History: Bottom Lines

Direct to California, c. 1869

Sunday, May 24, 2015

First woman to run for president? Think 1872….

The first woman to run for president? Think 1872....

It’s not like you need the fingers of more than one hand to count the women who have run for president of the United States.

In fact, Hillary makes two.

Almost 145 years ago, the Equal Rights Party nominated Victoria California Claflin Woodhull to run for president against incumbent Republican President Ulysses S. Grant and Horace Greeley, the nominee of both the Democratic and Liberal Republican parties.

Woodhull didn’t get any Electoral College votes, and there is no authenticated count of the number of votes she received.

In any event, she hadn’t reached her 35^th birthday, and was legally ineligible to be elected.

Woodhull, a suffragette, had a somewhat notorious career as a stockbroker, newspaper editor and a high-profile advocate of women’s rights, including the right to vote.

The weird thing is, of course, she couldn’t vote for herself. American women got the right to vote nationwide only in August 1920, with the ratification of the 19^th Amendment.

Dial "1" for White House

Monday, May 18, 2015

Direct to California, c. 1869

You need to get from New York to San Francisco in a hurry. By train, it will take 7 days and cost $2,500. Do you go for it?

In 1870, you did. The transcontinental railroad was completed in May 1869, and it revolutionized travel to the West Coast. A first class ticket cost $136 (about $2,500 today) for a berth in a Pullman sleeping car—for $65 you could get space on a bench in the third class coach. I know, don’t even think about it.

Before the railroad was completed, the best a traveler in a hurry could do was take the Butterfield Express (later Wells Fargo) overland stagecoach. First, you had to get to St. Louis, MO, and then the stagecoach offered a spectacularly uncomfortable ride across the western plains in about three weeks, and sometimes the stage didn’t make it through. Traveling by boat from the East Coast to the West Coast took about a month.

Political shenanigans about the preferred route of the transcontinental line delayed the construction project until the Civil War began. With southern legislators (who advocated a “southern” route) out of the picture, the reps from northern states approved a route from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California. In the mid-1860s, the national government handed out obscenely large cash grants and generous land grants to the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad. There was a lot of corruption, and a lot of worker exploitation, and a lot of folks got rich as the two companies laid tracks, starting at the endpoints and ultimately meeting at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869.

You know the story about the golden spike and all the hoorah celebrating the completion of the rail link across America.

It was a really big deal that spread a lot of benefits around, although the Native Americans on the plains and the buffalo herds got the other end of the stick, you know the story.

Dial "1" for White House

Thursday, May 14, 2015

First telephone in White House

President Rutherford B. Hayes may not be famous for a lot of things, but he should get credit for being an early adopter. Of telephone technology, that is.

The telephone was invented by Bell, who famously said “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you” on March 10, 1876 (for the moment, we’ll ignore Elisha Gray’s famous challenge about the patent).

Little more than a year later, President Hayes had a telephone instrument installed in the White House telegraph room. Almost 140 years later, President Herbert Hoover installed the first telephone in the Oval Office in March 1929.

Telegraph was the dominant communication technology in 1877 and would remain so for another 30-40 years, until the early 20^th century. In fact, in 1877, the U.S. Treasury Department had the only direct connection by telephone to the White House, so Hayes wasn’t getting too many calls in those early years.

By the way, the White House telephone number was “1” in 1877. It’s a rather quaint historical footnote.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

The Kent State thing

Tip: If the guy has a loaded gun, don’t throw stones at him.

The average American living today hadn’t been born when Ohio State National Guard troops killed four student protesters and wounded eight on the campus of Kent State University on May 4, 1970.

Campus rallies against the Vietnam War had been banned by the college, but about 2,000 students defied the ban and turned out to throw rocks and shout insults at the fully-armed Guardsmen, who had arrived on campus the previous day and had already used tear gas to disperse protesters.

Around noon, the National Guard again ordered students to disperse, fired tear gas and advanced with fixed bayonets. With. Fixed. Bayonets. Within minutes, the young Guardsmen fired more than 60 rounds into the student crowds. Four years later, a federal court threw out all charges against the shooters.

As it happened, I was in Vietnam at the time, serving our country. When I heard the grisly Kent State news, in US Army headquarters in Danang, my first reaction was: why would angry young men and angry young women provocatively throw stones at scared young men in uniform who are holding loaded guns with fixed bayonets? I also remember wondering where they got the stones—next time you go to a college campus, count the number of stones you see lying on the ground. I didn’t actually feel sympathetic toward the student protesters.

Today, I feel somewhat more sympathetic. I’m real sure that no student in that mob at Kent State was seriously afraid that the guys with helmets and guns would shoot at them. Kent State is part of America, right!?

Today, I feel sad that on May 4, 1970, some Americans who thought they were doing the right thing decided to piss off other Americans who were carrying loaded guns, and some Americans who thought they were doing the right thing aimed their rifles at other Americans and pulled the triggers.

Today, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about how hard it is for all of us, separately and together, to figure out what is “the right thing.”

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Sleep tight

It’s been more than 150 years since “Sleep tight” was not a euphemistic expression of good will.

Through the 1840s in America, it was quite common to sleep in a rope bed, that is, a bed frame with stretched ropes supporting the mattress or bedding. Use of metal supports or springs started to come into fashion before the mid-19^th century.

Such a rope bed required regular adjustment/tightening with a “bed key” to avoid a sag in the middle of the bed. “Sleep tight” was a friendly admonition to enjoy a night on a bed with snugged-up ropes giving firm support. The Sealy Posture-Pedic mattress hadn’t been invented, so you can imagine that “firm support” wasn’t really the norm.

Sometimes it’s not easy to get a familiar frame of reference for an historical time period like “the 1840s.”

Here are some hints about that decade, roughly 170 years ago:

U. S. presidents in that era were William Henry Harrison, John Tyler (of “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” fame), James Polk and Zachary Taylor.

Florida, Texas, Iowa and Wisconsin were admitted as new states in the federal union.

The California Gold Rush started in 1849.

p.s. here’s the bed key used by Ulysses Grant’s vice-president, Henry Wilson, who was a resident of Natick, MA. The Natick Historical Society has the bed key in its museum, see here

Saturday, May 2, 2015

A good thing in 1854

In April 1854 the Pennsylvania legislature did a good thing: it chartered the first black college in America.

Ashmun College was established in Chester County, then mostly farmlands west of Philadelphia. In 1866 the college was renamed Lincoln University.

The college website says it was "the first institution found anywhere in the world to provide a higher education in the arts and sciences for male youth of African descent." Among its alumni are Langston Hughes ‘29 and Thurgood Marshall ‘30.

Today LU is co-ed, is actually if not substantially racially and ethnically diverse, and has about 2,000 students who are working on bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Resident tuition/room/board adds up to just over $20,000. In the current environment of soaring college costs, that’s a strikingly affordable pricetag for a college degree.

I say the Pennsylvania legislature did a good thing in 1854 because in 1854 it was a good thing to establish a college for black men. No governmental entity, and probably no private venture, would do the same thing today. Our public sensibilities and mores forbid it.

It’s too bad there isn’t a compensating public impulse to offer accessibly-priced college education to all the young men and women who aren’t white with upper-socio-economic parents.

The 3 Rs...a bit of history

Sunday, April 26, 2015

8th grade graduation test in 1912

Graduating from the 8^th grade wasn't a snap in Bullitt County, Kentucky, in 1912.

Students attended mostly one-room schools in the predominantly rural county, south of Louisville. 8^th graders took the “Common Exam” in the county courthouse. Some students who earned high scores received scholarships to attend high school. Many of the farm kids in the county didn’t get schooling beyond the 8^th grade.

In case your 8^th grader or a student you know is grousing about final exams right about now, ask her to take a look at these sample questions from the 1912 Common Exam in Bullitt County. The full test is listed here.

In Mathematics:

“Find cost at 12 ½ cents per sq. yd. of kalsomining [whitewashing] the walls of a room 20 ft. long, 16 ft. wide and 9 ft. high, deducting 1 door 8 ft. by 4 ft. 6 in. and 2 windows 5 ft. by 3 ft. 6 in. each.”

In Geography:

“Tell what you know of the Gulf Stream.”

In Civil Government:

“Describe the manner in which the president and vice-president of the United States are elected.”

In History:

“Give the cause of the war of 1812 and name an important battle fought during that war.”

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

"Blood-and-thunder" for one thin dime

There were “westerns” before John Wayne put his mark on them.

The men in blue and gray in the Civil War—the ones who could read, and the ones who had buddies who could read—were avid fans of the dime novel.

New printing technologies in 1860 made it possible to churn out an endless succession of cheap (10 cents, hence “dime novel”) so-called “blood-and-thunder” stories, often about heroes of the American West like Kit Carson.

These dime novels in the mid-19^th century were the ‘westerns” before Hollywood invented the movie genre of the same name in the early 20^th century.

The flood of cheap books was unleashed by improvements in the steam printing press and stereotype plates, the cast metal plates that used a reversed image of a full page on the press. The resulting increase in productivity and cost reduction permitted publishers to do huge press runs of the formula “western” novels that were written by assembly lines of writers. Some of the more respectable authors cranked out a new book every three months. Some of the hacks claimed to be able to produce a brand new novel in 24 hours. As you might guess, originality and quality weren’t the principal standards of excellence.

Jill Lepore, in The Story of America: Essays on Origins, notes: “Blood-and-thunders were ‘sent to the army in the field by cords, like unsawed firewood,’ one contemporary reported. After the war, dime novel westerns cultivated a vast, largely eastern, and altogether male audience: they were the first mass market fiction sold to men and boys.” (1)

Dime novel readers who weren’t Kit Carson (1809-1868) fans must have been a rare breed. Between 1860 and 1900, the American frontiersman was the hero of more than seventy of the popular books.

(1) Jill Lepore, The Story of America: Essays on Origins (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 212, 217.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Join 2,998 other people at the movies!?

You may have forgotten that the Mark Strand Theatre opened in New York City 101 years ago.

It was the first mega-theater to be opened in the U. S., at a time when “movies” were hitting their stride as a social and artistic success.

Silent movies, that is. The first "talkies" weren't offered to the movie-going public until the late 1920s.

The Strand was a colossus, and a beautiful one. Before sensational theaters like this one opened for business, the silent films were shown in quite modest venues, often storefront “nickelodeons” named for the first Nickelodeon that debuted in Pittsburgh in 1905. The Strand seated about 3,000 people (!), offered high-rent boxes and a luxurious second-floor balcony, with a two-story lobby for high-class socializing before and after the show.

Within two years, there were more than 21,000 “movie palaces” throughout the United States, some of which exceeded the amenities of the Strand.

Contrast the Strand’s concept and architecture with the boutique “screens” offered today in our grindingly commercial multiplex theaters.

A hundred years ago, folks got dressed up—coat and tie for gents, classy dress for ladies—to go to the movies.

And they didn’t eat popcorn and slurp Coke during the show.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

The first modern Olympics cost $50,000 ?

OK, I made up that number. The 1896 Olympics in Athens cost 3,740,000 drachmas. I couldn’t locate a conversion table. I think the Greeks spent less than Boston is going to spend in 2024.

The games of the first modern Olympics lasted only 10 days in April, 1896, with 241 athletes (all men) representing 14 nations.

Most of the events were staged in Panathinaiko Stadium for the entertainment of about 80,000 spectators.

An American, James Connolly, was the first Olympic champion—he won the triple jump on the first day, and received a silver medal and an olive branch. (The gold/silver/bronze medal system was introduced in 1904 at the games in St. Louis).

Men from Princeton at the 1896 games

Besides the traditional track and field events, the 1896 games included swimming, fencing, shooting, tennis and cycling. The beach volley ball fans had to suck it up.

A Greek athlete won the marathon, to the boundless delight of the hometown crowd.

By the way, the marathon is a modern addition to the Olympics—it was introduced at the 1896 games. The distance was 40 kilometers (24.85 miles).

The race commemorates the feat of Pheidippides, a soldier who ran from the plain of Marathon to Athens in 490 B.C. to announce a Greek victory over Persian invaders.

In 1908, at the London games, the route of the marathon race was fixed at 26 miles 385 yards, the measured distance from its start point at Windsor Castle to the finish line in the stadium.

"...long, slow, thoughtful reading."

"Aimons toujours!"

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Lest we forget….

On this date in 1865, General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Grant.

Nearly all of the fighting and killing in the American Civil War was done.

I have ancestors who fought—and one who died—in the Civil War. I hope all of them, and their brothers in arms, rest in peace.

Requiescat in pace.

"Cultural authenticity"....huh?

Corwin Amendment to protect slavery

"...all the king's horses..."

"Liberty"?....what do you mean?

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

75 miles at a gallop....

Of course you’ve heard about the Pony Express riders, those guys were tough caballeros.

The Pony Express mail service—from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California—was inaugurated on April 3, 1860, just as the Civil War was starting to get hot.

Those hardy riders, including 14-year-old William Cody (he became “Buffalo Bill”), accomplished almost unbelievable feats in the saddle to keep the almost unbelievably expensive mail service in operation for about 18 months.

You may not have heard that the first transcontinental telegraph line put the Pony Express out of service more or less instantly in October 1861. Talk about disruptive technology!

The Pony Express was a good idea waiting to happen. The state of California was admitted to the Union in 1850, but it was essentially out of touch with the eastern states. Regular mail carried on boats took about a month to travel from the East Coast to the West Coast. The Butterfield Express overland stagecoach could carry mail and packages across the western plains in about three weeks at best, and sometimes the stage didn’t make it through.

The Pony Express riders could take a mail packet (about 20 pounds) from Missouri to California in 8-10 days. Unbelievable!

The riders made $25 a week (about $722 in current collars) to cover 75-100 miles per shift, jumping on a fresh mount every 10-15 miles. The Pony Express had about 80 riders on the payroll, and stabled 400-500 horses in more than 100 relay stations along the route.

Here’s another unbelievable factoid: it cost $5 in 1860 to drop a half-ounce of mail into the Pony Express packet. That’s about $145 in current dollars—a 20-pound mail packet was worth about $93,000.

Of course, there were substantial operating costs, but William Russell, William Waddell and Alexander Majors thought they were going to make a killing when they put the Pony Express into operation. However, they never nailed down the juicy government contract they hoped for, and then those pesky pre-Silicon Valley guys rolled out the telegraph….

There was a time....

"...long, slow, thoughtful reading."

Saturday, April 4, 2015

The Age of "Discovery"....

April 2 was the 502^nd anniversary of the “discovery” of Florida by a European—the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon (1474-1521) was the first European to step ashore on the Florida coast. He was searching for the mythic “Fountain of Youth,” but that’s another story.

De Leon trudged through the Florida sand for the first time in 1513, nearly 21 years after Columbus didn’t “discover” America. Columbus “discovered” an inhabited island in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, most likely San Salvador, and, in fact, he never set foot on the North American continent during any of his four voyages.

The first European to make a North American landfall in the Age of Discovery was the Italian navigator Giovanni Caboto (c.1450-c.1499), who claimed Newfoundland in 1497 for his sponsor, Henry VII of England (by the way, he called his favorite explorer “John Cabot”).

This is a rather roundabout way of mentioning that, when the Pilgrim Fathers went ashore in Plymouth Harbor in 1620, they very definitely were not beginning the European exploration and colonization of North America….and they probably didn’t step directly onto the “Plymouth Rock,” as our American legend would have it, but that’s another story.