January 2011

In the spring of 1778 William Howe, commander in chief of His Majesty’s forces in North America, received orders to return to London and justify his actions, or rather his inactions, for he had gained no conspicuous victory in three years of war. He was nearly fifty, plump and rosy, a friend of the gentler arts, the gentler sex. Through the winter of 1777–78 he and his troops had reposed comfortably in Philadelphia while Washington’s hapless little army, freezing and starving, lay vulnerable twentyfive miles away in Valley Forge. Howe and his staff lived delicately; they were adept at what was known in a later war as scrounging. Merchant ships brought in French wines, English cloth and woolens, green turtles from the Bahamas. Many Philadelphians, never fanatic types, discovered themselves to be Loyalists at heart; many more, with Quaker prudence, evinced a high-minded neutrality, gave no offense, and waited for the outcome.

Joe Lyons, the nineteen-year-old son of Isaac Lyons of Orangethorpe, shot and seriously wounded Morris Smith, son of W. J. Smith of the same place, at Fullerton at about half-past 9 o’clock on last Thursday morning. Lyons had driven in from his father’s ranch in a cart and awaited the coming of Smith on the sidewalk on Commonwealth avenue near Smith’s butcher shop. The latter shortly after arrived, coming up on horseback through the alley leading out on to Commonwealth avenue in rear of Stern and Goodman’s store. Friendly greetings passed as the two approached one another.

“Hello, Joe,” said Morris.

“Hello, Morris,” replied Joe.

As Morris was about to continue on his way toward his shop, Joe accosted him further:

“Say, Morris, you have ruined my sister.”

The town house at 47 East 65th Street belonged to the President’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, and on Sundays we often passed it on our way home. The Sunday morning walk was a family ritual. It was my father’s pleasure to parade his “four girls,” my mother and his three daughters, all of us turned out in the tailored tweeds that he favored for women’s dress. In the lead on these walks was my father, the judge, with my mother on his arm—a woman of impressive carriage and striking good looks. My parents were both six feet tall, and they set a brisk pace. We girls took up the rear, a pale-faced, gangling lot who dawdled behind and then hastened to catch up, three pairs of long skinny legs with bony knees. My father thought we were beautiful.

For years passengers travelling the railroad between New York City and Albany were stirred from their reveries by a Scottish castle looming suddenly from the Hudson River. An outpost of nearby West Point? The domain of an émigré laird? No, this island fortress was once the private arsenal of the world’s largest arms dealer.

Frank Bannerman saw himself as a sincere Christian. Critics branded him a secondhand merchant of death. Whatever else, he was a paragon of nineteenth-century capitalism.

Bannerman was a child of three when the family emigrated from Scotland and settled in Brooklyn. When the Civil War broke out soon after, his father left for the Union navy, and Frank, then ten, quit school to help support the family. By the war’s end young Frank was carrying on his father’s earlier livelihood, buying government surplus equipment at the nearby Brooklyn Navy Yard.

In the 1870’s American manufacturers were a long step ahead of the American advertising industry. They were producing goods on a nationwide scale, but there was no national publication in which they could hawk their products. The ingenious solution to this problem was the trade card [see “Trade Cards,” AMERICAN HERITAGE , February, 1967]. With a picture on one side and some persuasive copy on the other, these cards were slipped into packages, handed out in retail stores, and mailed to customers. Their bright, ingenuous designs made them sought after by a generation of Americans, who collected them, swapped them, and eventually enshrined them in albums. The examples on these pages are from an album kept by the parents and grandparents of Professor Albert Castel, a contributor to this magazine. Fanciful even by trade-card standards, these anthropomorphic vegetables advertised a fertilizer called Buckeye Phosphate. All of them are accompanied by egregious verse, as shown beneath the raffish carrot at the left.

On the morning of August 1, 1921, the Gazette of Charleston, West Virginia, carried under an eight-column banner on its front page the following dispatch from the city of Bluefield:

“Sid Hatfield lies in the morgue at Welch tonight, a smile frozen on his lips, eyes wide open and five bullet holes in his head and chest. On the slab next to him lies the body of his friend and bodyguard, Ed Chambers.

“They were shot down as they mounted the steps of the McDowell County Court House this morning, where they were scheduled to go on trial. Their wives, who were with them, ran screaming into the doorway of the building.

“Who started the shooting nobody seems to know. The true story of how the men met their death will, in all probability, always remain a secret.…”

The scene is one of a quintessential Englishness: a stately manor house with sparkling bay windows giving out upon a broad expanse of finely trimmed lawn that reaches out toward the river Avon in the valley below, an exquisite formal garden with pebbled walks and a delicate fountain, the whole set off against a stone balustrade supporting a majestic row of classical stone urns. But there is something weirdly wrong with the picture nevertheless—what is that huge tepee, with all the children running in and out of it, doing out in front of the manor? Or that rear end of a Pullman car with its observation platform? Or, in fact, that old Conestoga wagon? It’s a double exposure, with the Wild West imprinted sharply upon the green English calm, a schizocultural impossibility that boggles the mind. Yet it is really here.

Once counted in mere thousands, the men and women who staff the civilian agencies of the federal bureaucracy now number in the millions. Their total in 1974 is roughly equal to the population of Iowa and is greater than the population of any one of twenty-four other states or the District of Columbia. Almost 2.8 million strong, they often provide the only contact most of us have with federal power. We think them worthy of examination and offer here a brief look at the bureaucratic record in American life.

Flurries of wet snow camouflaged the runway of Cleveland airport in the early winter darkness. of Monday, February 19, 1934. Attended by a small group of chilled spectators and outlined by explosions of light from news cameras, a bulky figure in fleecelined flying suit, leather helmet, heavy boots, and furry gloves clambered into the open cockpit of a Boeing P -12 pursuit biplane. Lieutenant Charles R. Springer pulled down his goggles, fastened his seal belt, waved, and prepared to carry out his orders. By direction of President Franklin D. Roosevelt the United States Army Air Corps that stormy Monday had started to transport the nation’s air mail. Lieutenant Springer was to fly a leg of its first delivery.