update

I finished that book by McCammon and its sequel, both excellent. Now I'm switching over to some classics. I just picked up The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand tonight. I had to read a few chapters in High School and always meant to pick it up again, now I'm doing it. I also got We Were Soldiers Once... And Young by Lt. Gen. Hal G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway.
I read it once for a research paper on the press in Vietnam, enjoyed it. I look forward to reading it for leisure. I always respected the way those three people wrote.

Came across a few quotes doing family history research that I thought were rather insightful...

“It is absurd to think that life begins for us at birth. The pattern is set far back; we merely step into the process.” Kathleen Coyle

"All sources lie" Lawrence of Arabia

Your thoughts?

Dickinson part 4 (final)

"Frightful as the day had been, the night was yet more hideous, since to the horrors that were seen was added the greater horror of deeds which might be committed in the darkness- or, if they were seen, it was by the lurid glare of burning buildings, the red flames of which, flung upon the stained and brutal faces, the torn and tattered garments, of men and women who danced and howled around the scene of ruin they had caused, made the whole aspect of affairs seem more like a gathering of fiends rejoicing in pandemonium than aught with which creatures of flesh and blood had to do....

them that he was there as a proof of his friendship whicdh he had demonstrated by : sending his adjutant general to Washington to have the draft stopped,: begging them to "wait for his return" " to separate now as good citizens, " with the promise that they "might assemble again whenver they wished to so do"; meanwhile he would "take care of their rights." This model speech was incessantly interrupted by tremendous cheering and frantic demonstrations of delight, one great fellow almost crushing the Governor in his enthusiastic embrace.

His allies in newspaper offices attempted to throw the blame upon the loyal press and portion of the community. This was but a repetition of the cry raused by traitors in arms that the government, struggling for life in their deadly hold, was responsible for the war; " If thou wouldst but consent to be murdered peaceably, there could be no strife. "

It was absurd and futile to characterize this new reign of terror as anything but an effort on the part of Northern Rebels to help Southern ones at the most critical moment of the war, with the state militia and available troops absent in a neighboring commonwealth and the loyal people unprepared. These editors and their coadjutor, men of brains and ability, were of that most poisonous growth- traitors to the government and flag of their country-renegade Americans."

Dickinson Part III.
"Late in the afternoon a crowd which could have numbered not less then ten thousand, the majority of whom were ragged, frowzy drunken women, gathered about the Orphan Asylum for Colored Children- a large and beautiful building and one of the most admirable and noble charities of the city. When it became evident from the nmenacing cries and groans of the mutiltude that danger if not destruction, was meditated to the harmless and inoffensive inmates, a flag of truce appeared, and an appeal was madie in their behalf, by the principal, to every sentiment of humanity which these beings might posess- a vain appeal! Whatever human feeling had ever, if ever, filled these souls was utterly drowned and washed away in the tide of rapine and blood in which they had been steeping themselves. The few officers who stood guard over the doors and manfully faced these demoniac legions were beaten down and flung to one side, helpless and stunned, whist the vast crowd rushed in. All the articles upon which they could seize- beds, bedding, carpets, furniture, the very garnebts of the fleeing inmates, some of these torn from their person as they sped by- were carried into the streets and hurried off by the women and children who stood ready to recieve the goods which their husbands, sons, and fathers flung to their care. The little ones, many of them assailed and beaten- all, orphans and caretakers, exposed to every indignity and every danger- driven on to the street, the building was fired. This had been attempted whist the helpless chidlren, some of them scares more than babies were still in their rooms; but this devilish consumation was prevented by one man. He, the chief of the fire department, strove by voice and arm to stay the endeavor; and when tovercome by superior numbers, the brands had been lit and piled, with naked hands and in the face of threatened death he tore asunder the glowing embers and trod them underfoot. Again the effort was made and again failed through the determined and heroic opposition of this solitary soul. Then on the front steps, in the midst of these drunken and infuriated thousands, he stood up and be sought them, if they cared nothing for themselves not for those hapless orphans, that they would not bring lasting disgrace upon the city by destroying one of its noblest chariteis, which had for its object nothing but good.

He was answered on all sides by yells and execrations nad frenzied shrieks of "Down with the nagurs" coupled with every oath and curse that malignatn hate of the blacks could devise and drunken Irish tongues could speak. It had been decreed that this building was to be razed to the ground. The house was fired in a thousand places, and in less than two hours the walls crashed in, a mass of smoking, blackened ruins, whilst the children wandered through the streets, a prey to beings who were wild beasts in everything save the superior ingenuity of man to agonize and torture his, victims"

Politics and History

If Massachusetts wants to ensure continuity of senate representation, they should start planning to hold a special election given the gravity of Sen. Kennedy's diagnosis. There have been questions in the past concerning Supreme Court Justices at times, Douglas and Fortas I believe.... Granted this was because of a stroke , but tumors can have a similar effect. Gov. Patrick should start soliciting candidates to finish Sen. Kennedy's term posthaste, before his health potentially impairs or call into question votes...

I must say though, Gov. Patterson's eye surgery took me completely by surprise. I'm glad all is well there.

Today I was rereading Bryan Perrett's book Last Stand! Famous Battles Against the Odds, and he raises the point that the last stand was not a common aspect of warfare until the Napoleonic age. Agree? Disagree? Why ?

Your main course follows...


Part Two: Anna Dickinson

As quoted in Commager/Bruun's The Civil War Archive

"As the smoke cleared away there was a general and ferocious onslaught upon the armory; curses, oathes, revilings, hideous and aobscene blasphemy, with terible yells and cries, filled the air in every accent of the English tongue save that spoken by a native American.. Such were there mingled wit hthe sea of sound, but they were so few and weak as to be unoticeable in the roar of voices. The paving stones flew like hail until the street was torn into gaps and ruts and every windowpane and sash and doorway was smashed or broken. Meanwhile divers at tempts were made to fire the building but failed through haste or ineffectual materials or the vigilant watchfulness of the besieged. In the midstr of this gallant defense word was brought to the defenders from headquarters that nothign could be done for their support and that if they would save their lives they must make a quick and orderly retreat. Fortunately there was a side passage with which the mob was unacquainted, and one by one they succeeded in gaining this and vanishing.
THe work was begun, continued gathering in force and fury as the wday wore on. Poltice stations, enrolling offices, rooms or buidlings used in any way by government aauthority or obnoxious as represeenting the dignity of law, were gutted, destroyed, then left to th e mercy of the flames. Newspaper offices whose issues had been a fire in the rear of the nation's armies by extenuating and defending treason and through violent and incendiary appears stirring up "lewd fellows of the baser sort"to this very carnival of ruin and blood were cheered as the crowd went by. Those that had been faithful to loyalty and law were hooted, stoned, and even stormed by the army of miscreants, who were only driven off by the gallant and determined charge of the police and in one place by the equally gallant and certainly unique defense of turning the boiling water from the engines upon the howling wretches, who, unprepared, for any such warm reception as this, beat a precipitate and general retreat. Before night fell it was no longer one vast crowd collected in a single section, but great numbers of gatherings, scattered over the length and breadth of the city. some of them engaged in actual work of demolition and ruin, others, with clubs and weapons in their hands, prowling round apparantly with no definit atrocity to perpertrate, but ready for any iniquity that might offer, and, by way of pastime, chasing every stray police officer or solitary soldier or inoffensive Negro who crossed the line of their vision; thees three objects- the badge of a defender of the law, the uniform of the Union army, the skin of a helpless and outraged race- acted upon these madmen as water acts upon a rabid dog. "

To be continued

Poll results

According to the Poll from this past week, 80 % of voters prefer military history.

What is it about military history that draws you in? Tactics? Strategy? Leaders? Battles? The what ifs? Don't forget to vote in my next poll...

Your excerpt of the day...

Anna Dickinson's description of the July 1863 draft riots in NYC... quoted from The Civil War Archive edited by Henry Steele Commager and revised and expanded by Erik Brunner

"On the morning of Monday, the thirteenth of July, began this oubreak, unparalleled in atrociities by anythign in American history and equaledonly by the hoorrors of the worsdt days of the French Revolution. Gangs of men and boys, composed of railroad employees , workers in machine shops,, and a vast crowd of those who lived by preying upon others, theives, pimps, professional ruffians, the scum of the city, jailbirds, or those who were running with swift feet to enter the prison doors, began to gather on the corners and in streets and alleys, where they lived; from thence issuing forth, they visited the great establishments on the line of their advance.. comandding their instant close and the companionship of the worksmen- many of them peaceful and orderly men- on pain of the destruction of one and murderous assault upon the other, did not their orders meet with instant compliance.
A body of these, five or six hundred strong, gathered about one of the enrolling offices in the upper part of the city, wherethe draft was quietly proceding, and opened the assault upon it by a shower of clubs, bricks, and paving stones torn from the streets, folling it up by a furious rush into the office. Lists, records, books,, the drafting wheel, every article of furniture or work in the room, was rent in pieces and strewn about the floor or flung into the streets, while the law officers, the newspaper reporters- who are expected to be everywhere- were compelled to make a hasty retreat through on opportune rear exit, accelerated by the curses and blows of the assailants.
A safe in the room, which contained some of the hated recors, was fallen upon by the men, qho strove to wrench open its impregnable lock with their naked hands, and baffled beat them on its iron doors and sides till they were stained with blood, in a mad frenzy of senseless hat and fury., And then, finiding every protable article destroyed- their thirst for ruin growing by the little drink it had had- and believing or rather hopping, that the officers had taken refuge in the upper rooms set fire the house and sttood watching the slow and steady lift of flamesfilling the are demoniac shrieks and yells, while they waited for the prey to escape from some door or window, from the merciless fire to their merciless hands. One of these, who was on the other side of the street, courageously stepped forward and, telling them that they had utterly demolished alll they came to seek, informed them that helpless women and children were in the house and besouught them to extinguish the flames and leave the ruined premises- to disperse or to at least seek some other scene.

By his dress recognizing in him a government official, so far from hearing or heeding his humane appeal, they set upon him with sticks and clubs and beat him till his eyes were blind with blood, and he, bruised and mangled, succeedded in escaping to the handful of police who stood helpless before this howling crew , now increased to thousands. With difficulty and pain the inoffensive tenants escaped from the rapidly spreading fire, which having devoured the house originally lighted, swept across the neighboring buidligns till the whole block stood a mass of buring flames. The firemen came up tardily and reluctantly, many of them of the same class as the miscreants who surrounded them and who cheered at their approach, but either made no attept to perform their duty or so feeble and farcical a one as to bring disgrace upon a service they so generally honor and enoble.

At last, when there was here nothing more to accomplish the mob swollen to a frightful size, including myriods of wretched, drunken women and the half-grown vagabond boys of the pavements, rushed throught the intervening streets, stopping cars and insulting peaceable citizens on their way, to an armory where were manufactured and stored carbines and guns for the government. In anticipation of the attack, this, earlier in the day had been fortified by a police squad capable of coping wit htan ordingary crowd of ruffieans, but as the chaff before fire in the presence of these murderous thousands. Here, as before, the attacke was begun by a rain of missiles gathered from the streets, less fatal, doubtlesss, than more civilized arms, but frightful in the ghastly wounds and injuries they inflicted. Of this no notice was taken by those who were stationed within. It was repeated. At last, finding they were treated with contemptuous silence and that no sign of surrender was offered the crowd swayed back, then forward, in a combined attempt to force the wide entrance to the doors. Heavy hammers and sledges which had been brought from forgeds and workshops, caught up hastily as they gathered the mechanics into their ranks, were used with frightful violence to beat them in at last successfully. The foremost assailants began to climb the stairs but were checked and for the moment driven back by the fire of the officers, who at last had been commanded to resort to their revolvers. A half score fell wounded and one who had been acting in some sort as their leader- a big, brutal Irish ruffian- dropped dead.

The pause was but for an instant. ...."

To Be Continued....
http://history-forums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1016

From my native Long Island... I doubt Gov. Stuyvessant took it well.

the document below can be found at http://www.nyym.org/flushing/remons.html

Right Honorable
You have been pleased to send unto us a certain prohibition or command that we should not receive or entertain any of those people called Quakers because they are supposed to be, by some, seducers of the people. For our part we cannot condemn them in this case, neither can we stretch out our hands against them, for out of Christ God is a consuming fire, and it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Wee desire therefore in this case not to judge least we be judged, neither to condemn least we be condemned, but rather let every man stand or fall to his own Master. Wee are bounde by the law to do good unto all men, especially to those of the household of faith. And though for the present we seem to be unsensible for the law and the Law giver, yet when death and the Law assault us, if wee have our advocate to seeke, who shall plead for us in this case of conscience betwixt God and our own souls; the powers of this world can neither attach us, neither excuse us, for if God justifye who can condemn and if God condemn there is none can justifye.
And for those jealousies and suspicions which some have of them, that they are destructive unto Magistracy and Ministerye, that cannot bee, for the Magistrate hath his sword in his hand and the Minister hath the sword in his hand, as witnesse those two great examples, which all Magistrates and Ministers are to follow, Moses and Christ, whom God raised up maintained and defended against all enemies both of flesh and spirit; and therefore that of God will stand, and that which is of man will come to nothing. And as the Lord hath taught Moses or the civil power to give an outward liberty in the state, by the law written in his heart designed for the good of all, and can truly judge who is good, who is evil, who is true and who is false, and can pass definitive sentence of life or death against that man which arises up against the fundamental law of the States General; soe he hath made his ministers a savor of life unto life and a savor of death unto death.
The law of love, peace and liberty in the states extending to Jews, Turks and Egyptians, as they are considered sons of Adam, which is the glory of the outward state of Holland, soe love, peace and liberty, extending to all in Christ Jesus, condemns hatred, war and bondage. And because our Saviour sayeth it is impossible but that offences will come, but woe unto him by whom they cometh, our desire is not to offend one of his little ones, in whatsoever form, name or title hee appears in, whether Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist or Quaker, but shall be glad to see anything of God in any of them, desiring to doe unto all men as we desire all men should doe unto us, which is the true law both of Church and State; for our Saviour sayeth this is the law and the prophets.
Therefore if any of these said persons come in love unto us, we cannot in conscience lay violent hands upon them, but give them free egresse and regresse unto our Town, and houses, as God shall persuade our consciences, for we are bounde by the law of God and man to doe good unto all men and evil to noe man. And this is according to the patent and charter of our Towne, given unto us in the name of the States General, which we are not willing to infringe, and violate, but shall houlde to our patent and shall remaine, your humble subjects, the inhabitants of Vlishing.
Written this 27th of December in the year 1657, by mee.
Edward Hart, Clericus
Additional Signers
Tobias Feake
Nathaniell Tue
The marke of William Noble
Nicholas Blackford
William Thorne, Seignior
The marke of Micah Tue
The marke of William Thorne, Jr.
The marke of Philip Ud
Edward Tarne
Robert Field, senior
John Store
Robert Field, junior
Nathaniel Hefferd
Nich Colas Parsell
Benjamin Hubbard
Michael Milner
The marke of William Pidgion
Henry Townsend
The marke of George Clere
George Wright
Elias Doughtie
John Foard
Antonie Feild
Henry Semtell
Richard Stocton
Edward Hart
Edward Griffine
John Mastine
John Townesend
Edward Farrington

What I'm reading

I've finished Forever and am now reading Robert McCammon's Speaks the Nightbird. Late 17th Century southern. Charles Town's answer to Salem... I'm only 250 pages in but an excellent read so far.

I'm seeing many similarities between McCammon and Hamill, dialogue, pacing, command of content among them. The fact that the protagonist is but three years younger than myself



When you read History, fiction or non-fiction, what do you look for?



Like many, I need a hook in those first few pages. If I cannot feel a connection with the characters or get engaged with the content about to be covered, an author will not hold my interest.

Finally:

A major pet peeve of mine is when the author decides to use the book itself in lieu of maps. There are two big reasons why this aggravates me to no end. First, the libraries inevitably screw you out of half a page by putting the card on the back cover instead of on the last actual page. Secondly, rather than remove the applicable book covers, they glue them to the book itself, rendering even more of the potential maps useless...

What drives you up the wall in terms of books?

I took a walk around the village I live in earlier tonight. It seems to me there is no common ground, no plaza to amble around and meet up with people. It lacks a social center. It's two street business district used to serve that function, but we've grown too big. The village has almost 20,000 people living in it. Small enough to see a lot of familiar faces, but the days of a neighbor telling your parents that you were causing trouble are long gone.

Many of the village's young people have left, because they cannot afford the cost of living here. Here I am, 20 minutes from Manhattan but similar to a retired jockey, have no stake in the race. The borough we were once a part of, shrugged us off when we were no more than flea infested farmland. The real laugh is my county is down to a single working farm. Suburban but without the necessary rail/mass transit links to make intra county commuting, except by car, effective.

Similar to the Roman empire, the very forces that gave birth to the opportunities my family took advantage of, is now threatening to extinguish that opportunity.