Summaries, quotes and quips by Gerald D.
Ames, Editor of the Grist for The Millbrook Society, Hatboro, PA.
Should one wish to search this file, use
of your browser word search provides an easy and quick method.
401. Cabell, Brian. “Civil War sub brought to surface”. CNN.com, &
AP. Aug. 2000. (Downloaded web page). In this story, there are links to:
·
Searching for answers
·
A ship powered by hand
·
Crew’s final mission
·
Elaborate welcome planned
When the Hunley is raised [Tue. Aug ?,], it will have been 136
years since it last broke the water’s surface.
Using an elaborate truss, the 39.5-foot-long encrusted submarine
will be raised and placed into a specially constructed cradle, spot-welded to
the deck of a barge.
The Hunley sank on February 17, 1864, after ramming an explosive
torpedo into the hull of the Union blockade vessel Housatonic. It was the first
submarine in history to sink an enemy warship.
The Hunley was fashioned from an iron steam boiler and designed
for a crew of nine -- eight to work a long, hand-powered crank-driven screw,
and one to pilot the craft. It had two ballast tanks at either end that could
be flooded using valves, or emptied by hand pumps. Iron weights were affixed to
the underside of the hull for added ballast. These could be release by
unscrewing bolts from inside the vessel.
The Hunley carried a spar torpedo that was filled with
explosives and placed on the end of a long pole attached to its bow. But after
ramming its torpedo into the Housatonic, a 1,800-ton sloop-of-war with 23 guns,
the Hunley sank. Historians hope to discover why. It is believed the crew and
their belongings will be found inside.
Prior to the Hunley’s final mission, two previous crews aboard
the vessel had lost their lives. Their graves can still be found at a
Charleston cemetery.
402. Lelyveld, Nita. “Neighbors rally ‘round old tower”. A simple round
tower, towers 142’ over everything in the neighborhood, though that Queen
Village neighborhood has changed in the nearly two centuries since it was
built.
When Sparks Shot Tower was built between Front Street and Second
Street, on Carpenter, the surrounding working class neighborhood was known as Southwark.
The people were mostly immigrants. Many of their descendants still live in the
area and showed up at this historic marker dedication to tell their many
stories. Mayor Rendell, councilman Frank DeCicco and Janet Klein of the state
Historic and Museum Commission, among other dignitaries performed the
ceremonies.
This tower, with its small umbrella-like cap at the top provided
the ammunition shot for two wars, as the molten lead was poured through a
screen at the top. The molten lead droplets would cool into round shot before
striking the water pool at the bottom. The pool would complete the cooling and
cushion the fall so that the shot would remain perfectly round.
During peaceful periods, the tower and its attached building
were a center of neighborhood functions. Ten-cent dances, basketball, and
movies were shown when you gathered at the “shot.”
Built by Thomas Sparks and John Bishop to make bird shot for
hunters, because of embargoes against importation of ammunition during
President Thomas Jefferson, it became a necessity when the war of 1812 opened.
Bishop, a Quaker holding the peaceful tenets of his faith, sold his share to
Sparks for $15,000. It was used again during the Civil War. The Sparks Shot
Tower was undoubted one of the first to be built on American soil, though on in
Virginia claims to be a year older. [That would be the one near Harpers Ferry,
I believe.]
The Shot Tower center hosts Little League games, basketball
leagues, a summer day camp and other community activities. It is hoped to make
a museum in the base of the tower and to keep the center open more than it is
now.
403. Salisbury, Stephan & Inga Saffron. “Echoes of slavery
at Liberty Bell site”. Philadelphia Inquirer. 04/24/02. “Historians say George
Washington kept slaves there. They’ve asked to have the site studied, but the
Park Service says no.” A new $9 million pavilion may yet cover archaeologically
sensitive ground. The National Park Service's plans for the pavilion are to
display the Liberty Bell and its interpretation. No one knew exactly where the
Presidents house was when construction began. Archaeologist working ahead of
the construction uncovered the evidence and wishes to have construction pause
till the site is fully excavated. The Park Service has followed a pattern of
“preservation in-situ” whenever unintended artifacts have turned up in the
course of their work on other goals. Such a practice may preserve the site, but
it cannot then be excavated and interpreted till some time in the future when
the construction above it can be removed [indefinitely]. That method does not
sit well with the Mayor Street and most archaeologists.
The Presidents, Washington and John Adams lived in the house.
Pres. George Washington was a slaveholder and brought about nine here with him,
providing quarters for them behind the mansion. John Adams was adamantly
against slavery and had never owned slaves [slaves he inherited, he freed].
404. Ross, Ruth Robinson. “Union Library Company of Hatborough:
The First Two Hundred Years". 1955. Hatboro, Pa., Union Library Co. [A
complete scanned and interpreted copy is on a CD disk in the Millbrook Society
files.]
“Founded
in the summer of 1755 in the village of Hatboro, Pennsylvania, sixteen miles
distant from Philadelphia a in the Manor of Mooreland near the Bucks County
line, represented a quiet yet far-reaching victory of the human spirit. The
adversary was not economic or political, individual or group, but something
subtler and more dangerous, or, in the candid phrasing of the founders, ‘black and
dark ignorance.’
It
is a mark of their greatness that four men, friends of one another and of
learning, saw the danger and moved to meet it by ‘the Erecting a Publick
Library of Select Books’ as ‘the most likely way (at least) to promote
Knowledge and Moral Virtue.’ There was a kind of greatness in the community
too, for in this small farming settlement, in haying and harvest time when all
were busiest at their own concerns, a considerable group of men appeared at the
public meeting called at the Crooked Billet Tavern to hear the proposal for the
library project. Thirty-eight fixed their signatures to the Instrument of
Partnership. This precious document, enacted into law by the Pennsylvania
Assembly in 1787, is the Charter by which Union Library is still
governed
as it begins its third hundred years."
“It is no accident that these men wrote of knowledge and
ignorance in terms which recall the great words of the prophet Isaiah, ‘the
people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.’ There was a holy zeal
in their concern that the things of the mind and spirit should not altogether
disappear from their lives. Their daily round of isolation and hard work
afforded little contact with great ideas of their own time. Even traditional
English culture had to be maintained by an act of will."
405. Smith, Charles Harper. “Colonial Land Tenure in Hatboro and
Vicinity”.
[Reprinted by Permission from the April 1943] BULLETIN of the HISTORICAL
SOCIETY of MONTGOMERY COUNTY PENNSYLVANIA and the author. 04/24/02.
"Hatboro and Vicinity" here refer to the Borough
itself and adjacent portions of Upper Moreland township, bounded on the
northeast by Bucks county, on the northwest by Horsham township, on the
southwest by the line of Mill Road, and on the southeast by a broken line most
readily followed by reference to the map accompanying this paper.
This block of land, containing about 2,500 acres, once formed
the north corner of a vast tract of some 25 square miles, known during the
XVIII th Century as the Manor of Moreland, and named for its first private
landowner, Dr. Nicholas More, who patented the greater part of it on August 7,
1684 (Per 2, 13-14).2
Nicholas More was a London physician of independent means, who
brought his family to America in the fall of 1682. An ambitious and forceful
man, he had a brief but meteoric career in the Provincial Assembly and Court,
and took an active part in the development of vacant lands. As President of the
Free Society of Traders, he obtained a grant of 20,000 acres from the Proprietor;
his ambition to become a great landowner in his own right was satisfied by
purchase of the Manor of Moreland, which he hoped to develop after the British
feudal pattern, where the Lord of the Manor owned all the land and
improvements, and regulated the daily life of his tenants through a manorial
court, over which he presided, Development began in the Somerton-Bustleton
vicinity almost immediately, but was halted by his death two or three years
later.3
In tracing the land tenure of Hatboro and vicinity, names such
as Peter Chamberlin, Nicholas Gilbert, James Erwin, John Jones, Jacob Bellew,
James Craven, Thos. Lloyd Mary Keach, Jeremiah Walton, Isaac Walton, Lawrence
Thompson (earliest holders of Hatboro land, c.1710-40), will crop up. Thomas
Duffield, Isaac Tustin, David Marple, John Crosley, Margaret Loofbourrow, Thos.
Lacey, John Harrison, Jacob Walton, and Thos. Walton follow in the 1740s. (the
full booklet was scanned and available in the Millbrook files).
406. ECENBARGER, WILLIAM. “Walkin' the Line.” M. Evans and
Co., Inc. NY. 2000. The book jacket states:
In 1780, the Pennsylvania Assembly passed a law calling for the
gradual end of slavery, and the Mason Dixon line became the boundary not just
between Pennsylvania and Maryland, but also between freedom and slavery. From
that moment, it also became a lightening rod for racial conflict that continues
to this day. This unique history/travelogue examines the influence of this
great divider, which remains the most powerful symbol separating Yankee from
Rebel, oatmeal from grits, and North from South. Bill Ecenbarger has walked as
much as humanly possible of the Mason-Dixon line-from its beginnings on Fenwick
Island, Delaware, to its end at Brown's Hill, Pennsylvania. All the while he's
made side trips, diverting right and left to interview the people who live
along its border. Through his travels and conversations he has recorded the
testimony of the Mason-Dixon, from past to present, with stunning accuracy. The
resplendent tales the Mason-Dixon tells never fail to shed light on the
American experience. Ecenbarger's unique perspective is crucial to an
understanding of this country: that of the invisible barrier between North and
South -two widely different regions inescapably bound by blood.
Ecenbarger has structured the book as a geographic progression
from the eastern most point on the Line to the westernmost. He quotes
generously from Charles Mason's journals as he describes the original journey
that the two surveyors completed in 1768-ending eighty-seven years of dispute
between the Calverts and the Penns, who, in one of history's ironies, would
lose their land to the Revolution in eight years. As he walks the Line, the
author also traverses history, weaving the history of the Mason Dixon Line into
the present, and describing the full relevance of its dimensions.
-FROM THE INTRODUCTION: "I had originally intended to tell
the story of how the Mason Dixon Line came to be, and to walk and talk along
the Line to discover what had happened in the past and what it was like now.
But the narrower theme became inescapable-for no matter how many ways I could
shuffle the deck, the race card kept coming to the top. And so I resolved to
view the Line through the lens of race and learn more about this awful thing that
runs so deeply in American life."
The line was begun to settle a dispute between the heirs of
William Penn and Cecilius Calvert, the second Earl of Baltimore, in 1750. An
original line from the western-most point of Fenwick Island, west to the
Chesapeake Bay to establish a mid point for the north line. Further squabbling
prevented continuance for a decade. Then Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two
highly regarded astronomer-mathematicians recommended by the Royal Observatory,
were engaged to complete the division of Maryland (named by Lord Calvert for
the Queen of King Charles, Mary) from Pennsylvania. The line was to touch the
tangent of a 12 mile circle from Newcastle to a point 15 miles south of
Philadelphia, then go due west to an unclear point (probably to the Mississippi
River).
Important points were the midpoint on the south and east to
include Penn’s 5 southern counties (now Delaware), The tangent point, the 15
mile point south of Philadelphia for the “East point,” and the constantly
correcting west line to account for the curvature of the earth at a northerly
latitude line. This latter line was estimated at about 12 degrees north of west
in the sight distance. A crew of cutters for the sight line and for moving camp
and equipment accompanied the surveying pair. To the farmers, they became known
as the star gazers and main point markers as “Star-gazer stones.” These were
the first truly surveyed latitude points on the land of America.
407. Hicks, Brian & Schuyler Kropf. “Raising the Hunley: The Remardable
History and Recovery of the Lost Confederate Submarine”. Ballantine
Books, NY. 2002. 301pp.
Both authors followed the efforts to find and then on through
the recovery machinations till it lay at rest in the Warren Lasch
Conservation Center on the old Charleston Naval Base in Charleston, South
Carolina.
Horace Lawson Hunley’s first attempt to build a boat that could
attack from below the surface proved that it could be done. It sank and was recovered,
then scrapped and the second vessel was built.
The story covers the trials and struggles to bring the idea of
an underwater boat to be built, the two sinkings and loss of crew on each
accident after it was finally built, and the lives of those entangled in its
web. Hunley, himself died in the second sinking, on a trial run. The superb
construction and design of this first battle submarine were beyond the belief
of those who even thought they knew the most of its history; a history shrouded
in secrecy. Finally the sleek little sub rammed a spar-mounted torpedo into the
Housatonic, backed away and pulled the detonating line, under a volley
of hand weapon fire.
Most attempts over the 130 years that it lay at eternal
patrol were concentrated on the landward side of the remains of the
Housatonic, the Union sloop that the Hunley torpedoed and sank. It was finally
located by Clive Cussler (novelist) and his search and recovery crews about a
half-mile outside its prey.
408. Zall, Paul M. “Jefferson on Jefferson”. University Press of
Kentucky. 2002. 160pp.
Mr. Zall is senior researcher at the Huntington Library. He is
the author and editor of many books, including Franklin on Franklin and Lincoln
on Lincoln.
It is stated in the back fly cover that “In Jefferson on
Jefferson, researcher Paul Zall returns to original manuscripts and
correspondence for a new view of the statesman’s life. He extends the story
where Jefferson left off [‘…weary of writing of myself’], weaving excerpts from
other writings--notes, rough drafts, and private correspondence--into passages
from the original autobiography.”
Nearing the end of his life, Jefferson, in February 28, 1826,
summed up his public service, ever so succinctly to beg the Virginia
legislature to allow him a lottery to pay his $100,000 debt, thereby saving
Monticello and some lands to be buried on:
“I came
of age in 1764, and was soon put into the nomination of Justices of the
country; and at the 1st election following I became one of it’s representatives
in the Legislature.
Thence
sent to 1st Congress
then employed 2 years with Mr. Wythe and Pendleton on the Revisal and reduction
to a single code of all the British statutes, acts of assembly and certain
parts of the common Law.
Then elected Governor
Congress Legislature
Minster Plenipotentiary
Secretary of State
Vice President
President
University
In these different offices, with scarcely any interval between them, I have
been in the public service now 61 years and during the far greater part of the
time in foreign countries or different States. Every one knows how inevitably a
Virginia estate goes to ruin when the owner is so far distant as to be unable
to attend to it himself; and the more especially, when any of his employment is
so different in character as to alienate his mind entirely from the knowledge
necessary to good and even to saving management.
If it
were thought proper to specify any particular services, I would refer to the
specification of them made by the legislature itself in their Farewell address,
on my retiring from the Presidency, February 1809…There is one however not
therein specified the most important of it’s consequences of any transaction in
my life: the head I personally made against the Federal principles and
practices during the administration of Mr. Adams. Their usurpations and
violations of the constitution at that period and their majority in both houses
of Congress was so great, so decided, and so daring that after combating their
aggressions on the constitution, inch by inch and one by one, without being
able in the least to check their career, the Republican leaders thought it
would be best for them to give up their useless efforts there, go home, get
into their respective legislatures, embody whatever of resistance they could be
formed into, and if ineffectual, to die there as in last ditch. All therefore
retired, Mr. Gallatin alone remaining in the House of Representatives and
myself in the Senate where I then presided as Vice President. We remained
firmly at our posts bidding defiance to the brow beating and insults with which
they continually assailed us, and keeping the mass of republicans in phalanx
together, until the legislatures could be led onto the charge; and nothing on
earth is more certain than that if myself particularly, placed for my office of
Vice President at the head of the republicans, had given way and withdrawn from
my post, the republicans throughout the Union would have given up in despair,
and the cause would have been lost forever. By holding on, we obtained time for
the legislatures to come up with their weight…and saved the constitution at its
last gasp. No person who was not a witness of the scenes of that gloomy period
can form any idea of the persecutions and personal indignities we had to brook.
They saved out country however. The spirits of the people were so much subdued
and rendered desperate by …machinations that they would have sunk into apathy
and monarchy as the only form of government which could maintain itself…”
Jefferson’s great debt, having been made the greatest by the
default by Wilson Cary Nicholas of a $20,000 loan, together with bad business
times and a string of bad growing years, bade him swallow his pride and
petition for the lottery.
Another movement that struck terror in his heart and occasioned
impassioned writing was the tendency toward a growing single religious
denomination, and even the apparent linking, or appearance of sanctioning by
government of religion.
“I am
of a sect by myself, as far as I know. I am not a Jew, and therefore do not
adopt their theology, which supposes the God of infinite justice to punish the
sins of the fathers upon their children, unto the third and fourth generations;
and the benevolent and sublime Reformer of that religion has told us only that
god is good and perfect, but has not defined Him. I am therefore, of His
theology, believing that we have neither words nor ideas adequate to that
definition. And if we could all, after this example, leave the subject as
indefinable, we should all be of one sect, doers of good, and eschewers of
evil. No doctrines of His head to schism. It is the speculations of crazy
theologists which have made a Babel of a religion of most moral and sublime
ever preached to man, and calculated to heal, and not to create differences. These
religious animosities I impute to those who call themselves His ministers, and
who engraft their casuistries on the stock of His simple precepts. I am
sometimes more angry with them than is authorized by the blessed charities
which He preaches…”
When the time to write a declaration of independence from the
ever increasingly tyrannical mother country, a committee was appointed that
“…were J. Adams, Dr. Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston and myself…”
Jefferson was asked to draught a document, which he did.
At the
time of writing…I lodged in the house of a Mr. Graaf, a new brick house
[Seventh and Market], three stories high, of which I rented the second floor,
consisting of a parlor and bedroom, ready furnished. In that parlor I wrote
habitually, and in it wrote this paper, particularly. Now I happen still to
possess the writing-box on which it was written. It was made from a drawing of
my own, by Benjamin Randall, a cabinet maker in whose house I took my first
lodging on arrival in Philadelphia…It claims no merit of particular beauty. It
is plain, neat, convenient, and, taking no more room on the writing table than
a moderate quarto volume, it yet displays itself sufficiently for any
writing…Another half-century may see it carried in the procession of our
nation’s birthday, as the relics of the saints are in those of the church.”
“I drew
{the Declaration of Independence}; but before I reported it to the committee, I
communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, requesting
their corrections, because they were the two members of whose judgments and
amendments I wished most to have the benefit, before presenting it to the
Committee…Their alterations were two or three only, and merely verbal. I then
wrote a fair copy, reported it to the Committee, and from them, unaltered to
Congress.”
There was much altering, or rather striking out long segments,
abbreviating and sometimes substituting briefer passages, particularly by Mr.
Dickinson, being the most representative of those entertaining “The pusillanimous
idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with…” In the end the
supposed softening of the language seemed to be made more firm and unyielding.
A major disappointing censure was “The clause too, reprobating
the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to
South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation
of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our Northern
brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though
their people have very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty
considerable carriers of them to others.” The submitted draught is then printed
in its entirety, showing strikeouts and additions.
409. Lenihan, Daniel.
“Submerged: Adventures of America’s Most Elite Underwater Archeology Team”. Newmarket Press,
New York. 2002. 287pp.
“Daniel Lenihan is not just an explorer, but a preservationist;
not just a risk-taker, but a nationally recognized scientist, respected in the
ranks of park rangers. He has been at the center of many major underwater
research projects in the U.S., from the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor to the
first expedition to resurvey the sunken ships of Bikini Atoll after they were
declared radioactive from nuclear blasts.
Lenihan has been diving as a park ranger and archeologist for
the National Park Service (NPS) since 1972. In 1976, he developed the only
federal underwater archeological team in the U.S. and, in 1980 was appointed
the first chief of the NPS Submerged Cultural Resources Unit (SCRU).
Over the last 25 years, Lenahan and the SCRU team has been the
subject of national media stories and many TV documentaries on CBS, ABC, BBC, CNN,
PBS, The Discovery Channel, and National Geographic. He has written frequently
for Natural History and American History, and coauthored with
Gene Hackman the well-received sea Novel Wake of the Perdido Star. A
native New Yorker and former schoolteacher, he lives with his family in Santa
Fe, New Mexico.”
Lenihan, who put together the SCRU team with topnotch divers,
and then practiced them all till they were better, has an enviable record of
never losing a diver on a project. Some of the most advanced diving of the
period were undertaken, all the while doing the tedious and exacting recording,
measuring and photographing of artifacts, area, of wreck lay, and not
forgetting to be aware and acutely cognizant of their surroundings, down-time,
and vital air supply. Apparently almost all dives were done on air and not
exotic gas mixtures. Nitrogen narcosis had to be carefully monitored and
recognized, not to fall prey to its intoxicating lure to nirvana.
There is a small and neat color picture grouping in the book
center of some of the projects they undertook.
From Chuuk (formerly Truk) to Florida caves, and Great Lakes to
Kalaupapa volcanic pipe and high altitude lakes, SCRU plied the most stringent
preservationists code of ethics and advanced the science (and the standard) of
underwater archeology. They did this introducing us to methods from the
simplest of two leg tape tie-offs to the most sophisticated of electronic
mapping and positioning gear yet available, in fact was further developed.
Many an amateur diver in the future will have this group of
dedicated researchers to thank when they are able to see this marvelous world
where every 30 to 33 feet of depth adds the pressure of an additional
atmospheric column of miles.
410. Brubaker, Harold.
“DuPont: Seeking a strategy.” Philadelphia Inquirer. 07/07/2002.
“After casting off oil, seed and drug units, the 200-year-old
firm fights image as rudderless."
A gene-based system for detecting food contamination, the 14 year-old
BAX system has been in the making. The $39,000 system, worked on by researcher
Peter M. Mrozinski, was introduced in November of 2000 and only recently gained
the FDA as a customer. With the high cost, few can afford to evaluate it till
it shows convincing evidence of value.
The company will celebrate its 200th anniversary on July 19,
2002. Eleuthere duPont started his gunpowder mill in 1802.
1802 -- Eleuthere du Pont de Nemours began building a gunpowder
mill on the brandywine Creek...
1801-65 -- DuPont supplied four million pounds of gunpowder to
Union forces during the Civil War.
1902 -- Three great grandsons of the founder -- Thomas C. du
Pont...bought the company.
1915-18 -- DuPont was the biggest supplier of military
explosives to Allied forces during WW 1.
1930 -- DuPont invents neoprene, a synthetic rubber...
1935 -- Nylon "synthetic silk -- invented.
1938 -- Teflon developed in a lab at Deepwater.
1941-45 -- ...largest supplier of explosives, DuPont supplied
plutonium for the Manhattan P...
1950 -- Dacron polyester and Orlon acrylic fibers go into
production.
1959 -- Lycra fabric is developed.
1961 -- Tyvek protective material is developed.
1964 -- Kevlar knife and bullet-resistant material is developed.
1967 -- Nomex fire resistant material and Corian synthetic
marble -- are developed.
1981 -- DuPont purchased Conoco Inc. for $7.8 billion.
1990 -- DuPont formed a pharmaceutical joint venture with Merck
& Co. Suva refrigerants and Dymel
1997 -- DuPont acquired 20% of seed company Pioneer Hi-Bred
International Inc.
1998 -- DuPont acquired polyester businesses from ICI...&
Merck's half in DuPont Merck...
1999 -- DuPont acquired coatings maker Herberts..., remainder of
Pioneer...
2001 -- DuPont sold ...Bristol-Myers Squibb for $7.8 billion.
2002 -- DuPont announced plans to shed its $6.5 billion textiles
and fibers operation by end of next year.
411. Wills, Gary. “James Madison.” 2002. Times Books,
Henry Holt & co. NY -- The American Presidents Series, ed. Authur M. Schlesinger,
Jr. (ISBN 0-8050-6905-4)
“We are creatures of our time and place. But Madison’s time and
place enmeshed him in especially dense networks of both restraint and support,
networks from which he never broke free, since he never wished to be free of
them." He was very strong for freedom and liberty, though he did not
connect these thoughts with slave holding, but primarily of the mind and in
religion. In fact, in spite of strong connections and study at William and Mary
College -- also a Jefferson scientific collaborator -- he spoke strongly of
separation of religion and state and supported The College of Virginia over
W&MC. Outside of this break in his solid network world, he strayed but
little from the land-holding and family heritage influence. This network
included much of Virginia's power and brain trust, such as the legal giant,
Edmond Pendleton (agrarian theorist and Madison's schoolmate) John Taylor of
Caroline, Bishop James Madison of W&MC and his namesake. They also included
the in-law cousins' like Andrew Lewis, one of Washington's in-laws, and Patrick
Henry, his least favorite connection, who was related by marriage to his wife
Dolly as well as to himself.
"Being embedded in this weave of relationships gave a
person a kind of social safety net. Madison grew up in a realm ruled by his
namesake-father, who would live until James Junior--called Jemmy o distinguish
him from James Senior--was fifty. All that time Madison lived in his father's
house, supported even in his adulthood by a father who appreciated his genius.
James Senior was the principal slave holder of Orange County--which made him,
almost ex officio, justice of the peace, vestryman of the church, and commander
of the county militia." In his father's absence, Madison had to and did loyally
perform these services, to which he was born and bred.
He became the unlikely colonel of the county militia, as
expected of him, but was soon called to serve in the 1776 revolutionary
convention in Williamsburg at the age of twenty-five. Next year, having lost
re-election because of his disdain of buying drinks and the accompanying
jollity, was appointed to Governor Patrick Henry's Council (influence again
ruled). So strong was his zeal for respect that he often supported dire
measures against even hints of disloyalty or transgressors of law and order (as
he saw and supported). "Indeed it appears to me that the bare suspicion of
his (Benjamin Franklin's because of heard favoring of the king) guilt amounts
very nearly to a proof of its reality." He accused Theodoric Bland, a
colleague, of being a traitor. He was wrong about both, and was willing to call
into question, Washington, too.
On Religion: He argued and scolded the "incompetent
Anglicans, felt William and Mary College to be too staid to be of help to him
and was impressed with the Presbyterians he had met and Princeton Univ. This
was before Jefferson took hold of the college. He was tutored at home by a
recent graduate of Princeton and thereby encouraged to attend to his further
schooling there, which he did. He was so impressed with John Witherspoon, then
in his first year as President of Princeton, carrying the latest in the
Scottish enlightenment of the period that, though he finished his regular
academic studies in two years, stayed on to study an extra year under the good
"Doctor." He remained friends with the good Doctor for many years
and, indeed regarded him as highly as his father.
"When he twenty-five year old Madison was elected to the
Virginia Convention, he demonstrated for the first time what would become his
greatest strength in committee, prior preparation. The convention was drafting
Virginia's trailblazing Declaration of Rights, under the guidance of its
principal draftsman, George Mason.”
“Because the bill for religious freedom that Madison would carry
through to passage in 1785 worked from the original draft proposed by Jefferson
in 1777, some think that Madison was just following Jefferson’s lead. But his
Article XVI was passed even before Jefferson proposed his bill, at a time when
the young Madison had not even met Jefferson. The two men reached their
convictions separately, and Madison would defend the concept of free conscience
more extensively and effectively than even Jefferson ever did, when he composed
The Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments
(8.298-304).”
“Madison is called the father of the Constitution. It is a title
deeply deserved, on many counts. In the amazing time that stretched from the
Annapolis Convention (September 1786) to the Virginia ratification (June 1788)
–from his own thirty-fifty year to his thirty-seventh—he defended the Annapolis
call to the Constitutional Convention in Congress, helped persuade Washington
to attend it, did his research into the nature of confederacies, drafted the Virginia
Plan, played a key role in transforming that plan into the finished draft,
defended that draft in Congress and in The Federalist, and then returned
to Richmond where he defeated Henry and won his state’s ratification.” That
paragraph nearly sums up Madison.
“From our own historical vantage, we can deplore the Alien and
Sedition Acts [probably Pres. John Adam’s worst action] while realizing that
worse excesses have occurred as the result of war scares. The Palmer raids
under Woodrow Wilson arrested thousands and deported over six hundred. The
Japanese-American internments under Franklin Roosevelt deprived thousands of
their property and liberty. These things occurred without being caused by
conspiracies to remake America into a monarchy. [The McCarthy witch-hunt is a
third example of the restriction of individual liberties to the detriment of
this free nation].
That Madison exhibited great courage in spite of fragile health,
is shown during his presidency and the War of 1812, when he “…kept his head while
others were growing hysterical. A week before the actual arrival of the British
in Washington rumors of their approach made nervous people gather outside the
White House, suspicious that the Madison’s would sneak off to save themselves
(S 411). But Madison had no intention of fleeing. On August 22, he rode toward
the enemy, staying overnight at Winder’s camp near the naval yards.”
“Madison’s claim on our admiration does not rest on a perfect
consistency, any more than it rests on his presidency. He has other virtues,
which I want to emphasize once more in this conclusion. In discussing his
presidency, I had to leave out larger achievements. Among this nation’s
founders, only two were more important—Washington and Franklin (the sine
quibus non). As a framer and defender of the Constitution he had no
peer—James Wilson came in second, but by a long distance. The finest part of
Madison’s performance as president was his concern for preserving the
Constitution. As champion of religious liberty he is equal, perhaps superior,
to Jefferson—and no one else is in the running.”
412. Lansing, Alfred. “ENDURANCE—Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage.” 1959. Carroll &
Graf Publishers, Inc. NY. ISBN 0-881840178-1.
It is impossible to really appreciate the incredible courage and
endurance of the men of this saga. In was believed then, and it still stretches
credulity to believe that Shackleton, or the men that accompanied him could
survive and accomplish the feats related in this book.
He set out in August of 1914, to traverse the Antarctic
Continent. They became trapped in the ice and by October of the following year,
abandoned their crushing ship. Then for the next five months they survived on
the constantly shifting and breaking ice floes, eating seals, birds and fish,
besides what rations they rescued and shifted with themselves from site to
site, all the while striving to reach a shore.
They were able to save and repair two of the small boats till
they abandoned the floe. In these, they finally managed to land on Elephant Island,
the first people to do so. Their first beachhead showed signs of flooding and
would not do. They finally achieved another gravelly barren beach, from which
Shackleton and several men, chosen with great care, not only to be the best for
the most difficult sea journey for aid and rescue of the rest, but to leave the
balance in the best hands to survive till rescue (should they make it to South
Georgia).
It would take more than a year more till they could manage a
successful return and rescue of the balance of the crew.
The book is broken by main episodes, into six parts, each of
which is made of several chapters. Each of the parts has more than enough plot,
suspense and action to make a book in itself.
413. Stanton, James E. "Fate of two buildings."
Intelligencer Record. 9/3/01. "The future of the Spread Eagle Inn appears
to be assured, while that of the old Richboro Elementary School remains
uncertain." John Long, Northampton township supervisor, is championing the
school dating from 1913. He went to school there in the 1960s. Commerce bank is
threatening in court to be able to demolish it or move it to the back of the
lot for day care usage.
The two centuries old
Spread Eagle Inn was in danger of demolition in the widening of the
intersection of Richboro Pike and Second Street Pike, but was saved by the
$425,000 donation of two developers and a campaign to preserve it by an avid
group of supporters. It will be move sever yards south and west and
rehabilitated.
414. Parnes, Amie "An endangered inn will take
on a new role." Philadelphia
Inquirer. 10/06/02. "The former Spread Eagle Inn in Richboro has been
moved and refurbished. It will have offices.” Doug Crompton, chairman of the
preservation committee, with the largess of the community, a couple of
developers and the township have spruced up the recently relocated 200 year-old
inn in the hopes of it helping in the rejuvenation of the community. “In
December, the inn was lifted from its foundation and moved 120 feet to Tony
Giaimo’s property, here he runs Guiseppe’s Restaurant.
Giaimo Bros is expected to buy the inn from the
township for $800,000...” They are to try to interest Starbucks, several banks,
and other offices to occupy the building.
415.–-. “CHANTICLEER.” a PLEASURE GARDEN IS OPEN
April through October, Wednesday through Saturday, 10 to 5 and Fridays until 8
p.m. during June, July and August. 786 Church Road, Wayne, PA 19087
(610/687-4163)
416. Douglass, Frederick. "Narrative of the
Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave." May 1845. Oxford University
Press reissue with an introduction by Deborah McDowell and notes by John
Charles in 1999. Douglass was born of Harriet Bailey and a white father about
February 1818 in Tuckahoe, MD, near Hillsborough in Talbot County (about 12
miles north of Easton, MD). He died at Cedar Hill estate in Anacostia, District
of Columbia (his home of thirteen years). Fittingly, this "object"
that made himself a "man," spoke and wrote extensively for freedom of
the African-American Negro, American Indians, and the liberation of women, died
immediately following an address before the National Council of Women. He was
buried in Rochester's Mount Hope Cemetery.
This book detailed and set out the effect of slavery
on both the slave and the master, as noted Abolitionist, William Lloyd
Garrison's Introduction to the book "...nothing has been set down in
malice, nothing exaggerated, nothing drawn from the imagination." Though
it was not the first detailed slave account (a genre from about 1760) is became
the sui generis.
He occluded the "I" and detailed treatment
and feelings as if an observer, a recorder of the facts. It is a moving and
disturbing account for the reader yet. Names mentioned were: Wendell Phillips
(wrote the Preface), Hugh and Sophia Auld, Thomas Auld, Edward Covey--a noted
slave breaker, Aunt Hester, Capt. Anthony--quite possibly Douglass' father and
first master, Col. Lloyd, Noah Willis, Austin Woolfolk, Severe, Hopkins,
M'Durmond, Austin Gore, Giles Hick, Bondly, Thomas Hamilton, Curtis, Waters,
Capt. Edward Dodson; mostly slave holders. Not the least of these and reserved
for special venomous consideration, are the highly religious beaters and
owners: William Freeland, Rev. Daniel Weeden, and Rev. Rigby Hopkins, Wright
Fairbanks and Garrison West. Many slaves are named by only first names or by
ownership, such as Lloyd's Ned, because relationships were deliberately broken
down by separations and sales. In his free life, there is (besides the afore
named abolitionists, David Ruggles--helped him escape, Anna Murray--became Mrs.
Douglass, Rev. James W.C. Pennington--minister who married them, Joseph
Ricketson, William C. Taber, Nathan & Mrs. Johnson, and William C. Coffin.
417.
Cronkite, Walter. "A Reporter's Life." 1996. Alfred A. Knopf. "For
the 22 million who were there Monday through Friday...And for Betsy, who has
been there every night--And for the children and grandchildren, who have made
something very special of a reporter's life: Nancy, Kathy and Bill, and their William
and Jack, Chip and Deborah, and their Walter IV and Peter," a dedication.
Reprinted from the dust Jacket: "From the age
of six, when he went dashing down a hill to spread the news of President
Harding's death through his Kansas City neighborhood, Walter Cronkite's
vocation was unmistakable. Three years later, when he started peddling the Kansas
City Star, the die was truly cast: 'My mother was horrified and frightened,
as I suppose many mothers have been, or should have been, when their children
got into newspapering.'
The next year the Cronkite family moved to Houston,
and other boyhood activities intervened; but when shin splints kept him off the
high school track team he landed the job of sports editor for the Campus Cub
and discovered the 'sacred covenant between newspaper people and their readers.
We journalists had to be right and we had to be fair.' It was no accident that
Walter Cronkite came to be known as the most trusted man in America.
Now, at the age of eighty, Cronkite has written his
life story--the personal and professional odyssey of the original 'anchorman,'
for whom that very word was coined. As a witness to the crucial events of this
century--first for the Houston Press, then for the United Press wire
service and finally for CBS in the fledgling medium of television--Cronkite has
set a standard for integrity, objectivity, enthusiasm, compassion and insight
that would be difficult to surpass. He is an overflowing vessel of history, a
direct line with the people and places that have defined our nation and
established its unique role in the world.
But Walter Cronkite is also the man who loved to
drive racecars 'for the same reason that others do exhibitionist, dangerous
stunts. It sets us apart from the average man; puts us, in our own minds, on a
level just a little above the chap who doesn't race.' He is also the man whose
'softheartedness knows no rational bounds,' and who always has had 'great
problems at the theater, tearing up at the slightest offense against animals
and people, notably the very old or the very young.' He is the man who could
barely refrain from spitting on the defendants at the Nurenberg Trials, and who
could barely announce President Kennedy's assassination over the air for the
sobs in his throat.
Walter Cronkite helped launch the juggernaut of
television, and tried to imbue it with is own respect for quality and ethics;
but now he occupies a ringside seat during the decline of his profession and
the ascent of the lowest common denominator; As he aptly observes, 'They know
that for decades they have had the privilege of getting their news from a
gentleman of the highest caliber. And they will immensely enjoy A Reporter's
Life."
Walter Cronkite also stated that he had almost
flunked physics and he still can't quite get it right (some things seem to be
born in a person). For instance when the war caught up with him and Betsy in
London at the height of the V-1 missile attack from Germany in WW-I, he
observes: "These were bombs to which they attached wings, a gyroscopic piloting
device and a little one-cycle engine." [Italics are mine]
As a wordsmith though, he is my hero. He collected
thoughts and sayings and could use them well when the occasion called. An aside
in the Nurenberg Trials and describing the sharp mind and wit of Britain's Sir
Norman Birkett's disdain for U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert
Jackson's handling of General Goering, I quote: "With his red hair peeking
out from under his judicial wig, he once offered a minor criminal his last
words before the bench. 'As God is my judge,' said the man, 'I'm innocent.' 'He
isn't, I am, and you aren't,' replied Birkett."
Walter Cronkite defended first amendment rights and
the thoroughly believed right of the public to have access to everything in the
spheres of politics, government, and armed conflict; bar the need for military
strategy. In a free democracy, that must not be abridged. "Censorship must
be imposed only as long as military exigency demands it. Furthermore, as in
World War II, there must be an appeal procedure by which the press can argue
the case for release of its dispatches and pictures. This is neither too much
for a free press to ask, nor too much for the army of a democracy to
give." He shows where the lack of such freedom had hurt those who imposed
it and the public who were deigned timely information.
418. Adams, William Howard.
"The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson."1997. Yale University Press. In the opening, is the Henry
Adams quote: “With all his extraordinary versatility of character and opinions,
he seemed during his entire life to breathe with perfect satisfaction nowhere
except in the liberal, literary, and scientific air of Paris.”
His time in Paris covers the years from August of 1784
to 1789, as insister of the new United States (replacing John Jay). Benjamin
Franklin and John Adams were still there working on the peace treaty with
England. Because of France’s help in the US revolution, some concurrence, even
if only minimal, must occur.
His early education, first from his father and later
at the College of William and Mary and at Columbia, instilled a love of freedom
and personal liberty and the belief that it was innate and the natural right of
man. On Page 72, the author makes this most clear in the following:
“Reflecting on the conditions that had
produced the American Revolution, Jefferson contemplated the gap between the two
societies: ‘If all the sovereigns of Europe were to set themselves to work to
emancipate the minds of their subjects from their ignorance and prejudices, and
as zealously as they now endeavor the contrary, a thousand years would not
place them on that high ground on which our common people are now setting out.
Ours could not have been so fairly put into the hands of their common sense,
had they not been separated from their parent stock and old world, by the
intervention of so wide an ocean.’ Europe was 'yet loaded with misery by Kings, nobles,
and priests,’ and the same conditions conducive to despotism-'monarchy’ was
Jefferson's code word-could appear in the New World if it failed to guard
itself against the age-old fascination with 'nobility, wealth and pomp.’ In
fact, the Virginian would be stunned by the loose approval of monarchy that he
heard in New York shortly after he returned in 1789.’
Not long after returning
from Paris, and before the upheavals of the French Revolution had carried the
country into more dangerous waters, Jefferson reminded a fellow Virginian ‘that
the ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, that we must be contented to
rescue what we can get from time to time, and eternally press forward for what
is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own
good.'"
Jefferson preferred to work
in the background. Though he was hurt and wrote a scathing letter to the editor
of a Virginia paper that did not mention him, but gave the writing of the
declaration of independence to John Dickinson, he did not mail it. He soon
cooled and did not
even bring it up in discussions in Paris with friends and compatriots. Adams,
in his memoirs, stated that Jefferson merely clothed their thoughts in proper
clothing. Indeed, the committee had asked him to do just that. Adams felt that
it would be best received if written by a Virginian, so passed to Jefferson
that honor.
419. Bastian, David F. “Grant’s Canal.” Burd Street
Press. 1995.
From the back cover, “This work addresses a major effort that has been
virtually overlooked in Civil War history. By May 1862, only Vicksburg
Confederate fleet at Memphis stood in the way of Union domination of the
Mississippi River. The Confederate fleet his fell in early June, leaving
Vicksburg as the only Confederate control point on the river and the only
connection to supplies from the West.
For six weeks David Glasgow Farragut’s naval forces
could not force Vicksburg to surrender. Realizing that it could not be taken
from the river, the Union decided to move the river away from Vicksburg. This
tart of two poorly planned and peopled unprecedented engineering efforts to
divert the course of river. The failure of the second effort under Grant
resulted in an extensive siege. Vicksburg finally surrendered after 14 months
from the time Farragut first called on her to surrender. Ironically, the cutoff
could have succeeded with proper planning and tools. This work describes the
circumstances and results of the Federal attempt to divert the river.”
420.Munn, Jesse. “Historical houses provided safe haven for escaping slaves.” Public Spirit. 2/27/2003.