The latest fracas over faith in the public square involves the plans for Cordoba House, an Islamic Center, including a “mosque,” to be built two blocks from Ground Zero. Proposed to bridge the differences between Islam and the West, the $100-million project, which includes a prayer room rather than an actual mosque,  has won the backing of Mayor Bloomberg, among others. But with the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks looming, the race for Governor of New York heating up, and a Presidential election in the wings, Cordoba House was plunged into America’s boiling pot of religious politics. And like New York’s recent weather, the political firestorm that has been ignited shows no sign of cooling.

The pot was first stirred when Sarah Palin implored the group behind Cordoba House not to build the center, asking Muslims via Twitter, to “refudiate” the plan.

Raising the temperature was Newt Gingrich on his website, Newt.org, where he warned that “America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100722/ap_on_re_us/us_ground_zero_mosque_politics

This whole argument might be construed as a momentary blip in a slow summer news cycle. But the fear and loathing of faiths that supposedly threaten America’s existence is nothing new. The grade school notion of America as a “Melting Pot” nation in which all are welcomed to worship is a myth. Since Spanish Catholics slaughtered French Protestants in Florida in 1565, ingrained religious animosity has been an unhappy and uncelebrated American tradition.  For centuries, Catholics, Jews, Mormons and other “foreign” religions have encountered disdain, discrimination and worse.

In fact, the political attacks on the Islamic Center recall an earlier assault on a religious compound built near an American memorial.

It was August 1834 and the place was Charlestown, Massachusetts, outside Boston. The “threat” then came from a Roman Catholic convent where Ursuline nuns ran a private school for girls called Mount Benedict.

But the Ursuline Convent stood near sacred ground – the site on which the Bunker Hill Monument was being built. To many Americans, the Ursuline compound nearby was an affront, a symbol of a foreign faith that was evil, hateful and a threat to the nation.

On the night of August 11, 1834, a few hundred locals descended on the convent.  As the nuns and their young charges cowered, both the convent and school were ransacked and torched by the mob. A mausoleum was then opened, coffins overturned and the remains scattered. When the three nights of arson and mayhem was over, the Ursuline convent and the school it housed were in ruins.

The desolation of the Ursuline Convent in August 1834 is not one of the proud events that historic Boston touts to patriotic visitors. And it is hardly unique. America’s past is littered with similar examples of intolerance, sectarian hatred and ultimately, religious violence. A decade after the attack on the Ursuline Convent, Philadelphia was torn apart by the anti-Catholic Bible Riots, in which dozens died and the homes of mostly Irish Catholic immigrants were destroyed along with two Catholic churches in an argument begun over which Bible to use in public school.

For much of America’s history, the religious fear and loathing were directed mostly towards Catholics—especially Irish Catholics—who were thought to be plotting to turn America over to the Pope. Now, of course, the perceived threat comes from Islam and a symbol like Cordoba House has replaced the nefarious Ursuline Convent.

In 1790, after taking the oath of office just a few blocks from what is now Ground Zero, President Washington wrote a letter to another much maligned and distrusted group –the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island.

“Happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”

His words should be required reading for public officials –past, present and future.  They might even make a good plaque at Ground Zero.

You can read more about the burning of the Ursuline Convent, the Philadelphia Bible Riots and the history of anti-Catholicism in A NATION RISING.

-It’s not a “piece of paper.” The original version of the Declaration  was “engrossed” (a word for preparing an official document in a large, clear hand) on parchment (which is an animal skin, stretched and treated to preserve it). The Declaration was probably “engrossed” by Timothy Matlack, an assistant to Charles Thompson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress.

–”Inalienable” or “unalienable“?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Jefferson’s drafts shows he wrote “inalienable.” The parchment and printed versions use “unalienable.”

According to The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style from Houghton Mifflin:

The unalienable rights that are mentioned in the Declaration of Independence could just as well have been inalienable, which means the same thing. Inalienable or unalienable refers to that which cannot be given away or taken away.

–Why didn’t George Washington sign? Washington was otherwise engaged. At the moment that the Congress voted on the Declaration, Washington was commanding his ragtag Continental Army in New York City, about 90 miles from Philadelphia. Washington had been appointed Commander of the Army in June 1775 and taken command in Boston.  On July 9, 1776, he had the Declaration of Independence read aloud to his men. After hearing the Declaration read, a mob of enthusiastic New Yorkers tore down a statue of King George III in the Bowling Green and melted the lead for musket balls.

For Washington, the date of July 4 was bittersweet. In 1754, as the young and untested commander of a Virginia militia unit, he had been surrounded and forced to surrender by a French army in the Pennsylvania wilderness. Washington’s surrender came after his men and some Native American allies attacked and massacred a group of French soldiers on a diplomatic mission.  Washington’s surrender included what was a “confession” of murdering a French diplomat and the incident helped sparked the Seven Years War (known in North America as the French and Indian War). This was the first and only time he surrendered in his military career. But the sting of that defeat must have made July 4th an unhappy anniversary for Washington for years to come.

–How many Declarations are there?

The document, which was later lost, went to printer John Dunlap who prepared 26 (known) copies of the Declaration of Independence on the night of July 4th. Their present location –including two in England– and more information on the history of the Declaration and its travels over the centuries can be found at the National Archives: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_history.html#appendixa

–First of all, we celebrate the wrong day –as far as John Adams was concerned. The Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, actually voted on a resolution of independence on July 2d. John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that this day would be a day of history that would be marked with bonfires, church bells ringing and “illuminations” –or fireworks. He was right about all the other details but missed on the date. The date of the adoption of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence became fixed on the national calendar.

–Although Jefferson was the chief author of the Declaration, he was a member of a committee of five men charged with drafting a declaration that would explain why the colonies were separating from England. The others were  John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert Livingston of New York, who was not an advocate of independence.

–“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of ?“  Jefferson borrowed from a phrase used by other writers, including fellow Virginian George Mason, who had written about “life, liberty and the pursuit of property.”

Here is a link to Jefferson’s draft as it was presented to Franklin and Adams with some of his changes shown: http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/rough.htm

–Congress also made some changes. The most significant was the deletion of a paragraph in which Jefferson charged that King George III was responsible for the slave trade. That was dropped, Jefferson later noted, in deference to the men who owned slaves as well as those who made a great deal of money transporting them. Remember, some of the largest slave ports were in the northern colonies.

–The July 4th vote was not unanimous. The vote tally was by each state delegation. New York abstained on July 4 and voted to approve the Declaration on July 9th, making it unanimous. All thirteen colonies were now aboard.

–The signers didn’t sign –at least not on July 4th. Only two men actually signed the July 4th version: John Hancock, President of the Congress and Charles Thomson, serving as secretary. The actual signing ceremony took place on August 2, 1776. And even then, only 50 of the 56 signers were present to sign.

–The first celebration took place in Philadelphia on July 8th when the Declaration was read publicly for the first time. The “Liberty Bell,” a name that was not given to the famous symbol of freedom until the early 19th century, was rung. But it didn’t crack then. That came later. The words inscribed at the top of the Liberty Bell read, “Proclaim Liberty throughout All the land unto All the Inhabitants Thereof.” And no, Taco Bell did not buy the rights to the Liberty Bell — that was a very successful April Fools Day joke. (Yes, they got me.)

–Words on back? Sorry no secret, invisible treasure map as in the movie National Treasure. But the words “Original Declaration of Independence, dated 4th July 1776″ are written on the back of the parchment version now displayed in the National Archives.

By now, I hope we all know that the cherry tree story is a legend, made up by a pseudobiographer but chiseled into American folklore.
But there is a true story about a young George Washington that most of us never hear. It is the story of his first actual military experience and his signing of a “murder confession.” It is not only more interesting than the cherry tree story but a lot more revealing.

The incident began in late May 1754, with England and France in a brief respite from bouts of relentless war. Relying upon knowledge garnered from reading military manuals, the wet-behind-the-ears Washington was in command of a crew of militiamen dispatched to build an outpost in western Pennsylvania’s contested wilderness.

Encountering a detachment of French soldiers, Washington followed the advice of an ally he barely trusted –an Indian chief known to the English as the Half King. Tossing caution to the wind, the untested Washington defied orders and ambushed the French. When the smoke cleared, one Virginian and several Frenchmen lay dead or wounded; the rest were taken prisoner. “I heard bullets whistle,” Washington later told his brother, famously adding that the sound was “charming.”

What happened next was anything but charming. A wounded French officer frantically waved some papers at Washington. He was, in fact, a diplomat, carrying letters to the British. But before Washington could make sense of this, the Half King buried his tomahawk in the Frenchman’s brain. The Indians fell on the other captives, leaving few alive.

Following this massacre, a French army set off in hot pursuit of Washington. Outnumbered, Washington’s men cobbled together a small wooden shed, surrounded by sharpened stakes, in a meadow about 60 miles south of what is now Pittsburgh. It was called “Fort Necessity” —but “Desperation” would have been more fitting. The Half King’s warriors took one look and beat a hasty retreat.

On a rainy July 3d, the French surrounded Fort Necessity and poured gunfire down on Washington’s hapless troops. Their powder wet, their trenches filling with mud and gore, some of the Virginians ransacked the rum stores. By the morning of the 4th, Washington had no choice. Fortunate he wasn’t shot on the spot, he accepted terms. Among them was signing what amounted to a murder confession. His admission sparked the Seven Years’ War—history’s first true “world war.” (The North American phase was the French and Indian War.)

Insubordinate, incompetent, an admitted murderer who had surrendered in abject defeat –Washington should have been done in by any of these blows to his reputation. But instead, he flourished. The first “Teflon” hero in American history –nothing stuck to the young George Washington.

Clearly, he possessed uncanny survival skills. He had proven that in 1753, during a dangerous trek through the Ohio River Valley wilderness when he was shot at by an Indian and later plunged into an icy river. By all rights, Washington should have died of exposure. But he lived to tell the tale and made a name for himself.

Just as intriguing as this public reversal of Washington’s failures is how they escaped inclusion in your schoolbooks. Maybe it is this simple: his “youthful indiscretions” never fit the tidy “I-cannot-tell-a-lie” image of young Washington that many Americans still cherish. Many Americans still cling to the mythic version of history with heroes as perfectly polished as the marble monuments in the nation’s capitol.

Yet the tale of “Washington’s Confession” is not simply revisionism meant to tarnish an icon. Washington emerged as the “indispensable man” who saw combat at its worst, learned well the politics of war, and was surely shaped by these disastrous misadventures.

“Washington’s Confession” is just one piece of America’s “hidden history,” a reminder that winners tell the tales. And Washington was a winner. Even though –as he surely knew– it is often the defeats and disasters that can teach us the most.

Here is a link to the National Historic site at Washington’s “Fort Necessity”
http://www.nps.gov/fone/index.htm
You can read more of the story of “Washington’s Confession” in America’s Hidden History

When I was a kid, we got two holidays: one for Lincoln’s Birthday and another for Washington’s. Now, we have to make do with a three day weekend in February for Presidents Day.
Think you know about the Father of Our Country?
This video contains a few things that might surprise you.

Want to learn a little more?
Here is the website for the National Park Service’s Birthplace of Washington site:
http://www.nps.gov/gewa/index.htm

And here is the National Park Service website for Fort Necessity, scene of Washington’s surrender and “confession.”
http://www.nps.gov/fone/index.htm

With Presidents Day around the corner, it seems like a good time to think about some other great books about the Presidents and Presidency. Here is a short list of some of my favorite Presidential biographies –all what I call “must reads.” Obviously, this not an exhaustive list, and some may already be familiar. Not all of them focus on the presidential years of the subjects. But this is a good place to start with a collection of accessible and fascinating views of the lives and careers of some of the most significant Commanders in Chief –all told by great storytellers, great writers and great historians.
Since Presidents Day exists to honor Washington and Lincoln, I’ll start with them–

Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington by Richard Brookhiser. Fairly brief, mostly admiring but honest, and to the point, Brookhiser of the National Review, cuts through the mythology but keeps Washington firmly in place as “Father of Our Country.”
Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America by Henry Wiencek. Rather than an exhaustive biography, this is a study of Washington’s complicated relationship to slavery and his views on emancipation.

Speaking of Emancipation, The Lincoln Library is enormous. But if I had to pick one single-volume biography of “The Great Emancipator,” I choose With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen B. Oates. I like it for its readability and utterly human portrait of one most mythologized of Presidents. A close second to Oates is Lincoln by David Herbert Donald. Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography by Philip B. Kunhardt. Jr., Philip Kunhardt III and Peter W. Kunhardt is a beautiful volume, a “coffee table” book that won’t just sit on the coffee table. It might be especially valuable for households with children, as is Lincoln: A Photobiography, an award-winning book for children by the appropriately named Russell Freedman.

Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt by David McCullough is one of my favorite biographies, although it focuses not on TR’s astonishing Presidency but on his youth. A magnificent book.
For Teddy Roosevelt’s Presidency, read Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

For the “other Roosevelt, another of my all time favorite books is Doris Kearn Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. It focuses life in the White House during the war years and is the perfect combination of scholarship and great storytelling
Because FDR’s historic “First Hundred Days” got so much attention recently, I would also recommend this fairly slim but excellent overview of the Depression and Roosevelt’s controversial, much-debated response to it: The First Hundred Days by Anthony Badger

For FDR’s successor, the gold standard is Truman by David McCullough

Master of the Senate by Robert Caro. Until Caro finishes the fourth installment of his epic biography of Lyndon Johnson, this book, covering Johnson’s years as the Senator from Texas will have to do.

President Reagan: The Role Of A Lifetime by Lou Cannon. A California journalist, Cannon covered Reagan for years and this is an even-handed assessment.

A comprehensive reading list of these and Presidential biographies can also be found in Don’t Know Much About History

[The news story about the Tea Party Convention: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/politics/26teaparty.html?src=tptw]

It began as a populist uprising against –surprise, surprise—the bankers and lawyers who were making the rules back in Boston, men derided as “thieves, knaves and robbers” by the average people of Massachusetts. During the first economic crisis in a nation then ruled by the Articles of Confederation, sweeping foreclosures threatened farms and businesses, unfair tax systems were crushing American families, and there was no credit to be had. Sound familiar? Plus ça change…

Fighting back, hundreds of these average men came together under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays and came to be called Shays’s Army. The politicians called them “insurgents.”

Many of the men, like Shays, were veterans of the Revolution and had fought in every battle from Bunker Hill to Yorktown. Some had suffered through the winter at Valley Forge. Now some of them had been told they couldn’t vote. So they began their second American Revolution in the winter of 1786 and the early winter of 1778. On January 25th, after a raging storm left four feet foot of fresh snow in the Berkshire hills, more than a thousand of these men – farmers, tradesmen, shopkeepers – marched on the federal arsenal in Springfield, hoping to take the artillery and muskets stored inside, and continue on to Boston to overthrow the state government.

Apparently, they believed these words from the Declaration of Independence:

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it . . .”

Lightly armed and poorly organized, the “Shaysites” were repulsed by a small militia army, bought and paid for by the power brokers of Massachusetts. Among those in power was patriot icon Samuel Adams, who said of the rebellious farmers,

“In monarchies, the crime of treason and rebellion may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death..”

Indeed a few of the rebels did die that day in Springfield. Several volleys of grapeshot killed a handful of men; the others scattered in panic. More federal troops eventually rounded them up. Daniel Shays, an outlaw, made his way to the “Republic of Vermont,” not yet a state. (Eventually pardoned, he lived out the rest of his life as a struggling farmer in upstate New York.)

The “horrid and unnatural Rebellion and War,” as the Massachusetts legislature called the uprising, ended with a few small bangs and a whimper. And Americans killing each other.
Thomas Jefferson, hearing the news in Paris, wrote back to America,

“What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

George Washington was not so philosophical. “Are your people mad?” an incredulous Washington wrote to one of his former aides in New England. The prospect of more Shays Rebellions provided the urgency for Washington, James Madison, and other “Framers” to collect in Philadelphia to draft the Constitution. The angry “teabaggers” of western Massachusetts had pressed America to become “a more perfect Union.”

“Shays’s Rebellion” was far from the first time populist anger boiled over violently in America. There had been numerous uprisings throughout colonial America in which the poor and powerless struck out at the earliest generation of American “Elites.” And populist anger has remained a constant throughout our history. It is anger born of economic dislocation, but is often fueled by darker streaks — race and religion have frequently stoked the coals of populist rage. And these tales are usually untold in our schoolbooks. They don’t fit the tidy picture of American History.

In the past, populist movements like the “Tea baggers” have usually flamed hot before burning out –co-opted or absorbed by the major parties. Whether the fractious and increasingly fractured “Tea Party” is one more of these flameouts remains to be seen. But the history of populist anger is a real one. And as the Senate race results in Massachusetts –scene of Shays’s Rebellion– recently proved, people are mad. The bloodletting may be symbolic this time. But Jefferson’s “Tree of Liberty” may be refreshed with more political bloodshed before too long.

You can read more about Shays’s Rebellion and its impact in America’s Hidden History

Why is there a statue of Benedict Arnold’s boot?

Years ago, I was asked that question on a radio call-in show and honestly did not know the answer. Nor was I even aware at the time there was such a statue. But there it is — part of the Saratoga National Park in Saratoga, New York. The “boot” is actually anonymous, citing the “most brilliant soldier in the Continental Army.” But there is no question it honors American history’s greatest villain, born this day in 1741.

The “Boot Monument” is part of the park tour:
http://www.nps.gov/archive/sara/tour-7.htm
http://www.nps.gov/sara/index.htm

History books like to make people into heroes or villains. Benedict Arnold was easily characterized as a villain, the most notorious traitor in American History for his attempt to betray the patriot cause when he was in command of the strategic post at West Point, overlooking the Hudson River. But he might have been one of the nation’s greatest heroes. And that is what makes history so compelling. Not the black and white of dates and “facts,” but the more subtle gray complexities of ego, ambition and human frailty.

Born on January 14, 1741 in colonial Norwich, Connecticut, Arnold had a biography that reads like that of a character out of Dickens. The son of a wealthy, successful ship’s captain and merchant, young Benedict Arnold was born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. He was sent off to the best boarding school by his father, owner of the finest home in town. Then it fell apart. Yellow fever took his sisters while he was at school. Alcoholism then took his father. The fall was stunning as the elder Arnold became the town drunk and lost his fortune. At 14, young Benedict Arnold became an indentured servant. As a teenager, he ran away on several occasions to try and join the British-American forces then fighting France in the French and Indian War. Through pluck and generous relatives, Arnold eventually became a wealthy young merchant himself and was soon immersed in patriot politics, even traveling to Philadelphia to observe the First Continental Congress.

When the fighting began in 1775, he led Connecticut’s militia to Boston to join the rebel army gathering there. Arnold soon won honors for his role in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. With George Washington’s approval, he led a daring but disastrous march through Maine to unsuccessfully attack Quebec. Later, he built a small navy to battle the British on Lake Champlain, helping save the patriot cause. But it was at Saratoga in October 1777 that he made his greatest contribution, leading a charge that turned the tide in what would become the most important American victory of the Revolution to that point.

Admired by Washington, Arnold also made a great many enemies. Seeing others promoted and advanced before him made him bitter and ultimately led to his fateful decision to join the British side.

After his plot was uncovered, Arnold did join the British side, fighting against his onetime countrymen. He later moved to Canada and eventually to London where he died and was buried in June 1801 at the age of 60. His remains were accidentally –and fittingly?– moved to an unmarked grave.

You can read more about Arnold and his exploits in the chapter called “Arnold’s Boot” in America’s Hidden History

His column, entitled “In Search of Dignity,” topped the Times list of most emailed articles and drew hundreds on online comments, many of them laudatory. Brooks used the column to celebrate the good manners, civility and dignity possessed by George Washington. These attributes, Brooks believed, could be traced back to Washington’s boyhood, when he scrupulously copied out maxims from the “Miss Manners” of his day, a book called Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation. Among its 110 rules:

When in Company, put not your Hands to any Part of the Body not usually Discovered.

Brooks then contrasted Washington’s demeanor in public with that of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford –he of the secret rendezvous in Argentina that didn’t stay secret– and Governor Sarah Palin, who chose Friday afternoon on the July 4th Weekend to inform the world that she was resigning as Governor of Alaska for reasons that many found mystifying.  Brooks bemoaned the fact that these modern Republicans just couldn’t hold a candle to Washington when it came to dignified behavior.

Brooks finally made the leap to Barack Obama, surprising many readers with an admiring nod that placed the current President on equal footing alongside the First President in terms of his public demeanor.

Set against the backdrop of the day’s Michael Jackson memorial frenzy, the piece clearly tapped into a great American yearning for civility and a gentler time when wise men with Washington’s virtues held court.

But his argument has a fatal flaw. As I read Brooks’ words, the obvious jumped off the page. In his catalog of Washington’s public virtues and civility, David Brooks neglected to mention that George Washington owned, bought and sold his fellow human beings. When they ran away, he took out advertisements offering a reward for their return. He ran such an advertisement in 1761 when three of his “Negroes” took flight.

Whoever apprehends the said Negroes, so that the Subscriber may readily get them, shall have, if taken  up in this County, forty shillings reward. . .

Brooks neglected this uncomfortable fact of Washington’s life. It is a truth all the more evident in light of the recent celebration of  the Declaration of Independence. With its clarion call that “All Men are created equal,” the Declaration was written by Thomas Jefferson, another Virginian who also relied completely upon slave labor to put food on his table. Both men would have been completely at home owning Barack Obama, his wife and their children and perhaps selling some or all of them if necessary.

It was for this fact that Samuel Johnson once railed in Parliament:

How is that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?

The great contradiction between Washington’s dignity and idealism and the fact he was a slave owner is at the heart of so much of what was rotten in this country for centuries. It strikes me as outlandish to attempt to laud Washington’s courtly demeanor without reflecting on this great stain on his character. And the “everybody did it back then” defense doesn’t cut it either. Washington knew slavery was wrong and completely at odds with what he was fighting for. It is shameful to give him –and the rest of the “Revolutionary Generation”– a pass when it comes to America’s “original sin.”

As the events of the day have shown, we live in a world that is quick to lavish praise on the departed –to cover up a multitude of sins in an orgy of adulation that allows the country to feel some pride in a sanitized past. But when we overlook the “evil that men do” in singing those praises, the music starts to sound very tinny.

True dignity demands far more than decent manners.