Monthly Archives: July 2015

Robert Roosevelt’s Brooklyn Bridge

09 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by in Roeblings

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484px-Robert_Roosevelt_-_Brady-HandyThe Roeblings and the Roosevelts are two of the most prestigious families in American history. There was also a connection between the two clans: Robert Roosevelt, Teddy’s uncle, was a trustee in the Brooklyn Bridge Company. Today Robert is less well-known than other Roosevelts, but he was a very prominent figure in Gilded Age America . He was a U.S. Congressman in the early 1870s and later an alderman and diplomat. Roosevelt was a Tammany Democrat, but also a reformer. He helped take down Boss Tweed’s infamous Ring.

Roosevelt joined the trustees in June 1879 when the construction of the bridge was already very much underway. He was an active member of the board who attended meetings and read financial documents with a lawyer’s care. Roosevelt was involved in a very public dispute with the Edgemoor Iron Company over the business’s inability to provide material in a timely manner. He even challenged Washington A. Roebling’s abilities as Chief Engineer, insisting that he file regular reports to the trustees. Roebling dutifully complied. Roosevelt was occasionally too clever for his own good. He once innocently wondered if the extra steel in the bridge might make it more susceptible to collapse. Roebling explained that the added weight provided additional, not less, stability. The Brooklyn Bridge opened to great fanfare in May 1883. When it did however, Robert Roosevelt was not involved in any official capacity; he had very resigned at a trustee’s meeting on June 12, 1882.

(Matthew Brady image/Theodore Roosevelt’s uncle Robert was an important lawyer, politician, and reformer. Roosevelt was a conscientious trustee, but his passion for weeding out municipal corruption sometimes led him to challenge the Roeblings unfairly.)

Who will be the last remaining WW2 veteran?

05 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by in Memory, WW2

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An aging WW2 veterans is escorted onto the Hermione, July 3, 2015

Here and below aging WW2 veterans are escorted onto the Hermione, July 3, 2015. Note the cameraman in the bottom image.

Some readers know of my fascination with aging soldiers. On Friday another volunteer and I conducted an oral history at Governors Island with a former trumpeter in the First Army Band. He told us that in the mid-1950s he and the band gigged in Vermont at a ceremony for a handful of aging Civil War veterans. This was on my mind a few hours later when I was at the South Street Seaport to see the Hermione. There were many things going on for the July 4th weekend, including something for World War II veterans. There is still a ways to go before the WW2 soldiers are finally no more. Generationally they are at the point where Civil War veterans were in the 1920s-30s. There were then still many thousands, which got down to the hundreds, and then finally just a handful over the next 15-20 years. I am too young to remember that, but I do remember a time when soldiers of the Great War were not that uncommon. Seeing these two being escorted onto the Hermione I could not help but wonder who will be the Frank Buckles of the Greatest Generation.

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Thinking of the French this 4th

04 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by in Governors Island, New York City, Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace (NPS)

≈ Comments Off on Thinking of the French this 4th

The Marquis de Lafayette arrived in Castle Garden, also called Castle Clinton in 1824. Today this is a unit of the National Park Service.

The Marquis de Lafayette arrived in Castle Garden, also called Castle Clinton in 1824. Today this is a unit of the National Park Service.

On my tours at the Roosevelt Birthplace I always told the story of Marshal Ferdinand Foch’s 1921 visit to the site, which was then still under reconstruction. The Great War had been over for three years and Foch was on East 20th Street paying his respects to Theodore and Quentin Roosevelt. Many of you will know that young Airman Quentin died in France on Bastille Day 1918. The wider story is that Foch was in the United States on a goodwill tour modeled in part on Marquis de Lafayette’s goodwill tour of 1824-25. Lafayette arrived in New York and landed at Castle Garden to great fanfare before venturing out across the still-young nation whose independence he had helped win.

One of the beautiful things about the Battery is its sense of the old and the modern, as this image of the castle with the Manhattan skyline attests.

One of the beautiful things about the Battery is its sense of the historic and the modern, as this image of the castle with the Manhattan skyline attests.

This all came back to me yesterday when, after the day at Governors Island, I ventured up to the South Street Seaport to see the Hermione. For those not aware, this is a reconstruction of the frigate that took Lafayette here. The ship sailed into New York earlier this week to mark the 4th of July. Interest was high and there were many people out enjoying the scene.

The Hermione docked at the South Street Seaport, July 2015

The Hermione docked at the South Street Seaport, July 3, 2015

One of the most symbolic acts of the Great War took place on a Fourth of July. In 1917 members of the 16th Infantry Regiment led a contingent that included General Pershing on a five mile march ending at Lafayette’s tomb at Picpus Cemetery. The arrival of the Americans in summer 1917, though largely symbolic at this point in the war, could not have come a better time for the flagging morale of the French people. It was at Lafayette’s grave that Colonel Charles E. Stanton said the famous line: “Nous sommes ici, Lafayette.”

As the caption on this old photograph indicates, Colonel Stanton's famous words are often misattributed to John Pershing. General Pershing was in attendance and had previously approved Colonel Stanton's speech, including its most famous line. The 16th Infantry, part of the First Infantry Division, had led the highly publicized march.

As the caption on this old photograph indicates, Colonel Stanton’s words are often misattributed to John Pershing. General Pershing was in attendance however and had previously approved Colonel Stanton’s speech, including its most famous line. The 16th Infantry, part of the First Infantry Division, had led the highly publicized 4th of July march.

Happy 4th.

 

Robert Bullard’s interwar years

01 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Governors Island, Robert Lee Bullard (General)

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Robert Lee Bullard commanded the First Division, the Second Army, and the III Corps over the course of World War One.

Robert Lee Bullard commanded the First Division, the III Corps, and the Second Army over the course of World War One. He lived until 1947.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I have been reading some of the first-hand accounts of the Great War. Last night I began Robert Lee Bullard’s American Soldiers Also Fought. As it title suggests the book is a response to those, especially those Europeans, who downplayed America’s contribution to the war effort. That is a subject I will tackle in future posts. What I am most interested in here is Bullard’s introductory statement. On page one he writes:

We did not go into the war, as has been contended, to support “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” Nor did we go in to support democracy against autocracy: the President of the United States was in that war a greater autocrat than the Kaiser.

Plainly it was because our rights were being violated worse by Germany than by England. If Germany won we’d be “next” on their list.

I find the first paragraph striking on several levels. If I am reading it correctly–and I don’t know that I am–Bullard seems to be taking the Wilson Administration to task for its numerous misdeeds during the war. The zeal with which A. Mitchell Palmer scapegoated German-Americans comes to mind. The Creel Committee did some important work, but it too frequently succumbed to reactionary impulses. Bullard is going deeper though. As he saw it, Wilson’s failures also included the flawed outcome at Versailles and his advocacy for the League of Nations.

What is interesting is that in this small treatise Bullard is looking backward and forward at the same time. In the next line he is warning his readers about the German threat. The timing is important here. Bullard published Americans Soldiers Also Fought in 1936, just over a decade after he retired as commander of the Department of the East on Governors Island. After his retirement Bullard had become head of the National Security League, a preparedness organization begun by Leonard Wood and others just after the outbreak of the Great War. The group was still around decades later, taking on challenges wherever it saw them. By 1936 Hitler was entrenched in power and the Kaiser was still very much alive, living in exile in a manor in Holland. Wilhelm II lived another five years, long enough to see the Germans take Paris in 1940.

(image/The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Corps Commander Bullard” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1860 – 1920. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-b337-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99)