AUGUST 12 – 18687 Pres. Johnson defies Congress in Stanton Affair; 1969 Viet Cong attack; 1851 Singer patents sewing machine; 1963 Happy Birthday Sir Mix-a-Lot
AUGUST 12
1867 – President Andrew Johnson defies Congress suspension of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Stanton had served as Secretary of War under President Lincoln, and was instrumental in helping the North achieve victory in the Civil War. When Lincoln was assassinated he led a search to go after Lincoln’s killer John Wilkes Booth. He remained secretary of war after President Andrew Johnson took office upon Lincoln’s death, but didn’t approve of Johnson’s lenient policies towards the Reconstruction. He openly criticized Johnson’s soft tendencies in handling the treatment of blacks in the south and seemingly stopped at nothing to have Johnson removed from the Presidency. A Republican led Congress supported Stanton and passed the Tenure of Office Act, in order to prevent Johnson from removing Stanton from office.
But in 1867, Johnson ignored the law and fired Stanton nonetheless. So what does Stanton do? Why, he locked himself in his office. Johnson was impeached, but by one vote was acquitted. So Johnson stayed, and Stanton left. Voluntarily, that is. He returned to his private practice, and when Ulysses Grant was elected President, Grant appointed Stanton to servce on the Supreme court on December 20, 1968,
1969 – Viet Cong strikes at 150 targets throughout Vietnam, including Da Nang and Hue.
1861 – Happy Birthday Eliphalet Remington, designer of the Remington rifle and founded the Remington Arms Co.
1992 – The US Canada and Mexico announce NAFTA, the north American free trade agreement which created a trilateral rules based trade bloc in North America. And that’s all I got to say about that?????? Not quite. According to citizen.org, NAFTA opponents – including labor, environmental, consumer and religious groups – argued that NAFTA would launch a race-to-the-bottom in wages, destroy hundreds of thousands of good U.S. jobs, undermine democratic control of domestic policy-making and threaten health, environmental and food safety standards.
NAFTA promoters – including many of the world’s largest corporations – promised it would create hundreds of thousands of new high-wage U.S. jobs, raise living standards in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, improve environmental conditions and transform Mexico from a poor developing country into a booming new market for U.S. exports.
12 1851 – Singer patents the sewing machine.
Now I don’t really want to spend all day talking about sewing machines anymore than I want to talk about square dancing. I know a lot of folks love the dos-ee-doh, but I’m not one of them.
Just not my thing.
Neither is sewing machines, but this story is really about, just like all the other stories I tell on this show, America.
Isaac Singer was not a sewer, he was an engineer who simply ran into a situation one day where he’s have to to repair a sewing machine. Singer was born October 27 1811 in New York, his parents divorced when he was ten and he left home at age 12 and started his career as a machinist. He started with a rock drilling machine, and ten years later patented this cool gadget that carved wood and metal.
He was a tall and animated lady-magnet, and at age 19 married 15 year old Catherin Haley and had two kids with her then left her for the Rochester Players. Meanwhile he had 10 children with his mistress Mary Ann Spenser. Whoo, talk about child support! Luckily, he’d be able to afford it.
In 1851 when he was working in Boston, when someone handed Singer a busted Leroy and Blodgett Sewing machine, it took him 11 days to give it a huge upgrade, installing a foot pedal to lead the cloth to the needle that was encased by a suspended arm in a horizontal bar. Something like that.
As I said I’m not a seamstress, but the concept is simple enough for even a guy like me to understand.
Of course he’s not the only one, I also talk about the contributions Allen Wilson brought to the sewing machine on my December 19th ep, as well as the contributions by a guy name McCormick on my June 21st ep, and of course the lawsuit Singer got in with another inventor named Howe on my July 9th ep. Bottom line, this beast could sew 900 stitches per minute, over 20 times faster than the best seamstress of the day.
God bless America!
+I.M. Singer and Company would be the first major manufacturer of an internationally sold product. He sold his sewing machines for ten bucks each, which was affordable to your average housewife, and if it still was too much he made available an installment credit payment option. And enough to make Singer a very very rich man indeed. Singer took his fortunes and moved to England where he spent the remainder of his comfortable life.
1820 RIP Manuel Lisa. Born in Cuba, he was a Spanish citizen, then later became an American citizen, Lisa was an Indian agent who helped to establish the Missouri Fur Company in St. Louis. In 1802 he established a trading monopoly with the Osage Indians, assisted the Lewis & Clarke expedition in 1803 and 1804, then later established a trading post at the Bighorn River in present-day Montana, followed by the the construction of Manuel’s Fort in Mississippi. During the War of 1812, Lisa used his outstanding reputation among aborigine tribes to support their alliance with the United States and the big war against tribes allied with the British. After the war, he created Ft. Lisa in Omaha NB, which was the main trading post with the Omaha, Pawnee, Oto and other tribes.
1963 — HB Sir Mix-a Lot