In reply to Mr. Lichtenstein’s comment on my article ‘The Wall of Separation” (August/September 1984), may I say that I can find therein no “downright distortion of fact.” Contrariwise, he is guilty of downright distortion of my text.
I am perfectly aware that the Constitution offers an option to the President-elect to take an oath or affirm. What I pointed out is that most of our Presidents have chosen to do the former. Whether the “tradition” established by our first President is now considered binding is indeed a moot question. But so far thirty-seven out of his thirty-nine successors have chosen to take an oath on the Bible. It so happens that all the successors have been men, but there is nothing in my article to suggest that they “must” be men, as Mr. Lichtenstein implies. The issue of gender is not even discussed in my article.
Richard B. Morris
Columbia University
New York, N.Y.
Grand Thanksgiving
It is hard for me to describe the thrill I had when I saw your tribute to Dorr E. Felt and his Comptometer in the October/November 1984 “Time Machine.” Mr. Felt was my beloved grandfather. Since the demise of his company through mergers and the takeover of the calculating field by electronics, it had seemed as if no one except the family remembered him or his invention. Many modern historians have given undue credit for the first practical calculator to others, one being the Englishman Charles Babbage, whose attempts at constructing a calculating machine in the 1820s came to naught when the British government refused to give him further support after eight years of failure. Other historians have given credit to William S. Burroughs, whose work and patents followed Mr. Felt’s. I congratulate you on your careful research and for giving due credit to the young runaway farm boy turned machinist who worked with crude tools and materials to prove an idea and to establish an industry.
As you can well imagine, Thanksgiving (the day in 1884 on which Felt started his experiments) has been a special day for the family. Last November his grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren gathered in spirit around the table (we are now spread from coast to coast and from Seattle to Mexico City) to give our special thanks for the determination of the young man who had been told by his friends a hundred years ago that it couldn’t be done.
His original macaroni-box model has been at the Smithsonian Institution for the past fifty years, a gift of the family, after being exhibited at Chicago’s “Century of Progress” from 1933 to 1934.
Mary Elizabeth Schmidt
Hillsborough, Calif.
On Having Been There
I find I must take issue with Philip Kunhardt (“I Wish I’d Been There,” December 1984) in his account of Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. It is not the “last great old-style infantry charge in history.” That dubious honor, if you can call it that, belongs to Lt. Gen. John B. Hood, who on November 30, 1864, brought his Army of Tennessee to the outskirts of the village of Franklin, Tennessee. He was pursuing Federal forces under Maj. Gen. John Schofield, who had just eluded a trap set for him by Hood at Spring Hill, Tennessee, ten to twelve miles south of Franklin.
Schofield’s forces had arrived in Franklin some hours ahead of the Confederates and had quickly fortified themselves along the Harpeth River just south of Franklin. As Hood’s army began to assemble in front of Franklin, the Southern general divided his forces between the east and west side of the Columbia-Franklin Pike, now U.S. 31, and prepared to attack.
Despite strong pleas from his chief of cavalry, Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, and his corps commander, Gen. Benjamin Franklin Cheatham, that a frontal assault would be disastrous and that the Federal forces could be flanked with only minor casualties, Hood would not listen. He gave those fateful orders: “We will make the fight.” At 4:00 P.M., out across the fields on that bright day with flags flying and bands playing “Dixie” and “Bonny Blue Flag,” the Confederate Army of Tennessee marched into the jaws of Hell. Pickett’s forces had almost three hours of artillery support before they launched their attack. Hood’s had none.
Out of a force of some 38,000, the casualties were staggering—4,500 wounded and 1,750 killed. The heaviest loss was in the officers’ corp, where six generals were killed, five wounded, and one captured. Fifty-four regimental commanders were either killed or wounded. In one brigade of 600, a total of 419 men were lost. I would like to have been there to see what possibly could have justified Hood in giving such an order.
Gordon Whitney
Madison, Ind.
On Having Been There
In Walter Havighurst’s choice of the event he wished he had seen in your December issue, he mentions “Lincoln’s old friend, Chief Justice David Davis.”
Davis never was Chief Justice of the United States. He was appointed Associate Justice by Lincoln in 1862 and served under three chiefs—Taney, Chase, and Waite. He resigned his seat in 1877 to accept a position as a United States senator from Illinois.
Coincidentally, he already had been mentioned as the proposed fifteenth member of the electoral commission in the Hayes-Tilden controversy. Whether his reluctance to serve on the commission was the impelling motive for his retirement from the bench has never been definitely established.
John P. Cohalan, Jr.
Say ville, N.Y.
Echoes of the Civil War
In “A Confederate Odyssey” by Charles Hemming (December 1984), the young Confederate lands near the St. Mark’s Lighthouse. The lighthouse is still there, and the Battle of Natural Bridge, which decided that Tallahassee would be the only state capital not taken by Union forces, is still reenacted each year in the swamps of Wakulla County. Only fifteen years ago ammunition stored by the cadets in Tallahassee was unearthed on the Campus of the Florida State University, having been left when they marched off to battle.
In the same issue, the moving story by Everett Wood on the effect of Stephen Vincent Benêt on an Alabama ensign reminded me of my own introduction to that poet and storyteller. At that time I was stationed at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina, with the 87th Infantry Division in the spring of 1943. Since passes into town were infrequent, I was fortunate to discover that the post library was close to our company street.
In browsing I discovered John Brown’s Body and, like Lieutenant Wood, I was enchanted, fascinated, and drawn into involuntarily memorizing. In the same library I found The Devil and Daniel Webster and Other Stories. Later, while in an Army hospital in England, I was fortunate to come across the Pocket Book of Americans by Rosemary and Stephen Benét.
Benét’s next book in the Western Star sequence was to have begun:
Now for my country that it still may live,
All that I have, all that I am I’ll give.
It is not much besides the gift of the brave
And yet accept it, since ‘tis all I have.
The gift, as Wood and I have found, greatly exceeded the worth placed on it by the giver.
Martin Roeder
Tallahassee, Fla.
Limits of Medicine
Something important was missing from the special section on American medical history that appeared in the October/November 1984 issue. The distinction between the history of the medical profession and the history of health care was not made clear.
Physicians aren’t the only professionals engaged in healing. In this century, nurses, psychologists, dentists, nutritionists, physical therapists, and a host of other health care professionals have all made important contributions.
It remains easier to market palliatives, alcohol, and tobacco in American society than it is to implement a full agenda for disease prevention and health promotion. Still, in a decade in which Americans are demanding more and more from physicians and hospital care, it’s important to understand that personal behavior, family income, and the nature of the environment are still the prime determinants of health status. There are limits to what medicine can accomplish in health care.
Helen M. Dalzell, MSW
Robert F. Murphy, MPH
Walpole, Mass.
Aero Memories
What a flood of almost forgotten memories ‘The Aero View” (December 1984) brought back on the VCR of my mind! The overhead photography of the Atlantic City shoreline shows Heinz Pier, scene of my first job out of high school. I was probably in the attic projection booth showing Seeds of Service, the company film, when the picture was taken.
Then, next from the top (and unmentioned), Garden Pier Theater, which one June afternoon prompted a buddy and myself to play hooky and attend our first burlesque show. That was before sex education in the schools.
Next came Steel Pier with its “fifty attractions for the price of one”—and if you arrived before 11:00 A.M. they threw in a free steamboat ride down the coast for the fifty-cent admission.
Finally, Young’s Million Dollar Pier, with its gigantic ballroom located just off the Boardwalk and the thousands of electric light bulbs in the ceiling adding to its pre-air-conditioning glory. So what if your prized white suit was dripping with perspiration? Dancing to the music of Paul Whiteman and his orchestra and the incredible banjo wizardry of Al Pingatore made me almost oblivious to the rivulets of sweat running down my spine.
Of even more interest is the aerial view of Willow Grove Park, which I visited as a child, about 1930. Apparently there were four, not three, coasters. One was hidden in the grove of trees running left-center from the big white racing coaster that was called, in illuminated letters, “A Chase through the Clouds.” We all decided that the simple little out-and-back coaster was the best of the lot. It probably never got more than forty or fifty feet off the ground, but every dip went to ground level, creating that tingling sensation in the pit of the stomach, while the branches and tree trunks rushing past created the illusion of great speed.
In “The Canals of Venice” one rode majestically in gondolas through a waterway that twisted and turned and doubled back upon itself, at gradually lower elevations. We glided silently, except for the gurgle of water against the gondola, through the splendors of Venice as interpreted on canvas hangings and backdrops. A bewitching journey!
I remember Mother done in by the Swiss Alps mountain ride. She was deathly afraid of roller coasters in any form, and in all innocence we persuaded her to join us on this “gentle scenic ride.” We loved the animated scenes inside the mountain. There were miners at work, shuttling ore cars, and waterfalls. Mother was as ecstatic as we were until we suddenly burst out of the top of the mountain into daylight and into the first drop of a horrendous roller coaster. At the end of the ride Dad and I had to support a mother whose legs had turned to jelly.
Today everything is gone, and even the beautiful merry-go-round has been broken up and scattered to the four winds. Only a few fiberglass replicas of the horses, going nowhere, now decorate the huge shopping mall that, alas, has replaced this fairyland of our childhood.
