To celebrate the centenary of American independence, and to mark their own contribution to that effort, the French were determined to make the USA a splendid gift. The anniversary present would prove to be La Liberté éclairant le monde, the gigantic Statue of Liberty (more properly “Liberty Enlightening the World”).
Work began on Liberty years before the centenary but the difficulty of the task and financing problems meant that by 1876 only the statue’s arm bearing the torch could be sent to Philadelphia for the festivities. It was designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and built by Gustave Eiffel. Made of copper, it depicted the Roman goddess Libertas carrying a torch and a law tablet inscribed with “1776”; at her feet is a broken chain signifying freedom from oppression. The statue was shipped in pieces to New York where it was erected on an island platform in the harbour, towering 305′ above the ground.
On this date in 1886 President Grover Cleveland dedicated the statue after a grand ticker-tape parade (the first ever) through the streets of New York.
No American contribution to religion has evoked as much turmoil, tragedy, and violence as the Church of Latter Day Saints, popularly called Mormonism. Its origins lie in the Burned-over district of upstate New York but the crises it precipitated occurred across the USA all the way to the Great Salt Lake of Utah.
Following the 1830 publication of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith’s new revelations attracted a large number of converts as well as hostile attention from their Christian neighbours. Particularly provocative were the approval of polygamy and numerous theological novelties such as the appearance of Jesus Christ in the Americas.
Settlements of Mormons were established in Ohio and then Missouri where Smith prophesied the Second Coming and the founding of a new capital city. Alarm at the growth of a Mormon presence led to the establishment in 1836 of Caldwell County in the northwest of Missouri where they could come together in safety, but that hope proved illusory. Small-scale violence broke out, especially after Mormons expanded their presence into neighbouring counties. In 1838 these skirmishes broke out into what is known as the Mormon War.
In the summer of 1838 a Mormon preacher warned that his people would respond to any further attacks with violence. Sidney Rigdon’s “July 4th Oration” stated:
We take God and all the holy angels to witness this day, that we warn all men in the name of Jesus Christ, to come on us no more forever. For from this hour, we will bear it no more, our rights shall no more be trampled on with impunity. The man or the set of men, who attempts it, does it at the expense of their lives. And that mob that comes on us to disturb us; it shall be between us and them a war of extermination; for we will follow them till the last drop of their blood is spilled, or else they will have to exterminate us: for we will carry the seat of war to their own houses, and their own families, and one party or the other shall be utterly destroyed.—Remember it then all MEN.
A Mormon militia encountered forces of the Missouri state troops at the Battle of Crooked River on October 24 and though casualties on both sides were light, all thought of conciliation was abandoned. On October 27 Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issued Executive Order 44, known as the Extermination Order:
Headquarters of the Militia, City of Jefferson, Oct. 27, 1838.
Gen. John B. Clark:
Sir: Since the order of this morning to you, directing you to cause four hundred mounted men to be raised within your division, I have received by Amos Reese, Esq., of Ray county, and Wiley C. Williams, Esq., one of my aids [sic], information of the most appalling character, which entirely changes the face of things, and places the Mormons in the attitude of an open and avowed defiance of the laws, and of having made war upon the people of this state. Your orders are, therefore, to hasten your operation with all possible speed. The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description. If you can increase your force, you are authorized to do so to any extent you may consider necessary. I have just issued orders to Maj. Gen. Willock, of Marion county, to raise five hundred men, and to march them to the northern part of Daviess, and there unite with Gen. Doniphan, of Clay, who has been ordered with five hundred men to proceed to the same point for the purpose of intercepting the retreat of the Mormons to the north. They have been directed to communicate with you by express, you can also communicate with them if you find it necessary. Instead therefore of proceeding as at first directed to reinstate the citizens of Daviess in their homes, you will proceed immediately to Richmond and then operate against the Mormons. Brig. Gen. Parks of Ray, has been ordered to have four hundred of his brigade in readiness to join you at Richmond. The whole force will be placed under your command.
I am very respectfully, yr obt st [your obedient servant], L. W. Boggs, Commander-in-Chief.
This proclamation was swiftly followed by a massacre of 18 Mormon prisoners at Haun’s Mill, despoiling of Mormon settlers, and a decision by Joseph Smith to migrate out of Missouri. Further violence and hardship would ensue.
In the autumn of 1813 the United States launched a two-pronged attack on the city of Montreal, hoping to control the St Lawrence River valley and end the British military control of Lower Canada. On this date, one of those columns under Major General Wade Hampton met defeat at the Battle of the Chateauguay.
Hampton was an experienced officer, a veteran of battles in the Revolutionary War and against a slave uprising; by 1813 he was one of the most senior generals in the American army. His orders were to lead a force of about 4,000 regulars and militia men from Lake Champlain, strike into Quebec and rendezvous with another column outside of Montreal. This plan suffered number of setbacks, not the least of which was the refusal of 1,400 New York militia to cross the border. To add to the confusion, his orders were countermanded by the American Secretary of War after his troops had been committed to battle, and local guides (either deliberately or mistakenly) gave unreliable advice stranding hundreds of his men in a forest. On October 26 Hampton’s main force encountered British, Canadian, and Mohawk units at a ford on the Chateauguay River.
The troops facing the American invasion were a curious mixture of British regulars, Quebec volunteers, other locals drafted for a year’s military service, and Mohawk warriors from Kahnawake. They were commanded by a Canadian colonel, Charles de Salaberry, a seigneur who had seen long service with the British army in the West Indies and in the Netherlands in the wars against Napoleon. In 1803 he killed a fellow officer in a duel.
Salaberry’s men were greatly outnumbered and possessed no artillery to counter the 10 American cannon but they had better intelligence of their foe’s movements and were well-entrenched. Unable to outflank the Canadians and unwilling to risk heavier casualties in a frontal attack, Hampton decided to withdraw. His retreat, and the defeat of the other American column at the Battle of Crysler’s Farm, meant an end to that year’s threat to Montreal.
Hampton retired shortly after the battle and returned to his South Carolina plantations where he was an owner of thousands of slaves. Salaberry became a folk hero in Quebec and was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath by the British government.
Early in the twentieth century China was in political turmoil. The Qing (or Manchu) dynasty that had ruled the country since 1644 was on its last legs, rebels and warlords were making bids for power, and rival political theories were being tried on for size. Monarchist loyalists, reformed monarchists, Ming dynsty revivalists, republicans, ethnic nationalists, Muslims, socialists, regional separatists, etc., etc., all vied for influence – and even anarchism, usually associated with Europe, played a part.
One curious anarchist expression was the Chinese Assassination Corps. This small group of revolutionaries was fiercely anti-Qing and dedicated to the overthrow of the 2,000-year-old Chinese empire. Having been unsuccessful at building a mass movement, they adopted the tactic of “propaganda by deed”, individual terrorism, and murder. They aimed, and failed, to kill the Prince Regent, various Qing officials, and military officers but in October 1911 during an uprising in Guangdong, they finally brought down their target.
General Feng Shan had been sent to southern China to replace another assassinated Qing administrator and to suppress armed uprisings but his tenure was a very short one. Five members of the Assassination Corps devised a way to penetrate the heavy cordon of Manchu guards protecting the officer. As Feng Shan’s cavalcade moved down the street toward his headquarters on a palanquin, a bomb was slid from a window on a wooden plank, landing directly in front of his chair. The explosion killed the coolies carrying the general, a dozen of his guards, and Feng Shan himself.
The Assassination Corps would soon disband itself, burning most of its documents and membership lists.
The treaty (or rather treaties) of Westphalia brought a merciful finish to the worst conflicts in European history prior to the 20th-century, ending the Thirty Years War and the Eighty Years War. Historians often credit these agreements as the basis of the system of modern nation states. Significant aspects of the treaties include:
• A religious settlement which determined that the national religion of the signatory countries should be that of the ruler in place in 1624. Those not of that religion (Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist) were allowed to practise their own faiths in private.
• The independence of the Netherlands from Spain was recognized.
• The independence of Switzerland from the Holy Roman Empire was recognized.
• Territorial adjustments gave fortresses to France, Baltic territories to Sweden, and expanded Prussia.
Fry and Laurie explain the diplomatic difficulties:
From Butler’s Lives of the Saints we learn about a highly elastic martyr.
ABOUT the year 361, Julian, uncle to the emperor of that name, and like his nephew an apostate, was made Count of the East. He closed the Christian churches at Antioch, and when St. Theodoret assembled the Christians in private, he was summoned before the tribunal of the Count and most inhumanly tortured. His arms and feet were fastened by ropes to pulleys, and stretched until his body appeared nearly eight feet long, and the blood streamed from his sides. “O most wretched man,” he said to his judge, “you know well that at the day of judgment the crucified God Whom you blaspheme will send you and the tyrant whom you serve to hell.” Julian trembled at this awful prophecy, but he had the Saint despatched quickly by the sword, and in a little while the judge himself was arraigned before the judgment-seat of God.
There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and “best” was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for. – Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974
There’s a problem when you date an older man; they’re kinda like a parking meter. He’s thinking, “How much money do I have to put into this chick?” and she’s thinking, “How much time before he expires?”. – Rhonda Shear, imdb.com
Since we cannot be universal and know all that is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about everything. For it is far better to know something about everything than to know all about one thing. This universality is the best. If we can have both, still better; but if we must choose, we ought to choose the former. And the world feels this and does so; for the world is often a good judge. – Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Every human creature is deeply interested not only in the conduct, but in the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of millions of persons who stand in no other assignable relation to him than that of being his fellow-creatures. A great writer who makes a mistake in his speculations may mislead multitudes whom he has never seen. The strong metaphor that we are all members one of another is little more than the expression of a fact. A man would be no more a man if he was alone in the world than a hand would be a hand without the rest of the body. – James Fitzpatrick Stephen, Liberty , Equality, Fraternity, 1873
There is surely evil that no repentance can redeem. And Tolstoy, like many men of giant ego, was not really capable of true religious belief or feeling. When Tolstoy found God, it was God that was honoured, not Tolstoy. – Theodore Dalrymple, The Terror of Existence
The tastes of one age are not necessarily the tastes of another and this particularly applies to humour. What has the audience rolling in the aisles one year is yawned at the next. Dubbed the “English Aristophanes”, Samuel Foote (1720-1777) was once accounted the wittiest man of his age but now seldom merits even a footnote in the history of British literature.
Foote trained for the legal profession but he was a man of a light and careless disposition, more eager to spend money than to make it, preferring the pleasures of the tavern to those of the law courts. He soon ran through his inheritance and that of his wife, winding up for a spell in debtor’s prison. For lack of a better alternative he turned to the stage and after discovering that he had no talent for tragedy began a career in comedy. His satires such as An Englishman in Paris, Diversions of the Morning, and Taste won him a contemporary reputation but not always financial success.
What tickled the ribs of 18th-century London may be seen in this collection of Foote’s more famous bon mots:
While present one evening at the Lectures on the Ancients, adventured on by Charles Macklin, the lecturer hearing a buzz of laughter in a corner of the room, looked angrily in that direction, and perceiving Foote, said pompously: ‘You seem very merry, pray, do you know what I am going to say?’ ‘No,’ replied Foote, ‘do you?’
On another occasion, while dining at Paris with Lord Stormont, the host descanted volubly on the age of his wine, which was served out in rather diminutive decanters and glasses. ‘It is very small for its age,’ said Foote, holding up his glass.
‘Why do you hum that air?’ he said one day to a friend. ‘It for ever haunts me,’ was the reply. ‘No wonder,’ he rejoined, ‘you are for ever murdering it.’
A mercantile friend, who imagined he had a genius for poetry, insisted one day on reading to him a specimen of his verses, commencing with, ‘Hear me, O Phoebus and ye Muses Nine;’ then perceiving his auditor inattentive, exclaimed, ‘Pray, pray, listen.’ ‘l do,’ replied Foote, ‘nine and one are ten, go on.’
Having made a trip to Ireland, he was asked, on his return, what impression was made on him by the Irish peasantry, and replied that they gave him great satisfaction, as they settled a question which had long agitated his own mind, and that was, what became of the cast-off clothes of the English beggars.
The integration of African American players into professional and university sports was a long and painful struggle. One of the ugliest moments in this story took place on this date in 1951 in Stillwater, Oklahoma during a football game between the Bulldogs of Drake University and Oklahoma A&M College Aggies (now the Oklahoma State Cowboys).
Johnny Bright was a superb black athlete who had come to Drake on a track scholarship but who would eventually also star in basketball and football. During the 1951 season Bright, playing halfback and quarterback, was leading the nation in both rushing and passing, when they met the Aggies. It was no secret that the Oklahoma team meant to target Bright in some nasty way and within the first seven minutes of the game Bright had been knocked down by defensive lineman Wilbanks Smith, the last time with a clearly illegal blow to the face well behind the play and long after Bright had handed the ball off. Despite a broken jaw, Bright continued for a while, completing a touchdown pass before leaving the game.
The play was not penalized and nothing more may have been heard of the incident had not photographers from the Des Moines Register captured it on film. The Pulitzer Prize-winning shots caused a national scandal but neither Oklahoma A&M, the Mississippi Valley Conference or the NCAA took any action, causing Drake and Bradley University to withdraw from the league.
Bright was named to the All-America team in 1951 and went on to a stellar career in Canadian football, playing an important part in the Edmonton Eskimos dynasty of the mid-1950s. Bright became a Canadian citizen and was a repected teacher and coach in Alberta before dying in 1983. Twenty-two years later Oklahoma State officially apologized to Drake for the incident.
If there were a vote for England’s Most Unpopular King, the sure winner would be John (1167-1216). Other monarchs of that land have been crueller, more profligate, or unsuccessful, but none have combined high levels of nastiness, pettiness, and bumbling in the fashion of John. He was the youngest son of Henry II, founder of the Angevin empire, and Eleanor of Aquitaine, both significant political figures but failures as parents.
In the constant warfare between his father, brothers, and mother, John remained loyal to Henry who came to consider him his favourite child and who tried to find territory for him to inherit. Late in Henry’s life as the king battled his oldest surviving son Richard Lionheart, John switched sides and betrayed his father.
During the reign of Richard (r. 1189-99), John proved equally duplicitous. While Richard was absent on the Third Crusade, John, who had been bribed into loyalty by Richard’s gift of a wealthy bride and considerable land holdings, quarrelled with royal officials and conspired with the wily Philip Augustus of France. When Richard, on his way home from the crusade, was held for ransom in Germany, John allied himself with the French and rebelled against his brother but was stripped of all his lands by Richard when the king was released.
On Richard’s death in 1199 and after a tussle with his nephew Arthur of Brittany, John assumed the throne of England. He was also ruler of that significant part of France that had been acquired by his father and brother but it required considerable military and diplomatic skills to keep that makeshift empire intact and John conspicuously lacked those abilities. Through a series of defeats in battle and political blunders, John proceeded to lose Normandy, and place the rest of his French holdings in jeopardy. At home, he feuded with the great barons, developing a reputation for lechery, greed, irreligion, and untrustworthiness.
In 1205 he initiated a quarrel with the Church by a disagreement over the choice of the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Innocent III, the most lordly of medieval popes, responded by placing England under the interdict, essentially excommunicating the entire country. Because Innocent had also personally excommunicated John, canon law permitted the pope to declare John deposed and turn the realm over to another Christian king, in this case Philip of France. This encounter ended with John’s surrender, acceptance of the papal candidate, and surrender of his kingdom to Innocent III as a papal fief.
Equally humiliating for John was his forced signature on the Magna Carta, a charter of traditional English rights, presented to him by a coalition of his barons. This 1215 document is seen as the foundation of liberty in the English-speaking world. Though John later repudiated the Magna Carta and continued his war against his own political class, he was unsuccessful at everything in 1216. Dubbed “Lackland” and “Soft Sword”, John was so infamous that no English king in the past 800 years has borne his name.
