Posted on 08/21/2010 7:17:45 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
Today, the U.S. Treasury released a $1 coin commemorating former President James Buchanan. And people aren't happy about it.
To understand why, some background is helpful. In 2007, thanks to a bill promoted by then-Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire, the Treasury began minting $1 coins with the likenesses of former Presidents, starting with George Washington.
The coins -- which have been appearing ever since, featuring a new President every three months -- are meant to improve use and circulation of America's dollar coins, which are often seen as an awkward misfit among currency, neither fish nor fowl.
Sununu's initiative drew inspiration from the 50 State Quarters Program, which launched in 1999. The runaway success of that effort, according to his legislation, "shows that a design on a U.S. circulating coin that is regularly changed... radically increases demand for the coin, rapidly pulling it through the economy."
The bill also suggested that a program wherein Presidents are featured on a succession of $1 coins, and First Spouses commemorated on gold $10 coins, could help correct a state of affairs where "many people cannot name all of the Presidents, and fewer can name the spouses, nor can many people accurately place each President in the proper time period of American history."
So the bill passed, and the Washington dollar coin appeared not long after. It was followed by Adams, Jefferson, et al., with the First Spouse coins minted alongside.
Now we're up to Buchanan, the fifteenth President, who took office in 1857 and turned things over to Abraham Lincoln in 1861, and whose coin (produced at the Philadelphia and Denver Mints and purchasable through the U.S. Mint website) has occasioned the aforementioned grousing. Here's where some feel the coin program is falling short:
1. The coins aren't circulating.
Many Americans have never gotten into the habit of using $1 coins, and as a result, over a billion commemorative Presidential coins are sitting around in a stockpile at the Federal Reserve. As BBC News reports, if these coins were stacked up and laid on their side, they'd stretch for 1,367 miles, or the distance from Chicago to New Mexico.
2. They don't seem to be educating people, either.
In February 2008, a year after the first presidential coins were minted, The New York Times reported that a survey had found large numbers of American teens to be woefully ignorant of their country's history. It was far from the first time Americans had gotten a dismal grade in history, suggesting that Sununu's commemorative-coin campaign isn't having much of an effect in that arena, either.
3. James Buchanan was kind of a crappy president.
In fairness, this is a grievance with a specific president, not the presidential coins program as a whole. Still, it seems to come up in all the coverage of the new coin: Buchanan wasn't very good at his job.
That's the consensus of historians, anyway, who have traditionally censured Buchanan for his failure to prevent the Civil War. Last year, a C-SPAN survey of historians granted Buchanan the dubious distinction of worst president ever.
Still, all of this isn't reason enough to declare the commemorative-coins program a total failure. If more coin collectors start avidly pursuing the presidential coins, it could have the effect of pushing down the national debt, thanks to the way the value of the coins fluctuates with their availability. And if the dollar coins were to catch on and replace paper $1 bills entirely, it could save the country between $500 and $700 million each year in printing costs.
Plus, if things stay on track, 2012 will see the release of the Chester A. Arthur dollar coin -- marking the first time that long non-commemorated president's face has ever appeared on any nation's currency. And who are we to deprive him of that?
Now you've gotten totally dishonest with that ns type bilge.
This specific dialog started when I disagreed with your assertion that planters were 'non-productive'. Did I ever say that I agreed with their methods? No. Was it right for the northern mill owners to work children long shifts for slave wages? No. Were the mill owners productive? Yes.
In both the case of the planter and the mill owner they produced a product and at a profit. That is productive.
It's YOUR argument that is indefensible and the reason that you've resorted to dishonesty because, as usual, you yanks can never admit when you're wrong.
Like I said in a previous post, we're done. You won't admit that you're wrong and instead have resorted to that low browed crap that you posted above.
Who were doing everything they could to kill as many of us as possible and one of their top generals advocated rounding up all of his 'countrymen' and exiling them to foreign countries and repopulating their land with damnyanks!
There's no way that you wrote that crap in seriousness and if you did then you're a complete moron.
but they were perfectly happy and anxious to see a French or British army do the same.
The South wanted enough forces to drive the marauding vermin from our country and then to establish a peaceful truce and that is all.
How could I forget those klansmen that must be lurking in your family tree! That one has got to be the most bizarre I've seen yet. Wonder if my ancestors from Sweet Caroline are under suspicion too...LOL!!
Think we should let some of the rude posters in on this bit of information?
http://www.stxop.com/prodimages/EGBS21.jpg
Admittedly Buchanan was pretty bad, but “worst president ever?”
Haven’t you ever heard of Woodrow Wilson?
In your post 1269 to Idabilly that I was responding to, you had said, "So are you going to dismiss this first hand account by strongly pro-Confederate Southern citizen Myra Inman of Cleveland, Tennessee? ... Do you dismiss this first-hand account?"
But, but, but ... in your post 1259 you said, "I would take accounts like that [Pepper's and Simm's in my post 1254] with a grain of salt. It is in the interest of a devastated and humiliated people with a questionable cause to cast the victor in the worst light possible." Pepper gave a first-hand account of what he saw. Simms was a witness to what had gone on in Columbia, and he also reported first-hand accounts of what happened from dozens of other witnesses.
Do you think the perpetrators of savagery were going to write down what they did?
"The most of our Virginia boys treat them verykind though there is some of our extreme southern troops has treated the people badly." That's the point- most soldiers, Yankee and Reb, treated the people kindly. Most Yankee troops did not burn ladies looking for loot and most Confederates did not gouge the eyeballs out of citizens and then make sport of the blind man's agony.
Lee, like Sherman, had nice orders regulating foraging, but that didn't stop Lee from leaving PA. with hige trains of Yankee loot.
No, that's why we are fortunate to have had those Southern ladies near by to document the Confederate torture of Robert Carter and General Wheeler's complicity in the war crime of 9/27/1863.
You make the error of attributing the desire of some Southerners too all Southerners. Most Southerners probably just wanted the war over with a return to the old Union of North and South.A significant element of other Southerners, both black and white, welcomed the Yankees as liberators form slaver and/or local oppressions. Read up about the reception of Knoxville, Tennessee to Burnside and his liberating troops.
Texas women are and have been a priceless asset to the nation just like Massachusetts women, Alaskan women, North Dakota women and all the women of our great Union.
Not just cavalry. Southern citizen Adelia Craigmiles Knox of Lafayette, Georgia had this to say of the passage of Braxton Bragg's Confederate Army of Tennessee:
"When the army moved on there was not a growing thing left on the place."
You are right, it is the nature of war. Both sides.
I don't disagree that there were a Yankee fringe that behaved badly, but I think you could gain some perspective by also learning about war crimes committed from the other side like the Carter atrocity I posted to you about.
Hi. Happy Labor Day. I posted to all the other rebs this afternoon so I didn’t want to leave you out.
Back to your yankee cover-up...
From the slave narrative of Sam Word, 1122 Missouri Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas at 78 years of age:
I saw the Blue and the Gray and the gray clothes had buttons that said C.S., that meant secessioners. Yankees had U.S. on their buttons. Some of em come there so regular they got familiar with me. Yankees come and wanted to hang old master cause he wouldn’t tell where the money was. They tied his hands behind him and had a rope around his neck. Now this is the straight goods. I was just a boy and I was cryin’ cause I didn’t want em to hang old master. A Yankee lieutenant comes up and made em quit-they was just the privates you know…
…Mother had lots of nice things, quilts and things, and kept em in a chest in her little old shack. One day a Yankee soldier climbed in the back window and took some of the quilts. He rolled em up and was walking out of the yard when mother saw him and said, ‘Why you nasty, stinkin’ rascal. You may you come down here to fight for the n*ggers, and now you’re stealin’ from em.’ He said, ‘You’re a G-D-liar, I’m fightin’ for $14 a month and the Union…
Instead of splitting hairs over the wording of your sentence, I'll simply say your kind sentiments are appreciated:)
Sherman did nothing a Confederate general wouldn’t have done to the opposing home front had doing so been in their interest to win.
According to the memoir of C.O. Bates, he attended an evening lecture in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, given by a son of General Sherman, forty six years after the General's dirty deeds. It appears that General Sherman's son believed justification was necessary for the infamous "march to the sea." The justification offered at that lecture? Hood was to the north and the sea was to the south so his father was trapped. LOL!!! Revisionism at it's finest. Please see page 3, paragraph 3, @ the link below.
Also on page 3, his memories of farmers being hung and his grandfather's near hanging. Sounds like more "bad guys" were in the Union ranks. Please see page 3, paragraph 4.
Happy Labor Day to you, also:)
http://cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/mack&CISOPTR=2663&CISOSHOW=2654
How about a link that works!
http://cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/mack&CISOPTR=2663&CISOSHOW=2654
I see in a link you provided in May 2009 that General Wheeler showed that the two Carters were not bushwhackers, bushwhackers apparently being appropriate to be killed according to the policy of that time. However, it sounds like Wheeler disproved the possibility that they were bushwhackers. He and his men laughed at the suggestion that the Carters were bushwhackers. The Carters, whether they were bushwhackers or not, were killed off in the woods by cavalrymen shortly after the interview with Wheeler.
Assuming the story is true and that the Carters were not bushwhackers, Wheeler's lapse is that he did not arrest and charge the people who did the killing or make it clearer beforehand that the cavalrymen were not to kill the Carters. That is bad indeed.
Did Sherman have the same kind of lapse? Yes, most certainly. Consider the account of the mayor of Columbia on page 334 of Link. The mayor and Sherman found the body of a black, shot in the heart. Sherman asked who did it. Federal soldiers said they had killed the black for making insolent remarks. Sherman said that was wrong and told them to bury the black. No arrests were made, and Sherman went on his way.
Heck, there wasn't even a suspicion that the black was a bushwhacker. He simply mouthed off at the Federals.
Sherman, of course, was guilty of many more occasions where he did not try to stop crimes from happening. Simms, that witness of what went on in Columbia, says that Sherman and his officers were seen all over the city but apparently saw nothing that needed stopping. According to Simms there was robbery going on on virtually every street corner.
The morning after Columbia was burned, Sherman told the mayor and other witnesses that his soldiers burned the city. Thus, Sherman's account agrees with what Captain Pepper said the soldiers told Pepper.
Happy Labor Day to all.
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