Of all the material published in recent months on the S&L debacle and the so-called banking crisis, John Steele Gordon’s article entitled “Understanding the S&L Mess” (February/March) is by far the most useful. Those of us who deal with the current calamity can benefit from Mr. Gordon’s clear and concise historical perspective. I have commended it to all my members, more than four hundred California banks, as part of their required readings.
I am hopeful that the public policymakers who have the opportunity, born of crisis, to make our national banking system rational will also read this extraordinary issue of American Heritage.
Thank you for this truly remarkable commentary.
Lorry Kurmel
Executive Director
California Bankers Association
San Francisco, Calif.
Discovering New Castle
I found Frederick Allen’s article on his journey through historical New Castle, Delaware, (September/October) to be right on target. I only worry that too many people may discover New Castle. The other problem is that I spent two successive nights reading every word of every article in American Heritage. This is a tribute to your magazine, but it sure plays havoc with my schedule!
Michael N. Castle Governor, State of Delaware
History Mysteries
Among the questions raised by historians in December’s “Mysteries of American History” is James Madison’s turnaround in pushing the Bill of Rights through Congress after resisting it at the Constitutional Convention. This does not seem much of a mystery to me. Madison had always been a champion of liberty and religious freedom and was outspoken on the subject as a Virginia legislator. But his goal at the convention was the enactment and ratification of the Constitution. He regarded a formal bill of rights as not particularly essential in popular governments such as that which the Constitution was to provide, and he opposed its inclusion for fear that this issue might jeopardize the fragile agreement. It was not that he opposed the concept, and once the Constitution was ratified over almost insurmountable odds and conflicting state interests, Madison was free to use his energies in behalf of the Bill of Rights.
Richard G. Simon San Bernardino, Calif.
History Mysteries
I found all but one of the twenty mysteries of American History worthy entries. John Kenneth Galbraith’s penultimate contribution, however, struck a dissonant note. In particular, Professor Galbraith cannot seem to resist taking advantage of any opportunity given him to disparage those who have, over the last half-century, opposed his failed brand of leftist economics. That American Heritage should provide yet another forum to this socialist anachronism to comment on contemporary American politics is, in my view, regrettable.
William P. Rudland Westlake, Ohio
History Mysteries
The answer to “What Made Burr Tick?” is quite simple. Burr was a contemporary of Napoleon Bonaparte, whose incredible rise to power in Europe had blurred all sense of reality for an entire generation. Like Napoleon, Burr was a young aristocrat who had risen to prominence through battlefield courage in a revolution. Burr’s efforts to make himself emperor of Mexico were surely no more far-fetched than Bonaparte’s already successful grab for power in Revolutionary France.
I would like to take exception, however, to Thomas Fleming’s question “Was Jefferson Guilty?” The question presumes that miscegenation is a crime. Personally, I have no idea whether or not Jefferson was sexually involved with Ms. Sally Hemings. But if he was, it would have been an affair between two unmarried people. By all accounts they were emotionally devoted to each other. Where’s the guilt?
Dan Abramson New York, N.Y.
History Mysteries
It was interesting to read that like Dumas Malone, Mr. Fleming ignores the detailed research of Fawn Brodie for her Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Portrait. She made a strong effort to track down all possible original sources of information regarding Jefferson’s relationship to Sally Hemings and presented an equally strong case for his paternity of several of her offspring. Among other telling data was Brodie’s finding that Peter Carr was nowhere around on one or more occasions when Sally was supposedly impregnated by him. So what more useful data could be uncovered by a committee of scholars researching the matter is a real question.
William B. Drew Tubac, Ariz.
History Mysteries
One of your “mysteries” is not a mystery at all but the product of a rather severe historical fraud.
Jacques Barzun of Columbia University wanted to know why Secretary of War Stanton kept Maj. Thomas Eckert from accompanying President Lincoln to Ford’s Theatre. Presumably Eckert might have prevented John Wilkes Booth from assassinating Lincoln that night. Barzun also suggests that Stanton likewise dissuaded General Grant from joining the Lincoln party.
The major source for these suggestions, together with their implication that Stanton was connected with the Lincoln assassination, is Otto Eisenschiml’s book Why Was Lincoln Murdered? Eisenschiml was a professional chemist who wrote several books on Civil War topics. His thesis was that the Radical Republicans were behind the assassination because they knew the President would oppose their views on Reconstruction.
Eisenschiml’s scholarship never let the truth get in the way of the point he was trying to make. The details are given in William Hanchett’s book The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies, but, in broad outline, Stanton had no ulterior motive; he just didn’t want Lincoln to go out in public yet, because he felt it wasn’t safe. So he told Eckert to refuse to go, in hope that the President would then cancel the trip. Stanton’s intercession with Grant was along the same lines and was not necessary anyway since Julia Grant couldn’t abide Mary Lincoln and had persuaded her husband to go with her to Burlington, New Jersey, where their children were staying.
Instead of a sinister desire to leave the President unprotected, we have a clumsy attempt to persuade Lincoln not to go out at all.
Eisenschiml’s book was a notorious popular success when published in the late thirties, despite the fact that most professional historians derided it. Consequently, much of it has found its way into secondary writings and thus has gained a measure of legitimacy, especially in today’s climate where conspiracies are seen behind every crisis.
James F. Epperson Madison, Ala.
Burger Beginnings
Editor’s note: J. C. Furnas’s inquiry into the origins of the hamburger produced an especially vigorous response. It began with a press release—“Buffalo, New York regional Agricultural Fair solves mystery posed in December issue of American Heritage Magazine”—in which Paul Laing, CEO of the Erie County Agricultural Society, declared that “the Hamburger was first sold at our Fair in 1885.” It seems that two Ohio brothers arrived on the grounds too late to get a supply of chopped pork for their sandwich concession. “The butcher sold them beef and after some experimentation they formulated a sandwich.” When asked what it was, they simply appropriated the name of the Buffalo suburb where they were doing business—Hamburg, New York. “Suggestions that the name originated in Germany ignore the fact that ground beef is not called hamburger in German; there is no known connection to that nation.” Saying that a recipe for the sandwich appears in a cookbook published in Buffalo as early as 1890, Laing concludes, “Few segments of our culture are as well documented as this favorite: the first Hamburger was served at the Erie County Fair in Hamburg, N.Y. by Frank and Charles Menches in 1885.”
This is certainly not a claim likely to play well in Seymour, Wisconsin. The town sees itself as the “Home of the Hamburger” on the basis of the achievement of Charles (“Hamburger Charlie”) Nagreen, who claimed to have invented the sandwich and its name at Seymour’s fair in the same annus mirabilis of 1885. Seymour recently defended its position in the most impressive manner. In the summer of 1989, according to Tom Duffey, president of Home of the Hamburger, Inc., “the citizens of Seymour cooked the world’s largest hamburger to commemorate the invention.” It weighed 5,520 pounds and fed thirteen thousand people.
But both Buffalo and Seymour are silent on a central issue in Furnas’s quest, which is the all-important question of when the bun replaced the sliced bread that Nagreen and the Menches would have used.
Light on this comes from Thomas C. Dolly, of Omaha, Nebraska, who describes himself as an “old-time drive-in operator” and who sent us a monograph he prepared on the growth of the hamburger chains. Dolly cites Walter Anderson, a Wichita, Kansas, diner operator who “invented the fast-food hamburger, which ultimately changed the eating habits of America and a sizable portion of the world.” In 1916 Anderson “found that by mashing a ball of ground beef flat and frying at high temperature [he] not only speeded up the cooking time, but vastly improved the flavor and texture as well.” Thus inspired, Anderson went on to invent the modern grill and finally talked a Wichita bakery into creating a special bun for him. On this foundation he built the White Castle chain.
Finally, David O. McCann of Fairfax, Virginia, though standing apart from the main controversy, offers information on an epochal refinement. “In 1964 Lionel Clark Sternberger, proprietor of the Rite Spot steakhouse in Los Angeles, died. A Time obit recalled that four decades earlier, at the tender age of sixteen, Lionel experimentally tossed a slice of cheese on a hamburger he was cooking at his father’s short-order shop in Pasadena, and lo! the cheeseburger sizzled to life.”
