Monday, October 31, 2011

Augusta, GA has a few ghost stories to share

From the Augusta Chronicle: Augusta has a few ghost stories to share
An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.
– Charles Dickens

Augusta, GA isn’t really what you would call a ghost town, but sometimes over the past 200 years something strange has happened, and this newspaper has tried to explain it.

With Halloween almost here, you might be in the spirit to set out on a ghost hunt.

You could start at the Ezekiel Harris House on Broad Street near the new Kroc Center. During the Ameri­can Revolution, a bitter British commander hung 13 patriots nearby. Naturally, there are those who report that strange lights are sometimes seen in the vicinity. Odd sounds are heard, too.

On the other end of Broad at the corner of Fifth Street is the famous “Haun­ted Pillar.” This lonely column is what’s left of an old market building destroyed by an 1878 tornado. The “haunted” part is a local legend – move the pillar or touch it, and you’re supposed to die.

The truth is the pillar has been moved a lot, and if you want to get picky, it’s not even the original. In 1935, The Chronicle reported, an automobile hit it and “reduced it to a pile of brick and cement.” The driver was not injured; the pillar was rebuilt. On a Friday the 13th in 1958, this newspaper said, the column was toppled when an oversized bale of cotton fell from a passing truck. The driver was not injured.

Maybe the curse involves bad driving.

Walk down the street a few blocks into Olde Town, and you might see something spooky. On both July 11 and July 13, 1871, The Chronicle reported a ghost frightening residents. It turned out to be a mentally unbalanced girl wandering in her nightclothes.

Now on to Walton Way. In June 1903, The Chronicle reported that ghosts were seen at Meadow Garden, the former home of George Walton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Maybe it was George and political rival William Few renewing a political argument.

Keep going up Walton Way, and you arrive at the campus of Augusta State Uni­versity, scene of one of our town’s most repeated ghost stories.

According to both Chronicle reports and a Georgia ghost story anthology, a professor strolling across campus one spring night reported seeing a man dressed as a Confederate officer walking in the old Walker family cemetery. Then he vanished.

The professor said he didn’t believe in ghosts, but he could offer no other explanation. We’ll have to take his word for it, and you can take my word for this: If you do see something spooky Mon­day night, it won’t be me.

I should be at my own front door passing our treats. Don’t get greedy. Crowd control will be handled by my vigilant little assistant in a dog costume.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Cheraw’s Revolutionary War history remembered

From the Cheraw Chronicle, South Carolina: Cheraw’s Revolutionary War history remembered
More than 230 years after their death, British soldiers who perished in Cheraw during the American Revolutionary War will be remembered in a special service this November at Old St. David’s Cemetery.

What began as a conversation between Cheraw Mayor Scott Hunter and local physician Dr. Joe Newsom three years ago, evolved into extensive research for British natives and Cheraw residents Noel and Stephanie Briggs.

“In our conversation, Dr. Newsom mentioned that while Cheraw gave attention to the Civil War, our Revolutionary War history was also rich,” Hunter said. “That reminded me what I had always heard about the graves of the unknown British soldiers. With Noel’s and Stephanie’s British heritage, I knew they would be interested.”

Several books, with references to the graves of these soldiers, have been written, including “History of the Old Cheraws,” by Alexander Gregg, the rector of St. David’s Church from 1846 until 1859.

After Hunter approached the Briggs, requesting their assistance identifying the soldiers buried at Old St. David’s Church, Stephanie Briggs spent more than two years researching anything she could find regarding the British soldiers’ time in Cheraw.

The soldiers, from the Fraser Highlanders 71st Regiment of Foot, served in the army of King George III. Encamped in Cheraw during the summer of 1780, these men fought in more battles and skirmishes in both the Northern and Southern Campaigns than any other British regiment. Following the Fall of Charleston to the British in May 1780, Lord Charles Cornwallis ordered detachments from the Regiment to Cheraw. Arriving in Cheraw on June 9, 1780, the soldiers camped near the Great Pee Dee River, not far from Old St. David’s Church.

Searching the British Public Records Office in London as well as libraries and museums in the United States and the United Kingdom, the Briggs also made contacts with researchers in several other countries in their attempt to complete the task requested by Mayor Hunter. The Briggs confirmed that the original Commanding Officer of the Highlanders left the Regiment to return to England. He later died, after an illustrious career, and was buried in Westminster Abbey in London. However, the Briggs’ research indicated two officers and several men from the Regiment had indeed died from fever contracted in Cheraw during the summer of 1780. Unfortunately, neither the major who commanded them, nor the surgeon who treated the men, made any reference to the deaths of their soldiers, or their names, in their correspondence, probably due to the restrictions placed on them.

So while the names of the 71st Highlanders who died in Cheraw that summer of 1780 will forever remain a mystery, they will be commemorated at a special service to be held in the cemetery at Old St David’s Church on Nov. 13 at 3 p.m. At that time, a new headstone and markers at the graves will be dedicated, telling future generations more of the story about these soldiers of the Fraser Highlanders, who died with honor serving their King, far away from their Scottish homeland.

Also, during that weekend, there will be a “Round Table Workshop” held in the conference room of the Cheraw Police Department on Nov. 12 from 9:30 a.m. to noon. At that time, researchers and historians from the organization, Southern Campaign of the American Revolution (SCAR), will meet to share information on the Revolutionary War in the southern states. This session will be free, and the public is welcome to attend, although space may become limited.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Porter pastels depict battlefields of Revolutionary War

From The Daily News (NY): Porter pastels depict battlefields of Revolutionary War
GENESEO -- Historians reckon that one-third of all the battles of the American Revolution occurred in New York State.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, artist and Livingston County native J. Erwin Porter embarked on a comprehensive project to paint many of those battlefields in their then-contemporary settings. He visited and painted 22 battle sites.

This collection has never been on display -- until now.

A portion of the historic Porter paintings will be shown at the Lockhart Gallery, 26 Main St., beginning Saturday. The exhibit remains on view until Dec. 3.

An opening reception is sheduled Oct. 29, and will include uniformed members of Sons of the American Revolution. After the Lockhart show, the collection will move to the Livingston Arts Center in Mount Morris.

Livingston County Historian Amie Alden described the paintings as "absolutely gorgeous."

J. Erwin Porter (1903-1981), who lived in Penfield, was raised in Livingston County and graduated from Livonia High School. His career was spent in illustration, art direction, and advertising. He indulged an interest in New York State history and historic sites in his artwork.

His "All along the Erie Canal" series of pastels has been displayed throughout the state, most recently during the World Canal Conference in Rochester in September 2010.

Porter was also celebrated for his illustrations in children's books in the 1920s. His trademark was the sometime inclusion of a small human figure (typically interpreted to be Porter himself) tucked someplace in his painting.

Much of Porter's work has been accepted by the State Museum of New York, through the donations of Porter's son Jon, a Geneseo attorney, and Jon's brothers.

Porter's Revolutionary War battle series has been out of public view since its initial donation.

Stored away in the State Museum for 30 years, all the paintings were in need of some degree of restoration.

Three years of lobbying efforts by Alden, Jon Porter and the Sons of the American Revolution were required to get the museum to surrender the paintings for restoration and public showing. The Sons of the American Revolution have supplied substantial funds for the pastels to be matted and framed. Twelve of the total 22 battle scenes have been prepared for public viewing.

Alden anticipates that the balance of the paintings will be ready for inclusion in the collection by the end of this year.

Included in the collection and exhibit, will be two Livingston County Revolutionary War sites: The Groveland Ambuscade and the Torture Tree in Cuylerville, both named as state and national Historic Sites.

At Groveland, a Continental Army scouting party led by Lt. Thomas Boyd stumbled into, and foiled, an ambush of Gen. Sullivan's entire army, which had been set by Loyalist forces under John Butler and Joseph Brant -- but few of Boyd's party survived. As captives, Boyd and fellow soldier Michael Parker were taken to Little Beard's Town near present-day Cuylerville and, after interrogation by Butler, tortured by the British Seneca allies. Legend has the tortures taking place below the still-standing oak.

The County Historian's Office received funds from the Community Arts Grant program administered by the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts to present the exhibit.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

21 October: Historical Society presents "Antique Swords of Fairhaven"

Yes, it's a week too late, but the news is interesting.

From South Coast Today, Massachusetts: Historical Society presents "Antique Swords of Fairhaven"

FAIRHAVEN — The Fairhaven Historical Society is presenting a special program on Friday, Oct. 21, entitled "Antique Swords of Fairhaven."

The illustrated lecture will be held at the Fairhaven Town Hall, at 7:30 p.m. The presentation will be made by two experts in the field, Jerry Alferes and John Cook.

Mr. Alferes has worked with Japanese expert Ogawa obtaining rubbings of the Japanese sword, given to the Town of Fairhaven in 1918. He can share many insights into the history of the sword and its historical significance.

Mr. Cook will contribute expertise in the field of American and British swords from the Revolutionary War and later.

He will comment on the British sword captured by Nathaniel Pope of Fairhaven during the first naval battle of the Revolutionary War.

One of the heroes of the first naval capture, during the American Revolution, was Captain Nathaniel Pope.

On May 13, 1775, approximately three weeks after the battle of Lexington, Fairhaven's Captain Pope and two military companies were warned that a 20- gun English ship was sailing into Vineyard Haven.

Two decoy sloops, manned and armed, were in the bay. Captain Pope, with 25 military volunteers, left Fairhaven harbor in a foggy evening on the old, 40-ton sloop, the Success. They succeeded in capturing one of the vessels and brought both the vessel and the 13 enemy prisoners to Fairhaven.

One of the swords that will be presented at the lecture has historically been regarded as the one taken by Captain Pope from that encounter.

The Pope family has kindly let this prize from the early input of Fairhaven into the Revolutionary War, be exhibited.

Washington Crossing documentary will focus on the big Revolutionary War win


From Philly.com: Washington Crossing documentary will focus on the big Revolutionary War win
The story of George Washington and his colonial troops crossing the Delaware on Christmas Day 1776 and routing the Hessians the next day has all the elements of a Hollywood blockbuster - action, intrigue, suspense. Even sex.

That's why Robert Child, an award-winning director of historical documentaries, is gearing up to film America's First D-Day - Washington Crossing in Bucks County.

"There are several aspects that most people don't know," Child said this week. "There actually were three crossings, in the middle of a nor'easter. And there was a mystery woman."

Producers are negotiating with CSI: NY star Gary Sinise to narrate the 90-minute film, and Mad Men's Jon Hamm "would be the ideal Washington," Child said. Casting is scheduled to start next month, with the hiring of many local actors.

Monday, October 24, 2011

How Ben Franklin Organized Our Economic Independence

From Executive Intelligence Review: How Ben Franklin Organized Our Economic Independence
by Anton Chaitkin
There are in every country certain important crises when exertion or neglect must produce consequences of the utmost moment. The [present] period ... [is] clearly of this description.

Our money absorbed by a wanton consumption of imported luxuries, a fluctuating paper medium substituting in its stead, foreign commerce extremely circumscribed and a federal government ineffective [and] disjointed, tell us...plainly that further negligence may ruin us forever.

An extraordinary meeting was held at Benjamin Franklin's home on Friday, May 11, 1787, to hear an outline for the economic policy and national mission that the United States Constitution should be designed to carry out.

The tight-knit grouping of American nationalists who had directed the Revolutionary War would use this policy paper to instruct the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, scheduled to open three days later.

The essay begins with the words quoted above, which speak to us with special urgency in the present world crisis. It has never been published since 1787, and has been retrieved from an archival copy for the present report. It is entitled "An Enquiry into the Principles on which a Commercial System for the United States Should be Founded, Read before the Society for Political Enquiries, Convened at the House of His Excellency Benjamin Franklin, Esquire, in Philadelphia May 11, 1787."

After Franklin and his colleagues approved it, the then-anonymous author, Philadelphia merchant Tench Coxe, dedicated it thus: "To the Honorable the Members of the Convention, assembled at Philadelphia for federal Purposes, this Essay is most respectfully inscribed by Their obedient and Most humble Servant, The Author, May 12, 1787."

It was printed as a 52-page pamphlet over the weekend and published Monday, May 14, 1787, the day the Constitutional Convention officially opened, and was distributed to each delegate to the Convention.

The pamphlet sets forth a nationalist program guide to survival, contrary to the British doctrine of Free Trade and submission to the empire.

The new U.S. national government should have "prohibitory powers ... enabling Congress to prevent the importation of such foreign commodities, as are made from our own raw materials."

It should promote the creation of machine-powered industries such as "casting and steel furnaces" utilizing water power, and it is "probable also that a frequent use of steam engines will add greatly to this class of factories."

The "great natural powers of the country will [otherwise] remain inactive and useless. Our numerous mill seats ... [for making] flour, oil, paper, snuff, gunpowder, ironwork, woolen cloth, boards and [ships] ... would be given by providence in vain" (emphasis in original).

Promoting and protecting "a manufacture of our own produce," and our fisheries, and our coastal merchant shipping, "ought not by any means be sacrificed to the interests of foreign trade, or subjected to injury by the wild speculations of ignorant adventurers."

The Federal government must be able to veto state laws that interfere with this forceful national development policy. And rather than letting the South remain a de facto colonial sector of the British, the government should see to it that "the produce of the southern states should be exchanged for such manufactures as can be made by the northern."

The pamphlet concludes by stressing that the national government must have taxation power and regulatory powers to carry out "the restoration of public credit."

The Society for Political Inquiries which published the Coxe paper had been organized by Benjamin Franklin late in 1786, following the call for a Constitutional Convention issued at the prior Annapolis Conference. Franklin, then the governor of Pennsylvania, had employed Tench Coxe as a delegate of the state to the Annapolis Conference.

The Society for Political Inquiries was an arm of the central group of nationalists, led by Franklin and George Washington, who had together run the finance, military policy, and diplomacy of the American Revolution.
The Leadership that Met that Day

This close-knit group of leaders had taken charge of the Revolution, beginning in June of 1775, two months after the patriots' first battles with British forces in Massachusetts.

Meeting in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress officially created the Continental Army on June 14, 1775, and appointed Washington its commander the next day.

On June 30, the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly, also meeting in Philadelphia, created a provisional military government, taking power away from the last sitting colonial Governor, John Penn.

Benjamin Franklin was appointed president of this military government, the Committee of Safety, and Robert Morris was named vice president. Morris presided over an array of private merchant operations in America and abroad, built up since the 1750s in coordination with Franklin's networks for political intelligence and commerce. Franklin and Morris, delegates to the Continental Congress, led the Secret Committee of Trade (arms procurement) and the Secret Committee of Correspondence (seeking foreign backing for the conflict with Britain). Military supplies for Washington's army would be acquired through the combined authority of Congress and the Morris-Franklin channels.

After declaring American Independence, the Congress sent Franklin to Paris to secure European military support. For the next decade of war and its aftermath, Franklin and Morris would remain in constant trans-Atlantic correspondence, sometimes more than daily.

In December 1776, Congress fled to Baltimore ahead of British forces advancing on Philadelphia. It left Morris in charge of the Union's executive government, and responsible for supplying the Army.

Within days, General Washington asked Morris for funds for an intelligence service, and to pay his destitute soldiers. On the next morning, Morris supplied the cash raised from private sources. Later, Franklin negotiated the 1778 treaty of alliance with France, and arms and money began flowing to the American war effort through official channels.

Franklin and Washington, along with a few other brilliant and fiercely patriotic men, who assisted and coordinated affairs with them, became the core of the nationalists who led the country through the Revolution into the successful formation of the United States Government.

General Washington's confidential secretary and intelligence aide Alexander Hamilton, then in the field with the Continental Army, would become famous as President Washington's Treasury Secretary.

Robert Morris's two closest associates and advisors, who would write most of the Constitution, were Gouverneur Morris (no relation), spokesman for the Continental Army in Congress, and later the American ambassador to France; and James Wilson, later a founding justice of the Supreme Court.

The New Yorker Hamilton was "adopted" by Franklin's nationalist Philadelphians. At the outset of the Revolution he had begun calling for securing American independence by national control of credit and action to establish manufactures.

Despite their diligence, despite French aid, the credit of the Union had collapsed by 1781, the states were staggering under impossible debts, and international trade was frozen by a British naval blockade. There was at that time no real executive branch of government.

Hamilton proposed that Congress appoint Robert Morris the Financier (or Superintendent of Finance) of the United States, and that it also create the offices of Secretary of War and Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Congress voted unanimously in February 1781, to appoint Morris the Financier, and also head of the office of Marine, running the Navy.

That Summer and Fall, Morris strategized with the French Navy. With huge sums on his own credit, Morris organized supplies for Washington's army all along the line of their march to Yorktown, Virginia, where they and the French were to deliver a knockout blow.

The British army of Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in October 1781. But the British blockade continued, the American economy was devastated, the army was exhausted and near mutiny.

In this weak and increasingly dangerous situation, the nationalist leaders put together the nucleus of a functioning national executive. Congress appointed Washington's aide-de-camp Gen. Benjamin Lincoln as Secretary of War, and Morris's close associate Robert Livingston of New York as Secretary of Foreign Affairs.

Morris noted in his diary (Dec. 3, 1781) that he had organized the first session of a de facto U.S. executive branch, which was to meet weekly in his office:

"[I] held a conference with the Secretary of War, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, the Commander-in-Chief [Washington], the Secretary of Congress, and my assistant Mr. G. Morris, wherein [I] proposed that the same persons should meet every Monday evening for the purpose of communicating to each other whatever may be necessary and for consulting and consorting measures to promote the service and public good. I communicated to them Dr. Franklin's letters etc. We had a general conversation as introductory to the business."[1]

Morris's assistant James Wilson took part in this small governing group, as did Hamilton, who had resigned his military commission after his heroism at the battle of Yorktown. Hamilton was hired as an official receiver of taxes in New York state under the authority of Robert Morris.
The Bank of North America

In his first official act as Financier, Morris proposed to Congress a plan for a national bank, which he, Hamilton, and Wilson had worked out together in the preceding months.

The Bank of North America would help organize the desperate national finances by taking deposits, issuing bank notes that would not depreciate, and lending funds to the government. In his explanatory letter, Morris proposed "That it be recommended to the several States ... to provide that no other bank or bankers shall be established or permitted within the said States, respectively, during the war."[2]

The Continental Congress chartered the Bank of North America, based in Philadelphia, to begin operations Jan. 7, 1782. Morris's main business partner Thomas Willing (Tench Coxe's brother-in-law) was president; James Wilson was a board member and the attorney for the Bank, as well as for the French military in America. Through Franklin, the French government shipped across $400,000 in silver to start up the Bank.

The treaty with Britain formally ending the American Revolutionary War was signed Sept. 3, 1783. But the nominally independent U.S.A. was threatened with catastrophe. To prevent American creation of independent industry, the British immediately began dumping cheap manufactures in U.S. markets, selling goods at lower prices than they charged inside England, despite the costs of ocean transport.

Morris and Hamilton proposed a 5% national tariff on imports to finance the otherwise destitute government and to begin to protect American manufacturing. But various anti-national state leaders opposed giving Congress the power to tax.

Franklin responded angrily to reports of the "anti-tax" arguments raised against the right of the people to a national self-government. He wrote:

"All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."[3]

Without governmental power to tax, America was collapsing.

On news of the Paris peace treaty, the American army disbanded, starving and in rags.

Independence Hall, the home of Congress, was mobbed by soldiers demanding payment, who held the Congressmen hostage. Hamilton, then in Congress, negotiated with the soldiers and with the Pennsylvania state government. But he could not get protection for the U.S. government, and the Congress fled to Princeton, New Jersey.

The shock from this half-decade crisis of weakness and bankruptcy would give fire to the nationalist leadership, to fashion a powerful government for a Continental republic.
The Constitution

"To free ourselves from foreign power."

Franklin returned to the United States in 1785, acclaimed for having steered the French alliance that secured American independence. He was chosen President of The Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, i.e., governor of the state, an office which he held through 1788.

The nationalists were now in motion.

Washington became president of the Potomac Company, which aimed to connect the Potomac and Ohio Rivers, and open up the West to settlement. The General got Maryland and Virginia to incorporate the Company, and commissioners from the two states met in 1785 at his home, Mount Vernon, to negotiate jurisdiction over the canal route.

On the public rationale that wider representation was needed to deal with larger issues involved in the projected canal, James Madison—then a staunch nationalist—and other Virginians called a convention for Annapolis, Maryland for September 1786.

Governor Franklin appointed Robert Morris, Tench Coxe, and three other Pennsylvania delegates to this Annapolis Meeting of Commissioners to Remedy Defects of the Federal Government. Only Coxe actually attended the conference from Pennsylvania.

New York delegate Alexander Hamilton wrote the Annapolis meeting's report, calling on all the states to appoint "Commissioners, to meet at Philadelphia on the second Monday in May next, to take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union."

Washington and his friends chose the date for the proposed Convention to coincide with the scheduled Philadelphia meeting of the Society of the Cincinnati, the group for the officers of the American-French alliance against Britain, in which Hamilton was a leader.

The nationalist Society for Political Inquiries first met at the City Tavern on Feb. 9, 1787. The 42 original members included Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris, James Wilson, Franklin's son-in-law Richard Bache, scientist David Rittenhouse, physician Benjamin Rush, and other allies of Franklin, Washington, and Robert Morris.

The essay setting forth the rules for the Society, written by "Common Sense" Revolutionary author Thomas Paine, specified that the Society was to meet every two weeks at Franklin's home. The rules-essay included the following nationalist manifesto of the need to go beyond nominal independence, and to break from mental and political chains to the British Empire:

"Accustomed to look up to those nations, from whom we have derived our origin, for our laws, our opinions, and our manners, we have retained with undistinguishing reverence their errors with their improvements; have blended with our public institutions the policy of dissimilar countries; and have grafted on an infant commonwealth the manners of ancient and corrupted monarchies. In having effected a separate government, we have as yet effected but a partial independence. The revolution can only be said to be complete, when we shall have freed ourselves, no less from the influence of foreign prejudices than from the fetters of foreign power. When breaking through the bounds, in which a dependent people have been accustomed to think and act, we shall probably comprehend the character we have assumed and adopt those maxims of policy, which are suited to our new situation."[4]

The Revolutionary officers grouped as the Society of the Cincinnati opened their national meeting on May 7, 1787. Running simultaneously with the Constitutional Convention, their proceedings would add to the nationalists' message that true independence from Britain, a strong Union, and a vigorous national government must emerge from the Convention. Washington chaired both meetings, while staying in the home of Robert Morris.

Hamilton nominated Maj. William Jackson as Secretary of the Convention. Jackson had been Washington's military aide, and the agent of Robert Morris in England; he had also participated in the Society for Political Inquiries May 9, 1787 meeting, planning for the Constitutional Convention.[5]

As the Constitutional Convention progressed, the pro-nationalist delegates steering the meeting caucused at the Indian Queen tavern, located next door to Franklin's home and printshop, and they picnicked under the trees at Franklin's home.

Two months into the Convention (on July 26, 1787), Franklin's allies met to form the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts. The new group was led by Society for Political Inquiries members Coxe, George Clymer, and Thomas Fitzsimmons; and by Mathew Carey, whose American Museum magazine published the essays of Franklin, Coxe, the Inquiry Society, and the Manufacturing Society.

Members of both groups assembled for meeting of "friends of domestic manufactures" Aug. 12 at the University of Pennsylvania, to hear a report on the progress of the Convention, and an address by Coxe stressing the need for the nation to promote "machines ingeniously contrived."[6]

Here was the Philadelphia-based political movement for industrial development and American national survival, begun by Franklin, and continuing through several generations, until after the 1879 death of Mathew Carey's son, economist Henry C. Carey.
The Authors

"Who wrote the Constitution?" is a question not often seriously asked.

In later times, when the point of view of America's Founding nationalists was obscured, Anglophile, Southern Confederate, and Wall Street apologists asserted, as supposed fact, that James Madison was the main author, the "Father of the Constitution."

During and just after the Revolution, Madison was an indispensable, forceful Virginian ally of the central Washington-Franklin nationalist group, and a friend and often political partner of Hamilton. But the notion of Madison's authorship of the Constitution was later useful to the anti-nationalists. Not long after the Convention, his beliefs and commitments shifted, in accord with the Southern plantation set to which he and Thomas Jefferson had adapted their views.

It was very useful for Southern acceptance of the Constitution that the so-called "Virginia Plan" was the first outline for a central government brought into the Convention, as a point of departure for the deliberations. According to Madison, it had been worked out in preliminary discussion among Washington, Madison, and the other five Virginia delegates. The national structure called for in this plan was in many ways analogous to most of the state constitutions already adopted: a two-house legislature, with separate executive and judiciary departments.

The New Jersey delegation countered with a call for a weaker central government. Hamilton came back with a proposal to virtually eliminate state governments, which effectively corralled the delegates toward the "more moderate" nationalist agenda.

The Constitution as agreed to differed from the Virginia plan in several important features. Several crucial points in our present scheme of government were chiefly the work of James Wilson. (Franklin, then 81 years old, gave his own speeches to "my learned colleague" James Wilson to read, adding authority to Wilson's role as a Convention spokesman for the governmental philosophy of the nationalists.)

Madison's plan suggested two branches of legislature, the second branch (later called the Senate) to be appointed by the first (House of Representatives). In the ensuing debate, it was proposed by anti-democratic "states rights" advocates, that the House and Senate be appointed by the state legislatures; the Senate was to resemble somewhat the British House of Lords. Wilson and Madison together led the successful fight for a popularly elected House, and Wilson defeated the proposal for property ownership as a requirement to qualify voters in Congressional elections.

As to the Senate, Wilson disagreed that the British government could serve as any model for the U.S.A. "Our manners, our laws, the abolition of entails and primogeniture, the whole genius of the people are opposed to it." But his argument for a Senate directly elected by the people was defeated; the legislatures would appoint Senators until Wilson's proposal became law in 1913, in the 17th Amendment to the Constitution.

The preliminary Virginia Plan would have left the country with a fatally weak Federal Government, without a truly independent executive or judiciary.

The Virginia Plan called for an undefined "national executive" to be chosen by the Senate. Wilson proposed that the executive branch be headed by a single person, with strong and clearly defined powers. As a member of the Committee of Detail, Wilson was the principal author of the first (Aug. 6) draft of the Constitution, in which this executive chief was styled "the President of the United States."

The first draft was turned over to a Committee of Style and Arrangement, consisting of Hamilton, his close ally Rufus King, Gouverneur Morris, Madison, and Connecticut delegate William Johnson, an advocate for small states happy to compromise with the nationalists.

The plan was shifted to make the Federal government less like the British system, in which a parliament, controlled by an oligarchy, may make and break governments at will. The President would be elected by the people through the Electoral College, not appointed by Congress, and the Supreme Court judges would be appointed by the President with Senate consent.

That agreed to, this committee asked Gouverneur Morris to write the finished text. Morris himself composed the Preamble, in which the people of the whole nation, rather than the separate states, here state the purpose of their new government:

"We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
The Revolutionary War for Ratification

The drive to win the votes of the states for this Constitution was coordinated nationally by Hamilton, assisted by Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris, and Madison. Hamilton recruited Madison and New Yorker John Jay to help him write the influential pro-Constitution newspaper essays which became known as the "Federalist Papers."

The ratification fights in Pennsylvania and Virginia point up the strategic war between the nationalists, whose Constitution completed the Revolution, as against the agents of the British imperial system who, first, fought to block the Constitution, and, later, would claim that nationalist measures were unconstitutional.

In the Virginia ratifying convention, Revolutionary orator Patrick Henry led the opposition. Henry warned the delegates that, under the strong central government of the proposed Constitution, "They'll free your niggers!"[7]

Slave-owner George Mason, who argued that the Constitution wasn't sufficiently abolitionist, nonetheless complained that the Constitution would make it legal to tax slavery out of existence.

But the ardent nationalist law teacher George Wythe, who chaired the Committee of the Whole at the Virginia ratifying Convention, opposed Patrick Henry and his followers. Earlier, Wythe had written the rules for the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, working with Hamilton and another delegate. Wythe was an experimental science colleague of Franklin's, a professor of Greek who taught Aeschylus, and Plato, and the mentor to Kentucky's great nationalist leader Henry Clay. Wythe later declared, as Virginia's chief judge, that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had made slavery illegal; he was soon thereafter assassinated.

Under Wythe's strong chairmanship, Madison supervised the nationalist effort at the Virginia ratification convention, and coordinated efforts with Hamilton, sending messages back and forth by pony express, to New York's ratifying convention. Hamilton had the same close coordination with John Sullivan and John Langdon in New Hampshire, and with Rufus King in Massachusetts. Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris travelled to Virginia to personally assist at the convention.

The ratification fight within Pennsylvania was the first American theater of political operations for immigrant Geneva aristocrat Albert Gallatin. His family had helped arrange for the sale of Hessian mercenaries to King George III for the war against America. Now operating in backwoods Western Pennsylvania, Gallatin ran the opposition to that state's ratification of the plan for an American national government.

Henry Adams wrote in his admiring biography, "Mr. Gallatin never changed his opinion that the President was too powerful; even in his most mature age he would probably have preferred a system more nearly resembling some of the present colonial governments of Great Britain.[8]

The Pennsylvania legislature attempted to call a state ratification convention, but it was stalled by the Gallatin clique, which staged a walkout, preventing a quorum. Pro-Constitution laborers and tradesmen went to the houses of two of these anti-federalists, broke in, and dragged them to the State House, delivering them into the assembly room for the vote.

At the ensuing convention, Gallatin and his floor captain John Smilie battled Franklin's Philadelphians, and lost two to one.

Gallatin promulgated the British-originated "Free Trade" economic doctrines that would be used against the Administration of President George Washington. As U.S. Treasury Secretary from 1801 to 1813, in a Federal government whose establishment he had opposed, Gallatin would respond to British naval assaults and terrorism by systematically dissolving the U.S. armed forces.
The Sovereign Nation

The new United States Federal Government first convened, temporarily, in New York City, where Washington was inaugurated President.

The first substantive legislation of the Federal Congress, the Duty Act, begins, "Whereas, it is necessary for the support of government, for the discharge of the debts of the United States, and the encouragement and protection of manufactures, that duties be laid on goods, wares and merchandises imported." The Act had been introduced by Madison as a revenue measure with low tariff rates and no real thought to protection of manufactures. But Philadelphia Congressman Thomas Fitzsimmons offered an amendment, designed by his advisor Tench Coxe, that gave the legislation the protective spirit enunciated in the introductory clause.

Passed by the founding U.S. Congress and signed by President Washington on July 4, 1789, to associate nationalist economics with Independence Day, the Act imposed tariffs on imported steel ($10 per ton), nails ($20 per ton), cast iron, coaches, boots, shoes, hats, clothing, cables, cords, fish, liquors, and luxuries. It discriminated in favor of American shipping.[9]

Two months later, President Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton as the first U.S. Treasury Secretary, and asked him for a program for the transformation of America by modern industry, to reorient the country away from the de facto colonial system of plantations.

Coxe, author of the nationalist instructions to the Constitutional Convention, was appointed Assistant Treasury Secretary, and did the detail work for Hamilton's famous "Report on Manufactures." But it was Hamilton, a man of passion and true genius, who gave to this "Report" and his other state papers the distinct American economic theory, in opposition to Adam Smith and British imperial dogma.

Smith's 1776 Wealth of Nations had warned Americans not to try, by government action, to escape from their destined role as a plantation economy and supplier of raw materials to Mother Britain, the seller of manufactures to America.

Hamilton replied that America would not accept this as her destiny, that manufacturing skill would elevate American culture and national power, and keep it independent of the empire.

As contention arose between the nationalists and those identified with the plantation system, a Great Compromise was reached in 1790, arranged by Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and Robert Morris.

Of the three compromise points hammered out, the first two are well known:

1. The permanent capital of the United States would be located within slave territory, on the banks of the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia.

2. In exchange, the slave-owners would not oppose the assumption by the Federal Government of the Revolutionary War debts of the individual states; this gave the national government real power over the credit of the country, holding out the promise that an industrial economy would one day overwhelm and eliminate slavery.

Point three of the 1790 Compromise stipulated that for the Republic's first decade, from 1790 until 1800, while the City of Washington was being built, Philadelphia, the power center of Franklin's nationalists, would be the national capital.

Thus it was that George Washington, as the U.S. President, resided in a Philadelphia house belonging to Robert Morris; that the world-renowned Bank of the United States, modeled on the Revolutionary War's Bank of North America, was established in Philadelphia; and that the ideas and culture of revolutionary nationalism were infused into the founding Administration of the republic.

Today we are confronted with an economic nightmare in the collapse of the predatory, "globalist" financial system that has come to replace the Constitutional system founded with the United States. That original system was established in a war against the empire. The economy, and that Constitution, can only be restored together.

[1] Diary of Robert Morris (University of Pittsburgh Press online edition). An excellent resource for this period is Charles Rappleye, Robert Morris, Financier of the American Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010).

[2] "Proceedings on the Incorporation of the Bank of North America: Letter from Robert Morris with the Plan of the Bank, May 26, 1781"; in Legislative and Documentary History of the Bank of the United States, Including the Original Bank of North America (Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1832), p. 11.

[3] Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris, Dec. 25, 1783 (http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/ founders/documents/v1ch16s12.html).

[4] Life and Works of Thomas Paine, Vol. 4 (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Thomas Paine National Historical Association, 1925), pp. 311-312.

[5] Book of Minutes of the Society for Political Inquiries, held by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

[6] Jacob Cooke, Tench Coxe and the Early Republic (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1978), p. 103.

[7] George Morgan, The True Patrick Henry (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1907), p. 353, citing Hugh Blair Grigsby.

[8] The Life of Albert Gallatin (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1879).

[9] See the Duty Act at Annals of Congress; Statues At Large; 1st Congress, Session I, Chapter 3, 1789, pp. 24-27.

DAR’s impact on country, Ray County significant

From Richmond Daily News: DAR’s impact on country, Ray County significant
by Linda Emley

On Saturday afternoon, Feb. 20, 1909, 17 women gathered at the Richmond Hotel and organized the Allen-Morton-Watkins chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. DAR is an organization of women that are descended from an ancestor who helped achieve independence for the United States of America in the Revolutionary War.

The local chapter received its charter on March 16, 1910. One of the founding women was a woman who many of us remember, Miss Sue Darneal. She was a member of DAR for 69 years and lived in Richmond until she died in 1978.

Miss Louise Darneal was Miss Sue’s sister. I have been told many stories about the “Darneal Sisters,” so we will have a story about them in a later chapter. Miss Louise was also a member of DAR and was working on the 1973 Ray County History Book only hours before she died in 1973.

Louise Darneal will always be near and dear to my heart because she was one of the founding members of the Ray County Historical Society. She never lived to see our museum grow to be the wonderful museum it is today, but I am sure she would be proud of all the hard work that has shaped it over the years.

The first national DAR chapter was founded in 1890 by four women who had fathers or grandfathers who were patriots of the American Revolution. Since its founding in 1890, DAR has admitted more than 800,000 members.

There are a variety of ways that patriots helped achieve freedom. Your ancestor could be a signer of the Declaration of Independence or a soldier that actually fought in a battle for freedom. But there are other ways of serving your country, such as donating goods or services as a doctor, nurse, minister or a store merchant.
One of my favorite acceptable categories for being a patriot is “Participant of the Boston Tea Party.” I would be happy to claim that one of my forefathers was there for the Boston Tea Party, but I will settle for my patriot Thomas Turner, who served in North Carolina. He was born on Aug. 27, 1734 in Virginia and died on July 1, 1822 in Kentucky. It’s 10 generations from my sons to Thomas Turner.

During the first year of organization, our DAR group voted to award a medal to an eighth grade student who made the highest grade in U.S. history. In 1916, this award was changed to a monetary award instead of a medal. It was originally chosen to be awarded to an eighth grade student when all schools had an eighth grade graduation. The chapter still presents this award annually and also gives an award to a Richmond student who is outstanding in vocal or instrumental music.

A member of the senior class at each of the five area high schools in our county is chosen for the “DAR Good Citizen” award. They are also given a monetary award.
If you would like to learn more about DAR, a copy of the DAR magazine American Spirit is given to the Ray County Public Library each year by our local DAR chapter. It can be checked out from the library.

Traditionally, as each DAR “daughter” passes, a marker is placed at her grave with the permission of the family. We also invite the family to one of our meetings to be present as we honor our departed member.

So who were Allen, Morton and Watkins that our local chapter is named after? They were three Revolutionary soldiers who were early Ray County pioneers: Colonel Charles Allen, Joseph Morton and Colonel William Watkins. Joseph Morton was a relative of the first DAR regent, Mrs. Ella Morton Child.

There is another local Watkins with DAR ties. Marie Watkins Oliver was born in Ray County on Jan. 11, 1854. She married Robert Oliver and moved to Cape Girardeau, where her husband had a law firm. Marie joined the Cape Girardeau DAR chapter in 1908. DAR appointed Marie as chairperson of the committee to research and design a flag for Missouri. Thanks to this DAR request, our Missouri Flag was designed by a Ray County girl, Marie Watkins Oliver.

Since this is women’s group, two other organizations were formed for men and children. The men’s group is called SAR, Sons of the American Revolution. William Osborn McDowell organized SAR in New York on April 30, 1889. This was the centennial for the inauguration of George Washington as the first U.S President in 1789.
SAR member No. 1 was McDowell, who helped organize DAR on July 29, 1890. CAR, the Children of the American Revolution was formed in 1895. It’s for boys and girls under the age of 22. At one time, there were local CAR and SAR chapters, but they are no longer active.

There is at least one Revolutionary War Soldier buried in Ray County. Abraham Hill is buried in the Hill Cemetery that is located north of Richmond on E.112th St. His tombstone says, “ABRAM HILL, CT. MIL, REV. WAR.” I think this is his original tombstone, but it does not have any dates on it. The local D.A.R. placed a stone next to his grave that gives the dates of 1760 and 1843. Abraham’s D.A.R. patriot record shows his birth as July, 24, 1759 in New Jersey. and his death record as May 26, 1843 in Richmond, Mo.

There is a list of Revolutionary Soldiers buried in Missouri, and it says that “James Wells resided with in son-in-law, James Clevenger in 1840 and died Aug. 17, 1855, aged 92 and was buried in New Garden Cemetery, Ray County.”

This info was obtained from the Probate Judge records of Ray County. I found a James Wells living with David Wells in Clay County on the 1840 Missouri Census of Pensioners. There are 12 James Wells listed in the D.A.R. ancestry database, but none of them are listed in Ray County, so we are still looking for more details about James Wells and a few other possible Revolutionary soldiers that may be buried in Ray County.

Besides all 50 states, there are DAR chapters in Australia, Austria, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain and the United Kingdom. Many famous women have been members. Some of the DAR members of the past were Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Grandma Moses, Ginger Rogers and Lillian Gish.
You might find a few surprises in the current list of DAR members. We have former first ladies, Laura Bush and Rosalynn Carter. Others are Elizabeth Dole, Janet Reno and actress Bo Derek. So the next time someone asks you what do Laura Bush and Bo Derek have in common, you can reply, “Both are members of DAR.”

Somehow I can’t see all these women sitting down to have tea with Bo Derek, but that is the nice part about DAR. All women are welcome and sometimes the only thing we all have in common is a patriotic person that helped make us “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Stars and gripes: Declaration of Independence was illegal, claim British lawyers

From the Daily Mail: Stars and gripes: Declaration of Independence was illegal, claim British lawyers
It is an argument that many would think is long forgotten now that the two countries have one of the strongest international alliances in the world.

But that has not stopped a team of lawyers from the UK challenging the Declaration of Independence that released the United States from their colonial masters.

A debate took place this week in Philadelphia - the city where discussions began in 1776 and concluded in the separation on July 4 - between the two countries testing the validity of the document.

Michael Beloff, former president of Trinity College, Oxford, headed the UK team while David Levi, Dean of Duke University Law, spoke for the U.S. side.

They questioned various aspects of the declaration that founded America and led to the American Revolutionary War that ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

It was claimed by the British that the declaration signed seven years earlier was in fact illegal.

The UK half of the discussion, which took place in the Ben Franklin Hall, said it was totally illegitimate and amounted to treason.

During the tongue-in-cheek argument, one of the British team said: 'There really is no need for you Yanks to keep picking at this ancient scab two centuries or so later.'

They argued that just because you want to start a new law, it doesn't mean you can just do such a thing.

In their brief, they said: 'What if Texas decided today it wanted to secede from the Union? Lincoln made the case against secession and he was right', the BBC reports.

In response, the Americans said: 'The English had used their own Declaration of Rights to depose James II and these acts were deemed completely lawful and justified.'

When it comes to taxing people without giving them representation, the British lawyers said that that was simply a wish of colonists.

They argued that they should be grateful that Britain protected them at great expense from the French during a seven-year war.

The Americans, however, said the Declaration of Independence was formed through 'Natural law', which the British said is an undefined concept.

They also said that the document was legal because there had been other movements of independence across the world that had been recognised in the UN charter.

At the end, a vote was held and it was decided that the U.S. would survive for another day and maintain its independence.

The Declaration, which helped establish the guiding principles of modern democracy, was written mainly by U.S. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson and is described by historians as 'America's birth certificate'.

It includes the then extraordinary assertion: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,' which paved the way for the French Revolution 13 years later.

It was signed by 56 delegates from the 13 American colonies that were at war with Britain.

The 200 first copies were made by printer John Dunlap that night and distributed throughout the colonies the following morning to be read aloud to the colonists and their militia.

BIRTH OF THE UNITED STATES
Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776: From left, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776: From left, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

The American revolution was the political upheaval during the latter half of the 18th century.

Thirteen colonies in North America joined forces to break free from the British Empire - giving rise to the United States of America.

Rejecting the authority of Britain's Parliament to govern them from overseas, by 1774, each colony had set up a provisional Congress...

January 10, 1776: Thomas Paine published a booklet entitled Common Sense.

It outlined his vision of a government in which the people, through their elected representatives, would have supreme power.

Paine was the first to openly suggest independence from Britain.

Common Sense was read by many, including George Washington.

The work was to have a massive influence on Thomas Jefferson in his writing of the Declaration of Independence.

May: Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, receives Richard Henry Lee's resolution urging the colonies to become free and independent states.

June 11: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston are appointed to a committee to draft a declaration of independence.

June 12-27: Jefferson is chosen to write the first draft, of which only a fragment exists. Jefferson's clean copy - the 'original Rough draught' - is reviewed by the committee. Both documents are in the manuscript collections of the Library of Congress.

July 1-4: Congress debates and revises the declaration.

July 2: Congress declares independence. John Hancock, President of the Congress and Charles Thomson, the secretary, signed the document.

July 4, 1776: The United States is officially born.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Local speaker visits American Legion

From KnoxNews.com: Local speaker visits American Legion
Retired U. S. Air Force Colonel Donald Edmands is known for his briefings to local civic organizations and recently shared one of these briefings with his fellow American Legionnaires of Post 256.

Edmands detailed the events of the first day of the American Revolution and brought out details that we normally do not notice nor hear, like “Paul Revere was not the only rider on that eventful day, but is probably the most recognized, likely, due to his reference in the famous poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.”

Other events and details of the beginning day of our War of Independence reflected upon the readiness of the military. A lesson learned about that eventful day was the necessity of not only having a strong and well-organized military, but one that is trained and ready for conflict within a short notice.

For more info about the American Legion, contact Commander Rich Gruber at 865-271-8610 or visit www.tellicolakepost256.org.

Sons of American Revolution honor black woman for heroics during War for Independence

From the Online Athens Banner-Herald: Sons of American Revolution honor black woman for heroics during War for Independence
Mammy Kate was a big woman. Some tales have her towering to almost 7 feet tall. She was a slave, the mother of nine children, and as legend has it, a heroine of the Revolutionary War.

On Saturday, Mammy Kate, her husband, Daddy Jack, and four others, including Mammy Kate’s master, former Gov. Stephen Heard, will be honored when members of the Georgia Society Sons of the American Revolution and the Daughters of the American Revolution lay wreaths at their graves.

Mammy Kate will become the first black woman in Georgia ever honored by the groups as a patriot of the American Revolution.

Austin Dabney, who fought at the Battle of Kettle Creek in Wilkes County and is buried in Pike County, was the first black person in Georgia honored by the SAR.

The ceremony takes place at 10:30 a.m. at Heardmont Cemetery in Elbert County, where Mammy Kate and the other honorees — Daddy Jack, Stephen Heard and Capt. John Darden — are buried and will be remembered in a ceremony. A second ceremony will follow at 2 p.m. in Stinchcomb Methodist Church in Elbert County, where patriots Dionysus Oliver and Peter Oliver will be honored in a similar ceremony.

The story of Mammy Kate’s heroics is based primarily on Heard family history, said Larry Wilson, a member of the Samuel Elbert Chapter of the SAR, which is hosting the event that is expected to draw SAR and DAR members from across the state.

“I don’t think the Heard family has any written documents. It’s all passed down by word of mouth,” Wilson said.

The story is that Mammy Kate rescued her master, Stephen Heard, in 1779 from a British prison camp in Augusta, where he was to be hanged, said Peggy Galis, an Athens resident who grew up in Elberton and is a descendant of Heard.

The late John McIntosh, who in the 1930s prepared a history on Elbert County published in 1940, quotes from an 1820 letter in the book that describes Mammy Kate as a “giantess, more than six feet tall,” and a woman who was of “pure African blood and declared herself to be the daughter of a great king.”

“Mammy Kate is one of the most remarkable figures in Georgia,” said Galis, who learned about Kate’s legacy as a child. “I’m so thrilled,” she said about Kate’s recognition for her heroics in the War for Independence.

Briefly, the story is that Mammy Kate, upon learning Heard was captured, traveled to the prison camp in Augusta where she volunteered to wash clothes for the British officers, a deed that gave her access to the prison and eventually to Heard. Given privileges not only to wash clothes, but to bring in food, she entered the compound with a clothes basket, secured Heard — who was a physically small man — in the basket and carried him outside the prison, according to Galis.

Heard, who was grateful for the woman’s ingenuity and bravery, gave Mammy Kate her freedom, along with some land, but she insisted on staying at the Heardmont plantation, Galis said. Kate and Daddy Jack are both buried within the rock walls of the Heardmont Cemetery.

While written documents on the actual rescue do not exist from the 1700s, this is not surprising. Galis said, as few things were recorded during those days. For example, the Hargett Library at the University of Georgia, which houses historical documents, has only one letter from Stephen Heard, she noted.

When Heard died in November 1815 without a will, his son, John A. Heard, administrator of the estate, created and filed a will in 1816 with the courts. Mammy Kate and Daddy Jack are each mentioned in the former governor’s will as drawn up by his son.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Chambersburg, PA: Historical marker honors 'Capt. Molly'

From Public Opinion Online.com: Historical marker honors 'Capt. Molly'
In honor of its 50th anniversary, a marker remembering Margaret Cochran Corbin was rededicated and unveiled Sunday along U.S. 11.

"Captain Molly" Cochran Corbin was born in Franklin County and followed her husband to war in 1776 before becoming the first woman pensioner.

Margaret was the epitome of women in the Army and the Daughter's of the American Revolution's motto of "God, home and country," said Col. Cheri Provancha, commander at Letterkenny Army Depot.

"In remembering the past, we honor the men and women who gave their lives for our freedom and future," said Gail Runshaw, chapter regent of the Franklin County DAR chapter.

With "grateful recognition," a wreath was placed at the marker and a prayer said by Judy Grenawalt, chaplain of the Franklin County DAR chapter.

The marker names Margaret as a "heroine of the Revolution" and gives a brief history of her life and contributions during the American Revolution.

Sunday's ceremony began at Rocky Spring Presbyterian Church where guests learned about local history and the war service of Margaret.

"God's plan for Margaret was one challenge after another challenge," Provancha said.

Born in 1751 in Franklin County, Margaret and her brother were orphaned when she was five after Native Americans attacked their home, killed her father and kidnapped her mother.

Margaret and her brother grew up with an uncle and she married John Corbin at the age of 21, Provancha said.
In 1776, when John joined the army, Margaret went with him and followed around helping out the troops, she said.

"Where else would Margaret be? She believed in God. She believed in home. She believed in country," Provancha said.

During the battle of Fort Washington in New York, Margaret worked alongside John and about 600 soldiers.

John was killed during the battle, but Margaret didn't stop. She stepped into his place cleaning, loading and firing the cannon, Provancha said.

She became the first woman soldier in the Army and was recognized for her aim and accuracy, she said.

During the battle, she was severely wounded. Although she recovered, her left arm was completely disabled and her face disfigured, Provancha said.

In June 1779, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted Margaret $30 to cover her current needs. The next month, Congress' Board of War granted Margaret half the monthly pay of a soldier and a new set of clothes, she said.

Margaret became the first woman in the United States to receive a veteran's pension, Provancha said.

America Must Remember Boston’s Liberty Tree

A political article, referencing the American Revolution.

From Newsmax.com: America Must Remember Boston’s Liberty Tree
Ten years before the American Revolution, colonists in Boston staged the first act of defiance against the British government.

No, it was not the Boston Tea Party. That took place just a year and a half before the start of the war.

Instead, the colonists’ first protest against the British unfolded on Aug. 14, 1765 at the Liberty Tree. A magnificent elm towering over the other trees nearby, the Liberty Tree stood at the corner of what is now Washington and Essex Streets in downtown Boston.

What set off the protest was passage five months earlier by the British Parliament of the Stamp Act. The first direct tax imposed on the colonists, it required that printed materials such as newspapers, pamphlets, deeds, posters, insurance policies, and bills of sale carry a revenue stamp. Violators of the Stamp Act were to be tried in British vice-admiralty courts in the colonies.

The colonists found the Stamp Act outrageous. It led to the rallying cry of “no taxation without representation” and agitation that culminated in the American Revolution.

On the morning of the 1765 protest, a crowd began to gather under the tree as word spread that an effigy of Andrew Oliver, the colonist chosen by King George III to impose the Stamp Act, had been hanged in its branches. Up in the tree with the effigy was a British cavalry jackboot. Grinning from inside the boot was a devil-like doll holding a scroll marked “Stamp Act.”

That night, crowds marched through the streets carrying the effigy to Oliver’s home. After burning the effigy, they ransacked his house. In fear of his life, Oliver resigned. On that Sept. 10, a small copper plate with the inscription “The Tree of Liberty” was nailed to the trunk of the elm.

This first public show of defiance led to the formation by some of the participants of the underground Sons of Liberty. It consisted of patriots like John Hancock and Samuel Adams. Meeting regularly under the tree, the Sons of Liberty plotted resistance against the Crown and eventually orchestrated the Boston Tea Party on Dec. 16, 1773.

The tree grew to be such a vibrant symbol of the cause of independence that in 1775, just before the outbreak of the revolution, British soldiers cut it down.

“Armed with axes,” the Essex Gazette reported, “the British soldiers made a furious attack upon it. After a long spell of laughing and grinning, sweating, swearing, and foaming with malice diabolical, they cut down a tree because it bore the name of Liberty.”

Those British soldiers might still be laughing if they knew how the Liberty Tree has been obliterated from American history. While most Americans know about the Boston Tea Party, few are aware of the Liberty Tree and how important it was to fanning the flames of rebellion that led to the revolution in 1775 and the Declaration of Independence.

As a 22-year-old Boston Herald reporter, I heard about the Liberty Tree and its story. I walked the four blocks from the Boston Herald to the corner of Washington Street — originally Orange Street — and Essex Street to examine a bas-relief plaque commemorating it.

A block east of Boston Common, the plaque was in a section known as the Combat Zone, where prostitutes, muggers, and drunks prowled at night. The bas relief was installed on the third-floor level of a former brick warehouse built in1850 by David Sears.

Originally commissioned by Sears, the plaque was located directly over the spot where the Liberty Tree once stood. Underscoring how pivotal the tree was to American independence, the plaque bore the inscription, “Sons of Liberty 1766, Independence of Their Country 1776.”

Now black from soot, the building housed a delicatessen, a billiard parlor, a liquor store, and a hamburger place. The plaque was overshadowed by a billboard adjacent to it depicting a chubby young boy eating a hamburger.

Nobody looked up to see the plaque, which was just as well: It was covered with bird droppings.

In a series of articles beginning on Oct. 2, 1966, I wrote about the long-forgotten history of the Liberty Tree. To call attention to how obscure the site had become, I interviewed waitresses at the Essex Delicatessen below the plaque on Washington Street. None knew what the Liberty Tree was.

“The Liberty Tree? That’s a roast beef sandwich with a slice of Bermuda onion, Russian dressing, and a side of potato salad,” said one waitress who had worked beneath the plaque for 20 years.

Eventually, I persuaded John A. Volpe, then the Republican governor of Massachusetts, to inspect the grimy plaque from a 100-foot aerial fire truck ladder. A photo of him peering at the plaque from the ladder ran on page one of the Herald on Oct. 6, 1966.

Climbing down from the ladder, Volpe promised to create a park with monuments to let Americans know about the history of the Liberty Tree. Edward J. Logue, the administrator of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, said the park would be a “handsome, open space” with grass, benches, plaques explaining the history of the tree, and “the largest elm tree that can be transported and is resistant to Dutch elm disease.”

That promise was never fulfilled. Instead, a tiny bronze plaque was recessed into the sidewalk across the street from the original bas-relief plaque. It’s as invisible to tourists as the old one on the third floor across the street above a branch of the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles.

The site is not part of Boston’s Freedom Trail, which includes 16 historic sites. Nor is the Liberty Tree included in most timelines of the revolution.

Last month, Glenn Beck ran a segment on his GBTV internet network highlighting the importance of the Liberty Tree. He cited the 1966 Boston Herald articles. But most Americans have no idea that America was born at the Liberty Tree.

When Marquis de Lafayette, the French soldier and statesman who helped George Washington fight the British, visited Boston in 1825, he said, “The world should never forget where once stood the Liberty Tree so famous in your annals.”

Shamefully, that is exactly what has happened.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

On travel til Wednesday

I'm visiting elderly relatives in Box Elder, SD who do not have internet.

Will try to sneak out now and again to an internet cafe to post, but more than likely will not be posting until Wedneday.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

The Pulpit and the American Revolution: Jonas Clark

From The Moral Liberal: The Pulpit and the American Revolution: Jonas Clark
Leonard O. Goenaga

Article Series: The Pulpit and the Patriots

WEEK 4: The Pulpit and the American Revolution: Jonas Clark (1730-1805)

Another Patriot Preacher of interest is Jonas Clark of Lexington. A graduate of Harvard College in 1752, Clark took on a pastorate for fifty years.[i] Clark’s influence may be seen in the role he played within his town. As Franklin P. Cole details, Clark “instructed the Lexington delegates to the Stamp Act Congress. Throughout that stormy period he was the most influential politician as well as churchman in the Lexington-Concord area.”[ii] In addition, Clark adheres to a pattern that is beginning to become visible: influence and interaction with key patriot leaders. “On the very night of April 18 1775, John Hancock and Samuel Adams were being entertained by Jonas Clark.”[iii] An interesting note of history was Paul Revere’s arrival to warn them of Gage’s expedition, which sought to capture the Boston patriots. When asked if Clark’s Lexington men were prepared to fight, he responded by telling them “I have trained them for this very hour”.[iv]

As for influential sermons, Clark provided an important historical contribution with The Fate of Blood-thirsty Oppressors. This sermon, delivered on the anniversary of the battle of Lexington, described in detail stages of the battle, and remains a treasure to Civil War historians.[v] One final fact worth mentioning regarding Clark’s role in the Nation’s beginnings is his appointment in 1799 as the Lexington delegate to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, where he actively participated in several keen committees, showing that not only were these preachers engaged with the public at the Pulpit, but also directly in governmental affairs.[vi]

The Pulpit and the American Revolution: Jonas Clark Political Sermon

Jonas Clark,The Fate of Blood-thirsty Oppressors, and GOD’s tender Care of His distressed People (April 19, 1776)

Help fund American Revolutionary documentary about Grace Lee Boggs

From Channel APA: Help fund American Revolutionary documentary about Grace Lee Boggs
Director Grace Lee has been filming AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY: THE EVOLUTION OF GRACE LEE BOGGS, a feature documentary about legendary Detroit activist and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs over the past decade. They’re trying to raise funds to complete the film this year. As Grace is now 96, they want her to be part of the film’s release plan. Here’s more about the documentary film:

Grace Lee Boggs has dedicated her life to the next American Revolution. Born to Chinese immigrants in 1915, she earned a PhD in philosophy at age 25 before committing herself to a life of ideas, action, and the promise of change and social justice from within the African-American community. Moving to Detroit in the 1950s and marrying African-American autoworker/activist James Boggs, she saw that Detroit embodied both the failures and possibilities of the American dream, and was thus an enormously fertile place to work. At 96, Grace continues to engage audiences everywhere in a process of re-imagination, conversation and action — reminding us that revolution is not only possible and necessary, but already happening.
Although Grace’s biography is part of our story, this is not a traditional biopic or historical film. This story is about how a visionary thinker and doer grapples with the looming questions confronting humanity and sustains her commitment to that work. The driving narrative transports Grace through the major social movements of the last century — from labor to civil rights, from Black Power to feminism, identity politics and beyond — and shows how she emerged with a philosophy that is almost radical in its simplicity and clarity: revolution is not an act of aggression but an ongoing, evolving series of living conversations. It is about the willingness to shift tactics, reflect upon and embrace contradictions. “Revolution,” Grace says, “is about the ability to change yourself to change the world.”

In a world plagued by seemingly endless wars, environmental disasters, rampant consumerism and economic collapse, people everywhere are asking: How can I make a difference? How do we create meaningful change? And how do we sustain ourselves so we can continue evolving our humanity? American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs explores how a lifetime of thinking, advocating, and grassroots action has culminated in powerful approaches to these elusive questions and how Grace’s ideas are inspiring a new generation of young people and activists to rebuild and revitalize their corner of the world, in Detroit.

You can help fund the film here: http://www.indiegogo.com/American-Revolutionary.

Help fund American Revolutionary documentary about Grace Lee Boggs

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Who is: Aaron Sturges?

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry on Aaron Sturges, but there is an article from the Mobile News Tribune for June 26, 2010: DAR group moves to protect headstone

TISKILWA — The safe removal of the 1865 headstone of Lydia Sturges from a hill north of Tiskilwa to a sheltered location recently was completed. Members of the Princeton-Illinois chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution and members of the Tiskilwa Historical Society are working on the project.

The headstone of Lydia Sturges, daughter of Revolutionary War soldier Aaron Sturges, states “Died June 2 1865 Aged 74 years, 3 months, 4 days.” With the approval of land owner Delmar Beams, the fragile limestone marker was carefully relocated by Ed Waca, Tiskilwa Historical Society volunteer. The stone had been moved from the original gravesite prior to Beams’ ownership of the land. The headstone has been leaning against a tree for decades. Delmar and Eleanor Beams are members of Tiskilwa Historical Society.

Aaron Sturges is known to have been buried in Bureau County, but no gravesite has been located. In the 1940s, one account states that stones near Lydia’s marker may have outlined a family burial plot.

Aaron Sturges began his Revolutionary War service with the Connecticut Men of the Revolution as a private, enlisting in May 1775, a month after Concord and Lexington. He was 14. He spent three months of that enlistment guarding the Connecticut tidewater shores from British landing craft.

He then enlisted in the Connecticut militia and helped rout the British laying siege to Fort Independence near New York. At 15, he enlisted as a fifer for a three-year tour of duty. On his service record is the 1777-78 Valley Forge winter and participation in the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse.

Following the war Sturges married, and later the family left Connecticut. and relocated to Saratoga County, N.Y. After the death of his wife, Sturges joined Lydia who had earlier moved to Bureau County. By September 1841, he was receiving his Revolutionary War pension money ($80 a year) in Bureau County. According to printed sources, Aaron Sturges died in October 1842
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In Tiskilwa, Lydia Sturges was affiliated with the C.A. Dean family. The sale of her estate goods was July 12, 1865, on the lawn of the Dean residence. Her personal goods garnered $174.95.

The cooperation of local, state and national groups will result in the eventual placement of Lydia’s headstone and a memorial marker for Aaron. Appropriate recognition for Aaron as a Revolutionary War patriot and his daughter as a DAR Daughter of a Patriot will be given with cast bronze markers.

Aaron Sturges is the second Revolutionary War soldier noted in Bureau County. Edward Hall served with forces from North Carolina. Hall, his wife and daughter are buried in Miller Cemetery near Spring Valley. Their graves were honored with ceremonies and DAR bronze markers in May 2005 by the Princeton-chapter.

22 October, Princeton, IL: DAR plans commemorative markings

From BCRNews.com: DAR plans commemorative markings
PRINCETON — The Princeton-Illinois chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, invites the pubic to attend the commemorative markings for Aaron Sturges, Revolutionary War patriot, 1760-1842, and his daughter, Lydia Sturges.

The event will be at 1 p.m. Oct. 22 at Mount Bloom Cemetery in Tiskilwa. A reception will follow at the Mount Bloom gazebo. RSVP by Oct. 15 to Beverly A. Larson, 603 E. Central Ave., Princeton, IL 61356; 815-875-4127.

Participants should bring lawn chairs, In case of inclement weather, the service and reception will be held at Museum on Main, 110 E. Main St. in Tiskilwa.