Ragged Mitt

How much do you pay in income taxes? I really don’t care, and I’m not sure I need to know how much my president pays either.  But the news that Mitt Romney finally released his most recent tax returns, and that he pay less in taxes than your run-of-the-mill millionaire, or run-of-the-mill American, was interesting fodder for the news pundits in this campaign season. How does he do it? By getting most of his income from investments, which are taxed at a lower rate than earned wages. Of course, his supporters say he earned the money long ago, when Bain Capital made its many deals. Hmm. Needless to say, even some millionaires—you know, the ones who actually work every day for their income and are intellectually honest—know that hedge-fund billionaires and those who live off their capital gains are not paying their fair share.

The other thing that struck me today as I heard the spin on Romney’s taxes: comments from staff and supporters that Romney did indeed earn his money; no trust-fund baby here. No, Romney pulled himself up by his bootstraps and did the work himself. Why, he’s a regular Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story.

OK, nobody actually mentioned Horatio Alger. Remember him? Probably not, unless you too are a History Nerd. More on him later. But let’s put something to rest right here: Mr. I-Earned-My-Wealth-On-My-Own had advantages that few Americans do. Through much of his childhood and adolescence, his father George was president and chairman of the board of American Motors, which at that time was a pretty major corporation, the creature of the largest merger of the era (though its Javelin and Gremlin, perhaps the company’s best-known models today, were still off in the future). Romney the elder then served as governor of Michigan and briefly in Richard Nixon’s first cabinet.

None of this is news, of course. But the corporate success and political power of Romney the elder suggests that  little Mitt did not exactly want for much, hmm? He attended prep school at Cranbrook and grad school at Harvard. And just maybe his dad’s various positions made it easier to forge meaningful business connections that greased the wheel for his success at Bain.

Of course, I don’t know that for a fact. Pure speculation on my part. But I do know Romney is not cut from the same cloth as Ragged Dick, one of the heroes of the Horatio Alger books. At one time, many Americans knew Alger and his creations, and the stirring theme his book stressed—that through pluck and some luck, even a street urchin could achieve financial success. Ronald Reagan touted the Alger story line, or at least the values Alger championed. Only, as I noted in the first published article I ever wrote (almost 30 years ago…), the Alger story was largely a myth. (And one that Mark Twain thought was ripe for parody.) For every near-penniless Andrew Carnegie who made a fortune, most business titans of Alger’s era came from fairly well-off, WASP backgrounds. Kinda like Mitt (ignoring that Mormonism is not really Protestantism. Or Christianity). And one of the great ironies of the Reagan era was that while Ronnie decried the role of government in society, and particularly the economy, Reagan and his family were beneficiaries of the New Deal (documented in Garry Wills’s Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home).

So, will some Romney staffer or supporter trot out Alger as they try to show their candidate’s hard road to riches? Don’t know. But if they do, don’t believe it—or the reality of the rags-to-riches myth.

Unknown Moments

Coal miners battling for their rights in West Virginia. Scandal tainting the national pastime. Piranhas on the loose. All not-so-stellar moments in our country’s history, but ones presented to a vaster audience than most history books reach, thanks to the pen and camera of filmmaker John Sayles.

(OK, the last bit is not part of our history, but Sayles did write the script for Piranha in his days working as a hired gun for B-film producer extraordinaire, Roger Corman.)

The author and filmmaker

Sayles is also a novelist, and he was in town last night to discuss his latest book, the historical novel A Moment in the Sun. I haven’t read it, but I know the near-1,000 page tome covers, as usual, parts of our history most American don’t know about—and that some flag-waving types would probably prefer we all ignore. Why dwell on the details of stomping out foreign freedom fighters or denying blacks their rights, when we are at heart God’s chosen country?

Yeah.

The decidedly leftist Sayles does want to dwell on the details, as he writes about the only insurrection in U.S. history, led by white supremacists against the duly elected black officials of Wilmington, NC. And as he takes a look at the bloody—some might say ruthless and/or barbaric—squashing of a rebellion in the Philippines, as locals who had successfully battled Spain for independence had a tougher time against the Yanks. Both events took place in 1898 (though the Filipino insurrection stretched on for several years), in the aftermath of the Spanish-American war.

The new(ish) book

Sayler read a chapter (a whole freakin’ chapter; it was the longest reading by an author that I’ve ever attended…) which describes the life of a NYC “newsie” trying to sell papers announcing the start of that war. Newspapers, or one in particular—William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal—is often cited as the fanner of flames to get America into the war, after the mysterious explosion of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor. (Modern consensus—it was an accident, not some deliberate attack by Spanish forces, which then controlled Cuba.) And the refrain through the chapter was “War!” shouted out by our streetwise hero and the other kids trying to make a buck hawking papers.

I’m not an expert on the era, but I did notice one historical inaccuracy in the chapter: The narrator talks of the newsie putting one of his hard-earned pennies, a “Lincoln,” into a Mutoscope, an early motion-picture machine. Only problem is, the first Lincoln penny did not appear until 1909. Oops. But the chapter was filled with wonderful dialogue and a fine eye for historical detail—including the marked attention to ethnicity paid by the characters-from-many-backgrounds. We have, of course, transcended that today…

Emilio Aguinaldo--first pres of the Philippines, captured rebel leader

Afterward, Sayles and fellow author Francisco Goldman talked about the book, Sayles’s creative process, and a bit about his latest film, Amigo, which covers some of the same territory as the book. Sayles noted that he didn’t know about the war in the Philippines until his mid 30s—not a sign of his lack of intelligence, but of the general effort, deliberate or not, to whitewash that first major American intervention.

I dug out an old high-school textbook from the 1970s. Its references to the Filipino insurrection: one sentence about the Filipinos taking up arms “in open revolt against the United States” and another about the general news blackout regarding the “war to suppress Emilio Aguinaldo and his Filipino patriots.” And this from a book written by generally liberal—or at least mainstream—historians. In 2006, in a different kind of book, historian David Traxel wrote about the Progressive Era and the country’s role in World War I. Crusader Nation, its subtitle says, is about the “United States in Peace and the Great War, 1898-1920.” Which implies all was peaceful from the end of the Spanish-American War until 1914, but Sayles, and the tens of thousands of Filipinos killed by American guns, knew better. I found no mention of the insurrection in Crusader Nation.

But I found some telling quotes about the war, and America’s foray into imperialism, while writing a short historical play a few years back. It was called “Truth, Justice, And…” and it riffed on comments by-then president George W. Bush, suggesting that the horrors of Abu Ghraib (a bit before the even-worse horrors of Haditha), were an anomaly; violence, especially toward the innocent, is just not part of the American character. The play suggests otherwise, as do some of these quotes I found from some of the young American soldiers sent to battle the Filipinos:

“It was like hunting rabbits; an insurgent would jump out of a hole or the brush and run; he would not get very far…. I suppose you are not interested in the way we do the job. We do not take prisoners.”

“…legs and arms nearly demolished; total decapitation; horrible wounds in chests and abdomens, showing the determination of our soldiers to kill every native in sight. The Filipinos did stand their ground heroically, contesting every inch, but proved themselves unable to stand the deadly fire of our well-trained and eager boys in blue. I counted seventy-nine dead natives in one small field, and learn that on the other side of the river their bodies were stacked up for breastworks.”

“We burned hundreds of houses and looted hundreds more. Some of the boys made good hauls of jewelry and clothing.”

Some soldiers, though, then as now, were not altogether thrilled with their mission:

“They are fighting for a good cause, and the Americans should be the last of all nations to transgress upon such rights. Their independence is dearer to them than life, as ours was in years gone by, and is today. They should have their independence…”

(You can find these and other quotes here.)

Sayles said that much of our present position—I assume he means as an intervening nation—started with the war in the Philippines. It certainly made us an imperial power, which is what some American leaders wanted. Other voices, however, did speak out against taking on the “white men’s burden”; Mark Twain comes to mind. But then as now, the forces that speak for fighting wars when we have not been attacked always seem to get more play than those that oppose killing foreigners for exaggerated claims of “national security.” The Filipinos certainly learned that, even if most Americans–still–don’t.

Happy–Mostly–Anniversaries

In these parts, no one has put away the party hats and noisemakers with the passing of New Year’s Day. No, we have a centennial to celebrate here in New Mexico: 2012 marks the 100^th anniversary of that famous dance, the kangaroo dip.

A map of the territory of New Mexico, 1873

Oh, I’m joking, of course. No one knows for sure when that hot-footed step and its bestiary cousins, the camel walk, the crab step, and the bunny hug, were first introduced, though Gordon Carruth, in his What Happened When, says 1912 was about the time when the still-popular ragtime craze inspired these steps. No, what we New Mexicans are about to start celebrating on January 6 is the inclusion of our fair state in the Union. It only took some 60 years after the Kearny invasion (described a bit here), which is rocket-like speed, really, when you consider Californians had to wait, uh, about two years. And Missourians sat on their hands some 18 years after the Louisiana Purchase before they—wait a minute. Two years? 18? And New Mexicans had to wait more than half a century? What gives?

Well, racism, partly. And religious prejudice. Because to the conquering Anglo mind, how could Spanish-speaking Catholics and various Native Americans be trusted with the delicacies of democracy? One Eastern visitor during the 1850s berated the New Mexicans as “lazy and indolent.” The Civil War hero William T. Sherman said the United States should go to war with Mexico again—to make it take back New Mexico.

And when talk of statehood came up during the 1880s, members of Congress who opposed it noted that the New Mexicans themselves were not exactly clamoring for a change in their status: “No agitation of the question in late years has been noticeable. “ (You can read more on this here.) In 1889, when the residents had a chance to approve a constitution—a prerequisite for statehood—they voted it down. The Santa Fe New Mexican (still published) noted that many residents feared their taxes would increase if they joined the Union. Good guess.

Uh oh...

TR on the stump, 1912

I’m sure every two-bit historian in the Land of Enchantment (including, of course, the History Nerd), will be trotting out various state centennial stories in the months to come. But I wanted to highlight some of the other events of 1912 that are worthy of exploration during this 100th-anniversary year, some of which I hope to delve into here:

• The one you are apt to hear about most: the sinking of the Titanic. I’ve written about it twice for kids and will certainly be able to dredge up a few interesting tidbits: the alleged ghost stories, the myths, the heroics.
• And Big Centennial Event number two, especially if a third-party candidate runs in November, is the presidential race between Teddy “Bull Moose” Roosevelt, William Howard “I Did Not Get Stuck In a Bath Tub (but I did order a larger one for the White House)” Taft,  and Woodrow “Prig and Racist” Wilson. It is, as far as I can tell, the only time a current, ex, and future president squared off in a three-way race. And amazing to consider when today’s Republicans fall over each other to display their conservative bona fides, two of them were liberal GOPers at heart, back when that concept was not an oxymoron.
• The passage of key federal labor laws, including one that gave workers under federal contract an 8-hour work day.
• The violent “Bread and Roses” Lawrence, MA, textile strike, which featured immigrant workers and the Wobblies—you know, back when workers were actually ready to fight for their rights.
• The rise of Jim Thorpe as an American sports hero—and the subsequent black cloud that smothered his reputation.
• And perhaps most important to me, the Boston Red Sox’s victory in the World Series (something I seriously doubt will happen in 2012…).

I’m sure other noteworthy centennials will pop up as the year goes on. Stay tuned to the History Nerd for all the excitement.

There Will Be No Blood

Faithful readers know that it doesn’t take much to set the History Nerd into a tizzy. Just a few words can do it, as this post on the Civil War shows. This week, it was the simple phrase “bloodless conquest.” A circular from the History Book Club (the HN has been a faithful member for decades) used that phrase while promoting a new book on Stephen Kearny’s trek into California during the Mexican War. Along the way to what would become the Golden State, Kearny traveled through New Mexico, taking control of the territory for the United States. That’s where the offending phrase came in.

The sanctuary that wasn't.

The ordeal here in the Land of Enchantment, HBC’s blurb claimed, was a “bloodless conquest.” Hmm, I thought, what about the remains of that church at Taos Pueblo I’ve written about before? Didn’t the cannon fire that reduced it to rubble spill some blood too?

I suppose the copy meant bloodless in the sense of no large-scale clash of armies, and that was certainly true. When the Mexican War began, the governor of New Mexico was Manuel Armijo, a local wealthy landowner. He asked Mexico for more troops and began to muster a volunteer force. About 1,700 U.S. soldiers under Kearny were soon on their way from Kansas to New Mexico, and they knew who the enemy’s leader was. As they marched the Americans sang a little tune with words penned by one of their own: “Oh, what a joy to fight the dons, and wallop fat Armijo! So clear the way to Santa Fe! With that we all agree, O!”

Kearny’s men reached New Mexico in August. Armijo never received the promised reinforcements (unlike in 1841, when the Mexican government sent aid to thwart a planned attack by Texans intent on seizing New Mexico for themselves—perhaps one reason among many why Texans are still somewhat scorned here today?), and he knew his local volunteers were no match for the Americans. Also influencing him were several Americans who acted as emissaries for the U.S. government. The story goes, among Anglo sources at least, that Armijo was persuaded to abandon any thought of resistance, with some greenbacks making the decision a little easier for the guv to make. The state historian here disputes that Armijo took a bribe. In any event, the governor left Santa Fe for Chihuahua and Kearny took control unopposed. It was, as New Mexican historian Marc Simmons notes, the first time U.S. troops had conquered a foreign capital. Manifest Destiny, indeed!

Some New Mexicans welcomed the commander and his troops. After all, they were American immigrants who had settled there years before. But the Spanish and Indian populations were not as thrilled. Wealthy landowners in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, fearing the inevitable Anglo land grab, began organizing a rebellion by the end of 1846. Details of the plan leaked out and the leaders were arrested. But to the north in Taos, new leaders emerged, determined to fight for their land (proving once again that one man’s freedom fighters are another’s insurgents—or, in the language of the day, “insurrectionists”).

Fort Burgwin, named for one of the American soldiers killed in Taos.

The Taos Rebellion started with the killing of the American governor, Charles Bent, in January 1847. Also killed in the first blows of the rebellion were several dozen other Americans there and in other northern towns. The Niles Register, a prominent newspaper of the day, relayed news of the deaths, noting also that “their families [were] despoiled.”

U.S. forces moved north from Santa Fe to squash the revolt, and they found the New Mexicans in the church at the Taos pueblo. Not recognizing the hiding place as a sanctuary, the Americans opened fire. Cannon shot and flame destroyed most of the church; the ruins of it are still standing next to the pueblo’s cemetery. The better-armed Americans then killed about 150 Indians and New Mexicans. Fighting also took place in Mora. The residents there fled before the invaders destroyed all the buildings and set fire to crops. Soon after, most of the rebel leaders were captured and tried for treason, an oddity given, in the words of our state historian, “the illogic and in fact illegality of convicting citizens of another nation of ‘treason.’” But invading armies are not always known for their logic or legality, eh? In any event, the convicted were executed.

And the amazing thing about these several weeks of conflict and killing? It was all bloodless.

The HBC wording that incited this rant just goes to show that you can’t always believe marketing copy (as if anyone needed the History Nerd to affirm that…).  And it seems like another example, intentional or not, of how some people tend to whitewash certain aspects of our history. But here in New Mexico, some folks don’t forget.

And So It Still Goes

As night enveloped the city of Dresden, Germany, the buzz of approaching aircraft filled the streets. From 17,000 feet up, the planes, hundreds of them, began to release their loads:  tons of incendiary, high-explosive, and conventional bombs. As the weapons pummeled the city, huge firestorms broke out. The intense heat created a vacuum that sucked the air out of the bodies of some residents. Others were charred to a crisp, never even having time to move before the fast-moving flames and searing heat engulfed their homes.

The author and subject

And as readers of one of the most influential novels of the 1960s know, Kurt Vonnegut was there.

Vonnegut was an American POW on February 13, 1945, when the infamous Dresden firebombing began. He had been one of 150 prisoners sent to a slaughterhouse in the city that the Nazis had turned into a factory to produce a malt-based, high-protein syrup. Holed up in bunker beneath the slaughterhouse, Vonnegut survived the devastating attack, then was given the job of “body miner”—he combed the rubble looking for dead civilians.

The biographer

Vonnegut’s experiences led to his writing Slaughterhouse-Five, a book 20 years in the making that finally appeared in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War. His witnessing of the Dresden horrors, his biographer Charles Shields asserts, also led to something like, if not actual, PTSD. That trauma, combined with Vonnegut’s mother’s suicide when he was about to leave home to serve overseas (on Mother’s Day, no less); his father’s seeming indifference; and Vonnegut’s own sense that he was both unable to meet expectations and didn’t fully receive the praise he deserved, fed a depression that haunted the author throughout his life.

Shields was in Santa Fe to promote his authorized biography of Vonnegut, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life, the first-ever of the writer who touched so many young Americans during the Vietnam era, and who continues to do so today. One of those 1960s teens who came under Vonnegut’s spell was Shields, and he described the “rocky friendship” that began after he finally convinced the aging, chain-smoking author to cooperate on a bio.

The biographer recounted getting phone calls from Vonnegut late at night, from a man whose second wife, the photographer Jill Krementz, cut off his access to some of his old friends. To Shields, the calls were more the grasping for human contact from a lonely, 80-something man than the attempts by a biographical subject to shape how his story would be told. Shields described how early on in their relationship, Vonnegut went off on family wounds suffered decades before. The biographer-as-therapist, I wrote in my notes, and Shields then seemed to affirm this by offering his diagnosis, describing his subject/patient as a “still-aggrieved adolescent.”

From what Shields said and what I’ve read about the book (I have not read the bio itself), he did not pull punches. Vonnegut’s affairs, his drinking, his less-than-sensitive parenting: they are all there.  Yet it’s apparent that Shields has a deep respect for the lonely, one-time suicidal, much beloved-and-also dismissed author. And he appreciates all that Vonnegut endured. The man, Shields said simply, withstood “so much pain.”

Dresden, of course, was the source of a great deal of that pain. But Vonnegut’s ordeal also gave him the book that launched his career as a best-selling author. Slaughterhouse-Five will always resonate, because Americans will always, seemingly, get involved in wars that lead to atrocities. Though, interestingly, it was our frequent partners in crime, the British, who called for the Dresden bombing.

There was a strategic element to it: The Soviets were beginning their march toward Berlin and they wanted the Allies to bomb German communication and transport centers. Dresden, among several other cities, fit that bill. Winston Churchill was particularly eager to help the Soviets and weaken German morale with major attacks on urban centers. British planes began the bombing on Dresden that created a fiery glow visible hundreds of miles away. The next day, when American bombers arrived to finish the job, they had trouble seeing targets because of all the smoke and flames.

The bombing

Historians don’t doubt that there were military targets in the city, but the leveling of Dresden and the killing of up to 60,000 civilians appalled many people after the fact. Churchill, the following month, tried to distance himself from the attack, and in recent years, some people have called the Dresden bombing (and the similar firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, carried out by U.S. planes) a war crime. The BBC has an interview with a former RAF bomber pilot who took umbrage at the charge. But there’s no question that the “total war” effort of the Allies led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Axis civilians, not even counting the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

To Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut’s alter ego in Slaughterhouse-Five—and probably to Vonnegut himself—the historical debates don’t mean much. To him, the bombing was an all-too-real nightmare that came to dominate his life. A horror no one should have experienced then, or should ever experience. Shields calls SH-5 Vonnegut’s best book, and probably few would argue that. The book, and the event it’s based on, shaped the life of a funny, touching, satirical, and sometimes-profound American writer.

No Kidding

A Robin Hood of the West.  And a punk cop-killer.

An Irish American who sided with an Englishman in a turf war—against other Irish Americans.

An East Coast urbanite who quickly adapted to the rural ways of the Hispanic Southwest.

Who are these people? No, actually, not plural; we’re talking about a single he. But not just any figure from America’s past. He’s Henry McCarty. And Henry Antrim. Also William H. Bonney.

But you may know him as Billy the Kid.

And if you don’t know much about his story except the outlaw ways, the death at the hands of Sheriff Pat Garrett, and the larger-than-life legacy, you might not know how much New Mexicans have embraced him as part of the state’s Wild West past.

Or at least some of them.

The stuff of legends, despite the somewhat goofy expression.

Billy the Kid (or BTK, as the History Nerd will sometimes refer to him for brevity’s sake), is something of a historical icon here in the Land of Enchantment. Visitors stopping at the I-40 tourist center just over the Texas border are greeted by a life-sized cut-out of the Kid, a blow-up of the only photo of him known to exist. BTK was the subject of sensational newspaper accounts during his lifetime and pulpy dime novels after, and the star of countless books and films since. The 1973 Sam Peckinpaugh version of his life might be the best-known movie, though hardly the most accurate. That title would have to go to Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. (Ha ha, despite what you may have heard, the History Nerd does have a sense of humor.) Now there’s another contender for the definitive story—as definitive as a legend’s life gets: the American Experience documentary Billy the Kid.

Apropos of BTK’s life and death in New Mexico, filmmaker John Maggio turned to several scholars and writers based here to try to get at the heart–and soul–of this orphaned youth-turned-coldblooded killer. Maggio and American Experience executive producer Mark Samels then came to Albuquerque and Santa Fe last week to give a sneak preview of the film and take part in a panel discussion of the work and its mythic subject.

To Samels, one intriguing part of the Kid story is its international scope. Henry McCarty, as he was known at birth, was the son of an Irish immigrant, Catherine McCarty (father unknown). Later in life he was befriended by the Englishman John Tunstall, and he blended easily with the Hispanic population of his adopted home of New Mexico, where he settled with his mother and stepfather. There, he quickly learned Spanish, favored wearing a sombrero, and took at least one Hispanic girlfriend. (He also won the support of the Hispanic community for challenging the Anglos who had stolen their land.) Once the legend spread, BTK became a symbol of the American West for many foreigners. His obituary appeared in a London newspaper, and Lincoln, NM, the site of his last days, is a popular tourist attraction with European visitors.

To Maggio, BTK was an underdog, an actual kid who was dealt bad breaks and made some mistakes. By 15, he was on his own, with his mother dead and his stepfather casting him off. Henry/Billy turned to petty theft, was arrested, and escaped. During his time as a fugitive he tried to go straight—briefly—but soon turned back to a life of crime. He became a murderer when a card game turned violent, though the killing might have been in self defense.

BTK killed again as he took part in the Lincoln County War, a bloody affair that pitted John Tunstall against “the House,” a local outfit that controlled the county’s politics and economics. Dozens–hundreds?–of  people died during the war, which began with Tunstall’s death in 1878 and lasted, on and off, until 1884. By then, Billy was in the ground, shot down by Pat Garrett after one more escape from the law.

Gardner's book. And he's a musician too!

Billy once joked that despite his reputation, he was not responsible for all the murders that occurred during the war. His actual death toll was in single digits. But as Mark Lee Gardner pointed out, there’s no escaping that some of those victims were officers of the law, merely trying to do their duty. In Santa Fe, Gardner joined Samels, Maggio, and writer Hampton Sides for a discussion of the film and BTK. Gardner, author of a book on the Kid, was one of the consultants for the film. He called Billy smart and passionate. He had a way of ingratiating himself with people that put them at ease. Though territorial governor Lew Wallace was not impressed when the Kid wrote to him from jail, seeking a face-to-face meeting. BTK told the governor in 1879, “I have no wish to fight again.” Wallace—a former Union general and author of Ben-Hur—made a deal with the Kid, promising him his freedom if the outlaw informed on other participants in the Lincoln County War. Billy kept up his end of the deal, but Wallace didn’t. Despite Billy’s obvious local popularity, the governor put a $500 bounty on the Kid’s head.

If Wallace was a contemporary unswayed by the growing BTK legend, Hampton Sides considers himself a modern-day Kid “contrarian.” Sides stirred up local controversy in 2010 when he came out against the idea of departing New Mexico governor Bill Richardson’s granting him a pardon (Richardson eventually demurred). Sides ran up against the many New Mexicans—and other Americans—who see BTK as a lovable antihero, or at least a symbol of part of America’s Western heritage. And of course, Sides also inflamed the folks in these parts who make money off the tourists who embrace the symbol.

Me and the Kid...

The American Experience film premieres on January 10. I’ll watch to see how the rest of this revisionist look at the Kid plays out. I think Maggio worked extremely hard to be as accurate as he could be, given the limitations he faced—only a few letters and the one, just one, photo of the Kid. But legends do have a way of transcending historical sources, and a cowboy cash cow like Henry McCarty will surely spark more books and films. Me, I can’t wait for the sequel to BTK vs. Dracula.

Deja Vu All Over Again?

They call it Liberty Square, the hundreds of people who have been staying at what was commonly known as Zuccotti Park until Occupy Wall Street began some six weeks ago. Now, the leaderless organization, holding “general assemblies” that rely on consensus, has built a small community that is the nexus of the larger protest movement that has spread so far beyond Manhattan. Within Liberty Square you’ll find a sleeping area, a medical station, a supply depot, a commissary, and—what caught my eye, as well as the peepers of many others–a library.

Plan your next stay in NYC

What do you know, this rabble, as the vulpine conservative pundits would have you think of them, can actually read. Yes, and they can create their own security force, provide sanitation, produce media accounts, and even rein in the drumming circles that once kept awake neighbors.

This exercise in spontaneous community building during an era of economic hardship led me to think of the Bonus Army. You remember that fighting force, yes? Not a crack team sent to drive out some foreign tyrant or bring democracy to a distant land, the Bonus Army was made up of veterans who, during the early years of the Great Depression, wanted the bonus they had been promised for fighting in World War I. You see, losing jobs and homes and life savings made some of the vets a little desperate—and impatient.

After years of wrangling, Congress in 1924 agreed to give the vets money as compensation for the pay they lost giving up their civilian jobs to answer their government’s call (you know, for that war to end all wars—and, as some of its critics would have it, the war to aid all capitalists). President Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge vetoed the bill, saying it would be a budget buster. Congress overrode the veto, and the vets had their so-called bonus: money based on their length of service, plus interest, payable in 1945, or when they died (which of course meant some would not get much pleasure out of their hard-earned bonus. This led to a nickname for the payment—the Tombstone Bonus).

The Depression, though, convinced many of the vets that they couldn’t wait till 1945 or their interment. Starting in 1932, some of them demanded the money pronto. One of them was Walter W. Waters of Portland, Oregon. He led a group of vets from his hometown on a march to Washington D.C. Along the way, many more former doughboys and their families, from all across the country, joined this Bonus Army. In DC, they set up camp at the Anacostia Flats not far from the Capitol. Some military and government honchos saw a subversive element at work, and several Communists did try to exploit the movement, Still, most of the 25,000 or so strong at the main Anacostia camp and smaller ones around the city were what they said they were: honest, patriotic vets looking for what they felt they were owed for their service. Waters, fearful of disruptions that would bring down the authorities or turn public support against them, laid down this edict: “No panhandling, no liquor, no radical talk.”

Camp Marks

Like the Wall Street occupiers, the vets soon built a self-regulating community, but on a much vaster scale. Camp Marks, as it was called (named for a friendly local cop), had a barbershop, its own newspaper, classes for the children, musicians (but as far as I know, no drum circles), baseball teams, and, yes, a library. Most amazingly for the times, the camp was integrated. For housing, some of the “soldiers” slept in donated tents, while other scavenged a local dump for items they could use to cobble together makeshift huts.

Occupy Wall Street, its spokespeople say, has few specific demands. The Bonus Army, though, was in Washington for one thing: to get their bonuses as soon as possible. In June, Congress considered a bill that would do just that, drawing several thousand of the marchers to Capitol Hill. The House approved the early payment; the Senate nixed it. The protest seemed to be over, but Waters and others vowed to remain in DC until they got what they wanted.

A certain general loved the smell of wooden shanties in the afternoon...

I wish I could say there was a happy ending to this tale. Alas, alas…On July 28 police and Bonus Army participants who had been camped in downtown DC clashed. This led the military to head into the city, using a force that had been secretly preparing for just such an event. Eagerly leading the army was none other then General Douglas MacArthur, with a somewhat more reluctant Major Dwight D. Eisenhower by his side.  Also taking part was some officer named Patton. Cavalry troops, tanks, and tear-gas tossing infantry drove the people off the streets, then headed for Camp Marks. More tear gas and the fires the soldiers set dispersed the remaining marchers. Not an episode of our glorious history certain Americans would like you to know too much about, hmm?

It wasn’t just the library that led me to connect the Bonus Army to the Occupy movement. The attack on Iraq War vet Scott Olsen did it too, though he is obviously looking for something different than what the marchers of ’32 sought. Or is he? I guess you could say social justice is at play in both circumstances. I just hope the larger Occupy movement doesn’t face today’s equivalent of MacArthur and Patton on some city street.

(An added note on Olsen: It appears there may have been an attempt by some right wingers to smear him, just as good ol’ J. Edgar Hoover tried to taint the Bonus Army with exaggerated claims of Red influence [uh, people do still remember that Red=Communist, right?]. Read more on that here and here.

And for more info on the Bonus Army, check out Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen, The Bonus Army: An American Epic; this Smithsonian article; or this website.)

The Newest Old Amendment

When was the last time you thought about the 27th Amendment?

Umm, maybe never?

You know, it was the last one ratified, back in 1992. It deals with….hmm. What does it deal with again? I know it didn’t repeal Prohibition, because I was drinking legally way before 1992. Quartering troops? No, no, that’s one of the early ones; Third, maybe? Ah, I know, it’s the Equal Rights Amend–oops. Well, that would have been the 27th, if enough states had ratified it in time.

I didn't hear a harrumph out of you...

OK, so here is the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, confirmed by Congress on May 20, 1992, just two weeks or so after Michigan became the requisite 38th state to ratify it:

“No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”

So maybe not as sexy, say, as the ones about not abridging free speech or having a speedy and public trial or giving women the right to vote. But there it is, the law of the land. And why, you may ask, does the History Nerd care? Because he was challenged in a class the other night to explore the roots of this amendment, and he never (well…) backs away from a historical challenge.

Short on height, but long on the legal smarts

Our newest amendment actually has a long pedigree, something that poked at me with unsure familiarity when the challenge first arose. Long indeed: It was one of the original proposed amendments penned by James Madison in 1789. He introduce nine to the House; the representatives eventually sent 17 to the Senate. The two bodies then whittled that down to the 12 that  were sent to the states for ratification. The states accepted ten, the amendments to the Constitution that we know today as the Bill of Rights.

Why did Madison want an amendment governing Congressional pay raises? He knew people didn’t always trust their lawmakers (surprise!). And some lawmakers once in awhile try to benefit from their position (surprise  again!). Madison believed lawmakers shouldn’t be able to vote themselves a raise, unless they faced reelection before they actually got the cash. The election would allow voters, in effect, to give a thumbs up-or-down on the raise. Or at least if their particular lawmaker got to benefit from it.

A handy-dandy document, when not flouted by certain presidents and lawmakers...

The amendment won some support in the states. Six of the thirteen voted to ratify, but that fell short of the nine needed to put it in the Constitution. So, the ratified amendments took effect, and Madison‘s Amendment, as it’s now called just sat…wherever it is failed amendments go. But all hope was not lost,  because the Congress of 1789 did not put a time limit on the ratification process for the first proposed amendments (unlike today).

Decades passed, and Ohio ratified it. Meanwhile, the country continued to grow, meaning the number of states needed to pass the amendment  grew too. By 1959, with the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, Madison‘s Amendment needed approval from 31 more states. A pretty daunting figure for an admittedly obscure amendment. But then something happened.

People began to get really pissed at their members of Congress. And the raises they sometimes voted themselves. A retroactive pay raise spurred Wyoming in 1978 to ratify the amendment. Then, during the 1980s, a college student researching it began his own Constitutional crusade, to get the amendment ratified once and for all. (See a real legal authority’s take on this here.) Ralph Nader came on board too, and as the effort steamrolled, a 1989 Washington Post article spurred the final push. And so the 27th Amendment came to grace our Constitution.

Has the amendment impacted the lives of most Americans? I think we know the answer. The judicial system is not exactly flooded with cases relating to it. My quick research found just one U.S. Supreme Court issuance that referenced it: a dissent by Justice Stephen Breyer (joined by Scalia and Kennedy) on a denial of certiorari in Williams v. United States (535 U.S. 911 [1992], for all you legal geeks).

You, you mean, I lost?

But I did find a more substantive U.S. Court of Appeals case that dealt with it, Boehner v. Anderson (30 F. 3d 156, 308 U.S. App. D.C. 94  [1994], and yes, the same House Minority Leader John Boehner now often seen on the news saying all those constructive things about our president). Read more at your leisure, but the gist was that a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for Congress did not violate the amendment because the increase went into effect after an election. Boehner also argued that if that COLA law were constitutional, then a later elimination of the COLA violated the amendment because no election took place between the passing of the later law and the varying (lowering) of his pay. The court punted on that one and did not rule. The whole thing confuses me: Boehner says Congress couldn’t raise his pay with a COLA, but couldn’t take away the most recent COLA either? The court’s decision notes the “seemingly contradictory factual claims of injury.” Whew. I thought it was  just me. No, not surprisingly, it was Boehner.

At least one legal scholar (John Dean, in the article I linked to above), says Congress has routinely ignored the 27th Amendment since its certification. COLAs taken since 1997 have violated its provisions, but no one has ever been given standing to challenge Congress on this. (As of Dean’s admittedly old article; but at the least, any challenge has not gotten to the SCOTUS or stopped the COLAs. In 2009. however, Rep. Dan Burton, R-IN, introduced one of several bills to ax the COLA; all seemed to have died in committee.)  The courts have been sticking with the argument that the original law calling for COLAs was passed in accordance with the amendment, so everything’s kosher (read more about the whole thing here).

So, there you have it – challenge met with a quick history of the 27th Amendment. Makes fascinating reading, doesn’t it? You‘re welcome.

The Real Dracula and Other History Stuff

I am among the nerdiest of the history nerds. Need proof?

Historiography excites me, baby.

I didn’t know what historiography was until my senior year of high school, and I think it’s safe to say I wasn’t introduced to the basic concept, without the hifalutin’ name, before  then. You see, back in the 70s, nobody but professional historians and their collegiate charges really cared about the nuances of historical interpretation, the shifting social climates and the individual biases that shape the documenting of history. For the average Joe, history was still largely fueled by Official Story, god-bless-America interpretations of the past (and probably still is). Any attempt to pull back the curtain on cherished myths, to suggest Americans ever did anything wrong in their march toward fulfilling their destiny as God’s truly chosen people (sorry, 12 Tribes) was verboten. Or done only by those commie-inspired revisionists hell-bent on destroying the country and turning us over to the Russkies.

What’s changed since then? Well, educators actually introduce the idea of historiography to much younger students, as I’ve learned in the books I’ve written. They don’t need to know the h word to understand that historians change their interpretations of facts and people as new material is uncovered and old theories are proved wanting. And because of this, there’s a greater willingness to accept challenges to some of the American myths, though conservatives are still apt to sneer out the word revisionist when attacking the historians they don’t like, even if no one believes those historians get their marching orders from Moscow. Actually, both the right and left seem to use revisionist as an epithet. I dunno, to me revisionism is just accepting new facts and adapting accordingly. But whose facts do we accept? And what happens if we don’t agree which facts are true? (Maybe David Byrne should be the troubadour for the modern historian: “facts all comes with points of view, facts don’t do what I want them too…“)

Dig that 'stache!

What deep, contentious point of history got me thinking about all this? Dracula. The real Dracula that is, Prince Vlad III of Wallachia, Son of the Dragon, Vlad Tepes – Vlad the Impaler. Historical study of Dracula is not new: Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally pioneered it here in the States several decades ago, and certainly Romanian and other Eastern European scholars have recounted his deeds for centuries. Of course, the modern American interest is fueled by the prince’s sharing a name with a certain fictional bloodsucker you may have heard something about…

I’m doing a book on the real Vlad Dracula, with an emphasis on the horrible-but-true exploits that filled his three short reigns in Wallachia (no, not Transylvania; Vlad had plenty of connections to the other count’s stomping grounds, but he did not rule or build a castle there). The problem is, some of the sources on Vlad are, well, sketchy. Either they were written down years after his death, or they were based on oral history, or, most commonly, they were written by people with an axe to grind.

More stakes! We need more stakes!

The worst of the tales come from German propaganda printed during Vlad’s life and after his death. Gutenberg’s press let the proto-tabloids churn out grotesque depictions of Vlad’s cruelty toward Germans living in Transylvania.  Some of the deeds are corroborated in other places. Some are really exaggerated or just plain unprovable by more objective sources. The impalements by the hundreds – nobody disputes that. But forcing mothers to eat their own children; well… The German press, however, did the most to shape the image of Dracula as a blood-crazed (though not blood-drinking) madman.

Turkish sources are also not flattering, since Dracula battled the Ottomans and impaled a few of them along the way. Which was not a very nice payback for the fine education he received at their hands years before, when his father Vlad II, Dracul (dragon), turned two of his sons over to the Turks. Since the days of the Persians and Romans, rulers sometimes left their boys with putative allies or potential enemies, a diplomatic move meant to show loyalty to more powerful nations. Vlad would be less likely to disobey the Turks if his sons were in their care. The Turks, in response, had an obligation to treat the young princes well, unless their father screwed up. Around the time of Vlad III’s stay in Turkish hands, the son of another European ruler had his eyes poked out when Dad upset the Turkish hosts.

The remains of Castle Dracula, at Poenari; the one at Bran often labeled such is an impostor

Romanian sources, not surprisingly, are a little kinder to Vlad. Sure, he impaled people. But those were lawless times. He was just trying to bring a little order to a chaotic land. And rein in the boyars, nobles who tried to keep Wallachia decentralized and under their influence. And don’t forget all the pretenders to Vlad’s throne that he had to thwart. In an era when war and brutality were part of life, Vlad did what he had to do to secure his rule, strengthen Wallachia, and keep out those damn Muslim Turks always knocking at the door.

So, the modern historians sift through these sources, looking for parallel accounts that seem to offer more credibility than others, and paint as true a picture as possible of the real Dracula. But of course, the interpretations differ; that‘s what makes history such a fun bloodsport.

An illustrated version of Dracula's story, as retold by your humble narrator

One small conflict developed a few years ago. Florescu and McNally noted the parallels in the real Vlad‘s life and the details Bram Stoker incorporated in his book.  For a time, the two historians thought Stoker got some of his info from a Hungarian historian he knew. The character of Van Helsing, claimed by some to be Stoker’s alter ego, mentions the Hungarian by name: Arminius (last name Vambery). Stoker and Vambery did dine together several times, but there is no evidence in Stoker’s detailed notes for Dracula that he based the fictional count on Vlad the Impaler, other than some of the general bits of Romanian history and geography. Now, Stoker got plenty of things wrong, but he wasn’t writing history. And Stoker did not base his count on the real Dracula, as far as any blood-sucking tendencies. Vampire legends were common, and the author was already writing his when he learned about the real Vlad and used elements of his life and times in Dracula.

Another Dracula scholar, Elizabeth Miller, has worked hard to discredit the Vlad-Count Dracula connection, which other writers have hyped, so people will not associate the real prince with Stoker’s creation. She wants to “separate fact from hypothesis” and “vehemently challenge the widespread view that Stoker was knowledgeable about the historical Dracula”  (more on this here).

Does all this really matter to you and me, how we live our lives, or whether or not we enjoy Stoker’s book? No. But for the historian, it’s all part of what we do: Point out inaccuracies. Debunk myths.  Find the truth of a matter, as much as it can be found.  As much as there is any one truth. And of course, there never really is. Hence, historigraphy.

My Vlad book will talk a little about the different views of the 15th-century-prince, but only a little. The kids want to read about the blood and guts. But I hope I will help them understand that the fictional count and Vlad the Impaler have only the loosest of connections. And then I move onto another historiographical hotty: What really happened before the attack on Pearl Harbor? Who knew what? Incompetence or conspiracy? I’ll let you know when I find out.

[For the historically curious, a good oveview of historiography as a broad concept is John Burrow‘s A History of Histories. I especially like the bits on ancient and medieval history. See a good review of it here, which notes the shortcomings I was too ignorant to see, while still offering some overall praise. A perfect gift for the history geek in your life.]

Father and Son, Fallen Senators

The senator

Senator Chris Dodd’s announcement that he would not seek reelection this year stirred up mixed feelings. He has been one of my U.S.  senators for most of my adult life, and I’ve respected most of his stances as well as his political skill. I was out of the state during the last few years, when bad judgment and perhaps the disease fatal to so many incumbents – creeping entitlementosis – derailed his career. By choosing not to run, I think he made the right decision for the Democratic Party, and maybe he can use his last year in Washington to salvage his reputation a bit, instead of fending off constant attacks, as he would have had to do on the campaign trail.

Dodd with LBJ - a happier time in the Senate

Some political pundits say that for many years now, Dodd has also tried to salvage another man’s reputation: his father‘s. Through the years, I knew that Thomas Dodd faced censure in the Senate, though I had never delved into the details. Afterward, in 1970, he lost the support of Democrats in Connecticut and unsuccessfully ran as an independent, losing to Lowell Weicker. (Weicker then made his national reputation during Watergate and showed rare political backbone as governor of Connecticut, calling for an income tax. And as any political junkies reading know, Weicker lost his Senate seat to Jowlin‘ Joe Lieberman.)

Chris Dodd's wee bit o' Eire

Dodd‘s loss may not have impacted his health, but it‘s hard not to think that his death in 1971, of a heart attack at 64, came sooner than it might have if his career had not taken such a turn. No, no passive voice there: if he had not erred, had not flouted ethics and diverted campaign funds to his own use. A man respected for many years of public service made a big mistake, just as his son seemed to do by accepting a sweetheart mortgage and paying less-than-market value for a vacation home in Ireland.

The elder Dodd had stepped into controversy earlier in his career as well. He failed the Connecticut bar exam and friends supposedly had the rules changed so he could still practice law in the state. (Details of this were not revealed, as far as I can tell, until the 1960s, in a column by Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. Their digging also led to the charges that put Dodd in hot water in the Senate. Dodd later sued the newsmen, who had informants sneak into Dodd’s office to retrieve personal files. Dodd lost his case.) But for the most part, Dodd had served well, earning high marks for his work as assistant prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. If he had not entered politics, Dodd would have sealed a favorable reputation in the history books.

During the mid-1930s, Dodd had been a G-man, once taking part in a trap meant to capture John Dillinger. Starting in 1938, he worked in the U.S. attorney general’s office, prosecuting the KKK on civil-rights charges and overseeing cases involving such crimes as fraud and espionage. But the Nuremberg assignment was the topper. Leading the prosecution was Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson, who had briefly been Dodd’s boss in the Justice Department. He respected Dodd’s work in court and eventually made Dodd his right-hand man on the U.S. legal team.

Dodd was not universally loved, even then. Joseph Persico, in his book Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial, notes how one critic called the prosecutor a “phony grandstander” and another said he was a “glory hound” (charges some of his son’s critics might wield today?). But others, Persico writes, considered Dodd “a formidable prosecutor and a quick study” who could, with the right material, “make it sing” in court.

I came across Dodd’s Nuremberg accomplishments while writing a book on the trial (which, alas, was killed by the publisher before I finished it). Here’s how I described Dodd’s most memorable day in the German court, December 13, 1945:

Presenting the gruesome evidence

Thomas Dodd introduced more shocking evidence from the camps. One commander had killed prisoners who had colorful tattoos on their skin. The skin was then removed and made into lampshades for the commander’s wife. Dodd revealed some of the lampshades to the stunned court. Then he began to describe another object taken from a camp: “…a human head with the skull bone removed, shrunken, stuffed, and preserved.” The Nazis had decapitated the prisoner, Dodd explained, “and fashioned this terrible ornament from his head.” At times, the evidence brought gasps from the people in the courtroom. Other times, they fell silent as Dodd explained more Nazi horrors.

Grandstanding, or an effective prosecutor doing his best to viscerally convey the horrors of the Holocaust? I go with the latter, realizing that grandstanding is not necessarily a bad thing during a trial. And Persico presents a Dodd who voluntarily passed up the chance to question one of the most famous Nazi defendants, Albert Speer. Dodd granted Speer’s request to give Jackson the honor. Dodd had “no ego stake in the assignment,” Persico writes. Others at the court thought Speer wanted the higher-ranking Jackson to cross-examine him because of Dodd’s reputation as a “tough, skilled, dangerous prosecutor.”

Dodd had another strong day in court in April 1946, as he cross- examined Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party’s chief theorist on the superiority of the Aryan race and inferiority of the Jews. During the war he served as head of the Reich’s occupied eastern territories. Rosenberg, the New York Times reported, tried to portray himself as a “kindly benefactor” who called for good treatment of the Jews and Slavs under his control. Rosenberg said, “Where an excess took place – and some terrible excesses took place – I did my utmost to prevent it or alleviate it.” Dodd, the paper said, “destroyed” Rosenberg’s self-serving self portrait “and forced the German to admit responsibility for the Nazi regime in the plundered and devastated lands of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe.”

For his work in Nuremberg, Dodd received several honors, including the Medal of Freedom. He entered politics in 1952, winning a seat in Congress. For the next four years, he was the only Democrat from Connecticut in the House, showing how much the political pendulum has swung in the state since then; today, all five representatives are Democrats, though I don’t think anyone will be surprised if that changes come November.

The loving father with his son

In 1956 Dodd ran for the Senate and lost to the Republican incumbent, Prescott Bush (that last name might ring a bell. And isn‘t it amazing that over the last sixty years, the small state of Connecticut has turned out so many senators who made a lasting impact on national politics – for good or ill…). Dodd lost that race, but finally won a Senate seat in 1958. He gained a reputation as a staunch anti-Communist, influenced by what he saw of Soviet tactics and attitudes during the Nuremberg trial. According to a 1966 Times report, Dodd also alienated his fellow senators, sometimes ignoring the institution‘s traditions and generally stepping on toes. The article appeared as a Senate committee was already investigating Dodd’s alleged improprieties, which soon drew national attention.

Dodd’s reputation probably did not help him the next year, when the censure vote came up. 92 out of out 97 senators voted for censure. The Senate heard that Dodd used some of his campaign fund to make home improvements (shades of Alaska’s Ted Stevens and Connecticut governor John Rowland, both brought down, in part, for a similar offense) and pay taxes. Dodd was just the seventh senator to be censured, a punishment that does not take away any senatorial prerogatives, just a person’s good name. Dodd maintained his innocence throughout the ordeal and said on the Senate floor, “I believe now, I shall continue to believe, that history will justify my conduct and my character.”

Yes, history -  or the people who write it and read it – do judge after the fact. I’m not sure if the good of Dodd’s career outweighs the bad. Thankfully, my verdict really doesn’t matter. I do believe, like others, that Chris Dodd hoped to vindicate his father. That was part of the reason why he published letters his father sent  home during the Nuremberg trial, trying to remind Americans of the elder Dodd’s important service. (The book was also timed to give Dodd some positive public press as he began his quixotic run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, as well as launch an attack on some Bush-era policies.) But even that opened a can of worms, as some people thought comments Thomas Dodd made in his letters about “too many Jews” at Nuremberg hinted at anti-Semitism. Chris Dodd rejected that notion, which is why he published the potentially incendiary words. (See more on this here.)

Removing the tarnish from his father’s reputation surely motivated Senator Chris Dodd to take the lead in establishing a research center at the University of Connecticut named for the elder senator. The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center houses a human-rights institute, a center for Judaic studies, and various special collections – including Dodd’s papers. And winning a Senate seat was also part of the redemption for the father by the son. Chris Dodd once told his brother, “Every time I walk on the Senate floor, I feel that he’s vindicated.”

That vindication will end in January 2011. Chris Dodd will have to find other ways to honor his father. And perhaps he will find some way to restore his own reputation, so history will justify his conduct and character, highlight the good he achieved in public office, rather than illuminate the missteps and perhaps arrogance that ended his tenure.