A Historic Dinner

One of my graduate adviser's favorite questions was really out of the box, but it worked. He'd often ask "If you could have dinner with either Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, or John C. Calhoun, who would it be and why?" Those three, known as the Great Triumvirate, served in the Senate during the antebellum period and the question is actually a clever way of getting us to think about the contribution of those men. So...who would it be? Let's look at the three candidates.

Henry Clay, from senate.gov

Henry Clay, Whig, Kentucky

Why: Clay was the longest serving Speaker of the House of the nineteenth century. Before Clay, the speaker was a glorified parliamentarian. The Kentuckian made it more like what we know today--someone active in policy. He pushed the vote to declare war on Britain in 1812 and was involved in peace negotiations. He ran for president unsuccessfully three times, became the founder and spokesman of the Whig Party, and was one of the most prominent senators in history. Known as the "Great Compromiser," Clay forged the tariff legislation that ended the nullification crisis in 1833 and staved off the Civil War for a decade with the Compromise of 1850. The deal had eight parts including the admission of California as a free state, the settling of a boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico, the abolition of the slave trade in Washington, DC, and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.

Dinnertime Conversation: In other words, what would I want to talk to Clay about over dinner? I'd really want to hear how he felt about the other two members of the Great Triumvirate and how he worked with them (and others) behind the scenes to forge those compromises.

Main Course: Steak and potatoes. Classy, simple. I'm sure somehow a bottle of bourbon would get involved.

Daniel Webster, from loc.gov

Daniel Webster, Whig, Massachusetts

Why: Webster, a congressman from New Hampshire and Massachusetts and a senator from Massachusetts, is one of the most renowned orators in American history. His Second Reply to Hayne on January 26-27, 1830, rebutting pro-nullification arguments, is considered one of the greatest speeches in history. Webster concluded, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." He argued over two hundred cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, notably with a four hour argument in Dartmouth College v. Woodward and three days of speaking in McCullough v. Maryland, both in 1819. In the first case, his defense of his alma mater after New Hampshire tried to change the charter moved the courtroom to tears. In McCullough, Webster defended Congress's authority to establish a national bank and made the famous statement (borrowed by John Marshall in the Court's decision), "The power to tax is the power to destroy." Webster backed Clay's compromises. His support for preserving the Union cost him his seat after he spoke in favor of the Compromise of 1850. That Webster was supporting legislation that included a fugitive slave law alienated his base.

Dinnertime Conversation: Webster opposed the War of 1812 and after the burning of Washington in 1814, suggested moving the capital city north of the Mason-Dixon line. What accounted for his conversion from sectionalism to nationalism? What did he really think of Clay's compromises and his leadership of the Whig Party?

Main Course: He's from New England. I think you have to go with lobster.

John C. Calhoun, from house.gov

John C. Calhoun, Democrat, South Carolina

Why: Calhoun was the strongest voice the South had in the decades before the Civil War. He began his national career as a "War Hawk" who lived in the same boarding house as Henry Clay. After the War of 1812, Calhoun's political views shifted from an ardent nationalism to a fierce sectionalism. In 1828, he penned South Carolina Exposition and Protest, which outlined the policy of nullification. In other words, he explained that South Carolina saw the Tariff of 1828 as an unconstitutional attack on the South and therefore, South Carolina could declare the act as null and void. He was the first vice president to resign and took his seat in the Senate in 1832. He believed that the Compromise of 1850 wasn't enough to appease the South. He was too ill to deliver his final speech, so Senator James Mason of Virginia read the remarks. Calhoun said that if Southern rights were not respected (namely the right to take slaves into the territories), then secession would be the only option. He died on March 31, 1850. The South lost its most prominent voice and the Compromise of 1850 passed through Congress. His legacy lived on as the South threatened secession throughout the 1850s, finally pulling the trigger during the winter of 1860-61.

Dinnertime Conversation: I'd really be curious about how he shifted away from the nationalism of his early career. He seemed to take the opposite political theory path than Daniel Webster. I'd also love to talk to him about his political theories on secession.

Main Course: Perhaps barbeque? Cajun food? I think with Calhoun's temperament, something spicy is in order.

The Verdict: Clay, Calhoun, and Webster all had major roles in antebellum politics, and I'm hoping future blog entries will get more into this. Bear in mind that Webster and Clay both died in 1852. Without the Great Triumvirate, the Senate had nobody who could forge the great compromises. Stephen Douglas tried, but he only made enemies in both the North and South (more on this later, I hope). But merely because I think he was a genius and because of all he did, I'd have to go with Clay. Oddly enough, I think John C. Calhoun would agree with me. He and Clay were once friends but had a falling out over politics. Calhoun once said of Clay, "I don't like Clay. He is a bad man, an imposter, a creator of wicked schemes. I wouldn't speak to him, but, by God, I love him!" Who would you pick?

I'm hoping that this is the first of many entries for the new year. I'm a little late in acting on my new years' resolution to update more often. Thanks for reading!

Senator Inouye to lie in state

Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, who passed away Monday. From senate.gov

As many of you probably heard, Senator Daniel Inouye passed away on Monday at the age of 88. He was a decorated war hero, who earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions in Italy during the Second World War. It has also been announced that Senator Inouye will be the thirtieth person to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. Senator Inouye's story was featured in the Ken Burns series, The War.

Since I haven't updated in too long (December busyness will cause things like that to happen), I figured a brief history of the lying in state ceremony would be appropriate.

The first person to lie in state was Henry Clay of Kentucky, a Speaker of the House and longtime senator known as the "Great Compromiser," in 1852. David and Jeanne Heidler, in Henry Clay: The Essential American, provide a beautiful description of the ceremony in the book's first pages.

Abraham Lincoln was the second person, and the first of eleven presidents, to lie in state after his assassination in April 1865. For the ceremony, a catafalque of pine boards and black cloth was assembled:

Lincoln Catafalque. From senate.gov

 The Lincoln Catafalque has been used for every other lying in state ceremony since, and for a few other events. In July 2010, longtime West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd's remains rested upon the catafalque in the Senate Chamber.

The full list of those who have lain in state can be found here.

Senator Inouye will join Clay, Charles Sumner (1874), John A. Logan (1886), Robert Taft (1953), Everett Dirksen (1969), Hubert Humphrey (1978), and Claude Pepper (1989) as the only sitting senators to lie in state.

There are a number of war heroes who have lain in state: Admiral George Dewey (1917), the Unknown Soldiers from World War I (1921), World War II (1958), Korea (1958), and Vietnam (1984), General John J. Pershing (1948), General Douglas Macarthur (1964), and General Dwight D. Eisenhower (1969).

A few names stand out. Former President William Howard Taft was Chief Justice of the United States at the time of his death in 1930. J. Edgar Hoover, longtime director of the FBI is on the list. Also, Pierre L'Enfant, the man who laid out the city of Washington, DC, lie in state before he was reinterred from a pauper's grave to Arlington National Cemetery in 1909.

When Officers Jacob Chesnut and John Gibson of the U.S. Capitol Police were killed in the line of duty in 1998, Congress created the lying in honor ceremony to pay respects to those who do not quite meet the dignitary status for the lying in state ceremony. Rosa Parks was the only other individual to lie in honor. There are only a few differences from the lying in state ceremony. Notably, the casket does not rest upon the Lincoln Catafalque.

Hopefully this sheds some light on how rare the lying in state ceremony it is, but nobody deserves it more than the American hero and public servant, Senator Inouye.

Lincoln's Second Greatest Speech

Plaque of the Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg National Cemetery, photo by Andrew Tremel

November 19, 2011 wreath laying at Soldiers' National Monument, Gettysburg National Cemetery, taken by Andrew Tremel

November 19, 1863 is a date that stands in the minds of (hopefully) most Americans--the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.

Before I continue, I want to dedicate this blog entry to the memory of Tony Zusman, a coworker, historian, Civil War re-enactor, fellow fact of the day junkie, and friend. Every day at work, he provided a sheet with various "facts of the day," always highlighting something with Elvis. I always appreciated references to Mel Brooks' greatest works, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. One of his last sheets featured the birthday of Hedy (not Headly) Lamar. Tony was always positive, upbeat, caring. I can't say enough good things about the guy, and I can't express how much me and my coworkers will miss him. I couldn't find an event related to pop culture that I knew enough to blog about. Hopefully he'd be okay with me blogging about the president of the Union, as Tony was a Confederate re-enactor and long time officer in Longstreet's Corps. Requiescat in pacem, Tony.

I've actually had this particular entry in mind since I started the blog. The Gettysburg Address is Lincoln's most famous speech. It's even etched into the walls of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. At least when I was in school (hopefully still, but I doubt it), we had to memorize Lincoln's immortal words. The speech defined the meaning of the war:

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

As great of a speech it was--one of the best in American history--I consider it to be Lincoln's second best speech. If it weren't for a speech he delivered more than three years earlier, Lincoln never would have had the chance to speak at the dedication of Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg. The speech that I consider Lincoln's best is what he delivered at the Cooper Institute in New York City on February 27, 1860. It became known as the Cooper Union speech, about which Harold Holzer wrote an excellent book, titled Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech that Made Abraham Lincoln President.

Invited to speak in New York, Lincoln took full advantage of the situation and it was a make-or-break moment in his rise to the presidency (this was Lincoln's East Coast debut). Lincoln earned some national attention because of his performance in the famed debates with Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas in 1858. Douglas was once again Lincoln's target in his Cooper Union address. Douglas had made the claim that the Founding Fathers supported the idea of popular sovereignty--that residents of a territory could decide the slavery question for themselves. Wrong, Lincoln argued in his hour long address. A slow, serious, and methodical researcher, Lincoln cited the congressional votes of signers of the Constitution on the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the Missouri Compromise, and other measures that prohibited slavery in new territories. He denounced John Brown's raid on Harpers' Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) and said if the South resorted to secession, the blame for disunion would rest squarely upon their shoulders. But Lincoln showed that the Republican Party's idea of barring slavery in the territories was in line with the Founders' thoughts on expansion. The Dred Scott decision and Douglas's "popular sovereignty" were a break with political and legal tradition.

He concluded emphatically, "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

This speech likely remained in the minds of delegates in Chicago at the Republican Convention that May. Thanks to capable floor managers, Lincoln clinched the nomination and led the nation through the Civil War. If you have a free 90 minutes check out Sam Waterson recreate Lincoln's delivery on C-SPAN's website. Or, if you don't, you can read it at your leisure, here. But take a moment this weekend--look at Cooper Union or the Gettysburg Address and remember the sacrifice of those who fought in the Civil War and those who protect our Union today.

November 10

Happy 237th birthday United States Marine Corps!

Also today in history...

Electoral Chaos

1860 Electoral Map...an election that ultimately changed the nation, nps.gov

The last thing I want this blog to become is a place for political rants. I want to stick with history, thus, in this post, I'm not going beyond the 1800s.

I'll confess: I'm sick of it all: the news, the debates, the ads, the phone calls, the yard signs lining highway medians. I have election fatigue. Yet the nerd in me wants to see a little bit of electoral chaos after the polls close. I thought it would be fun to take a brief look at some of the contested presidential campaigns in years past.

Election of 1800

In the days before the Twelfth Amendment, presidential electors cast two votes. Whoever had the most votes was president; the runner-up became vice president. It led to President John Adams having his chief rival, Thomas Jefferson, as his vice president. John Adams ran for reelection in 1800, but came in third place to Jefferson and New Yorker and future duelist Aaron Burr. Jefferson and Burr tied with 73 electoral votes.

The House of Representatives met in February to do their constitutional duty and settle the election. On February 17, after thirty-six ballots, Thomas Jefferson became president and Aaron Burr ended up as vice president. Jefferson went on to serve two terms in the White House, while Burr fought a duel with the former treasury secretary and later faced a treason trial. The country reacted to the election by ratifying the Twelfth Amendment, leaving the presidential and vice presidential candidates on separate ballots.

Election of 1824

With only factions and no organized political parties, four men ran for president: Andrew Jackson, the hero from the War of 1812, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford, and Speaker of the House Henry Clay. Jackson finished first in the popular vote, but could not attain a majority in the Electoral College. Adams was second, Crawford in third. The House of Representatives would decide the election, but Clay would not be on the ballot: only the top three moved on. Crawford had suffered a stroke, so it was a two man race.

To say that Clay didn't get along with either Jackson or Adams is an understatement. He used his influence as speaker, however, and swung the election to Adams. Clay saw the secretary of state as the lesser of the two evils. Adams subsequently appointed Clay as secretary of state. While there was likely at most an unspoken agreement over that arrangement, Jackson and his cronies were able to use accusations of a "corrupt bargain" to defeat Adams in 1828.

Election of 1860

This was probably the most chaotic election in history, simply because seven states reacted to the results by seceding from the Union. I put it on the list not so much because of the election itself, but because of the outcome. This election, like the 1824 contest, saw four candidates. In May, the Democratic Party split. Southern delegates bolted from the convention after a majority of Northerners and Midwesterners adopted a platform based on popular sovereignty (residents of a territory would decide slave or free status on their own). The remaining Democrats nominated Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas. The Southern Democrats held their own convention and nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge on a platform that called for territories to be open to slavery. The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, a little known former congressman. The Constitutional Union Party formed to avoid most of the controversial issues and took slave holding Senator John Bell as its candidate.

Lincoln won with a majority in the electoral college and 40% of the popular vote. He won 52% of the Northern vote and didn't even appear on the ballot in most Southern states. After his election, Lincoln assured the South that he would not interfere in slavery where it already existed. Seven states ignored the threat, seceded, and in February 1861, formed the Confederate States of America.

Election of 1876

Democrat Samuel Tilden faced off with Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. As the election returns trickled in, there were three states whose electoral votes were in dispute: South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. Tilden was one vote short of clinching the Electoral College vote; Hayes needed all three states. When ballots were counted, Hayes was declared the winner by one vote, but Democrats made accusations of fraud (Tilden did win the popular vote, after all). Congress set up the Florida Commission, made of five senators, five representatives, and five Supreme Court justices. It ended up that parties were split evenly and the fifth of the justices was to be Justice Joseph Bradley, believed to be independent-minded. The commission voted 8-7 to award Hayes with the 20 disputed electoral votes. To assuage the Democrat-dominated South, Hayes promised he would remove all federal troops from the South, thus bringing Reconstruction to an end.

Today in history is back

After a month hiatus of general busyness with other projects (including dealing with copy edits and proofs for my article coming out in January), I'm finally ready to get back to blogging.

There are so many things I could blog about: John Adams' birth (October 30, 1735), the HMS Bounty (a reproduction of the ship sunk last night), or the "Perfect Storm" of Halloween 1991. All too obvious.

We also just commemorated the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The latter is related to why I started this blog. My dad loves "today in history" stuff. He'd ask us "what happened today in history?" on most nights either out of curiosity or trying to spark dinnertime conversation. Regardless of the date, my brother Josh would answer "Cuban Missile Crisis?" He was right once a year. He probably knew that, but he's a smart ass.

Still, topics too obvious.

So today, we're going to look at the life of architect Thomas U. Walter, the fourth Architect of the Capitol, who died on October 30, 1887.

from senate.gov

Born in Philadelphia in 1804, Walter's early work included the Moyamensing Prison in Philadelphia, the Chester County, Pennsylvania Courthouse, and the homes of prominent Pennsylvanians, such as Nicholas Biddle, president of the Second Bank of the United States. His better known work, however, can be found in Washington, DC.

Our country had grown rapidly by 1850. In September of that year, California became the thirty-first state. There were sixty-two senators and 233 representatives in chambers that were growing more and more crowded. Congress launched a design competition to expand the building. Walter won, and from 1851 until his resignation in 1865, he oversaw the construction of the current chambers of Congress. That, of course, wasn't his only contribution.

Late in 1851, a fire broke out in the Library of Congress, then housed in the Capitol. It burned 35,000 volumes (around 2/3 of the library's holdings) and if it weren't for nearby Marines who chopped out a staircase leading to the wood and copper Capitol dome, the dome would have gone too. Members of Congress were alarmed by fire. Walter used this as an opportunity to propose a larger, fireproof Capitol dome--one more in proportion with the new chambers of Congress. In 1855, Walter received a $100,000 appropriation to begin. When it was all said in done in the 1860s, the dome cost around $1.1 million.

Cross section of the dome, from archives.gov

He also rebuilt the Library of Congress in cast-iron, and the library remained in that facility until the construction of the Jefferson Building in 1897.

Walter's Libary of Congress, from capitol.gov

 He retired to Philadelphia in 1865 after a contract dispute, but left a lasting legacy in American architecture. Struggling financially, he took a position as chief assistant to the architect of the Philadelphia City Hall in 1873. The last years of his life also saw him reconcile with Montgomery C. Meigs, who was the superintendent of construction for the Capitol wings. The conflicts between Meigs and Walter are well documented in William C. Allen's magnum opus, History of the United States Capitol (the full text of the book can be found at the link).

Walter is buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. The American Institute of Architects refurbished the grave site a few years ago (Walter was a founding member of the organization in 1857).

Walter gravesite, photo taken by Andrew Tremel

Battle of New Market Heights

September 29, 1864 was the battle of New Market Heights, an attack on the Confederate lines during the skirmish of Petersburg. The reason I blog about it today? I haven't made an entry all week. No...seriously, I wrote part of my master's thesis on this battle. It was important, in my opinion, because it provided further evidence to doubtful white Union generals that African Americans made excellent, gallant soldiers. Union officers still needed more proof, but that's another blog post for another time.

By early Fall 1864, Union General Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate General Robert E. Lee had been entrenched around Petersburg, Virginia, a railroad depot south of Richmond. Throughout the nine month siege, Grant made several attempts to crack Lee's lines with only limited success. On September 29, Grant ordered General Benjamin F. Butler to assault Lee. A number of regiments of African American soldiers (United States Colored Troops or USCT), in the brigade of Brigadier General Charles Paine, were involved in the fighting. In fact, of the twenty-five African American soldiers who received the Medal of Honor during the Civil War (both army and navy), fourteen earned the award at the battle of New Market Heights.

For more on the battle, here's a link to the National Park Service's overview.