Posted on 11/01/2017 4:44:16 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
First session: November 21, 2015. Last date to add: Sometime in the future.
Reading: Self-assigned. Recommendations made and welcomed. To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by reply or freepmail.
* Financial panic!
The details of the sinking of the steamer Central America are related.
“The Kansas Constitutional Convention met and organized, then adjourned until the 19th of October. The election for delegate to Congress, members of the Legislature, and various county officers, was held October 5. The result has not yet reached us. In view of this election Governor Walker issued a proclamation giving his views in reference to the qualifications required for voting, and other matters of interest. . . .”
“General Gideon J. Pillow of Tennessee has published a long letter purporting to give a portion of the secret history of the late Mexican war. . . .”
“An overland emigrant train, consisting of ten persons, had been attacked by Indians, and all its members killed, with the exception of one woman, who escaped after having been left for dead. Other Indian murders are reported. – The inhabitants of Carson Valley are about to petition Congress for a separate Territorial organization. They wish to be separated from Utah because they dislike the Mormon supremacy, and also because they are during the winter months unable to hold any communication with Salt Lake City, even if they desired it. The present population of the Territory within the proposed boundaries is about 7000, and is rapidly increasing.”
“EUROPE: Public interest in Great Britain is almost wholly concentrated upon the affairs of India.” News of the Indian mutiny is presented in detail.
“THE EAST: The United States sloop of war Portsmouth, visited Siam for the purpose of exchanging ratifications of the treaty lately concluded between that country and the United States. . . . Just before the Portsmouth sailed, the Second King came down the river from Bangkok to the anchorage, thirty-five miles distant, in order to visit the ship; and was so much gratified with his visit that he repeated it the next day, remaining on board nearly the whole of each day. He was accompanied by his son, Prince George Washington, and by a suite of officers and nobles. This is the first time that a King of Siam has ever visited a man-of-war, and it is received as an act expressive of friendship toward the United States.”
It is said that the king greatly resembles Rex Harrison.
Continued from March 6 (reply #23). A letter from Francis Blair, Sr. to William Seward quoted in the last paragraph of the following was written on this date.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals
Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher
I get the feeling after Dred Scott and the Fugitive Slave Act that war was indeed inevitable. The North feared that the South, with the Supreme Court leading the way, wanted to legalize slavery nationwide. The South feared that the North wanted ultimately to abolish slavery nationwide. And with all that land to the West eventually reaching statehood, the North could someday have the votes to do it.
I’ve always been interested in the history of arctic/polar exploration, so the brief mention of the attempts to discover what happened to the Franklin expedition caught my attention. PBS/Nova carried an interesting story about its fate back in the 1990s:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/franklin-expedition.html
Maybe Eli Whitney made the Civil War inevitable. Most people attribute it to his invention of the cotton gin, that gave new life to the Peculiar Institution. But it was also the development of interchangeable parts, which made possible the assembly line and accelerated the industrial revolution that had already begun in the north.
Clearly, by this time, the United States was already two distinctly different societies. But yes, Dred Scott made the war inevitable.
Americans don’t usually resort to violence to resolve civil and political disputes. We go to Court. The Supreme Court isn’t perfect at resolving these differences but it’s normally pretty good. Dred Scott was the one time it failed, but maybe it had no chance of success. Even so, the decision was so bad it took a civil war and three amendments to the Constitution to undo it.
November 2, MONDAY. The baby walked all alone today. Poor George Cornell’s death is announced at last. He was a useful man, and his prominent fault, cynicism of speech, merely assumed. . . .
State election comes off tomorrow. Nobody cares. Twelve months and a crisis have toned down people’s interest in politics wonderfully. John C. Fremont is a very insignificant person, and Kansas a very remote insignificant territory. The Democrats are likely to carry the state by default.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas
Poor George sounds a little down.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453346/ron-chernows-ulysses-grant-biography-virtue-and-power
This a review of a new biography of Ulysses Grant, who might do something noteworthy someday (?). Honestly, he hasn’t amounted to much since the Mexican War. The author seems to fancy himself as the nonfiction Tolstoy - no doubt the audiobook is a zillion discs - but I thought his nearly-as-massive biography of Alexander Hamilton was quite a page-turner.
I still like Aaron Burr best, though.
I got the feeling that NR reviewer would rather talk about Donald Trump and was determined to connect the story of a Civil War general to him by whatever means he could think of.
Yeah, the guy had to make a point that had nothing to do with the book. Maybe my library will get the CD set. That’s how I got through “War and Peace.”
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals
November 3. Voted, on my way downtown, in Twentieth Street. My contribution to the new glass ballot-boxes was a mosaic, little bits from all the tickets, and one or two John Smiths and William Browns derived from my imagination, for in some cases I knew nothing good of any candidate. It has been the quietest of elections. Voting was like going to daily service, a lonely thing to do. Even the ticket distributors in their little boxes seemed desolate and dreary as Simon Stylites (or Simon Stock, rather, in his hollow tree), and found it a delightful novelty to be asked whether this was a verdant voter’s legal district who was the other candidate for assemblyman or constable, and the like.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas
Sounds like the County Commissioners election around here. We vote for Town Council next Tuesday, and there are actually several good choices. Drainage is the big issue.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas
George is cleaning his aquarium, while my sons are cleaning our lizard cages.
My last kiddo is off to college, so I don’t have to deal with weird pets anymore. Or every cartoon movie that comes out!
They’re really my husband’s weird pets.
Continued from October 5 (reply #10) .
Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era
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