Category: HISTORY

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Memorial Day and the 1st Minnesota

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are so many vignettes that ennoble the concept of Memorial day that to select one brief story seems wanting. Memorial Day, a day of remembrance for those who have served a higher purpose and sacrificed all for that purpose, is a special part of the American fabric.  The element of sacrifice certainly wasn’t in every case heroic – very likely in most it was the element of fate driven bad luck- in the wrong place, at the wrong time – but in all cases the sacrifice was contributive to the greater good that freedom and free will are worth exposing oneself necessarily to the harsh judgement of fate.

There have been some very special moments of great clarity in American history when the participants knowingly chose their sacrificial destiny in hopes of in some way extending the fragile life of the candle frame of freedom.  Many are sacrifices known but to few; some have reached the legendary status of epic saga.  What drives a man to face impossible odds and end his time on earth is no doubt individually diverse, but is it possible that hundreds of men could accept the same moment, the same clarity of purpose, the same love of freedom to willingly and collectively snuff their own lives out in defense of it?  It happened on the second day of Gettysburg, and it happened to the 1st Minnesota regiment.

The 1st Minnesota was formed in the initial passion of the start of the Civil War  in 1861.  The newly formed western states of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa were among the most enthusiastic to the cause of the Union, and there was little difficulty in filling the ranks with men who hoped to show their willingness to defend the concepts of the Union.  The regiment by the time of Gettysburg was already significantly battle tested, having served in the initial battle of the war at Bull Run and many engagements since.  Gettysburg was clearly to all however something all together on another level.  A vigorous southern army led by General Robert E. Lee, fresh from crushing serial victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville determined to take the war to the northern states and end it there.  Convinced of its own superior generalship and mettle of its troops, the southern army looked to a knockout punch and by the fateful connection  of various roads and turnpikes found itself in the “country” of Pennsylvania at the little town of Gettysburg.  The reeling army of the north, now led by taciturn General Meade, was positioned on the southern army’s flank protecting the capitol of Washington until direct contact between the two armies was initiated just outside Gettysburg.  The battles of the first day secured the positions of the two armies, and the next two days were to witness the ultimate clash of wills.

The fighting of the second day was filled with epic stories, and epitomized the snarling aggression of the Southern army to split the Union forces in two and finish the war for good.  Places with names like the Devil’s Den, the Peach Orchard, and Little Round Top saw man to man fighting of an intensity and drama that have reached legend and have been told innumerable times.  The Union army, bent like a fishhook around Cemetery Ridge, was pummeled on its left by savage thrusts of Southern warriors.  Southern Generals Mclaws and Hood punched deep into Union reserves all afternoon and the wavering the Union defenses were recognized by its on site Corps Commander William Hancock.  At about 6:20 pm a new blow north of the battered Union left came to the weakened center that had spent the day re-inforcing the left flank.  Alabama troops under General Cadmus Wilcox staggered the vulnerable center and a massive gap began to form.  All eyes saw the moment the same way.  Wilcox could eye the cottage that held the Union senior command and beyond it the road to Washington.  Hancock could see the unmitigated disaster of a union line split in two.  Devoid of troops and needing to gain time, he called out to the commander of the 1st Minnesota regiment, Colonel William Colvill, and ordered his 262 men to fill the gap and against over a 1000 southern marauders buy that precious time for the Union forces to reinforce the breech.

The great historian Shelby Foote captures the clarifying moment for all time:

“Colonel, do you see those colors?”  As he spoke he pointed at the Alabama flag in the front rank of the charging rebels.  Colvill said he did. “Then take them,” Hancock told him.

Quickly, although  scarcely a man among them could have failed to see what was being asked of him, the Minnesotans deployed on the slope- eight companies of them at any rate; three others had been detached as skirmishers, leaving 262 men present for duty – and charging headlong down it, bayonets fixed, struck the center of the long grey line.  Already in some disorder as a result of their run of nearly a mile over stony ground and against such resistance as Humphrey had managed to offer, the Confederates recoiled briefly, then came on again, yelling fiercely as they concentrated their fire on this one undersized blue regiment.  The result was devastating.  Colvill and all but three of his officers were killed or wounded, as well as 215 of his men.  A captain brought the 47 survivors up the ridge, less than one fifth as many as had charged down it.  They had not taken the Alabama flag, but they had held onto their own.

And they had given Hancock his five minutes, plus five more for good measure.

For those precious five minutes General Hancock needed to marshall enough reserves to stem the breech and save the Union army to fight another day, the 1st Minnesota sustained a casualty rate of 83%, the single greatest loss of men of any surviving military unit during a single engagement in U.S. military history.

To knowingly give up all that one has to potentially preserve freedom for five more minutes.  The 1st Minnesota serves as a reminder to all on this Memorial day of what true selfless behavior is and what it means to be called and accept the call.  In honor of Colonel Colvill and every one of the 215, as well as the untold others who gave their last measure so the rest of us could live in this great land of free people, God bless, and Thank You All.

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100 Years On, Its Still a Titanic Saga

    

      One hundred years ago today, the world became slowly aware of an unfolding tragedy in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic that resonates in our time as an engrossing saga.  The RMS Titanic, on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York struck an iceberg at 1140 pm April 14, 2012 of the coast of Newfoundland, and so began a harrowing two and one half hour dance with death that ended with her sinking at 220 am April 15th, 2012.  Of the 2224  passengers, 1514 would not survive the night, making the sinking of the Titanic one of the largest loss of life at sea in peacetime recorded.   The unique confluence of one of the great engineering achievements of the twentieth century, the tragedy striking the boat on its maiden voyage, and the progressive binding of the world in the communications revolution that wireless provided has led to a story of tragedy of special nature and endurance.

     The RMS Titanic was one of three magnificent ships built by the White Star Line to create a luxurious and rapid transatlantic transport they hoped would make the voyage predictable and repeatable.  The concept was a boat leaving Southampton for New York every Wednesday and an ocean liner back from New York every Saturday, all in the modern convenience and luxury of a White Star craft.  Transatlantic voyages, forever a hazardous and lengthy process in the time of sail, taking up to six weeks to traverse 3000 miles of open forbidding ocean, was becoming through the miracle of steam power a tolerable six days, and in the magnificent luxury of the White Star Line, conceived as a pleasurable voyage. A one time one way perilous voyage was now being conceived of as a repeatable event, where vacations to Europe or America, business on either side of the Atlantic, or moving to American shores while not leaving the family far behind was possible and potentially commonplace.  J.P Morgan, an American financier and primary investor in the cruise line thought so, and in underwriting the building of the Titanic and her sister ships, saw it as just another inevitable triumph of man’s conquering of his environment.

     These were special ships and engineering triumphs.  The RMS Titanic was the largest ship built of its time, over 10 stories tall and 882 feet from stern to bow, displacing over 50, 000 tons.  Her massive reciprocating engines backed by turbine were capable of over twenty knots consistently, driving 23 foot propellers. An army of firemen were required to shovel the 600 tons of coal a day required to drive such engines.   She had 15 watertight compartments, and with the loss of any two, or the partial flooding of any four, the great ship could continue to float.  Over 15000 workers of the Harland and Wolff shipbuilding company of Belfast, Ireland labored 26 months to weld her 2000 6 by 30 foot steel sheet plates together with millions of rivets in the technology of the day. She was designed with a bounty of modern conveniences, designed in essence to be a floating luxury hotel, with spas, swimming pools, premier restaurants, workout facilities, and spectacularly furnished suites and verandas. She was a triumph of her time and the zenith of British shipbuilding capability and know how.

     The Titanic had her sea trial just a week before her planned transatlantic voyage but handled beautifully.  Captain Edward John Smith was senior most of White Star’s executive captains and was selected to oversee her maiden voyage.   The initial voyage contained many celebrities among its passengers, including one of the richest men in the world John Jacob Astor, the owner of Macy’s Department store Isidor Strauss, and the ship’s architect and designer Thomas Andrews.  Leaving Southampton on April 10th, she crossed the English Channel to pick up passengers in Cherbourg, France, headed to Cork, Ireland and then into the expanse of the Atlantic.  The Titanic was approaching Newfoundland on the fifth voyage day, entering the area of the Grand Banks known as “the corner” where ships routinely angle south towards New York.  The night of April 14th was quiet and moonless, and the water exceedingly still. Reports of rogue icebergs in the area were filling the wireless, usually the indication for ships to slow down with such poor visibility, but Titanic was part of a cruise line that wanted to establish predictability to transatlantic scheduling and continued unbounded into the iceberg zone.

      The starboard side impact with the iceberg that felled Titanic was one not envisioned by the designers, a glancing blow that caused only a minor plate buckling that however popped rivets , creating a sliver of water access to the ship’s interiors, transitioned fatally across five compartments. Water poured in at a rate 15 times the capability of the bilge pumps to remove it, and progressively the forward compartments inevitably filled until the stern tipped forward enough to allow water to pour over the bulkheads, filling one compartment after another.  Though the initial impact was so slight the majority of the passengers barely noticed it, the fate of the ship was settled in the original thirty seconds.  The next two and one half hours of progressive terror were inescapable from the initial failure of the rivets.

     The early morning of April 15th was filled with horror as the ship’s demise became progressively apparent and the surrounding dangers obvious.  The water temperature was estimated 28 degrees, creating a scenario of rapid hypothermia and death for any individual forced to contend with unprotected exposure, the lifeboats were too few and the stunned passengers and crew too disorganized to achieve a rapid and measured abandonment of the ship.  As the bow began to reach water line, the end became sudden, as the great ship, with thousands of tons of water pulling its bow toward the bottom, seized and split in half, its stern then pitched vertically with hundreds holding on as best they could , until it too past beneath the surface. Only 700 passengers and crew made it to the boats and those in the water due to the temperatures had no chance.  Despite two hours of distress calls it was three hours after sinking that the RMS Carpathia finally approached to pick up the survivors.

     The indepth story of Titanic’s last hours as told by the survivors was so filled with courage and bravery, terror and panic, chivalry and cowardice, that it seized the attention of the public and has never let go.  The incomprehensible defeat of modernity to the basest elements of ice and water, crushing the light out of a ship declared essentially in just two hours made the loss an especially poignant one.  Men had decided to conquer time and distance for their own needs and pleasures and the flaws in their assumptions had disastrously brought to bear.  There is nothing in the Titanic saga that stopped progress – the incredible speed of a six day voyage is now a seven hour flight from New York to London and many times the population of the Titanic make that trip every day.  But the moral of the story, man’s willfulness and pride in his achievements at times overwhelming his common sense continues to show itself this very day.  In 2009, an Air France transatlantic plane was lost with all on board when the pilots, attempting to navigate through a mid-atlantic thunder storm, mis-interpreted their air speed and in a stall continued to pull their plane’s nose upward, compounding their plane’s loss of air speed until the entirely capable plane was essentially flying vertically and with no forward momentum tumbled out of the sky into the Atlantic.  The vulnerability of man as he continues to stretch the limitations of his earthbound nature will always have potential tragedy shadowing him, as a matter of course.  One hundred years later, the Titanic’s tragic beauty appears before us as in a long ago dream, and reminds us of our own unpredictable journey.

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Swing Vote

    

      The 2008 movie Swing Vote  puts forth the premise that as a result of an impossibly splint American electorate and an election night malfunction the entire result of the Presidential election comes down to the single unexpressed vote of a New Mexico ne’er-do-well played by Kevin Costner. The future direction of the United States is implausibly tied to the ultimate “fence sitter” whose personal leanings are essentially unknowable.  Mark Steyn in National Review Online in his typically brilliant style  relates how a similarly absurd process is underway at the Supreme Court hearings into Obamacare, and how the shifting sand ideology of Justice Anthony Kennedy may be the deciding scale upon which the entire future of a United States, balanced or unbalanced upon a constitutional platform, is determined.

     I am not remotely suggesting that Justice Kennedy is a ne’er-do-well. The superficial comparisons with the movie end at the gate of Justice Kennedy’s accomplished career and intellect.  I am suggesting that our society’s ne’er-do-well attitude regarding civilized process has led us to this abyss.  When Chief Justice Marshall ruled in Marbury vs Madison in 1803 that it was the onus of the judicial system to determine the extent to which a legislated act conforms to the Constitution, he could not have possibly imaged that such a consideration would lead us to the calamity we face today. Reflecting upon a set of principles, commitments, and responsibilities outlined in a mere four pages of a Constitution, it was a capable step to interpret how a single action could be reflected in the clarifying single sentences of the various brilliantly crafted Articles.  He would have been dumbstruck to consider the constitutionality of a legislative act of governmental enumerate powers that spanned 2700 pages under the ludicrous title of the Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act, a leviathan of a law that seeks to delineate all potential considerations in managing an American citizen’s well being, currently one sixth, or 2.6 Trillion dollars of the Gross Domestic Product of the United States.

     I am additionally not suggesting that Justice Anthony Kennedy is the modern day equivalent of Chief Justice Marshall.  He’s not-Not by a long shot. Justice Kennedy has , however, unfortunately been put in the position, as a result of a perfectly split court reflecting a perfectly split electorate, of determining what will be the American Truth every bit as important as Marbury vs Madison.   I don’t envy his weighty responsibility.

     Oh, to have to assess the potential constitutional conflicts of a law that at 2700 pages already is a temple to conflict with constitutional values.  The legislative crafters of this Noah’s Ark of Health Care, the crafters that nurtured and voted for it, had little if any idea of the consequences of such a blizzard of regulations, organizations, and powers. The main sponsor, the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, suggested the best way to find out what was in the bill was to vote for it. The influential congressman, John Conyers of Michigan, suggested the very size of the law assured that he would have no time to read it, and that he felt comfortable voting on it sight unseen, if the people who assured him the law was a good idea would stand behind it. Behind such indepth analysis, the future of the implied contract of freedom of the individual and their relationship to a government with clearly limited enumerative powers hung in the balance.  No worries.  Certainly the justices who would be required to assess the law’s constitutionality would take the time to deconstruct the massive missal to governmental overreach. Actually, no.  A 2700 page law proved beyond their capabilities and as Justice Scalia opined, would represent “cruel and unusual punishment” to any one individual who dared break the seal and read.  So we are left with Justice Kennedy, the deciding vote, determining the very future of the United States, interpreting a law that no one has read, and invoking its future permanence or demise.

     Mark Steyn makes all writers take a back seat when he puts his mind to paper, and in the case of dissonance of writing laws that no one can read, and its effect on a democratic society, he stands as a Zeus:

“Who does read the thing? “What happened to the Eighth Amendment?” sighed Justice Scalia the other day. That’s the bit about cruel and unusual punishment. “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages . . . ? Or do you expect us to give this function to our law clerks?”He was making a narrow argument about “severability” — about whether the Court could junk the “individual mandate” but pick and choose what bits of Obamacare to keep. Yet he was unintentionally making a far more basic point: A 2,700-page law is not a “law” by any civilized understanding of the term. Law rests on the principle of equality before it. When a bill is 2,700 pages, there’s no equality: Instead, there’s a hierarchy of privilege micro-regulated by an unelected, unaccountable, unconstrained, unknown, and unnumbered bureaucracy. It’s not just that the legislators who legislate it don’t know what’s in it, nor that the citizens on the receiving end can never hope to understand it, but that even the nation’s most eminent judges acknowledge that it is beyond individual human comprehension. A 2,700-page law is, by definition, an affront to self-government.”               national review online Mark Steyn

      We are left to balance our futures and all that we have on the inscrutable machinations of Justice Kennedy. The careful balance of the three branches of government, so carefully weighted, and so brilliantly expounded by Madison and Hamilton, have been deformed beyond all recognition.  It is up to Justice Kennedy, to free the tethers of the future from the whims of a solitary individual,  and send this immutable mess of a  “law” back ,forcing Congress to do its job of writing laws that invite structured debate and are knowable to all, so that rational choices can be made.  Obamacare stands on the pretense of Accountable Care.  We all know upon reflection that President Obama’s centerpiece is of no account, providing care that is simply uncountable.  That’s no Affordable way for a democratic society to work.

 

 

 

 

 

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Dont’ Know Nothin’ ‘Bout History

     President Obama, as is his wont, took upon himself the role as professorial instructor during a campaign speech at a local college in Maryland this week.  Deriding his opponents as contrarians and anti-science in the ongoing debate regarding America’s energy needs and potential new sources of energy, the President clarified for adoring students the role of “rubes” in history in attempting to obstruct progress:

“Of course, we’ve heard this kind of thinking before.  If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail, they must have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society.  … There always have been folks who are the naysayers and don’t believe in the future, and don’t believe in trying to do things differently.  One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, ‘It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?’ That’s why he’s not on Mount Rushmore because he’s looking backwards.  He’s not looking forwards.  He’s explaining why we can’t do something, instead of why we can do something.”

         It is certainly not the the first time a politician has used an endearing nonsensical understanding of history to try to prove a point, and it won’t be the last.  Many presidents have made assumptions based on superficial understanding of past events and cultures to promote many wayward programs and agendas.  The problem of course begins to arise when a politician uses a general disdain for accuracy and a superficial shell of understanding of history, science, geography, and culture to form a bedrock philosophy.  President Obama continues to use historical facts and figures as if he got them from the back of a bubblegum wrapper, and it shows in his tendency toward naive and oblivious maneuvers in both domestic and international events. 

      President Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th President of the United States, may not have been Mt Rushmore material, but the assumption that he was a culturally backward neanderthal is just one more example of not bothering to let facts get in the way of a good story.  President Hayes was a highly educated and intelligent individual, conversant in ancient Greek, a Harvard College law graduate, and a major general in the victorious Union Army.  He proceeded to become a U.S. representative and governor of his home state of Ohio, succeeding to the Presidency of the United States in the highly contested election of 1877 against Samuel Tilden, the governor of New York. In an election so contested that it required a decision by the House of Representatives to finally declare a winner, Hayes proved equal to the task, bringing a reputation for honesty and progressivism to the job.  The period after the Civil War was a time of significant political instability and Hayes brought a steady hand to the task, achieving an end to the north’s dominance of the south through reconstruction, attempting to restore integrity and performance to the civil service system, a tireless advocate for availability of education to all, and working to achieve what was felt to be at the time an enlightened policy of assimilation of native americans into the greater culture.  It also turns out that he was, much like Lincoln before him, a technology geek, and a believer in American industry and ingenuity.  The first functioning wire phone service of Alexander Bell’s invention of the telephone listed the Hayes White House as phone number 1, and Thomas Edison frequented the White House, demonstrating new fangled inventions such as the phonograph, to the delight of Hayes.  Even Obama’s dullard remark that Hayes’ attitude regarding science is what kept him off of Mt Rushmore comes up short. Hayes, a popular President, served on term not because he could not gain another, but because, he had campaigned on serving one term and one term only, and he was a man of his word.  There are worse legacies to be had than that.

     Is it necessary for our leaders to have a solid foundation in historical accuracy to make good decisions?  One is reminded that the highly successful foreign policy president Truman was a high school graduate, and President Reagan was accused of using Reader’s Digest as his predominant fact checker.  Even a President acknowledged to be a voracious reader of history, and a frequent interviewer of historians’ perspective in his analysis of current events, George W Bush, failed to articulate an in-depth understanding of events, at least in any way recognizable to his opponents.

     President Obama, however, is unique in his acquired knowledge set.  What kind of grasp can you have on the forces of history if you have bothered to restrict your reading and devise your thinking only through the bent prism of history’s aggrieved?  Can the man who is quoted as saying there are 57 states in the union, understand the bonds that led to each of the actual 50 joining the American union of states?  Can the President who felt a telling weakness of the American role in Afghanistan was the lack of available Arabic speakers in the military, possibly discern a victorious strategy in an Afghanistan devoid of Arabs?  Can a President who hugs President Chavez of Venezuela in front of President Uribe of Columbia possibly mediate a conflict between the two important South American countries, when Chavez promoted the harboring elements  of the murderous columbian terrorist organization FARC, within his territory?  Can a President who assumes that people from Austria speak Austrian, have the facility to understand the historical considerations that led Austrians and other Europeans to see the Euro as the means of integrating Germany peaceably into the  fabric of a modern Europe?  The list goes on and on.  The anointing of President Obama by historian Michael Beschloss as “probably the smartest guy ever to become President” flies in the face of this President’s clumsy grasp of ties of history that bind, and speaks to our loss of rationality in assessing common sense, achievement, and reasoning.

      The President is an ongoing example of our sharp societal lerch towards the domination of feelings, victim-hood, and pre-formed ideas in the national conversation.  It proves increasingly difficult to have an intelligent debate on issues such as economic progress, climate change, freedom versus responsibility, the principles that uphold a functioning democracy, the role of a constitution in a republic, and the extremely complex considerations of war and peace when the acknowledged leader of the free world has disdain for accuracy and the intellectual rigor for those very discussions.

     Rutherford B. Hayes may not be on Mt Rushmore, but he understood his role in promoting, not rejecting the American ideal, and saw his role as president as a steward, not an adversary, to those ideals.  Based on President Obama’s ongoing assault on history, the constitution, and the unique strengths of the American story, I can assure him when future historians review his time at the tiller of America, the stone head they will be referring to will not be a facsimile granite edifice on Mount Rushmore.

 

 

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The Battle at Hampton Roads

     

     At the estuary of Virginia’s James River with the Atlantic Ocean, a waterway known as Hampton Roads, history turned on March 8-9th, 1862.  The navy of the United States of America was participating in a progressively successful blockade of the breakaway Confederate States of America, designed to strangulate the economy of the natural resource poor, industrially underdeveloped  southern states and force an environment of surrender.  Warships of the U.S. Navy, the USS Cumberland and the USS Congress were positioned to shut down the critical Hampton Roads waterway and prevent maritime resupply of the confederate capital at Richmond while facilitating the impending Peninsula campaign of Union forces directed by General George McClellan. The two great ships were positioned in blockade to take on any challengers when on the evening of the eighth an entirely new threat presented itself.  The wooden battleship USS Cumberland found itself under attack by strange sail-less craft with angled sides upon which its canon shell harmlessly bounced off and in a technique worthy of ancient Greek battles, rammed by her and sunk. The strange craft turned its sites on the USS Congress, who found itself equally helpless against the impervious craft and determined instead to dash itself against the shoals to prevent sinking.  This made the Congress an immobile object for target practice by the alien craft and it was pummeled into surrender.  In a relatively brief battle, a single craft had taken down two American warships, caused the deaths the deaths of 241 naval seamen in the greatest loss of life to the American Navy until 1941’s Pearl Harbor, and put the entire strategy of blockade to victory in peril.  This unique threat was the CSS Virginia, the redesigned ironclad warship reconstituted on the shell of the previously captured USS Merrimac. In a brief battle, the south had found its magic bullet that could re-orient the entire world of military strategy.  For centuries, the concept of naval battle was unchanged – the goal was to attain close quarters with the opponent craft and turn your armaments upon it, achieving destruction of the craft, or at least sufficiently damage it to prevent its further utility as a sailing vessel.  The logic of several thousand years of armed combat at sea ended in one fell swoop on March 8th, 1862, when a vessel impervious to canon and whose mobility was driven by power under the water line rather than sail presented in the reality of the CSS Virginia.

     Unknown, however to the Virginia, on the same night of March 8th, an even more revolutionary craft had entered Hampton Roads from the ocean, and was positioned on March 9th to take on the indestructible Virginia.  She was the USS Monitor, and she was not just a revolution in armour and propulsion  like the Virginia, but additionally, a revolution in armament.  The Monitor was the culmination of the revolutionary engineering ideas of Swedish immigrant engineer John Ericsson and the enormous resources of the north applied to technology.  The south’s engineering was creative and facile, but limited to the available resources, and putting the Virginia with her iron plates together was a major stress.   To obtain enough iron for armour plating many railroad track tailings had to be sacrificed, and the south was not in a position to create a fleet of such vessels. The Virginia was placed on the platform of a previous wooden ship, and her plating placed to the water line.  As she fired off ordinance, she became necessarily lighter in the water and began to draft less, exposing her wooden underframe.  The Monitor was something else entirely.               

     Ericsson designed her as a new type of vessel, providing almost no available target with the craft designed to float as a craft even along the waterline, and for the first time, with armaments impervious to the craft’s position in the water as they were placed in an armoured rotating turret that could rotate to any necessary firing position.  Ericsson had undergone the struggle of all immigrants, having his evocative ideas dismissed by so called experienced naval personnel who felt they would never work, and who had his reputation injured in a previous disastrous trial  years earlier when a previous demonstration in 1844 in the presence of President Tyler of an early turret had exploded, killing 8, and making Ericsson a pariah.  Ericsson, who had the design of the rotating turret pilfered rather than designed by him, never gave up the idea.  When spies suggested the development by the south of the Virginia, interest returned to Ericsson’s idea, and President Lincoln, who had a love of new technology, approved the very expensive building of the Monitor.

     On March 9th, the CSS Virginia came out to play and found itself blocked by a craft even more distorted than itself.  Ramming the craft proved unfeasible as the monitor’s underwater screw design powered by steam and raft design proved too nimble.  Additionally the Monitor’s available outline for canon fire was its rotating turret alone, made of impregniblehigh grade steel to the Virginia’s explosive, non-penetrating shells.  The battle proved inconclusive; but the lesson was clear.  The Virginia, now raised in the water, was becoming vulnerable, and its tactics would have no effect.  The battle was ended with the ships removing themselves from close contact, but revolutionary first battle between two ironclads at sea changed naval warfare forever.

     The amazing Monitor design put forth by Ericsson had over 40 patentable designs and navies across the world took notice.  Steam powered screw propulsion, rotating, repeat firing armament turrets, reduced available target design, comprehensive rivet armour plating – Ericsson’s little Monitor was inspration for what would become the massive Dreadnought class battleships of the 20th century and would change forever battle tactics.  The Virginia, as spectacular as was its brief success, was made impotent by a superior craft, and as the south was incapable of creating numerous ironclads as could the north, became an expendible structure scuttled by its own crew later that year.   The blockade held and grew in intensity and eventually the south was strangulated from the vise from without and the lacerations within.

     Hampton Roads, Virgina is now the site of the one the great naval bases in the world in Norfolk, Virginia, and one can look at the docks and see the various permutations of John Ericsson’s breakthrough thinking as far as the eye can see.  Once again, the experiment that is America, the freedom of immigrants to prove themselves in the free expression of ideas, came to fruition in the narrow waters of Virginia in 1862, where it had done so many times before. 

      (further study of this event and other stories of the American Civil War are available online on the terrific site http://www.civilwar.org/)

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Bordeauxinsanity

    

      Wine Spectator magazine March, 2012 issue acclaims the 2009 Bordeaux wines a classic, generational vintage. Perfect weather and felicitous harvest timing positioned the most famous vineyards in the world to achieve awe inspiring results for the sophisticated wine assessor to gawk over, with ratings for the 1st growths achieving 98-99/100 scores on initial tastings.  The wine lovers among us should be overcome with joy in celebration of a spectacular vintage, non?

     Non.  The great wines of Bordeaux 2009 will never be something any reasonable wine enthusiast, even one saving his shekels, will ever taste a drop of.  The estimated price per bottle to partake in the experience of the 2009 vintage of the great wine producer Chateau Lafite Rothschild will set you back 1800 dollars.  That’s right –  a case of this wondrous brew put aside for the expected 12 to 15 years required to begin to untap its potential comes at 21,600 dollars. Plus tax.  At today’s prices, for each case of perfection of Chateau Lafite, you could buy 205 barrels of oil,  13 ounces of gold ingot, a Honda Civic with gas money to spare, or approximately a third of a year of a Harvard education (speaking of inflated value).  Lucky enough to have someone else buy the bottle and offer you a glass at cost, it would cost you 5 Packer tickets at the 50 yard line or two shares of ownership.  Fear not, you have almost no chance of making that painful decision to spend so extravagantly, as the available first growths are being swept up by those who see them as future investments as much as contributors to a good meal.  The expansion of deep pocketed purchasers, particularly the recent influx of Chinese millionaires looking to imbibe in the world of luxury purchasing have settled on wine as the ultimate symbol of success and are willing to pay what it takes to participate.

     The exalted position of Bordeaux as the home of the most desired wines in the world came about through historical endurance and exceptional marketing.  The presence of wine grape harvest goes back in the region of Bordeaux over 200o years with Roman growers in the province of Aquitania realizing the value of the beverage to thirsty drinkers from the suffering soldier of Albion (Roman Britannia) to the nobles of Rome itself.  Wine as a trade resource suffered the tribulations of all commodities with the fall of the Roman system  and it was not until the linking of the fortunes through marriage of Henry the Vth and Eleanor of Aquitaine that the demand for Bordeaux wines again took off and became an export commodity.  Demand and Bordeaux’s excellent growing climate and soil conditions led to the expansion of the appropriate land available of expansion of vineyards in the 17th century, and by the mid 1800’s wine stood as a major export product of France itself.  But how to tell the lovingly produced from the slapshod? Well there’s technique, and quality, and taste – and of course, price.  The 1855 French classification system by which the Bordeaux wines have flourished in reputation was weighted heavily on price.  After all, market demand drove the price and must of course have as a prime characteristic of demand quality.  The assumption lead to the 1855 recognition of four growers of Bordeaux as First Growth, the marriage of quality and price – Chateaus Lafite , Margaux, Haut Brion, and Latour. Regardless of changes in ownership, talent, technique, and effort, the first growths have held their exalted, and resultingly pricey position in the wine world ever since, joined only through the incredible pressures over time of the grower Rothschild’s successful lobbying of the entrance of Chateau Mouton Rothschild to join his Lafite chateau as a first growth in 1973.  A classification system based primarily on the prices of wine in 1855 thus rules demand for product and the mark of excellence in 2012.

     The noble qualities of the primarily Cabernet Sauvignon grape of the left bank wines of the river Gironde and the Merlot grape of the right bank (though the blends vary) are not in question.  The question is one of sanity- is a beautifully developed 25 dollar sip of a Haut Brion Cabernet a better experience for the wine drinker  the equivalent 2.50 sip of a California 2007 Paul Hobbs Cabernet or a 25 cent sip of a 2007 Robert Foley Claret?  Do you have to be Robert Parker to tell?  Married with a wonderful Filet Mignon does it matter in satisfaction until the bill comes due?  I had one opportunity at a so-called 100 year wine, a wonderfully kept 1982 Lafite Rothschild at the twenty year mark, of course on someone’s else’s generous dollar, and although I admired its immense depth, silky smoothness, and wonderful complexity, I ended up happy and tipsy as I had with much lesser mortals, and I cant say it changed me much.  I never became a voracious automaton for the perfect drinking experience, and my bank account thanks me.

     I am happy for the hard working wine producers of Bordeaux that in 2012 they are still able to convince a Chinese industrialist or a Hollywood producer that he needs to pay a king’s ransom for a 2009 Bordeaux whose price is based on a 1855 market snapshot to get on with life.  Vive la France!  As for me, I will continue to struggle on with an occasional 2006 Boscarelli that cost 12 dollars of inflated pricing at the restaurant I enjoyed it at in Tuscany. It made me happy, and slightly tipsy – and I still had money left for dessert. Now that’s a life experience worth every penny.

 

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American Colossus

“We must hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. “                             Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence  July 4th, 1776 

     On the occasion of the 280th anniversary of the birth of George Washington,  the above quotation locks in for all time the recognition of the inherent mettle of the man who has assumed the mantle of our greatest American.  At the time of the declaration, George Washington was very likely the wealthiest man in the American colonies, owning massive swaths of Virginia, and a prodigious businessman.  He was a key piece of  Great Britain’s earlier strategy of defending land gains in the new world by fashioning leaders from the colonists, and had risen to colonel in His Majesty’s forces in earlier battles in the French and Indian War of the 1760’s.  No process of political interaction by Britain would not include prominent Americans such as he, and the concept of representation for the common man would have not benefited him in the least.  The wealthiest American, well thought of by his British cousins, a “noble”  in a land of commoners , prominently potentially signed his life away on July 4th, 1776 on the altar of – principle.  It is a concept so rare to today’s politician that the action viewed through the dim mirror of history still seems staggering.  Benjamin Franklin voiced what all recognized, the claiming of the inherent right to separate, and thereby attaining for the American colonies all the land and resources of America formerly owned by Great Britain under the rule of a sovereign would be the greatest attempted seizure of all time, and would be intolerable for any ruler.  Intolerable would equate with treason, a crime punishable by death,  and no one would be more exposed to that charge than the leader of the rebellion’s armed forces.

     What could George Washington possibly been thinking?  He would have to raise a volunteer amateur army to defend the entire land mass of Atlantic facing America against the most powerful country on earth, with hundreds of times the resources, the world’s most powerful and well trained army and navy, and fully half of colonial America either apathetic or outright adversarial to his cause.  It was the all confounding concept of principle that drew him inexorably to such a weak hand.  Washington was born in an age where universal concepts of the rights of man and progressive exposure of the flaws of omnipotent rule were discussed as living entities.  This was the Age of Enlightenment, where reason was considered the ultimate virtue, to be applied for the benefit and inevitable improvement of society.  Emmanuel Kant the philosopher described Enlightenment as “Mankind’s final coming of age, the emancipation of human consciousness from an immature state of ignorance and error.” Utilizing reason was not the same as being realistic, or the immense challenge of an American separateness would have fallen upon deaf ears.  Washington and others accepted ultimate risk as part of the price to pay for the right to reason.  The principle of a thinking, mature individual to determine his own life course was too powerful to such men to allow the odds of attaining it in their own lifetimes the only consideration.

     Principle drove Washington to stand to the front, and lead his ragtag army against overwhelming odds, through years of immense hardship, through tangles of wavering support at moments of crisis, through cataclysmic defeats and wobbly victories, to outlast the will of the powerful with the will of the reasoned.  In 1781, after seven years of great personal sacrifice and enormous risks,  Washington closed the trapdoor on the British army of Cornwallis at Yorktown, and with its surrender the British fife and drum played ” The World Turned Upside Down”.

     It was indeed a world turned upside down, and the world waited to see the reaction of reasoned men to victory. What are strengths of principles when the ultimate power has been placed at the feet of an individual?  The assumption of time immemorial was that to the victor goes the spoils, and Washington as head of the victorious force could have easily accepted the role of king as so many others over time had with a similar position.  The rational man who fought for reason, however would have none of it, and the world stood amazed as the man who had fought for the right to achieve his own destiny, choose the destiny of a common farmer amongst men, his work done, resigning his commission of commanding general of the army.

     The world had not seen a man like Washington,  where principle ruled the man at the height of his powers.  He would go on to serve his country again as its first elected leader, and upon completion of his service, again resign the reigns of power.  No short tome can capture the depth of his personhood, and I suggest you look to two brilliant dealings with this uniquely American hero, Richard Brookhiser’s Founding Father and Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life .  You will find a very recognizable modern man in George Washington but one with immeasurable internal principled fortitude that seems almost alien to today’s American leaders.  Where among us are the men or women that will accept the mantle of principle required to face down and rescue America from her ominous future?  The answer will lie in someone who will live in the directed shadow of the American colossus George Washington, who accepted that in times of crisis, it is not importantly to succeed personally, but rather to succeed princibly. To the Marco Rubios and Paul Ryans of the world, the magnificent far off example before you is the roadmap to the ultimate  triumph of a newly enlightened America.

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The Great One Revisited

      On the occasion of the two hundred third anniversary of the birth of one of the epic figures of human history and one of mankind’s noblest humans, I wish to present a repeat reading of my 2011 birthday tribute to Abraham Lincoln.   The Great One.

The Great One – Originally Posted on February 12, 2011 by bfaure

     February 12, 1809, 202 years ago, lost in the wild frontier of Kentucky in a log cabin placed at the side of a creek called Nolan, outside the settlement of Hogdenville, a miracle of history occurred. An illiterate tenant farmer named Thomas Lincoln and his wife Nancy Hanks brought into the world an epic soul. From such humble roots, one of the great thinkers and unquestionably one of the world’s most gifted leaders came into being to a nearly untouched natural world. He was Abraham Lincoln, and in his relatively brief life of 56 years shook the very foundations of his nation and changed it forever.

     It is the ultimate test of nature versus nurture when one examines the life production of Abraham Lincoln. He certainly had no significant identifiable schooling, and his upbringing provided nearly no stimulants for learning beyond the skills needed to survive in a very rough and occasionally brutal wilderness. His step-mother Sarah Johnson, coming into the family after the untimely death of Lincoln’s mother at age 11, found a melancholic and wild boy, but inured in him an uncommon devotion due to her unstinting love for him.  Though illiterate herself, she saw in him something nobody else saw, and pushed him to learn to read and write. In the Indiana wilderness the family moved to, Lincoln proved a voracious self taught student in writing skills, grammar, and the few books available to him. The entire scope of his training was frankly his will to learn, and the interpretations of his learning all his own. From wilderness wild cat to eventual local learned man, the philosophic world view devised by Lincoln was entirely unique and his own creation.

     David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln biography is in my mind the most passionately human biography of Lincoln and a must read for any who wishes to understand Lincoln the man who became Lincoln the colossal historical figure. The specific chapters reflecting the years of Lincoln as a young circuit lawyer in Illinois are essentially perfectly written. Lincoln was a mental sponge, forgetting no personal interaction, no lesson to be learned, no overarching theme to the simplest disputes and events. He built on his friendships, his experiences, and his battles to develop an uncommon awareness of the unique qualities of the American Experience and the vital role of the common man in framing it. With no apparent template for a guide, he created a strong and complex capacity to understand, and importantly, elucidate that understanding to others, in clear and precise language. It was a skill that was natural, his own, and absolutely, genius.

     Lincoln wrote and spoke on so many topics of importance to his time that an entire career studying the many moments of brilliance have consumed academicians since his life ended.  The more amazing reality is how often he spoke in a way that evoked universal themes that crossed multiple generations that speak to us today.  The speeches written by Lincoln resonate for our time; the House Divided speech, the Lincoln Douglas debates, the first and second Inaugurals, and the jewel in the crown, the Gettysburg Address.  He was additionally at his greatest in the simple letter responses to friends, and the letters of consolation to the war’s bereaved, showing each his ability to understand their prism of understanding, their own special role and their personal sorrow.   This President in saintly fashion absorbed every arrow, every pain, every loss, every need as his own, and it showed stunningly in his rapid aging in photos over the five year period of the Civil War.  The mind , though, did not age, and his brilliance revealed in the final weeks of his life showed eternal strength of character and a bottomless desire to take on monstrous social complexities and provide the leadership to solve them.
    

Everyone’s favorite Lincoln is their special Lincoln – Lincoln the Western Railsplitter, Lincoln the Writer, Lincoln the Philosopher, Lincoln the War Leader, Lincoln the Speech Maker.  Any one of these Lincoln’s would be worthy of a birthday treatise.  Lincoln the Miracle Man is my favorite today – the perfect Product from nothing, out of nothing, through the strength of his own will and the freedom offered by his society to have an equal chance as any other, to excel, and flourish at a miracle level, to the benefit of us all.  He is the man, who at his First Inaugural, looking into the dark chasm of the impending cataclysm of the Civil War, forgave us our sinful stubbornness and projected the way  to our eventual salvation by relying on our inherent goodness and the saving grace of our humanity:

” I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends.  We must not be enemies….The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and headstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell  the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

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The State of The Union Sham

     The United States Constitution identifies a specific responsibility of the head of the executive branch, the President, to report to the legislative branch his or her understanding as to the current state of the nation and recommend possible agendas for review and development.  Article 2 Section 3 specific to the powers and responsibilities of the Executive branch, requires of the executive:

He shall from time to time give to the Congress information as to the State of the Union, and recommend to their consideration Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient

     From the first President of the United States to the current one, the requirement has been taken on with variable sincerity.  After Washington’s first address to the Congress in person, the tradition was converted to a report read indirectly by a designate to the Congress on the request of Thomas Jefferson, to avoid the appearance in Jefferson’s eyes of magisterial overtones, so committed was Jefferson to the concept of co-equal branches of government.  Woodrow Wilson took back the role of personally delivering the speech  in front of a joint session and ever since the event has taken on appearance of spectacle.  The eventual presence of television did what nearly 200 years of Presidential speeches could not, warp the purpose of the president’s requirement to report to Congress into one in which he reported directly to the American people, with Congress, Judiciary, and assembled military figures and important guests the captive props for the President’s stage.  The modern media have become willing accomplices in the elevation of the speech to theater, as it allowed them to create a dramatic venue.  No one has bothered to note the damage done to the nation’s Framers original intent.

     The President who may have begun the process of sticking a fork in the serious nature of an executive report was our first actor in chief, Ronald Reagan, who began to highlight personal stories in the speech by inviting guests who represented “American hero” props for the president’s agenda.  Soon no president could be without identifying a “hero”, or seem to appear to be insensitive to the ‘average joe’s’ role in the American agenda.  President Clinton took the speech to another level, converting the report into a never ending litany of self absorbed projects without any correlative agenda other than they all sprang from his disorganized wonk personality.  Clinton’s state of the union speeches introduced America to the concept of speech as endurance contest, with members of Congress visibly falling asleep during the speech, including one specially poignant moment when his own wife Hillary nodded off.

    President Obama has managed however in 2012 to be the first President to give a state of the union speech in which he never discussed the state of the union.  Certainly the job of explaining your role in projecting an agenda that has led to 10% unemployment, 5 million fewer jobs then when he took office, a 5 Trillion dollar increase in the nation’s debt in three years, an empty energy plan based on undermining any form of energy development in cost effective, efficient and available fuel sources, and a myriad of foreign policy reversals is assuredly not easy. But the speech managed to score a perfect avoidance of any subjects that would address any of these pressing issues, instead becoming a platform for another campaign speech.  The president even devised a new prop not thought of before, inviting Warren Buffet’s secretary to sit with the first lady and substituting the typical “American Hero” prop with instead an average “American Victim” that in its current tax policy, America has decided to screw, making her supposedly pay more taxes on a percentage basis than her billionaire boss Buffet.

     And we were all asked to watch.  It is part of the sham of the current American political process that the newspeak Orwell warned us about has penetrated the President’s duty to Congress. President Obama demands passage of a bill he just vetoed.  President Obama expresses his willingness to drill for oil a week after killing the Keystone pipeline  that would take such oil to refineries.  President Obama decries the role of regulation in burdening job growth then describes one after another governmental process to “assure fairness”.  President Obama talks of budgetary restraint in the greatest outpouring of national deficit spending in our nation’s history.

     Is this the cornerstone of an agenda designed to advance America as envisioned by the Founders, or the creaky pablum of a politician who is no longer even aware of why this event, the State of the Union, exists in the first place?     We are in the throes of a President who sits not astride history, but rather, has turned his back on it.  Unfortunately he reflects an ever growing number of Americans who assume their bounty has come about because of all encompassing government, not as a result of any individual’s labors. If President Obama will not assess the state of the union as required by his oath as executive, I humbly will.  Citizens, the State of the Union is bad,  and its going to take a real awakening to stop all the theatrics, and get down to some real and lasting solutions.  We need to recognize a sham when we see one confronting us, and note it rhymes with scam.  Let’s use the Constitution to remove those who want to make a pretense of all that it stands for, with their every word and inaction.

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Distant Mirror

    

      2011 was the 70th anniversary of two epic world shaping events, the cataclysmic invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany and the Japanese surprise attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. World War II, a conflagration that resulted in over 60 million deaths and involved every corner of the earth, continues today to cast a profound shadow over almost every country’s posture in the modern world and their reaction to perceived actions or historical inequities. Historians often describe the value of a distant mirror in objectively understanding historical events, waiting a sufficient number of decades until emotions cool and perspective clarifies. World War II is reaching that status, as the population that remembers in real time the events that led to the war passes on, and the books that recorded those events with acute memory become dated.   The enormous number of volumes attempting to delineate the story of World War II is staggering, and one could surmise that something that has been treated so expansively by the world’s great historians would leave no room for further assessment. The contrary appears to be true, however, as new summary statements regarding the war and its denouement continue to be published.  Two celebrated treatments have recently come forward and both are from eminent British historians, Max Hastings and Andrew Roberts.  I am in the process of reading, and learning from them both.

     Andrew Roberts has participated in the indispensable internet interview platform of the Hoover Institute, Uncommon Knowledge,  and reviews many of the elements that defined the war’s reasons for being and eventual outcome.  The learning lessons are many, but I’d like to bring forward a few for some comment prior to hearing Robert’s views in their entirety.

     1) The radical political historical degenerate – Central to the calamity of World War II was the identification of a specific type of political leader who viewed the world in historical scope with their particular views in inexorable ascendancy, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Tojo.  As Roberts points out, Hitler’s single minded focus on the concept of racial superiority and its need to establish hegemony over lesser races and ideologies, dominated every decision he took and prevented any kind of logical strategic thinking.  Stalin, ideologically locked in his view of communism as the inevitable dominant ideology, suffered from similar strategic delusions, to the incalculable suffering of his people. Tojo had more precise view of what was possible, but no less delusional in his view of racial superiority, to the extent that he allowed his armies to perpetrate horrendous treatment and enslavement of millions of Asians. This overarching historical view, that any current catastrophic sacrifice is worth the eventual outcome of ideological purity did not die with World War II.  Currently, Iran’s  Khamenei and Ahmadinejad espouse the pretense of the ’12th Imam’, their pathological hatred of Jews and the existence of Israel, and their willingness to initiate world conflict to achieve the eventual Islamic caliphate resonates almost exactly to the verbiage of World War II’s racialists.  No one should make the assumption that the outcome of such degenerate ideological purity would not again be cataclysm.

     2) Wars fought by ideologues – The battles in World War II between Hitler and Stalin dwarf in size, scope,  and sacrifice any comparable event in world history.  The battles of Leningrad, Kursk, and Stalingrad have no reason for having been fought the way they were beyond the two leader’s need to participate in a forum that implied the clash of entire civilizations. Eastern front battles were titanic, because the leaders viewed their ideology as needing the purification provided by titanic sacrifice, with the elimination of any momentary weakness in will or dangerous sprouting of rational thought.  Strategic retreats to improve the circumstance of battle have zero value to ideologues, who view the circumstances of the battle not as a military set-piece but a battle of the gods of ideology.  The battles were fought on purpose with the blunt impact of massive forces, with no consideration whats so ever for the individual combatant.  The result for the Germans were the deaths of millions of infantrymen  and for the Russians, tens of millions of civilians and soldiers.  Ideology through history has resulted in enormously greater destruction than any puny value its more positive ideals may have provided some in a peaceful society.

     3) The innate weakness of ideological struggle- Roberts takes time to describe the relatively small sacrifice of the United States in World War II in proportion to the enormous sacrifices of the Germans and Russians, and the resultant ongoing dissonance between the former allies’ view of the conflict, and the current world.  The lesson I take from World War II is somewhat different.  The Germans may have “cracked” their resolve in taking on the enormous losses resulting from the Russian invasion, losing 4 out of 5 German soldiers to the Russians, but they did so purposefully, for the battles against the ultimate ideological competitor, Bolshevism, required civilizational sacrifice.  This was not about defeating a country so much as wiping out forever an ideology and a people.  The western allies were strategic thinkers and were not about to bleed themselves to death to prove a point.  If the German Infantry were to be superior, the allies were superior on the ocean and in the air, and eventually technologically. The battle without a Russian cataclysm would have been more drawn out and more tactical, but ideology always makes its critical mistake in thinking its people will sacrifice forever for purity of ideology. I think the eternal truth of  individual rationalism would have eventually dissected the German effort from within, and led eventually to the same outcome.  As sane men, the Rommels and Guederians wouldn’t have forever participated in insanity. Not without great pain, but inevitably, none the less.

    Enjoy a great historian’s perspective in  Peter Robinson’s Uncommon Knowledge interview, courtesy of Powerline, of  Andrew Roberts: