Born August 1, 1819 in New York City, Herman Melville.
In New York’s West Village, where I live, the streets are filled with literary “ghosts” –reminders of the great writers who lived and worked in this historic district of New York. Every day that I walk around the neighborhood, is like getting a literary education. It’s one of reasons I love to live here.
Nearby is Grove Street, which is where Tom Paine once lived. They say the locals called it “Raisin Street” back then because Paine had recently written the Age of Reason –its French raison sounded like “raisin.”
And around the corner from Grove is winding, narrow Commerce Street and the Cherry Lane Theater, where Waiting for Godot had its premiere.
But one of my favorites is Herman Melville, who worked in the Customs House on Gansevoort Street –in what is now the white hot center of the “Meatpacking District.”
Melville’s early success did not last and he took the Customs House job to make a living. He died on September 28, 1891, in New York City. His unpublished work, the novella Billy Budd was discovered after his death and published in 1924, 33 years after his death.
As the nation marks the 200th anniversary of the beginning of the War of 1812, many Americans remain puzzled over what that war was about. Fought between the United States and Great Britain, it was a conflict over the British policy of forcibly taking American sailors off of American ships and “pressing” them into service in the Royal Navy, border issues, the future of American territory in the West and a number of other minor issues. They were all issues that could have and should have been settled without bloodshed. The War of 1812 was, in other words, avoidable and unnecessary.
But one of the other issues that inflamed Americans was England’s support for native nations that were still attempting to stop the westward expansion of American settlers. This was the hidden “war within a war” fought as part of the larger War of 1812. One of the most devastating of these conflicts was the Creek War fought largely in what is now Alabama. That war began in August 1813, when a group of Creek Indians, led by a half-Creek, half-Scot warrior named William Weatherford, or Red Eagle, attacked an outpost known as Fort Mims north of Mobile, Alabama. The attack turned into the most deadly frontier massacre in American history.
And it was an event that shocked the nation. Soon, Red Eagle and his Creek warriors were at war with Andrew Jackson, the Nashville lawyer turned politician, who had no love for the British or Native Americans. You know the name of Andrew Jackson, the future hero of the Battle of New Orleans and future 7th president of the United States., But you don’t know the name William Weatherford. You should. He was a charismatic leader of his people who wanted freedom and to protect his land. Just like “Braveheart,” or William Wallace of Mel Gibson fame.
Only William Weatherford, also known as Red Eagle, wasn’t fighting a cruel King. He was at war with the United States government. And Andrew Jackson.
This video offers a quick overview of Weatherford’s war with Jackson that ultimately led the demise of the Creek nation. You can read more about William Weatherford, Andrew Jackson, and Jackson’s role in American history in A NATION RISING
America is preparing to mark the 200th anniversary of one of the most unnecessary and avoidable wars in its history– the War of 1812, or “Mr. Madison’s War,” declared by Congress on June 18, 1812.
It is also appropriate to note that today – June 14– is Flag Day, the day that the Continental Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the nation’s flag in 1777. These two landmarks come together because it was during the War of 1812 that America got the words that eventually became its national anthem –with music borrowed from an old English drinking song. Almost from the outset, the song has been butchered at baseball games and Super Bowls.
At war with England for the second time since 1776, the United States was ill-prepared for fighting and the British were preoccupied with a war with France. So it was a fitful few years of war.
But the conflict produced an iconic American moment in September 1814. Francis Scott Key was an attorney attempting to negotiate the return of a civilian prisoner held by the British who had just burned Washington DC and had set their sights on Baltimore. As the British attacked the city, Key watched the naval bombardment from a ship in Baltimore’s harbor. In the morning, he could see that the Stars and Stripes still flew over Fort McHenry. Inspired, he wrote the lyrics that we all know –well, at least some of you probably know some of them.
But here’s what they didn’t tell you:
Yes, Washington, D.C. was burned by the British in 1814, including the President’s Mansion which would later get a fresh coat of paint and come to be called the “White House.” But Washington was torched in retaliation for the burning of York –now Toronto—in Canada earlier in the war.
Yes, Key wrote words. But the music comes from an old English drinking song. Good thing it wasn’t 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. Here’s a link to the original lyrics of the drinking song To Anacreon in Heaven (via Poem of the Week).
The Star Spangled Banner did not become the national anthem until 1916 when President Wilson declared it by Executive Order. But that didn’t really count. In 1931, it became the National Anthem by Congressional resolution signed by President Herbert Hoover.,
Now here are two other key –no pun intended– events related to Flag Day, June 14:
•In 1943, the Supreme Court ruled that schoolchildren could not be compelled to salute the flag if it conflicted with their religious beliefs
•In 1954 on Flag Day, President Eisenhower signed the law that added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.
The history of the War of 1812, including a Timeline of major events, is explored in greater depth in the Anniversary edition of Don’t Know Much About History, now available in paperback.
Don't Know Much About History (Anniversary Edition, paperback)
(Images Courtesy of the Library of Congress and Flanders Cemetery image Courtesy of the American Battle Monuments Commission)
Every year at this time, I spend a lot of time talking about the roots and traditions of Memorial Day.
It’s not about the barbecue or the Mattress Sales. Obscured by the holiday atmosphere around Memorial Day is the fact that it is the most solemn day on the national calendar. This video tells a bit about the history behind the holiday.
It is the day for the “wearing of the green,” parades and an unfortunate connection between being Irish and imbibing. For the day, everybody feels “a little Irish.”
But it was not always a happy go lucky virtue to be Irish in America. Once upon a time, the Irish –and specifically Irish Catholics– were vilified by the majority in White Anglo-Saxon Protestant America. The Irish were considered the dregs by “Nativist” Americans who leveled at Irish immigrants all of the insults and charges typically aimed at every hated immigrant group: they were lazy, uneducated, dirty, disease-ridden, a criminal class who stole jobs from Americans. And dangerous. The Irish were said to be plotting to overturn the U.S. government and install the Pope in a new Vatican.
One notorious chapter in the hidden history of Irish-Americans is left out of most textbook– the violently anti-Catholic, anti-Irish “Bible Riots” of 1844.
In May 1844, Philadelphia –the City of Brotherly Love– was torn apart by a series of bloody riots. Known as the “Bible Riots,” they grew out of the vicious anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment that was so widespread in 19th century America. Families were burned out of their homes. Churches were destroyed. And more than two dozen people died in one of the worst urban riots in American History.
The story of the “Bible Riots” is another untold tale that I explore in my book A NATION RISING
“With his special gift for revealing the significance of neglected historical characters, Kenneth Davis creates a multilayered, haunting narrative. Peeling back the veneer of self-serving nineteenth-century patriotism, Davis evokes the raw and violent spirit not just of an ‘expanding nation,’ but of an emerging and aggressive empire.”
“In fourteen hundred and ninety-two/Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
We all remember that. But after that basic date, things get a little fuzzy. Here’s what they didn’t tell you–
Most educated people knew that the world was not flat.
Columbus never set foot in what would become America.
Christopher Columbus made four voyages to the so-called New World. And his discoveries opened an astonishing era of exploration and exploitation. His arrival marked the beginning of the end for tens of millions of Native Americans spread across two continents.
Once a hero. Now a villain.
You can read more about Christopher Columbus, his voyages and their impact on American history in Don’t Know Much About History and Don’t Know Much About Geography.
The story of “Isabella’s Pigs,” and the role of Queen Isabella in the making of the New World, is depicted in America’s Hidden History
Don't Know Much About@ History: Anniversary Edition
The Top Ten list for 2010 is out. And there are some familiar names on it- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. But these aren’t a critics Top Ten Recommendations. They are among the list of books most challenged by people who object to the presence of these books in school and public libraries.
Yes, it is time to think about the “Book Wars” again.
Each year, the American Library Association and other groups markBanned Books Week during the last week in September. In 2011, it begins today, September 24, and continues through October 1. (This video was made two years ago, but the issues remain the same.)
In a time when some American parents don’t want their children to hear the President of the United States give a speech on education values, or a planned Koran-burning wins with wide popular approval, the importance of this reminder of the right to free expression and the value of THINKING is more urgent than ever.
Here are some important links to three groups involved in combating censorship: the American Library Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and Teaching Tolerance:
The end of summer, a three-day weekend, burgers on the grill, and a back-to-school shopping spree, right? And the most important question, “Can I still wear white?”
But very few people associate Labor Day with a turbulent time in American History. That’s what Labor Day is really about. The holiday was born during the violent union-busting days of the late 19th century, when sweat shop conditions killed children, when there was no minimum wage and when going on vacation meant you were out of work.
If you like holidays, benefits and a five-day, 40-hour work week, you need to know about Labor Day.
When Labor Day was signed into law by Grover Cleveland in 1894, it was a bone tossed to the labor movement. And it was deliberately placed in September to ensure that it would not recall the memory of the deadly rioting at Chicago’s Haymarket Square in May 1886. Europe’s workers, and later the Communist Party, adopted May Day as a worker’s holiday to commemorate the deadly Haymarket Sqaure Riot which came about during a strike against thee McCormack Reaper Company.
Although Labor Day did become federal law in 1894, most of labor’s successes –the minimum wage, overtime, the end of child labor – did not come about until the Depression-era reforms of the New Deal.
Labor Day was created to celebrate the “strength and spirit of the American worker.” But this holiday should remind us that — like so many things we take for granted — those victories for working people came at great cost, in blood, sweat and tears.
Today, a few days after marking Independence Day and celebrating the events of 1776 in Philadelphia, I want to highlight a piece of “America’s Hidden History” that underscores the dangers of an “official” religion and the irony of calling America a “Christian Nation.” The story is of a time when Christian sectarian violence led to bloodshed in the streets of Philadelphia.
Starting in n May 1844 and then again for several days following the 1844 Independence Day Parade, Philadelphia –the City of Brotherly Love– was torn apart by a series of deadly riots. Known as the “Bible Riots,” the bloody street fighting and violence grew out of the vicious anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment that was so widespread in 19th century America. Families were burned out of their homes. Churches were destroyed. And more than two dozen people died in one of the worst urban riots in early American History. This video offer an overview of the “Bible Riots.”
The story of the “Bible Riots” is another untold tale that I explore in greater in A NATION RISING, now available in paperback.
A NATION RISING -National Bestseller now in paperback
