklyn from 1923-1973, described Long as
Cold and austere, stiff as a poker, highly diplomatic in dress and in speech...and anti-Semitic.
Long reviewed Hitler's terrible book Mein Kampf as "eloquent in opposition to Jewry and Jews as exponents of Communism and chaos." In a 1940 diary entry, Long said that those sympathetic to the plight of those targeted by the Nazis were "largely concentrated along the Atlantic seaboard, and principally around New York" who had "joined up with the small element in this country which wants to push us into this war."
Long's views on Jews and basically all non-Americans reflected what was actually a popular opinion in the United States at the time. Two weeks after Kristallnacht, 72% of respondents to a Gallup Poll said the United States should not allow larger numbers of German Jews into the United States. 54% of respondents said the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis was their own fault. 67% of Americans opposed a bill proposed in Congress to admit child refugees from Germany, and the bill never made it to the floor for a vote. A lot of Americans thought Germany and the Soviet Union were using Jewish refugees as spies. Let's not forget that there was another recession in the Great Depression. Unemployment hit 20%. "Economic Anxiety" has been around for a while.
A June 26, 1940 memorandum from Breckinridge Long detailed the following regarding potential immigrants from the United States:
We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States. We could do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone the granting of the visas. However, this could only be temporary. In order to make it more definite, it would have to be done by suspension of the rules under the law by the issuance of a proclamation of emergency - which I take it we are not yet ready to proclaim.
The State Department - remember this is Long's doing - "cautioned consular officials to exercise particular care" in screening applicants for visas. In June 1941, the State Department issued a "relatives rule," which denied visas to immigrants with close family still in Nazi territory which, by June 1941, was pretty much all of Western Europe. And by that point, most American consulates in German-occupied territories were closed (under German orders, to which the United States complied). On June 22, 1941 the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa - the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
On July 1, 1941 the State Department centralized all alien visa control in Washington. All applicants needed to be approved by a review committee in Washington, and then were required to submit additional paperwork, including a second affidavit proving their finances were in order. Basically after July 1941 it was virtually impossible to leave Nazi-occupied Europe for the United States.
This was Long's goal, as he was terrified of "radicals" and "the Jewish press" for his efforts to prevent immigration to the United States. He saw himself besieged by "communists, extreme radicals, Jewish professional agitators, and refugee enthusiasts...all woven together in the barrage of opposition against the State Department which makes me the bull's eye."
Emanuel Celler, on Long:
Long said that he refused to grant visas for security reasons. Well, what is meant by security reasons - he felt that if he granted a visa to a refugee, the relative of the refugee might be held as a hostage in Germany and...they might force him to behave in a way that involved the security of the United States and therefore he would not grant him a visa. Which was a lot of hooey.
Eleanor Roosevelt found Long "not only unsympathetic but also opposed to the policies she supported and, as much as possible, she tried to work around Long."
For many applicants trying to escape the Nazis, many of the documents the State Department required were simply impossible to acquire. One of these applicants was Otto Frank, who wrote to his old college buddy Nathan Straus, Jr. asking him to put up $5,000 (just over $87,000 in today's dollars). It was a good ask: Straus was the son of a Macy's co-owner, head of the U.S. Housing Authority, and a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. Otto Frank and his family, including his daughter Anne, would never make it to the United States.
FDR could have removed Long. He didn't. Ultimately, only 10% of the immigration quota from Germany was filled under Long. Most of those who didn't receive visas died during World War II.
Emanuel Celler said of the State Department's division under Long:
There unquestionably were a number of anti-Semites in the State Department, and I know that personally...The normal attitude of the State Department in those days, and I suspect it still exists, that you don't do anything to rock the boat. You keep things calm. And the fact that the millions of Jews were being murdered while they were delaying, I don't think that troubled most of them, frankly.
Breckinridge Long came from a rich, political family with a history of turning its back on pretty much anyone who didn't look like them. In that way, they represented most of America. Breckinridge Long is a wide-angle view on how things don't change all that much.
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