Not many political martyrs are born to the part; more often they are cast in it by government officials who are stupid or self-righteous or both. Take John Wilkes: a reckless, ambitious parvenu who became involved in the cause of liberty quite accidentally and emerged the champion of London’s mobs and the darling of America’s rebels—thanks to King George in’s intolerance for dissent.
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January 2011
Life in a small urban community in America in the 1880’s could be exceedingly pleasant, particularly if one was a leading citizen with the means to enjoy it. As an 1887 history of New Haven, Connecticut, recorded: “From the day, nearly two centuries and a half ago, when the first settlers landed at Quinnipiac [as the red man called the place], until today, the name of Hotchkiss—all of that name being the descendants of Samuel Hotchkiss, the original planter—has never ceased to be a familiar one to the people of New Haven.” At the time this was written, Henry Lucius Hotchkiss, at forty-five already a leading businessman of the town, was busily photographing on glass-plate negatives the delightful life he and his family enjoyed both in New Haven and at their summer homes in New Hampshire and the Adirondacks.
“From the tyranny of man, I firmly believe the greater number of female follies proceed. I lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority.… I am scarcely able to govern my muscles when I see a man start with eager and serious solicitude to lift a handkerchief or shut a door, when the lady could have done it herself. … The lordly caresses of a protector will not gratify a noble mind that pants for and deserves to be respected!”
The most important and impressive collection of family letters in this country is that of the Adams family. Extending from ij6i, when John Adams began courting Abigail Smith, almost to the end of the nineteenth century, it offers a view unparalleled in scope and depth of the ideas, actions, and feelings of an illustrious American family. Part of the huge undertaking called The Adams Papers , published under the editorship of Lyman H. Butterfield by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, the Adams Family Correspondence is expected to amount to some twenty-four large volumes. Volumes 3 and 4, covering the years ijj882, have just been issued—a most interesting period that found Abigail weathering the Revolution at home in Braintree, Massachusetts, and John abroad, in France and Holland, as an indefatigable advocate for the fledgling republic. They suffered the usual heartaches of a loving couple separated by oceans and wars—doubt, fear, jealousy, irritation—intensified by the fact that any letter between them, if it escaped capture by the British, was sure to take many weeks in transit.
Wyoming. The name itself recalls the Old West, where a man was a man. The virile pioneer, eyes squinted against the prairie sun or mountain snowstorm, muscles tense, ready to overcome any human or elemental opposition. The rough, tough cowboy, drawing fast, drinking hard, dying young.
With these images in mind, consider Wyoming’s contribution to Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol. The state’s statue stands among marble heroes and bronze statesmen—and it wears a skirt. It is one Esther Hobart Morris, proclaimed by the legend on the base of her statue to be:
At the time World War I was nearing its end, I was stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, as an officer-instructor in light field artillery (horse-drawn three-inch cannon known as French 75’s). Ordered to report at the mess hall, I and my comrades of identical rank were told by an arty major bearing the authority of the high command that as a tribute to the generosity and kindliness of our neighbors in the nearby town of Lawton, we were soon to present, in a curve of the dried-up Medicine River (which we were assured would make an ideal outdoor theatre), a pageant entitled “The History of Fort Sill.”
Soon our whole detachment beheld the rising of a simulated pioneer stockade on the flat where the river had once run, and an authentic old-time stagecoach delivered a load of volunteer townspeople to inhabit it.
Tucked away in rural southwest Wisconsin, where the west branch of the Kickapoo River crosses Route 82, is an area of the state known locally as Brush Hollow. It was there, after the turn of the century, that McGarry Morley spent much of his vacation time as a youngster, for his grandfather owned a local farm. Young Morley “loved the people, and thoroughly enjoyed all the various happenings.” Much time has passed since then, and Mr. Morley, now a retired advertising-agency executive, “hated to think of all the folklore and history being lost,” so he began writing a series of folk stones he calls Brush Hollow Tales. The one recounted here, adapted from a story first published in the magazine Wisconsin Trails , is based on several events that actually occurred in Brush Hollow about 1912. In the tradition of the folklorist, Mr. Morley has woven them together into an amusing and nostalgic reminiscence.
Mid-October of 1776 found a badly beaten American army in full retreat from Manhattan Island into the forests and farmlands of Westchester County. It was by no means a rout; units of Washington’s army fought skillful and rugged rearguard actions every step of the way. William Howe, in command of the king’s forces, followed the Americans in a pursuit sluggish enough to allow Washington ample time to settle his troops in the hills surrounding the village of White Plains. The Americans dug in well, established a long, curving line, and waited for the inevitable attack. It came on the morning of October 28.
“The scene was grand and solemn”
Private James Sullivan Martin,
Continental Army:
We marched… for the White Plains, in the night. We had our cooking utensils, at that time the most useless things in the army, to carry in our hands.… We arrived at the White Plains just at dawn of day, tired and faint—encamped on the plain for a few days and then removed to the hills in the rear. One day… we found that the British were advancing upon us.
An unknown American participant in the battle:
At one point in the Battle of White Plains an American militiaman whose unit was temporarily not engaged with the enemy called out to a nearby civilian: “Who’s ahead?” The civilian, holding a small square object up to one ear, replied: “Oakland, 3 to 1.”