Politics
Memorial Day is the day that we honor our fallen soldiers. Many people mistakenly think that it is a day to honor veterans and active-duty soldiers too, but it is not. This day is just for those soldiers who gave all…gave their lives for freedom. One that comes to my mind is my uncle, Jim Richards older brother, Daile Richards, who gave his life at Normandy, France. That operation was one of the most shocking attacks to me, because these men who “stormed the beaches of Normandy” were basically sitting ducks…or running ducks anyway. Their task was to leave the relative safety of the boats and swim to the beach. Then, they were to attack the strongholds there. The fatalities on that day numbered between 5,000 and 12,000. The discrepancy being those who were deemed missing. It was a horrible loss for the Allies, but it had to be done.
Those losses were in one battle alone. are just the tip of the iceberg, and the other losses are mind boggling to imagine. Nevertheless, every soldier that was lost in that battle or any other battle deserves our deep and abiding respect and appreciation for their sacrifice. They gave all…they gave their life, and if they hadn’t many more people would have been lost. We can never repay them or their families for their sacrifice, but we can forever remember what they did. Their sacrifice means everything in a war. Without that sacrifice, freedom is lost, and fear reigns. So, instead of saying Happy Memorial Day, I say thank you to the fallen soldiers and to their families.
Benjamin Franklin, like many older people had issues with his eyes. In order to efficiently function, he needed two pair of glasses…one for closeup and one for distance. It is an irritation felt by many people as they get older. Of course, these days we already have things like cataract surgery, contact lenses, and bifocal glasses, but in Benjamin Franklin’s day, these things didn’t exist, and even eye care was scarce. Doctors didn’t have the equipment we have for diagnosis and correction that we have today. This was the place of frustration Franklin found himself in, and the motivation he felt for change.
So, he set to work, and in a letter dated May 23, 1785, Benjamin Franklin revealed his design for what we would eventually know as bifocal glasses. Benjamin Franklin was many things. He was a Pennsylvania inventor, printer, author, diplomat and American Founding Father, and he had grown tired of alternating between these two different pairs of glasses to help his near or far vision. He was so tired of it, in fact that he came up with an idea to, quite literally, split the difference, and with that Benjamin Franklin became widely credited as the inventor of bifocal glasses. It was an invention that was almost mor for himself than for anyone else, but that definitely helped millions if not billions of people.
Benjamin Franklin was more than a scientist. He was also a politician and diplomat, famous for signing both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and if those things were all he did in life, we would likely 
have considered him a great man. Nevertheless, his curious, scientific mind would not let him stop there. He went on to invent many other things, among them the Lightning Rod, Bifocal Glasses, the Franklin Stove, the Odometer, the Glass Harmonica, the Flexible Urinary Catheter, the Long Arm, Hand Paddles, the Phonetic Alphabet, and one that people aren’t sure is a good thing or a bad thing…Daylight Saving Time.
In the letter to his friend George Whatley, a London merchant and pamphleteer, Benjamin Franklin included a sketch of his new invention, saying that he found the bifocals particularly useful while dining in France. He stated that with the glasses, he could see both the food he was eating and the facial expressions of people seated across the table, which helped him better interpret their words, which was crucial for a diplomat navigating a foreign country. His letter stated, “I therefore had formerly two pair of spectacles, which I shifted occasionally, as in travelling I sometimes read, and often wanted to regard the prospects. Finding this change troublesome…I had the glasses cut, and half of each kind associated in the same circle. By this means, as I wear my spectacles constantly, I have only to move my eyes up or down, as I want to see distinctly far or near, the proper glasses being always ready.” It was ingenious!!
The bifocal sketch came the year after Franklin made a special request to his optician, “Slice in half the lenses of his reading glasses and long-distance glasses, then combine them together with the distance lenses on top and reading glasses on the bottom. Franklin called the glasses style ‘double spectacles,’ later known as 
bifocals.” Oddly, Franklin was not an inventor that was interested in making money from his inventions, and so, like with his other inventions Franklin did nothing more that present the idea and let someone else basically run with it. He only wanted his bifocal breakthrough to help other members of the community struggling with vision deterioration. For that reason, Benjamin Franklin never patented any of his inventions and was instead intent only on sharing them freely…unlike most inventors of that time or this.
In 1832, a conflict broke out, between the United States and Native Americans led by Black Hawk, a Sauk leader. The brief conflict was known as The Black Hawk War. The war erupted soon after Black Hawk and a group of Sauks, Meskwakis, and Kickapoos, who were known as the British Band, crossed the Mississippi River, into the state of Illinois, from Iowa Indian Territory in April 1832. Black Hawk’s motives for the conflict were vague, but he was apparently hoping to avoid bloodshed while secretly resettling on the former tribal land that had been surrendered to the United States in the 1804 Treaty of Saint Louis. Of course. the treaty had been disputed by the Native Americans since its inception.
While it really wasn’t accurate, the US officials were convinced that the British Band was hostile. So, they mobilized a frontier militia and opened fire on a delegation from the Native Americans on May 14, 1832. That caused Black Hawk to return fire, successfully attacking the militia at the Battle of Stillman’s Run. Then, he led his band to a secure location in what is now southern Wisconsin, where they were pursued by US forces. Meanwhile, there were raids by other Native Americans tribes against forts and settlements that had been left 
largely unprotected with the absence of US troops. Some Ho-Chunk and Potawatomi warriors with grievances against European Americans also took part in these additional raids, although most of the tribal members tried to avoid the conflict. The Menominee and Dakota tribes were already at odds with the Sauks and Meskwakis, and they chose to support the US troops.
General Henry Atkinson, commanding officer of the US troops, tracked the British Band looking for the best place to engage in battle. Colonel Henry Dodge caught up with the British Band on July 21st. His troops defeated them at the Battle of Wisconsin Heights. By this time, Black Hawk’s band had been weakened by hunger, death, and desertion, so many of the native survivors retreated towards the Mississippi, just trying to stay alive. US soldiers attacked the remnants of the British Band again on August 2nd, at the Battle of Bad Axe, killing many or capturing most of those who were still alive. Black Hawk and some other leaders escaped, but later surrendered and were imprisoned for a year.
The Black Hawk War gave young Captain Abraham Lincoln his brief military service. Other future famous 
participants included Winfield Scott, Zachary Taylor, and Jefferson Davis. The war gave momentum to the US policy of Indian removal, in which Native American tribes were pressured to sell their lands and move west of the Mississippi River and stay there. These were dark times in American history, and I think it is sad that we couldn’t just let the Native Americans share the land with us, but then, I don’t suppose the refusal to share was completely the fault of the White Man either.
Before men became president of the United States, they led normal lives, and especially normal childhoods. No one is born a president. Even Princes, while born a prince, do not resemble a prince at birth and even through childhood. Those things are trained. The same would apply to Zachary Taylor, future President of the United States. Taylor grew up in a world that was very different than ours today. Parts of the United States didn’t even belong to the United States yet. The United States and Mexico had a year-long conflict that erupted in a full-blown war on May 13, 1846, but even before the United States formally declared war on Mexico, General Zachary Taylor defeated a superior Mexican force in the Battle of Palo Alto north of the Rio Grande River. That battle took place on May 8, 1846
The conflict really started when the United States annexed the Republic of Texas as a new US state. The drift toward war with Mexico had begun a year earlier when the U.S. annexed the Republic of Texas as a new state. Ten years before, the Mexicans had fought an unsuccessful war with Texans to keep them from breaking away to become an independent nation. Since then, they had refused to recognize the independence of Texas or the Rio Grande River as an international boundary. The United States did not make any attempt to annex Texas until 1844, but it appeared that Texas was growing more interested in the possibility of becoming part of the United States. Texas was formally admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state. In January 1846, fearing the Mexicans would respond to US annexation by asserting control over disputed territory in southwestern Texas, President James K Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to move a force into Texas to defend the Rio Grande border.
Hoping to avoid the battle, Polk had tried to settle the matter diplomatically, but when that failed, Taylor was ordered to take his forces up to the disputed borderline at the Rio Grande. The Mexican General Mariano Arista 
viewed this as a hostile invasion of Mexican territory, and on April 25, 1846, he took his soldiers across the river and attacked. Congress declared war on May 13 and authorized a draft to build up the US Army. The problem Taylor faced, however, that with the skirmishes he was already involved in, he was in no position to await formal declaration of a war that he was already fighting. For him, the war had already started, when the Mexican army attacked him. In the weeks following the initial skirmish along the Rio Grande, Taylor engaged the Mexican army in two battles. On May 8th, near Palo Alto, and on May 9th at Resaca de la Palma, Taylor led his 200 soldiers to victories against much larger Mexican forces. Poor training and inferior armaments undermined the Mexican army’s troop size advantage. One problem the Mexican army faced was that Mexican gunpowder was of such poor quality that artillery barrages often sent cannonballs bouncing lazily across the battlefield, and the American soldiers merely had to step out of the way to avoid them. It was like fighting a battle with spitballs.
After triumphs at Palo Alto and Resaca de Palma, Taylor crossed the Rio Grande, carrying the conflict into Mexican territory. Over the subsequent ten months he achieved victory in four battles and secured control over three northeastern Mexican states. In the following year, the war’s front shifted to other regions, reducing Taylor’s role in it. Other generals in the campaign moved into mor prominent roles, which ultimately concluded with General Winfield Scott’s capture of Mexico City September 1847. While Zachary Taylor’s part in the end of the war was smaller, he emerged from the war a national hero, often referred to as “Old Rough and Ready” and the people assumed that his military victories meant that he would be a good political leader. Of course, dominance in one area of life does not mean proficiency in another. Nevertheless, he was elected president in 
1848. He proved to be an unskilled politician who tended to see complex problems in overly simplistic ways, which doesn’t bode well for a nation’s president. In July 1850, Taylor returned from a public ceremony and complained that he felt ill. Suffering from a recurring attack of cholera, he died several days later. Taylor was president from March 4, 1849 to July 9, 1850. He was succeeded by Vice President, Millard Fillmore, in office from July 9, 1850 to March 4, 1853, with no Vice President.
The Great Depression, and the ensuing jobs loss found 10 million men without a job by May of 1935. I think anyone who has studied the Great Depression much, probably has their own opinion of what cause the problems that led up to the stock market crash and the Great Depression that followed. I think everyone also has their own opinion on what things helped improve things, and what things prolonged the situation. Whatever the case may be, President Franklin D Roosevelt decided that some changes had to be made, and some helps had to be put in place. One such change occurred on May 6, 1935, when Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was just one of many Great Depression relief programs that Roosevelt created under the umbrella of the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, which he had signed the month before. The WPA, the Public Works Administration (PWA), and other federal assistance programs were designed to be a way of putting unemployed Americans to work in exchange for temporary financial assistance. Out of the 10 million jobless men in the United States in 1935, 3 million were helped by WPA jobs alone.
While the programs actually put the United States further in debt, I guess we did make a trade for that assistance. Roosevelt believed in the elementary principles of justice and fairness, but he also expressed a great dislike for handing out welfare to otherwise able workers. That said, the WPA program and the others he set up, found the workers building highways, schools, hospitals, airports and playgrounds. They also restored theaters, like the Dock Street Theater in Charleston, South Carolina and built the ski lodge at Oregon’s Mount Hood. In that way, the payments given to them were not free. I do agree with a fair day’s wage for a job done. Still, it would just be best if the government wasn’t paying for it.
The WPA also employed actors, writers, and other creative arts professionals by funding federally sponsored plays, art projects such as murals on public buildings, and literary publications. Roosevelt protected private enterprise from competing with WPA projects by incorporating a provision in the act that imposed wage and price controls on federally funded products and services. Again, while these people actually did a job for their wages, the thing to note is that these were “federally funded” which meant that the government was going further and further into debt. It seems to me that there must have been a better way to get people back to work, but these programs were what was done in the depression prolonging “New Deal” that Roosevelt set up.
In the years leading up to World War II and the huge defense-industry production that came with the war, the economy came roaring back in 1940. This allowed the opponents of the “New Deal” in Congress to gradually pare back WPA appropriations. In 1943, Congress suspended many of the programs under the ERA Act, including the WPA, because people were back to work doing more of the necessary jobs again.
Even in wartime, the public demands information…about everything. During World War II, the demand for information was being met by a correspondent named Ernie Pyle, who was also America’s most popular war correspondent. Ernest “Ernie” Taylor Pyle was born on August 3, 1900, on the Sam Elder farm near Dana, Indiana, in rural Vermillion County, Indiana. His parents were Maria (Taylor) and William Clyde Pyle. Ernie’s dad was a tenant farmer on the Elder property at the time of Ernie’s birth. As was common in those days, neither of Pyle’s parents attended school beyond the eighth grade. Ernie first began writing a column for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain in 1935. His column was so interesting and widely loved, that it was eventually syndicated to some 200 US newspapers. The column related the lives and hopes of typical citizens, thereby capturing America’s affection. When the United States entered World War II in 1942, Pyle was a natural choice for war correspondent. His area of coverage was the North Africa campaign, the invasions of Sicily and Italy, and on June 7, 1944, he went ashore at Normandy the day after the Allied forces landed.
Pyle’s stories were different than tales of the battles the US participated in. They were always written about the 
experiences of enlisted men instead. He described the D-Day scene as, “It was a lovely day for strolling along the seashore. Men were sleeping on the sand, some of them sleeping forever. Men were floating in the water, but they didn’t know they were in the water, for they were dead.” It was a devastatingly poignant story, and that same year, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished correspondence, and in 1945 he traveled to the Pacific to cover the war against Japan.
Pyle could always be found among the men in the platoon he was covering. He wasn’t aloof, but rather he was one of them…sharing cigarettes and good conversations. Because Pyle was not military, he was able to go home when he wanted or needed to, and so he made a couple of trips home to take care of his wife, Geraldine “Jerry” when she was ill. Nevertheless, his heart was with the infantry, and so he returned to tell their story. Pyle wrote that he was especially fond of the infantry “because they are the underdogs.” To make his point, Pyle wrote a column from Italy in 1944 proposing that soldiers in combat should get “fight pay,” just as airmen received “flight pay.” In May 1944 the United States Congress passed a law that became known as the Ernie Pyle bill. It 
authorized 50 percent extra pay for combat service. Pyle was destined to leave a legacy in the world of infantry fighting, and on April 18, 1945, Ernie Pyle made his own “last stand” when he was killed by enemy fire on the island of Ie Shima. After his death, President Harry S Truman spoke of how Pyle “told the story of the American fighting man as the American fighting men wanted it told.” Pyle is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
The Russian ship, Novgorod was a “monitor” built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1870s. A monitor is “a relatively small warship that is neither fast nor strongly armored but carries disproportionately large guns.” These ships were used by various navies from the 1860s, during the First World War and also has a limited presence in the Second World War. Novgorod was one of the most unusual warships ever constructed, and it is still considered in “popular naval myth” as one of the worst warships ever built. Whether it was a good warship or not, it certainly was one of the funniest looking warships of all time.
While funny looking, Novgorod was relatively effective in her designed role as a coast-defense ship, and apparently there were reasons for the design of the ship. The hull was circular to reduce draught (In maritime terms, “draught” (also spelled “draft”) refers to the vertical distance between the waterline and the bottom of a ship’s hull (keel)123. It is a critical measurement that indicates how deep a vessel sits in the water.) Well, this ship definitely sat low in the water, so I guess “draught” was reduced with this funny looking ship. The design allowed the ship to carry much more armor and a heavier armament than other ships of the same size. While she was funny looking, Novgorod played a minor role in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 and was reclassified as a coast-defense ironclad in 1892.
Scottish shipbuilder John Elder published an article in 1868, that indicated that widening the beam of a ship would reduce the area that needed to be protected and allow it to carry thicker armor and heavier, more powerful guns in comparison to a ship with a narrower beam, as was the typical practice of the day. I suppose that makes sense. The low riding craft might also be somewhat more difficult to see in battle. In addition, only a moderate increase in power would be required to match the speed of a normal ship. according to Elder. Then Director of Naval Construction of the Royal Navy, Sir Edward Reed, agreed with Elder’s conclusions. Rear-Admiral Andrei Alexandrovich Popov of the Imperial Russian Navy decided that to further expand on Elder’s concept by broadening the ship, and in the end, it was actually circular and flat-bottomed, unlike Elder’s convex hull, to further minimize its draught. Thus, the funny looking monitor (also known as a popovkas) was born.
In his book, The World’s Worst Warships, naval historian Antony Preston characterized the popovkas like this: “But in other respects, they were a dismal failure. They were too slow to stem the current in the Dniepr, and proved very difficult to steer. In practice the discharge of even one gun caused them to turn out of control and 
even contra-rotating some of six propellers was unable to keep the ship on the correct heading. Nor could they cope with the rough weather which is frequently encountered in the Black Sea. They were prone to rapid rolling and pitching in anything more than a flat calm and could not aim or load their guns under such circumstances.” The Novgorod popovkas ship was decommissioned in 1903 and used as a storeship until she was sold for scrap in 1911.
Every politician has his trusted advisors. Often these are high ranking officials who have proven their vast political knowledge and proven that they can be trusted to keep their part of government participation on the straight and narrow for their president. However, not every advisor is a politician or someone in business, or even someone who works at all. Some seek the advice of their wives, but few to the degree of Congressman John Adams, who would later be our second president. John Adams and his wife, Abigail had an interesting political relationship. She was truly his closest confidant. When he needed advice, she was his “go-to girl” in every case. Often, Abigail would be at home maintaining the family farm in Braintree, Massachusetts while her husband was serving on the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. On March 7, 1777, Continental Congressman John Adams wrote three letters to and received two letters from his wife, Abigail.
The Adams’ correspondence was truly remarkable. Their total letters during his political career numbered 1,160 letters in total, and they covered topics ranging from politics and military strategy to household economy and 
family health. For many of the years of Adams’ political career their lives were literally lived in letters. Their mutual respect and adoration showed that even in an age when women were unable to vote, there were nonetheless marriages in which wives and husbands were true intellectual and emotional equals, and the marriage between John and Abigail Adams was one of those.
Normally, Congress met in Philadelphia, but in mid-December 1776 Congress decided to move to Baltimore to escape capture by the advancing British. The time in Baltimore was frustrating for the Congress. There were complaints that “the town was exceedingly expensive, and exceedingly dirty, that at times members could make their way to the assembly hall only on horseback, through deep mud.” Throughout the session there was inadequate representation from the various colonies. In those days congressmen came to meetings if they felt they could make it, but excuses for not going were often made too. Even with the shortage of representatives, Samuel Adams declared in the earlier part of the session, “We have done more important business in three weeks than we had done, and I believe should have done, at Philadelphia, in six months.” The congressmen also managed to appoint a committee of five to obtain foreign assistance.
On March 7th, 1777, John drafted his second letter to Abigail. In it he declared that Philadelphia had lost its vibrancy during Congress’ removal to Baltimore. “This City is a dull Place, in Comparason [sic] of what it was. More than one half the Inhabitants have removed to the Country, as it was their Wisdom to do—the Remainder are chiefly Quakers as dull as Beetles. From these neither good is to be expected nor Evil to be apprehended. They are a kind of neutral Tribe, or the Race of the insipids.” While the Adams’ couple did what they had to do to serve their country, I’m sure the years of service were hard on the couple, but never on their marriage. Their love was genuine and forever. Their letters may have been mostly formal and businesslike, but I think that if you read between the lines their letter told so much more about the couple they were.
When a president leaves office these days, they leave with a lifetime pension, but until 1958, when a president left office, he was not afforded any compensation. That meant that after their time in office, they had to go back to earning a living on their own again. I understand that our presidents have a really big job, but the longest they can be in that office is eight years, so a lifelong pension doesn’t totally make sense to me, but that is clearly another story.
After his term in office, our very first president, George Washington, was approached by James Anderson in 1797, who urged him to open a whiskey distillery. Anderson, who had experience distilling grain in Scotland and Virginia, told Washington that Mount Vernon’s crops, combined with the large merchant gristmill and the abundant water supply, would make a whiskey distillery a very profitable venture, So, after his term, Washington opened that whiskey distillery. By 1799, his distillery was the largest in the country, producing 11,000 gallons of un-aged whiskey!
By the 1810 census, distilleries were quite commonplace in the United States. In fact, there were more than 3,600 operating in Virginia alone, but George Washington’s distillery was one of the largest in the nation at that time, measuring 75 x 30 feet, or 2,250 square feet as opposed to the average being 800 square feet.
George Washington’s whiskey was not bottled, branded, or barrel-aged like most whiskeys of that time. Instead, his was put in an uncharred barrel, which was usually 30 gallons in size. It was then sent into Alexandria, where it was consumed right away as an unaged whiskey. This process brought a hefty stream of cash to Mount Vernon. Not only did George Washington earn his own living, but he also paid taxes on his income. He left office and became a normal everyday citizen again.
George Washington’s Mount Vernon still produces limited batches of both aged and unaged whiskey today. These days, however, the whiskey is placed in branded bottles. It is, nevertheless, produced in the traditional 
18th-century way as it was before, in George Washington’s reconstructed distillery, proving yet again that if a president was resourceful, he is unlikely to need a lifelong pension for eight years of work. I have a lot of respect for such a resourceful man like George Washington was. He didn’t expect the American people to carry his lifestyle on their backs for the rest of his life.
In 1873, the US Congress decided to follow the lead of many European nations and stop buying silver and minting silver coins. Silver was becoming relatively scarce, and it was thought that this new plan would simplify the monetary system. Several other factors exacerbated the situation, and a financial panic quickly set in. Silver prices began dropping rapidly when the government stopped buying silver, and many owners of primarily western silver mines were immediately hurt. The owners of silver weren’t the only ones effected. Farmers and others who carried substantial debt loads attacked the so-called “Crime of ’73.” Theirs might not have been an exact reason, but they believed that it caused a tighter supply of money, which in turn made it more difficult for them to pay off their debts.
Most Americans today wouldn’t really understand the problems surrounding the elimination of the coinage of silver. Nevertheless, in the late 19th century, it was a topic of keen political and economic interest. Our money, these days is basically “secured” by faith in the stability of the government, but prior to that time, money was backed by actual 
deposits of silver and gold, the so-called “bimetallic standard.” The US also minted both gold and silver coins. The fact that we went away from the “bimetallic standard” or for that matter, the “gold standard” has been a detriment to this country since that time. When money can be made without any gold or silver backing, it weakens the money.
Enter the Bland-Allison Act, which provided for a return to the minting of silver coins. A nationwide drive to return to the “bimetallic standard” began sweeping the nation, and many Americans began to place their undying faith in the ability of silver to solve their economic difficulties. Missouri Congressman Richard Bland led the fight to remonetize silver. Bland was no stranger to the struggles of the small farmers, but his background was in mining. Bland became a fervent believer in the silver cause. William B Allison was a US representative 
from 1863 to 1871 and senator from 1873 to 1908 from Iowa. He was also the cosponsor of the Bland-Allison Act of 1878. Both men were against the “faith in the stability of the government” form of currency.
The best part of Bland’s part in this was that he had the backing of powerful western mining interests. He quickly secured passage of the Bland-Allison Act, which became law on February 28, 1878. Although the act did not provide for a return to the old policy of unlimited silver coinage, it did require the US Treasury to resume purchasing silver and minting silver dollars as legal tender. Americans could once again use silver coins as legal tender, and this helped some struggling western mining operations. Other than that, however, the act had little economic impact, and it failed to satisfy the greater desires and dreams of the silver backers. The battle over the use of silver and gold continued to occupy Americans well into the 20th century.
