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Hey all, I thought I would send off a quick missive before heading back to New York City. I am typing this from our apartment in DC. About an hour ago I dropped off the rental car before hopping on the Shady Grove metro. We had a great time in Gettysburg this past week. We did it right by going the week before the battle anniversary. The crowds were heavy but manageable up until yesterday. Thursday (yesterday) morning it suddenly became REALLY busy, as in Times Square busy. That said, I must say that the Park Service had things under control; the hard work of the last several years made a clear difference. It was fun being in the VC and talking to folks from all over the country. Many of the people there were reenactors in town for the first of two events taking place in the next couple of weekends. Reenacting is not my thing, but to each his own. The only hiccup so far was a power outage at the Visitor Center on Wednesday morning caused by a powerful summer storm the evening before. People milling around said traffic lights were not working in parts of town as well. When I came back later in the afternoon everything was back to normal. Yesterday afternoon as I was coming down Taneytown Road I noticed workers building a huge stage near the Leister Farm (Meade’s Headquarters). The adjacent Ziegler’s Grove looks great sans the old cyclorama building. When we picknicked there one day I wondered aloud how many 2013 first timers will be unaware it ever existed. Such is the evolution of the park.
The battle anniversary is of course July 1-3, which is next Monday-Wednesday. The downside to that is that the weekday schedule may impact television coverage. I am going to check the tv listings to see what C-SPAN has scheduled over the weekend through next week. This is really a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Make time.
I am sorry about the dearth of posts this week, but I have been getting ready to go to Gettysburg for the sesquicentennial. I have been to Gettysburg several times over the years, including a memorable trip with my soon-to-be-wife in 2009, and must say that I have never been more excited about being there than I am for the 150th. Usually we make the drive to Antietam as well, but I think this year it will probably be all Gettysburg, all the time. Last year was the first year I felt I understood how the battle, the town, and even the region all fit together; this year I want to expand on that. I intend to take some of the extended ranger hikes and things like that. I am also planning on tracking the ground walked by the Florida regiments who fought in the battle, which is of interest to me because I grew up in the Sunshine State. This is a manageable undertaking because there only 2-3 such regiments, ideal for an afternoon of tramping. The trick in 2013 is to stay off-the-beaten-path because the crowds are going to be so big, especially now that the anniversary of the campaign is underway. I am intentionally putting off reading Allen Guelzo’s Gettysburg: The Last Invasion until I return. There may be a quick visit to Monocacy in there as well. I have always wanted to the site of The Battle That Saved Washington, and it happens to be on the way back to where we are headed the final day.
When I get back I will have a lot on my plate, including volunteering at Governors Island National Monument and my book proposal. It should be a fun summer. FYI, it will be light posting, if any, between now and the end of the month.
I did my first interpretive tour of the season at Governors Island this morning. It always feels good to have the first one of the year under one’s belt. Heading to Castle Williams for my shift after lunch, I happened upon something new to the island this season: an outdoor library. Being a librarian myself, I of course had to check it out. The Library Lawn, it turns out, is a coordinated effort of the Uni Project. All three library systems in New York City–New York Public, Queensborough, and Brooklyn Public–are participating in the summer-long effort. People can get library cards, enjoy programming, and other activities. As you can see from the picture above, people are enjoying this pretty cool endeavor. Note Castle Williams and New York Harbor in the upper left hand corner.
The only negative of being in Cooperstown last weekend was that I missed the demolition of Building 877. Everyone was talking about it this week. A friend of mine woke early last Sunday and rode her bike to Red Hook to watch from Brooklyn. Here is some footage I found on Youtube. Enjoy.
The name Roy Gjertson did not mean anything to me until earlier today, after reading this U-T San Diego piece that happened across my in-box. As it turns out, the now eighty-seven year old Californian was the designer of the 1963 Gettysburg centennial stamp pictured above. It is one of the great stamps of the 1960s and not something I ever considered particularly controversial.
Along with a thousand or so other graphic artists, Gjertson entered the design competition and then waited to see what happened. He had been preparing for awhile, in particular by reading the works of Centennial doyen Bruce Catton. The stamp really works. For one thing the colors, blue and grey, are right. Inexplicably, the GAR and UCV stamps issued in 1949 and 1951, respectively, are red and grey. It is also cinemagraphic, capturing the intensity of the July 1863 fighting in dramatic fashion. The scene just . . . flows.
So why the controversy? It turns out some folks got pissed because the blue shading takes up more than half the stamp, therefore slighting the Cause. Objectors also did not like what they interpreted as Johnny Reb’s disheveled look in relation to Billy Yank’s cleaner and better accoutered appearance. Topping the imbroglio off was that the Post Office published Gjertson home address, the better for people to write for autographs. Instead, what he got was an earful from those who chose to be angry. Judging from the glint in his eye, he looks like the type who would take such controversy in stride.
I just got back from the Mets-Cardinals game at Citi Field. Not surprisingly the Mets lost, 8-2.
Earlier today I received an email from my good friend Susan in Oklahoma with a link to some recently found video of New York City life in 1939. This was an important year in the city’s history. For starters, the World’s Fair began that April. I always think about that when going to Citi Field/Shea Stadium because the fair took place in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, located at the same subway station for what is now the ballpark. (The 1964 World’s Fair was held there as well.) April 1939 was the same month Lou Gehrig retired from the Yankees; three months later he made his “luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech on the Fourth of July. That September Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, increasing tension in the city, though as you will see life as always has a way of going on. My favorite part of the video is the footage of the elevated subway lines (now gone in Manhattan) and the line of passenger cruise ships along the Hudson (gone as well) seen from atop Rockefeller Center. Still, much remains as it did seventy-four years ago. Alas I could not embed the video so check it out here. It is all of three minutes.
And Susan, we have not forgotten about visiting Oklahoma, and when we do we expect to be given the grand tour of the CIvil War sites. So start brushing up.
I got back earlier this afternoon from Cooperstown, the site for this year’s Conference on New York State History. I spoke yesterday on the role that Theodore Roosevelt Sr. and other wealthy New Yorkers played in both the war and its aftermath. When I was at the Teddy Roosevelt Birthplace in Manhattan in February, my friend Ranger Sam and I were discussing the lack biographies, or even articles, about the great philanthropist and reformer. Yes, he was the father of the future president, but he was much more than that. It is a ripe topic, and I believe I may be the one to tell the story. There are even many parallels with the life and career of Joseph Hawley.
There were two of us on the panel. The other speaker was Christopher Fobare of Utica College, who I had not met until yesterday. Christopher gave an exceptionally thoughtful presentation about Horatio Seymour, Roscoe Conkling, and the presidential election of 1868. His talk explored the elections of 1872, in which Horace Greeley ran against the incumbent Grant, and 1876 (New York’s Samuel J. Tilden vs. Hayes) as well. It is a very misunderstood time in American history. Christopher really got to the heart of the matter and explained why it is important.
I had not been to Cooperstown in fifteen years. A friend and I visited in 1998, coincidentally just a few weeks after Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa broke Roger Maris’s single season home run. This time their memorabilia was not on display as it was then. Cooperstown–the Hall and the village–is such a great place. No, Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball there but the region has the pastoral feel of the game’s early nineteenth century origins. As the image above reflects, James Fenimore Cooper did not call Otsego Lake Glimmerglass for no reason. Getting there is part of the experience. It was a great weekend all the way around.
WW2 ration book found on commuter train, July 1943
I know I have been at this blogging this awhile now because I am again re-posting this piece about the Normandy landings I wrote in 2011. The passing of the WW2 cohort is a common theme of mine, in part because I am old enough to remember veterans not as infirm geriatrics but as robust, neighbors, teachers, and just general folks you saw everyday without thinking much about. The death earlier this week of Senator Frank Lautenberg only made their passing that much more real. He was the last sitting senator who also served in the war, following the death of Daniel Inouye late last year. (Bob Dole was a WW2 veteran as well, having served in Italy, though he of course left the Senate to run for the White House in 1996. He is still practicing law in DC a month away from his 90th birthday.) I believe we are diminished with no more of these individuals serving in the U.S. Senate. Part of our institutional memory is gone with them.
I was in Grand Central Station earlier today and in their small museum space they had an exhibit of items lost-and-found by a family whose members have served as conductors for four generations over the past century, since Grand Central’s founding in 1913. I could not resist taking the above photo of this ration card that some unfortunate commuter left behind on a train in July 1943.
And, again, from 2011:
I could not let the 67th anniversary of D-Day go unnoticed. When I was younger this was a much bigger deal than it is today. It is only a bit of a stretch to say that I have measured the events of my life according to the anniversaries of the Normandy invasion. In June 1984 I was still in high school, getting ready to start my senior year at the end of the summer. Ten years later I had graduated from college, but was unsettled and still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. By 2004 I had gone to graduate school and moved to New York City. Now I am married and in full middle age.
The arc of D-Day presidential ceremonies, or lack thereof, paints a fascinating portrait of the postwar decades. In 1954 President Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander of the invasion a decade earlier, skipped France altogether and instead vacationed at Camp David. His only public comment was a small proclamation about the Grand Alliance. For the 20th anniversary Ike did record a television special with Walter Cronkite entitled D-Day Plus Twenty Years: Eisenhower Returns to Normandy. The footage of the journalist and the retired president was filmed in August 1963 and is quite moving. On June 6, 1964 Johnson, who had taken office only seven months earlier after the Kennedy assassination, was in New York City speaking to the Ladies Garment Workers Union. In the waning days of Vietnam and the Nixon Administration in 1974 Americans were too tired and cynical to care about World War 2. Reagan’s address in 1984 remains the most memorable of the anniversaries. At Pointe du Hoc he addressed a sizable audience of veterans still young enough to travel but old enough to appreciate their own mortality. President Clinton’s address on the beaches of Normandy during the 50th anniversary symbolized the passing of the baton from the Greatest Generation to the Baby Boomers. In 2004 current events overshadowed the 60th anniversary and the ceremony painfully underscored tensions in the trans-Atlantic alliance.
Today only one person mentioned it to me. Alas we have reached the tipping point where most of the veterans have either passed on or are too aged and infirm to participate in the observance. In other words it has become part of history. Makes me feel old and a little sad.
The Union League Club of New York funded the 20th USCT.
I have spent the last few days putting the final touches on my upcoming talk at the New York History conference later this week. There were two parts to put together, the photographs I will use as visuals and the outline of the presentation. Cooperstown should be fun. I will be speaking about Theodore Roosevelt Senior,Williams E. Dodge Junior, and their cohort of New Yorkers, many of them Union League Club members, who helped Lincoln fight the Confederates, and then helped fight Boss Tweed, Tammany Hall, and municipal, state, and federal corruption in the Gilded Age. Along the way they also created many of the institutions New Yorkers take for granted today, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and New York Botanical Garden. I just got off the phone with the Hayfoot, who looked at my outline and, as always, gave me some sage advice.
With some exceptions, Civil War New York is a story that has not been told well. The major contributor is of course Barnet Schecter, whose The Devil’s Own Work should be on everyone’s reading list.
Along with my Joseph Hawley biography, this will be my big project for the next few years. In a way they are even the same project. In both cases my emphasis will be on creation of the Republican Party in each state (Hawley helped found the Party in Connecticut in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, while Chester Arthur was doing the same in the Empire State.) and continue through the early years of the Progressive Era when that generation died off. You could say I am putting the “era” in Civil War Era. Really one has too, though. So many people focus on Fort Sumter to Appomattox as if those four years happened in a vacuum. You cannot understand the war with that approach. I am fortunate that most 0f the materials I need are located in repositories here in New York and in Washington where the Hayfoot is working for the time being.
Today was orientation day at Governors Island for all volunteers. It was so good to be back and to see many folks I had not seen since last summer. Here are a few pics, some of which were taken by my great friend Sami Steigmann.
Castle Williams
The view from atop the circular fort is stunning. Castle Williams opened to the public for the first time in two centuries just last year.
Freedom Tower
Here is a closer look at the Freedom Tower, which when finished will be the largest building in the Western Hemisphere. Coast Guard brats who lived on the island in the late 1960s and early 1970s recount watching the original World Trade Center structures going up little-by-little from the island.
Old Coast Guard barracks
This building, on the southern part of the island managed by the city, is set for demolition at 6:00 am next Sunday, June 9. A park is going up in its place.
Camp scene
A living history unit, of high schoolers from Rhode Island no less, is camping out and interacting with the public this weekend.
Fort Jay
The orientation stopped at Fort Jay. This System Two fortification is at the highest point on the island and so thankfully suffered little damage during Superstorm Sandy, though there was some to the old sculpture atop the sally port.
Modeling with the park’s new toy
Last year there was much excitement that we would be getting a canon in time for the 2013 season. Rangers were unhitching this baby from the truck as we walked by.
It is going to be a great summer at Governors Island. Come see for yourself.
