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Category Archives: George Washington

Morristown National Historical Park turns 90

04 Saturday Mar 2023

Posted by Keith Muchowski in George Washington, National Park Service

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Morristown National Historical Park ninetieth anniversary celebration, March 4, 2023

I had a good time in New Jersey today at the ninetieth anniversary celebration of Morristown National Historical Park. Although we usually associate Franklin Roosevelt with the shifting focus on the national parks from the West to the East, it was actually Herbert Hoover who began the process. The lame duck executive signed the enabling legislation creating the first national historical park on March 2, 1933 in the waning days of his presidency. MORR is one of the gems in Park Service system, and spread across several locations as it is has something for everyone. Above we see the ribbon cutting that took place after this afternoon’s keynote address. The historical park is having a number of events throughout the year. In fact, on Saturday June 17 a guy with my initials will be giving a talk in the museum behind the Ford Mansion. The topic is based on an article I recently wrote about a project undertaken for a decade in the 1910s and 1920s sponsored by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in cooperation with the National Park Service.

Happy Presidents Day

20 Monday Feb 2023

Posted by Keith Muchowski in George Washington

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Washington’s Birthday, by Charles Baugniet (1878) / Indianapolis Museum of Art

The early days of Tammany

20 Friday Aug 2021

Posted by Keith Muchowski in George Washington, John Jay, Museums, New York City, Rufus King, Tammany

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The Journal of the American Revolution has uploaded my article about the early days of Tammany. I hope you enjoy reading it a much I enjoyed putting it together.

The Washington-Rochambeau Grand Reconnaissance

23 Friday Jul 2021

Posted by Keith Muchowski in George Washington, Museums

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Van Cortlandt House Museum, Bronx

This morning a friend and I ventured to the end of the 1 Train on a gorgeous summer day to visit the Van Cortlandt House Museum, the oldest remaining house in New York City. The structure dates to 1748. It was more coincidence than anything else–we did not realize it when we booked out tickets online earlier in the week–but in a piece of good fortune we happened to be there on the 240th anniversary of the Washington-Rochambeau Grand Reconnaissance. The two generals had met on the premises on July 23, 1781 on the third of three days of reconnoitering British strengths in and around New York City. Ultimately they of course decided against an offensive against the Redcoats headquartered in Manhattan and instead went south to face Cornwallis at Yorktown. It was great to see people out using the park, and also striking up conversations with fellow museum visitors and knowledgeable museum staff. I took the photo you see here of one of the gardens from the second floor. Summer 2021 is on. Go get some.

Dateline: Wall Street, 30 April 1789

30 Friday Apr 2021

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Federal Hall National Memorial, George Washington

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With the days warming, the world reopening incrementally, and a semi-normal summer potentially ahead I have been thinking a lot recently of hopefully returning to Federal Hall sometime in the near future. This has never been truer than today: the anniversary of George Washington’s first inaugural. We will see what happens. I have so missed that interaction with the public.

Above was the scene on Wall Street in 1789 and below an incredible image of President Benjamin Harrison’s entourage 100 years later.

(images/NYPL)

George Washington’s birthday 2021

22 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by Keith Muchowski in George Washington

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image/NYPL

a “New Valley Forge”

23 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Federal Hall National Memorial, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George Washington, Memory

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Here are a few more images from my presentation this past Monday at Federal Hall on Presidents Day. Here we see an announcement for a Washington Birthday Democratic fundraiser held in Fort Worth, Texas on February 23, 1942. This was less than two months after Pearl Harbor in those tense days when the United States was getting up to speed in its war effort. The U.S. had been the “arsenal of democracy,” manufacturing tanks, bullets, jeeps, and whatnot for the Allies long prior to Pearl Harbor. Now American fighting men themselves would join the fray. As we see from the announcement the dinner was held on February 23, not Washington’s actually birthday, because the 22nd fell on a Sunday.

New York Times, February 23, 1942

Roosevelt himself did not attend the dinner, though as we see the Texas Democratic leadership was not hesitant to use his likeness, and on equal footing with President Washington no less. One must remember that Texas in this era was part of the Solid South, comprised, like the rest of the region, of Dixiecrats who since the Civil War eighty years previously had stood against the Party of Lincoln. In the 1930s these leaders, and those who voted for them, were part of the fragile New Deal coalition supporting FDR in cooperation with the Democratic machines of the northern cities. That coalition would hold another three decades until fracturing in the chaos of the Vietnam War and bitterness of the Civil Rights Movement. Roosevelt’s vice-president in his first two terms had been John Nance Garner, a Texan and former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. The tension and unease in their relationship were representative of the strains within the New Deal coalition itself.

Garner was gone by 1942 and now Roosevelt was facing the war in his unprecedented third term. What we see here is the snippet of an article from the February 23, 1942 New York Times describing the mood on Washington’s birthday in those weeks just after Pearl Harbor. The first public observation of George Washington’s birthday had been at Valley Forge in the winter of 1778. Now America was facing a “new Valley Forge.” Attendees at the Fort Worth soiree did not meet Franklin Roosevelt, but they did hear him. That night he gave one of his fireside chats over the radio outlining the progress and stakes of the war, and the lessons to be learned from the experience and difficulties of Washington and the men of his Continental Army all those years earlier.

 

Presidents Day 2020

17 Monday Feb 2020

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Abraham Lincoln, Federal Hall National Memorial, George Washington

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April 6, 1861 Harper’s Weekly woodcut of the USS Wyandotte firing a salute in Pensacola Bay on February 22 in commemoration of George Washington’s birthday.

I am having my coffee before jumping in the shower and heading to Federal Hall in a short bit. Here is an image I intend to share today when discussing the history and evolution of George Washington’s Birthday. It is the original USS Wyandotte. Built in 1853 and christened the USS Western Port, the steamer saw action in South America and served in the Caribbean suppressing the slave trade prior to the Civil War. The image we see here depicts the Wyandotte in Pensacola Bay firing a salute to George Washington on February 22, 1861. This very same day President-elect Lincoln was in Philadelphia at Independence Hall marking Washington’s Birthday and raising a flag with an additional star on it in tribute to Kansas becoming a new state. He was on the train journey that was taking him from Illinois to Washington for his March 4 inaugural. It was an anxious time. Earlier this very month Jefferson Davis had been named Provisional President of the Confederacy and had spoken in Montgomery, Alabama on February 18 laying out the cause for secession.

(image/Library of Congress)

 

Sunday morning coffee

16 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Federal Hall National Memorial, George Washington, Memory

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I spent a portion of this morning putting the final touches on an interpretive talk I’ll be giving tomorrow at Federal Hall. The talk is about the history and evolution of George Washington’s Birthday, which historically, with the Fourth of July, has served as a key part of America’s civic religion. There is a very human need for a usable past. On the federal level there is technically no such thing as President’s Day; the three-day weekend in which we are now in the middle is in commemoration of George Washington.

It will be good to be back at Federal Hall, where I have not been since Labor Day Weekend when it was last open on weekends. Later today I will go over my notes and outlines in preparation. The rotunda is closed for renovation but there will still a lot going on tomorrow if one is looking for something to do. That includes the talk by historian Lawrence Cappello. Come and get your history on.

Dateline January 11, 1785: Congress moves to New York City

11 Saturday Jan 2020

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Confederation Congress, Federal Hall National Memorial, George Washington, Pierre Charles L'Enfant

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New York City Hall was home to the Confederation Congress from January 1785 until October 1788.

On Christmas Eve a few weeks back I noted that on that date in 1784 the Congress of the Confederation was packing up its temporary home in Trenton, New Jersey and moving to more permanent, or at least semi-permanent, digs in Manhattan. Specifically Congress was moving into New York City Hall on Wall Street, which it did on January 11, 1785. The image above, as the caption notes, is from prior to the Revolution. The image is more representative of the structure as it would have been in 1785, a few years before Pierre L’Enfant renovated the building in preparation for its transformation into Federal Hall.

There is a tendency to think that not much happened at City/Federal Hall during the Confederation Period, presumably due to the weakness of the Articles of Confederation themselves. It was during this time, two years later in 1787, that the Constitutional Convention convened in Philadelphia. Still, many significant things happened during the Confederation Congress’s years in the building we see here. Among other things, congressmen passed the Land Ordinance of 1785, put down Shays’s Rebellion, and passed the consequential Northwest Ordinance of 1787 that made possible the eventual ratification into statehood of numerous territories. After New York became the eleventh state to ratify the Constitution in late July 1788 Congress soon thereafter moved into the Walter Livingston House in order for L’Enfant to begin his work converting the building in time for the Federal Congress to convene on the site in March 1789 and for George Washington’s inaugural that April.

(image/NYPL)

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