Day By Day

Thursday, October 29, 2009

This Day In History

Today is "Hermit" day, so dig out your dusty old picture of Peter Noone and the boys and spend the day [like so many days lately, it seems] sitting alone in a dark room, staring at a computer screen and softly singing, "I'm 'Enery the Eighth, I Am...." If anyone should approach your house, walk out on your porch brandishing a shotgun and, in your best Clint Eastwood voice tell them to "Get Off My Lawn!!!"

On this day in 1618 Sir Walter Raleigh was executed. Rising from obscure origins Raleigh had gained favor with the English court by killing and oppressing lots of Irishmen. By all accounts he was extremely charming [he was a poet back when that was cool] and gained the favor of the Tudor queen, Elizabeth I. Eventually he parlayed that into knighthood and a royal patent to explore the New World, which resulted in the unsuccessful attempt to found a colony at Roanoke. Raleigh screwed up his career, though, by secretly marrying one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, Elizabeth Throckmorton [the things men do for love]. When the Queen found out she had the newlyweds imprisoned in the Tower of London. Raleigh gained their release by promising to leave court and retire to Dorset. Once there began a publicity campaign aimed at gaining another royal patent, this time to find "El Dorado", the City of Gold. Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 and the new monarch, James Stuart (whose mother, Mary "Queen of Scots", had been executed by Elizabeth), looked upon Raleigh and other favorites of the Tudors with suspicion. He suspected Raleigh of treason, imprisoned him again in the Tower, and released him only after Raleigh promised to leave England on an expedition to locate El Dorado. That didn't work out well. Not only did Raleigh fail to find the City of Gold, but men under his command sacked a Spanish colonial outpost, which led to strenuous protests from the King of Spain. When Raleigh returned to Britain King James, who was trying to repair relations with Spain, had him arrested and beheaded. It was tough being a courtier back in those days, even if you were a poet and devilishly handsome.

And on this day in 1885 Major General George McClellan, a Philly boy, died at the age of 58. As commander of the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War he was consistently outmatched and humiliated by Robert E. Lee. Eventually Lincoln removed him from command. Historians are divided on the justice of this. Most consider Lincoln's actions warranted and judge McClellan a failure, but there are those who see the political attacks on McClellan as an attempt by Lincoln partisans to shift blame for the President's misjudgments and ineptitude onto the backs of his military commanders. In 1864 McClellan was nominated for President by the Democrats who adopted a platform promising an immediate end to the war and unconditional negotiations with the secessionist States. The Democrats went into the election divided between a "peace faction" that demanded an end to the slaughter and a "war faction" that attacked the incompetence and corruption of the Lincoln administration and promised to prosecute the war more effectively. Even so divided, the Democrats had a good shot at taking Lincoln down. The President himself expected to be defeated. But Sherman's capture of Atlanta, just a month before the election, and Grant's approach to Richmond allowed the Republicans to plausibly argue that the war would soon be over and that it would be a mistake to change horses in midstream. Lincoln won convincingly. Later McClellan served as Governor of New Jersey. The State has posted his biography online here. He's a fascinating guy. Check him out.

Today is the eightieth anniversary of "Black Tuesday". On two successive days in 1929 the Stock Market plunged by nearly 25 percent. This collapse precipitated the greatest financial crisis of the Twentieth Century, but it did not [as popular imagination has it] create the Great Depression. That was the result of inept and wrongheaded actions by the government as it sought to manage the financial crisis. For an overview of what happened and an introduction to theories as to why it happened check out Murray N. Rothbard's America's Great Depression. [here]. It's a pretty good introduction to the subject that explains a lot of basic concepts and terms, but don't take it as gospel.

Happy Birthday to Bela Lugosi [1884], the first and still the best of the Draculas; and to Ed Kemmer [1921 in Reading, PA], who we kids knew as Commander Buzz Corey of the United Planets Space Patrol. He was the fifties radio prototype for TV's James Kirk. You can hear a bit of his work here. Ed shares his birthday with William H. "Bill" Mauldin, the greatest newspaper cartoonist of the WWII era. His "Willie and Joe" cartoons spoke were for millions of readers the voice of the American GI. You can see some of his work here and here.