MAY 22 — ELECTIONS: 1835 Van Buren unanimously elected leader of the Democratic Party; 1856 The caning of Senator Charles Sumner; 1842 Howe’s Cavern is purchased in Cobleskill NY; 1966 Cloward-Pivens call for socialism in America
MAY 22
1835 – Van Buren unanimously becomes leader of the Democratic Party.
Just in time for the 1836 presidential election! What a show, folks. The Petticoat Affair, the rise of the Whigs, Julia Chinn, and a surprisingly close race. The Anti-Masonic, who were as the name would imply, opposed to freemasonry, were a semi-legit party in the 1832 election between Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay and several other National Republicans, but fizzled out quickly and merged with newly formed Whig party.
The Petticoat Affair was a sex scandal regarding the appointment of John Eaton to Secretary of war by President Jackson. Eaton was having a relationship with a young 23 year old girl named Margaret Petty Eaton, who, not saying she got around or anything, but had a reputation of being on more laps than a napkin if you dig what I’m saying. Peggy was married to a sailor, who died unexpectedly, supposedly from suicide from learning about his wife’s affairs. Nonetheless, John Eaton’s romance with her would continue, and as a result Eaton was booed from his Washington constituents. But President Jackson, who had his own sex scandals regarding his wife Rachel, long story, sympathized with Eaton, and appointed him Secretary of War, and hence the scandal.
Meanwhile, the Whigs were making a name for themselves, and felt they had a shot at defeating the Jacksonian Democrats by utilizing a strategy that got John Quincy Adams elected over Old Hickory Jackson in the 1824 election. Throw a bunch of Whigs in the race and prevent the Democrats from winning a majority, and letting the House of Representatives decide who would be president. Seemed like a good idea since they couldn’t agree on a single candidate anyway. In New England was Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster, who supported Clay and could get the Anti-Masonic vote. From Tennessee was Hugh White, he would represent the south.
Then, the war hero Senator of Ohio, William Henry Harrison, who defeated Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe, would take the west. Meanwhile, the Little Magician Van Buren, hardly the rough and ready man Old Hickory was, actually a meek senator from New York. He would be running with Richard Mentor Johnson, a somewhat shocking choice since Johnson was riddled with yet another sex scandal, this one with Johnson’s slave Julia Chinn. Being romantically involved with you slave was considered very taboo. Lots of slave-owners did it, and few would admit it. It just wasn’t something you would bring up at a dinner conversation. But political consequences be damned, Johnson came out with it anyway. Not only was he having an affair with his slave, they had two kids together, and Johnson wasn’t apologizing for it. In 1833, Julia died, and Johnson found a new slave to be involved with.
But this new slave would leave him for another man, so out of revenge; Johnson sold her at an auction and started sleeping with her sister. Johnson would make sure his two children from Julia were well educated and taken care of until he died. And now, the Whigs smelled blood. Ding, ding, Van Buren and Johnson versus Harrison, White, Weggster and yet another contender from North Carolina, William Person Mangum,it was on. The Democrats would win this election yet again, their third straight, and this time getting only 170 votes in the Electoral College, two more than they needed to get the majority. He won 50% popular, while Harrison came in second at 36%, and 73 electoral. White came in third, Webster only got Massachusetts and no other state, and Mangum came in last. Van Buren’s popularity would be short lived. After the Panic of 1837, Old Tippecanoe Harrison would come back for a rematch in the 1840 election, and turn the tables on the Democratic Party.
1944-Operation Chattanooga Choo Choo is launched.
…Not the song, not the movie, but rather an Allied invasion on German railroads in WWII. The Germans were preparing from an Allied invasion and needed forces on the beaches ASAP. The US 9th AF targeted railway facilities marshalling yards, bridges and rolling stock in western France in the weeks before D-Day. Hundreds of locomotives and trains were strafed and destroyed by P-47 Thunderbolt fighter bombers, while B-26 Marauders and A-20 Havocs bombed rail yards and vital bridges. Eighth AF fighters flew fighter-bomber missions.
The result ended in German commander’s attempt to rally forces to Normandy were completely frustrated to find their telephone and telegraph communications cut, road and rail bridges destroyed and railway transport in chaos, thanks to Chattanooga Choo Choo and French resistance forces, supplied by Carpetbagger missions.
1842 Hows Cavern is purchased in Cobleskill, NY.
Just in time for summer vacation, in case you’re anywhere near Albany. The Secret Garden is right next door, and I hear that’s actually the real deal, even though Howe’s Tavern has a 150 foot elevator that takes you down to the depths of the cavern.
Farmer Lester Howe discovered a cold spot in his acreage and found the cavern entrance. In 1843, Howe and his neighbor purchased the land and opened up a tourist center. Meanwhile, down the street a few miles, back in 1928, a couple cows named Lucky and Floyd on a nearby farm wandered away, and found another cavern around 85 feet deep. Floyd and Lucky mooed the attention of local civil engineer Roger Mallery, who took a look, and recruited a couple teenagers as well as the Albany Flashlight company for sponsorship, and using an 85’ rope, down the caverns went the teenagers.
What they found is the story that you only see in movies. No not aliens and not a video arcade either. but rather, something better than Hows. Remarkably, they found a 100-foot waterfall. Imagine being a teenager and finding this underground! Mallery purchased the land right away and opened it up for all to see, though Howe’s has always been the more popular big brother cavern.
Mallery made things easier on his visitors, and replaced the 85’ rope with a ladder and other ways to ease down the massive cave. But still Howe’s is the popular one! Maybe it’s that 150’ elevator.
1807 – The Burr controversy begins.
… Former Vice President to Thomas Jefferson Aaron Burr was suspected of treason along with his posse of planters, politicians and army officers. According to the accusations against him, Burr’s goal was to create an independent nation in the center of North America and/or present-day Southwest and parts of present-day Mexico. Burr’s side was that he intended to take possession of, and farm, 40,000 acres in the Texas Territory leased to him by the Spanish. President Long Tom Jefferson had Burr arrested and indicted for treason, even though he didn’t have any evidence.
To this day Burr’s true intentions remain questioned, some historians claim he intended to take parts of Texas and some, or all, of the Louisiana Purchase, for himself. He was acquitted of treason, but the trial destroyed his political career, which was already looking bad anyway. After his acquittal, burr shamefully went to England and tried to gain support for a revolution in Mexico and got booted out of England.
He then went to France to try an enlist Napoleon but got kicked out of there too. By this time he didn’t have enough money to get back home, but finally in 1811 was able to sail home.
1856 –The caning of Charles Sumner…
Tensions were heating up on the slavery issue between the north and the south, the territory of Kansas was at war with itself and was bleeding, the Kansas-Nebraska Act overrode the Missouri Compromise, Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been published, and for two days during May 19-20 Republican Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner went on a big insult-ridden tirade against the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Fugitive Slave Act.
Sumner, who detested politics, wound up leading the Republican Party after the Free Spoilers had split from the Whig Party. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was put in by “murderous robbers from Missouri,” and proceeded to call them “hirelings, picked from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy civilizations.”
Stephen Douglas, who wrote the Kansas-Nebraska bill, is noted as saying “that damn fool will get himself killed by another damned fool.” Sumner verbally attacked South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks, saying “The senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes him a chivalrous knight with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean the harlot, slavery.
For her his tongue is always profuse in words.” On and on he went for two days. The southerners didn’t take to kindly to being persistently insulted like that, and the next day at work, Brooks showed up with his gold-tipped cane and beat the crap out of Sumner.
Like Joe Pesci against a smart-ass bartender. L
ike that.
At the end, Sumner was bellowing like a calf, according to a letter Brooks sent to his brother the next day. Finally folks were able to break it up, but Sumner was barely alive after the ruthless beating. Again, the country was divided. The north couldn’t believe what just happened, while the south turned Brooks into a hero. A vote was cast in Congress to expel Brooks, but he did not get the 2/3rds. It would be a few years until Sumner would return to his seat, though Massachusetts kept voting for him to stay as Senator.
That little bit of violence would soon become widespread throughout the entire country.
1930 –Happy birthday Harvey Milk!
…The first openly gay politician to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. During the short time he served, only 11 months, he was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city.
On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back. Harvey Milk became an icon in San Francisco and a martyr in the gay community. In 2002, Milk was called the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the US. In 2009 Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
1985-Pete Rose passes Han Aaron as NL run scoring leader upon his 2108th home run.
1966 Cloward-Pivens publish The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty.
Surprisingly, most Americans don’t know about how a pair of political activists called publicly for the overloading of the U.S. welfare system for the purposes of creating a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the existing welfare system with a socialist system of “a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty.”
Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven, both Columbia U Sociologists and members of the Democratic Socialists of America were inspired by their idea of straining the system to cause an economic collapse by the August 1965 riots involving many African American riots in Los Angeles. I guess you just can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, right? Since LBJ was the president and the house and senate were controlled by the Democratic Party at the time, it seemed a perfect opportunity for America to help individuals who were eligible for welfare and not receiving they claimed.
Conservative writer David Horowitz explains his take on how this strategy started in his book The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party. In the end, as historian Robert Weir writes in 2007, although the strategy helped to boost recipient numbers between 1966 and 1975, the revolution its proponents envisioned never transpired.
1942 – Not so happy birthday to the Unabomber.
…Ted Kaczynski was born in Evergreen Park, IL. An interesting fellow, extremely intelligent, great with math, but has a big problem with technology. Something about how it takes away our freedoms? I don’t really get it either. He’s 72 y ears old who’s serving eight life sentences. He wrote the Unabomber Manifesto and demanded that newspapers would print it, but his brother recognized the handwriting and tipped him off to the FBI. His lawyers wanted him to plead insanity, but he argued he was completely sane.