Monthly Archives: February 2013

Oh, the possibilities

28 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in Joseph Roswell Hawley

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I came across this interesting depiction of Joseph Roswell Hawley today. I have not begun writing yet, but things are progressing readily enough with the research, literature review, and other aspects of the biography. This card was part of the 1888 Duke Honest Long Cut “Presidential Possibilities” series. Tobacco cards were not just for baseball players; Duke (the American Tobacco Company after a series of mergers in 1890) and its competitors manufactured cards for all types of events and programs for decades, well into the twentieth century. All told there were twenty-five cards in the 1888 set, which is probably a good ten to fifteen more candidates than was realistic. Every election usually starts off with ten to twelve hopefuls who then drop out along the way. They probably created so many to appeal to customers–and everyone smoked in this era–across the nation. That said, the selections are heavily skewed to candidates from the North, West, and Civil War border states. The Deep South is not represented at all.

In 1888 Hawley himself had already been in the Senate for seven years and was at the height of his powers. What I find interesting about the list are the other potential candidates. There was incumbent Grover Cleveland, eventual winner (but popular vote loser) Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley (the 1896 winner), John Sherman (brother of William Tecumseh and Senate colleague of Joseph R.), Gilded Age powerbroker and seemingly perennial candidate James Blaine (Ha!), Benjamin Butler, and even Robert Todd Lincoln (probably added for the cachet of his last name). The list speaks volumes about the influence of the Civil War generation decades after the war’s end, and are wonderful pieces of Americana.

Honest Long Cut 1888 presidential series

Honest Long Cut 1888 presidential series

The potential candidates

The potential candidates

Strike the tents

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by in Ellis Island

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It was a necessary evil but one of the blights in Battery Park over the past decade has been the complex of white security tents through which visitors were required to pass on the way to Liberty and Ellis islands. The structures went up immediately after 9/11 and were originally supposed to be temporary. Nonetheless, in the manner that these things sometimes play out, they were still in use up until Hurricane Sandy in late 2012. In fairness security at the islands is extraordinarily complicated. Millions crowd onto ferries every year to visit the national monuments. There are overlapping local, state, and federal police jurisdictions. What’s more, the waters fall under the jurisdiction of the Coast Guard. People ferry from New Jersey as well, which adds another layer of complexity. It is all very professional. Most visitors took it in stride, but in the dog days of summer, especially, people were not always in the best of moods when finally reaching Liberty and Ellis. None other than Anthony Weiner–yes, the congressman who couldn’t keep it in his pants before hitting Send to his Twitter page–tried to have them removed a few years ago. His idea was a good one, but the plan he promoted was not feasible. Well, the Park Service announced the other day that the tents will be coming down for good when the islands re-open to the public. The bugs haven’t been entirely worked out yet, but a more steam-lined procedure will be carried out on the islands. Taking down these tents is good news for New Yorkers and for the people from around the world who visit every year.

Civil War New York

22 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by in Heritage tourism, New York City

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Forts Tompkins and Wadsworth, Staten Island

Forts Tompkins and Wadsworth, Staten Island

People are often surprised about how much Civil War history took place in New York City. Yes, with the major exception of the 1863 draft riots there was no fighting here, but the municipality was integral to the Union war effort on a number of political and economic levels. One should actually say municipalities, as Brooklyn was an independent city until 1898. If you look closely and know what you are looking at, you can see Brooklyn’s one-time independence reflected within the language of the many plaques and monuments sprinkled throughout our fine borough. Even militarily New York City was important, what with Governors Island, Fort Lafayette, the harbor defenses, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard right here. New York City was crucial to putting down the Rebellion. It was to Governors Island, for instance, that Major Anderson sailed after surrendering Fort Sumter. New York was important in the postwar period also. The Grants called New York City home after leaving the White House, and are buried there. The widowed Varina Davis moved to Manhattan, where she was active in political and social life until her death in 1906. And they are just a few names I am coming up with off the top of my head. One of my projects this winter is to create my own catalog of Civil War-related things to see and do in the five boroughs and beyond. Look for it soon. In the meantime here is a short list from NYCGO.

(painting by Seth Eastman, U.S. Army Center for Military History)

Five minutes with Grant

21 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

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The narrative is a little easy for those already familiar with the story of General Grant’s final days, but I thought I would pass along this short video. I especially loved the footage of Ulysses Grant Dietz toward the end. Dietz is an interesting figure in his own right. He did us all a great service several years ago when, working with others, he pressured the powers-that-be to clean up the tomb of his great, great grandfather.

 

Looking to summer

19 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Gettysburg, Heritage tourism

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McPherson Barn, Gettysburg

McPherson Barn, Gettysburg

The Hayfoot and I started talking earnestly over the weekend about our annual pilgrimage to Gettysburg. Maybe it was the 20 degree February weather that got us thinking about late June. Last night I pulled out the booklet sent to me a few months back by a Civil War preservation group to which I am a member. It will be a busy season at Gettysburg to put it mildly. The Antietam anniversary last September was a huge deal, and this should be even bigger. It is always good seeing people soaking up their history and culture. We were happy to see the packed rooms at the National Portrait Gallery over Presidents Day Weekend. For one thing higher attendance at our museums and national parks means potentially better budgets, or at least fewer cuts. If you don’t stay relevant what have you got? Many of the activities at Gettysburg will be better than others. Some will be thought provoking, and some will be crass. It may surprise you to know that, unlike some, I don’t get too worked about the commercialism at Gettysburg or at any historical site. People have been cashing in on the Battle of Gettysburg since approximately July 4, 1863.

I first visited Gettysburg in July 2008, three months after the opening of the new visitor center, and so have no firsthand knowledge of the town as a tourist site prior to the new clubhouse. I do know that many business owners on Steinwehr Avenue were concerned about tourists finding their way to the commercial strip. These are not unreasonable concerns. The stakes are high, especially during the sesquicentennial. When I was in library school I volunteered in a small history museum that stood on a courthouse square in a small town in Texas. Surrounding the courthouse museum, on all four sides, were a number of restaurants and antique shops. The revenue they generated for the town in tourists dollars was considerable. What does 2013 mean for Gettysburg? The Hanover (PA) Evening Sun offers some insight.

Monday evening coming down

18 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by in Beatles, Museums, Philately, Washington, D.C.

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I just got back from my trip to Washington. I managed to visit the Library of Congress, National Portrait Gallery, and even sneak in a quick rendezvous to the Postal Museum while I was killing time this morning waiting for my bus. I was glad to see that the U.S. and International Stamps Gallery is again open to the public. When I was there about two years ago it was closed due to a leak in that part of the museum. It is good to see it up and running again. The stamps themselves are, after all, what the museum is all about.

The coolest thing I saw over the weekend was the Jedediah Hotchkiss map of the Shenandoah Valley, which was part of the Library of Congress’s sesquicentennial exhibit. According to this 1948 LOC document the Library of Congress owns over 600 hundred Hotchkiss maps from during and after the war. Major Hotchkiss was a cartographer who worked primarily for Stonewall Jackson. The one on display was from Jackson’s Valley Campaign. One does not have to be a Lost Causer to admire it as a work of art and engineering. I’m not sure how this one entered the collection, but apparently it was acquired by the Library of Congress in 1964. The how’s and why’s of how such documents get into various collections is fascinating in and of itself. In the case of the Civil War, collections were often donated to various repositories and museums by children or grandchildren well into the twentieth century, as late of the 1950s and 60s.

Catching up on my email and internet, I noticed that Beatle mentor Tony Sheridan died over the weekend. I always thought of him as being so much older than the Beatles but he was only 72, more or less the same age as Fabs. I mentioned just the other day that the Beatles and their inner circle are passing on. A few days ago Amazon UK posted the bibliographic details for volume one of Mark Lewisohn’s  trilogy. As Lewisohn said there might be, there is to be an “author’s cut” and a “publisher’s cut.” Volume one for the author’s cut logs in at over 1,800 pages. It will be interesting to see what he comes up with that is new. The first volume ends in December 1962, so there will be a great deal on the late Tony Sheridan. Sad to know he’s gone.

Presidents Day weekend

16 Saturday Feb 2013

Posted by in Monuments and Statuary, Museums, New York City

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I am on the Boltbus to DC. We just crossed under the Hudson into New Jersey.

I was having a conversation with someone the other day in which we were talking about the things that are uniquely of the 21st century. Hard as it is to believe, but we are now more than a full decade into the new millennium. The people of the 20th century saw the introduction of radio, television, and the personal computer. But what is new and unique so far to the 21st century? A few things we came up with were the eReader, the iPad and other tablet devices, and for those who live in the Northeast Corridor, the Boltbus. It has become such a part of the fabric of life in this region. I firmly believe that some filmmaker a half century from now will create a nostalgic scene in which two young lovers, circa 2010, head off for a weekend alone in the big city by taking this cheap and thoroughly enjoyable mass transit. Don’t laugh. Woody Allen did something similar in his depictions of, say, the Automat in Radio Days.

This weekend I am hoping to see the Civil War exhibit at the Library of Congress. Also on the list is the Civil War and American Art show at the Smithsonian’s  American Art Museum. This will actually be at the Met later this year, but there is going to be so much to it that I want to see it more than once; viewing art can be exhausting and emotionally draining. Speaking of the Met, this is a Holiday Monday coming up. Winter is a great time to visit, especially with the Matisse show set to run for one more month.

I have blogged about the Met’s New American Wing before. Here is a short video that PBS Channel Thirteen released this week about the works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens at the Metropolitan Museum. It is really something to live in New York and walk past these sculptures every day when going about your business. Yesterday morning I paused briefly in front of Saint-Gaudens’s statue of General Sherman while I was on my way to the dentist. No matter how long I live here, I will aways be a tourist. I love the still photograph in the video of what I assume was the dedication ceremony. It is lost on us today that people turned out by the thousands, even hundreds of thousands, for such occasions. Pretty wild.

Enjoy the video and your weekend.

The Eisenhower Memorial saga continues

14 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Monuments and Statuary

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I hope the powers-that-be eventually reach the conclusion that the current proposal for the Eisenhower Memorial on the National Mall is the wrong one, historically, aesthetically, and even technically. It is difficult to imagine the Gehry design withstanding decades of humid District of Columbia summers and windy, cold winters. There have been structural problems with other Gehry projects. On Tuesday the National Capital Planning Commission issued its newest technical report for the proposed monument. Time will tell.

The Way Home

13 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in National Park Service

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I am halfway through re-reading Shelton Johnson’s Gloryland and thought I would re-post this film in which he participated. If you have never seen it, enjoy; and if you have, experience it again.

 

Hey everybody, you never know what is waiting for you when you log on but today something special came through my inbox. Amy Marquis, an associate editor at National Parks Magazine, has just released a short film chronicling a visit to Yosemite by a group of late adult African Americans. For most, perhaps all, it was their visit to a national park. I’ll let the film say the rest.

Please Please Me turns fifty

12 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Beatles

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It is hard to believe but yesterday was the fiftieth anniversary of the Please Please Me album recording session. On February 11, 1962 the Bealtes went into Abbey Road Studios–still called EMI Studios–and banged out ten of the fourteen songs that would appear on their first long playing record. (The other four songs had been recorded and released previously as singles.) Yes, the Beatles anniversaries are hitting the half a century mark. I am one of those people of the belief that the Beatles didn’t record a bad song. There are a few in the canon weaker than the rest (“Old Brown Shoe”?), but how many can be called truly awful?

I know it did not break ground the way Revolver and Sgt. Pepper would a few short years later, but Please Please Me has always been my favorite Beatles lp. For starters, it sounds different than the rest of their work. Basically it was the recording of live studio performances with little overdubbing or other studio gimmickry. This gives the record a fresh sound that it has never lost even after five decades. The great jazz records of the 1950s and 1960s, recorded in the same era with the same primitive recording equipment, have a similar freshness and vitality. The Beatles already understood the songs in-and-out because they had played them hundreds of times in Liverpool, Hamburg, and anywhere else they could land a gig. I often quip that the Beatles recorded Please Please Me in February 1962 and it was all downhill from there. In the thousands of times I have listened to it over the years, I have always better and more refreshed when the final chords of “Twist and Shout” fade away. It isn’t saying too much to call the album . . . life-affirming. It’s on my turntable right now.

I’m looking forward to volume one of Mark Lewisohn’s monumental trilogy, coming later this year. The wait has been frustrating but Lewisohn has been taking his time for the best reason: to tell the story properly. There have been other worthwhile, even essential Beatle books, but it is really a story only Lewisohn can tell in all its messiness, grandeur, and totality. It is almost now or never for the documenting of the Beatles story. Two of them are already gone; McCartney and Starkey are now in their seventies. It is hard to imagine, but in a few short years they and many of the people present during the creation will also no longer be with us to tell their part of the story. This book and its subsequent volumes are going to be a huge deal.

Put the record on right now. You’ll feel great.