Plus

“DEMAND
A RECOUNT!”
Bill Buckley’s run
for mayor in NYC In the Argonne
Forest in 1918,
SECRET AGENT a doughboy
became a legend.
How a slave spied
for Lafayete
AUDUBON’S
FOUR-FOOTERS
The naturalist’s
final portfolio

Saving
Sgt.York
Putting to rest—finally—
doubts about his heroism October 2018
HistoryNet.com
 42

58

2 AMERICAN HISTORY
OCTOBER 2018

FEATURES

50 32 Saving Sergeant York

The sharpshooting hero turned out to need a passel of
rescuers, nearly to the current day By Nancy Tappan

42 Thunder on the Right in NYC

William F. Buckley’s 1965 mayoral run helped spur
today’s conservatism By Alvin C. Felzenberg

50 Secret Agent Man

A bondsman worked under cover for the Revolution
to help bring about victory By Larry C. Kerpelman

58 Audubon’s Four-Footer Brigade

In his last wilderness foray, the naturalist focused on
North America’s mammals By Michael Dolan

DEPARTMENTS
6 Mosaic
News from out of the past
12 Contributors
14 Interview
Andrew Carnegie, industrial-grade peacenik
16 Déjà Vu
Animalistic name-calling is
as American as cherry pie
20 American Schemers
Big Tim Sullivan, Tammany man
and ill-fated media entrepreneur
22 SCOTUS 101
The backstory behind that
ubiquitous Miranda warning
24 Cameo
Ellen Swallow Richards wore
down academic barriers and
created new disciplines
26 Style
16
32
Hiting the trail
to ever-renewing Yosemite Media diatribes
may have killed
66 Reviews Rachel Jackson
72 An American Place
Hotel Del Coronado, San Diego, California

ON THE COVER: Sergeant Alvin C. York lands at
Hoboken, New Jersey, on May 22, 1919, seven months ater
his feat of marksmanship in France’s Argonne Forest.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ©PHILIPPE HALSMAN/MAGNUM PHOTOS; GRANGER,
NYC; PICTURES NOW/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; RADHARC IMAGES/ALAMY STOCK
PHOTO; PHOTOGRAPH FROM AUDUBON’S LAST WILDERNESS JOURNEY, PUBLISHED
BY D. GILES LTD. AND THE JULE COLLINS SMITH MUSEUM OF FINE ART, AUBURN
UNIVERSITY; PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL CORTEZ AND JANET GUYNN FOR THE
MUSEUM; COVER: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES, COLORIZATION BY BRIAN WALKER
OCTOBER 2018 3
American
History
ONLINE
Visit HistoryNet.com/American-
History and search our archive
for great stories like these:
Valorous at Home
and in South Vietnam
Chicagoan and Freedom Summer
volunteer Milton Lee Olive III gave his
life to save four U.S. Army comrades.
Trying to Talk His
Troubles Away
At Appomattox, Robert E. Lee wanted
to gab about peace, not discuss his
surrender, with Ulysses S. Grant.
‘Bloody Thursday’
Helped Bring Victory
No day in WWII cost the Eighth Air Force
more dearly than October 14, 1943, but
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 by Sarah Richardson

Meet Sally
Hemings
Home and Hearth
Monticello now explains
without cant the relationship
between Thomas Jeferson and
Sally Hemings, a childhood
occupant of one of his slave
cabins, below, who later moved
into the estate's South Wing and
bore her master six children.

Monticello, Thomas Jeferson’s hilltop estate near Charlotesville,

Virginia, has stopped hedging about Thomas Jeferson fathering six
children with Sally Hemings, a daughter of an enslaved family that
Jeferson’s wife Martha inherited from her parents in 1774. On June 16,
2018, Monticello added to its tour an exhibit on Hemings and her
children that expressly acknowledges Jeferson’s paternity. Housed in

FROM TOP: CEPHAS PICTURE LIBRARY/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; PHOTO BY ANDREW LICHTENSTEIN/
a windowless room in the South Wing where Hemings lived, the dis-
play reclaims a space that had been converted into a public restroom.
A new online exhibit establishes Sally’s ancestry, tracing her and her children’s lives. Three-quarters European, Sally had
the same father as Martha Jeferson, John Wayles. Wayles owned Sally’s mother, Elizabeth Hemings, and is thought to
have fathered six children with her. At 14, Sally Hemings accompanied Jeferson’s daughter Maria to Paris, where Jefer-
son, a 44-year-old widower, was U.S. ambassador. Hemings family tradition holds that Jeferson and CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES; IAN G. DAGNALL/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Sally Hemings began a sexual relationship. Before returning to Virginia in 1789, a pregnant Sally
Hemings struck a bargain with Jeferson. Rather than remain in France, where legally she was
free, the 16-year-old agreed to return to Monticello if Jeferson promised to free any children
they had. Jeferson did free Sally Hemings’s children—the only family unit of his human chat-
tel he ever freed—a fact that ranks among the strongest evidence of the relationship’s exis-
tence. Other proof includes Hemings oral tradition and a shared Y chromosome documented
in a study of the Jeferson family and descendants of Eston Hemings, Sally’s youngest child.
Supporting evidence resides in entries in Jeferson’s farm book confirming his presence at Mon-
ticello on dates corresponding to when Sally would have conceived. Jeferson did not free Sally
Hemings, but ater he died she informally was granted autonomy. She lived the rest of her life in Char-
lotesville. Of her four surviving children, three moved away and claimed white identity. Madison Hemings, who identi-
fied as black, moved in the 1830s to Ohio, where in 1873 a newspaper reported his comments on his Jeferson lineage.

6 AMERICAN HISTORY
 Blacks and watermelon are an enduring American stereotype. Rice
University scholar William Black traces this linkage in a recent issue of
the Journal of the Civil War Era, noting that it emerged soon ater the
Civil War. Previously, caricatures of many peoples, from Arabs to hillbil-
lies, featured the gourd, as in a British oicer’s jest that the melon is a
“poor Arab’s feast.” Easily grown and messy to eat, watermelon came to
be tied to the idea that
Melon Imagery a those who farm it are lazy
and sloppy. The juicy
Post-Bellum Slur gourd usually was shared
and oten outdoors,
another trope. Before 1862, Black writes, enslaved people did farm, eat,
and sell watermelon; some earned enough to buy their freedom. Ater
the war, melon growing oten spelled self-reliance for freed people—an
upliting link transmogrified into bufoonish images.
In 1869, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper published what may
have been the first caricature of blacks reveling in watermelon. “The
Southern negro in no particular more palpably exhibits his epicurean
tastes than in his excessive fondness for watermelons,” the editors wrote.

That
“The juvenile freedman is especially intense in his partiality for that
refreshing fruit.” Nearly 50 years later, D.W. Griith worked the meme
into his 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation, showing blacks feasting on
watermelons provided by corrupt whites.

Other
Genius
George
Rare Kodachrome footage shows
American genius George Washington
Carver putering in his home, lab, and
garden at the Tuskegee Institute in Ala-
bama. Born a slave and orphaned as an
infant, Carver overcame huge odds to
ROM TOP: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; SHERIDAN LIBRARIES LEVY/GADO/GETTY IMAGES

become a prominent agriculturalist,

promoting crops like peanuts and sweet
potatoes and beter soil maintenance.
Carver apparently disliked publicity,
but trusted friend and orthopedic sur-
geon C. Allen Alexander of Kalamazoo,
Michigan, got permission to film him in
1937. The footage [bit.ly/GWCarveron-
Film] shows Carver working in his vial-
filled lab, showing his wonderful
botanical paintings, and expertly cro-
cheting a blanket with a large needle.
The film turned up among footage
donated by the National Park Service to
the National Archives.

OCTOBER 2018 7

In 1885, Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the
telephone, went head to head with Thomas Edison
trying to improve the phonograph, which Edison
had invented in 1877. Bell plunged into his project in
1880, tweaking a machine made by Volta Associates.
Five years later Bell, born into a family of elocutionists, recorded oth-
ers' voices and his own on a wax-coated fiberboard disc (let) on which
a needle let grooves. By optically scanning the grooves in the original
cylinder and digitally converting them into sound, an interdisciplinary
team from the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Berkeley, California,
has recreated Bell’s voice recording. [bit.ly/bellsvoice]
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SCIENCE HISTORY IMAGES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; PATTI MCCONVILLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION; DIVISION OF WORK & INDUSTRY/NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY/SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
Out of Here
Voting unanimously in May, New York
City’s Monument Commission ordered
removed from Central Park a statue of pio-
neering gynecologist James Marion Sims.
The statue faced the New York Academy
of Medicine at E. 103rd St. and Fith Ave-
nue. Oten regarded as the father of gyne-
cology, Sims invented the speculum,
which permits visual inspection of the
vagina. But his legacy was tarnished by
experimental surgeries in the 1840s on
enslaved women in Montgomery, Ala-
bama. Sims did the procedures to repair
fistulas—delivery-related tears in the birth
canal. His method did correct a traumatic
injury, but contemporary critics object to
his use of enslaved women as research
subjects. Sims, buried in Brooklyn’s Green-
Wood Cemetery, was a fervent pro-slavery
Confederate. The city may mark the stat-
ue's removal and his grave with plaques.

When the Founders were planning the President’s House in Washing-

ton, DC, Thomas Jeferson suggested a design contest. President George
Washington recruited immigrant Irish architect James Hoban to enter.
Hoban won. Scholars commenting in a podcast at the White House His-
torical Society say Washington believed the republic’s leader deserved a
residence conveying formality and power yet not imperial in mien. Hoban
most recently had designed the 1791 courthouse in Charleston, South Car-
olina, which the “President’s House,” with its tall windows, strongly
resembles. The design also featured three oval rooms and bow windows,

Hoban's elements then popular among the Anglo-Irish gentry. Washington liked
the oval shape for holding levees, the term for events in which visiting

House
politicians were introduced formally. Some Americans carped at Hoban’s
design, but ater British troops burned the residence in 1814, President
James Madison defended restoring the dwelling to original form. The res-
toration was complete by the time James Monroe moved in in 1817.

8 AMERICAN HISTORY
35 DAYS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
Situated 650 miles from mainland Japan, the small island of Iwo Jima was considered
the difference between victory and defeat for the Allies in the Pacific Theatre during World War
II. It was a vital link as a refueling site for the U.S. bombers and fighter escorts on their way
to Japan.
On February 19, 1945, U.S. Marines hit the shores of Iwo Jima after 3 days of pre-invasion bombing. Their objective was
a dormant volcano named Mt. Suribachi, which rose 546 feet above the shore. Control of Suribachi meant control of
the island.
The climb up Suribachi was fought inch by inch. The Japanese fought from a fortified network of underground bunkers which
made gunfire ineffective. The high ground had to be taken using flame throwers and grenades. Finally, on February 23,
U.S. forces reached the summit. The raising of the American flag that day provided a lasting impression, inspiring not only
the combatants, but also a war-weary nation.
On March 26, the entire island was secured. The Allied Forces suffered 25,000 casualties, with nearly 7,000 dead. Those
sacrifices led to air superiority in the Pacific . . . and victory in World War II.

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 Neither Here Nor There
Chukchi family outside
TOP BID
a hut somewhere in the
Bering Straits, 1816. For the Birds
An edition of John James Audubon’s
Birds of America sold for $9.65
million at Christie’s on June 14. One
of only 120 surviving editions, the
four-volume set, published in London
in 1838, contains 435 hand-colored
copperplate etchings. It likely was first
purchased by William Henry Caven-
dish-Scot-Bentinck, the 4th Duke of
Portland, who bequeathed the magnif-
icent tome to his son, an eccentric
who beneath the family estate in Not-
tinghamshire’s Wellbeck Abbey cre-
ated a library, ballroom, and tunnel

Surviving the
network—all painted pink! In 2012,
descendants donated the edition to
the conservation-supporting Kno-

Bering Strait
bloch Family Foundation.

A research team has pinpointed a gene variant widespread among

Native Americans, traced that variant back to Asia, and linked that gene
to the successful colonization of the Bering Strait more than 20,000
years ago. The gene’s most well-known expression is formation of dis-
tinctively shovel-shaped incisors, but it also afects duct formation in
breast tissue. When researchers looked for the distinctive incisors in the
remains of more than 5,000 people from archaeological sites in Europe,
Asia, and North and South America, they found it in about 40 percent of
Asians, and in all Native Americans studied. The gene spread so widely,
scientists infer, because it powerfully benefited pregnant women and
nursing mothers and their infants during the 9,000-year period of migra-
tion across the Bering Strait, where limited light drastically curbs vitamin
D production. The researchers suspect that the gene’s impact on breast
duct development boosts transfer of vitamin D, faty acids, and other
nutrients, helping nursing infants survive. Archaeologists use the term
"Beringian Standstill" to refer to the era during which an isolated popula-
tion of at least a few thousand inhabited tundra—now submerged—in the
Bering Strait before colonizing North America about 15,000 years ago.
LEFT: DE AGOSTINI/GETTY IMAGES; CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 2018

Special collections staf at the Maryland Historical Society stumbled onto a sheet of
Old-Time runes that proved to be a transcription in a contemporary form of shorthand of George
Shorthand Washington’s first inaugural address. The manuscript had belonged to patriot Samuel
Church, but no one knows if Church took the notes. Shorthand dates to ancient Greece;
of GW’s this type—cramming several small words into a stroke or two—first appeared in a 1743
manual on the method by James Weston. The society has posted an online challenge:
Inaugural decipher the Englishman’s code and compare the transcription to the address delivered
Address at Mount Vernon on Thursday, April 30, 1789. The first three participants to complete
the assignment win admission to Mount Vernon. [bit.ly/ShorthandGW]

10 AMERICAN HISTORY
 Authentic Historical
Reproductions

We found our most important

watch in a soldier’s pocket
I
t’s the summer of survive some harrowing flights in a accuracy to only seconds a day. The
1944 and a weath- B-24 bomber and somehow made it movement displays the day and date
ered U.S. sergeant is back to the U.S. Besides the Purple on the antique satin finished face
walking in Rome only Heart and the Bronze Star, my father and the sweep second hand lets any
days after the Allied cherished this watch because it was a watch expert know that it has a fine
Liberation. There is a reminder of the best part of the war automatic movement, not a mass-
joyous mood in the for any soldier—the homecoming. produced quartz movement. If you
streets and this tough soldier wants enjoy the rare, the classic, and the
He nicknamed the watch Ritorno for
to remember this day. He’s only museum quality, we have a limited
homecoming, and the rare heirloom
weeks away from returning home. number of Ritornos available. We
is now valued at $42,000 according
He finds an interesting timepiece hope that it will remind you to
to The Complete Guide to Watches.
in a store just off the Via Veneto take time to remember what is
But to our family, it is just a reminder
and he decides to splurge a little on truly valuable. If you are not
that nothing is more beautiful than
this memento. He loved the way completely satisfied, simply return
the smile of a healthy returning GI.
it felt in his hand, and it within 30 days for a full refund
the complex movement We wanted to bring this of the purchase price.
inside the case intrigued little piece of personal
him. He really liked history back to life in a
the hunter’s back that faithful reproduction of Stauer 1944 Ritorno $147
opened to a secret com- the original design. We’ve Now only $99 + S&P
used a 27-jeweled move-
partment. He thought
that he could squeeze ment reminiscent of the
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The hunter’s back Please mention this when you call.
and new daughter in and we built this watch
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home that now he could opens to reveal a special of Swiss built precision
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compartment for a
keepsake picture or
can be engraved.
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it for 15 days on Swiss
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Learn more about the history of the 1944 classic at www.stauer.com
 Michael Dolan (“Audubon’s Quadrupeds,” p. 58) is editor of American History.
Alvin S. Felzenberg (“Demand a Recount!”, p. 42) is author of A Man and His Presidents: The
Political Odyssey of William F. Buckley Jr. (Yale, 2018), from which he adapted his article. An
American presidential historian and political commentator, he was principal spokesman for
Felzenberg the 9/11 Commission. He lives in Washington, DC.
Larry C. Kerpelman (“The Secret Agent,” p. 50) has published in The Boston Globe, Physicians
News Digest, and GreenPrints. He most recently wrote about the competition to speed word of the
Revolution across the Atlantic (“Race to Remember,” June 2017). A retired social science researcher,
he lives in Acton, Massachusets. His website is lckerpelman.com.
Nancy Tappan (“Saving Sergeant York,” p. 32) is senior editor of American History.
Kerpelman

Mary, Mary
Mississippi Delta pioneer
Mary Hamilton and
friend at one of the
logging camps she and
her husband worked.
Sound Advice
When I lost my vision, I was
devastated—until my local
association for the blind enrolled me
in Talking Books, a free Library
of Congress service that includes
American History. Now I am able to
listen to well-researched articles.
Learn about this resource at
loc.gov/nls.
Mark Hughes, Kings Mountain,
North Carolina

Hoops Oops
James Naismith (“It’s Shoe Time!,”
August 2018) invented basketball
in Springfield, Massachusets,
not upstate New York.

FROM TOP: PHOTO BY MARTHA STEWART; COURTESY OF LARRY KERPELMAN; COURTESY OF MARY MANN HAMILTON LLC.
Diana West, Hadley, Massachusets

Keep ‘Em Coming

Hail Mary
Many thanks for the portrait of our great-grandmother (“Concordia
Days,” June 2018). Most of us don’t honor our antecedents. We take
our air-conditioned, internet/text-laden world for granted. We need
to remember pioneers like Mary Hamilton, who provided the
foundation for our country.
Kerry Hamilton, Palm Springs, California
I’ve subscribed for as many years as I can
remember and love geting every issue. The
August 2018 issue is amazing, especially the
cover article. I really enjoy the new layout
and features—American Schemers, SCOTUS
101, and Cameo are particular favorites—and
frequently pass my copy on to my mom.
Sarah Jowet, Merced, California

Catching Up Marilyn, Morbidly

In April I came upon a vintage American History article (“Teddy In
the Middle,” February 2003) that clarified the presidency’s impact
on Theodore Roosevelt. Author Stan Sanders showed how public
opinion of TR changed and also illuminated his reasons for defending
mining despite knowing its toll. My thanks to you and the author for
this informative article.
Mason Hyde, Sterling, Virginia
Thank you for “Dying Like a Star” (August
2018), a sensitive and moving story. But was
the coroner’s photo necessary? I would have
preferred to remember Marilyn Monroe’s
fresh and lively Hollywood image, even while
acknowledging her painful and lonely life.
Robert A. Dill, Stow, Ohio

12 AMERICAN HISTORY
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 “A FOOL
FOR
PEACE” BY RICHARD ERNSBERGER JR.
Author and historian David Nasaw, who spe-
cializes in early 20th-century American social
and cultural history, is a professor of history at
the Graduate Center of the City University of
New York. His books Andrew Carnegie (2006)
and The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and
Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy (2012)
were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
How did a tough businessman like Andrew
Carnegie become a pacifist? He read a lot of
philosopher Herbert Spencer, which convinced
Carnegie’s Quest him that through evolution progress was inevi-
David Nasaw sees a
table. Carnegie had lived through the Civil War
campaign for an
alternative to war as a civilian. He recognized that in war there are
by industrialist no winners, only losers. He saw war as back-
Andrew Carnegie— ward, barbaric, outmoded. There had to be a
top, at the podium beter way to setle disputes between nations—
in the New York City which, for Carnegie, was arbitration. Carnegie
hall named for pledged himself to hasten war’s extinction.
him—as a noble
gesture in a century What inclined him to this point of view?
that turned vicious He was as commited to ending war as he had
with a vengeance. been to making a profit. He oten said that he
14 AMERICAN HISTORY
worked harder ater his retirement from the
steel business than he had as an industrialist. I
don’t think Carnegie’s anti-war sentiments had
much to do with his Scotish Calvinist upbring-
ing. And I don’t think it fair to say he was just a
tycoon who embraced an admirable cause.
Who else influenced Carnegie, and what
were some of his pacifist ideas? Until Carn-
egie, the international peace movement was
the province of Quakers and international law-
yers. Carnegie brought pacifism into the main-
stream through articles, speeches, pamphlets,
UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES
and conferences he sponsored at, among other
venues, Carnegie Hall. The major impetus for a
revitalized peace movement may have been the
Spanish-American War, notably the American
invasion and occupation of the Philippines.
For people like Carnegie, Mark Twain, William
James, and others, the United States was aban-
doning its principles and donning the man-
tle of European imperialism in occupying the
Philippines with troops who engaged in torture
and deprived a people of their independence.
 What was Carnegie’s relationship with Presi- would not only survive but would prosper and
dents Theodore Roosevelt and William How- lead. And remember: he lived a century ago,
ard Tat? Theodore Roosevelt held Carnegie when kings, queens, and emperors were alive
in contempt. He abhorred Carnegie’s self-righ- and well in Europe. Carnegie reached out not to
teousness, his unquestioned belief that war was the masses, but to university students, because
inhumane and wrong. Roosevelt refrained from he believed they were the leaders of tomorrow.
publicly criticizing Carnegie because he needed He was an adherent of the “great man” theory—
the industrialist. Republican businessmen that the Roosevelts, the Gladstones, the Carne-
assailed TR as a radical for his trust-busting. gies, the emperors and kings, made history.
The principal industrialist who stood by him
was Carnegie, who was admired for his philan-
thropy. So TR played a double game: in public
The Great War devastated him. He was bro-
ken by the war and more by national leaders’
andrew
he feigned friendship and praised Carnegie but enthusiasm and that of the young men follow- Carnegie’s
in private ridiculed him and opposed his ideas ing them into war. He hoped President Wood- palaces of
for international arbitration and a world court. row Wilson might broker a setlement—he
urged Wilson to do so—but when this failed,
peace and
Roosevelt played Carnegie? Yes. Ater he let he retreated into himself. We would say that he endowment
the White House, Roosevelt wanted to hunt in had a nervous breakdown. He stopped read- stand as
Africa. To pay for that expedition, he accepted
Carnegie’s donations. In exchange, Carne-
ing newspapers, ceased writing to dear friends
in England, including Liberal Party statesman
monuments
gie asked TR to broker a peace between the John Morley, to whom he had corresponded to his
cousins who ruled Germany and Great Brit- every Sunday for decades. He saw no visitors, dream.
ain—Kaiser Wilhelm and King Edward VII. TR stopped talking to his wife and daughter. Only
agreed, then sabotaged the initiative when he when a truce was signed did he rouse himself,
told the kaiser he stood firm in his judgment write President Wilson a congratulatory note,
that war was sometimes necessary, and that no ofer best wishes on Wilson’s plan for a League
leader should embrace pacifism. When Edward of Nations, and propose his Peace Palace at
VII died, the peace plan was scutled for lack of The Hague as a venue for a peace conference.
a partner to work with Wilhelm.
Was Carnegie’s $25 million-plus outlay for
How about Tat? Tat was part of the Repub- the cause money well spent? His palaces of
lican establishment that did not want to alien- peace, certainly at The Hague, are living mon-
ate Carnegie, a Republican and a donor. Tat uments to his dream. So, too, the Carnegie
admired Carnegie but had litle need of him. Endowment for Peace. Have these institutions
He invited Carnegie to the White House and brought peace on earth? Of
listened to him. And Tat worked to get the course not. But have they kept
Senate to agree to treaties binding the United alive a dream; have they con-
States to arbitrate its diferences with selected tributed to the promotion of
European nations rather go to war. Those trea- peace? I think so.
ties never were ratified.
What’s the lesson in Carn-
Carnegie refused to give up. He was a utopian, egie’s crusade? He was very
a visionary. He was not naïve, but he also knewmuch a “fool for peace.” His
that he’d succeeded at everything he had put legacy is the notion that civ-
his mind to; why not international diplomacy? ilized people should not
He believed the world was moving away from consider war inevitable but,
the barbarism of war and toward greater civili-rather, an aberration to be abolished. He was a Palace of Peace
zation. It was not absurd to think that the 20th
“possibilist,” not a realist. We need more such Carnegie built a
century would be a century of peace through men, men willing to dream of a beter world seting in The Hague
arbitration. and to do what they can to bridge the gap in which he hoped
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

between the present and that beter future they world leaders would
Should Carnegie have taken his case to the envision. Andrew Carnegie’s dreams of a world be able to replace
people? Carnegie was no populist. He believed, without war are as relevant today, perhaps combat with
with Spencer, that the “fitest” should and more so, than they were a century ago. + colloquy.

OCTOBER 2018 15
 animal
tracks
BY RICHARD BROOKHISER
Seventy-five years ago, the February 21, 1943, edition of the Saturday
Evening Post had as its cover Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom of Speech,”
which the artist based on a Vermont town meeting at which Rockwell
had seen a yeoman rise in lonely dissent and get a respectful hearing.
This spring the subject of the First Amendment got a brisk workout
from TV comics. Roseanne Barr tweeted a late-night blast at former
Obama adviser Valerie Jarret: “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the
apes had a baby=vj.” The following week, Samantha Bee described first
daughter Ivanka Trump on-air as a “feckless [rhymes with runt, though
much more hostile].” Bee rode out a tornado of complaints in the storm
shelter of an apology; Barr’s sitcom, a reboot of her hit series of the pre-
ceding century, was summarily canceled.
In op-eds and comments sections, kibitzers raged. Barr lost her show,
disappointed fans claimed, because she is a fan of Donald Trump. Bee’s
scripted four-leter epithet, critics harped, had been veted by writers
and producers; why hadn’t those participants also truckled? Australian
comic Jim Jefries, defending Bee, informed Americans that, Down
Under, the c-word almost qualifies as a term of endearment. “This
[stunt]’s alright,” an Aussie might say of a friend, Jefries observed.
Had everyone gone nuts?
Graying boomers are just old enough to remember the lees of an era
16 AMERICAN HISTORY
An 1878 cartoon posed reformer Carl
Schurz and others in animal guises.
of relative civility enforced by the stern pur-
poses of winning World War II and managing
the Cold War. That age included and relied
upon an entertainment industry mindful of
its botom line and wary of giving ofense.
Professionals in suits and ties, from FDR to
JFK, ran the show; professionals in suits and
ties, from John Gunther to Theodore White,
recorded those worthies’ doings. Bob Hope
supplied the yuks. Entertainment changed
first, with the judicial evisceration of anti-ob-
scenity laws and the advent of auteurs, drugs,
and rock ‘n’ roll. The post-WWII political con-
sensus hung on longer, at least in regard to the
manners of pols and the press. Public afairs
remained in the hands of adults—until free-
for-all primaries, talk radio, and the internet
finally made anyone a potential candidate,
and everyone an expert.
GRANGER, NYC
However, there is a long, rude backstory to
national manners that begins well before Pearl
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 whenever Harbor. Take the sin that slew Roseanne: the
animal imagery of racism.
men hold Whenever men hold other men as slaves,
other men masters find it easy—maybe even necessary—
as slaves, to think of their human chatel as less than
human. Pseudo-scientific animalization of
masters blacks in America arguably dates to the man
find it easy who wrote that all men are created equal. In
to think of his 1784 work Notes on Virginia, Thomas Jef-
ferson included, in a lengthy discussion of
human blacks’ alleged physical and mental deficien-
chattel as cies, a comment that blacks prefer to mate
less than with whites, even as “the Oran-utan” prefers
“black women over those of his own species.”
human. At the last, Jeferson retrieved his humanity by
adding that blacks and whites shared a com-
mon moral sense, entitling all men to freedom.
Charles Pinckney, signer of the Constitution,
lived long enough to defend admission of Mis-
souri as a slave state in an 1820 speech in the
House of Representatives in which he ran-
sacked the zoo for interspecies comparisons.
“The African man,” Pinckney declared, “…is as
unchanged as the lion or tiger which roams in
the same forests as himself.”
What politicians orated, showmen bally-
hooed. On the eve of the Civil War, impresario
P.T. Barnum exhibited beneath the rubric
“What-Is-It?” a black man clad in ostensible
jungle duds and purported to be the missing
link between real—for which read “white”—
men and monkeys. Hokum and politics fused
in a Currier and Ives print portraying Abraham
Lincoln and Republican newspaperman
Horace Greeley touting What-Is-It? as the next
GOP presidential candidate. No wonder, given
this history, Barr told her tweeps, “I did some-
thing unforgiveable so do not defend me.”
Society spared women such blistering ste-
reotypes, in part because the patriarchy barred
females from politics and in part because even
patriarchs need to reproduce. The woman
most caustically handled during that long era
of ill feeling was Rachel Jackson, spouse of
Andrew. The Jacksons had met in Nashville,
Tennessee in 1790 as Rachel was escaping a
bad first marriage to Lewis Robards. As in
most bad matches, this one had dueling narra-
Ripping Rachel tives: Robards labeled Rachel a flirt, she called
Andrew Jackson him out as a brute. Jackson, believing Robards
believed that media had divorced Rachel, took her to Natchez,
name-calling sent Mississippi, and married her. But Robards
his beloved wife to hadn’t yet filed papers; in 1794, he finally sev-
her grave. ered the marital knot, on grounds that his
18 AMERICAN HISTORY
helpmeet had abandoned him to live in sin
with Jackson. The happy couple celebrated a
second ceremony in Nashville.
Such tangles were not uncommon on the
frontier, where distance complicated access to
lawful authority, and where locals generally
did what they wanted anyway. At the time the
Jacksons’ neighbors thought no ill of them. But
in 1828, when Andrew took a second run at the
White House, Rachel’s romantic and legal his-
tory became campaign fodder.
By now setlement had civilized the Mis-
sissippi Valley, and religious revivals had
solidified proto-Victorian mores. Cincinnati
journalist Charles Hammond supported Presi-
dent John Quincy Adams. Hammond was
publishing a “monthly anti-Jackson expositor,”
Truth’s Advocate, in which he ran Rachel
through the wringer. “The question fairly pres-
ents itself to a Christian and moral people,
ought a convicted adulteress and her par-
amour husband to be placed in the highest
oices of this free and Christian land?” Ham-
mond wrote. “Those who value good charac-
ter, and the institutions and moral sentiments
that preserve it, can give but one answer.” The
editor feigned empathy for Rachel, depicting
her as “an abused and broken flower,” an image
nearly as sinister as his criticisms. Jackson
beat Adams in a landslide—not enough Chris-
tian and moral voters, evidently—but within
weeks of that victory Rachel died from distress
due, the president-elect firmly believed, to the
abuse she had sufered.
The most prominent victim of actual
obscenity, however, was a man: again, Jefer-
son. America learned of the president’s afair
with Sally Hemings in an 1802 newspaper
expose. “It is well known,” journalist James
Callender began, “that the man, whom it
delighteth the people to honor, keeps, and for
many years past has kept, as his concubine,
one of his own slaves.” Callender was waxing
biblical; “delighteth to honor” is from the Book
of Esther. In portraying the afair, engraver
James Akin took a lower road. His 1804 print
depicts the putative couple as barnyard fowl:
Sally in the background as a black hen, Jefer-
PICTURES NOW/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
son struting in front as a rooster, beneath the
capitalized title “A PHILOSOPHIC COCK.”
Yes, a cock is a bird, but the term had as many
meanings then as it does now.
Jeferson must have loved it. A lesson not to
compare people with animals. +
AMERICAN SCHEMERS
sullivan’s
travels BY PETER CARLSON
The corpse lay in a railroad yard in the Bronx,
sliced nearly in half by a train. Nobody claimed
the remains, and on September 13, 1913, city
workers were readying the unknown dead
man for burial on Hart Island, New York’s pot-
ter’s field. Municipal regulations required a
final inspection of each nameless casualty, so
a policeman lited the coin lid.
“Why, it’s Tim!” the cop said. “Big Tim!”
Timothy “Big Tim” Sullivan had been one of
the most powerful, most beloved, and most
corrupt politicians in New York City history.
Known as “King of The Bowery,” Sullivan
Himself served as a state senator, a congressman, and,
Besides providing most importantly, as boss of the Tammany
constituents with Hall Democratic machine on Manhatan’s
coal, Christmas Lower East Side, where his reign combined
dinners, amusement politics, organized crime, and an emerging
park excursions, entertainment industry.
and shoes, at top, Timothy Sullivan was born in 1862 to
Timothy Daniel “Big impoverished Irish immigrants in Five Points,
Tim” Sullivan also a lower Manhatan slum. His father died
took a run at show before the boy started school; his stepfather, a
business by opening
drunk, deserted the family, inspiring Tim to
theater chains.
swear of booze for life. At eight, he was
20 AMERICAN HISTORY
hawking newspapers in the street. At 18, he
was running an outfit that distributed five
newspapers across Manhatan. At 21, young
Sullivan bought a saloon that functioned as
headquarters for the Whyos, an Irish gang
allied with the Tammany machine.
Soon, the youth was marshaling Tammany’s
voter-fraud operation around The Bowery,
using gang members to bully Republicans out
of casting ballots and encourage “repeaters” to
vote oten for Democrats. The best repeaters
began Election Day full-bearded. “When they
vote with their whiskers on, you take 'em to a
barber and scrape of the chin fringe. Then you
vote 'em again with side lilacs and moustache,”
Sullivan said. “Then to the barber again, of
comes the sides and you vote ‘em a third time
with just a moustache. If that ain’t enough, and
the box can stand a few more ballots, clean of
the moustache and vote ‘em plain face. That
makes every one of them good for four votes.”
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)
Tall, brawny, and handsome, with bright
blue eyes and a warm smile, Big Tim won elec-
tion to the state Assembly in 1886 and in 1894
to the state Senate. His Bowery district was the
 AMERICAN SCHEMERS
city’s most crowded, elbow to elbow with Irish, German, Italian, and Jew-
ish immigrants. Big Tim helped constituents get jobs, distributed coal,
and bailed their kids out of legal trouble. At Christmas, he fed thousands
a turkey dinner washed down with beer. Every February, he gave away
shoes by the thousands of pairs. On Labor Day, he packed hundreds of
families into riverboats for a free cruise to an amusement park. And all
year long, Big Tim was a notoriously sot touch, handing cash to any
petitioner with a tale of woe. All he asked in return was that on Election
Day his people vote the straight Democratic ticket—twice, if possible.
Big Tim financed his good works Tammany style, through kickbacks
and grat. Recipients of city jobs “donated” a tithe to Big Tim’s operation.
So did businessmen anxious to avoid problems with city inspectors.
City regulations required saloons and theaters to close on Sundays—for
many customers, the only day of all week.
Publicans and impresarios could flout that law by spliting the profits
with Big Tim’s machine. Pool halls, then illegal, paid $10 a day to stay
open. Brothels and gambling dens ante’d far more. Big Tim personally
pocketed at least $100,000 in grat a year, plus bribes paid him in Albany
as a stalwart of the legislature’s infamous “Black Horse Cavalry,” a bipar-
tisan caucus willing to kill bills for cash.
However, Big Tim did not live by grat alone. A shrewd businessman, he
gazed upon The Bowery’s entertainments and saw the future. With one
partner, he opened the Dewey Theatre, a Union Square vaudeville house.
With another, he built a nationwide chain of vaudeville houses. He owned
a piece of Coney Island amusement park Dreamland. He partnered with
pioneering movie mogul William Fox in a chain of cinemas. An avid poker
player, Big Tim invested in illegal gambling. Spoting a comer and hiring
him to run one of his games, he told young Arnold Rothstein, “Gambling
takes brains, and you’re one smart Jew-boy.” Sulli-
van had that right: in 1919 Rothstein made a for- A Good Turnout
tune fixing the World Series. Spared a pauper’s
grave by chance, Big
In 1902, Tammany bosses ofered to run Big
Tim departed via
Tim for Congress. “I’ll think it over,” he said. “If it Old St. Patrick’s
ain’t a piker’s game, I might take a stack and Cathedral.
sit in.” When he ran, The New York Times
denounced him as a “disreputable predatory
politician” and “the embodiment of every-
thing that is corrupt and vile.” Sullivan won
in a landslide, served two terms, and quit,
peeved at the paucity of grat available in
the nation’s capital to a minority-party
backbencher. “There’s nothin’ to this con-
gressman business,” Big Tim said. “They use
`em for hitchin’ posts down there.”
Sullivan happily returned to the New
York state Senate, where grat was bounte-
ous, and his Democratic colleagues
included neophyte Dutchess County pol
Franklin Roosevelt. When Roosevelt
spurned an appropriation for his own dis-
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
veered within range of the angelic. In 1911,
appalled at gun violence in his district, he
sponsored the “Sullivan Law,” which required a
police permit to carry a concealed weapon. “I
want to make it so that the young thugs in my
district will get three years for carrying a dan-
gerous weapon instead of a sentence in the
electric chair,” Big Tim said. In 1912, he defied
Tammany to help reformer Frances Perkins
enact a law limiting the workweek for women
to 54 hours. “I seen me sister go to work when
she was only 14,” he told Perkins. “And I know
we ought to help these gals.”
By then, the big fellow was sinking into
mental illness. The deaths of his wife and a
brother plunged him into depression. Muter-
ing that enemies were doping his food, he lost
60 pounds. He spoke of suicide. Relatives took
him to Europe, but a grand tour proved no
cure, so his family commited Big Tim to a san-
itarium. In April 1913, he moved in with his
brother Patrick in the Bronx, becoming so vio-
lent caregivers straitjacketed him. In August,
he ran of. He had been missing two weeks
when a cop peeking into a coin bound for pot-
ter’s field said, “Why, it’s Tim!”
Fame saved Tim Sullivan from a pauper’s
grave. At his Bowery clubhouse, 20,000 peo-
ple—many of them immigrants he’d helped—
filed past his casket. “Behind the Irishman
walked the Jew, the Italian, the Frenchman,
the Scandinavian, the Chinese, the Spaniard,”
the Times reported. “It was, in fact, a proces-
sion of all nations.” +

trict, saying it was unnecessary, Big Tim

chewed him out. “Frank,” he said. “You
ought to have your head examined.”
No statesman, Sullivan occasionally

OCTOBER 2018 21
SCOTUS 101
LITANY OF
THE LAW
MIRANDA V.
BY DANIEL B. MOSKOWITZ
So familiar is the mantra that TV viewers can
chant along with any actor playing a cop taking
ARIZONA a suspect into custody: “You have the right to
384 U.S. 436, remain silent. Anything you say can and will be
used against you in a court of law. You have the
1966 right to an atorney. If you cannot aford an
RIGHT TO atorney, one will be provided for you.”
SILENCE AND Real oicers routinely give that warning.
They did not always. The story of that change
COUNSEL began on Wednesday, March 13, 1963, when
police in Phoenix, Arizona, brought in Ernesto
Miranda for questioning. Ten days earlier, a
man had abducted and raped a learning-dis-
abled 18-year-old. The woman had been on
her way home ater closing the concession
stand at the movie theater where she worked.
Oicers had a convincing case. Miranda, 23,
Chant Along
In 1976, Miami, had a criminal record, including convictions
Florida, police for minor crimes and an arrest for rape. His
commander Ralph features closely fit the description the victim
Page holds a had given of her assailant shortly ater the
“Miranda card.” atack. In a lineup, she pointed out Miranda as
22 AMERICAN HISTORY
the participant who looked most like her
atacker. A green Packard owned by the woman
Miranda was living with had distinctive inte-
rior features the victim mentioned in describ-
ing the automobile in which her atacker
abducted her. And Miranda’s employer said
that on the night of the atack the accused had
not shown up for work.
Phoenix police wanted to strengthen their
case by geting Miranda to confess. Ater two
hours of questioning, he did. All sides agree
that those two hours involved no blatant coer-
cion or brutality—although the police did con-
vey that the victim had been more certain in
identifying Miranda in the lineup than she
actually had been.
Miranda wrote out his confession. Police
AP PHOTO/ROBERT HOUSTON
took him to see the victim to make a voice
identification. The woman airmed that his
voice matched her atacker’s. Asked by police
if she was the woman he referred to in his con-
fession, Miranda answered, “That’s the girl.”

Lawyer Alvin Moore, appointed to defend Miranda, tried to get his
confession excluded from evidence. Moore said Miranda had made the
confession without fully understanding his right not to confess. That got
nowhere with the judge, mainly because each sheet on which Miranda
had writen his confession bore the heading: “This statement had been
made voluntarily and of my own free will, with no threats, coercion or
promises of immunity and with full knowledge of my legal rights,
understanding that any statement I make can and will be used against
me.” And the oicer running the interrogation testified that he had read
the heading aloud to Miranda before the suspect began writing.
A court convicted Miranda and sentenced him to 20 years, mini-
mum. The Supreme Court of Arizona airmed the verdict, rejecting
Moore’s claim that Miranda’s confession was faulty because police had
not told him he could have a lawyer present at the interrogation. The
case went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Moore’s argument very much reflected the tenor of the times in crim-
inal defense law. When the justices agreed to review Miranda v. Arizona,
they combined that case with three convictions appealed on similar
grounds: a New York state robbery case, a federal case involving two rob-
beries in California, and a California case involving a purse snatching in
which the victim died. The California Supreme Court had thrown out the
purse-snatching conviction because police had not advised the accused
of his right to counsel, but in the other two cases appellate courts had
upheld convictions. Ater hearing a total of three days of arguments in
the four cases in February-March 1966, the high court issued a single
combined opinion, headed by Miranda’s name.
In preceding years, justices had been struggling to define when a
confession’s circumstances were so questionable that the statement
could not be presented to a jury. Under the English common law that
had prevailed in the United States since the nation’s founding, a confes-
sion resulting from undue police coercion had to be thrown out. But
undue coercion had no firm definition. Judges were to look at the “total-
ity of the circumstances.”
The justices batled among themselves whether to maintain the case-
by-case approach. In 1963, the justices by a 5-4 vote had ruled it incor-
rect to admit into evidence a confession signed by a man arrested for
robbing a gas station ater police refused
the suspect’s request beforehand to phone
his wife or his atorney. In 1964, also 5-4,
the justices had nixed a confession by a
man questioned in his brother-in-law’s
murder—not only had police not allowed
the suspect to see his lawyer, oicers had
not informed the suspect of his right to
remain silent, which for the first time the
court deemed “an absolute right.”
Those votes indicated growing con-
cern on the part of a five-justice bloc
about methods used to get confessions.
The decisions prescribed no absolute
AP PHOTO/MATT YORK
Rendered Immortal
Ernesto Miranda’s booking photo from
his March 13, 1963, arrest for rape.
SCOTUS 101
rules because each case involved questionable
police behavior. In the purse-snatching fatal-
ity, police quizzed the suspect for more than 14
hours before he confessed. The beauty of
Miranda and associated cases to the court
majority was that none bespoke a hint of
police misbehavior, ofering a clear opportu-
nity to set minimum standards on making
sure suspects knew their rights.
Chief Justice Earl Warren, in earlier days a
tough prosecutor, opened the justices’ confer-
ence ater oral arguments on the Miranda
cases by saying he believed it time to junk the
“totality of circumstances” yardstick. Warren
said the court should declare that to be admis-
sible at trial a confession had to be preceded
by a suspect’s being told of his right to remain
silent and to have a lawyer. Warren wrote
essentially the same on behalf of the five-jus-
tice majority whose members had thrown out
confessions in the earlier cases.
The four dissenters said their colleagues
were sending the country down a dangerous
path. Justice Byron White warned that “the
Court’s rule will return a killer, a rapist, or
other criminal to the streets.” Congress sec-
onded White. In 1968, the House and Senate
passed a law ordering federal trial judges to
admit any voluntary confession, whether or
not the suspect got a Miranda warning. That
measure was so constitutionally suspect pros-
ecutors seldom invoked it. Not until 2000 did
justices have a chance to decide if Congress
really could overturn Miranda. By a 7-2 vote,
justices found that Congress had no such
authority, and that Miranda remained the law
of the land. Moreover, said conserva-
tive Chief Justice William Rehnquist,
who chose to write the opinion him-
self, “Miranda has become embedded
in routine police practice to the point
where the warnings have become part
of our national culture.” Police had
learned to live with Miranda, even to
appreciate having a definite rule on
what to say to suspects before interro-
gating them—a rule that, adhered to,
immunized police behavior during
interrogations from scrutiny at trial.
Miranda certainly didn’t inhibit
Miranda’s prosecutors, who retried him,
leaving out his confession. Again, he was
convicted and sentenced to at least 20
years’ incarceration. +
OCTOBER 2018 23
 COULDN’T STOP
WOULDN’T STOP “I wish I were triplets,” Ellen Swallow said
as a newly arrived but belated Vassar Col-
lege undergraduate, dreaming at 25 of mak-
ing up for lost time. By the time she died at
68 of heart disease in 1911, she had built a
career as a chemist and engineer that
smashed gender barriers and would have
filled a half-dozen résumés. Slight, bright-
eyed, and dark-browed, with a quizzical,
crooked expression, Ellen Swallow was a
one-woman parade of firsts: first female
student at Massachusets Institute of
Technology, first female fellow of the
American Association of Mining and
Metallurgy, first female professor at MIT.
Relentless She invented the word “euthenics,” meaning
Ellen Swallow the science of environmental management.
Richards, shown in When eugenics—controlled breeding of
1888 (back row, far humans—was all the rage as a path to beter
let) with students of living, Swallow posited a holistic understand-
the MIT Women’s ing of environmental conditions as the key to
Laboratory, took a
health. Colleagues credited her with estab-
practical approach
to advancing gender lishing the academic discipline of home eco-
status as a scientist. nomics, a line of study that helped households
run healthfully and eiciently. Swallow
24 AMERICAN HISTORY
BY SARAH RICHARDSON
founded what became the American Associa-
tion for University Women, as well as a sea-
side lab that evolved into the prestigious
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
In childhood Swallow displayed unmistak-
able talent despite physical frailty. Raised in
Dunstable, Massachusets, by schoolteacher
parents who kept a farm, she grew up sur-
rounded by books. When she was 17, her father
opened a store in Westford so his daughter
could atend school there. Two years later, he
moved the store to Litleton, where Ellen
served as postmistress, sharing periodicals and
discussing the issues of the day with custom-
ers. In 1865, at age 23, she took a position
teaching children in Worcester. Observing
female friends’ unhappy marriages, she
doubted that she would wed. “Pray for me, dear
Annie, that my life may not be entirely in vain,
that I may be of some use in this sinful world,”
COURTESY OF MIT MUSEUM (2)
she wrote to a cousin. “I feel sometimes as
though I would be glad to leave it, the ties that
bind me to earth at times seem very slight.”
She found purpose in 1868 when she tested
into the junior class at Vassar—then the only
American college for women. Diving into laboratory science, she found
a mentor in Maria Mitchell, helping the pioneering astronomer record
meteorological observations. Det fingers that in girlhood had won her
an award for embroidery made her a gited and meticulous technician.
At her dormitory, she chose a fith-floor room, so she could watch the
sky and study uninterrupted. Curiosity and a quantitative bent—she
counted the steps to her room and calculated the miles she walked on
campus—came to define her life.
Graduating from Vassar in 1870, Swallow applied to the new Massa-
chusets Institute of Technology, which as yet had admited no women.
Enrolled as a “special student” over certain instructors’ objections, she
decided utility could trump sexism. Ofering fellow students help ranging
from tutoring to mending, Swallow said later, she learned “where the
powder magazines were situated, and carefully avoided the vicinity, but
did not put out my candle. And now I begin to see that my litle light has
had its efect. An extra covering is thrown over the fiery material when I
am around so that I can come nearer, and I feel that I’ve conquered.”
At all times operating with calculated determination, Swallow was
inventive. Frustrated that women’s clothing lacked pockets, she sewed a
pouch she suspended from a belt. She recognized that to progress women
had to be in shape. “Nowadays the last card they can trump up against us is
that we are not physically equal to what we try to do,” she said. To avoid
unwelcome atention or criticism, she counseled her striving sisters to go
“unremarked in a crowd”—even though her own talents and discipline
consistently stood her apart. Robert Richards, her geology and minerology
professor, noted her skill. “She came near to being one of those immortals
who have identified new elements in the earth’s crust,” he said. In time, an
instructor who had balked at even leting Swallow into MIT hired her for a
water quality project with landmark results. Boston and adjacent towns
were spewing waste and sewage into waterways, uterly unregulated. The
project showed Swallow firsthand what industry did to water—and the
need for rules to prevent air and water pollution and adulteration of food.
In 1875, two years ater receiving a chemistry degree from MIT, Ellen
Swallow married Robert Richards, now head of the Institute’s mining
engineering department. Buying a house in Jamaica Plain, Massachu-
sets, they enlarged the windows and swapped a coal furnace for a
cleaner-burning gas model. Daily, the two walked or bicycled together.
Swallow Richards’s middle years were a catalog of achievements
expanding scientific education for women and improving the public
health. In 1875, while teaching chemistry at MIT for no pay, she raised
money to convert a garage into a laboratory for female special students.
Not until 1883 did the institution enroll women as a mater of course. In
1884, Swallow Richards was hired as professor of sanitary chemistry;
during her lifetime, she was MIT’s only paid female instructor. The state
of Massachusets hired her as a consultant. To aid women struggling to
educate themselves, she created and ran a correspondence course. She
wrote household management manuals The Chemistry of Cooking and
Cleaning, The Science of Nutrition, Home Sanitation, and Food Materi-
als and Their Adulteration. Her endeavors foreshadowed the test
kitchen and the health food restaurant. An 1890 project sought to nour-
ish the impoverished by distributing scientifically balanced meals that
recipients did not always find palatable. Swallow Richards had more
success with Rumsford Kitchen. That facility, at the 1893 Columbian
Exposition in Chicago, ofered healthy meals, recipes, and nutritional
education. A Swallow Richards venture deliv-
ered healthy lunches to high school students
in Boston who until then had been buying
food, typically sweets, from janitors, or going
hungry. This efort expanded into nutrition
programs at hospitals and prisons.
Swallow Richards laid the groundwork for a
revolution in understanding the interaction of
nutrition, environment, and health. She
brought a scientific perspective to household
life: how to cook healthy meals, the impor-
tance of ventilation, the need for clean air and
water. She and her allies advocated on behalf
of reforms in the home and in the factory. Rec-
ognizing housekeeping to be a set of important
skills, in 1909 Swallow Richards helped found
a body dedicated to household management.
Her intensely scientific orientation led to
debate with co-founder Melvil Dewey, creator
of the Dewey decimal library system, over the
organization’s name. Dewey prevailed, and so
emerged the American Home Economics
Association, in 1994 renamed the American
Association of Family and Consumer Science.
In 1894, convinced Vassar should be an
exemplar, she used her trusteeship to help
devise the school’s first sewage system, retir-
ing the practice of using a Poughkeepsie creek
as a toilet drain. The initial estimate for the job
was $37,000; the version Swallow Richards
implemented cost $7,500. “The quality of life
depends on the ability of society to teach its
members how to live in harmony with their
environment—defined first as the family, then
with the community, then with the world and
its resources,” she said.
Claims that women running households
needed no higher education irked her. “’What
do you expect this will do in the kitchen?’ I
have never succeeded in banishing the ring of
that question from my ears. Indeed, it has been
repeated in other forms so many times since
that I have had litle opportunity to forget,” she
said. “Can a housekeeper know too much of
the efect of fresh air on the human system, of
the danger of sewer gas, of foul water?”
All her life, she pressed on. “I ask nothing
more, only longer days or quicker memory,”
she said. There is so much to do.” In her 1902
book Euthenics, Ellen Swallow Richards wrote,
“If the State is to have good citizens it must
provide for the teaching of the essentials to a
generation that will become the wiser mothers
and fathers of the next.” +
OCTOBER 2018 25
STYLE
We view majestic
Yosemite National
Park through the
lens of photographer
Michael Ambrose,
tour the park’s
recently reopened
Mariposa Grove,
home to the giant
sequoias; and visit
Yosemite’s elegant
Tenaya Lodge.

26 AMERICAN HISTORY
 TRAVEL

Picture Perfect
In May 1903, John Muir
took President Theodore
Roosevelt camping at
Glacier Point in California’s
Yosemite Valley, a seven-
mile-wide canyon that
spreads beneath huge rock
formations including
El Capitan, the world’s
tallest granite monolith,
and Yosemite Falls, North
America’s largest waterfall.
Over those three days,
the naturalist persuaded
the president to place
Yosemite Valley and
adjoining Mariposa Grove
under federal protection.
Of their sojourn, Roosevelt
said, “It was like lying in a
great solemn cathedral, far
vaster and more beautiful
than any built by the hand
of man.” In 1906 he named
the 750,000-acre parcel a
national park. More than
four million visitors come
here each year.

Panoramic view from the Merced River of the

Yosemite Valley. On the let is El Capitan; on
the right are the Cathedral Rocks. Photograph
by Michael Ambrose, michaelambrose.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHAEL AMBROSE ©2018

STYLE
PHOTOGRAPHY

Still Life
Michael Ambrose’s rich
landscape photographs
capture nature’s timeless
beauty. His images of Cali-
fornia’s Yosemite National
Park exemplify his ability
to create compositions
that envelop the eye in
their breadth, depth, and
strength. Ambrose grew up
in northern California on
Lake Tahoe’s north shore,
not far from Yosemite. The
Humboldt State University
graduate aims to inspire
viewers “to look beyond the
beauty to a sense of time,
the cycles of the season and
our connectedness to the
dynamic earth.” For more
on Ambrose’s work, visit
michaelambrose.com.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MICHAEL AMBROSE ©2018

This spread clockwise from above: Tenaya Lake,
El Capitan in winter, a February sunset sets Horsetail
Falls aglow, Yosemite Valley at twilight, Lembert
Dome from the Tuolumne River, Photos by Michael
Ambrose. michaelambrose.com

OCTOBER 2018 29
STYLE
TRAVEL

Tenaya Lodge
To do Yosemite in
style, try Tenaya
Lodge. This AAA
Four-Diamond rated
resort occupies 78
acres bordering Sierra
National Forest. The
accommodations
include luxe bedding,
whirlpool tubs, and
private balconies
giving onto vast pine
forests. The concierge
staf is adept at helping
guests plan activities.
Pet-friendly Tenaya
has complimentary
valet parking, a fitness
center, babysiting,
and a Kids’ Adventure
Club. Ater a hike, the
Ascent Spa is the spot
for a massage, sauna,
and steam. At dining
time, choose among
five options from
casual to upscale,
such as the Embers,
known for preparing
Caesar salad and
flaming Bananas
Diablo at tableside.
The lodge ofers a fine
way to see the park.
Mercedes-Benz buses
circulate among the
top eight highlights.
tenayalodge.com

This page clockwise

from above: Tenaya Tenaya Lodge’s On-Site Activities and Features
Lodge lobby,
PHOTOS COURTESY OF TENAYA LODGE

Guided hikes Sledding

Tenaya Lodge
Archery Kids’ Adventure Club
pools, Ascent Spa,
Tenaya Lodge tour Climbing wall Cross-country skiing
bus, Flashlight hike. Ice skating Skiing/snowboarding
Arcade Swimming pools
Stargazing Hot tubs
Mountain biking Ascent Spa

30 AMERICAN HISTORY
 STYLE
TRAVEL

Looking Up
In June 2018,
Mariposa Grove
reopened to Yosemite
visitors. A three-year
layof allowed a $40
million restoration to
protect the four-acre
patch of giant sequoi-
as—some more than
285 feet tall and 2,000
years old. To protect
the nearly 500 trees’
roots and improve
drainage, workers
removed pavement,
laid trails, and added
bridges and board-
walks in sensitive
stretches. Over a
million visitors a year
come to marvel at the
grove. Its most popular
inhabitant, the Grizzly
Giant, below, is 1,800
years old, with a
circumference
exceeding 90 feet.
yosemite.com

OCTOBER 2018 31
 Saving
Sergeant
York
A century on, the saga of the hero of the
Argonne stands firm By Nancy Tappan
[SCENE: Doughboys tramping in mud]

MOTORCYCLE COURIER: HEY SARGE! York by himself captured 132 Germans!

SERGEANT: GUY NAMED YORK! Captured 132 Heinies all by his lonesome!
BUDDY 1: How’d he do it?
BUDDY 2: Musta surrounded ’em!
BUDDY 3: A whole division and a bunch of high officers!
BUDDY 4: …How could one guy…
DOUGHBOY IN DUGOUT TO NONCOM SOAKING HIS FEET: Say, Sarge, d’ya hear?
York captured the Kaiser!

T
his scene, from the hit 1941 Warner Bros. movie Sergeant York, summa-
rizes American reactions to an exploit late in World War I in northern
France that earned Alvin C. York the Medal of Honor. In the century
since this reluctant soldier braved machine gun fire to pick of 20 or
more foes, persuading 128 other German soldiers and four oicers to
surrender, the York saga has engendered pride and puzzlement. Did he
really do it? By himself?
The media lionized York as a hell-raising Tennessee mountaineer who got religion, a con-
scientious objector who found in his faith a reason to fight. Some, even doughboys who
fought beside him, called him a liar. In 1929 the German government tried to discredit York;
in the 1970s, amid post-Vietnam malaise, iconoclasts derided the 1918 incident as
morale-boosting propaganda.
In the 1990s, another American soldier, Douglas V. Mastriano, decided to test the truth of the
York legend. Since seeing the movie as a boy, Mastriano has felt a fascination for Alvin York.
During 30 years as an Army intelligence oicer, including tours in Germany, service in the 1991
Gulf War, and later in Afghanistan, Mastriano combed archives, studied oicial maps he came

32 AMERICAN HISTORY
 At the Scene
In February 1919, York
visited the batle site
with Army investigators.
SCIENCE HISTORY IMAGES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

OCTOBER 2018 33

to see were inaccurate, and organized excavations
at the batle site, locating important artifacts and
even the spots where York fought. Mastriano’s
work substantiated much of the story.
“I tried to match up the American and Ger-
man accounts and ended up narrowing the
search area down to a 100-meter square,” said
Mastriano, who recently retired from the Army
as a colonel and ran unsuccessfully for the
Republican nomination in Pennsylvania’s 13th
Congressional District. “The rest is history.”
Mastriano’s archaeological team pinpointed
locations from which York fired shots that killed
at least 20 Germans. The search, penetrating
several feet of plant debris and topsoil, turned
up cartridges from weapons like those York car-
ried, scraps of American uniforms, and items
belonging to German units and individual sol-
diers involved. “We’ve become so jaded,” said
Mastriano, who in 2014 published Alvin York: A
New Biography of the Hero of the Argonne.
“If there are heroes out there we want to tear
them down…I think it’s good not to accept
everything as fact, but at the same time let’s not
always look for reasons not to believe.”
Alvin Cullum York was born December 13, 1887,
in Fentress County, Tennessee. He grew up on
his family’s small farm near the town of Pall
Mall, seven miles from the Kentucky line. The
Wolf River Valley was as hardscrabble as any in
Appalachia, its hamlets isolated by rushing
creeks and accessible only by mountain paths.
Alvin, third of 11 children, worked in father Wil-
liam’s fields from age six, and helped his mother,
Mary Brooks York, with chores. William York
blacksmithed and hunted raccoon, fox, squirrel,
and other small game. Alvin told a biographer he
couldn’t remember not owning a weapon. At a
young age he became a skilled hunter. Bullets
34 AMERICAN HISTORY
General of the Armies
American Expeditionary Forces commander
John J. “Black Jack” Pershing at first insisted his
troops fight only as an intact American army.
and powder were costly, and Alvin remembered that his pa
“threatened to muss me up right smart if I failed to bring
down a squirrel with the first shot or hit a turkey in the body
instead of the head.”
School met three months a year, between crops. Freckle-
faced, red-haired Alvin finished third grade. He grew to be
more than six feet tall and a hard-muscled 175 lb. As a youth
he met pig-tailed Gracie Williams, 13 years his junior, and
thought, “I’m going to marry that girl.”
Years later, in 1911, Alvin was 24 and the oldest son still at
home when a mule kicked William York, who died of his inju-
ries. While younger siblings ran the farm, Alvin took over the
smithy; when the smithy burned down, he worked on railroad gangs and
as a hired hand. His choicest job, road construction, paid $1.60 a day.
In the land of outlaw distilling, drinking was a given. Alvin frequented
“blind tigers,” crude saloons that straddled the state line. These joints hon-
ored the leter of the law, serving Kentuckians on the Tennessee side of the
room and vice versa. Alvin smoked, fought, played cards, and oten won
moonshine drinking contests. He also competed at shooting. He could hit
a target with rifle or pistol standing, prone, or on horseback. From 40 yards,
he could shoot of the head of a turkey trussed to a log.
Mary York worried about her son. As he let for an evening’s carouse,
she would follow him to the front gate, begging him not to drink or fight.
Staggering home, Alvin oten found his mother waiting, praying for his
safe return. Her devotion shamed him, as did the scorn of Gracie’s father.
Frank Asbury Williams, a prominent, deeply religious farmer, declared
that no “hell-raising no-account” would be courting his daughter. Gracie
herself, while finding Alvin atractive, refused to get serious unless he
cleaned up. At age 27, Alvin began to regret his wastrel ways. “I knowed
deep down in my heart that it [wasn’t] worthwhile,” he wrote later.
Pall Mall shopkeeper Rosier Pile pastored the Church of Christ in Chris-
tian Union, whose members followed a strict code of righteousness and
Saddling Up
American troops queue to board trucks for the ride
to their next billet, somewhere in France.

dutifulness; during the Civil War, the fundamentalist sect had decried the
fighting. Alvin was drawn to the congregation, and Pastor Pile became the
young man’s spiritual guide.
When the Great War started in 1914, generals still enshrined the frontal
assault. Machine guns shredded that doctrine, slaying soldiers trying to
cross no man’s land by the hundreds of thousands. Venturing under heavy
fire from trenches festooned with coils of barbed wire, units measured
forward progress in yards. The stalemate on the Western Front changed
technology and tactics. Combatants developed huge artillery pieces. The
Germans excelled at building underground bastions able to withstand the
worst shelling. The kaiser’s men installed concrete pillboxes into which
machine gun crews could scramble as Allied infantrymen began advanc-
ing. Both sides unleashed poison gas and strove to build beter
warplanes. Nonetheless, generals kept sending men over the top.
OPPOSITE PAGE: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES (2); THIS PAGE: USAHEC; MAP BY JON C. BOCK
The war seemed far from Wolf River Valley and from Alvin
York, now second elder of Pastor Pile’s church, where he led the
singing and in Pile’s absence conducted the service. Financial
woes were gnawing at York; he was behind in paying state real
estate taxes on the farm in 1915-16. Gracie’s pa doubted he could
support a wife. Still, Gracie and Alvin let one another notes in
rail fences and when she brought in the cows he walked with
her. In early 1917, Frank Williams relented and allowed
the couple to pledge their troth.
The European conflict was as distant to most PARIS
Americans as it was to York when President Wood- ENLARGED
row Wilson declared war on Germany in April 1917. AREA
With 128,000 regular troops and 182,000 National FRANCE
Guardsmen, the United States had the world’s 17th
largest army, behind Portugal’s. American war materiél,
Doughboys at Ease
Men of the U.S. 77th Division pause on the
first day of the Meuse-Argonne ofensive.
tactics, and military leadership were all out of
date. American Expeditionary Forces commander
General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing had litle use
for tanks, airplanes, or newfangled tactics that
had evolved in four years of combat across the
Atlantic. Black Jack believed an American soldier
with a rifle could overcome any enemy.
To staf the newly organized AEF the Army
hastily drated civilians into divisions oten given
minimal training before sailing to France, start-
ing in June 1917. Pershing did not expect to be
able to field a decisive combat force until the fol-
lowing summer. To restore depleted ranks and
teach the Yanks how to survive and win in
no-man’s-land, Britain and France pushed to
assign newly arrived doughboys to their armies.
Refusing these demands, Pershing insisted his
boys would fight as an intact American army
even if it meant borrowing Allied field pieces,
rifles, and helmets.
Folks in Fentress County were deeply patriotic,
but suspicious of conscription. Pastor Pile’s
church had no formal doctrine of pacifism, but
the sect’s historic resistance to war brought a cri-
sis for Alvin, 30, when he got a drat notice in
June 1917. “I believed in the Bible and [it] distinctly
said, `THOU SHALT NOT KILL,’” he wrote later.
Pile urged Alvin to object to serving on
grounds of conscience. Completing the registra-
tion form, which asked “Do you claim exemption
from drat?” Alvin answered, “Yes, Don’t Want to
Fight.” The county drat board twice rejected his
petition to be ruled a conscientious objector; two
GERMAN MACHINE
GUN NESTS
328TH
INFANTRY
YORK’S
SHOOTING
POSITION
LIPP HILL
223
VOLLMER
ENDRISS
THOMA Â
ÂTEL
CHÉHÉRY
YORK
appeals to the Middle Tennessee board failed. Shocked, Alvin thought of
fleeing into the mountains, but on November 14, 1917, he reported for induc-
tion. At Camp Gordon, Georgia, he felt lost among the urban accents and
unfamiliar atitudes of the Polish, Jewish, and Italian conscripts comprising
G Company, 328th Infantry Regiment, 82nd “All American” Division, but
he made the best of things. He was feeling more soldierly, but still had
doubts about war. He sought the counsel of his company commander, Cap-
tain Edward Danforth, and batalion commander Major George E. Buxton.
Buxton, a devout New Englander, sat up one night debating the Bible with
York. When Alvin cited the commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” Buxton
countered with John 18.36: “For my kingdom is not of this world, but if my
kingdom were of this world, so would my servants fight.” Buxton gave York
a pass, suggesting he go home and think maters through.
Sergeant York portrays this experience by having Gary Cooper as Alvin
climb to a ledge with his hound dog, his Bible, and an American history
text. He sits a night and a day and another night, reading and asking for
divine guidance. As the sun rises, revealing the valley below, a revelation
comes: accept his duty in confidence that God will see him through. He
returns to Camp Gordon, where the other fellows heartily welcome him.
In reality, York did accept the Army, but fellow soldiers, with one excep-
tion, did not accept him.
Apart from the equally pious Murray
Savage, of East Bloomfield, New York, York
had no close friends in G Company. Men
like Bernard Early and William Cuting,
whose real name was Otis B. Merrithew
but who had enlisted under an assumed
name, viewed the Tennessean with suspi-
cion for voicing doubt about fighting. They
also sneered at his preferring to study the
Bible with Savage over whooping it up in
taverns. In April 1918, ater five months of
slipshod training, the All-American Divi-
sion sailed to England before making the
short hop to France.
In May 1918, Pershing began to allow
doughboys and Marines to fight under
and learn from French and British com-
manders. At Belleau Wood on May 27,
at Cantigny on May 28, and in mid-July
at Chateau-Thierry, Americans blooded
themselves against the Boche; Cha-
teau-Thierry helped reverse the war’s
momentum in the Allies’ favor. On June
26, the All-Americans had filed into the
trenches in the American sector of lines
stretching from the Argonne Forest to the
Vosges Mountains in Lorraine province,
The Foe, But Also Friends
On October 8, 1918, Lieutenant Fritz
Endriss, top, and First Lieutenant
(Reserve) Paul Vollmer had an ap-
pointment with destiny.
36 AMERICAN HISTORY
Fellow Believer
Corporal Murray Savage
shared a faith with York.
a relatively quiet sector. York and Savage each
were promoted to the rank of corporal.
On September 12, AEF forces, including the
82nd, conducted the war’s first entirely American
atack, reducing a salient at St. Mihiel, southeast
of Verdun. That day York’s 328th Infantry went
over the top to atack Norroy, a small village. The
Germans volleyed with mustard gas. Company G
took casualties, with men falling to machine guns
and others panicking and ripping of their gas
masks. York later recalled having to wear his
“pesky” mask for hours.
In late September, Allied commander-in-chief
Ferdinand Foch ordered four lightning atacks in
as many days near the Belgian border. Foch
intended to overrun enemy-held rail arteries to
FROM TOP: JAMES LYON, ACADEMY MUSEUM BLMFLD NY; UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY PRESS (2)
strand German reserves, and to retake French
coal and iron mines, starving enemy war indus-
tries. Foch gave the Americans the toughest
assignment: On September 26, doughboys would
atack north up the heavily defended Meuse
River Valley and through the Argonne Forest to
capture a rail hub at Sedan.
Foch’s Meuse-Argonne ofensive began badly.
Pershing ordered old-fashioned assaults straight
into machine guns and artillery. Men fell in
stacks. Snarled communications caused huge
traic jams. Still, the sheer volume of American
troops, artillery pieces, ordnance, aircrat, trucks,
rifles, and rations began to tell. By October 6,
doughboys were advancing. The 82nd Division
remained in reserve. On October 7, 1918, the 82nd

got orders to join the fight. Enemy forces had encircled the First Batalion of
the AEF’s 77th Division in the Argonne Forest. To relieve what would come
to be called the “Lost Batalion,” the 328th Infantry was to atack across a
triangular valley northwest of the village of Châtel Chéhéry. The aim was to
draw of German units raining fire on the trapped Americans and capture a
road and rail line supplying Germans on the east side of the Argonne. On
October 7, the First Batalion of the 328th atacked Hill 223, a promontory
northwest of Châtel Chéhéry. Against fierce opposition, the 328th held the
east slope. The next morning, York’s Second Batalion was to crest the hill
and atack across the valley.
The valley’s defenders were from the Second Landwehr Division, a
national guard unit of men 35 and over from Würtemberg in southwestern
Germany. On October 7, three Landwehr regiments—the 120th, 122nd, and
125th—moved into positions on the northwest side of the valley. The new
arrivals dug foxholes and arranged machine gun nests. First Lieutenant
(Reserve) Paul Jürgen Vollmer, commander of the 120th’s 1st Batalion, set
up a command post in a clearing behind one of the hills. Vollmer was fluent
in English; before the war, he had lived in Chicago, Illinois. On high ground
to Vollmer’s let, Lieutenant Paul Lipp of the 125th positioned machine gun-
ners. A friend of Vollmer, Lieutenant Fritz Endriss, led the 4th company of
Vollmer’s batalion. Endriss spread his men on the right.
York’s 2nd Batalion was a litle over a kilometer to the southeast. The
USAHEC
Americans were to go over the top at 6:10 a.m., preceded by an artillery
After the Firefight
Center, Vollmer, Thoma, and
Lipp pass American officers,
let, tallying prisoners taken by
York (behind Vollmer, helmet-
ed) and his fellow doughboys.
barrage. At Vollmer’s command post, a small
advance party from the 210th Prussian Reserve
Infantry and the 7th Bavarian Sapper Company,
commanded by Lieutenant Max Thoma, arrived.
Vollmer took the Bavarians and Prussians for-
ward to Endriss’s sector to fill a gap in the line.
At 6:10 a.m., the promised American barrage
still had not begun. York’s batalion hurtled into
the valley anyway. From the opposite hillsides,
German machine gunners raked the atackers,
killing or wounding half the Americans, includ-
ing the lieutenant leading York’s and Savage’s
platoon. Taking command, Sergeant Harry Par-
sons formed York, Savage, Cuting, and 13 others
into a makeshit raiding party reporting to Early,
an acting sergeant. Parsons ordered the men to
flank the enemy and silence those machine guns.
As this was occurring, about 70 more Prussian
reinforcements who had been marching all night
arrived at Vollmer’s command post. The weary
infantrymen shed their heavy ammunition belts,
stacked their rifles, and sat to eat breakfast. The
American barrage finally started, masking York
and his comrades as they circled let through
OCTOBER 2018 37
heavy underbrush. York was carrying an Ameri-
can-made Enfield .30-06 bolt action rifle and a
Colt .45 automatic pistol. At a stream, the Ameri-
cans surprised two Germans filling water cans.
The pair fled, yelling “Die Amerikaner kommen!”
York and cohort pursued the pair into the open,
stumbling upon the seated, unarmed Prussians.
The men eating threw up their hands, crying
“Kamerad,” the word for surrender. The Ameri-
cans began organizing their prisoners.
At the front line, Vollmer got word that another
70 Prussians had arrived at his command post.
He was headed there when he heard shouts.
Drawing his pistol, Vollmer ran for the command
post, where his men were milling, some with
hands raised. At gunpoint, Vollmer ordered his
men to take up arms. Suddenly a big freckled
redhead wearing a British-style helmet sur-
prised Vollmer by demanding that he surrender.
The interloper was Corporal Alvin York.
Up the hill, Lipp and his machine gunners,
hearing a ruckus, spoted Allied helmets below.
The Germans moved their gun and fired into the
scrum. Machine gun rounds killed Murray
Savage and five other Americans and badly wounded Early, Cuting, and
one other doughboy. Bullets struck several captured Germans. York was
now the only noncommissioned American oicer on his feet. Vollmer and
other prisoners began yelling, “Don’t shoot, there are Germans here!” Try-
ing to sort friend from foe, the gunners on the hill stopped firing. Alone,
York darted up the hillside. Fellow Americans provided covering fire. At a
“V” formed by two sunken roads, York dove flat, aimed his Enfield at the
nest, and waited. Each time a machine gunner or rifleman on the crest
raised his head, York picked the man of. He expended all the cartridges he
could reach safely; 19 Germans died. The guns on that part of the ridge
went quiet. As York was returning to the crowd scene in the clearing,
Endriss, on the opposite slope, ordered his men to fix bayonets.
With about half his squad following, Endriss charged York, who drew
his .45. Below, American Private Percy Beardsley opened fire on the
charging Germans, first with his Chauchat machine gun and, when the
Chauchat jammed, with a .45 pistol. As he would have at home with a tur-
key flock, York shot his atackers back to front, one by one. Endriss, the last
of the six Germans York shot, screamed as he went down. Seeing his friend
fall, Vollmer stood. He said to York, “English?”
“No, not English.”
“What?”
“American.”
“Good Lord!” Vollmer said. “If you won’t shoot anymore, I will make
them give up.”
York agreed. With a whistle, Vollmer signaled his fellow Germans to

Look Back
present at the York incident. The report,
meant to debunk the York story and
restore German honor, illuminates the
persistent biterness among Germany’s

in Anger
“The details of Sergeant York’s exploit were
created later by the imagination of a fertile
mind. Probably the product of a typical
American megalomania.” —First Lieutenant
(Reserve) Paul Jürgen Vollmer
This statement appeared in Die Entstehung von Kriegslegen-
den Festellungen über die englische Heldentat des amerikan-
ischen Sergeanten York am 8.10.18. That official German
government report—“The Origin of War Legends: An Investi-
gation of the Alleged Feat of Sergeant York, October 8, 1918”—
was researched and writen in 1929 by a military historian as
a retort to a Swedish newspaper story lionizing Alvin York.
The Hemmets Journal article had outraged a German citi-
zen, who complained to the War Ministry. The ministry
directed the National Archive to seek testimony from men
military classes regarding the York saga.
The 27-page report’s author, a military
historian identified only as “Oto,” said his
brief had been to pin down the origins of
the “York legend.” Oto likely was Oto
Korfes, Ph.D., who had ended World War I
with the Magdeburg-based Seventh Prus-
sian Infantry Division. Between 1920 and
1937, Korfes was atached to the German
National Archive at Potsdam as a military
historian. During World War II, Korfes
commanded the 295th Infantry Division.
He was captured at Stalingrad.
Oto researched and wrote the report with aid from Lieu-
tenant Colonel Carl H. Müller, a U.S. Army historian. Müller
spent 1928-32 working in Potsdam under a deal allowing the
former combatants to study one another’s wartime records.
In tones of chagrin, outrage, and denial, witness ater Ger-
man witness scorned the York story as fiction, even fantasy.
In his text, Oto endorses these diatribes by likening Ameri-
can accounts of the incident to martial fables familiar to Ger-
man readers. In such legends, fighting men risk all to grasp
falling flags and rally comrades to victory or endanger life

38 AMERICAN HISTORY
 surrender. The Americans lined up the prisoners and, with Vollmer in the
lead, began to shepherd the group toward the American lines. York walked
at Vollmer’s back, jamming his pistol into the German oicer’s ribs. Sud-
denly Thoma and his Bavarians appeared, aiming rifles. With the muzzle
of his .45, York prodded Vollmer.
“You must surrender!” Vollmer told Thoma.
“I will not let them capture me.”
“It is useless,” Vollmer said. “We are surrounded!”
“I will do so on your responsibility,” Thoma said.
“I take all responsibility.”
Reaching the American sector with the POWs, the squad members
marched their captives past a lieutenant who counted 132 prisoners. Within
48 hours, Endriss was dead. Vollmer ended the war in a prison camp.
Later on October 8, York’s regiment captured the German supply road
and rail line. On October 9, German forces withdrew from the Argonne.
York asked for and got permission to revisit the batle site to search for
living casualties. He found none. In the next three weeks, York saw
additional action—an exploding shell threw him into the air but did him
no harm. On October 31, another division relieved the 82nd.
On November 3, York made sergeant. He was on leave
when he learned of the armistice. He ached to go home, but
his superiors kept him traveling the
former combat zone to give inspi-
rational speeches. One day York
found himself careening across the countryside
in a motorcycle sidecar. On November 30, the
Army awarded York the Distinguished Service
Cross. His captain nominated him for the Medal
of Honor. Such nominations occasion deep scru-
tiny. York’s October 8 actions seemed so extraor-
dinary that investigators bore down harder than
usual, in February 1919 bringing York to the bat-
tlefield, where he posed for a photograph at one
of the critical locations. Investigators collected
aidavits from firefight survivors as well from
their superiors, including Captain Bertram Cox,
the only oicer to visit the scene the day of the
batle. York’s nomination went all the way to
President Woodrow Wilson’s desk. Finally, on
April 18, 1919, 82nd Division commander Major
General George Duncan pinned the Medal of
Honor on York’s chest. Awards for valor from
France, Italy, and Montenegro followed. The mil-
lion-reader weekly Saturday Evening Post in its
April 26, 1919, issue, published
journalist George Patullo’s
cover story, “The Second Elder
Gives Batle,” the first account
in the national press of events

and limb to blow up an enemy
fortification. “War legends usu-
ally are based on actual events,
the facts of which are greatly
embellished by the imagination
of the person involved, or of the
later’s contemporaries, or of
later generations,” Oto wrote.
Müller asked Oto for a copy for the U.S. Army War Col-
lege. With a carbon, Oto sent a leter explaining that Ger-
many was shelving his conclusions. “We are not interested in
releasing to the Press anything concerning this afair,” Oto
TAMU LIBRARIES: CUSHING MEMORIAL LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES; AKG-IMAGES/NEWSCOM
Making History
American military historian
Carl H. Müller in 1919, let, and
likely German colleague Oto
Korfes during World War II.
American translation languished classified and unread
at the U.S. National Archives, first in downtown Wash-
ington, and later at College Park, Maryland.
In 1985, David D. Lee referenced Oto’s report in Sergeant
York: An American Hero. The 1929 German aidavits do not
disprove York’s story, Lee noted.
Oto’s report is “flawed at its base,” author Douglas Mastri-

wrote. “If the newspapers should print another article, how-
ever, which, in connection with the alleged feat of Sergeant
York, might have the tendency of depreciating the name of
the German army…we will immediately disprove the article
with the aid of the material at hand…”
Oto asked Müller to step in on Germany’s behalf should
the American media hype the York story. “We would appreci-
ate very much your seeing that similar steps be taken in the
United States, in the event that this case receives further
notice,” the German historian wrote to his former collabora-
tor. “Any publication on our part is to serve merely as a
defense against unjustified accusations.”
In 1936, the War College had Oto’s report translated into
English. The German original probably was destroyed in a
1944 Allied bombing raid on Potsdam. For decades, the
ano said in Alvin York: A New Biography of the Hero of the
Argonne. “The speed, shock, and surprise [of York’s atack]
caught both sides of guard,” Mastriano wrote. “The Germans
had trouble believing that so few Americans could capture so
many of their soldiers…and launched an efort to script a
rebutal. The premise was that it was impossible for this to
happen to German soldiers…”
A passage in the 1929 German testimony illuminates the
sorry state of the 210th Prussian Reserve Infantry, whose
members surrendered en masse to York’s squad in the
Argonne on October 8, 1918.
“The fighting value of the men in the trenches had sunk
very low,” the commander of a neighboring unit, the 11th
Company of the 212th Prussian Reserve Infantry. “Our men
simply would no longer go over the top.”—Nancy Tappan

OCTOBER 2018 39

in the Argonne on October 8, 1919. The ballyhoo had begun.
So had the criticism. Sergeant Bernard Early and Corporal William Cut-
ting each complained to army investigators that he had been more instru-
mental in the German surrender than York. Alvin York returned stateside
May 22, 1919, honored with a New York ticker tape parade and a standing
ovation from the U.S. House of Representatives. When Alvin finally
reached Pall Mall, he and Gracie went for a walk. They returned ready to
wed. Tennessee Governor Albert H. Roberts and Pastor Pile jointly per-
formed the ceremony on June 7, 1919, in Pall Mall. Ofers to buy York’s
story multiplied, but even though the former sergeant wanted to raise
money to build a school for mountain children, he declined. The Yorks did
accept a Tennessee Rotary Club ofer to buy the couple a farm but the
Rotarians did not come through. Embarrassing publicity brought in private
donations that covered the mortgage. In 1928 Doubleday published Ser-
geant York: His Own Life Story and War Diary.
In 1927, York opened tuition-free Alvin C. York Agricultural Institute in
Jamestown, Tennessee. He ran the school until 1936, when local power
brokers, saying he lacked the necessary background, pushed him out.
Paul Vollmer returned to Ulm and postal work. In 1929, stung by the
praise heaped on York, the German National Archive undertook to dis-
prove his story, soliciting from Vollmer and other soldiers who had
surrendered to York testimony on the episode to be compiled into an
oicial report (see “Look Back in Anger,” p. 38).
The German veterans’ aidavits reflected disbelief and defiance. Ger-
man witnesses swore that not 17, but as many as 100 Americans had
overcome them. The German report included a topographical map even-
tually found to be far more accurate than one U.S. Army oicers imag-
ined for a 1929 War College exposition. At that event, soldiers reenacted
York’s exploit and Army brass awarded Bernard Early a Distinguished
Service Cross for having led the squad. William Cuting, back to being
Otis Merrithew, was bucking for a Silver Star. He butonholed ex-ser-
geant Harry Parsons seeking his endorsement. Parsons refused.
“It was York’s party,” Parsons told Merrithew.
During the 1930s, York hired hands to work his farm so he could travel
raising money for his school. Though still inclined to pacifism, in 1937 he
40 AMERICAN HISTORY
In History’s Web
Let, Rosier Pile and
Alvin York at Pile’s
Pall Mall, Tennessee,
store in 1942. Author
Douglas Mastriano
tracked down spots
where York fought in
France in 1918.
declared publicly that the United States would
have to fight Germany and Japan. In 1940, he
finally signed a movie deal with Warner.
Director Howard Hawkes would cast his story
as a warning parable to foster patriotism and
preparedness. York agreed to accept $50,000 and
2 percent of the gross.
In exchange for releases to portray them on
screen, the production company at first ofered
34 former doughboys as litle as $5. That sum
rose to $250 per man when York critic Otis Mer-
rithew agitated fellow veterans to demand more
money. In leters to studio oicials, Merrithew
swore that ater he and Early were wounded,
Early assigned command of the improvised
detachment to him, not York. Sergeant York did
bofo box oice, and, as York, Gary Cooper won
the 1942 Academy Award for Best Actor.
During World War II, York, in his mid-50s and
in poor health, made patriotic speeches and
raised funds. He even volunteered to re-enlist, an
ofer the Army declined. In 1951, the Internal Rev-
enue Service began hounding the hero, claiming
he owed taxes on movie royalties and funds
raised for his school. The mater dragged on until
House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-Texas) and other
allies raised money to help the aged warrior.
Under pressure, the IRS setled. Alvin York was
76 when he died on September 2, 1964. The next
year, Merrithew was awarded a Silver Star for gal-
lantry on October 8, 1918. He died in 1977.
LEFT: UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY PRESS; COURTESY OF DOUG MASTRIANO
With no accurate maps and the Châtel Chéhéry
topography undergoing natural change, the York
firefight’s exact location faded from collective
memory. In the 1990s, U.S. Army Lieutenant
Colonel Taylor Beatie and Major Ronald Bow-
man of the Army War College, employing field
analytical techniques and working primarily
from York’s diary, made an educated guess as to
the spot. Their analysis, published internally by
the War College, received litle public notice.
Douglas Mastriano began his archival research
 in the 1990s while stationed in Germany. Fluent Merrithew a Silver Star for his part in the Argonne action, the old soldier,
in that language, he was able to delve deeply into who had spent decades denigrating Alvin York and claiming credit for
records that had survived World War II. himself, surprised listeners.
At the U.S. National Archives in College Park, “There was one guy in my outfit who was a conscientious objector—but
Maryland, Mastriano located the 1929 German once he was in the thick of batle, he fought like a true American and
atempt to debunk York. He took special note of almost captured the whole damned German army single-handed,” Otis
the accompanying map, which marked with an X Merrithew said. “His name was Alvin York and he was a hero.” +
the German position in the October 8, 1918, batle.
The X was within 10 yards of where Captain Cox,
on the day of the firefight, had said the Germans Alvin and Alvin
had been. The mark on the German report’s map Top let, actor Gary
Cooper portrayed
also was close to where York had stood to have his
Alvin York, right, in
picture taken in February 1919 (see p. 33). the hit 1941 Warner
Mastriano began his field research in France Bros. movie based
in 2002. By 2006, his team had isolated a grid on the Tennessean’s
small enough to bring in metal detectors. life and exploits.
Beneath layers of loam and leaves, technicians
located cartridge cases from the types of pistol
and rifle that York had used. The search also
uncovered bits of two doughboy’s tunics, likely
from men who were killed on October 8, 1918, as
well as the oval identification disks and personal
efects of a soldier with the 125th Landwehr
Infantry—evidence that a machine gun had
been emplaced as York had reported—and but-
tons and other artifacts.
The overall efect was to confirm the long-ago
presence of the 120th Landwehr Infantry and
the 210th Prussian Reserve.
Among Mastriano’s most significant findings
were spent .30-06 rifle cartridges fiting Enfields
like the one York used and in line with York’s tes-
timony about where and how many shots he fired.
Researchers found the “V” between the two
sunken roads where York shielded himself while
firing at Lieutenant Paul Lipp’s company. The
recovery of 46 spent .30-06 casings was conso-
nant with York’s statement that during the
ENTERTAINMENT PICTURES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; EVERETT COLLECTION INC./ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

engagement he fired all 50 rounds in his front

ammunition pouches before switching to his .45
pistol. Searchers found another 24 spent .45-cali-
ber pistol cartridges at positions matching York’s
testimony about firing, along with Private Percy
Beardsley, at Lieutenant Fritz Endriss and his
men. Recovery of German ammunition belts and
other artifacts corroborated York’s story that
many enemy soldiers surrendered without a fight.

Author Mastriano concluded that York had

not acted singlehandedly. “Clearly, York was the
man of the hour, but we found American .30-cal-
iber cartridges scatered about the site, indicating
that several doughboys fired in support of York,”
the former intelligence oicer said.
In 1965, when the Army awarded Otis

OCTOBER 2018 41
 “Demand
a Recount!”
In New York’s 1965 mayoral race, William F. Buckley Jr. ran
short on votes but won the long game By Alvin S. Felzenberg

42 AMERICAN HISTORY
 W illiam F. Buckley Jr.’s decision to
run for mayor of New York City
in 1965 as the Conservative Party
candidate proved a turning point in his career and in the con-
servative movement. By challenging a charismatic liberal
Republican and a bland Democrat in what was perhaps the
nation’s most liberal city as President Lyndon B. Johnson was
pressing to build his Great Society, Buckley invigorated con-
servatives across the country.
Buckley’s “paradigmatic campaign,” as he called it, sought
to showcase conservative ideas as constructive alternatives
to the liberal agenda. The National Review editor contested
“group interest liberalism,” in which power brokers main-
tained control by placating voting blocs. That system, Buck-
ley argued, perpetuated a stalemated status quo, as most
©CORNELL CAPA ©INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY/MAGNUM PHOTOS; TOP: MELISSA A. WINN
voters had multiple interests. Addressing
New Yorkers as individuals and talking
about their city writ large, Buckley brought to
bear wit, erudition, and theatricality, atracting more aten-
tion than normally accorded third-party candidates.
Buckley’s campaign had its origins in an appearance he
made before the New York City Police Department’s Holy
Name Society Communion Breakfast on April 4, 1965. His
theme was the establishment of civilian review boards to
investigate allegations of police brutality. Buckley opposed
the imposition of such boards. Charges against police had
been overstated, he said, positing that New Yorkers faced a
greater threat from rising crime than from occasional police
overreactions. He insisted that existing procedures might
best address whatever abuses had occurred. Recent Supreme
Scene Stealer
A seasoned debater since
youth, Buckley deployed
stage technique against
foe John Lindsay.
OCTOBER 2018 43
The Candidate
Buckley, top, announces
his entry into the NYC
race in June 1965. Below,
the National Review
editor, right, in 1958 with
an issue on allegations
against Rep. Adam
Clayton Powell Jr. (D-
NY), and in August 1965
at the National Press
Club in Washington, DC.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES (2); AP PHOTO

44 AMERICAN HISTORY

Media Darling
A ready wit and a
Court decisions, Buckley believed, had made it
quick quip made the
candidate a favorite tougher for police oicers to do their jobs.
of reporters. The month before, the Alabama State Police had
beaten civil rights marchers in Selma. The episode at
the Edmund Petus Bridge was very much on the minds of Buckley’s audi-
ence, the press, and the public. Buckley said events in Selma had “aroused”
the “conscience of the world,” adding, based on information he later found to
have been faulty, that television coverage of the episode had excluded foot-
age of police showing restraint as demonstrators provoked them. Buckley
might beter have cited proven false allegations against police leveled locally.
The New York Herald Tribune reported the next day that Buckley’s
audience had applauded his comments about the Alabama police and
laughed at his references to the murder of civil rights volunteer Viola
Liuzzo. Buckley remembered his listeners being silent during both pas-
sages. The New York Times, which mentioned neither applause nor laugh-
ter in its “bulldog” edition, a day later published an expanded story under
the headline, “Buckley Praises Police of Selma/Hailed by 5,600 Police
Here as He Cites ‘Restraint.’”
Unable to persuade the Herald Tribune to retract or modify its story,
Buckley sued for libel. The Holy Name Society had recorded his talk; for
LEFT: SLADE PAUL/PARIS MATCH VIA GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT: ©PHILIPPE HALSMAN/MAGNUM PHOTOS
members of the press, he played that tape, which documented the absence
of applause and laughter. Clearly audible were Buckley’s references to
“injustices” dealt African-Americans. Hearing the tape, the National
Catholic Reporter wrote that of 26 quotations in the Herald Tribune story
atributed to Buckley 19 were inaccurate. The Tribune agreed to correct
the record. Buckley withdrew his suit. But the memory of how a single
newspaper—however wrong its facts—could shape the narrative stayed
with him. “Corrections very seldom catch up with distortions,” he
observed. The manner in which the media covered his speech, as well as
public figures’ demonstrated disinclination to counter such faulty report-
ing, lest it cost them votes, drove home to Buckley certain realities about
municipal politics in the New York of that era.
Buckley later said he decided to run for mayor about 45 minutes ater
his April 4 speech; more likely, his decision flowed from the Herald
Adapted by the author from A Man and His Presidents: The Political Odyssey of William F. Buckley Jr., Yale 2018
Easy Rider
Ater his mayoral
run, Buckley at
times rode a
Honda 50 to work
in Manhatan.
Tribune incident. Another impetus was liberal
Republican congressman John V. Lindsay’s con-
templation of a mayoral run. Were Lindsay to
win the mayoralty in a city where registered
Democrats outnumbered Republicans three to
one, Buckley surmised, commentators would
declare Lindsay a contender for the 1968 Repub-
lican presidential nomination. That would
reverse inroads conservatives had made in shit-
ing the party’s ideological center rightward with
the 1964 presidential nomination of Senator
Barry Goldwater. This conservatives were deter-
mined to resist.
The night Goldwater lost, Lindsay had won a
fourth term in Congress with 71.5 percent of the
vote in a district LBJ swept. Lindsay’s campaign
slogan, “The District’s Pride, the Nation’s Hope,”
telegraphed his ambitions. New York’s Republi-
can Governor Nelson Rockefeller and fellow
GOP moderate Jacob Javits, the state’s senior
U.S. senator, both were thinking presidentially,
and unlikely to leave oice soon. Junior Senator
Robert F. Kennedy had won election months
earlier. In 1965, the mayoralty seemed the only
way station that might open for Lindsay on the
path he hoped to take from the House of Repre-
sentatives to the White House.
Mayor Robert F. Wagner was retiring ater 12
years at City Hall. The Liberal Party, which usu-
ally backed Democrats, was poised to endorse
Lindsay, enlarging his prospects. As tribute for
that gesture, the Liberals demanded Lindsay
name one of their operatives to his ticket and
award the Liberal Party a third of mayoral
patronage. Lindsay entered the race with a
OCTOBER 2018 45
 Making Points
Buckley’s aristocratic mien
was no bar to obtaining outer-
borough voters’ backing.
record as one of the most liberal members of the House, with an 85 percent
approval rating from Americans for Democratic Action. On May 13, 1965,
Lindsay, 43, announced his candidacy for mayor.
Days later, Buckley, 39, published in National Review a column titled
“Mayor, Anyone?” Proposing to lead New York City out of what he termed
its “perpetual crisis,” Buckley described a 10-point program. He suggested
measures to reduce juvenile crime. He advocated repealing narcotics laws
regarding adults and allowing certified addicts to buy drugs at pharmacies.
He favored legalizing gambling, exempting teens from minimum wage
requirements, and ending union monopolies over city contracts. Busi-
nesses locating in depressed areas and hiring neighborhood residents
would, under a Buckley plan, receive tax benefits.
To keep traic moving, Buckley would ban loading and unloading of
commercial vehicles between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. He suggested that the city
allow people with good driving records to use their cars as taxis. His pro-
posal to build a bikeway from 125th Street to 1st Street generated consider-
able interest. Buckley favored residency requirements for welfare and
wanted to require recipients to perform some kind of work. In laying out
the magazine, the managing editor added to the cover a teaser: “Buckley
for Mayor?” On June 7, Buckley told Conservative Party chairman Daniel
46 AMERICAN HISTORY
Mahoney he would accept the party’s nomina-
tion for mayor. At the Overseas Press Club on
June 24, Buckley announced his candidacy. His
opening line—that he oten wished more of the
press was overseas—got a sustained laugh.
Buckley said he was running on the Conserva-
tive Party ticket because the Republican slot was
closed to anyone not in the “mainstream of
Republican opinion.” Lindsay and his managers
countered that Buckley’s views were outside the
“mainstream” of New York opinion. When some-
one inquired whether he wanted to be mayor,
Buckley said he had “never considered it.” Asked
how many votes he expected to receive, he
replied, “Conservatively speaking: one.”
Most of the press editorialized negatively
about his politics and his policy recommenda-
tions, but reporters covering Buckley found his
ready humor, candor, and unconventionality
refreshing. Liberal columnist and Lindsay sup-
porter Murray Kempton, a friend of the candi-
date, said he found it reassuring that Buckley
had pledged not to campaign during the day,
given his duties at National Review, while
incumbent elected oiceholders would be cam-
paigning on taxpayers’ time.
Buckley, asked the first thing he would do if
he won, shot back, “Demand a recount!” His jest
became the campaign’s most quoted line. Such
witicisms tickled reporters and audiences; inti-
mates feared Buckley was not taking his cam-
paign seriously. He established credibility, how-
ever, by releasing well-reasoned position papers
on virtually every issue. A commentator likened
the volunteers crowding Buckley’s headquarters
to “a ‘New Frontier’ elite of the political right.”
Lindsay sought to make a virtue of his new-
ness to the New York municipal scene. His cam-
paign advisers, taken with a Kempton line—“He
is fresh, when everyone else is tired”—printed it
on campaign posters. When not citing his per-
sonal atributes and professed idealism, Lindsay,
by design, avoided specifics.
In September, city comptroller Abraham D.
Beame, 59, won the Democratic primary. Asked
to discern between the diminutive Beame and
Lindsay, whom master builder Robert Moses lik-
ened to a matinee idol, Buckley pronounced
their diferences more “biological than ideologi-
STEVE SCHAPIRO/GETTY IMAGES
cal,” noting that he would be running against a
tall liberal and a short liberal.
Averring disinterest in which rival he took
votes from, Buckley was harder on Lindsay. He
insisted that he bore the congressman no
 asked the personal animosity, stating as his primary of labor, Moynihan had writen a memorandum
first thing objection to Lindsay that he belonged in the to President Johnson on the crisis beseting the
he would do Democratic Party. Indirectly nodding to black family: rising out-of-wedlock births, father-
if he found Lindsay’s presidential ambitions, Buckley
remarked, “Mr. Beame does not pretend to be
less households, and increasing unemployment
among black men—phenomena Moynihan said
out that he anything but what he is, a very ordinary poli- were exacerbated by a welfare system that stifled
won, buckley tician.” Lindsay denied having known Buck- incentive and discouraged work.
shot back, ley when the two men were students at Yale
and atributed Buckley’s diferent recollec-
Glazer and Moynihan also noted challenges
to other ethnic groups in New York. The book’s
“Demand a tion to his sufering “delusions of grandeur.” chapter on Irish-Americans, which Moynihan
recount!” An irked Buckley retorted that he did not wrote, told of how these and other outer-bor-
which became take “grandeur” to mean “having known John
Lindsay.” Whenever Lindsay donned reform-
ough Catholic voters, once cogs of Democratic
machines and prime beneficiaries of Tammany
the most- er’s robes to bater Beame, Buckley, invoking Hall largesse, had lost influence to “reform”
quoted line Lindsay’s deal with the Liberal Party, pro- Democrats. These “amateur Democrats,” as polit-
of the claimed the Republican “boss backed.”
On September 16, Buckley caught a break
ical scientist James Q. Wilson called them—were
mostly upper-middle-class professionals and
campaign. when a strike shutered six of the city’s daily almost exclusively Protestant or Jewish. “Ama-
newspapers. The 23-day walkout created a teur Democrats” cared more about program-
void that television, radio, and out-of-town matic issues and programs, oten run in Wash-
papers filled, and which worked to Buckley’s ington, than neighborhood problems and
advantage. Appearing together for the first time on radio, Beame and political patronage, the focus of the “regulars.”
Buckley took aim at Lindsay from opposite directions. Beame said Lind- This shit of power from clubhouse to reform-
say, by not identifying as a Republican in his campaign literature, seemed ers coincided with a surge of African-Americans
to be ashamed of his partisan ailiation. and Spanish-speaking residents into the city
“I’ll buy that,” Buckley blurted, beckoning to Republican voters. and what has been termed white flight to the
suburbs. Increasingly, regulars and reformers
During the candidates’ first televised debate, Buckley, who at Yale had batled over school busing, public funding for
been a champion debater, employed techniques he had long since per- private and parochial schools, crime control and
fected, including scene-stealing. His facial expressions matched his rheto-
ric. Noting that Buckley had time remaining, the moderator asked if he
cared to say more. “No,” the candidate said. “I think I’ll just contemplate
the great eloquence of my previous remarks.”
In early October, a Herald Tribune straw poll had Beame leading Lind-
say 45 percent to 35 percent, with Buckley at 10 percent. Within days,
Buckley had jumped to 13 percent. On October 21, the Daily News, back in
print, put Lindsay at 42 percent, Beame at 37 percent, and Buckley at 20
percent. Three days later, the newspaper poll had Lindsay at 43 percent,
Beame at 40 percent, and Buckley at 18 percent.
Lindsay, playing to liberals, began to slam Buckley as an ultra-rightist,
employing the phrase “relocation centers” to describe a Buckley proposal
to move unemployed mothers on welfare to areas where the city would
provide the women with housing and job training and their children with
schools and recreation centers. Beame referred to Buckley as the cam-
paign’s “Clown Prince,” asking rhetorically which groups Buckley
intended to send to “concentration camps” once he removed all the wel-
fare recipients and drug addicts.
Buckley was gaining among white ethnic voters, many of them Demo- Three Non-Amigos
crats, in the outer boroughs. Pollster Samuel Label atributed Buckley’s Buckley liked to say
numbers to his “giving emotional voice to many racial discontents among that he was running
BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

white voters.” In framing his arguments, Buckley repeatedly men- against a tall liberal,
tioned Beyond the Melting Pot, a 1963 book by Nathan Glazer and Daniel Lindsay, let, and a
Patrick Moynihan. Glazer was a prominent Harvard sociologist; Moynihan, short liberal, Beame.
an academic on the rise in policy-making circles. As U.S. assistant secretary

OCTOBER 2018 47
 Many liberals dismissed Buckley’s comments
on education and other issues as “racist.”
Decades later, academician Timothy Sullivan
concluded that outer-borough voters took to
Buckley because they felt he understood their
frustrations and treated them and their concerns
with respect. This mutual atraction abounded
with ironies. An elitist by temperament and a
skeptic regarding democracy’s ability to remedy
Talking Heads social ills, Buckley gave voice to grievances felt
A September 1965 Newspaper
by a constituency litle disposed to favor conser-
Guild strike lent prominence
to televised events like debates. vative economics and less hostile than he to
government intervention elsewhere.
The phenomenon of Buckley’s appeal to pri-
prevention, taxation, abortion, civilian review of marily white, working-class voters persists. “Buckley Democrats” shared
police, and accommodation to alternative life- demographic and other characteristics with Nixon’s “silent majority,” “Rea-
styles. Court decisions on school prayer, busing, gan Democrats,” and “Trumpers.” Buckley and his advisers expected him
abortion, and other maters intensified the sense to do best among Republicans concerned about rising taxes and a declin-
in the white working class of losing influence. ing city economy. Few even within his own camp expected Buckley to
Buckley addressed these concerns. draw working-class voters away from their Democratic roots. Voters
“Either schools are places where education is among whom Buckley was making inroads could not have cared less
the primary consideration,” the candidate whether he or Lindsay represented the GOP’s future.
declared, “or they are places where social poli- Nor did Buckley ignore African-Americans. He traced racial animus in
cies of politicians are the primary consideration.” New York “in part to a legacy of discrimination and injustice commited by
He predicted that “if the public schools became the dominant ethnic groups. The white people owe a debt to the Negro
litle more than social laboratories for the pro- people against whom we have discriminated for generations.” To right his-
motion of integration, parents most ambitious toric wrongs, Buckley embraced what later went by the name of airma-
for the educational advantages of their children tive action. He promised to crack down on unions that discriminated
will, if they can aford to do so, send their chil- against African-Americans. Appealing to black individuality, Buckley
dren to private schools; those who cannot aford declared educational success, bootstrapping, and capital formation surer
to do so will continue to send their children to avenues out of poverty than government programs.
the public schools but will become biter, and
even hostile, toward the minority groups whose Four days before the election, Buckley visited the offices of The New
pressures they hold accountable for unnatural York Times. He recalled secretaries, janitors, and non-editorial staf enthu-
arrangements.” He embraced vouchers—later siastically welcoming him, in contrast to the cool response of the paper’s
rebranded “school choice”—as a means of relief editorial board. He told reporters aterwards that he felt, upon exiting the
for families unable to send children to private building, as if he had passed through the Berlin Wall. Asked what he would
schools or beter schools outside the city. do if he woke up mayor, Buckley replied, “Hang a net outside the window

FROM TOP: LEONARD DETRICK/NY DAILY NEWS ARCHIVE VIA GETTY IMAGES; BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES
of the [Times] editor.”
Lindsay won with 45.3 percent to Beame’s 41.3
Coming Out on Top percent and Buckley’s 13.4 percent. Between
Lindsay, shown taking the oath of them, Lindsay and Buckley won 57.8 percent of
office, beat Buckley by more than
the vote. As Buckley had anticipated, news
three-fold in November 1965.
reports began to name Lindsay a presidential
possibility. The commentariat’s refrain was that
Buckley, by failing to deny Lindsay victory, had
not figured in the election, except insofar as he
pulled votes from Beame, enhancing Lindsay’s
tally. Another explanation was that traditionally
Democratic voters made a conscious decision to
deviate from past voting paterns.
Buckley polled worst in Manhatan, taking 7
percent to Lindsay’s 55.8 percent and Beame’s
37 percent. He did best on Staten Island, receiv-
ing 25.2 percent to Lindsay’s 45.8 percent and

48 AMERICAN HISTORY
 Bruised but Unbowed
Buckley’s campaign And Buckley launched his
foreshadowed beter own weekly public afairs televi-
times for conservatives. sion program, usually featuring
him matching wits with a liberal
intellectual or activist. Debuting less than three months
ater Election Day, Firing Line ran for 33 years, making
Buckley’s a household face.
The Buckley persona became recognizable to millions.
Two years ater Buckley’s mayoral run, Time ran a cover
story, “William F. Buckley, Jr.: Conservatism Can Be
Fun.” Presidential hopefuls sought his endorsement.
Buckley likely never would have atained such promi-
nence, or its accompanying influence, had he not run for
mayor. Among his many new roles was that of “tutor” to
Ronald Reagan, who, a year ater Buckley’s “paradigmatic”
campaign, won the California governorship. Days ater the
1965 New York City mayoral election, Barry Goldwater pro-
claimed that Bill Buckley had “lost the election but won the
campaign.” More than a half-century later, those words
appear even more prescient than they did then. +

Beame’s 28.9 percent. Buckley polled 21.9 per-

cent among Irish-Americans and 17.8 percent
among Italian-Americans.

Buckley’s percentage belied the growing and

enduring impact he would have on American
politics long ater both of his opponents, each
elected New York’s mayor, had departed the
scene. He emerged as the best-known American
conservative ater Barry Goldwater.
Fan mail inundated his oice. Strangers
stopped him to have pictures taken and to
request autographs. National Review subscriber-
ship jumped to 117,000. His newspaper col-
umn, “On the Right,” had been running in 150
papers; that figure doubled.
Buckley’s byline began appearing more fre-
quently in Esquire, Playboy, The New York Times
Magazine, and other periodicals besides his
own. He became a favorite and frequent guest
on The Dick Cavett Show and The Tonight Show.
He appeared on the prime-time revue Rowan
BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

and Martin’s Laugh-In and on satirical pro-

grams hosted by Woody Allen. He began pub- Picture Perfect
lishing books at the rate of at least one per year, In his 1967 caricature, artist
many of them best sellers. David Levine distilled the essence
of Buckley’s public image.
OCTOBER 2018 49
Continental Op
Artist John B. Martin
painted James Armistead
Lafayete around 1824.

The Secret Agent

A daring slave went undercover
to aid the Revolution
By Larry C. Kerpelman
GRANGER, NYC

50 AMERICAN HISTORY
T he summer of 1781 was crucial for King George III’s
military in America and for the colonial forces oppos-
ing the British. Earlier that year, in March, General
George Washington had ordered Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayete,
to depart Philadelphia and lead Continental forces in Virginia. Lafayete
was to help counter a British invasion of the American South, as well as
confront the traitor Benedict Arnold and his marauders, then ranging
around Virginia. In addition, the French oicer was to gather intelligence
on British troop strength, positions, and strategies.
That August, upon arriving in Virginia, British General Charles Lord
Cornwallis, commander of British forces in the South, sent Arnold and his
troops north to New York. Cornwallis then sparred with Lafayete across
the Virginia Tidewater in actions at the North and South Anna, Rapidan,
and James Rivers. From New York, British commander in chief General
Henry Clinton ordered Cornwallis to secure a locale on the Virginia coast
with a harbor suicient to accommodate a fleet of warships that would be
reinforcing British ground troops. Cornwallis drew his forces back from
Portsmouth to Yorktown to meet the enemy, but American and French
forces, always seeming to know his movements, steadily dogged the Brit-
ish general and his troops. By October 1781, the rebels and their French
enablers were besieging Cornwallis’s army at Yorktown, where circum-
stance forced the Briton to surrender.
Unknown to Cornwallis, for months his camp had been harboring a
secret agent—and not merely a spy informing the Americans but a double
agent who had been feeding Cornwallis disinformation about the colo-
nials. That litle-known figure, whom a Time writer described as “arguably,
the most important Revolutionary War spy,” was James Armistead, an
enslaved African-American.

Born into bondage around 1748, James Armistead was the property of
William Armistead, a New Kent County, Virginia, farmer. Among other
activities during the Revolutionary War, William Armistead sold supplies
to the American army. Hearing that slaves who served the rebel cause
could apply for their freedom once the war ended—assuming an American
victory—James Armistead asked his owner for permission to serve with
Lafayete’s Virginia campaign. The planter, who regarded James Armistead
as trustworthy and resourceful, assented.
An advocate for equality—long ater the Revolution, he would write to
Washington, “I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America
if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery!”—
Lafayete took on the black man as a forager, laborer, and courier. Observ-
ing James Armistead’s aptitude, Lafayete ofered him far more dangerous
work: Posing as a runaway slave, Armistead would present himself at Ben-
edict Arnold’s camp, ostensibly to seek work but on the sly gathering and

OCTBOER 2018 51
 Present Arms

52 AMERICAN HISTORY
his light infantry in 1782.
Lafayete, saluting, reviews
MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE INSPECTING HIS COMMAND OF LIGHT INFANTRY IN 1782, OGDEN, HENRY ALEXANDER (1856-1936)/PRIVATE COLLECTION/PETER NEWARK PICTURES/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

passing on intelligence about
British operations and troop
strength. Understanding that if
he were found out he would be
hanged, James Armistead accepted
the job. Suitably clad, the “runaway”
trekked to the enemy camp, which was in
the Virginia Tidewater. Armistead explained to
Arnold’s men he knew the vicinity and would be able to
guide them, obtain food, and help in whatever way he could.
The British took in the ostensible runaway. Cornwallis, plan-
FROM TOP: THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, BEQUEST OF ADELE S. COLGATE, 1962; MAJOR GENERAL MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE IN VIRGINIA 1781, 2015 (OIL ON CANVAS), TROIANI, DON (B.1949)/PRIVATE COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
ning to sally against Lafayete, sent Arnold and company
north and ensconced himself at Yorktown with 5,000 infan-
try and 800 cavalrymen. James Armistead joined the British
general’s camp at Portsmouth, working overtly as a scout
and forager and covertly as a secret rebel agent.
Cornwallis made Armistead an orderly, assigned to wait
on the oicers’ table—a prime position for eavesdropping as
the British general talked strategy, going over maps and
planned actions. The illiterate Armistead memorized what
he overheard and almost daily whispered that information to
a fellow operative who was part of a relay team of spies who
sneaked through British lines to pass intelligence to Lafay-
ete. Constantly forewarned, the Frenchman, whose forces
numbered only 3,000, was able to avoid confrontations and
to monitor and report on the British undetected. James also
carried instructions from the marquis to other American
operatives behind British lines.
Noting his orderly’s acuity, Cornwallis asked the supposed
runaway to spy on the enemy. Armistead said yes, informing
his Continental Army contacts, who arranged to supply him
with fake intelligence. Armistead, now a double agent, began
passing along falsehoods provided by handlers on the rebel
side about American strength and movements. He fed Corn-
wallis a steady stream of disinformation, augmented by
touches like a bogus leter, supposedly from Lafayete to
another rebel general. The crumpled communique, which
James claimed to have found on the road, discussed a large
number of troops coming to reinforce Lafayete. Reading this
discouraged Cornwallis from atacking the American forces.
As the summer of 1781 was ending, the American army was
closing in on Cornwallis’s army at Yorktown. In early Septem-
ber, Cornwallis began receiving legitimate reports from
trusted sources that a French fleet would be arriving of the
Chesapeake Capes to reinforce the Americans. In addition,
Washington and his army, marching out of locations in the
mid-Atlantic from New York to Pennsylvania, had arrived at
Williamsburg. Writing to Clinton, his supposed rescuer, Corn-
wallis said he feared he could not hold out. In the September
Fateful Meeting
Lafayete, let, first met
Washington in Philadelphia
on August 3, 1777.
5-9 Batle of the Chesapeake
Capes, which proved to be the
decisive batle of the war,
Admiral Francois Joseph Paul de
Grasse’s fleet held of arriving Brit-
ish ships and chased them from the
Chesapeake. By closing of British sea
approaches to Yorktown, de Grasse deprived Corn-
wallis of his needed reinforcements.
In early October, the rebels and their French allies began
besieging Yorktown. A French fleet arrived at the mouth of
Chesapeake Bay, crushing Cornwallis’s hopes of aid from the
Royal Navy. His back to the sea, with no way of escape,
Cornwallis sent an aide to Washington’s camp seeking terms.
On the warm morning of Friday, October 19, 1781, Cornwallis
signed two copies of the Articles of Capitulation for return to
Washington’s headquarters. Noting the scene of victory, the
American general wrote at the end of the articles, “Done in
the trenches before York, October 19th, 1781.”
A few days ater capitulating, Cornwallis, in a gesture typi-
cal of the day, visited Lafayete. Entering the Frenchman’s
tent, the British leader saw standing near the Frenchman his
former orderly, personal servant, and loyal spy, James Armi-
stead. Although fighting continued sporadically until the
1783 signing of the Treaty of Paris, the Revolutionary War
efectively ended at “the trenches before York,” as did James
Armistead’s career as an American spy.
Forewarned, Forearmed
Armistead’s intelligence
kept the rebel general and
his troops a jump ahead.
OCTBOER 2018 53
 Aux Barricades!

54 AMERICAN HISTORY
nental Army at Yorktown.
French troops who joined the Conti-
de Rochambeau, commander of 7,000
Washington, gesturing, with the Comte
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON AND COMTE DE ROCHAMBEAU AT THE SIEGE OF YORKTOWN IN 1781, 2002 (OIL ON CANVAS), TROIANI, DON (B.1949) / PRIVATE COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
FROM TOP: AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE: BATTLE OF YORKTOWN, 1781. TWO LINES OF BATTLESHIPS FIRING BROADSIDES. FROM A FRENCH LOGBOOK. HENRY HUNTINGDON MUSEUM. WATERCOLOUR/UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/UIG/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; THEY SCRAMBLED UP THE PARAPET AND WENT OVER THE TOP, PELL MELL,
UPON THE BRITISH, OR THE BATTLE OF YORKTOWN, FROM ‘JANICE MEREDITH’ BY PAUL LEICESTER FORD (1865-1902), PUBLISHED 1899 (OIL ON CANVAS), PYLE, HOWARD (1853-1911) / DELAWARE ART MUSEUM, WILMINGTON, USA/HOWARD PYLE COLLECTION / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL

Ships of the Line

A French logbook sketch shows
batleships firing broadsides in
the Batle of Yorktown, 1781

Armistead returned to New Kent County to resume life in

bondage. He expected to obtain his freedom, but under Vir-
ginia law only a special act of the Assembly could free a slave.
In autumn 1784, James traveled with William Armistead, now
a member of the House of Delegates, to Richmond. In the
state capital, James encountered Lafayete, who was about to
leave for his homeland.
The French noble gave his former secret agent a leter.
“This is to Certify that the Bearer By the Name of James has
done Essential Services to me While I had the Honour to
Command in this State,” Lafayete wrote. “His intelligences
from the Enemy’s Camp were Industriously Collected and
More faithfully deliver’d. He properly Acquited Himself with
Some important Commissions I gave Him and Appears to me
Entitled to Every Reward his Situation Can Admit of. Done
Under my Hand, Richmond November 21st, 1784—Lafayete.”
That December, a sickly William Armistead petitioned the
General Assembly for James’s freedom, oicially known as
manumission, from the Latin for “to release control.” Armi-
stead’s petition, inexplicably not sent with Lafayete’s leter of
praise, described the enslaved man’s eforts at Yorktown, ask-
ing for “that liberty which is so dear to all mankind. . . . [and] Over the Top
praying that an act may pass for his emancipation.” The peti- At Yorktown, Ameri-
tion died in commitee—the law freeing slaves for serving in can troops scrambled
the Revolution applied only to soldiers-at-arms, not spies. pell mell at the foe.

In November 1786, William Armistead filed a second, more

politically astute petition that included Lafayete’s leter of
endorsement. In his own remarks, the planter cited James’s
“honest desire to serve this country...during the ravages of
Lord Cornwallis thro’ this state,” closing with a
plea that the legislature grant James “that
Freedom, which he flaters himself he
has in some degree contributed to
establish.” The petition and Lafay-
ete’s leter were referred to the
“The World Turned Upside Down”
Cornwallis, who skipped surrender ceremonies,
passes between his troops and Washington’s.
Commitee on Propositions and Grievances, which ordered
a bill drated. The resulting measure unanimously passed
the House of Delegates on Christmas 1786, and the Virginia
Senate on January 1, 1787. Signed eight days later
by Governor Edmund Randolph, the legis-
lation freed James Armistead. Two
months later, as compensation for
freeing his slave, the Virginia Audi-
tor of Public Accounts issued war-
rants to William Armistead in the
sum of £250, far exceeding the usual
£100 compensation the state paid for
executing a bondsman convicted of a
capital crime. In gratitude for the support

OCTBOER 2018 55
 The Great Day
Opposite, troops
parade ater
British surrender
at Yorktown,
October 19, 1781.

Walking Papers
Let, measure freeing
James Lafayete.
Below, payroll for
rebel African-Ameri-
can troops.

that the marquis lent to his petition for freedom, James Armistead
adopted Lafayete as his last name.

James Armistead Lafayete, freedman, slipped into obscurity, making

his living farming. He had a wife and at least one son. The 1787 New Kent
County personal property tax book lists Lafayete as owning two horses
and three slaves. Black freedmen of that era did sometimes own slaves,

THE STATUTES AT LARGE; BEING A COLLECTION OF ALL THE LAWS OF VIRGINIA; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS
but it also was not unusual for property and census recorders to charac-
terize any blacks in a freedman’s household, even family members, as
slaves. In 1816, James and family acquired two tracts adjoining William
Armistead’s estate, one parcel of 10 acres, the other of 30.
To honor surviving soldiers of the Revolution, in the early 1800s many
states and the U.S. Congress set about providing liberal pensions for vet-
erans. On December 28, 1818, James Lafayete, 70, petitioned the Virginia
General Assembly for pension relief, reporting that his health had
declined such that he found it diicult to work. “In tender consideration
whereof,” his petition read, “he Humbly prays that your Honorable body
will pass a law, allowing a small sum for Emediate relief, and such moder-
ate pension for the remnant of his days as in your wisdom shall seem
just.” The Assembly alloted James Armistead Lafayete $60 for “present
relief” and a lifetime pension of $40 annually.

Returning to his native France ater the war, Lafayete, a staunch foe of
slavery, urged American President George Washington to remove the
stain of that institution from the new nation. Under the traditional English

56 AMERICAN HISTORY
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ©RMN-GRAND PALAIS/ART RESOURCE, NY; VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, USA/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE BY REMBRANDT PEALE, THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, ROGERS FUND, 1921

practice of “free tenancy,” tenant farmers paid low rents and

landlords imposed fewer restrictions. As an experiment
whose aim would be to emancipate participating slaves,
Lafayete proposed that he and the president each purchase
land for slaves to work as free tenants rather than as bonds-
men. Lafayete hoped the symbolic gesture would catch on
in the United States and the West Indies. Lafayete planned
to dedicate holdings he had bought in French Guiana in 1785
to this purpose, but Washington proceeded much more
slowly and never fully implemented his part of the plan.
The Marquis de Lafayete’s life in France was marked by
turmoil. Initially he held prestigious roles: appointment to
the Assembly of Governors, election to the Estates-General,
a hand in drating the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Souvenir
Martin made and sold
of the Citizen. Ater the storming of the Bastille, Lafayete,
an engraving based on
as commander in chief of the National Guard, tried to steer his painting of James
a middle course through the revolution. In August 1792, rad- Armistead Lafayete.
ical factions ordered his arrest. Lafayete fled to a region
ruled by Austria and comprising the southern Netherlands,
western Belgium, and much of Luxembourg. There, Lafay-
ete was captured, tried, and sentenced to five years in
prison. In 1797, Napoleon Bonaparte secured his release,
and ater the Bourbon Restoration of 1814, Lafayete became
a liberal member of the French Chamber of Deputies.

In 1824, President James Monroe invited Lafayete to the

United States. The marquis, 66, toured all 24 states, greeted by
rapturous crowds and appreciative politicians. At the field in
Yorktown where the British surrender had taken place 43
years before, his open carriage was moving slowly through
cheering masses when its occupant spied a familiar face.
Ordering his driver to halt, the marquis stepped into the
crowd to embrace his old friend, secret agent, and now name-
sake, James Armistead Lafayete. Reported the Richmond
Enquirer, “A black man even, who had rendered him services
by way of information as a spy, for which he was liberated by
the State, was recognized by [the marquis] in the crowd, called
to him by name, and [was] taken into his embrace.”
The Marquis de Lafayete was 76 when he died in 1834,
having outlived James Armistead Lafayete, who died on
August 9, 1830. In February 1865, Virginia ratified the 13th
Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed slavery.
Hard-Time Hero
Lafayete later endured
privations, but helped his
spy achieve freedom.
“By carrying information to Washington and Lafayete
during the final days of the American Revolution, James
Lafayete had won his own freedom and contributed to the
cause of American independence,” John Salmon, head of the
state records unit of the Archives and Records Division of
the Virginia State Library, wrote in the Autumn 1981 Virginia
Cavalcade. “His was a victory that subjected the institution
of slavery itself to the relentless ‘contagion of liberty’ that has
prodded America to honor the fullest implication of its pro-
fessed belief that ‘all men are created equal.’” +

OCTBOER 2018 57
 Room to Roam
The painter had the chance
to see bison on the hoof in
hordes before the onslaught
of industrial hunting.

J ohn James Audubon

had long since been
renowned as an artist
and naturalist when, in
1843, he headed west to
steep himself once
more in the American sublime—in his
words, the “grand and Last Journey I intend
to make as a naturalist”—specifically to
record the continent’s mammals. Out of
that adventure, augmented by son John’s
expeditions to obtain specimens like the
much-sought armadillo to preserve, pose,
and paint, Audubon created his final port-
folio—if not a crowning gesture, then a solid
butress to the cathedral of reputation the
artist had built. The self-actualizing Audu-
bon presented himself as a man of the wil-
derness, and upon his return to Philadel-
phia his appearance did not disappoint. “As
we turned from Chestnut street...we
encountered a finely built, muscular look-
ing gentleman,” a reporter wrote. “We at
once recognized him as Audubon...Time
has set his finger lightly on him since we
saw him last. He was clothed in a white
blanket hunting coat, and undressed oter
skin cap; his beard was grizzled, and, with
his moustache, had been sufered to grow
very long. On his shoulder, Naty Bump-
po-fashion he carried his rifle, in a deer-
skin cover; and his whole appearance was
characteristic of his character for wild
enterprise and untiring energy.”

PHOTOGRAPH FROM AUDUBON’S LAST WILDERNESS JOURNEY, PUBLISHED BY D.

GILES LTD. AND THE JULE COLLINS SMITH MUSEUM OF FINE ART, AUBURN UNIVERSITY;
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL CORTEZ AND JANET GUYNN FOR THE MUSEUM.

58 AMERICAN HISTORY
 Audubon’s
Quadrupeds
In his final take on wild America, the artist and
naturalist celebrated a continent’s four-footers
PHOTO CREDIT

OCTOBER 2018 59
 The artist and collaborator John Bachman, a
churchman-cum-naturalist, had worked together on
the last volume of Audubon’s Ornithological Biogra-
phy. Audubon’s sons had wed two of Bachman’s
daughters, making the mammal project a family
afair, as Ron Tyler notes in his introduction the new
Audubon’s Last Wilderness Journey: The Viviparous
Quadrupeds of North America (D. Giles/Auburn
University, 2018; gilesltd.com).
To explicate this volume’s richly reproduced
plates of four-footed criters that bear their young
live, editor Charles T. Butler enlisted accomplished
historians, natural and otherwise. These contribu-
tors’ essays illuminate not only Audubon’s and
Bachman’s lives, aims, and technique but the soci-
ety in which they lived and the story of the project

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM AUDUBON’S LAST WILDERNESS JOURNEY, PUBLISHED BY D. GILES LTD. AND THE JULE COLLINS SMITH MUSEUM OF FINE ART, AUBURN UNIVERSITY; PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL CORTEZ AND JANET GUYNN FOR THE MUSEUM.
that produced the portfolio.
Dennis Harper thumbnails the intricate means
by which master lithographer John T. Bowen ren-
dered Audubon’s paintings into a form artistically
and economically suitable for mass reproduction as
book plates and individual prints.
The English-born, Philadelphia-based Bowen
and his oeuvre have long been overshadowed by
Criters Considered
that of contemporaries Nathaniel Currier and James Clockwise from below, jaguar, porcupine, lynx,
Merrit Ives. He deserves greater fame. Quadru- northern hare, puma with young, armadillo, raccoon.
peds’s superb images, in tandem with Harper’s inci-
sive remarks on the history of lithography and
Bowen’s use of it here, ought go far to rebalance the
lithographer’s reputati0n. —Michael Dolan

60 AMERICAN HISTORY
OCTOBER 2018 61
An American Bestiary
Clockwise from below right: flying squirrels, skunk, musk oxen,
brown bear, mountain sheep, peccary, beaver, oter.

62 AMERICAN HISTORY
 PHOTOGRAPHS FROM AUDUBON’S LAST WILDERNESS JOURNEY, PUBLISHED BY D. GILES LTD. AND THE JULE COLLINS SMITH MUSEUM OF FINE ART, AUBURN UNIVERSITY; PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL CORTEZ AND JANET GUYNN FOR THE MUSEUM.

OCTOBER 2018 63
HERITAGE TRAVEL &
LIFESTYLE SHOWCASE
Home to more than 400 sites, the Civil
War’s impact on Georgia was greater
than any other event in the state’s
history. Visit www.gacivilwar.org to
learn more.
Greeneville, TN
Founded in 1783, Greeneville has a rich
historical background as the home for
such important igures as Davy Crocket
and President Andrew Johnson.
Plan your visit now!
Richmond,
Kentucky
“Part of the One and Only Bluegrass!”
Visit National Historic Landmark,
National Civil War Trust tour, historic
ferry, and the third largest planetarium
of its kind in the world!
Are you a history and culture buf?
here are many museums and
atractions, Civil War, and Civil Rights
sites just for you in Jackson, Mississippi.
Fayeteville/Cumberland County, North
Carolina is steeped in history and patri-
otic traditions. Take a tour highlighting
our military ties, status as a transporta-
tion hub, and our Civil War story.
Explore Maryland with once-in-a-
lifetime commemorations—all at one
destination. Create your family history
by exploring ours. Go to visitmaryland.
org to plan your trip today.
Walk where Civil War soldiers fought
and died. A short trip from Nashville and
a long journey into America’s history!
Call (800) 716-7560.
ReadySetRutherford.com
Edward S. Curtis: he North American
Indian. Historic exhibition of the full col-
lection. Only at the Muskegon Museum
of Art. May 11–September 10, 2017.
Experience living history for
The Batles of Marieta Georgia,
featuring reenactments, tours and
a recreation of 1864 Marieta.
www.marietacivilwar.com
H I S T O R I C
Roswell, Georgia
Whether you love history, culture, the
peacefulness of the great outdoors, or the
excitement of entertainment, Roswell
ofers a wide selection of atractions and
tours. www.visitroswellga.com
here’s no other place that embodies
the heart and soul of the True South
in all its rich and varied expressions—
Mississippi. Find Your True South.
Join us for our Civil War Anniversary
Commemoration including
atractions and tours, exhibitions,
memorials and a selection of artifacts
from Fort Fisher.
A vacation in Georgia means
great family experiences that can
only be described as prety sweet.
Explore Georgia’s Magnolia Midlands.
Experience the Old West in action with
a trip through Southwest Montana.
For more information on our 15 ghost
towns, visit southwestmt.com or
call 800-879-1159, ext 1501.
Over 650 grand historic homes in three
National Register Historic Districts.
Birthplace of America’s greatest play-
wright, Tennessee Williams. he ultimate
Southern destination—Columbus, MS.
To discover more about Tennessee and
to order your free oicial Tennessee
Vacation Guide, visit:
TNVACATION.COM
or call 1-800-GO2-TENN
Lebanon, KY is home to the Lebanon
National Cemetery, its own
Civil War Park, and it’s part of the
John Hunt Morgan Trail.
VisitLebanonKY.com today.
Experience the Civil War in Jacksonville
at the Museum of Military History.
Relive one of Arkansas’ irst stands at
the Reed’s Bridge Batleield.
jacksonvillesoars.com/museum.php
he Mississippi Hills National Heritage
Area highlights the historic, cultural,
natural, scenic and recreational treasures
of this distinctive region.
www.mississippihills.org
Six major batles took place in Winchester
and Frederick County, and the town
changed hands approximately 72 times—
more than any other town in the country!
www.visitwinchesterva.com
Known for sublime natural beauty,
captivating history and heritage and
warm hospitality, West Virginia really
is the great escape. Start planning your
getaway today.
History lives in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Visit Brice’s Crossroads National
Batleield, Natchez Trace Parkway,
Tupelo National Batleield, Mississippi
Hills Exhibit Center and more.
Explore the past in Baltimore during
two commemorative events: the War of
1812 Bicentennial and Civil War 150.
Plan your trip at Baltimore.org.
Once Georgia’s last frontier outpost,
now its third largest city, Columbus is
a true destination of choice. History,
theater, arts and sports—Columbus
has it all.
Tishomingo County, MS
With a variety of historic atractions
and outdoor adventures,
Tishomingo County is a perfect
destination for lovers of history
and nature alike.
 History surrounds Cartersville, GA,
including Allatoona Pass, where a ierce
batle took place, and Cooper’s Furnace,
the only remnant of the bustling
industrial town of Etowah.
ALABAMA HISTORICAL COMMISSION
Confederate Memorial Park is the site of
Alabama’s only Home for Confederate
veterans (1902-1939). he museum inter-
prets Alabama’s Confederate period and
the Alabama Confederate Soldiers’ Home.
Cleveland, TN
Near Chatanooga, ind glorious
mountain scenery and heart-pounding
white-water rafting. Walk in the footsteps
of the Cherokee and discover a charming
historic downtown.
If you’re looking for an easy stroll
through a century of ine architecture or
a trek down dusty roads along the Blues
Trail, you’ve come to the right place.
www. visitgreenwood.com
Vicksburg, Mississippi is a great place
to bring your family to learn American
history, enjoy educational museums and
check out the mighty Mississippi River.
Prestonsburg, KY - Civil War &
history atractions, and reenactment
dates at PrestonsburgKY.org. Home to
Jenny Wiley State Park, country music
entertainment & Dewey Lake.
Tennessee’s Farragut Folklife Museum
is a treasure chest of artifacts telling the
history of the Farragut and Concord
communities, including the Admiral
David Glasgow Farragut collection.
Williamson County, Tennessee, is rich in
Civil War history. Here, you can visit the
Lotz House, Carnton Plantation, Carter
House, Fort Granger and Winstead Hill
Park, among other historic locations.
Charismatic Union General Hugh
Judson Kilpatrick had legions of
admirers during the war. He just wasn’t
much of a general, as his men often
learned with their lives.
Southern hospitality at its inest, the
Classic South, Georgia, ofers visitors a
combination of history and charm mixed
with excursion options for everyone
from outdoorsmen to museum-goers.
Follow the Civil War Trail in Meridian,
Mississippi, where you’ll experience
history irst-hand, including Merrehope
Mansion, Marion Confederate Cemetery
and more. www.visitmeridian.com.
Search over 10,000 images and primary
documents relating to the Civil War Batle
of Hampton Roads, now available in he
Mariners’ Museum Library Online Catalog!
www.marinersmuseum.org/catalogs
Seven museums, an 1890 railroad, a
British fort and an ancient trade path can
be found on the Furs to Factories Trail
in the Tennessee Overhill, located in the
corner of Southeast Tennessee.
Explore the Natchez Trace. Discover
America. Journey along this 444-mile
National Scenic Byway stretching
from the Mississippi River in Natchez
through Alabama and then Tennessee.
Sandy Springs, Georgia, is the perfect
hub for exploring Metro Atlanta’s Civil
War sites. Conveniently located near
major highways, you’ll see everything
from Sandy Springs!
Alabama’s
Gulf Coast
Relive the rich history of the Alabama
Gulf Coast at Fort Morgan, Fort Gaines,
the USS Alabama Batleship, and the
area’s many museums.
'PSU.PSHBOPSH
r

Fitzgerald, Georgia...100 years of bring-
ing people together. Learn more about
our story and the commemoration of the
150th anniversary of the Civil War’s
conclusion at www.itzgeraldga.org.
Historic Bardstown, Kentucky
History, bourbon, shopping, sightseeing
and relaxing—whatever you enjoy,
you’re sure to ind it in beautiful
Bardstown, KY. Plan your visit today.
www.visitbardstown.com
hrough personal stories, interactive
exhibits and a 360° movie, the Civil War
Museum focuses on the war from the
perspective of the Upper Middle West.
www.thecivilwarmuseum.org
Come to Helena, Arkansas and see
the Civil War like you’ve never seen
it before. Plan your trip today!
www.CivilWarHelena.com
www.VisitHelenaAR.com
Treat yourself to Southern Kentucky
hospitality in London and Laurel
County! Atractions include the Levi
Jackson Wilderness Road State Park and
Camp Wildcat Civil War Batleield.
Just 15 miles south of downtown
Atlanta lies the heart of the true
South: Clayton County, Georgia,
where heritage comes alive!
CIVIL WAR MUSEUM
of the Western Theater
Hundreds of authentic artifacts.
Voted fourth inest in U.S. by North &
South Magazine. Located in historic
Bardstown, Kentucky.
www.civil-war-museum.org
Confederate Memorial Park in Marbury,
Alabama, commemorates the Civil
War with an array of historic sites and
artifacts. Experience the lives of Civil
War soldiers as never before.
he National Civil War Naval Museum
in Columbus, GA, tells the story of the
sailors, soldiers, and civilians, both free
and enslaved as afected by the navies
of the American Civil War.
Join us as we commemorate the 150th
anniversary of Knoxville’s Civil War
forts. Plan your trip today!
www.knoxcivilwar.org
Hip and historic Frederick County
boasts unique shopping and dining
experiences, batleields, museums,
covered bridges, and abundant outdoor
recreation. Request a free travel packet!
St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Visit Point
Lookout, site of the war’s largest prison
camp, plus Confederate and USCT
monuments. A short drive from the
nation’s capital.
Come to Cleveland, Mississippi—the
birthplace of the blues. Here, you’ll ind
such legendary destinations as Dockery
Farms and Po’ Monkey’s Juke Joint.
www.visitclevelandms.com
Dstination
Jessamine, KY
STEP BACK IN TIME at Camp Nelson
Civil War Heritage Park, a Union Army
supply depot and African American
refugee camp. Museum, Civil War
Library, Interpretive Trails and more.
 queenS AND kingS
of the hill As the saying goes, do not judge Smoketown
by its cover, which suggests its theme is black
entertainers. Whitaker’s work ranges much
more broadly and deeply, illuminating how
those who made Pitsburgh, Pennsylvania,
their destination in the Great Migration and
before, upon entering the realm of Andrew
Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Carnegie
and George Westinghouse, built African-Amer-
ican communities on foundations those white
industrialists laid where the Monongahela,
Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers connect.
In slavery days Pitsburgh was a stop on the
Smoketown: covert route north toward freedom. Industrial-
The Untold Story ization made the city America’s Ruhr, ofering
of the Other Great employment to all and encouraging a way of life
Black Renaissance in the Hill District. Between the 1920s and the
By Mark Whitaker 1950s, in that neighborhood, also known as Lit-
Simon & Schuster, tle Harlem and Litle Haiti, residents—my par-
2018; $30 ents included—contributed to a scene of rich
diversity and incredible accomplishments. In
my middle- and upper-class slice of the Hill,
“Sugartop,” our neighbors included crooner
66 AMERICAN HISTORY
Billy Eckstine’s sister; Pitsburgh Courier sports-
writer, managing editor, and later Steeler scout
Bill Nunn Jr.; and Courier social columnist Toki
Schalk. Photojournalist Charles “One Shot Tee-
nie” Harris documented the city’s civil rights
movement experience, everyday life, and social
events; my mother, Dolores, regularly showed
up in Teenie’s spreads. The Hill-based Courier—
America’s largest politically significant black-
owned newspaper, with 14 regional editions
and a million-plus circulation—advocated
PHOTO BY MARK RUCKER/TRANSCENDENTAL GRAPHICS, GETTY IMAGES
during World War II for integration of the mili-
tary, fair housing, and jobs, and led an exodus
of black voters from the Republican to the
Democratic Party. Black businessmen under-
wrote the Negro League’s Homestead Grays
and Pitsburgh Crawfords, professional baseball
teams whose ranks included Satchel Paige and
Josh Gibson and that teed up Jackie Robinson’s
grand leap to the Brooklyn Dodgers. I found
Smoketown a memorable history lesson and an
emotional look back. As Whitaker recounts,
Pitsburgh public high schools Westinghouse
 Brown Bombers
The 1943 Homestead Grays roster
included Cool Papa Bell, second from
let, Buck Leonard, second from right,
and Ray Brown, front, far right.
and Schenley had prestigious music programs
that produced scores of stars, such as Earl
“Fatha” Hines, Mary Lou Williams, Ahmad
Jamal, Erroll Garner, Billy Strayhorn, Lena
Horne, and Billy Eckstine. Black Opera Com-
pany president Mary Cardwell Dawson was
Pitsburgh-born and -bred, as were playwright
August Wilson and artist Romare Bearden. I
commend this book not only to my fellow black
Boomers but anyone interested in the real life
of these united states.
—Maral Taylor is a retired educator in
Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.
he kept us
out of war,
for a while
Thomas Woodrow Wilson so wanted to be a
politician that as a teen he wrote a constitu-
tion for an imaginary yacht club. He groomed
himself for oratory and soaked up political
lore. For fun, he and his minister father dis-
sected and revised orations. As a doctoral stu-
dent, he published his first book, analyzing
how the Constitution’s checks and balances
had worked out, then persuaded his professors
to accept it in lieu of a dissertation. He saw
himself as a pure idealist. The slightest dis-
agreement enraged him. “Father doesn’t read
any criticism,” his daughter said. “They make
him nervous.” His inability to resolve conflict
and failure to collaborate earn him a place in
the pantheon of presidents with good inten-
tions but disastrous results.
From Theodore Roosevelt and William H.
Tat, Wilson absorbed an expansive take on
the presidency. “[The] oice is anything he has
the sagacity and force to make it” became his
axiom. Having presided over Princeton Uni-
versity and governed New Jersey, he nodded
when higher opportunity beckoned. Within 18
BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES
months of Wilson’s winning the presidency in
1912 his New Freedom program had changed
the tax system, let credit flow, and created the
Federal Reserve system. He told friends it
would be “an irony of fate” if world afairs
dominated his presidency when his forte was Theodore
domestic politics. Roosevelt
Irony intervened. Mexican revolutionary and William
Pancho Villa raided the Southwest. The killing of
the archduke of Austria-Hungary set Europe HOWARD
ablaze, piting Germany and the Central Powers Taft left
against England, France, Italy, and Russia. Wil- Wilson with
son evaded a host of German provocations,
including the Lusitania sinking. Desperate to a broad
keep the United States neutral, he dispatched to take on the
the Continent self-serving confidant Colonel
Edward M. House, who misrepresented Wilson’s
Presidency.
intentions to please whomever he talked to.
Campaigning in 1916, Wilson let surrogates
claim, “He kept us out of war.” He barely had
been reelected when the Zimmermann tele-
gram, encouraging Mexico to invade the
United States, was intercepted. The czar fell.
Convinced he would be boxed out of shaping
the postwar world unless America fought, Wil-
son called for a congressional war resolution.
Peace achieved, he exhausted himself in
Paris hammering out his League of Nations
treaty. Congress, newly Republican, balked at
ratification. Against medical advice, Wilson hit
the road plumping for the treaty. When he
weakened out west, wife Edith insisted they
head home. Barely back in the White House,
Wilson had a stroke that paralyzed his let side
and let him with a fixed grimace. With a vast
cover-up, Edith took over and ran out his term.
In retirement, he struggled to come back. He
was revising nomination acceptance and inau-
gural speeches when the end came. O’Toole’s
scholarship is superb and her narrative det
and unbiased, illuminated by the later-day The Moralist;
emergence of long-hidden documents. Woodrow Wilson
—Richard Culyer is a writer in Hartsville, and the World
South Carolina. He Made
By Patricia O’Toole
Simon & Schuster,
2018; $35
Going Big
Wilson in St. Louis,
Missouri, promoting
the League of
Nations.
OCTOBER 2018 67

food
fight
History bufs remember the landmark 1906
Pure Food and Drug Act. Theodore Roosevelt
usually gets credit for its passage, but the law
The Poison Squad: was not a Roosevelt priority. The real hero was
One Chemist’s the all but anonymous Harvey Washington
Single-Minded Wiley, chief chemist at the U.S. Department of
Crusade for Food Agriculture. Wiley fought on behalf of food
Safety at the Turn safety for more than 20 years, an oten
of the Twentieth teeth-gnashing crusade ably recounted by
Century prize-winning science journalist Blum.
By Deborah Blum Readers nostalgic for yesteryear’s groceries
Penguin, 2018; $28 are in for a jolt. Humans have been diluting
milk and wine since prehistory, but emergence
of food as a profitable industry ater 1800 mul-
tiplied the temptation to add inedible stuf to
food to preserve it or make it cheaper. Formal-
dehyde kept milk from souring for a week or
more. Decayed meat, “even when fuzzed over
with mold, could be cleaned…with borax and
glycerin and dumped into hoppers and made
over again for home consumption,” Blum
writes. The vivid hues of lead, copper, and
mercury compounds made them irresistible as
food coloring. Corn syrup and sugar labeled as
honey beat the real thing on price.
out of
his class
One might expect a book about class to start
with the author’s definition of that term as he
understands it. Fraser’s failure to do so makes
Class Maters: Class Maters merely interesting rather than
The Strange Career significant. He aims to correct what he deems
of an American a widely held misconception about American
Delusion history and American values. “Class has
By Steve Fraser always matered in America,” he writes. “That
Yale, 2018; $25 our society so oten compulsively denies that
68 AMERICAN HISTORY
Wiley was 39 when he joined Agriculture in
1883. Created to enhance agricultural produc-
tion, the department ignored food adultera-
tion, but Wiley—a chemist, ater all—was
already looking into the phenomenon. Unlike
earlier crusaders, he was a reputable scientist
who wrote monographs like 1887’s Foods and
Food Adulterants.
Food reform gained prominence, and Blum
expertly recounts that emergence, spurred
largely by female sufragists, women’s maga-
zines, and national women’s clubs. No shrink-
ing violet, Wiley delivered speeches, wrote
popular-press articles, and became a depend-
able source for muckraking journalists. His
notoriety soared ater 1902 through his experi-
ments adding preservatives to the diets of vol-
unteers known as “the poison squad.” Many
grew ill. For decades Congress had deflected
stabs at food reform, so Theodore Roosevelt’s
support helped, but, according to Blum, public
opinion and Wiley’s advocacy matered more.
Enforcement proved frustrating, and Wiley’s
oten diicult relations with his superiors
deteriorated. He resigned his government job
in 1912 and for the rest of his life led the
Good Housekeeping Institute, a private-sector
watchdog. Food oversight has tightened,
thanks invariably to catastrophe; Google “pea-
nut buter salmonella outbreak.” Blum’s
unblinking portrait of a Congress in thrall to
Big Food makes her lively portrayal of the
dogged Wiley especially satisfying.
—Mike Oppenheim writes in Lexington,
Kentucky.
is not only politically and economically prob-
lematical but also leaves it damaged in the
heart, afflicted in the brain.” To make his point
Fraser hopscotches through 400 years, cher-
ry-picking episodes—setlement of Plymouth
and Jamestown, Nixon’s debate with Khrush-
chev in a model kitchen display in Moscow,
Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream”
speech—then recounts moments in his life to
“prove” that in every era some Americans have
had more wealth than others. Who ever denied
that? The American mantra that “all men are
created equal” is not a guarantee of classless-
ness but an airmation that we have no grid
of castes in which to entrap ourselves, that
talent, work, and luck can carry us up—or
down—the social scale. As Richard Reeves put
 All About

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 Washington, it, some folks “may be beter of, but they are
not beter.”
DC, is where Certainly, those born without economic
it is thanks and social advantages need more talent, work,
to a deal and luck to climb. Historically charting the
waxing and waning of opportunities to take
made by advantage of American classlessness would
Madison and make a significant work. Reveling in his mish-
Hamilton to mash of not-very-connected tales about
riches and poverty, Fraser doesn’t even try for
propitiate significance.
the south. But he does tell a good story, and for readers
seeking nothing more, Class Maters ofers a
degree of delight. Among Fraser’s best rifs:
how early British setlers’ mercantile culture
changed Native American values; how, ater
swells refused to ante up, ordinary Americans’
pocket change paid to install the Statute of
Liberty; and how a “slide down the slope of
class preferment” by Fraser’s suburban-raised,
Swarthmore-educated friend brought him joy
as a cowhand. —Daniel B. Moskowitz
a winning
pair at
work
In the Revolutionary era, these Founding
Fathers operated in concert, but once the Con-
The Price of Great- stitution was ratified, each codified his own
ness; Alexander notion of individual rights, nationalism, and
Hamilton, James majority rule, or republicanism. Madison
Madison, and the deemed “balance” a virtue. If a tax on a com-
Creation of Ameri- modity burdened a region, one elsewhere
can Oligarchy should counteract it—hence Madison’s
By Jay Cost anti-monopolism, whether oicial church,
Basic, 2018; $27 East India Company market dominance, or
Hamilton’s notion of a United States Bank.
Both endorsed strong central government
but difered on details. Hamilton admired the
British model—if not the hereditary titles—
urging that an electoral college appoint the
president and senators to lifetime tenure; the
people would elect representatives to three-
year terms. Hamilton saw commerce, the
“most productive source of national wealth,”
rewarding mechanics, merchants, even
70 AMERICAN HISTORY
Jeferson’s farmers. Regulating commerce, he
theorized, would anneal the less numerous
wealthy to the new nation, mediating between
them and what we call the middle class. Madi-
son saw that as out of balance.
Hamilton argued that commerce would ben-
efit farmers by raising demand for produce,
enraging arch-rival and Madison man Jefer-
son. However, doing as Hamilton said had
huge impact. His proposals more suit today’s
society. Madison’s advocacy of majority rule
and unfetered public opinion also prevails.
States’ debts were an issue early in George
Washington’s presidency. Madison first
backed federal assumption of notes. He
rethought that when some states paid most or
all their Revolutionary War tabs. Hamilton
said assumption would strengthen American
finance. Congress withheld approval until
Hamilton and Madison located the federal
capital on the Potomac in exchange for south-
ern support of assumption.
In The Federalist Papers, Madison backed
the doctrine of implied powers—that the gov-
ernment had authority to execute laws neces-
sary to carry out constitutionally specified
powers. By Washington’s administration, he
was declaring that since Congress had voted
against a national bank it would be unconsti-
tutional to approve one. Madison supported
the extra-constitutional Louisiana Purchase.
As president he flipped again, this time sup-
porting the Second National Bank.
In foreign afairs, Hamilton was an Anglo-
phile, Madison a Francophile. Early on, Madi-
son envisioned ours as a nation of farmers
feeding France. Hamilton saw that England,
which mainly sold America luxuries, needed
American commodities more than America
needed English frou-frou. Hamilton’s view
waned during Jeferson’s presidency but
waxed under President Madison, and still
does. Many Hamilton ideas fed into the syn-
thesis of “Hamiltonian vigor and Madisonian
balance” that produced the Era of Good Feel-
ings associated with Madison’s successor,
James Monroe.
Cost thoroughly, with balance, and always
in context portrays these titans in comity and
conflict. Detail-oriented readers will find Price
a bargain. Those seeking broader scope will
prefer biographies of the two.
—Richard Culyer is a writer in Hartsville,
South Carolina.
HISTORYNET.COM

HITLER’S
MONSTER Explore the mystery of
TANKS
“If the tanks

Custer’s Last Stand

succeed, then
victory follows.”

MAUS —German tank

warfare strategist

RATTE ER
Heinz Guderian, 1937

MONST
Hitler had big hopes
for a proposed big tank
with an inglorious
name: the Ratte

Join historian NEIL MANGUM for a comprehensive examination of two

momentous battles in the Great Sioux War of 1876: THE BATTLE OF
THREE MISBEGOTTEN BEHEMOTHS THE ROSEBUD–pitting Crazy Horse against Crook–and the climactic
PROVE BIGGER ISN’T ALWAYS BETTER
WHO WAS TO BLAME FOR
PRIVATE SLOVIK’S EXECUTION? BATTLE OF THE LITTLE BIGHORN, culminating in “CUSTER’S LAST STAND.”
HOLLYWOOD SWASHBUCKLER’S
SECRET WAR AUGUST 2018

WW2P-180800-COVER-DIGITAL.indd 1 5/4/18 3:20 PM

Two Battlefield Tours on

October 16-20, 2018
Neil Mangum is one of the nation’s preeminent authorities
on the Indian Wars, and a much sought-after guide.
He served as park historian at Little Bighorn Nat’l Mon.,
and is the author of The Battle of the Rosebud.

WOODBURY HISTORICAL TOURS

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email: LastStandHill@icloud.com

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CONSORTING HOW MUCH TIME

WITH EVIL
WHY SOMEZIVIS CT
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IMS
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN
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+ AN AMERICAN SPYMASTER’S
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FEBRUARY 2018
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11/3/17 4:45 PM

ADDRESS?
14 minutes, 2-3 minutes,
16-17 minutes or 7 minutes?
‘I KNOW ...1940s STYLE
page 36

TOO For more, visit

WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/
MUCH’
WHY CAPTAIN
MAGAZINES/QUIZ

JOHN CROMWELL
CHOSE TO GO HistoryNet.com
DOWN WITH ANSWER: 2-3 MINUTES. DELIVERED FOUR AND A HALF MONTHS
THE SHIP AFTER THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG, LINCOLN’S ICONIC ADDRESS
THIRD REICH IN 10 OBJECTS FRAMED THE CIVIL WAR AS NOT A STRUGGLE FOR THE UNION, BUT
HOW A SHORTAGE OF ALLIED A STRUGGLE TO PRESERVE THE PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN EQUALITY,
SHIPS THREATENED D-DAY AS OUTLINED IN THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
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 The Hotel
del Coronado…
…is a Victorian fantasy nestled in
the blond sands of a semi-arid
peninsula whose narrow neck
meets the mainland just south of
San Diego, California. In 1885,
entrepreneurs Elisha Babcock Jr.
and Hampton Story bought Coro-
nado’s 4,200 untamed acres. Sub-
dividing the parcel, the pair
birthed the West Coast’s first re-
sort community, neting $1 mil-
lion that financed Coronado’s
anchor, a sprawling whitewashed
wooden hotel complex. “The Del”
was the world’s largest resort
when its 400 rooms opened in
February 1888 to visitors well-
heeled enough to stand the steep
nightly rate of $2.50—meals in-
cluded. With a stunning beach-
scape and such amenities as
steam-driven elevators and the

DANITA DELIMONT CREATIVE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; COURTESY HOTEL DEL CORONADO

world’s first electrically lit out-
door Christmas tree, The Del
crawled with celebrities. In 1904,
Wizard of Oz author L. Frank
Baum designed the cavernous
ballroom’s exquisite chandeliers,
beneath which in 1927 Charles
Lindbergh and 1,000 guests cele-
brated his solo trans-Atlantic
flight. Immortalized in the 1959
film Some Like It Hot, the hotel,
now a Hilton, continues to lure
travelers looking for a luxe and
sandy escape at the country’s
second biggest wooden structure.
—Jessica Wambach Brown

The Glamorous Life

“The Del,” a full-on bastion
of western luxury, has a
grand dining room, at
right in the 1950s..

72 AMERICAN HISTORY
History’s All Around You in Clarksville, Tenn.
C
larksville, Tennessee is first and foremost
a river city. The Cumberland and Red
Rivers merge in the heart of the town, very
near where the city was founded in 1784, 12 years
before Tennessee became the nation’s 16th state.
Today, a fully-developed Cumberland RiverWalk
adorns this significant juncture, and an enclosed
RiverCenter tells Clarksville’s history from that very
vantage point.
Clarksville’s rich military history spans from
the Civil War era through modern conflicts. The
community’s 24-site Civil War Journey through-
out Montgomery County may enlighten your
understanding of this turbulent era. A highlight
of the trek is the remarkably well-preserved Fort
Defiance Park & Interpretive Center, just across
the river from downtown. Located on a 200-foot
bluff over the Cumberland, the defensive fort
was constructed in 1861 by Confederate troops to
control the river approach to Clarksville.
Anchoring Clarksville’s historic and quaint
downtown are two captivating structures. The
Customs House Museum & Cultural Center was
constructed in 1898 as a post office and customs
house to accommodate the region’s booming
tobacco trade. Its eclectic style incorporates Stick,
Queen Anne, Italianate, Romanesque, Flemish
and Gothic architecture. In 1984 the local museum
began operating in the building, and now boasts
more than 35,000 square feet of exhibit space,
showcasing local and regional lore, art, science
and hands-on activities. Kids of all ages will enjoy
one of the largest model train displays in the
region, along with the ever-popular Bubble Cave.
You’ll also learn about famous Clarksvillians like
Olympic Gold Medalist Wilma Rudolph, the
first woman from the United States to receive
three gold medals in a single Olympic Games.
Two blocks from the Customs House on
Franklin Street, the crux for downtown retail and
restaurants, visitors can enjoy live professional
productions in the 1947 art deco Roxy Regional
Theatre. Since 1983, the Roxy has produced over
500 mainstage productions plus alternative
theatre.
A refreshing 30-minute drive into rural Mont-
gomery County transports visitors to a mid-19th
Century settlement at Historic Collinsville. This
pioneer museum on 40 rolling acres features 18
authentically restored log houses and outbuild-
ings dating from 1830–1870. Each structure has
been restored to its original condition and is
authentically furnished. Historic Collinsville is open
seasonally from mid-May through mid-October.
Dunbar Cave, at over eight miles in length, is
one of the largest caves in Montgomery County.
Part of a 110-acre state park, the cave’s archaeo-
logical markings and excavations revealed that
the cave has been used by man for thousands of
years. The entrance to Dunbar Cave is 58 degrees
year-round which was a popular attraction
during the summer months and by the 1930s, the
cave became a hotspot for local bands and other
entertainment. In 1948, country music legend
Roy Acuff bought the property and staged his
Saturday Night Radio Dance Broadcast from the
site. The cave’s popularity declined in the 1950s
when indoor air-conditioning became common in
households.
A short drive northwest of Nashville along
I-24, Clarksville’s central location makes an ideal
weekend getaway for travelers looking for a mix
of history, education, outdoor adventure, great
food, wine and breweries, as well as outstanding
cultural opportunities. Customize your trip at
visitclarksvilletn.com with our online itinerary
builder, or download the new VisitClarksvilleTN
app.