History Magazine 2016-08-09

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Ben-Hur — Page 8

CONTENTS

Truman Assassination Attempt — Page 13

Vitus Bering — Page 17

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2016 Opening Notes ........................................................... 6 Medieval French Medicine, Wagon Forts

Ben-Hur

................................................................... 8

James Breig examines how a Victorian novel launched a neverending chariot race

Truman Assassination Attempt............................... 13 Chuck Lyons looks at an attempt by Puerto Rican Nationalists to assassinate the 33rd President of the United States

Denmark's Alaskan Explorer: Vitus Bering ............17 David A. Norris looks at the life and discoveries of the famous 18th century Danish explorer

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Glenn Hammond Curtiss: Aviation Pioneer ......... 22 Trafford Doherty looks back at the man remembered as the Father of Naval Aviation and the American Aircraft Industry

Cover: Photo courtesy of Glenn H. Curtiss Museum, Hammondsport, NY.

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History Magazine August/September 2016

and we’ll see you there!

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The Battle of Harlem Heights — Page 24

Hitler’s Wonder Weapons — Page 31

Where is Hysteria? — Page 43

The Battle of Harlem Heights ................................. 24 Douglas J. Gladstone examines a hard-fought battle that yielded a victory and a much-needed boost in morale for George Washington's troops

Raid on Hitler's Wonder Weapons.......................... 31 Andreas Forrer examines the steps taken by the Allies to disarm Hitler's Vengeance Weapon Program

Daniel Webster: Wall Street Tycoon ...................... 36 Laureen Sauls-Lessard looks at the Clamorgan Land Association Venture

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Where is Hysteria?................................................... 43 Charles Bush, M.D. looks at how the female psyche has been treated and mistreated throughout history

Inside Walls: The Legend of "Turkey Pete"............. 48 Brian D'Ambrosio looks at the life of a man who spent nearly 50 years in a Montana prison

Hindsight .................................................................. 53 A look at books and other media for your consideration

Questions or comments? Call 1-888-326-2476 or visit www.history-magazine.com August/September 2016 History Magazine

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TRIVIA

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MEDIEVAL FRENCH MEDICINE

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ains poured down and crops failed. People in medieval Marseille lay exhausted and hungry in their flea-infested beds. They picked lice from their hair, listened for rats and worried. Why did so many friends and family get sick? Vomits, sweats, or worse, suddenly appeared. No one knew why? Nobody agreed on a cure. Some said ashes of toad mixed in a potion eased a chill. Cooked pears brought down fever. How about trying rest and cold drink? Bleeding was essential, it matched a favorable horoscope, and the physician lanced the vein and missed an artery. But should treatment stop before or after the patient fainted? Marseille’s rulers, better rested and fed, battled their own fleas, head lice, listened for rats and wondered also. But the noble, the powerful, and the rich, always received educated medical care. An accomplished doctor, while equally mystified about cause, examined the condition then chose one among many possible procedures, incantations, amulets, or prayers to heal. The authorities wanted this expert medical help to reach everyone. And unlike other regions in the medieval world, they even ignored gender and religion in their search. A contract dated 28 August 1326, allowed Sara of St. Gilles, a Jewish woman, to add a male apprentice to her medical practice. Sara will teach her student, Salvetus of Burgonoro, “the art of medicine and natural science” and “instruct him in good manners”. She will supply clothing, support and food. Salvetus, in turn, “promises to be hard working, obedient, and perform all services, giving Sara whatever fees he earns”. After graduating, Salvetus, can visit patients “within and

WAGON FORTS

Anatomical Man, by the Limbourg Bros., dated between 1411 and 1416. In the early middle ages, even astral influences were considered with respect to the origin and cure of disease. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain, and in the United States

without the city of Marseille”. The document was written in legal Latin, witnessed, and signed by a

T

hough not a particularly successful endeavor, the first mass fielding of the tank took place in 1916 during the Battle of the Somme. The conceptual idea of the tank, especially in the context of The Great War, is clear. No Man’s Land was unassailable, there had to be a way to get across without sacrificing so many men, and the tank was it. But what if I told you that, even in 1916, the idea of the tank was not precisely new? What if I told you that by 1916, the idea was already 500 years old. That brings us to the Hussites, and particularly to one Jan Žižka. The Hussites lived in modern day Czech Republic and they had a serious problem. King Sigismund of Hungary also had the title of King of Bohemia, but in fact, had no true power over the area. Using the widespread Czech acceptance of the reformist teachings of Jan Hus, hence Hussites, as a justification for war, Sigismund and a horde of German knights set out for Prague to put a quick end to things. Numerically outmatched, the Hussites had to go up against an unassailable force, so what did they do? They made the Wagon Fort, they made tanks. That being said, in many ways, the Wagon Fort was more than a tank. By the time it was

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History Magazine August/September 2016

Replica of a Hussite war wagon (Chudów, Poland). Ludek, Wikimedia Commons

deployed, in contrast to the Somme, it already had a successful strategy attached. Similar to tank crews, each wagon had its own crew, all of them with important jobs to fulfill. First, as the battle was beginning, the wagons would be chained together in

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notary’s secretary. Sara has no title “doctor” by her name, yet, Salvetus, after graduating, can accept patients anywhere. How was that possible? We have no further information about these two. But there were so many different levels of education and experience, the city had to be flexible. Examiners set standards, gave tests, even telling the questions in advance. Every license was not equal. University educations were rare. Owning a medical book or renting was expensive. Finding a friend willing to lend, unpredictable. Medical knowledge came from early Arabic or Greek sources, hand copied into Latin and Hebrew, giving theories and recipes, but few results. Some applicants couldn’t read… anything. So, tests were given orally. Gender, religion and literacy didn’t count. Good judgement, a kind heart and clean hands and fingernails were important.

Honesty mattered. Basic methods of diagnosis, procedures, astrology, magic, diet, or prayers only useful on the Sabbath, could have been required. By this era, people who once called for help from women in the family, charity or a folk healer, now considered a city approved “doctor”. Some paid annually for this trusted advice. The city, depending on the “health” of the treasury, aided the poor. And, when things went wrong, nobody hesitated to take anybody to court, sometimes demanding money returned. The Black Plague reached Marseille in 1348. No one knew cause. None knew cure. But, before this epidemic struck, maybe even Sara or Salvetus visited a bedside saying, “I don’t know the reason for your distress. But I can help you now. You will survive.” And that frightened patient felt safer. Hm

much the same way as the covered wagons of the American west would be, in either a circular or rectangular shape. Each wagon had roughly 15 to 20 dedicated soldiers. First the forts began with long range shelling. Early adopters of the cannon, the Czech Houfnice, a predecessor of modern day long range artillery and the word Howitzer, would fire upon the enemy until the harassment could no longer be tolerated. As German Knights began to approach the Wagon Forts, the first wave of soldiers inside stepped out. These were crossbowmen, roughly 5 in number for each Wagon, and 2 men carrying the Czech pistol, or píšt’ala. These men would continuously fire at the approaching knights, prioritizing their horses, with the main

idea of exhausting the encroaching foe. By the time the Knights arrived, the long range opponents would be replaced by the rank and file infantry, equipped with sword and flail, who could dispatch the weary knights with little to no effort. Then, after loading everyone back up into the wagons and unchaining them, they could be moved forward to the next line of battle, if there was any left, and the whole procedure repeated. Though produced in a different context, and serving a somewhat different specific purpose, one to break a constant stalemate, the other to even some exceptionally uneven odds, the Wagon Fort is a clear predecessor to the Tank used to this day, nearly 600 years later. Hm

— Barbara Stern

— Aaron Jerashen

Volume 17 Number 6

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2016 PUBLISHER & EDITOR

Edward Zapletal [email protected] ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

Rick Cree [email protected] FREELANCE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

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ENTERTAINMENT

A costume from the Broadway version of ‘Ben-Hur’. New York Public Library

BEN-HUR

JAMES BREIG EXAMINES HOW A VICTORIAN NOVEL LAUNCHED A NEVERENDING CHARIOT RACE

P

ublished in 1880, Ben-Hur, a novel of ancient Rome and early Christianity, has been filmed multiple times, adapted into a Broadway play, animated for children, enacted on radio, drawn as a comic book, released as an audio book and transformed into a stage musical. No other American novel has launched such diverse formats and succeeded so often, most gloriously when the 1959 movie won 11 Academy Awards. As a bonus, the story even led to a landmark US Supreme Court case.

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History Magazine August/September 2016

What accounts for the enduring popularity of “Ben-Hur”, which will be tested once more when the latest movie version is released this summer? Finding the answer begins when Lew Wallace, a 19th-century “Zelig”, finished his novel, subtitled A Tale of the Christ. A Civil War general, a presiding judge at the trial of the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination and a territorial governor of New Mexico who bargained with Billy the Kid, Wallace opens his book with a prosaic sentence that gives away nothing about the adventures to come: “The Jebel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length, and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a caterpillar crawling from the south to the north.” The hundreds of pages that follow escort readers back in time to witness the birth and crucifixion of Christ… a falling-out between the fictional Judah Ben-Hur and his former Roman friend, Messala… a fightto-the-death sea battle… a furious chariot race between the duo… and the spiritual conversion of the title character. In May 1880, The Washington Post, barely noticing the book’s upcoming release by Harper and Brothers publishing house, placed the news in a personals column that shared such trivialities as Mark Twain’s real estate taxes and a man who was “confined to his room with sciatica”. The second to last of 18 short items told readers that Wallace “has written a new novel called ‘Ben-Hur.’…[He] once wrote something or other called ‘The Fair God’.” A few months later, on the other hand, The New York Times praised the novel as “startlingly new and distinctive”, “daring”, and “remarkable”. The Detroit Free Press enthused, “Few men could have written such a story,… but Mr. Wallace seems to have been fully equal to the demand.” Across the Pacific, an Australian critic lauded the book as “one of the best American novels”. As readers devoured it avidly, the book zoomed up bestseller lists. To meet customer demand, Sears, Roebuck & Company ordered a million copies in 1913. With as many as 50 million copies of “Ben-Hur” published, it has never been out of print. A fellow Civil War general, O.O. Howard, declared that “no library or home… can afford to be without this book of extraordinary human interest and remarkable achievement”. In 1886, a Cleveland, Ohio bookseller advertised that it had 500 copies on hand and headlined the news by simply repeating “Ben-Hur” five times in large type.

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The novelist became so renowned that one city advertised his speaking there with the headline: “BenHur, alias Gen. Lew Wallace… will lecture at Music Hall.” He admitted himself that “I shall look back upon ‘Ben-Hur’ as my best performance.” Larry Paarlberg, director of the Lew Wallace Study & Museum in Indiana, explained the novel’s universal appeal – it has been translated into multiple languages – by saying that the author “was in the right place at the right time to catch an emerging market that was both religious and secular, and the book touched both. As a story, it’s so powerful.” Howard Miller, emeritus history professor at the University of Texas at

Austin, has written about and taught the book. He noted that Wallace “wrote about things that Americans have never tired of exploring: masculinity and femininity, race and ethnicity, freedom and slavery, wealth, empire, and family.” Pointing out a strength of that story, he added, “as American culture changed, ‘Ben-Hur’ changed with it.” Its success “helped overcome Christian opposition to reading novels, attending the theater and going to ‘the picture show’.” Fraser Heston, whose father, Charlton, starred as Ben-Hur in the ’59 film, called the book “one of those timeless stories”. The main character, he continued, is “a Jewish Prince who loses everything

Charlton and Fraser Heston pose during the making of ‘Ben-Hur.’ Photo by Lydia C. Heston, Copyright Agamemnon Films 2016

at the hands of the Roman Empire and discovers the love of Christ in the process. He is a Jew who remains faithful to the God of his people even in the face of appalling hardship. And yet he learns the meaning of forgiveness and compassion [and finds] that it is love, not hatred, that will heal the world.” While modern bestsellers swiftly transition from page to screen, Wallace took his time in authorizing the 19th-century equivalent: a Broadway play. It didn’t debut until 1899, nearly two decades after the novel hit bookstores. He approved the script only after the producers resolved the sensitive issue of how Jesus would be portrayed: not by a thespian, but as a bright shaft of heavenly light. The resulting drama was termed a “brilliant spectacle” by the Times, which praised its costumes, scenery and the “picturesque movement of the play itself ”. Presenting Christ was only one problem the producers had to conquer; another was how to stage a thundering chariot race with real horses. Two chariots, drawn by four steeds each, were put on treadmills as scenery rotated rapidly behind them, creating the illusion of forward movement. Adding to the realism were large fans offstage that blew debris around the charioteers and caused the rivals’ hair to fly. A Broadway smash, the show toured the world for two decades, drawing sold-out crowds wherever it played. Filmmakers soon grasped the potential of Wallace’s spectacular story for the screen, but fly-bynight producers beat their rivals by filming a 15-minute version for $500 on a New Jersey beach – without permission. The result was Kalem Co. v. Harper Brothers, a 1911 Supreme Court case. The

August/September 2016 History Magazine

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ENTERTAINMENT

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questions before the justices were these: Does a movie, being another medium, infringe on the copyright of the novel, and is a producer guilty of copyright infringement if he merely sells the movie to a theater? Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said yes to both, laying down the precedent that movies were copyrightable. Already a book, play and iffy film, “Ben-Hur” was also a brand. One scholar believes the bestseller “provided the first popular artistic success to spill over into the commercial world”. Shortly after the book was published, Ben-Hur bicycles appeared on streets. From that, the number of products bearing the name exploded. John Philip Sousa recorded “Chariot Race, or Ben Hur March”, while “Ben-Hur Waltzes” could be heard via piano rolls; a spice company sold Ben-Hur pepper, thyme and sage; the novel’s name was stamped on an automobile, coffee, tea, freezers, razor blades, ink blotters and even perfume. In addition, cities took the moniker (there is a Ben-Hur, Virginia, for example), and parents gave it to their children, resulting in a pinup artist, Ben-Hur Baz; a journalist, Ben-Hur Lampman; and a colonel, Ben Hur Chastaine. Twenty years after Kalem’s failure, a far more mammoth and ten times longer cinematic version was produced by MetroGoldwyn-Mayer. With a running time of nearly two-and-a-half hours, this “Ben-Hur” starred Ramon Novarro as the title character and Francis X. Bushman as Messala. A review in The Washington Post credited the silent picture for having “reverently followed” Wallace’s book and for heightening “the powerful melodramatic and love interest of the play”. The Times critic called it “a masterpiece… filled with so much artistry one would like to ponder

An 1892 newspaper ad sought agents to sell Ben-Hur bikes. Sioux Valley News, Iowa

over some of the scenes to glean all that is in them”. Filmed in Italy and California, the movie drew crowds into theaters, and Paarlberg labeled it a “very good” film that “revolutionized” movies. But it ended up only breaking even, a result of its high production costs, estimated at $4 million. More than three decades would pass before “Ben-Hur” returned to movie theaters, and this time it won not only critical praise and audience enthusiasm, but also millions of dollars. The final rewards for the 1959 production, which runs three-and-a-half hours, were the 11 Oscars handed out to it, including best film, best actor, best musical score and best director. To Paarlberg, this iteration of the Wallace story was “a team effort” led by director William Wyler (who was a lowly assistant director on the silent movie). “Wyler,” said Paarlberg, “had a vision and got it across on screen very successfully.” Also contributing to the success of the powerhouse movie, noted Miller,

History Magazine August/September 2016

were “the MGM publicity and marketing departments. [They] devised pioneering techniques that kept the film in the public eye for months, both before and after its release.” Miller also credits the screenplay because it “retains the novel’s spiritual essence”, particularly in three characters: Ben-Hur; Simonides, his faithful servant; and Balthasar, one of the Wise Men who links Jesus and Ben-Hur. To Fraser Heston, his father’s film was “the first of the modern epics, by a brilliant director with an excellent script and a very good cast, brilliantly photographed and art-directed. And it has stood the test of time. It’s pretty much a perfect film.” Indeed, the American Film Institute’s lists of all-time great films rank it among the most inspiring and the most thrilling movies, and its film score by Miklos Rozsa, who was given a year to research and compose the music, is rated as one of cinema’s greatest. Since the turn to the 2000s, still more versions of “Ben-Hur” have appeared: • In 2003, the two Hestons produced an 80-minute animated “Ben-Hur” for youngsters, with Charlton again voicing the lead character. Keeping faith with the novel, the cartoon Messala doesn’t die in the chariot race. • In 2009, “Ben-Hur Live” was performed in Latin and Aramaic in an arena in London, England. Variety, the show business newspaper, said that “the production simply cannot deliver the high-stakes, life-and-death drama that came through in William Wyler’s film”. • In 2010, a two-part TV movie of the epic was broadcast on Canadian television.

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PRODUCER OUTLINES NEW ELEMENTS OF ‘BEN-HUR’ By James Breig Some people have questioned the necessity of remaking “Ben-Hur”, given that the 1959 film won 11 Academy Awards. But Roma Downey, executive producer of the 2016 version, has answers to those questions. First, she emphasized the scope of the story. “Ben-Hur,” she said, “is such a rich, epic tale of love, betrayal, forgiveness and redemption. These are themes that continue to resonate with us. I am drawn to source material that is compelling and inspirational. ‘Ben-Hur’ has both, and I have witnessed how important it is for today’s audiences to have a film they can watch together, a film that not only entertains them, but strengthens their personal faith.” In addition, she continued, the new movie is “for a whole new generation. It’s a story that should be told and retold. It’s epic! Our cast are incredible, the movie is fast-paced and powerful, and the visual effects are truly mind-blowing. The chariot scene alone will take your breath away!” To create a movie that contains new elements, Downey added, the original novel was consulted. Referring to its subtitle, “A Tale of the Christ”, she said that film-goers can “expect to see Jesus as very much a character in this film. Also, we’ve created a true action-adventure that is visually stunning – from the Poster for 1959 version of ‘Ben-Hur’. iconic chariot scene to Ben-Hur’s harrowing escape Wikimedia Commons from a slave ship.” To achieve such “stunning” elements, the producer pointed to something not available to filmmakers in 1959. “With today’s technical advances,” Downey said, “we’re able to paint the story more vividly than ever before. Audiences will leave the theater in awe of, and inspired by, Ben-Hur’s incredible journey!”

Paarlberg termed the miniseries “underwhelming. It didn’t have the majesty of the book and the other movies.” • In 2015, a spoof of the novel/ film appeared in London with a cast of four and, according to a reviewer, “rollicking bad puns”.

Asked about the recent attempts, Fraser Heston replied, “If you have your heart set on remaking this classic film, then go back to the novel by Lew Wallace and be as true to it as you can. Don’t try to modernize it or condescend to the material or what you think

21st-century audiences want in a film. There is a reason this great story continues to be told across all media for more than a hundred years.” The next film to try capturing the essence of the novel, as well as audience attention, is the 2016 version, starring Jack Huston as the title character. He has been quoted as saying, “There’s something really beautiful about [the story], especially in the current climate of the world, about different religions and people being at odds against each other. How do we find our way out of this, how do we forgive, how do we forget,

how do we move on, how should we treat our fellow human?” Fraser Heston said, “I look forward to seeing the new version, and wish the filmmakers and Jack Huston the best of luck with it. He’s a personal friend.” But, he added, “the audience will be the ultimate judge”. Hm JAMES BREIG’s most recent book is Star-Spangled Baseball: True Tales of Flags and Fields. He is also the author of a nonfiction book about WWII, Searching for

Sgt. Bailey: Saluting an Ordinary Soldier of World War II.

August/September 2016 History Magazine

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Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States. From U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

TRUMAN ASSASSINATION AT TEMPT

CHUCK LYONS LOOKS AT AN ATTEMPT BY PUERTO RICAN NATIONALISTS TO ASSASSINATE THE 33RD PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

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n late fall of 1950, two New York City men, each of whom was married and the father of small children, took a train south from New York to Washington where they checked into the shabby Harris Hotel. They were there on a mission. The following day, an abnormally hot Wednesday, they left the hotel and headed for a quiet, white row house on the city’s Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House. If all went as they had planned, they would soon be famous, another man would be dead, and they believed, they would

have boosted the cause they deeply believed in and, in some way, would have repaid the United States for what they considered its “criminal” actions. Their target that day was the 33rd President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, and their actions would result in what has been called “the biggest gunfight in Secret Service history”, a daylight gunfight on a Washington street that left two men dead and another two seriously wounded. Their cause was Puerto Rican independence. Despite revolts in the 16th and 18th centuries, Puerto Rico had continued to exist for 400 years under Spanish domination. That ended with the Spanish-American War when, under terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1898 which ended the war, Spain ceded the island to the United States. That action nullified a Carta de Autonomía (Charter of Autonomy) that Spain had signed a year earlier, in effect, liberating the island. The US takeover sparked protests on the island, and in 1922, adherents of independence formed the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and claimed that with the signing of the Carta de Autonomia, Spain had given up Puerto Rico and could not, therefore, cede it to the United States. The Nationalist Party continued to agitate against the United States, claiming its policies in Puerto Rico were “a continuation of colonialism”. This agitation spilled over on 30 October 1950, when on the orders of Pedro Albizu Campos, president of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, uprisings aimed at liberating Puerto Rico occurred in several parts of the island, most

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particularly in Utuado, where insurgents were killed, in Jayuya, where the uprising was put down by US bombers and artillery, and in San Juan, where the Nationalists made a failed attempt to assassinate the island’s governor, Luis Muñoz Marín, at his residence. The end of the uprisings had killed sixteen Nationalists, seven police officers, one National Guardsman, and four innocent bystanders. Another forty-nine people had been wounded, including twenty-three police officers. Hundreds of Nationalist sympathizers were also arrested and imprisoned. It was also widely broadcast on the island that the mainland American media had labeled the outbreaks as an “incident between Puerto Ricans”. The next day, Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo began hurriedly making plans to strike against the United States and to demonstrate that the US was deeply involved in what had happened – the uprising was not simply an “incident between Puerto Ricans” – and had overreacted in putting down the uprisings as it had. Torresola, age 25, had been born in Jayuya in 1925 into a family of Nationalist supporters, but had moved to New York City in 1948 in search of work. He had been employed by a New York stationery and perfume store, but had lost his job while undergoing a divorce. He had remarried soon after the divorce and survived with his new wife and two children on a welfare check of $125 a month. Torresola had been a member of the Nationalist Party in Puerto Rico and in New York had authority to take over command of the party in the United States if needed. Torresola’s brother and sister played an active part in the October uprising in Jayuya and had witnessed the

military response, which included the machine-gunning of many Jayuya rooftops. Torresola also learned that his sister had been wounded in the fighting. An ardent revolutionary, it was said, and ready to die “for the cause of freedom for Puerto Rico”. Collazo, 36, was born in Puerto Rico in 1914. When his father died in 1920, he was sent to Jayuya to be cared for by relatives. By the time he was 14, he was already participating in anti-United States rallies, and in 1932, he joined the Nationalist Party. In 1941, he moved to New York City, where he met and married divorcee, Rosa Cortez. The couple had three daughters: two from Rosa’s previous marriage, and one from Oscar’s previous marriage. Unlike Torresola, he was employed, working in a metal polishing factory. Quieter and less fiery than Torresola, Collazo was more a thinker and organized planner, but he too was dedicated to the cause. Together, Torresola and Collazo were determined to assassinate United States President Harry S. Truman “in order to bring world attention to the need for independence in Puerto Rico”. Torresola was the one familiar with guns. In court hearings after the attempt, it was testified that he taught Collazo how to load and handle the guns the two men planned on using, but that Collazo had first suggested assassinating the President. “In the United States, no one knows or cares about Puerto Rico,” Collazo is alleged to have said. “If we could do something to make them know, to draw Puerto Rico and the situation down there to their attention. That would be the way to change history.” The next day, 31 October, the two men took a train from New York’s Pennsylvania Station to

History Magazine August/September 2016

Washington. They had purchased one-way tickets, and in Washington, they registered at the Harris Hotel under false names. The hotel clerk later testified that Collazo looked “like a divinity student”. The following day, with guns in their pockets, the two men spent the morning sightseeing and then took a cab to the White House. It was there, from the car driver, they learned that the White House was under renovation, and Truman was meanwhile residing across the street at Blair House. The men walked to the Blair House at 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue. Torresola and Collazo’s hasty plan seemed to be little more than to approach the house from different sides – Torresola from the west and Collazo the east – and to shoot their way inside where they would find and kill Truman. As Torresola approached Blair House, Collazo walked past a guardhouse on the other side of the building and walked up behind Capitol police officer, Donald Birdzell, who was standing on the steps of Blair House. He aimed his pistol at Birdzell’s back and pulled the trigger. The gun didn’t fire. Collazo had failed to chamber a round properly in the complicated Luger P.38 pistol. He struggled with the gun and finally – perhaps simply by chance – got it to fire. The shot hit Birdzell in his right knee. His knee ablaze, Birdzell struggled out into the street, took out his service revolver, and returned Collazo’s fire. Floyd Boring, the uniformed Secret Service officer in the east guardhouse, also began firing, one of his shots passing through Collazo’s hat and leaving a laceration on his scull, but no serious wound. Joe Davidson, another Secret Service agent who happened to be at the eastern

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At the time of the attempted assassination, Harry Truman had been residing at Blair House, located at 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue while the White House underwent renovations. Photo by Ben Schumin, 2006. Wikimedia Commons

guardhouse at the time also started firing. Hearing the gunshots, Secret Service agent Vincent Mroz ran through a basement corridor from the Secret Service office and exited onto Pennsylvania Avenue on the east side of the House where he too began firing at Collazo who was on the entrance steps of the building struggling to reload his Luger. One of Mroz’s shots hit Collazo in the chest and he was down. Meanwhile, Torresola had approached a guard booth at the west corner of the building where he pivoted into its doorway and quickly shot White House police officer Leslie Coffelt four times, mortally wounding him. White House police officer Joe Downs had just returned to Blair House after going out for the

day’s groceries and had walked away from chatting with Coffelt when he heard the shots. He began turning to investigate when he was quickly hit by shots in the hip, back, and neck. Despite his injuries, Downs managed to struggle into Blair House and close the entrance door, locking the assassins out of the building. It was an act of courage that has been called “magnificent”. Torresola then turned his attention to the shoot-out between his partner Collazo and police officers, shooting officer Birdzell in the left knee. Then he too paused at the left of the building’s steps to reload, as yet unseen by any of the participants except the men he had shot. At about this point, President Truman, who had been taking a nap, looked outside his second

floor window and saw what was happening. Secret Service agents inside the house quickly pulled Truman from the window. At that same moment, the badlywounded Officer Coffelt left the guard booth, propped himself against it, and fired his .38-caliber service revolver at Torresola, who was about thirty feet away, hitting him two inches above the ear and killing him instantly. That too was magnificent. The entire gun battle took fewer than forty seconds, and it was later found that only one shot fired by Collazo had hit anyone, his first shot, which wounded Birdzell. Torresola had inflicted all the other gunshot wounds on the three White House policemen, one of whom, Coffelt, would die four hours later at a Washington hospital.

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Truman’s only comment after the incident ended was to say, “A President has to expect such things.” When Collazo recovered from his wounds, he was tried in federal court and sentenced to death, but President Truman commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter further commuted his sentence to time served, and he was released. Collazo returned to Puerto Rico and died there in 1994. At the time of the assassination attempt, the FBI also arrested Collazo’s wife, Rosa, on suspicion of having conspired in the plan. She spent eight months in federal prison, but did not go to trial. Upon her release, she continued to work with the Nationalist Party and helped gather 100,000 signatures in an effort to save her husband from execution. Truman, meanwhile, supported a plebiscite

in Puerto Rico in 1952 to determine its relationship to the US. Almost eighty-two percent of the Puerto Rican people voted in favor of the island’s then current arrangement with the United States. But one further incident was yet to mar that agreement. On 1 March 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists unfurled a Puerto Rican flag and fired thirty rounds from semi-automatic pistols from the Ladies’ Gallery of the House of Representatives chamber in the United States Capitol. At the time, legislators were debating an immigration bill. Five United States Representatives were wounded, one seriously, but all recovered. The four Nationalists, Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero, and Irving Flores Rodríguez, were arrested, tried and convicted in federal court,

and received long prison sentences. In 1978 and 1979, they too received pardons from President Jimmy Carter. All four returned to Puerto Rico. The gunfight at the Blair House, meanwhile, though it has all but slipped from public consciousness, is remembered in the United States Secret Service and has become part of the Service’s legend. “It was hell,” one historian said about it, “in a very small place.” Hm CHUCK LYONS is a retired newspaper editor and a freelance writer who has written extensively on historical subjects. His work has appeared in national and international periodicals. He resides in Rochester, NY with his wife, Brenda, and a beagle named “Gus”.

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History Magazine August/September 2016

EXPLORATION

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Russia’s Siberian port of Okhotsk served as a base for Bering’s voyages. Little was available in the little frontier settlement. Bering’s men had to build their own accommodations, and then construct their own ships as well.

DENMARK’S ALASKAN EXPLORER: VITUS BERING

DAVID A. NORRIS LOOKS AT THE LIFE AND DISCOVERIES OF THE FAMOUS 18TH CENTURY DANISH EXPLORER

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ar from the Bering Strait and the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Vitus Jonassen Bering was born in Horsens, Denmark in 1681. In 1696, his half-brother was appointed a customs inspector for the Danish colony of Tranquebar in India. Young Vitus went with him to sea, signing on as a cabin boy.

Meanwhile, once culturally and politically far removed from Western Europe, Russia was opening to the West under its ruler Czar Peter I. Known as Peter the Great, he modernized many of the country’s institutions. In 1696, he established the Imperial Russian Navy. In 1700, the Great Northern War broke out when the interests of the Swedish empire clashed

with the ambitions of Peter the Great. Among Russia’s allies in the war was Denmark. Bering, at the age of 22, was ready for a wider range of opportunities than he could find in his homeland. He joined the new Russian Navy in 1703. He took a new Russianized name, Ivan Ivanovich Bering. After the end of the Great Northern War in 1721, Bering was a veteran of long years of routine

naval service. His career nearly ended because of a family squabble. Bering’s wife, Anna, was disappointed that her husband was promoted only to captain, second class. Then, in 1724, Anna’s younger sister married an English officer in the Russian Navy. The Englishman, with only five years’ service compared to Bering’s twenty years, was already an admiral. Having a younger sister with a spouse who outranked her own husband so angered Anna that Vitus Bering resigned from the navy. After several months, Bering reconsidered and was welcomed back into the navy

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with a promotion to captain, first class. By the mid-1600s, Russian explorers and traders had pushed through Siberia to claim lands along the Pacific coast. At that time, many geographers thought that there was a land link between Asia and North America, or a sea route from Asia over the top of North America to Europe. Some scholars believed that there was a mysterious continent in the Pacific between Asia and North America, called Gamaland. To lead a massive effort to explore Russia’s eastern dominions, and find land or sea links from Russia to North America, the czar chose Bering. Peter the Great died a few days before his great expedition left St. Petersburg on 5 February 1725. They had to build two ships to take them to their final launching point, the Kamchatka Peninsula. On the eastern side of Kamchatka, they built another fort and constructed a new ship capable of making a long trip at sea. In the new ship, the Gabriel, they sailed into the Pacific in mid-1728. During the voyage, the Gabriel sailed through a passage separating Asia from Alaska, a waterway now called the Bering Strait. Every day, fog loomed over the seas, and no one aboard the Gabriel ever saw the North American coast. Bering sailed northward far enough to prove that there was no land connection between Siberia and North America. After another fruitless voyage the next year, Bering headed back to St. Petersburg. He reached the Russian court in 1730. Although Bering did not get to North America, his expedition stirred enough interest to send a second and larger party of exploration. Vitus Bering was also given command of this second effort, and this time, he was assigned

Long believed to be a portrait of Vitus Jonassen Bering, this image is now thought to be of his great-uncle. Wikimedia Commons. Published before 1923, and public domain in the US

nearly 600 men. Besides sailors and ship’s marines, the party included a handful of scientists and academics; a painter; an instrument maker; and an Orthodox priest with six other clergymen. Bering’s men left St. Petersburg in early 1733, but did not even reach the Pacific until 1735. The journey required incredible

labor. Maritime necessities such as cannons and anchors were unavailable in Siberia, so they had to be dragged along with the food and supplies. Encountering rivers required the construction of bridges or the building of numerous boats to ferry the men and equipage. Upon reaching the frontier town of Okhotsk, the explorers split into multiple expeditions. Some explored the Siberian coast. Another party visited Japan, then a self-isolated island monarchy that refused to trade with foreign nations. It was years before anyone left to look for North America. At Okhotsk, Bering commissioned two new ships, the St. Peter and St. Paul. After exploring Siberia’s coastline for several years, the two ships set out toward North America in early June 1741. Their orders to search for the mythical Gamaland sent them far south of the Aleutians, into the open sea. During a storm, the ships lost sight of each other, and thereafter,

Bering’s ships, the St. Peter and the St. Paul, were sketched by expedition naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller.

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This chart shows the routes taken by each of Bering’s ships in 1741 after they were separated in a storm. To the right is the Alaskan coast, and near the top are the Aleutian Islands and Alaska’s long peninsula. The Kamchatka Peninsula and Siberia are just beyond the left edge of the chart.

conducted their own explorations. On 15 July 1741, Capt. Aleksei Chirikov and the St. Paul anchored off the Alaskan coast. Chirikov sent some sailors ashore to refill the fresh water casks. Ten days later, they had not returned. Using the ship’s last remaining boat, another party went to look for them. Neither group was heard from again. Two large sea-going Indian canoes approached the ship, but drew away without attacking. Nevertheless, the crew assumed the men had been attacked and killed by the inhabitants. As his ship was low on supplies and he had no boat to send ashore, Chirikov felt he had no option, but to abandon the missing men and sail back to Kamchatka before winter ice prevented their return. Twenty-one men of the St. Paul’s crew were left behind or died of scurvy. For some time, the crew of the St. Peter sailed through fog. On 16 July, the fog lifted and they saw the 18,000-foot-high peak of Mount St. Elias. On the modern boundary of Alaska and the Yukon, Mt. St. Elias is the second highest mountain in the US and Canada.

Although they saw Alaska, none of Bering’s crew set foot on the American mainland. On 20 July, Bering sent a boat to Kayak Island, off Alaska’s coast, to take on fresh water. George Steller, the expedition’s German-born naturalist, eagerly explored the island. He found Aleut campsites and habitations, but he saw no people. Steller sent a message to the captain, asking for a boat and some more hands to help him gather plant and animal specimens. To his dismay, Steller learned that the ship was about to sail. Distant signs of an approaching storm made the mariners

anxious to get to sea, lest the heavy winds drive the St. Peter ashore. Steller was notified by the captain to return immediately, or “no more notice would be taken” of him. Livid with anger, Steller fumed that with only six hours to explore the undiscovered island on foot, Bering had made a voyage of thousands of miles from Siberia, just “to carry American water”. Despite his limited time on Kayak Island and a few later brief island stops, Steller found and described six new species of mammals and birds during the expedition. Of these animals, the largest was the Steller’s sea cow.

A fur seal, sea lion, and Steller’s sea cow appear on a chart showing Bering Island. The fur seal’s valuable pelts brought numerous European hunters to the islands of the northern Pacific, and helped spur the Russians to colonize Alaska.

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Ranging up to 30 feet long, this mammal was a relative of the manatee. Within 30 years, overhunting by European traders pushed the Steller’s sea cow to extinction. By early August, scurvy broke out among Bering’s crew. Besides painfully swollen gums and loss of teeth, sufferers also came down with fatigue, weakness, and severe lethargy and depression. Bering was too sick to command. When a storm caught the vessel, the worndown crew was unable to set sails or control the ship. Blown far out to sea, the St. Peter drifted aimlessly for weeks until another storm pushed them near land on 4 November 1741. Another storm later drove the ship ashore, leaving the hull firmly lodged on the beach. The stranded crew desperately wanted to believe that they were on the Kamchatka Peninsula, but they were on an uninhabited island. Eventually, the place would be named Bering Island, and the surrounding cluster of islands would be called the Commander Islands (in honor of Bering, as he was a ship’s commander). These islands, which form the western end of the Aleutians, today belong to Russia. For their winter camp, the crew built crude shacks by digging pits and covering them with driftwood and sailcloth. Food ran low, and the starving men were desperate enough to eat meat from a decaying whale carcass that washed ashore. Arctic foxes made life even more miserable for the stranded men. They boldly poked and prodded their way around the camp, and could not be kept out of the huts. Foxes attacked the sick, and tried to eat the dead before they could be buried. The animals displayed absolutely no fear of humans, although the men killed one after another.

Vitus Bering died on 19 December 1741 on an Aleutian island that would be named Bering Island in his honor. Several more of his crew died on the island during the winter of 1741-1742 before the survivors made their way back to Siberia.

Vitus Bering died on 19 December 1741. He was buried on the island with several other men who succumbed to sickness and malnutrition. In the spring, senior officer Lt. Sven Waxell decided to build a new, smaller ship from the timbers of the St. Peter. In August, a new single-masted ship took to the sea. After a frightening nineday voyage in a leaking vessel, the survivors landed at Petropovlosk on the Kamchatka coast on 26 August 1742. Besides Bering, another 30 hands out of his 77-man crew died during the expedition. Russian trappers and traders, following the lure of profits offered by an abundance of fur seals, returned in growing numbers to the Aleutians and the North American mainland. Eventually, Russia established a colony in Alaska. Russian land claims eventually overlapped those of the Spanish in California, where Russia established a post called Fort Ross in 1812. In 1841, the Russian-American Company sold the fort to a Swiss-born

History Magazine August/September 2016

entrepreneur named John Sutter. In 1848, gold was found on Sutter’s land, sparking the California Gold Rush. Alaska, the last Russian possession in America, was sold to the US in 1867. For some years, little was made of Bering’s voyages. Years of delay followed before the expedition’s findings were published. After his death, when news of his explorations circulated, Bering became famous in Europe and the Americas. Besides the island where he died, the Bering Sea and the Bering Strait (which separates Asia from North America) carry his name. Hm DAVID A. NORRIS is a regular contributor to History Magazine,

Internet Genealogy and Your Genealogy Today. His most recent special issue for Moorshead Magazines Ltd., Tracing Your

Revolutionary War Ancestors, is currently available at our online store.

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E A R LY AV I A T I O N

June Bug flies at Hammondsport, 4 July 1908.

Glenn Hammond Curtiss

AVIATION PIONEER

TRAFFORD DOHERTY LOOKS BACK AT THE MAN REMEMBERED AS THE FATHER OF NAVAL AVIATION AND THE AMERICAN AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY

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lenn H. Curtiss was born 21 May 1878, at Hammondsport, NY. Educated in the local public schools, his youth was dominated by a curiosity of all things mechanical. While still in his teens, he developed a successful bicycle business and later turned his attention to motorcycles. By 1902, Curtiss had progressed to manufacturing his own custom motorcycles, initially under the trade name “Hercules”, and was considered a pioneer motorcycle designer and racer. By 1905, he had become renowned for his motorbikes and racing feats throughout the country. On 24 January 1907, in a measured-mile run at Ormond Beach, Florida, aboard his specially built V8-powered motorcycle, he was clocked at 136.3 mph. On that day, and for years afterward, Curtiss carried the title “Fastest Man on Earth”. For motorcycles, this record stood until 1930. Today, that original bike can be seen at the Smithsonian and an exact replica is also located in the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, NY. His interest in aeronautics began in July 1904, when the Curtiss achieves a world speed record at famed balloonist Thomas Scott Ormond Beach, FL in 1903.

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History Magazine August/September 2016

Baldwin requested a Curtiss engine for his dirigible, the California Arrow. This engine and airship were so successful that additional orders flowed into the G. H. Curtiss Manufacturing Company for similar engines. When the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA) was formed by Dr. Alexander G. Bell in 1907, Curtiss was asked to join the group as director of experiments. The organization had as its primary purpose, a serious and scientific study of winged flight. Members designed and built various “aerodromes”. On 22 May 1908, when Glenn successfully flew the White Wing a distance of 1,017 feet, additional fame was added to his achievements and the new field of aeronautics beckoned to him. The findings of the AEA projects led to the Curtiss June Bug, which was entered in competition for the Scientific American Trophy.

In the competition, held on 4 July 1908, Curtiss won the trophy by flying well over the one kilometer distance required to win.

On 17 July 1909, in the Gold Bug, the second leg of the Scientific American Trophy was won and his flight over the Hudson from Albany to New York City with the Albany Flyer won the third leg on 31 May 1910. These flights were for longest distance, circular flight and cross-country flight and won him permanent possession of the trophy. In August 1909, he won the Gordon Bennett Cup for speed at Rheims, France, scorching the air at 46

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mph. For his great accomplishments in aviation, his willingness to help and to share his findings, and public demonstration of all his flights, the Aero Club of America awarded him aviator license #1 on 8 June 1911. In the same year, he developed the first successful hydro airplane, the A-1 Triad, which became the US Navy’s first airplane, and in 1912, he launched the Model E flying boat. Glenn Curtiss was awarded the Gold Medal of the Aero Club of America December 1911, and again in December 1912. For the flying boat development, he received the Langley Medal in 1913. His aircraft were becoming world renowned, his name almost legendary. When war broke out in Europe in 1914, the Curtiss organization was deluged with orders for aircraft and engines. The Curtiss flying boats and training biplanes were in great demand. From the small plant at Hammondsport, the Curtiss organization grew into a vast industrial complex between 1916 and 1918. In 1917, Curtiss began tinkering with the idea of building a better camping trailer as a diversion during WWI. The result was the Curtiss Aerocar and Curtiss’s version of the 5th wheel, utilizing pneumatics to compensate for the rough ride and poor control created by the conventional hitch. Today, the concept of the 5th wheel is widely used, not only for recreational vehicles, but also in the transportation industry as a whole. Curtiss’s interests were not restricted just to vehicles of transportation. In 1921, he essentially left the aviation business and moved to Florida to become a highly successful land developer. With friends, he developed the Florida cities of Hialeah, Miami Springs, and Opa-Locka.

Aerial Experiment Association at Hammondsport - Bell & Curtiss in front.

Preparing Albany Flyer for flight to NYC in 1910.

Opa-Locka was intended to be his crowning achievement, a planned community resembling something from the Arabian Nights. In the spring of 1930, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Miami for his many contributions to the development of the Miami area. In May 1930, he returned to New York to pilot the latest Condor transport airplane produced by the company still bearing his name. Loaded with dignitaries, the airplane retraced his route of twenty years earlier in the Albany Flyer. Curtiss’s amazing career was tragically cut short on 23 July 1930. At age 52, while undergoing surgery for appendicitis in Buffalo,

NY, he developed a blood clot that ended his life. Glenn Hammond Curtiss was returned to his hometown, where he rests today in a quiet spot in the Pleasant Valley Cemetery, not far from the site of his historic flight in the June Bug. Curtiss is remembered today as the Father of Naval Aviation and the founder of the American Aircraft Industry. Hm (Images courtesy Glenn Curtiss Museum)

TRAFFORD DOHERTY is the Executive Director of the Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, New York. For more information, visit the website at

www.glennhcurtissmuseum.org

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REVOLUTIONARY WAR

Engraved picture of the Battle of Harlem Heights by J.R. Armytage. Digital image courtesy of “George Washington’s Mount Vernon”

THE BATTLE OF HARLEM HEIGHTS

DOUGLAS J. GLADSTONE EXAMINES A HARD-FOUGHT BATTLE THAT YIELDED A VICTORY AND A MUCHNEEDED BOOST IN MORALE FOR GEORGE WASHINGTON’S TROOPS

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f you’re visiting the Columbia University campus this month, make sure you try to get over to the Mathematics Building. There’s a plaque commemorating the Battle of Harlem Heights that you’ll want to see.

According to Robert Hornsby, the associate vice-president for university media relations, the plaque was presented to Columbia on 16 October 1897 by the Sons of the Revolution. There’s a very detailed article about the presentation ceremony that was published in the student university newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, on 20 October 1897, he adds. Granted, the Battle of Harlem Heights, which took place 240 years ago on 16 September 1776, is never going to be confused with more famous American

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Revolutionary War campaigns such as the Battle of Bennington or either of the two Battles of Saratoga. In fact, according to Dr. Joseph Stoltz, Digital Scholarship Librarian at Mount Vernon, the Battle of Harlem Heights was “a relatively minor skirmish”. “But it was the first sort of open fight between the British and the American troops that George Washington actually won,” adds Dr. Stoltz. “I don’t think even General Washington himself realized how important this victory was for the morale of his troops.”

History Magazine August/September 2016

However, in George Washington In the American Revolution (Little, Brown and Company, 1967), author James Thomas Flexner suggests that the future Father of Our Country was more than well aware of what the victory meant. “This little advantage,” Washington would later write, “has inspirited our troops prodigiously.” Especially since Washington himself had questioned his troops’ courage and strength of character only the day before.

3 British troops had clearly dominated the American forces in the battles that had occurred up until that point. For instance, on 30 June 1776, the British army captured Staten Island. In late August, the Brits landed 22,000 men on Long Island and badly defeated the Americans, capturing 1,000 Continental Army soldiers to boot. Then, on 15 September, British General William Howe landed a reported 12,000 troops in the Kips Bay section of Lower Manhattan. In Washington: A Life (The Penguin Press, 2010), Pulitzer Prize-winner Ron Chernow describes with painstaking detail the ferociousness of the British attack. “During the night of September 14-15,” he writes, “five British ships dropped anchor in Kips Bay, soon accompanied by 84 barges that had been secreted in Newtown Creek on Long Island, with 4,000 British and Hessian troops on board. At eleven a.m., the warships’ big guns swiveled toward Manhattan and began to thunder with a horrendous, sustained racket, blowing the American breastworks to smithereens.” “For the few hundred American

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hayseeds cowering onshore,” he continues, “the cannonade, lasting an hour, provoked a terrified flight. Once the American defenses were demolished, British and Hessian troops waded ashore in net rows, their bayonets flashing. At the Battle of Brooklyn, the Hessians took no prisoners and oversaw mass executions, shooting in the head dozens of young Americans who tried to surrender; one Hessian decapitated an American prisoner and posted his head on a pike.” “These atrocities,” he notes, “spread contagious fear among the American troops, but officers lost their nerve as well, abandoning their men.” Washington, explains Chernow, was four miles north of this bloody scene when he “saw the puffs of smoke rising from Kips Bay”. He then traveled south as fast as he could. “As usual,” continues Chernow, “Washington plunged into the thick of the action, heedless of his own safety. Coming to a cornfield on Murray Hill, a half mile from Kips Bay, he was shocked to encounter troops retreating with the utmost precipitation and flying in every direction and in the greatest confusion.” For a man like Washington, the retreat was almost too much to bear. “For him, the retreat from Kips Bay was a sign that his soldiers were a moral failure,” says Dr. Stoltz. “At this point, Washington is beginning to have serious trepidations about the war. He is very aware of the implications of what would happen if he loses.” Chernow writes that, in the face of collapsed discipline, Washington flew into a rage as his “terrified troops succumbed to panic and ran in confusion, dumping muskets, powder horns, tents and knapsacks without firing a shot”. “One onlooker claimed that Washington, appalled by the

disorder, resorted to whipping fleeing men with his riding crop,” continues Chernow. Openly frustrated, Washington “flung his hat to the ground and shouted, ‘Are these the men with which I am to defend America?’ According to another account, he swore, ‘Good God! Have I got such troops as these?’” Chernow observes that Washington was so distraught that he struck several officers. “It is extraordinary to think of Washington flogging officers amid a battle,” he writes. “The day had provided fresh proof of how skittish his men were, officers and infantry alike.” Washington’s correspondence during this time to John Hancock, President of the Second Continental Congress, attests to his frustrations. In This Glorious Struggle; George Washington’s Revolutionary War Letters (Harper Collins Publishers, 2007) author Edward G. Lengel notes that, “after the retreats of September 15, when his men threw down their weapons and fled the enemy, sometimes without firing a shot, Washington realized that men were guided by self-interest before idealism.” “That painful, but necessary, lesson,” adds Lengel, “spurred Washington to write this remarkable letter, dated September 25, 1776, in which he sets a definite standard by which the country should build and maintain an army capable of winning the war: Unless some speedy, and effectual measures are adopted by Congress, our cause will be lost. It is in vain to expect that any (or more than a trifling) part of this Army will again engage in the service on the encouragement offered by Congress. When men find that their townsmen and companions are receiving 20, 30 and more dollars for a few months service, which is truly the case, it cannot be expected, without using

compulsion, and to force them into service would answer no valuable purpose. When men are irritated and their passions inflamed, they fly hastily and cheerfully to arms, but after the first emotions are over, to expect that they are influenced by any other principles than those of self-interest is to look for what never did, and I fear will never happen. This Congress will deceive themselves therefore if they expect it.

Etching of the Morris-Jumel Mansion engraved by Henry Bryan Hall. Digital image courtesy of The Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Division of Arts, Print Collection, The New York Public Library

“General Washington was acutely aware of what it meant to birth an army to fight for the new nation,” maintains Dr. Stoltz. “His letters to Hancock show they were having trouble recruiting and retaining troops.” As a result of this particular letter, Congress subsequently decided to increase the pay for officers, and also authorized acres of land to be given to all enlisted men, as an inducement and incentive to serving in the ranks. It was probably the only good thing that came out of the Kips Bay disaster.

3 Retreating north from Kips Bay to Harlem Heights, Flexner writes that “Washington, who always expected the enemy to act as rapidly as he would have done in their situation, prepared as best he could for an immediate attack”.

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“Before daylight on the 16th,” continues Flexner, “Washington sent out 120 New Englanders who had volunteered as rangers to discover what was happening. Bright daylight showed the plains empty. However, firing sounded from Bloomingdale Heights. A British bugler raised his instrument and through the early morning air there came to Washington’s ears the call used in the chase to indicate that the fox had skulked into his hole.” “The insult was only too plain to the foxhunting Virginia squire,” notes Flexner. Dr. Stoltz agrees. “It was the signature foxhunting tune that the English used to make fun of the Americans.” If that was the intent, then the Brits miscalculated big time. Washington proceeded to set up a trap for Howe’s forces. Flexner writes that the General “ordered some troops down into the Hollow Way, a flat break in the cliffs around what would now be 125th Street, to decoy the bugler and his companions there, while another force started on a circuitous march that would get them on the opposite cliff.” “The British light infantry were the elite of the British army,” notes Dr. Stoltz. “Washington hoped to pick off two or three of their companies, but neither the Americans nor the British were actually sure of their opponents’ precise locations and positions.” Flexner describes the comedy of errors that ensued next. “As Washington strained his eyes to see his secret posse appear dramatically above the enemy, his ears were unpleasantly assailed by firing not on their flank, but rather in their rear. By some unhappy mistake, the posse had let itself be seen.” “Up the far cliff the British scrambled,” continues Flexner. “The Americans in the Hollow Way

scrambled up after them and all disappeared under the trees. After 90 minutes, Washington sent orders that his troops should disengage. So ended the Battle of Harlem Heights.” According to Flexner, Washington estimated the American loss at 60 killed and wounded, while Howe put his casualties at 168. “To his government,” continues Flexner, “Howe claimed a victory: 3,000 Americans repulsed with more than 300 killed. But one of his subordinates noted that the British general had got in trouble ‘through overconfidence’.” Only half-kiddingly, Dr. Stoltz says that “the whole Harlem Heights engagement is one in which reconnaissance forces blundered into one another”.

3 Fresh from what could only charitably be called a victory, Washington and his troops found refuge in a country estate that stretched over 130 acres from the Harlem to the Hudson Rivers. Built in 1765 as a summer villa for Colonel Roger Morris and his wife, Mary Philipse, the Morris Mansion, as it was known at the time, was abandoned by the couple because they were Tories, aka British sympathizers. According to Kelsey Brow, the curator of what is now referred to as the Morris-Jumel Mansion, “the house was plainly visible to the redcoats encamped on what’s now Randall’s Island”. Though she says that “the British threatened to cannonade the house”, the threat was never acted upon. The oldest remaining house in the borough of Manhattan, the Morris-Jumel Mansion is an early example of Palladian architecture. Ironically, the mansion was converted into a tavern called Calumet Hall during Washington’s presidency; it was there, notes Brow, that

History Magazine August/September 2016

a cabinet meeting took place on 10 July 1790 which was attended by Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Henry Knox. The subject? Hamilton’s idea for the federal government’s assumption of state debts, which would later pass on 4 August 1790. The meeting is famously depicted in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash Broadway musical, Hamilton; the producer and star himself reportedly wrote part of his score and libretto at the mansion. The Americans’ stay there was short-lived. According to Brow, the Americans had to flee the mansion on 21 October. Lengel says Washington left Harlem Heights four days earlier, on 17 October 1776, “and withdrew to the Village of White Plains, where General Howe and the British troops appeared 11 days later, on 28 October, attacking and once again defeating the Americans, forcing Washington to commence a slow, painful retreat west across New Jersey”.

3 Dr. Stoltz admits he is fascinated by “the nuances” of the American War for Independence. “I’m biased,” he says, “but in comparison to the Civil War or World War II, I think the American Revolutionary War gets short shrifted by history.” “I think the Battle of Harlem Heights is a reminder to Americans that there can be great stories about the American Revolution,” he concludes, “as long as they’re told.” Hm DOUGLAS J. GLADSTONE is a journalist by training, whose published articles have appeared in The Chicago Sun

Times, The Burlington Free Press and America in World War 2 magazine, and History Magazine among others.

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Reconstruction of the Blockhaus as a V2 launch site.

WWII

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RAID ON HITLER’S WONDER WEAPONS

ANDREAS FORRER EXAMINES THE STEPS TAKEN BY THE ALLIES TO DISARM HITLER’S VENGEANCE WEAPON PROGRAM Text and photos by Andreas Forrer (unless noted otherwise)

C

aptain Warren E. Wieland was one of the B-17 pilots who flew 25 missions from Knettishall (70 miles North of London) into Nazi occupied Europe. He was assigned to the 388th Bomb squadron under Commander Curtis LeMay. I had the pleasure of interviewing him about some of these missions: He enlisted shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, went through flight training in the States, learned to fly multi-engine aircrafts and was assigned to his crew first as a copilot. Their B-17F was part of a group of 40 brand new planes and their orders were simple: Fly to Britain via Maine, Canada and Iceland. On their way, they came up with the name for the plane “Blind Date”, as that was how they felt about their encounter with Europe and, ultimately, the war.

“You just don’t know exactly what to expect,” he told me. And for the early bombing crews like Wieland’s who started their campaign in June of 1943, the chances of making it back were grim: Only one third of the airmen were expected to reach the goal of 25 missions, at which point you had fulfilled your duty. In those months, the German Luftwaffe was still strong and with their

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WWII

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fighters, they shot down a lot of the US bombers. In a raid over Stuttgart, of the 21 bombers sent there, only 10 made it back as they were facing 150 German fighters. A typical mission would begin with an early wake-up call. “Blind Date” and its crew would take off and circle over the area for about two hours until all of the planes of the formation (sometimes up to 1,000) had taken off and found their spot. Then they would proceed towards the Channel. Their escort of Spitfires, however, would have to turn back after the Channel crossing and there, the Luftwaffe was waiting for them. And as the war wore on, it was the heavy flak which was trying to get them. The cabin was neither pressurized nor heated, so the crew wore oxygen masks and electric suits, which they plugged into the plane’s power circuit. At 20,000 feet, it was freezing cold (sometimes they went to 29,000 feet, but “then the controls of the B-17 got very mushy” according to Wieland), tough to endure for eight hours, particularly if you were one of the “jockeys” in the gun turrets, who had to maintain their awkward sitting position for all that time. The Americans flew the daylight runs, the British took care of the

LEFT:

32

The original crew of Blind Date. Courtesy of W. Wieland

night time raids. The targets were mostly strategic, meaning industrial installations, factories and eventually cities, to wear down the German population. However, there were also a few specific military targets, which are worth looking into in more details since they dealt with what would ultimately become Hitler’s wonder weapons. In 1943, the crew flew a couple of missions into Norway. The first one targeted a German submarine base in Bergen. Out of all of the German submarine bases, this was one of the most important ones. It was built out by “the Organisation Todt”, which built many of the Reich’s gigantic concrete constructions. The roof over the

B-17 waiting for my ride. RIGHT: Captain Warren E. Wieland. Courtesy of W. Wieland

History Magazine August/September 2016

submarine pens was 12 feet thick and the US bombs had little, if any, effect on the base. Even when the US used 6 ton “Tallboy” bombs on later raids, the base did not get severely impacted. The second mission into Norway had a factory in Rjukan in its crosshairs. In November, the USAAF launched several B-17 bombing raids on the Vemork Hydroelectric plant. This plant produced heavy water (Deuterium), which the Germans needed to manufacture Plutonium for nuclear weapons. After their invasion of Norway, the Germans occupied and ran the plant. Subsequently, it had been attacked by saboteurs several times and partially destroyed, but the Germans

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managed to rebuild it and resume production of heavy water. The bombing raids proved to be difficult for the crews as bad weather often obstructed a clear view of the target area and so many bombs missed. However, the combination of saboteurs and bombing raids caused the Germans to finally give up on the plant and move their limited nuclear research closer to the fatherland. The other group of military missions took the crew on much briefer flights across the Channel to the Northeast corner of France, just south of Calais. Here the Germans were building a variety of launch facilities for their new “Vengeance” weapons, the V1 and the V2. To understand the significance of these weapons and how important it was to do anything possible against them, we have to take a closer look at their technology. The V1 was basically an unpiloted plane, which was capable of flying in a straight line for a few hundred kilometers carrying an 800kg explosive payload. It was controlled by a timer mechanism and launched from long ramps. The Germans built many of these ramps in France and set them up so that the V1 would be heading straight to London, where it would dive down and detonate its payload. This caused terror among the citizens of London. The British eventually learned how to best counter this weapon by sending fighter planes after them, which intercepted the relatively slow flying V1 over the Channel and tip its wings so it would go down into the water. The other vengeance weapon was the V2, the first rocket, which would make it into space. It was a very different “opponent” as it reached supersonic speeds shortly after take-off and, therefore, could not be stopped by any means. In fact, when it hit London, the population first saw

Bunker for the V2 guidance beam in La Roquetoire.

the enormous explosion of the impact before they heard the approaching rocket as it travelled faster than its sound. Hitler’s original deployment strategy for the V2 rocket was to launch it out of hardened bunkers. His Generals would have preferred a mobile deployment, but the Fuehrer had his reasons. The success of the impregnable submarine bases were one reason. The complexity of launching a rocket was another, particularly in 1942, when the decision was made to build the launch complexes. As it turned out, eventually the soldiers under General Dornberger’s guidance did learn to manage the launch procedures in the plain forest, but that took some extra efforts, training and equipment. Using both forced labor and paid workers, the Organisation

Area map showing key locations.

Todt began with the construction of the bunkers in Eperlecques and later in Wizernes. The goal was to build these massive sites where trains loaded with V2 rockets arrive from the underground factory in Nordhausen, Germany. The rockets would be stored in these bunkers, prepared and fueled and then moved outside for their launch to attack London. The intelligence of the Allies did not take long to detect these massive construction sites and the bombing raids were a foregone conclusion. Late in August of 1943, the bombing raids against the “Blockhaus” in Eperlecques began and on 7 September, Captain Wieland flew his B-17 to drop bombs on this target. The damage was massive, the many bombs created an effect similar to an earthquake. This caused the Germans to reduce their plans and instead of using the site to launch V2 rockets, it was now only destined to manufacture liquid oxygen. LOX was needed to propel the V2 and had to be kept at very low temperatures. Thus a constant loss through vaporization was inevitable (the Germans calculated that only 50% of the produced amount would make it into a rocket), particularly if it had to be transported long

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WWII

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V1 on ramp at the Blockhaus.

distances on specialized rail equipment. Therefore, it was helpful to have factories near the launch sites. However, the Allies continued to bomb the site, even using the “Tall Boy” bombs. So why were the bombing raids on these bunkers so much more effective and successful than on the submarine base in Norway? These bunkers were still under construction. So the structure was not as stable. In Eperlecques, the concrete had just been poured when the first attack hit. In Wizernes, the Coupole did not break, but because of the massive bombings, the whole structure shifted and tilted to the point that it became useless for launch operations. Near Wizernes and Eperlecques is a third, much smaller bunker called La Roquetoire. This bunker

served two related functions: It was supposed to contain all the equipment for the radio guidance beam, which could be used to keep the rocket laterally within its flight path. For this to work, the bunker had to be in a line with the launch sites and the target (London), which we can see on the map. Its second function was to house the same equipment on trucks so that it could be used in the field for launches from different sites and towards different targets. This bunker never got bombed, partly because the Allies did not know about it and partly because the Germans never got to use it after the loss of the launch bunkers. Regarding those losses, Hitler commented that “at least these bombs did not fall on German cities”. Finally, General

La Coupole bunker in Wizernes.

34

History Magazine August/September 2016

Dornberger got his wish and the V2 launch operations were moved onto mobile platforms, which made them nearly undetectable. All the operations against the V1 and V2 positions became part of a bigger plan, named Operation Crossbow. And not surprisingly, Captain Wieland’s list of 25 missions shows two entries under that name. Those missions were targeting the V1 launch catapults. Captain Wieland considered them “milk runs” as the flight time of less than 4 hours was much shorter than the extensive bombing raids into the heartland of Germany and the air defenses were much weaker. At its height, Operation Crossbow absorbed half the bombing capacity of the Allies. In this regard, Hitler’s comment was not without merit. So while the V1 and V2 positions were hit hard, their launch capacity only dropped by about 25% due to the bombings. A V1 position could be recreated overnight and the V2 were on their mobile launch platforms anyway. So the Allies started to focus on the supply lines for the V2s, which arrived along with LOX transports by rail. The V1 and the V2 could only carry a payload of less than 1 ton. That hugely limited their effectiveness. While they killed thousands of people, mostly civilians, their capacity to destroy large targets was highly limited and so was their threat potential. However, things could have been very different. If the Germans had actually managed to come up with a nuclear payload, then even that limited capacity could have created catastrophic damage. So how close did the Germans get to that point? Just in 2014, a Nazi underground factory was discovered in St. Georgen an der Gusen, Austria. It showed unusually high levels of

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WHAT IS IT LIKE TO EXPERIENCE IT MYSELF? This is a question I often ask myself when I see some of the amazing machinery used in WWII. Granted, you cannot simulate the sheer terror the soldiers on either side must have felt when going into and being in combat. But at least we can get a bit of a better understanding when riding along in one of these machines. So I was jumping at the chance of getting a flight in a real B-17. The Experimental Aircraft Association, which organizes the annual Oshkosh airshow in Wisconsin, owns “Aluminum Overcast”, an original B-17 bomber from the last year of the war. The plane has been fully restored and for the most part (except some navigational electronics), is kept original. We took off from nearby Appleton for a half hour flight over the Oshkosh airshow. Inside the plane, it is very loud once the four Wright 1820 engines with 1,200 HP each come to life. Earplugs help. And since this was summer, and only 2,500 feet altitude, the temperatures were not an issue. The ride itself was surprisingly smooth. You could tell the Captain and his co were experienced commercial pilots. Inside the plane, it is very tight, particularly the narrow catwalk through the bomb bay. And to get to the front gunner cupola, one had to crawl through a narrow tunnel underneath the pilot’s deck. However, once there, the view was simply breathtaking. As they say, it was an experience of a life time and I recommend it to anybody. There are also other warbirds on display and available for rides during the airshow, as well as a few WWII reenactors who greatly add to the ambiance. In regards to the targets of Operation Crossbow in the North of France: The two biggest bunkers in the region are La Coupole in Wizernes and Le Blockhaus in Eperlecques (aka Watten). Both are within a short driving distance from each other and today, both are fascinating museums. La Coupole’s interior has been replaced by a modern museum showcasing a very balanced view of the development of the V1 and V2 weapons. This includes the darker side of the V2 history where thousands of slave laborers died manufacturing the weapon, but also the brighter aspects of the rocket, which ultimately led to manned spaceflight and the Apollo program. Le Blockhaus is mesmerizing for different reasons. Here, the ruins were left untouched and that gives the visitor a great impression of the massive scale of the operations on either side – the huge concrete building as well as the enormous devastation caused by the massive bombing raids. Also some of the original gear from both sides is still visible at this terrific museum. The third bunker mentioned in the article (La Roquetoire) is not open to the public.

ANDREAS P. FORRER, PhD is a regular contributor to History Magazine. He is currently working on a book about the V2 rocket.

nuclear radiation. It is believed that it was used by the Nazis for nuclear experiments, with the purpose to mass produce nuclear weapons. The purpose was clear: A nuclear warhead or at least a “dirty bomb” would have fit perfectly into the nose section of either Vengeance weapon and would have had catastrophic effects on London and Antwerp. It is no coincidence that both programs, the V2 weapons and the nuclear facility, were run by the same person – SS General Kammler. It takes not much imagination to think what a fanatic like Dr. Kammler would have done with a nuclear payload if he had them at his disposal. After all, his troops continued to launch V2 rockets up to March 1945, when the war was all but lost for Germany. In hindsight, we see how strategically important the B-17 bombing raids were. The raids on the Norway heavy water plant helped delay the Germans’ progress in building nuclear weapons. And the raids on the bunkers and the V1 positions in the Pas de Calais region slowed down the bombardment of London. This created obstacles big enough to the German plans that they were never able to fully achieve the weapons’ full potentials as the first nuclear cruise and ballistic missiles respectively. In his 25 missions, Captain Wieland took part in all these operations from Norway to Calais and into Germany itself. After his return from the European front, he underwent training on the B-29 and would have been stationed in the Pacific theater if the war had not come to a sudden close. Hm

FURTHER READING V2 gefrorene Blitze, W. Gückelhorn/ D. Paul, Helios, Aachen, 2007 V-2. A Combat History of the First Ballistic Missile, T.D. Dungan, Westholme Publishings, Yardley, 2005 Hitler’s Miracle Weapons, Friedrich Georg, Helion & Company, West Midlands, 2005

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“Daniel Webster visits Springfield for a barbecue and a political address June 19, 1837… young Abraham Lincoln chats with him at the rally.” Courtesy of artist Lloyd Ostendorf, featured artist at www.abelincoln.com

and said, Daniel, if you will find another hand in this school-room as dirty as that, I will let you off this time. Instantly from behind his back came the left hand. Here it is sir, he replied. This will do for this time, the teacher said. You may take your seat sir.” Abraham Lincoln – Daily Story Daniel Webster/Abraham Lincoln’s Classroom

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t is a glorious day for the frontier town of Springfield, Illinois. The date is 19 June 1837. The times are tough as the country struggles in economic depression of the Panic of 1837. The country recently elected a new President, Martin Van Buren, who inherited a financial mess when his predecessor, President Andrew Jackson, shut down the second federal bank in favor of state banks whom became reckless. Today brought a glimmer of hope because the citizens were about to greet one of the country’s most respected members of the Whig Party, constitutional lawyer and US Senator Daniel Webster. It was celebrated with a town BBQ at Porter’s Grove where Webster would make a speech to the citizens. Webster was making a tour of the western states where “I heard a story last night about Daniel Webster when a lad, which was he and friends had made heavy financial investments. Webster new to me, and it has been running in my head all the morning. When had just left Ohio and was passing quite young, at school, Daniel was one day guilty of a gross violation through on his way to see of the rules. He was detected in the act, and called up by the teacher the properties in Missouri and for punishment. This was to be the old-fashioned ruler on the hand. Wisconsin, as well as in Illinois. His hands happened to be very dirty. Knowing this, on his way to the Webster was escorted to Springteacher’s desk he spit upon the palm of his right hand, wiping it off upon field from the small frontier town the side of his pantaloons. Give me your hand, sir, said the teacher. Out of Berlin, Missouri by members went the right hand, partly cleansed. The teacher looked at it a moment of Captain E. H. Merryman’s

DANIEL WEBSTER:

WALL STREET TYCOON

LAUREEN SAULS-LESSARD LOOKS AT THE CLAMORGAN LAND ASSOCIATION VENTURE

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Artillery to the festivities in Springfield, about 15 miles. Webster’s visit and speech was a treat and inspiration for a new citizen and young lawyer of Springfield who loved the constitution as well. His name was Abraham Lincoln. Webster was known as a spokesman for banking and industrial interests and eventually would hold an office on Wall Street in New York City. Although some thought his trip was political, with the possibilities of an announcement of a run for President, it was purely business. Webster was on the financial adventure of his lifetime. Webster had acquired thousands of acres of land patents in venture with friends and colleagues (including investors in London) in the western territories, including a little known venture called The Clamorgan Land Association located in Missouri and Arkansas. His son, Daniel “Fletcher” Webster, accompanied him on the tour. Fletcher was newly married and planned to live in Detroit with his new wife so he could oversee other investments in the Ohio-Toledo Strip, Wisconsin and Illinois for

US Senate Portrait of Daniel Webster by James Henry Wright. Public domain

timber, mining and railroad industries. The wilderness was no stranger to Daniel Webster, as he was raised in the wilderness of New Hampshire as a child before moving to Massachusetts. His passion about the western territory influenced family and friends, including a young Robert E. Lee, William T. Sherman, Johnson Ramey and Abraham Wayland to name a few.

The most important to Webster was the New Madrid territory (L’anse a la Graisse) along the lower Mississippi River, beginning in New Madrid to the Arkansas line. It was a large territory and associated with a Canadian fur trader named James Clamorgan (some records reflect the name as Glamorgan) who claimed it as one of two Spanish land grants he owned. The grant is written in Spanish and is translated in The Title Papers of The Clamorgan Grant, printed by T. Snowden, Wall Street, New York City, NY, 1837. James Clamorgan was granted, in a treaty by the Spanish government via Commandant of New Madrid, Don Carlos Dehault Delassus, an equivalent of 458,963 acres of land along the Mississippi River that spanned from the St. Francis River in Arkansas to St. Louis on 1 August 1796 by the King of Spain to establish a rope factory. The factory would provide cordages for his Majesty’s Navy. Also, the land would be used to bring farmers from Canada to settle there and raise hemp for the ropes. According to the grant, after all was established, Clamorgan was to have the land

Clamorgan Land Grant Survey. Library of Congress

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surveyed and recorded. Clamorgan failed to meet all the requirements of the grant due to friction wars between the Spanish and French. He went ahead and had the land surveyed and recorded in February 1806. He then conveyed the property to another Canadian fur trader, Pierre Chouteau, on 2 May 1809 for $1,500.00. James Clamorgan died in St. Louis in 1814. The Clamorgan Land Association was created by Daniel Webster and his Boston and NYC business associates about 1837-38 and included: • Webster, Lawyer and Secretary of State • Roswell Colt, a NY merchant, banker & railroad executive • Rufus Choate, lawyer and Senator of Massachusetts • Virgil Maxey, Senator of Maryland & Solicitor of the Treasury, Diplomat at Court of Brussels • Samuel L. Southard, Senator of NY & Secretary of Navy • Charles M. Thruston, Mineral Bank of Maryland & Trustee for the Association • John Glenn, Lawyer in Baltimore, MD & Trustee for the Association • Frances Markoe, State Dept. of Washington & Secretary of the Association • Major George W. Hughes, Corps of US Topographical Engineers & Engineer of the Association • Honorable Lewis McLean, Agent to the lenders of a loan raised in England, but resident of US • William A. Bradley, Banker & Mayor of Washington, DC • James B. Murray, New York Agent for the British investments in London, England

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The group’s goal was to get Chouteau’s grant validated to achieve clear title to the New Madrid territory using judicial process in exchange for purchase of the property. The original deeds were either misplaced or the wording was skeptical and proving ownership to the US government was difficult. There was another problem as well. The territory was included in the Louisiana Purchase (The Treaty of Cession) in 1803 and now fell under the laws of the United States government. It became public domain. Anyone holding private title to property there that was granted to them prior to the purchase by the king of Spain or France had to declare it with a committee board headed by William C. Carr that was set up in St. Louis, the territorial capital of the Louisiana Territory. There was a statute of limitations of 2 years to file private claims. After that, it would become a land bonanza for wealthy Wall Street investors in the east to obtain the prime territories with clear title through the Land Office in St. Louis. It was difficult for some of these private landowners to produce documents and some were sketchy with poor wording, making it unclear where property lines began and ended. Some of the properties were passed down to children and some given to concubines of men. The latter caused a problem because under US law, slaves were not allowed to own property, thus having some titles reverting back to the original owner. This was the biggest obstacle in reclaiming The New Madrid Grant. In 1824, Congress passed another act, enabling the claimants to lands within the limits of the State of Missouri and Territory of Arkansas to institute proceedings to try the validity of their claims. It also stated that in all cases, the

History Magazine August/September 2016

party against whom the judgment or decree of the said district court may be finally given, shall be entitled to an appeal, within one year from the time of its rendition, to the Supreme Court of the United States. “Any claim which shall not be brought by petition before the said courts within two years from the passing of the act, or which, after being brought before the said courts, shall, on account of the neglect or delay of the claimant, not be prosecuted to a final decision within three years, shall be forever barred.” Spain had conveyed the alluvial treaties to James Clamorgan on the grounds that he establish colonies in the Louisiana Territory. Under the Treaty of Paris dated April 1803, Clamorgan’s property rights were protected and guaranteed. This is also reflected in the San Ildefonso Treaty of October 1800 made between France and Spain in which France agreed to uphold the property rights of the citizens in the territory ceded to her from Spain. The same was reflected in The Treaty of Cessions (Louisiana Purchase) in 1803. That was the justification Webster and his associates needed to validate the deed. Webster justified that proving and reclaiming the original grant was vital for national security purposes because it could lead to vulnerability of the Spanish and French to have access to the port in New Orleans. The Clamorgan Land Association pursued the New Madrid claim quickly and although did not receive a favorable response in court, they were able to justify the claim through US Treaty Law and favorable opinions. On 14 February 1837 Webster gave a lengthy opinion to the court regarding the case. The Honorable A. G. Harrison concluded with a letter saying “that

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the claim, should it prove to be a good one, is one of the most valuable that was ever made by the French or Spanish authorities.” Webster’s opinion was concurred by T. Ewing and S.L. Southard. Even though the document copies were determined worthless in court, the opinions regarding the validity of the claims using the US Treaty Law superceded any doubts. As for the claims themselves, James Clamorgan had the land surveyed according to the original grant in February 1806 before conveying the property to Pierre Chouteau on 9 May 1809. Chouteau recorded a copy of it 27 December 1814 in New Madrid County. He later presented a copy of the claim to his mistress Maria P. Leduc in St. Louis 2 December 1836, who recorded it. Leduc sent a copy to a public notary in New York City named John H. Magher who was aligned with The Clamorgan Land Association. But the law stated that women or blacks were not allowed to own property at that time. So another copy of the deed with both names, Pierre Chouteau and Maria P. Leduc, was taken by William A. Bradley to NYC Public Notary John H. Magher who notarized it with his seal on 21 February 1837. The property was conveyed again on 1 June 1837 in St. Louis from both Pierre Chouteau and Maria P. Leduc to members of The Clamorgan Land Association, John Glenn and Charles M. Thruston of Maryland for $53,699.00 and put in trust. Pierre Chouteau died in December 1838. Other opinions and letters followed in favor of the transaction, including Judge A. P. Upshur, John Duer (US Attorney for the Southern District of NY), Lewis F. Linn (Missouri Senator), and Joseph Kent (Maryland Senator). Major Wetmore, author of Gazette

The plan of the New Madrid Fort. Public domain

and Map of Missouri gave his opinion on the value of the Clamorgan tract at $1,709,250.00. The transaction is not reflected in the General Land Office records of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), so it is unclear how the territory was divided and sold. A search in the BLM records shows parcels were recorded in the New Madrid territory prior to The Clamorgan Land Association’s transaction with Chouteau and Leduc. According to New Madrid history, a frontier fort had been established in L’anse de la Graisse when it was under Spanish Rule to fight off the Indians. Several settlers remained in the territory and eventually filed land claims. The validation of the title papers of The Clamorgan Grant was not achieved in Webster’s lifetime, but the land was held in trust during the judicial process, allowing control and deals to be made. The courts dismissed the

case saying that both Clamorgan and Chouteau failed to meet the requirements of the grant given to him by Spain and, therefore, the grant was invalid, even though the general consensus of opinion was that the transaction fell under the treaty law and the transaction of sale between Clamorgan and Chouteau was never disputed. How The Clamorgan Land Association dispersed the property is a mystery. Individual searches of members and their agent’s names appear with multiple claims throughout the territory. Also, a London, England publication by Francis Preston Blair called Extra Globe, dated 1 March 1841, lists an inquiry into the credibility of The Clamorgan Land Association and it’s members who are petitioning sales of the Missouri and Arkansas property. Webster had many other land and business investments, all made using credit and other

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people’s money. Although he lived beyond his means and owned great wealth when he was alive, he died owing everybody. After the Clamorgan venture, Webster began working on another venture located in the upper Mississippi River territory where he had several other land investments. According to Asa Curier Tilton, Daniel Webster’s Western Investments: Wisconsin History Magazine, Vol.1, No.4, June 1918, a charter for St. Croix and Lake Superior Mineral Company was formed in 1845 by Daniel Webster with his Boston associates Robert Rantoul, Rufus Choate and Caleb Cushing who served as Trustees for the scheme. They wanted control of the headwaters of the Mississippi to cut and send timber downstream to the new towns growing along the river frontier. There were also prospects in

mineral mining. The venture was pelted with problems, the building of a dam, floods, the onset of the Mexican War and the death of Rantoul in 1852 and deemed a failure. James Clamorgan died at St. Louis in 1814 leaving his other properties to four children named St. Eutrope, Cyprian, Apauline and Maximin Clamorgan. The ownership of the properties was in dispute. The Clamorgan family’s attempts to validate their properties spanned 2 centuries and are documented in “The Clamorgans: One Family’s History of Race in America” by author Julie Winch. Hm

LAND GRANT CLAIMS JAMES CLAMORGAN HAD IN HIS LIFETIME WERE: • The St. Charles Grant dated 3 March 1797 • New Madrid Grant (L’Anse de la Graisse) dated 9 August 1796 • Merimee Grant dated 20 September 1796 • Cedar Island Grant dated 25 March 1800 • Little Prairie Grant dated 13 November 1811 • There were other smaller grants.

LAUREEN SAULS-LESSARD is a freelance writer living in the Missouri Ozarks. Her stories are featured in several magazine publications including Wild West Magazine. She likes to collect antique silver and metal ware of historical significance.

Here’s what’s coming... Machiavelli: ‘The Prince’ ● Frost Fairs and Ice Palaces Pierre de Coubertin: Father of the Modern Olympics Walk to Roosevelt’s Grave ● Lynching Story Dyed in the Wool ● The Bethlem Hospital The USO at 75 ● Vlad Dracula: History Gaps and Facts Final Contents Subject to Change

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TRACING YOUR FEMALE ANCESTORS?

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TRACING YOUR FEMALE ANCESTORS VOLUME II

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Magazine advertisement from the early 1900s for a personal vibrator. Ads similar to this one appeared in most of the women’s magazines of the era.

WHERE IS HYSTERIA?

CHARLES BUSH, M.D. LOOKS AT HOW THE FEMALE PSYCHE HAS BEEN TREATED AND MISTREATED THROUGHOUT HISTORY

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rom Hippocrates and Galen to Mesmer, Charcot and Freud, physicians have been both fascinated with, and befuddled by, a cacophony of diverse symptoms collectively known by the ethereal term, hysteria. For centuries, hysteria was accepted as “just one of those female things”. As such, it was thought of much more casually than afflictions affecting males. But don’t be fooled; for behind this mundane sounding diagnosis lies a complex and sometimes chilling tale of how the female psyche has been treated and mistreated throughout history. The ancient Egyptians were the first to observe a disease entity that occurred exclusively in women and that was characterized by seizures and shortness of breath. They recorded their findings in the Kahun Papyrus in 1900 BC. Although not named, the condition was attributed to movement of the uterus within

the body. Treatment was aimed at enticing the uterus to return to its “natural” position by placing various herbs under the patient’s nose and in her vagina. The Greeks described a similar condition, again found exclusively in women. They added anxiety, tremors, convulsions and, in some cases, paralysis to the disease’s

MEDICINE

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ever expanding list of symptoms. In 500 BC, Hippocrates gave the condition its name, hysteria, from the Greek word “hystera” meaning womb. Both Hippocrates and Plato agreed with the early Egyptians that hysteria was caused by a “wandering womb” that periodically impinged on other organs, including the liver, the spleen and the brain, resulting in its vast array of symptoms. The concept of the wandering womb persisted for more than five hundred years until Galen, in around 200 AD, declared that the uterus was indeed a stationary organ, not a migratory one. Galen believed that hysteria was caused by the retention of female “seeds” within the uterus. These seeds, if not released, would proceed to decay, producing malignant vapors that would then affect other organs. It was from this theory that the term “treating the vapors” arose. Galen theorized that sexual abstinence caused the female seeds to become trapped within the uterus. Therefore, sexual intercourse, complete with liberating orgasms, was the obvious cure. Galen was quite specific in his recommendations to his hysterical patients. Married women were instructed to engage in intercourse at regular intervals with their husbands. Unmarried women, virgins and widows were encouraged to marry a virile young man who was capable of attending to his wife’s sexual needs. With the decline of the Greek and Roman empires, Europe entered into the Dark Ages. Scientific rational was quickly replaced by religious dogma. Sexual

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activity was tolerated by the Church for procreation only. Otherwise, the order of the day was celibacy and chastity. Eccentric behavior of any kind was considered to be the work of the devil. No less a theologian than St. Thomas Aquinas considered women to be “defective creatures” prone to demonic possession. Since hysteria and other manifestations of mental instability were considered to be a sure sign of possession, the treatment of choice was exorcism. If exorcism proved to be unsuccessful, accusing the hysteric of being a witch and burning her at the stake was available as a permanent cure. With the dawning of the Italian Renaissance, hysteria began to be reexamined. Still influenced by Galen’s theories, both midwives and physicians began using pelvic massage with clitoral stimulation to orgasm as a treatment for female hysterics. In Holland in 1550, the Sigmund Freud, the father of Dutch physician Johann Weyer advanced the psychoanalysis. Freud idea that hysteria was a manifestation of believed that hysteria could be cured by resolving mental illness and not demonic possession. repressed sexual fantasies. One hundred years later, English physician and neuroanatomist Thomas Willis proposed that the etiology of hysteria was to be found in the brain and nervous system and not the uterus. This neurologic approach to hysteria for the first time posed the question as to whether or not the disorder was exclusive to women. At the time, male hysterics were characterized as effeminate in demeanor. Their hysterical behavior was thought to be designed to attract the attention of other men. By 1700, the diagnosis of hysteria had become epidemic. Only “fevers” accounted for more physician consultations. Around this time, a bizarre association was developing between hysteria and the upper social class. It was acceptable, even fashionable, for the lady of the manor to become hysterical when stressed. However, if the scullery maid working in the lady’s service exhibited the exact same behavior, she was likely to be considered a “mad woman” and institutionalized in an asylum. In 1766, the Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer announced that he had discovered a A silver smelling salts natural force that he could control that would container. Smelling salts cure hysteria (and most other diseases as well). were carried by most He called this force “animal magnetism” high society Victorian women as a treatment for and his masterful manipulation of it became the “vapors”. known as mesmerism. Using a variety of History Magazine August/September 2016

methods, Mesmer created a trance state in hysterical patients. While in trance, Mesmer suggested to the patients that upon awakening, they would be cured of their symptoms. In many cases, they were. Now known as hypnosis, the Egyptians, Chinese, Greeks and Romans had practiced such altered states of consciousness known to the ancients as mystical transformations during religious ceremonies for hundreds of years prior to Mesmer. In the late 1800s, and following in Mesmer’s footsteps, the renowned French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot treated a large number of hysterical women using hypnosis. Initially, Charcot believed that hysteria was a hereditary neurological disorder. However, after many years of study, he became convinced that hysteria was, in fact, a psychological illness. Charcot was also one of the first physicians to conduct extensive research into male hysteria. One acolyte of Charcot was Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Freud believed that hysteria resulted from erotic fantasies, repressed from early childhood, which had been relegated to the unconscious mind. Once in the unconscious, these unfulfilled fantasies were converted into any number of physical symptoms including pain, paralysis, syncope and even blindness. Through hypnosis and psychoanalysis, Freud attempted to bring these sexual desires into the conscious mind where they could be confronted and ultimately resolved. Once this had occurred, the patient’s physical symptoms also resolved. Freud was the first to point out that a patient’s resistance to treatment

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was often caused by fear of loss of the beneficial secondary gains that the hysteric’s behavior engendered in other family members. At the same time that Charcot and Freud were dominating the scientific thinking concerning hysteria in continental Europe, physicians in Victorian England were approaching the treatment of hysteria in a very different way. At the time, it was the popular belief (among British males that is) that women were mere receptacles for male sexual fulfillment. It was simply unacceptable in polite society for “Ladies” to experience, let alone express, sexual desires or derive pleasure from sexual acts. Added to this was the absolute Victorian prohibition against “self-abuse”. It was no wonder that the French physician Pierre Briquet estimated that more than a quarter of the female population of England suffered from hysteria. In order to relieve hysterical females of their symptoms, two very different schools of thought evolved in England. One school, championed by Dr. Joseph Mortimer Granville, believed that pelvic massage to orgasm was the best method by which physicians could treat hysteria. The problem was that while this practice was extremely lucrative, it was very time consuming and, over time, produced extreme fatigue in the physician’s hands. This dilemma was solved in 1880 when Granville perfected an electromechanical vibrator. The vibrator produced orgasms quickly, safely and reliably. For the next twenty years, physicians held a monopoly on the vibrator, which meant that every orgasm produced by the device came at the cost of an office visit to the doctor. By the beginning of the 20th century, personal vibrators, skillfully marketed as “personal massage devises”,

The backside of a nineteenth century trade card for Jayne’s Sanative Pills. These “liver pills” were advertised as the cure for most illnesses including hysteria.

became available to the general public. They could even be purchased from the Sears catalog! At long last, hysteria could be self-treated at home! Dr. Isaac Baker-Brown led a very different school of thought concerning the treatment of hysteria. A trained gynecologic surgeon, Baker-Brown’s solution to the problem of hysteria was the clitoridectomy (the surgical removal of the female clitoris). This surgery, which was routinely performed without the patient’s consent, and sometimes without the aid of anesthesia, was thought

to be a foolproof cure for female masturbation, nymphomania (at the time, meaning the expression of overt sexual behavior), and of course, hysteria. Although clitoridectomies soon fell into disfavor in England, the procedure was being performed in the United States until the 1930s. To this day, the operation is still practiced in some African countries. Although male hysteria had been acknowledged to exist for decades, during World War I, it became a major concern for military physicians. Prior to the War, male hysteria (commonly known

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MEDICINE

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as neurasthenia) was an acceptable diagnosis for upper class men who were simply thought to be reacting to the pressures of an increasingly complex business world. Then, starting in 1914, mental breakdowns began to occur in soldiers, threatening to remove them from the battlefield by the thousands. This quickly became a crisis that had to be addressed. Originally called “shell shock”, this condition’s symptoms ran the gamut from simple nervousness to hysterical blindness and catatonia. Initially, it was thought that shell shock was a physical concussive type injury brought on by exposure to shock waves from exploding artillery shells on the front lines. But when soldiers from rear echelon positions far from exploding ordinance began reporting to sick call with exactly the same symptoms, a psychological etiology for shell shock had to be considered. Where no apparent physical injuries were found, treatment consisted of varying periods of rest and relaxation away from the horrors of the War. German psychiatrists reported good results using hypnosis. By the time the War was over, more than a quarter of a million soldiers from all sides had been diagnosed as suffering from shell shock. In many cases, lingering effects lasted for years and even decades. After the end of World War I, the diagnosis of hysteria in both females and males fell into disrepute. By 1980, hysterical neurosis was no longer considered to be a legitimate psychiatric diagnosis. And so the question remains, where is it now, this bizarre cluster of symptoms previously known as hysteria? Under what aliases does it disguise itself in this enlightened 21st century? Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)? Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)? The clinical presentation of symptoms is consistent, is it not? As is often the case with mental health issues, there is a cultural and social relevance to how these symptoms are understood and addressed. Whatever its current superficial identity, the underlying fears, conflicts and tragedies associated with hysteria often remain too painful to discuss in the light of day. As was the case in previous decades and centuries, hysteria marshals its battalion of physical and emotional symptoms in the dark of night. Ready to pounce; ready to pronounce that severe psychological trauma cannot and will not be pushed down and silenced indefinitely. Hm

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Heroes & Desperados! by David A. Norris This special issue from History Magazine features a collection of stories about famous, and not-so-famous characters down through history: some nice — and some not-so-nice. David A. Norris, a regular contributor to History Magazine as well as several of our other successful special issues, has compiled entertaining accounts of William Tell, Daniel Sickles, Lieutenant Maynard, Australia’s Bushrangers, Boyle The Turncoat, The Bow Street Runners, Highwaymen and more!

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PRISON LIFE

German-born “Turkey Pete” Eitner lived a life inside walls after a murder conviction which yields few details. He was 40 years old in 1918 when the steel doors of Montana State Prison slammed shut behind him. He died there in 1967.

A LIFE LIVED INSIDE WALLS: THE LEGEND OF “TURKEY PETE”

BRIAN D’AMBROSIO LOOKS AT THE LIFE OF A MAN WHO SPENT NEARLY 50 YEARS IN A MONTANA PRISON

S

ix months before the end of WWI, a manacled prisoner was locked behind the rock barricades of Montana State Prison. He died there in 1967 – two world wars later – but not until he proved that humanitarianism is not locked out of prison. Born in Germany, Paul Eitner saw precious little of American life. Four years after arriving in the US, he was behind bars. Paul G. Eitner, a tiny 5 foot German, had left New Jersey in 1914 at age 37 and landed in Miles City, Montana. As a treatment for his tuberculosis, his physicians had recommended that he head west in search of a drier climate to increase his chances for survival. Eitner found labor on a Custer County ranch until he was kicked in the head by a horse. He left the

48

ranch and became a porter at a saloon and stayed at a local boarding house. While the precise details are lost to history, Eitner’s life took a dark turn in 1918: he was accused of the murder of Joseph Nugent, another boarder or perhaps hotel operator who allegedly had tried to court a woman Eitner desired. He pulled a .38 caliber pistol

History Magazine August/September 2016

from his bureau drawer and shot Nugent to death. Eitner claimed it was self defense, but he was convicted of murder. He first entered a plea of innocent, but later changed his plea to guilty believing it would get him leniency. He was sentenced by Judge Joseph C. Smith to life imprisonment. On 6 March, he was delivered into the hands of Montana’s first prison warden, Frank Conley. He was 40 years old when the steel doors shut on him the first time. He came up for parole in 1931, 1934, and 1956 – and each time it was denied. The nickname “Turkey Pete” might have had something to do with the early parole refusals. He was sent outside the walls to work on the prison dairy farm near Galen. When Eitner arrived at the farm, he was put in charge of raising turkeys with the reprimand that he was to treat the turkeys “as if they were his own”. He did – and got in trouble.

The prison farm was near a heavily-traveled gravel road and “Turkey Pete” was caught selling turkeys to motorists for 25 cents each.

Prisoners sometimes passed part of the $2 they earned each day through the fence to town-bound motorists. On their way back from town, the motorists would drop off cigarettes or snacks to the prisoners. Eitner concocted a small twist to the commercial arrangement and sold the entire

history_aug-sept_2016-f_Layout 1 2016-07-18 2:22 PM Page 49

flock for 25 cents a piece. He was immediately returned to the prison. By the time Eitner’s last chance for parole was denied in 1956, he was completely institutionalized. When asked about a parole plan, Pete himself shrugged off future attempts and cited his inability to get along on the outside, and said, “Where would I go? This is home.” His hard years in a cell had earned the aged prisoner the status of trusty and a few special considerations. But it wasn’t enough. Eitner finally escaped from the prison – into a world of fantasy. Behind bars of silence, he was convinced he owned a firm called “Eitner Enterprises”, and he reportedly thought nothing of writing a million-dollar check. Prisoners drew up scrolled stock certificates for the spurious company and Eitner had a checkbook

imprinted with his company’s name. To safeguard his company’s funds, Eitner required his personal secretary to countersign any check (Mrs. A.D. Lightfoot, a social worker at the prison played this role). Everyone at the prison went along with Eitner’s fantasy. A typical transaction was remembered by one of the wardens like this: one of the guards would tell Eitner he had a good herd of cattle that he wanted to sell. Eitner would ask where the cattle were and then say he would send some of his people out to look at them. A few minutes later, he would come back and say his people had looked at the cattle and they were a little skinny. Eitner and the guard would haggle about the price and Eitner would write a check out for the cattle. A few minutes later, he would sell the cattle to another prisoner at a profit and his book-

Turkey Pete’s funeral was held in the prison auditorium - the first time, so far as it is known, that funeral services had been held inside the walls of Montana State Prison.

keeper would note the transaction in the checkbook. He skimmed over newspapers buying backsliding companies and rejuvenating them at profits of millions. Prison guards and other inmates said they received such checks when Eitner thought they had been especially kind to him.

He sold grasshopper legs to Fidel Castro and bought alfalfa seeds from Pancho Villa. “And once, he sent $3 million to free an Arabian sheik’s harem,” said Montana State Prison deputy warden James Blodgett at the time of Eitner’s death.

Guards and inmates respected Eitner’s longevity. As his mental status withered, he earned several privileges, including occasional off-site visits, a stash of bogus checks which allowed him to indulge in a fantasy land of entrepreneurism, and the special birthday celebration.

Once, when Eitner’s interest in his business deals dulled, his friends arranged a telephone call from President John F. Kennedy. “He hadn’t talked very often on the telephone and he was really

August/September 2016 History Magazine

49

PRISON LIFE

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thrilled that the ‘President’ called him to thank him for all the help he had given people,” said Blodgett. The plot to keep Eitner functional and interested was never breached by other prisoners, no matter what their attitude toward others might have been outside the walls. Men convicted of murder, rape – the entire scope of criminal activity – played Turkey Pete’s game. “Everything was said in respect and in fun,” said Blodgett. “They knew that here was a guy that had been here 49 to 50 years and it wouldn’t be fair to make fun of him. Then, too, I think everyone looked on it not as an act of insanity, but a means of survival.” Eitner was also known in prison circles as the “exile” and “Champ”. Eitner believed he was in training for a fight with heavyweight champion Cassius Clay. He would

shadowbox in circles around the guards and speak of a potential bout with Clay. In later years, Eitner served as mascot of the prison band. In that capacity, he once traveled to Helena where the band gave a concert for the residents of the Vocational School for Girls. He died 4 April 1967, at age 89. He was in his 50th year as an inmate at Montana State Prison. Warden Ed Ellsworth Jr. said he had no records to cite, but believed Eitner’s imprisonment was one of the longest in the nation. Research showed the prisoner had a nephew and a niece. They wrote to Pete, but he had no memory of them. Funeral services were held in the prison auditorium – the first time, so far as it is known, that funeral services had been held inside the walls of Montana State Prison. Administrators and

correctional officers served as pallbearers. He was interred in the “Isle of Forgotten Men”, the prison cemetery three miles west of Deer Lodge. Death brought Eitner to the end of a trail which, for more than 49 years, led nowhere except along a repetitious route on a small area of land surrounded by stone walls. Hm Photos of “Turkey Pete” courtesy of the Powell County Arts Foundation. BRIAN D’AMBROSIO lives, works in, and writes from Missoula, Montana. He contributes regularly to multiple publications on a vast variety of subjects. His most recent contribution to History Magazine was a piece on A.P. Giannini: “America’s Banker”, which appeared in the Feb/Mar 2016 issue.

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BOOKS

HINDSIGHT

SEPTEMBER 2016

ABOVE THE SHOTS

AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE KENT STATE SHOOTINGS by Craig S. Simpson and Gregory S. Wilson

A deadly confrontation at Kent State University between Vietnam War protesters and members of the Ohio National Guard occurred in the afternoon on May 4, 1970. What remained, along with the tragic injuries and lives lost, was a remarkable array of conflicting interpretations and theories about what happened – and why? Above the Shots sheds new light on this historic event through the recollections of more than 50 narrators, whose stories are unique and riveting: • the former mayor of Kent • a witness to the riot in town a few nights earlier • a protester who helped burn the ROTC building • a Black United Students member who was warned to stay away from the protest • a Vietnam veteran who deplored the counterculture, yet administered first aid to the wounded • a friend of one of the mortally wounded students, who died in his arms

PANIC AT THE PUMP

• an outraged student who went to the state capital to make a citizen’s arrest of Governor Rhodes • a pair of former KSU presidents who, years later, courted controversy by how they chose to memorialize the tragedy From the precipitous cultural conflicts of the 1960’s to the ever raging battle over how to remember the Kent State incident, the authors examine how these accounts challenge and deepen our understanding of the shootings, the Vietnam Era, memory, and oral history. Spanning five decades, Above the Shots not only chronicles the immediate chain of events that led to the shootings, but explores causes and consequences, prevailing conspiracies, and the search for catharsis. It is a narrative assemblage of voices that rise above the rhetoric – above the din – to show how a watershed moment in modern American history continues to speak to us. Published by Kent State University Press; 274 pages ISBN: 978-1-60635-291-5; Price: $28.95

THE ENERGY CRISIS AND TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN POLITICS IN THE 1970s by Meg Jacobs

In Panic at the Pump, Meg Jacobs shows how a succession of crises, beginning with the 1973 Arab oil embargo, prompted American politicians to seek energy independence, and how their failure to do so shaped the world we live in. When the crisis hit, the Democratic Party was divided, with older New Deal liberals who prized access to affordable energy squaring off against young environmentalists who pushed for conservation. Meanwhile, conservative Republicans challenged both kinds of governmental activism and argued that there would be no energy crisis if the government got out of the way and let the market work. The result was a stalemate in Washington and panic across the country: miles-long gas lines, Big Oil conspiracy theories, even violent strikes by truckers. Jacobs argues that the energy crises of the 1970s became, for many Americans, an important object lesson in the limitations of governmental power. Washington proved unable to design a national energy policy, and the inability to develop resources and conserve only made the United States more dependent on oil from abroad. As we face the repercussions of a changing climate, a volatile oil market, and continued unrest in the Middle East, Panic at the Pump is a necessary and instructive account of a formative period in American political history. Published by Hill and Wang; 384 pages ISBN: 978-0-8090-5847-1; Price: $35.00

August/September 2016 History Magazine

53

BOOKS

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PATHFINDER PIONEER

THE MEMOIR OF A LEAD BOMBER PILOT IN WORLD WAR II by Colonel Raymond E. Brim, USAF (ret.)

In this engaging book, we see how an 18-year-old miner shoveling ore from deep in the ground in Utah suddenly found himself, only two years later, 30,000 feet in the air over Nazi, Germany, piloting a flying Fortress in the first wave of America’s air counter offensive in Europe. Like thousands of other young Americans, Ray Brim was plucked by the US Army to be a combat flyer, and was quickly pitted against the hardened veterans of the Luftwaffe. Brim turned out to have a natural knack for flying, however, and was assigned to the select squadron developing lead Pathfinder techniques, while experimenting with radar. He was among the first to test the teeth of the Luftwaffe’s defenses, and once those techniques had been honed, thousands of other bomber crews would follow into the maelstrom, from which 80,000 never return. This work gives us vivid insights into the genesis of the American air campaign, told with the humor, attention to detail and humility that captures the heart and soul of our “Greatest Generation”. Brim was one of the first Pathfinder pilots to fly both day and night missions, leading bomb groups of 600-plus bombers to their targets. At the onset of his missions in the spring of 1943, B-17 crews were given a 50-50 chance of returning. Each of his raids were nerve-racking forays into the unknown; with struggles to survive the damage to his plane due to flak and German fighter attacks, in order to bring his 10-man crew home, often wounded, but still alive. Published by Casemate; 312 pages; photos ISBN: 978-1-61200-352-8; Price: $32.95

by John W. Emerson

This book is focused on the airplanes and aviators of the US Army Air Force in the South Pacific during World War II. Topics include the Japanese Conquest of the Philippines, the Allied build up for the recapture of the Philippines, and the American airplanes and pilots involved in retaking the Philippines. Of interest and not widely known, Charles Lindbergh flew combat missions in the South Pacific. This illustrated narrative portrays the interactions of American Aces and Commanders. The book also describes the modification of the B-25 and A-20 medium bombers for their role as strafers, skip bombers and delivery of parachute fragmentation bombs. Self-published; 102 pages ISBN: 978-1519693341; Price: $12.95

THE EDGE OF THE EMPIRE

BEER OF BROADWAY FAME

by Bronwen Riley

by Alfred W. McCoy

In The Edge of the Empire, English Heritage guidebook author Riley combines an extensive rage of Greek and Latin sources with information about archaeology for a vivid and engaging revelation of his British corner of Roman civilization. Dedicating a chapter to each stage of an epic journey, Riley describes places visited and people and objects seen along the way, resulting in a strikingly original portrayal of life in the second century and the ways in which that rich past continues to inform our present.

For more than a century, New York City was the brewing capital of America, with more breweries producing more beer than any other city, including Milwaukee and St. Louis. In Beer of Broadway Fame, Alfred W. McCoy traces the hundred-year history of the prominent Brooklyn brewery, Piel Bros., and provides an intimate portrait of the company’s German-American family. Through quality and innovation, Piel Bros. grew from Brooklyn’s smallest brewery in 1884, producing only 850 kegs, into the sixteenth-largest brewery in America, brewing over a million barrels by 1952. Through a narrative spanning three generations, McCoy examines the demoralizing impact of pervasive US state surveillance during World War I and the Cold War, as well as the forced assimilation that virtually erased German-American identity from public life after World War I. McCoy traces Piel Bros.’ changing fortunes from its early struggle to survive in New York’s Gilded Age beer market, the travails of Prohibition with police raids and gangster death threats, to the crushing competition from the big national brands after World War II. Through a fusion of corporate records with intimate personal correspondence, McCoy reveals the social forces that changed a great city, the US brewing industry, and the country’s economy.

Published by Pegasus Books 352 pages ISBN: 978-1-68177-129-8 Price: $28.95

54

AIR WAR IN THE PHILIPPINES – U.S. ARMY AIR FORCE

THE PIEL FAMILY AND THEIR BROOKLYN BREWERY

Published by State University of New York Press; 538 pages ISBN: 978-1-43846-140-3; Price: $29.95

History Magazine August/September 2016

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