January 2011

Captain John Parker’s company of minutemen stood in formation, some seventy strong, waiting on Lexington Green in the dim light of early dawn. They had gathered during the night in response to Paul Revere’s warning that the British were coming.

Lexington had been untouched by war, or by the violent, acts of strangers, during all the years since its founding. It had sent troops to fight elsewhere; several veterans of the siege of Louisburg in 1758, during the French and Indian War, were in the ranks this morning, but that was all any of them knew of war. They did not expect war now; indeed, they did not know what to expect. The day of April 19, 1775, was beginning.

What, everyone asks us these days, are we doing about the Bicentennial? After all, it is only four years away, or just three, if you want to begin with Lexington and Concord. The answer, of course, is that we are worrying about it, just like everyone else, and just as they are in those Massachusetts villages. (What bothers them is the possibility of being overwhelmed in 1975, as they were in 1875 before the automobile—by vast, thirsty, hungry, unmanageable crowds; see David B. Little’s cautionary tale on this subject on page 18.)

One of the good things that happened in America in 1970—a year otherwise noted for spreading oil slicks, raging forest fires, mercury in rainbow trout, and burgeoning pipelines in the tundra—was the decision by the National Park Service to purchase Cumberland Island, southernmost of the Georgia sea islands and a flaming issue in the long and bitter struggle between real-estate developers and conservationists over the future of the state’s coastline.

Cumberland is one of the most beautiful and historic of the barrier islands that buffer the Georgia coast from Savannah southward to the mouth of the St. Marys River on the Georgia-Florida border. All the major islands—Ossabaw, St. Catherines, Sapelo, St. Simons, Jekyll, and Cumberland—are of considerable interest historically, but Cumberland stands out because of the colorful variety of its past and because its natural beauty and traditions have been carefully preserved by a succession of owners with more than a passing interest in history.

Eight years ago our contributor Francis Russell first came upon the now famous shoe box full of love letters that President Warren G. Harding, then a senator from Ohio, wrote to Mrs. James E. (Carrie) Phillips. Both the Hardings and the Phillipses lived in Marion, Ohio, and the affair apparently lasted from about 1910 until the eve of Harding’s nomination in 1920. [See articles by Mr. Russell and by Kenneth W. Duckett in AMERICAN HERITAGE , February, 1965.]

For readers who prefer to have all the strings neatly tied at the end of their romances, it should be noted that Mary Owens went back to Kentucky after refusing Abe and subsequently married and raised a family. As for Lincoln, he was soon to meet Mary Todd, whom he married in 1842.
LINCOLN’S LOST LOVE HARDING CASE CONCLUDED

With spring rolling around again, it is pleasant to include some note of romance in our pages, even if rather reluctant romance. And there are few documents in American history to equal Abraham Lincoln’s own account of his “romance” with—in fact, engagement to—a young Kentucky lady named Mary Owens.

In 1836, when all this started, Lincoln was twenty-seven, a lawyer and member of the Illinois state legislature, and an obviously susceptible bachelor. Mary Owens was twenty-eight, less than a year older (Lincoln’s opinion to the contrary notwithstanding)—but let’s not get ahead of our story.

Our readers may recall the horrifying newspaper stories last year when some twenty-five migratory farm workers were found murdered and buried in California peach orchards. Then, this January two men were indicted in Columbia, South Carolina, on charges of holding nine other farm workers in peonage and involuntary servitude. It was alleged that the accused, operators of a migrant crew, charged the workers exorbitant prices for everything from soap to cigarettes and then forcibly detained them until the debts were paid. An interesting detail, and historically quite a switch, is that the victims were white and the alleged slave masters black.

Harry Houdini, the American magician and escape artist who became famous in the first quarter of this century, spent a great deal of his time exposing frauds. He insisted that all his own marvellous tricks were just that, accomplished entirely without supernatural assistance; he also exposed numerous “spiritualists” whose claims to otherworldly connections were hoaxes of one kind or another. Over the years he built up a tremendous reputation for uncompromising honesty. Yet Houdini was above all a showman—and at least once in his career the impulse to take credit for a great stunt overcame the impulse to tell the truth.