January 2011

On July first of 1777 the able, affable “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne set out from Crown Point on Lake Champlain with his competent Hessian ally, Baron Friedrich von Riedesel, thereby opening a campaign that he had wagered would see him home victorious by Christmas. Burgoyne’s plan was to bisect the colonies; Colonel Barry St. Leger would move east through the Mohawk Valley with seventeen hundred men, Howe would march north from New York, and Burgoyne would take his ninety-five hundred troops south to Albany, where he would meet with Howe and St. Leger. But it was not to be. St. Leger, laying siege to Fort Stanwix in the Mohawk Valley, was discouraged by rumors that Benedict Arnold was pounding north with reinforcements to relieve the fort. His Indian allies panicked, and St. Leger was driven out of the campaign. Howe, committed to taking Philadelphia, never started north at all.

General John Burgoyne, British Army:

No possibility of communication with your lordship [George Germain] having existed since the beginning of September … I have to report to your lordship the proceedings of the army under my command from that period; a series of hard toil, incessant effort, stubborn action; till disabled in the collateral branches of the army by the total defection of the Indians; the desertion or timidity of the Canadians and Provincials, some individuals excepted; disappointed in the last hope of any timely co-operation from other armies; the regular troops reduced by losses from the best part to three thousand five hundred fighting men, not two thousand of which were British; only three days’ provisions upon short allowance in store … I was induced to open a treaty with Major-general Gates. …

[On September 18] The enemy appeared in considerable force to … draw on an action where artillery could not be employed …

by Thomas A. Bailey and Paul B. Ryan The Free Press, 306 pp. $10.95

About two years ago this magazine was approached by Thomas A. Bailey, an emeritus professor of history at Stanford University, with the suggestion that he submit a review of Lusitania , a book about the famous World War I sea disaster by Colin Simpson, published in 1972. The proposed review would “expose the major misconceptions … about this subject, including Simpson’s.” We agreed, and in due course the review arrived— written by Professor Bailey in collaboration with Captain Paul B. Ryan, a retired naval officer.

A little group of American men of affairs and letters met along with their ladies on the morning of August 5, 1850, to hike up Monument Mountain, one of the more prominent features of the landscape surrounding Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The intention was purely social, and socially the day proved a smashing success, leading five of the ten hikers to record the event in letters, journals, articles, and books. For two of them, however, the climb was the beginning of one of the strangest episodes in the history of American literature. It was on Monument Mountain that Herman Melville, who had paused before putting the finishing touches on a new novel based upon the whaling industry, met Nathaniel Hawthorne, fresh from the critical success of The Scarlet Letter . The meeting led to a deeply important relationship between the two men that caused Melville to recast his novel as the great Moby Dick . It also set in motion a succession of missed personal opportunities, false starts, and misunderstandings that were the source of great bitterness for the remainder of his life.

It was midsummer of 1929, and all seemed right with the world. Herbert Hoover was in the White House, riding high on a tide of prosperity and popularity. A few critics muttered that stocks were dangerously overpriced, but to most Americans such foreboding seemed no more worrisome than a small cloud on a distant horizon.

COMRADE JEFFERSON SPREADS HIS POISON COLONEL POPE THE GREAT SHIPPE

The People’s Bicentennial Commission, a private group working outside of what it feels are federal efforts to commercialize the two hundredth anniversary of our republic, came up with some rather startling results in a survey taken last summer. The commission sent out ten pollsters who asked twenty-three hundred federal employees to endorse a paragraph that read: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. …”

It turned out that 68 per cent of those approached not only did not hold these truths to be self-evident but in fact found them decidedly subversive and refused to sign. Fortyseven per cent of those polled did not recognize the passage as part of the Declaration of Independence, but of those who refused to sign, 83 per cent did recognize it.

Albert Pope Hinckley of Orlean, Virginia, is the grandson of Colonel Albert A. Pope, the great bicycle innovator, and bears his name proudly:

I knew him well, remember him distinctly with affection and admiration. He commenced his military career as a young second lieutenant at eighteen and became colonel and commanding officer of his regiment, the 35th Massachusetts, the day after he was twenty-two. When I was a small boy, I looked forward every summer to attending the annual reunion of his regiment at his estate in North Cohasset, for which he assumed the entire expense.

Not surprisingly, he was an inveterate cyclist, and Mr. Hinckley tells us that the bearded rider in the pith helmet on the cover of our June, 1975, issue is supposed to be Colonel Pope. For those who wish to check the resemblance, which does indeed seem close, Mr. Hinckley has sent us a picture of his grandfather and grandmother standing before a lean Pope Columbia bicycle at their Massachusetts home.

There is currently a great deal of interest in the “Bermuda Triangle,” a stretch of water off the Atlantic coast, where, we are told, ships disappear without a trace and all manner of eerie things take place. While this speculation is in the air it might be appropriate to mention a spectacular maritime mystery that allegedly vexed the inhabitants of the New Haven Colony in the seventeenth century. The story is taken from an undated issue of the New Haven Colony Historical Society’s Journal .