3589
America 100 years ago
Although I’ve browsed some of the pricey, recent, multi-volume histories of the United States and the World at the public library, I’ve been disappointed by the revisionism* of current authors and publishers, so I was pleased to pick up this title at the library book sale, and wish I had the other volumes. Our Times, The United States, 1900-1925, vol. 3, Pre-War America by Mark Sullivan, The Chautauqua Press, Chautauqua, NY, 1931. I may try to track the other 5 volumes down, but probably won’t get them for $3.00. Chautauqua Press was "liberal" in its day, but liberal in the classic meaning of the word, not socialist as it has come to mean today, but open to new ideas. Chautauqua had a broad Christian base, but wasn't fundamentalist in outreach. Liberals of today are afraid of a little "sonshine" and have minds so open, their brains are in danger of falling out because nothing can be right or wrong (except GWB). Their publications reflect that, so it is difficult to get an intelligent synthesis of history because every culture and religion is presented as being of equal value.

Vol. 3 begins in 1890 with the developing friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft when they were both subordinates of Benjamin Harrison, Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner, and Taft as Solicitor-General; and moving calendar style, it ends with 1908 as alcohol prohibition is getting established (reminds me a lot of the smoking bans we see today, state by state), unemployment and breadlines caused by the panic of 1907, and women's outrageous fashion (sheath skirts considered a step toward the fig leaf, huge hats, fishnet stockings) and behavior (smoking and attendance at cheap moving picture theatres). There will be many stories in this volume I’ll enjoy researching further, such as spelling reform, hookworm humor (laziness was declared a disease), and Roosevelt's relationship with African Americans.

This volume was published in the early years of the Great Depression, yet the paper is good quality, there are excellent photographs and plates, better footnotes and indexing than I see in some modern histories, and the author is careful to note where he has copyright permission and carefully cites the sources. For some sections the author allows the events to speak for themselves, others are heavily laced with opinions. Because Chautauqua had such a strong cultural bent (still does), and Sullivan was a popular culture buff there are interesting photos contrasting the early 20th century with the late 1920s, for instance, a photo of two working women, one in 1907 and one in 1928 showing the differences in clothing and office technology on p. 479, and comparing shoe advertisements from a 1927 Scribner's Magazine with one from Theatre Magazine of 1906 on p. 434. Apparently the hunger for "big hair" in 1910 was filled by the locks European women, Chinese women and the goats of Turkestan. There's a delightful section on the historical significance of the popular songs of the pre-war era.

The dramatic change in fashion for women and the amount of flesh exposed after WWI is very apparent in this plate. As more leg is exposed, the less the waist and bust are emphasized. Skirt length dropped again almost to the ankle in 1930.

*With contemporary 21st century authors, it is difficult to determine if the Soviet Union was ever a big threat to us in any meaningful way, and hard to tell if the Christian church had any impact on American society except for amusement to be pilloried in cartoons and obscure court cases.

Dan Rather on Mark Sullivan: "Mark Sullivan was one of the most widely respected journalists of his day. One of the original muckrakers, he became America’s leading political reporter and columnist in newspapers and magazines for nearly half a century. A committed Republican, he had unrivaled access to the leaders of his party, including Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, and Harding, and contacts like these made him the ideal chronicler of his age."Source URL: https://maryelizabeth-winstead.blogspot.com/search/label/American%20history
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3404 What I didn't and did find at the library

Your kid got a paper due next week? It isn't just the journals and books that lack balance, perspective and diversity. You might want to browse the digitized sources, especially if you are homeschooling. The titles may not be what you remember from your school days. Publishing firms are bought and sold; editorial boards change direction; standards of reliability must meet market demands. Someone had to compile and write them, too--someone with a point of view, someone your children will be citing as an authoritative source. Recently I took a quick spin through "Annals of American History which is produced by Encyclopedia Britannica."

I can log on at home, but I was at the library. By clicking to Religion, I found the first paragraph set the tone:

"America was first colonized by religious exiles, who found in the New World their first opportunity for religious liberty. The United States, as a result, became the first country in the Western world to make an effective separation between church and state, as well as the first to write into its basic law the principle of religious toleration. This enormous diversity of religion is one of the hallmarks of the country."

So that's the framework. What will be the focus? Essays, articles and documents that don't meet the standard of tolerance and separation of church and state. How Indians were mistreated by missionaries. Brief (skimpy) one page articles on major Protestant denominations like the Presbyterians and Methodists bringing their history all the way up to--about 1800 in this source--and huge coverage of very minor organizations and movements of the 20th century I've never heard of (toleration and diversity, right?)

Original documents? That's what Annals does. It's just extremely selective. And if a kid is writing a paper, it's much easier to use this source than pull paper sources. (Although if there are recent compilations in paper, they too will be sifted and filtered to be politically acceptable to the left.) There's an eight page article in Annals by Clarence Darrow about what to expect from different religious groups if you seat their members on a jury; some court cases that reflect poorly on Christians; and a selection of "scholarly" articles, mostly negative about people of faith.

By using the timeline, I was able to pull up the 2003 gay Bishop document of the Anglican Church. I'm not well informed about the Anglicans, but I'm guessing there have been a few other achievements in the last decade. The timeline stops with 2003, although the copyright of the database is 2007. Has nothing much has happened in the last three years? I was a bit surprised to find that the Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemings paternity debate was deemed worthy of inclusion (actually not surprised at all), and that "Fast Food Nation" was a historical treasure--and not even exerpts from the book, but pieces of an on-line interview. The USS Cole story didn't make the cut that I could find.

So I turned to the reference shelves and looked through some of the handsome, hard bound multiple volume sources. The three volume, 50's in America by Salem Press (2005), had no entry for Christianity at all, but Stan Freeberg got in. No denomination, not even Roman Catholics, had an entry. I took a peek at Modern America 1914-1945 by Facts on File (c1995, but purchased by the library in 2005). In the Table of Contents I found a section on Religion. The first topic of 4 subdivisions? Women and the Church.Source URL: https://maryelizabeth-winstead.blogspot.com/search/label/American%20history
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Friday Family Photo--Veterans Day

When you go home
Tell them of us, and say,
For your tomorrow
We gave our today
Kohima Epitaph
Across the nation we're observing Veterans Day, November 11, which memorializes the end of WWI (armistice was the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918), and honors all veterans of the armed services. Today's photos are my Uncle Clare looking sharp and spiffy in his dress uniform in New Orleans and home on leave with his parents. He was 32 when he went into the Army Air Force in 1942. I think he could have had an exemption because he was a farmer and essentially was managing the Illinois and Iowa farms for his parents who were 68 and 66, and doing all the physical work on the home place. But I think he also saw the war as an opportunity to do some of the things he'd always dreamed of--he was a fabulous mechanic and loved airplanes. I have a dim memory of my mother telling me he couldn't be a pilot because of a hearing problem, but was trained for photographic mapping, and was an aerial engineer for the 24th Mapping Squadron of the 8th Photo Group, Reconnaissance (10th Air Force) which served in the China, Burma, India theater.

In New Orleans

With his parents, on the Franklin Grove farm

On a Geocities site I found the following information about this squadron: "The 8th Photographic Reconaissance Group arrived in India on 31 March 1944, assuming operational control of the 9th Photographic Reconaissance Squadron, 20th Tactical Reconaissance Squadron and 24th Combat Mapping Squadron on 25 April 1944, with the 40th Photgraphic Reconaissance Squadron joining the unit on 6 September 1944.

The main mission of the units attached to the 8th Photographic Reconaissance Group was to gather phtographs to be used in making target maps, assessing target damage and identifying potential targets"

Clare and a pilot were killed in an explosion when the plane hit a gasoline supply, through the stupidity of his commanding officer who insisted the men go up in a blinding storm. No one else in that unit lost his life and we found out how Clare died when a great nephew attended one of their reunions. I'm glad my grandparents never knew since they suffered this loss so terribly the rest of their lives (died in 1963 and 1968).

Searching the internet I found lists of accident reports, alphabetic by name of the soldier or civilian--thousands and thousands died in accidents--and his name is listed. Also found this report of USAAF Serial Numbers, "64105 (F-7A, 8th BRG, 24th CMS) w/o on takeoff accident at Hsing Hing, China Oc 29, 1944" which I assume was his plane since nothing else matches the date.

Originally buried near Chengtu, China after his death on October, 29, 1944, Uncle Clare came home on the Honda Knot in 1947 (I found this information on a Lee County, IL obituary web site) with over 200,000 dead soldiers and sailors with fighter escorts and awaiting dignitaries. While we waited in rural Illinois to bury him with other family in Ashton, he was being welcomed home in San Francisco:

"In San Francisco, a similar ceremony took place under an overcast October sky as the army transport ship Honda Knot slipped through the frigid waters beneath the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco Bay. An aerial escort of forty-eight fighter planes flew over the vessel before dipping their wings in salute and banking away. Surface ships from the Coast Guard and the Navy approached the Honda Knot and led her through a misting rain to anchorage off Marina Point, where a gathering of five thousand mourners waited to pay tribute to the war dead that the ship was delivering home to American soil from the Pacific theater. A navy launch approached the Honda Knot and offered another massive wreath from President Truman. Dignitaries in the audience included Army General Mark Clark, who had led American troops in Italy during the war, and the Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan, who honored these fallen heroes, many of whom had passed under the Golden Gate Bridge on ships bound for the Pacific war. Six of the 3,012 flag-draped coffins aboard the Honda Knot were removed the next day to lie in state in the rotunda of San Francisco’s city hall, where ordinary citizens of a sorrowful nation paid their last respects. The six dead represented servicemen from the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, and the Coast Guard, along with a civilian, all killed in the war. From the early morning until late that night, thousands of mourners filed by the coffins of knelt in prayer by their sides. The arrival of the Honda Knot and the Joseph V. Connolly officially initiated what one observer called the "most melancholy immigration movement in the history of man," the return to the United States of 233,181 American dead after the end of World War II. America's army of fallen warriors was coming home from the four corners of the earth, from Guadalcanal and Australia, from New Guinea, Japan, China, and Burma in the Pacific theater. From the Mediterranean theater men were returned from Libya, Sicily, Italy, Yugoslavia, and Romania. The bodies of men who had died in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany also came home. David Colley site

Clare is listed on this memorial site for the 10th Air Force.

Update: The National Archives has a site for WWII Honor List of Dead and Missing. You select by branch of the military, then by state, then by county. I found Uncle Clare, although his name was misspelled.

Veterans Day, War Memorials, World War II, Army Air Force, 10th Air Force, China Burma India TheatreSource URL: https://maryelizabeth-winstead.blogspot.com/search/label/American%20history
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