January 2011

LEATHERSTOCKING ON THE RIALTO LEATHERSTOCKING ON THE RIALTO WHEN A MANHATTANITE WRITES ABOUT A QUADRUPED FUMELESS ALL THERE WERE GULF WAR ECHOES GULF WAR ECHOES THE MEANING OF TET THE MEANING OF TET THE MEANING OF TET THE MEANING OF TET FROM GROG TO JOE

Admiral Richardson distorts both the events surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor and what I have written about them. Far from being “preoccupied with blame fixing,” I wrote that Adm. Husband Kimmel and Gen. Walter Short, the Navy and Army commanders at Pearl Harbor, “were dedicated, patriotic men who served their country to the best of their ability and should not be singled out for censure” and that “I, for one, would have nothing against restoring them to their full ranks. . .”

My objection was and is to a congressional resolution that not only urged the President to exculpate both men but added that they “were not provided necessary and critical intelligence ... that would have alerted them to prepare for the attack.” I believe this to be simply wrong. Worse, it was disingenuous—a way to slip the crux of a conspiracy theory past unwitting members of Congress and into the historical record. Admiral Richardson writes that this supposed plot is “peripheral” to his objectives, then proceeds to perpetuate the myth of a conspiracy with various insinuations.

In April, Kevin Baker wrote in the “In the News” column of his dismay at the current attempt by Congress to restore the ranks of Rear Adm. Husband E. Kimmel and Maj. Gen. Walter C. Short, the Navy and Army commanders in charge at Pearl Harbor during the raid. Rear Adm. David C. Richardson wrote in disagreement, and the editors thought his protest worth publishing in its entirety, since it is a succinct yet thorough statement of the position of those who believe that Kimmel and Short were, in effect, set up. We also asked Kevin Baker to respond.

Donald Morris, the novelist, newspaperman, and historian who knows everything and publishes a lively weekly newsletter about it out of Houston, reports a triumph. He has just acquired Sky Birds card No. 97, which shows Capitaine Georges Thenault, the first commanding officer of the original seven Americans who enlisted to fly for France in the Lafayette Escadrille before America entered the First World War. Morris had no urgent interest in Thenault, but No. 97 was the card he needed to complete the full set of 108 Sky Birds issued by the National Chicle Company in the early 1930s.

This, of course, is an item one could pursue for three lifetimes and never come near. Donald Morris got it without leaving Houston—or, for that matter, his home. The medium of his acquisition was eBay, the online auction site that offers instant access to the entire material world, and to endless inventories of a vanished one.

JOHN ADAMS REACHED HIS HOME IN BRAINTREE, MASSA- chusetts, by horseback in the last days of November 1777 and for two weeks did little but relish the comforts of his own fireside. He was home to stay, by preference and of necessity, he said: “It was my intention to decline the next election, and return to my practise at the bar. I had been four years in Congress, left my accounts in a very loose condition. My debtors were failing, the paper money was depreciating. I was daily losing the fruits of seventeen years’ industry. My family was living on my past acquisitions which were very moderate.... My children were growing up without my care in their education, and all my emoluments as a member of Congress for four years had not been sufficient to pay a laboring man on my farm....” But, on November 28, Congress named Adams a commissioner to work with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee in negotiating a French alliance.