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 30
This ethereal maiden
surely makes
Absinthe seem
appealing. But what
about the ensuing
“unethereal” hangover?

2 AMERICAN HISTORY
 Autumn 2023

FEATURES
30 ‘Death in the Afternoon’
Glowing green Absinthe caused a stir wherever it was
poured, from France to New Orleans.
By Jesse Hicks

46 38 ‘Collections of Human Bones’

Thomas Jefferson had enslaved workers dig up a burial
mound that belonged to the Monacan tribe.
By Rick Britton

54 46 Black Broadway
African American performers cut their own paths to
become Broadway stars.
By Daniel B. Moskowitz

54 Hot Air
Daring dirigible pilots floated all over the country,
sputtering above capitals and county fairs.
By Bruce W. Dearstyne

DEPARTMENTS
6 Letters
8 Mosaic
Live in a Lighthouse!
16 Innovations
Instant Messaging
18 American Schemers Thomas Jefferson
displayed all sorts of
James Michael Curley unearthed treasures

26 20 Déjà Vu
Jailbird Politicians
24 Interview
in Monticello’s entry
hall.—see page 38

ON THE COVER:
The Heart of Reconstruction The night is young as
this gent eagerly
26 American Place takes his first drink
Birth of the Factory Town of Absinthe. Wonder
29 Editorial how he felt a few
hours later?
62 Terra Firma
Where Meat Was Made
64 Reviews
A Tale of One Bad Human
COVER: DAVID NATHAN-MAISTER/SSPL (GETTY IMAGES), PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN WALKER; OPPOSITE: LIBRARY
OF CONGRESS; THIS PAGE, BOTTOM: LOWELL NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
72 Toy Box
Native American Doll

AUTUMN 2023 3
VISIT HISTORYNET.COM
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owners-vs-players-unions
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PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA

From Sea to Shining Sea
As you are reading this, you may very well get a text message or an
e-mail sent by a relative or friend on vacation containing an image of a
site they are enjoying. For decades before such technology
Letters was available, however, that news would have been spread
by postcard. “Dear [insert name], Having a wonderful time
at [insert location]. Wish you were here!”
Enjoy the above postcards celebrating some of America’s iconic his-
toric locations. Where are you traveling this summer? What historic
6 AMERICAN HISTORY
TOP LEFT: UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO; CENTER LEFT: GRAPHICAARTS (GETTY IMAGES); BOTTOM LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; CENTER RIGHT AND BOTTOM RIGHT: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE (2)
sites have you seen? Shoot us an e-mail, add a pic-
ture if you wish, and let us know where you’ve
been. Wherever it is, we here at American History
hope it was picture-postcard perfect.
American History readers wanting to pillory,
praise, or query the publication: write to us at
americanhistory@historynet.com
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 Worth a Move?
Own Your Own
Lighthouse
You Can Live Here!
The Nobska lighthouse in
Cape Cod, Mass., is just one
of the unique properties the
federal government is giving
away to caring stewards.

IF YOU’VE EVER DREAMED of owning a lighthouse (and, honestly,
who hasn’t?), now is your chance! The U.S. government is giving away
10 of its shorelines’ lighthouses, rendered obsolete by new technolo-
gies. The aim of the program, run by the General Services Administra-
tion, is to preserve the properties, most of which are more
Mosaic than a century old.
In 2000, Congress passed the National Historic Light-
house Preservation Act, and the GSA has been transferring ownership
of lighthouses ever since. About 150 lighthouses have been transferred,
80 or so given away, and another 70 auctioned, raising more than $10
million.
This year, six lighthouses are being offered at no cost to federal, state
or local government agencies, nonprofits, educational organizations, or
other entities that are willing to maintain and preserve them and make
them publicly available for educational, recreational, or cultural
purposes.
They include the 34-foot-tall Plymouth/Gurnet Light in Massachu-
setts. The octagonal wooden structure dates to
1842, although a lighthouse has been at the site
since 1768; Warwick Neck Light, in Warwick, R.I.;
Lynde Point lighthouse in Old Saybrook, Conn.,
Nobska lighthouse in Falmouth, Mass.; Little
Mark Island and Monument in Harpswell,
Maine; and Erie Harbor North Pier lighthouse in
Pennsylvania.
Four additional lighthouses will be sold at auc-
tion and include Cleveland Harbor West Pier-
head light, Ohio; Penfield Reef lighthouse in
Fairfield, Conn.; Stratford Shoal light in the mid-
dle of Long Island Sound between New York and
Connecticut; and Keweenaw Waterway Lower
Entrance light in Chassell, Mich. Some of the
previously sold lighthouses have been converted
to private residences. –Melissa A. Winn

8 AMERICAN HISTORY
 The remains of 14 Revolutionary War soldiers were honored in Camden, S.C., and received a ceremonial military tribute
on April 22, 2023. The soldiers were killed at the Battle of Camden on August 16, 1780. Their remains were discovered and
excavated 242 years later, on the Camden Battlefield in Fall 2022. Twelve of the bodies found were Patriot Continental sol-
diers, one possibly a North Carolina Loyalist, and one fought for the British 71st Regiment

Military of Foot, Fraser’s Highlanders.

South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust CEO Doug Bostick put the dig into

Funeral perspective: “When these young men marched into the darkness on that summer night in
1780, they did so out of love for their country....Our intent is to lay them to rest with the
respect and honor they earned more than two centuries ago.”
The excavations began September 2022 and lasted eight weeks. The SCBPT in April held three days of ceremonies to
honor and re-inter the soldiers’ remains. Hundreds of people, including South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster,
attended the burial ceremony.
SCBPT also released initial biological profiles of the 14 soldiers. Five were teenagers, a discovery that says quite a bit
about the composition of the Continental Lines from Maryland as they made their way with Baron de Kalb to engage in
the Southern Campaigns. The oldest was estimated to be 40–50 years old. They ranged in stature from 5-foot-2 to more
than 6 feet tall, with many being in the range of 5-foot-7. Although not all of the soldiers revealed evidence of traumatic
injury, others were uncovered with clear evidence of battle injuries from musket balls and buckshot.

‘Let Freedom Ring’

OPPOSITE PAGE: FAINA GUREVICH (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); THIS PAGE: PHOTO BY ALLEN RIDDICK; RIGHT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan announced in

June that the National Archives will place the Emancipation Procla-
mation on permanent display in the Rotunda of the National
Archives Building in Washington, D.C., with the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of
Rights.
“When President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proc-
lamation on January 1, 1863, he wrote that ‘all persons held as slaves
within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and hencefor-
ward shall be free,’’’ Shogan quoted. “Although the full privileges of
freedom were not immediately bestowed upon all Americans with
Lincoln’s order, I am proud that the National Archives will enshrine
this seminal document for public display adjacent to our nation’s
founding documents,” she said.
The National Archives will commence an assessment to deter-
mine the best display environment considering the condition and
importance of the original document. The current plan for display
calls for showing one side of the Emancipation Proclamation, a dou-
ble-sided five-page document, alongside facsimiles of the reverse
pages. The original pages on display will be rotated on a regular basis
to limit light exposure.

AUTUMN 2023 9
 In May 2023, Dry Tortugas National Park, Fla., announced it had discov-
ered the remains of a 19th-century quarantine hospital and cemetery on a
submerged island. While only one grave has been identified, historical
records indicate that dozens of people may have been buried there. The
small quarantine hospital, identified as the Fort Jefferson Post Cemetery,
was used to treat yellow fever patients between 1890 and 1900.
In August 2022, park cultural resources staff, assisted by members of
the National Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center, the Southeast
Archeological Center, and a University of Miami graduate student con-
ducted a survey that led to the findings.
According to their research, dozens of people were interred in the cem-
etery, and while most of them were military members serving or impris-
oned at the fort, several were civilians. John Greer was employed as a
laborer at the fort and died there on November 5, 1861. His grave, located
during the survey, was marked with a slab of greywacke, the same material
used to construct the first floor of Fort Jefferson. The slab was carved into
the shape of a headstone and inscribed with his name and date of death.
“This intriguing find highlights the potential
for untold stories in Dry Tortugas National
Park, both above and below the water,” said
Josh Marano, maritime archaeologist and proj-
ect director for the survey. “We are actively
working to tell the stories of the enslaved peo-
ple, women, children, and civilian laborers.”
While mostly known for its use as a military
prison during the Civil War, the islands and
waters surrounding Fort Jefferson were also
used for a naval coaling outpost, lighthouse
station, naval hospital, quarantine facility, and
more generally for safe harbor and military
training.
+ONLINE EXTRA! More photos and video
available at bit.ly/DryTortugasSurprise

Submerged
Surprise

Resting Place in the Deep

An underwater archaeologist records
data from the submerged Fort
Jefferson Post Cemetery.

What is It?
NPS PHOTO; DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION; NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
What was this device, often
found in 18th- and 19th-century
American homes, used for?
Be the first person to email the correct answer to
dshoaf@historynet.com subject heading “light,” and your
name will be posted with a description of the item.

Answer to
last issue’s
What is It?
Congratulations to Lance Negley, Peoria, Ill., who correctly
identified a timber scribe. The tool was used to carve numerals
into logs or timbers used in framing a house. Frames were often
assembled on the ground, and the scribe was used to score Roman
numerals into matching pieces for proper reassembly.

10 AMERICAN HISTORY
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Soul Food
Historic Boston Inc. recently unveiled the completed 1912
Upham’s Corner Comfort Station in Boston’s Dorchester neigh-
borhood after a $1.9 million rehabilitation project that converted
the long abandoned former public bathroom building into a
full-service restaurant.
Preservation The restaurant, Comfort Kitchen,
Coast to Coast above, owned by four local Dorchester res-
idents, features “comfort food” of the Afri-
can and Asian diasporas and emphasizes the importance of
immigration to the food and restaurant industry.
Historic Boston Inc. was designated by the City of Boston to
redevelop the Comfort Station in 2015. Through shared networks,
HBI and Comfort Kitchen’s partners met and agreed to work
together to restore the building for a restaurant and café.
Labor of Love Preservation Maryland’s national work-
force development program The Campaign for Historic Trades is
leading the national movement to strengthen and expand historic
trades careers, providing all tradespeople with clear pathways,
secure employment, and accessible education. The Campaign is
currently creating numerous open-education training resources
that will be available online in both English and Spanish. Partner-
ing with the Centro de Conservación y Restauración de Puerto
Rico, Inc., The Campaign is working to translate existing printed
educational materials, as well as video assets, into Spanish.
Instructional videos will also include audio transcriptions and
subtitles so both English and Spanish speakers can use the pres-
ervation training resources.
‘Moving on Up’ Preservation Buffalo Niagara has teamed
up with the Empire State Development “East Side Avenues” pro-
gram to provide $5 million in stabilization funds for the East Side
of Buffalo, NY. The program provides up to $150,000 per appli-
cant to complete critical structural work repairs to help stop fur-
ther decay and prevent demolition. In 2023, the groups are
working to distribute nearly $2 million of the fund to building
12 AMERICAN HISTORY
Comfort Kitchen,
Dorchester, Mass.
owners. Submitted project applications are
reviewed and prioritized based on: property
location, National Register eligibility, likeli-
hood of future redevelopment, urgency of
stabilization measures, impact on the neigh-
borhood, community support, the appli-
cant’s residency, the applicant’s development
experience, and preservation easement:
Building owners who are willing to enter into
a 10-year preservation easement on the
property with Preservation Buffalo Niagara
are given preference.
Gimme Shelter Since 1926, Billy
Webb Elks Lodge has served African Ameri-
cans in Portland, Ore., as a Black YWCA,
USO center, refuge for those displaced by the
1948 Vanport flood, NAACP headquarters,
Urban League and Congress of Racial Equal-
ity meeting place, and as Black Elks Lodge at
a time when the Elks prohibited Black mem-
bership. In 2020, the preservation organiza-
tion Restore Oregon listed the lodge as an
Oregon Most Endangered Place.
In September 2021, a fire left the building
uninhabitable. Restore Oregon is assisting
the Billy Webb Elks Lodge with technical
support, project management, and fundrais-
ing. The lodge recently received a $140,000
grant award from the African American Cul-
tural Heritage Action Fund to hire staff and a
COURTESY OF COMFORT KITCHEN (2)
$20,000 grant from Oregon Heritage to
restore its historic wood windows. Addi-
tional local funding requests are in process,
and construction was scheduled to begin this
summer.
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 TOP BID

Picture
Perfect
There is poise and pride evident in this 1870s–1880s tintype of
an elderly African American woman. When she was born, slav-
ery was the law of the land. By the time she left this mortal coil,
it had been abolished by a costly war, but her race still had a
long way to go for equality. She is unidentified, so we don’t
know if she was ever enslaved or born free. We’re left to gaze at
her Mona Lisa–like smile and wonder how she was impacted by
the massive social changes through which she lived.
Bounty
Hunter
$10,000
In 1977, the release of the movie “Star Wars”
produced a seismic shift in pop culture, estab-
lishing a zealous fan base. A large factor in the
movie’s explosive popularity was the accompa-
nying partnership with Kenner to create a toy
line, bringing the movie’s iconic heroes and
villains into every young kid’s home. One of
the series’ most celebrated characters remains
Boba Fett. His legendary feud with the sarcas-
tic pilot Han Solo is a favorite storyline. Who
doesn’t immediately conjure up the image of
Solo encased in a block of carbonite when they
hear Boba Fett’s famed quip, “Put Captain Solo
in the cargo hold.” His action figure, released
in 1979 even before the premiere of his debut
in “Empire Strikes Back,” flew off shelves and
was often hard to find. The lucky purchaser of
this prize must have foretold its future value
and maintained its pristine condition, in the
packaging. This one sold at auction June 8 for
$10,000. In 2019, a 1979 prototype Boba Fett
action figure that was never mass-produced,
sold for $185,850—shattering the previous
world record of $112,926.

In celebration of the 250th anniversary of American independence in

2026, the National Archives and the National Park Service are collaborat-
ing to transcribe Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Appli-
cations Based on Revolutionary War Service, ca.

Copy 1800–ca. 1912. The Revolutionary War Pension Files

contain applications and other records pertaining to
FROM TOP: HEIDI CAMPBELL-SHOAF COLLECTION; HERITAGE AUCTIONS

That claims for pensions and bounty land warrants. The

records could contain valuable details such as rank,
unit, period of service, age, residence, date and place
of marriage, and date and place of death of spouse. Some records may also
contain copies of marriage or other family records, information pertain-
ing to military activities or details about soldiers’ lives, along with letters,
diaries, family trees, or even photographs.
The project is one of many transcription missions of the National
Archives as part of the Citizen Archivist program.

+To learn more or start transcribing: archives.gov/citizen-archivist/

missions/revolutionary-war-pension-files

14 AMERICAN HISTORY
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 Dots and Dashes
ON FEBRUARY 7, 1825, Samuel Morse’s wife, Lucretia, died suddenly,
at the age of 25, while Morse was working in Washington, D.C. By the
time he was notified by letter and had returned home to New Haven,
Conn., she had already been buried.
Perhaps motivated by his regret, in the early
Innovations 1830s, Morse began perfecting his version of an
electric telegraph and, with the help of researchers
Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail, produced a single-circuit version. By
pushing a key, the operator sent an electric signal across a wire to a
receiver at the other end. Soon thereafter, Morse and Vail developed
the code that would translate the pulses and silences to language.
On May 24, 1844, Morse sent his first telegraph message, from
Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Md.: “What hath God wrought!”
Indeed. Its invention forever changed communication, and with it,
16 AMERICAN HISTORY
transformed everything. A message, a military
order, a money transfer, a piece of news, that
once took weeks to deliver by horse and carriage,
could now be exchanged almost instantly.
On April 11, 1846, the patent shown here speci-
fied a combination of devices to move and mark a
paper roll to record the incoming message; and,
more importantly, the use of a magnet in the
telegraph receiver to amplify the current,
enabling the telegraph to receive messages over
longer lines—a long-distance call.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
By 1866, the first permanent telegraph cable
had been successfully laid across the Atlantic
Ocean.— Melissa A. Winn
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 Boston Baked Bunco Artist
by Peter Carlson
JAMES MICHAEL CURLEY’S first arrest came in 1903, when he was a
28-year-old Massachusetts state legislator. He was charged with con-
spiring to “defraud the United States” for taking the federal Civil Ser-
vice exam while pretending to be one of his constituents, an Irish
immigrant who hoped to become a mailman.
“He couldn’t spell Constantinople,” Curley explained,
American “but he had wonderful feet for a letter carrier.” Sen-
Schemers tenced to two months in jail, Curley responded by run-
ning for Boston alderman on the slogan, “He did it for a
friend.” He won easily.
Curley’s second arrest came in 1943, when he was a 68-year-old con-
gressman charged with mail fraud in a scheme to extract bribes from
companies seeking federal contracts. “I’m being persecuted,” he said, by
“Communists and radical reformers.” Under indictment in 1944, he
won re-election to Congress. Awaiting trial in 1945, he was elected
mayor of Boston. Convicted in 1946, he served as mayor while serving
18 AMERICAN HISTORY
time in a Connecticut prison.
In the 40 years between sojourns in the hoose-
gow, Curley was elected mayor of Boston four
times, governor of Massachusetts once, and con-
gressman four times. For half a century, he domi-
nated the state’s politics with his pungent wit, his
orotund oratory, his Machiavellian shrewdness—
and the support of working-class Irish Americans
ED FARRAND/THE BOSTON GLOBE (GETTY IMAGES)
who saw him as the embodiment of their hopes.
And he lived to see himself portrayed as a lovable
rogue in the best-selling novel The Last Hurrah,
and played by Spencer Tracy in the 1958 movie
version.
Son of Irish immigrants, James Michael Curley
was born in Boston in 1874. His father, a laborer,
died when James was 10. To help his mother, a
 All Smiles for St. Patrick
Decked out in a raccoon fur coat, James M.
Curley hands out flowers during a 1947 St.
Patrick’s Day parade. His wife, Gertrude, is
seated next to him, and in the front seat is
Edward McCormack wearing his uniform.
scrubwoman, support the family, James began
working at 11, selling newspapers. He quit school
at 15 to work in a piano factory, then finished high
school at night, while spending his days deliver-
ing groceries by horse and wagon.
Eager to enter politics, he volunteered to run
social activities at a Catholic church and worked
for the Ancient Order of Hibernians—thus build-
ing a political base among the Boston Irish. In
1899, he won a seat on the city’s Common Coun-
cil, running as a Democrat, the party of Boston’s
immigrants, and entertaining Irish voters by
mocking the “Boston Brahmin” elite as old, weary
has-beens with “dogs and no children.”
He created a political organization, “The Tam-
many Club,” named after New York’s Democratic
machine, and organized picnics and Christmas
parties for the poor. He did favors for constitu-
ents—providing a meal or a job and, as we’ve seen,
taking a Civil Service exam “for a friend.” He
recorded each favor in a notebook, expecting
recipients to thank him with their votes. And they
did, electing Curley state representative in 1902,
alderman in 1904, and congressman in 1910.
Three years later, he was elected mayor, using
a trick so outrageous it became legendary. Curley
learned that the incumbent mayor, John “Honey
Fitz” Fitzgerald—the grandfather of President
Kennedy—was having a fling with a barmaid nick-
named “Toodles.” A Curley crony informed the
mayor’s wife of the affair in a letter, demanding
that Fitzgerald withdraw from the race. But Fitz-
gerald refused, so Curley announced his plan to
deliver a public lecture titled “Great Lovers in
History: From Cleopatra to Toodles.” Fitzgerald
quit and Curley won.
As mayor, Curley exhibited the political phi-
losophy that would continue all his life—a proto-
New Deal two decades before FDR’s election.
Calling himself “the mayor of the poor,” he spent
city money hiring workers to pave roads, expand
the city hospital and build schools, sewers and
playgrounds. He cut the pay of the highest-paid
city workers, and raised the pay of the lowest.
Recalling his mother’s years scrubbing floors on
her hands and knees, he famously issued
long-handled mops to City Hall’s scrubwomen,
declaring that no woman should go down on her
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
knees except to pray.
“Government was not created to save money
and to cut debt, but to take care of people,” he
said. “That’s my theory of government.”
He did take care of people—
but not nearly as lavishly as he
took care of himself. Curley
was as crooked as a pretzel. He
forced city employees to fund
his campaigns by purchasing
tickets to Tammany Club din-
ners. He signed sweetheart
deals giving city contractors
huge profits, provided that
they split the booty with him.
He hardly bothered to hide
his graft. Bostonians watched
James
as construction companies Curley
with lucrative city contracts
built Curley a 21-room,
10,000 square foot, neo-Geor-
gian mansion with marble
fireplaces—and charged him
next to nothing.
“Even his core voters knew Curley was dis-
honest,” Jack Beatty wrote in his excellent Curley was
Curley biography, The Rascal King. “For many crooked as a
Bostonians, his good works would ever stay
their dudgeon at his bad deeds.”
pretzel. He
In 1934, Curley was elected governor. As he forced city
had done in Boston, he hired the unemployed employees
to build roads and schools. But he also purged
the state Finance Commission, which was to fund his
investigating corruption in Boston’s govern- campaigns
ment, a subject Curley preferred to keep hid-
den. He fired one member, appointed another to a judgeship, and replaced
both with toadies uninterested in investigating their boss.
For lesser jobs, Curley appointed cronies. His chauffeur got a state job; so
did his gardener. A man who had served time for forgery was hired as an
auditor. Curley also displayed unusual sympathy for prisoners, pardoning
or paroling 254 on Christmas Day 1935—an act of mercy inspired by gener-
ous gifts to the governor from the prisoners’ attorneys.
Soon, newspapers and magazines began attacking Curley’s corrupt
regime. “Governor Curley appears to be suffering now from delusions of
grandeur,” a Springfield Union editorial charged, “and sees himself becom-
ing dictator of this Commonwealth a la Huey Long.”
Realizing he couldn’t win re-election in 1936, Curley ran for the Senate
instead, but he was trounced by Republican Henry Cabot Lodge. In 1937
and 1941, he ran for mayor of Boston but lost both races.
He seemed finished, an aging relic of a bygone era. But in 1942, Boston
voters elected him to Congress, and in 1946 they elected him mayor. After
spending five months of his term in federal prison, he ran for mayor three
more times, though never winning again.
He was 82 and sickly in 1956, when Edwin O’Connor published The Last
Hurrah, his novel about a very Curley-esque politician. Curley loved the
book but sued to prevent release of the movie version, claiming it violated
his privacy. The producers responded that they had already paid him
$25,000 for his permission. Curley denied ever receiving their money or
giving his permission. Anxious to avoid a lengthy court battle and eager to
premier the movie in Boston, the studio paid Curley another $15,000.
That was his final scam, his last hurrah. When he died, two months later,
100,000 mourners filed past his coffin. +
AUTUMN 2023 19
 Arresting Politicians
by Richard Brookhiser
DONALD TRUMP launched his third campaign for the White House
amid a blizzard of legal investigations. In New York City, he was
indicted for falsifying business records to conceal hush money pay-
ments to porn star Stormy Daniels. He was also slapped with two civil
lawsuits: one for fraudulently overvaluing his assets; a second for
defaming advice columnist E. Jean Carroll when he denounced her
belated claim that he had raped her in 1996.
Déjà Vu In Georgia, a grand jury pondered whether he had vio-
lated state election laws by fielding a slate of bogus
Trump electors after Joe Biden won the state en route to the presi-
dency in 2020, or by pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad
Raffensberger to “find” the votes he needed for him to win it. The FBI
wanted to know why documents labeled “Top Secret” had been squir-
reled away at his Palm Beach home Mar-a-Lago, while Justice Depart-
ment special counsel Jack Smith grilled a raft of witnesses to his alleged
attempts (not just in Georgia) to overturn his 2020 loss. Smith’s bag
included his veep Mike Pence.
Donald Trump likes to define himself in
superlatives: biggest, richest, best. But he is Big House to Big Time
Frequent jailbird
not the first politician to seek office under a
James Michael Curley
legal cloud. For example, James Michael bends the ear of
Curley, four-time Boston mayor and all- President Franklin D.
time symbol of the big city Democratic pol, Roosevelt in 1936.
20 AMERICAN HISTORY
got an early boost from a jail sentence. Curley
was the son of poor Irish Catholic immigrants.
Throughout his long career, he pitched himself as
the champion of his ethno-religious clan and
class of origin, steering gifts, jobs and public
works to friends and followers (and kickbacks to
himself ). He proclaimed his good intentions in a
rich, rolling voice that one drama critic com-
pared to actress Tallulah Bankhead’s.
At the dawn of the 20th century, Curley won
elections to the lower houses of the Boston and
Massachusetts legislatures. But in October 1902
he pushed the politics of generosity too far: he
took a civil service exam for a would-be letter car-
rier who doubted he could pass it himself. In Sep-
tember 1903, the impersonator was convicted in
federal district court of “conspiring…to defraud
the United States,” and sentenced to two months
in prison. Nothing daunted, Curley turned the
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
verdict into a campaign slogan. He ran for the
Board of Aldermen, the upper house of the Bos-
ton legislature, that November, boasting of his
bogus test-taking: “[H]e did it for a friend.” Curley
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was elected and, after his appeals had been exhausted, re-elected in Novem-
ber 1904 while serving his time in the Charles Street jail. “I read…every book
in the jail library,” he recalled, “and I made a lot of new friends among the
authors.” His flesh and blood friends propelled him, over the following
decade, to the U.S. House of Representatives, and his first term as mayor of
Boston.
Another jail house office seeker was Eugene V. Debs, whose fifth presi-
dential race was run behind bars.
Debs’ parents, immigrants to Terre Haute, Ind., from Alsace, named him
after French novelists Eugene Sue and Victor Hugo. But Debs’ political idols
were all-American: Tom Paine, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln. As a teen-
ager he worked as a fireman, or stoker, on train engines; as an adult he
became a labor journalist, a union organizer,
and the perennial presidential candidate of
Debs’ political the fledgling Socialist Party. Debs ran four
idols were times from 1900 to 1912, barnstorming the
all-American: country.
One listener described the effect of his ora-
Tom Paine, tory. “When Debs says ‘comrade’ it is all right.
John Brown, He means it. That old man with the burning
Abraham eyes actually believes that there can be such a
thing as the brotherhood of man….As long as
Lincoln he’s around I believe it myself.” In the 1912
free for all between Woodrow Wilson (D),
Theodore Roosevelt (Bull Moose) and William Howard Taft (R), Debs
polled 900,000 votes for a respectable six percent.
The overriding issue of the decade became the World War (it was not yet
called I). True to socialism’s international spirit, Debs deplored America’s
entry: “the master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has
always fought the battles.” After a speech in Canton, Ohio, he was arrested
for encouraging resistance to the draft and sentenced to ten years in prison.
Debs’ concluding speech to the court was radical poetry. “While there is a
lower class I am in it; while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there
is a soul in prison I am not free.” Debs was imprisoned first in Moundville,
West Virginia, then in Atlanta. So it was that he ran his last presidential race
from the slammer. “It will be much less tiresome,” he joked, “and my man-
agers and opponents can always locate me.”
Although Debs had the sympathy of non-socialists who thought him ill-
treated, he polled barely more than he had in 1912, while his percentage of a
popular vote broadened by women’s suffrage fell to 3 percent. Americans
were tired of causes, foreign and domestic. New president Warren Harding
22 AMERICAN HISTORY
Try and Try Again
Eugene V. Debs exhorts an audience. Debs ran
five times as the Socialist Party candidate for
president, and was in jail during his last effort.
commuted Debs’ sentence to time served on
Christmas 1921.
James Michael Curley, after four decades in
and out of office in Massachusetts, had a second
stint in jail. This time the crime was mail fraud.
During World War II, Curley fronted a firm that
claimed to help small businessmen get defense
contracts, while in fact it only helped itself to its
clients’ retainers. Curley, indicted in September
1943, did not go to trial until November 1945. Late
in the interim he was elected to his fourth term as
mayor of Boston. “Curley gets things done!” was
the winning slogan.
Twelve days after his inauguration in January
1946, a jury in federal district court in Washing-
ton, D.C. found him guilty. He appealed all the way
to the Supreme Court, but in June 1947 the septu-
agenarian mayor was taken to Danbury, Conn., to
serve a six month sentence. He kept up a brave
front. “The guests at this hotel,” he wrote of his
fellow inmates, “give me cigars, oranges and razor
blades….I am fortunate to have friends every-
where I go.” But the prisoner suffered from diabe-
tes and a heart condition. President Harry
Truman knocked a month off his time at Thanks-
giving. The recidivist returned to City Hall.
Politicians in humiliating circumstances can
retain the loyalty of their supporters, and even
win elections, for a variety of reasons. Debs and
Curley both spoke for the aggrieved—burdened
workers, snubbed ethnics. Their personalities,
however different, conferred an aura upon them:
Debs the idealist, Curley (in biographer Jack
Beatty’s epithet) the rascal king. They were stars.
But they sought stardom—or seemed to seek it—
in the service of others. The others rewarded
them with their votes.
Debs ran no more races after he got out of jail.
He died in 1926, age 70, appealing for the con-
victed anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. Curley ran
for a fifth term as mayor, unsuccessfully, but won
something more important: a fictionalized, and
sanitized, account of his life as Frank Skeffington
in Edwin O’Connor’s best seller The Last Hurrah.
His favorite part, he told the author, was “where I
die.” He died in 1958, age 83.
At least one of Donald Trump’s legal cases will
never land him in jail. In May the jury in E. Jean
Carroll’s civil suit found Trump liable for sexual
abuse and defamation. If their verdict survives
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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ages. Even hard time might not end his political
career. You can be in the government and a guest
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 Bricks, Mortar, and Social Change.
Fingerprints of enslaved workers who built the Brick Baptist
Church on South Carolina’s St. Helena Island in 1855 can still be
seen on some bricks. In 1862, after the Union Army liberated the
Sea Islands, it became part of the Penn School for freedpeople.

Blueprint for Reconstruction

The Sea Islands set the example. But few places followed it
RECONSTRUCTION IS A TOUGH story to tell. The promise was so
great and the ending so disappointing. It’s hardly a surprise that it took
a century and a half to open a national historical park portraying what
happened. In January 2017, a site was established as a national monu-
ment and rededicated as Reconstruction Era National
Interview Historical Park in 2019. The location is in South Caroli-
by Carl na’s Sea Islands, where Reconstruction can be said to
Zebrowski have begun and for a long while succeeded. Rich Con-
don arrived as park ranger a year later, around the start
of the COVID-19 lockdown. The temporary closure of the National
Park Service site gave him time to acclimate to his new situation and to
the touchy subject matter with which he would be dealing.
The attempt to reconstruct the South after the Civil War
and the freeing of the slaves didn’t go according to plan.
But what was that plan? What were the goals at the start?
Here in the South Carolina Sea Islands, U.S. troops arrived in November
1861. They drive out a large portion of Confederate troops and White
newly freed African American men. You have the
start of the 1st South Carolina Volunteer Infantry,
the first Black regiment to don the U.S. Army uni-
form. Things like land ownership and labor
reform. All that’s part of Reconstruction.
What’s special about this site is that all that
stuff happens here starting in 1862 through the
rest of the war, when it isn’t really happening in
many other places throughout the South. This
becomes what historians have called a rehearsal
for Reconstruction. All those goals are outlined
here, and they attempt to execute them during the
postwar period in many other places across the
South. The success rate varies. Here, it’s a massive
success. It takes hold and lasts probably the lon-
gest of anywhere.
How did the grand designs for
COURTESY RICH CONDON (2)

plantation owners. What’s left are about 10,000 African Americans.
They make up 85–90 percent of the population.
A lot of questions start to surface. The U.S. troops are being asked: Am
I free? Can I go to school? Can I carry a rifle? There are goals of provid-
ing education, building schools. There’s the goal of eventually arming
Reconstruction go wrong?
For a long time, Reconstruction was portrayed as
a failure. It wasn’t a failure. It was defeated. It was
dismantled and defeated in large part by groups
like the Ku Klux Klan, the Red Shirts, the White

24 AMERICAN HISTORY
League—groups of White supremacists who did
not want to see African Americans in U.S. Army
uniforms. Seeing them in a position of authority
didn’t sit well for people who used to call a lot of
these men “property.”
Reconstruction takes root and is doing well for
a while. In most places it’s lasting 12-plus years. If
you look at most definitions of Reconstruction,
people look at it beginning with the end of the
Civil War in 1865 and the passing of the 13th
Amendment abolishing slavery and ending about
1877, when Rutherford B. Hayes is elected presi-
dent and pulls U.S. troops from the South.
Here we have a much broader definition. We
start in 1861 with the arrival of U.S. troops and we
extend it to about 1900, because even in the 1880s
and 1890s, there are Black public officials being
elected to office. Where it goes wrong is some of
these more isolated areas like the South Carolina
Upcountry, where you have the Klan presence—
White supremacist violence and voter intimida-
tion. In many parts of the North, White
Northerners were losing interest in Reconstruc-
tion. All these are contributing factors to the pro-
cess going into a steady decline.
In the end, what were the most significant
changes, good and bad?
We see the legacy of Reconstruction in a lot of dif-
ferent places, even into the 20th and 21st cen-
tury. Some of the good changes: African American
land ownership. African American citizenship.
“Citizenship” was defined largely by Black U.S.
military veterans from the Civil War before 1868.
Before the passing of the 14th Amendment in
1868, “citizenship” was not clearly defined.
The bad side is that at the end of Reconstruc-
tion, you have the start of the Jim Crow era, which
lasts well into the 1960s. Here in South Carolina,
the 1868 state constitution was a restructuring of
society. It allowed African American men to vote.
It extended public education to everybody,
regardless of sex or race. Almost 30 years later, in
1895, a new constitution is passed in which segre-
gation is codified, in which African Americans are
seen as less than citizens and are largely disen-
franchised. This was happening across the South
at the end of the 19th century and in the early
20th century, and the ripple effects of that last
much longer than people like to remember.
This is one of the newest national
historical parks. Can you talk about
how it came to be?
There was plenty of interest in the local commu-
nity of having a park here addressing Reconstruc-
tion. Broad and diverse support ranged from
community leadership to churches to average
citizens. They have a vested interest in this story being told.
This site was established initially as a national monument through an
executive order in January 2017, and it becomes a national historical park in
March 2019. And really what that did was allow for the expansion of this
story. It allowed for the establishment of the Reconstruction Era National
Historic Network, which is operated by the park. We have national parks
across the country that are part of this network. We also have sites that are
not managed by the federal government that
have a Reconstruction story to tell. It allows this
story to become more familiar to people across
the nation.
How do you manage to maintain
a balance in your portrayal of
controversial subject matter like this?
We talk about the hopes and successes of
Reconstruction, but we also talk about the dis-
mantling, and that includes things like racial
violence, attacks on African Americans and
their allies in the South. We talk about the reac-
tions to things like African American progress,
to moving from the state of enslavement to Telling Powerful Stories
freedom to working toward equality. I think we Rich Condon has also
worked at the Flight 93
give it a fair treatment, which in other places it National Memorial in
had not been given in a long time. Shanksville, Pa.
I’ll note that we didn’t have a lot of violent
push back on the Sea Islands during Reconstruction. That’s because the
population remains about 90 percent African American, so you don’t have
groups like the Klan or the Red Shirts operating. You also didn’t have
bridges that connect these islands to the mainland until the 1920s.
Can you describe briefly what’s most important about
each of the distinct sites that make up the park?
We have three, you could say three or four, sites. We have our main visitor
center in downtown Beaufort. There is a plethora of things we can cover
here, one of them being African American financial autonomy. The Freed-
man’s Bank, one of the first in the nation, is still standing. We can talk about
land ownership and labor reform. The majority of the homes and lots in this
area are African American–owned by 1864–1865.
Out on Saint Helena Island, a 15-minute drive from here, we have the
Penn Center Historic Landmark District. We operate a site there called Dar-
rah Hall, and we also have an easement agreement with Brick Baptist Church
right across the road. At Darrah Hall, education is the big story. The people
who attended classes there at Penn School, who were enslaved just a couple
of months earlier, were prevented by law from learning to read and write.
This is their first opportunity to change that. Knowledge is power. That’s the
last thing a plantation owner wants the people he calls “property” to have.
The last one is Camp Saxton, down in Port Royal, about 4 miles south of
here. This is the site where the 1st South Carolina was recruited and trained
for service, the first Black men to wear the U.S. Army uniform.
You learn, in a larger sense, how military service, especially for African
Americans, is kind of this direct pathway toward citizenship. During Recon-
struction, when the nation’s trying to figure out who deserves citizenship,
200,000-plus African American veterans raised their hands: we fought for
this country and prevented it from falling apart.
Here is also the site where about 5,000 African Americans gathered on
January 1, 1863, for an impartation of the Emancipation Proclamation.
They’re hearing the words that declare their freedom for the first time. +
AUTUMN 2023 25
26 AMERICAN HISTORY
 On a Different Scale
Lowell’s mills were considered massive when
they were built in the 1830s, and were a
jarring sight to women raised on farms.

Company Town No. 1

FACTORY BELLS GOVERNED the day in early 19th-century Lowell, Mass. They summoned Red Brick
the mostly young women workers to the cotton mills at 4:30 a.m., signaled meal breaks, sent
them home to company boardinghouses after their 12- to-14-hour shifts, and sounded cur-
and Mortar
few at 10 p.m. + The Lowell National
The keepers of the boardinghouses were both caretakers and disciplinarians. They cooked Historical Park
meals and enforced moral codes. They made sure the “mill girls,” America’s first factory spotlights preserved
19th-century mills and
laborers, went to sleep on time and to church on Sunday. boardinghouses, as well
This was life in a company town—the first planned company town in the United States. It as the network of canals
wasn’t devised that way from the start, however. When the company founders traveled that allowed boats to
northwest of Boston in late 1821, it was simply to assess a potential pass around the Paw-
American Place factory site on the Merrimack River. Mainly, could the falls there tucket Falls for incoming
deliveries of supplies and
reliably power textile machinery?
outgoing shipments of
The answer was yes, and they bought the land. In 1823, the first machinery started pro- finished textiles.
cessing raw cotton into cloth. Three years later, the land was incorporated as Lowell, named
+ The 88 water-powered
after the company’s late co-founder Francis Cabot Lowell. looms at the park’s Boott
The workers were mostly single women ages 15 to 30 from financially strapped families in Cotton Mill still run as
the outlying areas. They needed places to live, so the company built they did back in the day,
the boardinghouses. A town with shops, churches, and other giving visitors an up-
destinations eventually rose up.
NH close look at the opera-
With production growing fast, recruiters visited farms tion that gave the town
its reason to be.
MA
and villages to find help. The families there needed the LOWELL
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE; LIBRRARY OF CONGRESS;

money but were skeptical about sending their single

NATIONAL + The 1840s boarding-
HISTORICAL house exhibit in the Mor-
MAP BY JON BOCK; NATIONAL PARK SERVICE; NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

daughters to live away from home. The promise of cash PARK

M E RRIMACK gan Cultural Center,
pay caught their attention. The RIVER with kitchen and com-
All for Fashion
It’s deafening when the living situation in Lowell sealed munal dining room
the deal, as many families con- LOWELL downstairs and bed-
weaving looms run at
the restored Boott Mills, cluded their girls would be pro- rooms upstairs, tells the
and the building tected, nurtured, and provided for. story of the day-to-day
rumbles. It’s hard to life of the workers in
By 1850, red brick boardinghouses and five- and six-story fac- company housing.
imagine 10 hour days tory buildings lined the river for nearly a mile, the work force sur-
in such a chaotic
passed 10,000, and Lowell was the top textiles manufacturing
environment. Lowell
Mill girls often stuffed location in the country. The mills continued operating another 70
cotton in their ears to years after that. They slipped into full decline only after World War
cope with the din. I and the disappearance of military contracts. —Carl Zebrowski

AUTUMN 2023 27
HOW DID
BUZZ ALDRIN
FIRST DESCRIBE
THE LUNAR
LANDSCAPE?
A majestic forbidding land,
a very dark desert, magnificent
desolation, or a really groovy place?

For more, visit

HISTORYNET.COM/MAGAZINES/QUIZ

ANSWER: MAGNIFICENT DESOLATION.

BUZZ ALDRIN, THE SECOND MAN TO WALK
THE LUNAR SURFACE, SPOKE THESE WORDS
SHORTLY AFTER NEAL ARMSTRONG SAID
“THAT’S ONE SMALL STEP FOR A MAN,
ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND.”
 Long Shifts
Workers in the Lowell
textile mills usually put
in 12- to 14-hour days,
and half a day on
Saturday. Sundays
were for church.

An Alien Environment
LOWELL NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE (2)

by Dana B. Shoaf
I had a chance to visit Lowell National Historical Park a couple of years ago, and the experience has really stuck with me
(P. 26). The absolute din the machinery caused when they ran some of the spinning machines was overwhelming. Leather
power belts spinning above you, shuttles of thread flying back and forth, and clacking, ratchety looms—it was sensory
overload. And only a very few looms were actually running. The mill girls had to stagger-start the looms each
Editorial morning. If they all fired up at once, the rhythmic pounding could have shaken apart the brick buildings.
Small nozzles connected to waterlines occasionally squirted water to keep up the humidity and prevent the
dry lint from spontaneously combusting. It was an alien environment to me, and one can only imagine how the young
women, America’s first “modern” industrial work force, must have felt after leaving their farms and quiet towns. +

AUTUMN 2023 29
Have a Sip, or Two....
Absinthe, the “Green
Demon” to its detractors,
and the “Green Fairy,”
to its adherents.
PHOTO CREDIT
 ‘Death in the
Afternoon’
Green and mysterious, absinthe caused
controversy wherever it was poured
By Jesse Hicks
PHOTO CREDIT

AUTUMN 2023 31

rtemisia absinthium is a green, leafy plant
native to Europe, but one that has since
migrated to North America. Commonly called
the wormwood plant, its flowers and leaves
are the main ingredient of absinthe, one of
the world’s most unusual liquors that was first
distilled in Switzerland. Absinthe is naturally green in color, and potent,
usually 90 to 148 proof.
That potency led many to believe absinthe had hallucinogenic powers,
and controversy has plagued the drink since it was first distilled. Before
coming to America, it was extremely popular in France. And then, Jean
Lanfray killed his family after imbibing the “Green Demon.”
THE LANFRAY KILLINGS happened in Commugny, a small agricultural
village in southwest Switzerland, nestled along the border with France.
Lanfray was a tall, brawny vineyard worker and day laborer. Like many in
the area, he was a born Frenchman; he had served three years in the French
Army. At 31 years old, he lived in a two-story farmhouse with his family: his
wife and two daughters living upstairs, and his parents and brother, with
rooms downstairs.
On August 28, 1905, he woke at 4:30 in the morning. He started the day
with a shot of absinthe diluted in water—not uncommon for him or for
many Europeans at the time. He let the cows out to pasture, had some
harsh words with his wife, and set off to a nearby vineyard to work. Along
the way, he stopped for more alcohol:
a creme de menthe with water, fol- An anti-absinthe
lowed by a cognac and soda. By then it
was 5:30 a.m.
petition quickly
gained 34,702
Investigating the killings, Swiss
authorities established a careful time- signatures.
line of Lanfray’s prodigious drinking,
learning that he would sometimes drink five liters of wine a day. Around
noon, he lunched on bread, cheese, and sausage. He also had six glasses of
strong wine over his lunch and afternoon break. And another glass before
leaving work about 4:30 p.m.
At a cafe on his way home, he had black coffee with brandy. Back at the
farmhouse, he and his father each polished off another liter of wine while
Lanfray bickered with his wife. Their long-simmering grievances came to a
head, and he rose from his seat, took down his rifle from the wall, and shot
his wife through the forehead, killing her instantly.
As Lanfray’s father ran from the house seeking help, his daughter Rose
came into the room—Lanfray shot her in the chest. He then went to the crib
of his younger daughter, Blanche, and killed her, as well. He struggled to kill
himself with the rifle, but it was too long to easily aim at himself and still
reach the trigger. Using a piece of string, he finally pulled the trigger but
32 AMERICAN HISTORY
The Source of the Matter
The wormwood plant’s
leaves and flowers are the
main ingredients distilled
into absinthe.
succeeded only in shooting himself in the jaw.
With blood running down his face, he picked up
Blanche and carried her to the barn, where he lost
consciousness. Police found him minutes later.
It was a senseless tragedy, the kind that leaves
bystanders helplessly grasping at explanations.
The fact that a man could get drunk, kill his
entire family, and have no memory of it—that
may have struck too close to home for Lanfray’s
neighbors, who worked in vineyards and drank
beside him. No, there had to be something else,
something other.
At a public meeting soon after, the people of
Commugny railed against the supposedly cor-
rupting power of absinthe. Lanfray was known
regularly to drink it (as did many, many others),
and had drunk two glasses on the day of the mur-
ders (along with liters of wine). A story began to
form, an explanation. Lanfray wasn’t simply an
angry drunkard; he was an Absintheur.
IT WAS A STORY many were ready to hear.
Absinthe already had a dangerous reputation,
despite its widespread use throughout Europe.
Even aficionados cautioned that “absinthe is a
spark that explodes the gunpowder of wine.”
Lanfray’s killings provided potent fuel for a
moral panic around absinthe that had been grow-
PREVIOUS SPREAD: NEVODKA (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); THIS PAGE: DORLING KINDERSLEY LTD (ALAMY)
ing for decades. Politicians now had a scapegoat—
and a crusade. The press feverishly covered “the
Absinthe Murder,” putting it on front pages
throughout Europe. One Swiss newspaper called
absinthe “the premier cause of bloodthirsty
crime in this century,” a sentiment echoed by
Commugny’s mayor, who declared, “Absinthe is
the principal cause of a series of bloody crimes in
our country.”
In the region, a petition to outlaw the drink
gathered 82,000 signatures within weeks. After
an absinthe drinker in Geneva, Switzerland,
killed his wife with a hatchet and a revolver, an
anti-absinthe petition quickly gained 34,702 sig-
natures. The public, too, had found a villain.
The following February, Lanfray went on trial.
His defense hinged on proving him absinthe-mad,
 The Progress of Absinthe
This series of French postcards takes an absinthe
imbiber through the elation of a first drink to his
confusing and stupefying end. Some absinthe
opponents claimed the alcohol led to hallucinations.

consumed by his addiction to that foul drink

whose demonic grip had driven him to murder. If
absinthe had made him do it, he couldn't be held
completely responsible for his actions.
The argument leaned on a folk understanding
of “absinthism,” a collection of maladies suppos-
edly known to afflict the chronic absinthe
drinker, including seizures, speech impairment,
disordered sleep, and auditory and visual halluci-
nations. Absinthism was the road to insanity and
death; even as millions of people from every walk
of life enjoyed absinthe, medical professionals
and the press warned of asylums rapidly filling
with former Absintheurs, now lost in the throes of
madness.
It was known as “une correspondance pour
Charenton,” a ticket to Charenton, the insane
asylum outside Paris. (It’s unclear whether absin-
thism actually existed as a syndrome at all, rather
than arising from misunderstandings about alco-
holism and mental health more generally.)
Not every doctor gave credence to the more
lurid claims about absinthism. In Lanfray’s case,
however, Albert Mahaim, a professor at the Uni-
versity of Geneva and the head of the regional
insane asylum in Vaud, examined the defendant
in jail and later testified that “without a doubt, it
is the absinthe he drank daily and for a long time
that gave Lanfray the ferociousness of temper
and blind rages that made him shoot his wife for
nothing and his two poor children, whom he
loved.” The prosecution, naturally, disagreed.
Whatever the public sentiment toward
absinthe, Lanfray was found guilty on four counts
of murder—his wife, it turned out, had been preg-
nant with a son. Three days later, Lanfray hanged
himself in his cell.
Less than a month after his death, Vaud, the
canton containing Commugny, succeeded in ban-
ning absinthe, with the canton of Geneva quickly
following. Then it was banned nationwide. Bel-
gium had already banned absinthe in 1905; the
Netherlands in 1909. Even France, which con-
sumed more absinthe than the rest of the world,
and where it was, as historian P.E. Prestwich put
DAVID NATHAN-MAISTER/SSPL (GETTY IMAGES, 6)

it, “inspiration of French poets and the consola-

tion of French workers,” banned the drink in 1914.
The Green Fairy to its advocates and the Green
Demon to its detractors, absinthe was exiled from
much of Europe. (The United Kingdom and the
Czech Republic were notable exceptions.) While
anti-alcohol movements had agitated in coun-
tries around the world for decades, absinthe was

AUTUMN 2023 33
 Fix a Mixed Drink point, as you could easily dilute absinthe and still
A harvest of wormwood is laid out to dry get a great bargain, proof-wise. Everywhere in
on racks, above. Once the wormwood France seemed to celebrate l’heure verte, the
was properly dehydrated, it was mixed “green hour” of the early evening devoted to
with other herbs, like anise, to make the absinthe.
alcohol, above right. The woman at left Absinthe became intricately connected to
seems positively refreshed by the drink.
French culture and identity. So it is no surprise
that when the drink found its way to the United
the first alcoholic drink singled out for a States, the most famous venue for absinthe indul-
ban. Its outsized, bewitching reputa- gence would be in a city with a distinctly French
tion had been turned against it. flavor: New Orleans, “the little Paris of North
Before the exile, absinthe had a long America.”
history in Europe, particularly in
France. In its modern form, it likely THE FRENCH SOLD LOUISIANA to the United
began as a patent remedy concocted by States in 1803, and the region’s uniquely French
a French doctor living in Switzerland culture became a point of pride. As absinthe took
in the late 1700s. Its name derives from the Greek absinthion, an ancient off in France, it also appeared in New Orleans,
medicinal drink made by soaking wormwood leaves (Artemisia absinthium) though without the same fanfare and popularity.
in wine or spirits. It was said to aid in childbirth, and the Greek physician In a town already famous for carousing, absinthe
Hippocrates, known as the father of medicine, recommended it for men- was one drink among many.
strual pain, jaundice, anemia, and rheumatism. Following the Civil War, a barman named Cay-
Wormwood persisted as a folk remedy through the ages; when the etano Ferrer, formerly of the Paris Opera House,
bubonic plague ravaged England began serving absinthe in what some clever mar-
in the 17th and 18th centuries, The most famous keting called “the Parisian manner.” A glass of the
desperate villagers burned emerald drink would be placed on the bar
wormwood to cleanse their
venue for absinthe beneath a pair of fountains, and water would
TOP: JACQUES BOYER/ROGER-VIOLLET (GRANGER, 2); LEFT: JARRY/TRIPELON (GETTY IMAGES)
houses. Wormwood drinks were indulgence would slowly drip, creating a milky opalescence in a
likewise medicinal—including
that early patent remedy.
be in a city with a glass—a process called the “louche.”
Ferrer’s ritual proved a compelling spectacle
In 1830, France conquered distinctly French for the tourists who flocked to the city of sin. The
Algeria and began to expand its flavor: New Orleans. building became the Old Absinthe House.
empire into North Africa. Soon Thought to be the city’s first saloon, it hosted
100,000 French troops were stationed in the country, where the heat and famous luminaries from Mark Twain and Walt
bad water led to sickness tearing through the occupiers. Wormwood helped Whitman to O. Henry and William Makepeace
stave off insects, calm fevers, and prevent dysentery, and soldiers started Thackeray. Oscar Wilde, of course, attended. No
adding it to their wine. When they returned home, they brought with them visit to New Orleans, by then “the Absinthe capi-
“une verte”—the potent drink with the unique green color. tal of the world,” could be complete without a
Absinthe quickly became intertwined with French society, first as a round at the Old Absinthe House.
harmless vice of the upper and middle classes. As its reputation (exotic, While Europeans of all classes drank absinthe,
revelatory) grew, so did its popularity; even among those not looking for a in the United States it remained a cosmopolitan
hallucinogenic experience, the high alcohol content proved a key selling indulgence little known outside the city. New

34 AMERICAN HISTORY
 Belly Up to the Bar
Imagine the likes of Mark Twain and Walt
Whitman leaning on the bar at the Old
Absinthe House in New Orleans. Note the
water dispenser used to pour in the drink.
An exterior view of the saloon, at right.

York had its own Absinthe House, and large metropoli-

tan areas such as Chicago and San Francisco catered to
the artists, bohemians, and wealthy, gilded-age poseurs
who wanted to associate themselves with absinthe’s
dark allure.
Absinthe’s relative obscurity in America didn’t pre-
vent the press from warning of its fearsome reputa-
tion, however. Against the backdrop of a growing
temperance movement, in 1879, a Dr. Richardson
offered his perspective on absinthe to The New York
Times. “I cannot report so favorably on the use of
Absinthe as I have on the use of opium,” he began,
describing rising absinthe use in “closely-packed
towns and cities.” He warned that the drink was com-
monly adulterated, and that frequent imbibers could become addicted. “In so.” The Times closed by warning that absinthe,
the worst examples of poisoning from Absinthe,” he wrote, “the person previously found only in large cities, had perme-
becomes a confirmed epileptic.” ated everywhere, “and it is called for with alarm-
Later that year, the Times reiterated: “The dangerous, often deadly, habit ing frequency.”
of drinking Absinthe is said to be steadily growing in this country, not Much of absinthe’s mythology came from an
among foreigners merely, but among the native population.” It ascribed “a accumulation of confusions, misunderstandings,
good many deaths in different parts of the country” to a drink “much more and motivated lies. Some, though, did try to cut
perilous, as well as more deleterious, than any ordinary kind of liquor.” through the green fog and get to the truth—at
Absinthe, the writer claimed, had a subtlety lacking in other alcohol; least as best they could. Valentin Magnan, physi-
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

addiction could sneak up quickly. “The more intellectual a man is,” the cian-in-chief at Sainte-Anne, France’s main asy-
Times cautioned, “the more readily the habit fastens itself upon him.” It had lum, saw rising numbers of insane people as a
already taken its toll in Europe: “Some of the most brilliant authors and art- sign of his country’s social decay. (More likely, the
ists of Paris have killed themselves with absinthe, and many more are doing increase resulted from improved diagnostic

AUTUMN 2023 35

techniques.) Like many, he saw absinthe as the
culprit, and set out to prove his case.
In 1869 he published his results. He had
arranged an experiment. One guinea pig was
placed in a glass case with a saucer of pure alco-
hol; another was placed in a glass case with a sau-
cer of wormwood oil. A cat and a rabbit also got
their own cases and their own saucers of worm-
wood oil. The animals breathing wormwood
fumes were wracked with seizures, while the sole
alcohol-breathing guinea pig just got drunk.
This and other experiments convinced Mag-
nan (if he hadn’t been already) that absinthe was
uniquely toxic. He extrapolated his results to
36 AMERICAN HISTORY
Inspiration for Writers
Novelists worldwide used absinthe and its supposed
side effects as grist for their pot boilers. The cartoon
at left indicates murder, madness, and a police
record dwell in every drink of absinthe one takes.
That's a lot of responsibility for a glass of booze.
humans, and claimed that “absinthistes” in his asylum
displayed seizures, violent fits, and amnesia. He pushed
for banning the Green Demon.
Fellow authorities disagreed, pointing out that
guinea pigs inhaling high doses of distilled wormwood
couldn’t be compared to humans consuming tiny
amounts of diluted wormwood. They suggested that
wormwood likely had little effect, and whatever damage
absinthe wrought was no different from typical alcohol-
ism. Rhetorically, however, Magnan’s support for the
concept of “absinthism,” separate from alcoholism,
TOP LEFT AND RIGHT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 2; TOP CENTER: HERITAGE AUCTIONS; BELOW: BETTMANN (GETTY IMAGES)
enabled those concerned citizens who wanted to ban
absinthe without committing to full prohibition.
Absinthe, after all, posed a unique medical danger, while
other alcohol (including France’s beloved wine) was
surely fine for responsible adults.
In the United States, absinthe never became the burn-
ing social question it was in Europe. The media took occasional potshots,
reflecting a general sense of absinthe’s depravity, without ever raising ban-
ning it to the height of a moral crusade.
An 1883 cartoon in Harper’s Weekly, for example, had the caption,
“Absinthe Drinking—The Fast Prevailing Vice Among Our Gilded Youth.”
The picture above featured a strapping young man on the left, and on the
right a broken, aged specter of dissolution, “after two years’ indulgence,
three times a day.” An earlier article in the magazine declared: “Many
deaths are directly traceable to the excessive use of absinthe. The
encroachments of this habit are scarcely perceptible. A regular absinthe
drinker seldom perceives that he is dominated by its baleful influence until
it is too late. All of a sudden he breaks down; his nervous system is
destroyed, his brain is inoperative, his will is paralyzed, he is a mere wreck;
there is no hope of his recovery."
 In the early 1900s, public opinion in Europe began
to turn against absinthe, generally as part of the
long-simmering temperance movement, and more
specifically because of the Lanfray murders. As coun-
tries began to ban the drink, Harper’s Weekly reported
in 1907 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had
begun to investigate “the green curse of France.” Four
years later, with little fanfare at the end of 1911, the
department’s Pure Food Board announced starting
January 1, 1912, importing absinthe into the United
States would be prohibited.
The head of the board told the Times that “Absinthe
is one of the worst enemies of man, and if we can keep
the people of the United States from becoming slaves
to this demon, we will do it.” (The board also announced
new restrictions on opium, morphine, and cocaine.)
News reports from the time show that, unsurpris-
ingly, Americans didn’t immediately cease drinking
absinthe. In a preview of the Prohibition era, authori-
ties particularly in California seized caches of the
emerald beverage. British mystic and provocateur
Aleister Crowley wrote his famous paean to the Old
How Do You
Give it a shot!
Follow this link Absinthe House, “The Green Goddess,” in 1916, well Drink Absinthe?
(www.historynet. after the ban. “Art is the soul of life and the Old (Ask Hemingway)
com/tenth/ Absinthe House is heart and soul of the old quarter of
ward/absinthe) New Orleans,” he wrote. And he struck a familiar note Well, it requires a fancy slotted spoon, for
to see Editor about the bewitching, destructive power of the Green one thing. The following is the most tradi-
Dana B. Shoaf try Fairy: “What is there in Absinthe that makes it a sepa- tional and common method for preparing
some absinthe. the drink. You place a sugar cube on the
rate cult? The effects of its abuse are totally different
Will he go mad
and commit a from those of other stimulants. Even in ruin and in spoon, and then place the spoon over a
crime on screen? degradation it remains a thing apart: its victims wear a glass of absinthe. Pour iced water over the
ghastly aureole all their own, and in their peculiar hell sugar cube so you end up with about 1 part
yet gloat with a sinister perversion of pride that they are not as other men.” absinthe and 3–5 parts water.
Crowley’s line evoked a demimonde particular to that time and place, but The water brings out the anise, which
in 1920 the arrival of Prohibition blunted much of absinthe’s mystique in gives absinthe a licorice taste, and fennel
the United States. Jad Adams writes: “The surreptitious nature of drinking that are also distilled with the leaves and
in the prohibition era—serving alcohol from hip flasks, barmen squirting a flowers of the wormwood plant. If the mix
syringe of pure alcohol into soft drinks they were serving—was not condu- is correct, the liquid will turn milky and
cive to absinthe, which was a drink of display and provocation.” opalescent in appearance.
New Orleans continued imbibing and became known as “the liquor capi- Ernest Hemingway was a fan of
tal of America.” The Old Absinthe House was closed by federal agents in 1925 absinthe—why is that not surprising? His
and again in 1926, the 100-year anniversary of its opening. Yet it outlasted favorite way to drink it was a simple cock-
prohibition and remains a fixture of New Orleans culture to this day. tail he called “Death in the Afternoon,” the
Absinthe, too, persevered. It went further underground, particularly in same name as his 1932 book about Spanish
America, and that burnished its appeal among bohemians and the counter- bullfighting.
LEFT: TENTH WARD DISTILLING COMPANY; RIGHT: BETTMANN (GETTY IMAGES)

culture. Ernest Hemingway and Jack London fondly recalled their absinthe
Death in the Afternoon ingredients:
experiences beyond the reach of U.S. law; Hemingway’s cocktail, Death in
1½ ounces Absinthe
the Afternoon, is likely the country’s most lasting and well-known contribu-
4 ounces chilled Champagne
tion to absinthe culture.
And eventually, like green shoots emerging after a long and punishing Hemingway published the recipe in a
winter, the Green Fairy rose again. After nearly 100 years of targeted prohi- 1935 book, So Red the Nose, or Breath in
bition, in 2007 the United States once again allowed absinthe to be the Afternoon, which featured 30 drink
imported and consumed. The green hour had come back around again, at concoctions from celebrities. He explained,
last. + “Pour one jigger Absinthe into a Cham-
pagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it
Jesse Hicks writes about science, technology, and politics. Based in Detroit, attains the proper opalescent milkiness.
his work has appeared in Harper’s, Politico, The New Republic, and Drink three to five of these slowly.” Yes.
elsewhere. Very slowly.

AUTUMN 2023 37
 ‘Collections
of Human
Bones' The “sage of Monticello” dug
up an Indian burial mound
By Rick Britton

38 AMERICAN HISTORY
Hallowed Hills
Indian burial mounds, such
as this one excavated in
1850 near the Mississippi
River, varied in height and
dimension. They were
typically erected in layers
over several hundred years.
 Historic Home With a View
Thomas Jefferson and his family were fortunate
to enjoy this splendid view of the Virginia country-
side north of Monticello, as captured in a water-
color painted about the turn of the 19th century.
hile a number of enslaved African Americans
looked on, 40-year-old Thomas Jefferson,
shovel in hand, began poking into the side of
the large Indian mound. Spherical in shape
and 40 feet in diameter, it sat on the flood plain of the gently flowing
Rivanna River, six miles north of Monticello, his mountaintop home. Jef-
ferson was standing in a ditch surrounding the “barrow,” as he called it,
when he commenced. “I first dug superficially in several parts of it,” he
wrote, “and came to collections of human bones, at different depths, from
six inches to three feet below the surface. These were lying in the utmost
confusion....”
Americans can usually rattle off a few of Thomas Jefferson’s titles and
achievements. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence,
Jefferson, our third president, was the driving force behind the Louisiana
Purchase and the wildly successful Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
Expedition. But he was much more. Jefferson was a true Renaissance man,
a brilliant polymath with an eclectic and dizzying array of interests.
Of these, he called science his “passion,” and over the course of his busy
life, despite devoting more than 30 years to public service, Jefferson made
contributions to botany, paleontology, meteorology, entomology, ethnology,
and comparative anatomy. He was also an amateur archaeologist, and in
1783, spurred on by a document sent him by the French government,
Thomas Jefferson excavated a Monacan Indian burial mound. It was one of
his greatest scientific accomplishments. “In applying his innate sense of
order and detail,” wrote science historian Silvio A. Bedini, “he anticipated
modern archaeology’s basis and methods by almost a full century.”
BORN ON APRIL 13, 1743, at Shadwell, his father’s plantation in the
40 AMERICAN HISTORY
Virginia Piedmont—the western edge of Euro-
pean settlement—Thomas Jefferson studied in
private schools prior to his 1760 enrollment at
the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg,
Va. There, as he later wrote, it was his “great good
fortune” to study under and befriend, Dr. William
Small, a disciple of the Scottish Enlightenment
who “probably fixed the destinies” of his life.
“[F]rom his conversation,” Jefferson wrote, “I got
my first views of the expansion of science & of the
system of things in which we are placed.”
It was in Williamsburg, too, that young Jeffer-
son had an encounter that helped foster his fas-
cination with Native Americans. In the spring of
1762, a party of 165 Cherokee from the Holston
River Valley accompanied their chief to Wil-
liamsburg prior to his journey to London. Called
PREVIOUS SPREAD: SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM; THIS PAGE: GRANGER
“Ontesseté,” this chieftain delivered a stirring
farewell oration the evening before he departed.
Enthralled, Jefferson looked on from the edge of
the native’s camp. “The moon was in full splen-
dor,” he later wrote, “and to her he seemed to
address himself....His sounding voice, distinct
articulation, animated action, and the solemn
silence of his people...filled me with awe and
veneration, although I did not understand a
word he uttered.”
After college, Jefferson practiced law for

seven years. Then, following service in the Virginia House of Burgesses,
the Continental Congress, and the Virginia House of Delegates, he was
elected governor of the Old Dominion in 1779 during the American Revo-
lution. In October 1780, the same year he was reelected governor, Jeffer-
son received a fascinating set of 22 queries—in
essence, a questionnaire—from the secretary of
the French legation to the United States,
François, Marquis de Barbé-Marbois (who in
1803 would play a large role in negotiating
the Louisiana Purchase). The question-
naire sought out some of the basic statisti-
cal information on the nascent American
states, then embroiled in a war with
France’s common enemy.
The Virginia copy had been forwarded to Thomas
Jefferson by a member of the state’s congres- Jefferson
sional delegation. Query number three, for
example, asked for “An exact description of [the
TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; RIGHT: THOMAS JEFFERSON FOUNDATION AT MONTICELLO
state’s] limits and boundaries,” while seven
inquired about “The number of its inhabi-
tants.” Others sought out details on the
“I know of no
state’s religions, rivers, mountains, flora, such thing as
seaports, colleges, commercial productions, an Indian
and military force, as well as customs and
manners. monument,
An inveterate compiler of data, Jefferson unless it be
was well-prepared to respond. As he later
noted in his Autobiography: “I had always
the Barrows,
made it a practice whenever an opportunity of which
occurred of obtaining any information of many are
our country [Virginia], which might be
of use to me in any station public or private,
found all over
to commit it to writing. These memoranda this country."
Mapping an Embryonic Nation
This map of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland,
and Delaware was first published in 1787. A 1753
map drawn by Joshua Fry and Jefferson's father,
Peter, was used to depict Virginia's boundaries.
were on loose papers....I thought this a good
occasion to embody their substance, which I
did in the order of Mr. Marbois’ queries, so as
to answer his wish and to arrange them for my
own use.”
Although burdened with the responsibilities
of his governorship, Jefferson began working on
his reply immediately. Unfortunately, the declin-
ing state of military affairs in Virginia for Jeffer-
son’s last seven months as governor meant that
he had to set aside the project that so sparked his
enthusiasm. During this tumultuous time, he
was forced to flee twice from Richmond, the new
state capital he had established. And—after Jef-
ferson and the legislature relocated to Charlot-
tesville to escape the enemy—he was compelled
to even abandon Monticello when a British raid-
ing party rode up the “little mountain” and cap-
tured his neoclassical home.
Although Jefferson later termed this trou-
bling period the very nadir of his public career,
the termination of his governorship in early
June 1781 did nevertheless give him the time he
needed to focus on the French questionnaire.
Organizationally, each query became the topic of
a chapter. In December 1781, Jefferson had the
first version sent to Barbé-Marbois, but he
immediately began enlarging the manuscript—
indeed, tripling the length—until it was pub-
lished in Paris in 1785 and then in London
two years later by John Stockdale as Notes
on the State of Virginia.
Most of the information came from Jeffer-
son’s personal papers, his large library at
Monticello, and his numerous learned corre-
spondents. One query, however, animated him
to travel afield. It asked for: “A description of the
Indians established in the State....An indication
of the Indian Monuments discovered in that
State.” After writing about Virginia’s “upwards of
forty different tribes”—and compiling a table of
their numbers, “confederacies and geographical
situation”—the former governor tackled the que-
ry’s second section. “I know of no such thing
existing as an Indian monument...,” he wrote,
“unless indeed it be the Barrows, of which many
are to be found all over this country.”
Jefferson penned that these were “of consider-
able notoriety among the Indians,” and that one
stood in his neighborhood. He recalled that, in
the mid-1750s, a party of Native Americans “went
through the woods directly to it...and having staid
about it some time, with expressions which were
AUTUMN 2023 41
 construed to be those of sorrow, they returned to
the high road” about six miles distant. (While some
writers claim that young Jefferson, then only 10 to
12 years old, witnessed this incident himself, it is
much more likely he heard this story secondhand.)
THESE NATIVE AMERICANS were most certainly
Monacans, a Siouan-speaking people who, in the
dim past, had journeyed from the Ohio River Valley
across the Appalachian Mountains. Up through the
late 1600s, the Monacan Nation—a confederacy of
like-speaking Native American tribes—controlled a
vast region of the fertile Virginia Piedmont, includ-
ing the valleys of the Rivanna and upper James Riv-
ers. By the time of the arrival of Europeans in the
Piedmont in the 1720s, the Monacan had long since
'Forty different tribes'
removed to the southwest.
Jefferson began work
on his famed Notes on Monacan men stalked elk, deer, and small game
the State of Virginia, through the open woods and sometimes pursued
above, in 1781. Top: An bison over the beautiful Blue Ridge into the
appendix in later Shenandoah Valley. Dressed in animal skins, and
editions included this sporting wildly cut manes, they adorned them-
statistical table listing selves with necklaces made of copper they had
Indian inhabitants of
mined. Much prized, the copper they sometimes
Virginia's Colonial era.
traded with the Powhatan, an Algonquin people
who occupied Tidewater Virginia to the east. The Monacan and the Powha-
tan also frequently fought.
The Monacan women raised crops of corn, beans, and squash in the fields
surrounding their villages. Often comprising scores of bark-covered domed
structures, these villages were surrounded by 7-foot-high palisade enclo-
sures (a feature that made them resemble the English-built forts). One such
town, Monasukapanough, had once stood near the Rivanna River in close
proximity to the “barrow” in Jefferson’s neighborhood. He noted the con-
nection between the two sites when he wrote that the mound was located
“opposite to some hills on which had been an Indian town.”
42 AMERICAN HISTORY
To better answer Marbois’ query and to satisfy
his own curiosity, Jefferson determined to “open
and examine” this mound thoroughly. Prior to
the excavation, however—in anticipation of what
was later termed the “scientific method”—he
posited questions he hoped to find answers for in
the earth. It was obviously a repository of the
dead, but when was it constructed? How was it
constructed? Was it true that those interred
were the casualties of Native American battles
fought nearby? Was it the common sepulcher (or
tomb) of just one town? This supposition came
from a tradition, Jefferson wrote, “handed down
from the Aboriginal Indians, that, when they set-
tled in a town, the first person who died was
placed erect and earth put about him, so as to
cover and support him....”
When another person died, the dirt was
removed, he was reclined against the first, and
then the earth was replaced. (In this manner,
therefore, a burial mound would grow outward
from the center.) Another question—inferred but
TOP: UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH LIBRARY SYSTEM; LEFT: HERITAGE AUCTIONS
never stated exactly—was this: Rather than being
related to just one Indian village, was this barrow
a sacred burial place for an entire section of the
Monacan Nation?
Interestingly, a theory at the time—popular
among members of the nation’s foremost scien-
tific organization, the American Philosophical
Society, which Jefferson had been elected to in
1780—claimed that Native Americans were too
primitive to have erected the barrows, also called
“tumuli,” which had been encountered in numer-
ous states. Instead, they attributed their con-
struction to a much earlier people descended
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: BACKYARDPRODUCTION (GETTY IMAGES); SMITHSONIAN LIBRARIES; MAREK KASULA (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)
from either Phoenicians, Israelites, or perhaps even Scandinavians (think
Vikings). These ancient “Mound Builders,” they theorized, were subse-
quently driven away by the barbarous ancestors of the Native Americans
with whom they were familiar. Some of the Mound Builders journeyed
south, they believed, and founded the Aztec civilization. While Jefferson
was certainly familiar with this racist hypothesis, it is unknown whether he
was considering it as he began his dig.
Unfortunately, too, the exact date of the excavation is not known. Con-
cerning this important detail—and so uncharacteristic of Jefferson, who
was normally minutiae-obsessed—his Notes on the State of Virginia is
silent. Historian Douglas L. Wilson, however, who studied the original
manuscript at the Massachusetts Historical Society, the “setting copy” for
the 1785 Paris edition, has concluded that the dig “must have been per-
formed after...the summer or early fall of 1783 and before [Jefferson] left
for Philadelphia on 16 October.”
The circular barrow was large, 40 feet in diameter, encircled by a ditch
five feet across and five feet deep. It had been 12 feet high, Jefferson
observed, “though now reduced by the plough to seven and a half, having
been under cultivation about a dozen years.” Prior to that, it had been cov-
ered with a small stand of trees one foot in diameter.
Jefferson’s poking around quickly established that the mound
Native American Roots
Clockwise from top: Moundsville, W.Va., derives its
name from the majestic Grave Creek Mound—62 feet
high and 240 feet in diameter, erected in 250-150 BC;
a restored soapstone vessel, found at the base of Buck
Mountain, Va.; a rebuilt Monacan Village now stands
at the tribe's historic home near Natural Bridge, Va.
contained human bones. They were lying in dis-
array, “some vertical, some oblique, some hori-
zontal...entangled, and held together in clusters
by the earth. Bones of the most distant parts
were found together, as, for instance, the small
bones of the foot in the hollow of a scull...to give
the idea of bones emptied promiscuously from a
bag or basket....”
These were “secondary burial features,” wrote
University of Virginia anthropology professor
Jeffrey L. Hantman, “the comingled remains of
numerous individuals” who had been initially
buried elsewhere, “then moved collectively at
designated ritual moments....”
AUTUMN 2023 43
 Familiar Ground Jefferson marveled at the number of
James Monroe, the nation's fifth remains he uncovered; the vast majority
president, was one of Jefferson's being skulls, jaw bones, teeth, and the
prominent Charlottesville bones or arms, legs, feet, and hands. Some
neighbors. Here, archaeologists
he extracted intact, but others, such as the
excavate a section of Monroe's
original Highland plantation. skull of an infant, “fell to pieces on being
taken out” of the mound.
Next began the most commented-upon aspect of Jefferson’s archaeologi-
cal endeavor. “I proceeded then,” he wrote, “to make a perpendicular cut
through the body of the barrow, that I might examine its internal structure.
This... was opened to the former surface of the earth, and was wide enough
for a man to walk through and examine its sides.” Typical of Jefferson’s writ-
ings, this passage disguises the fact that he alone could not possibly have
performed this labor. Surely, the “perpendicular cut” was dug by a rather
large number of enslaved African Americans, perhaps as many as 30 or 40,
whom he had either transported from Monticello or leased from a nearby
plantation owner. These sentences, too, reveal Jefferson’s utter insensitiv-
Restored Honor
Finally recognized as an official state tribe
by Virginia in 1989, the Monacan Indian
ity to the site’s sacred status.
Now the amateur archaeologist was able to
determine how the barrow was constructed. “At
the bottom, that is on the level of the circumja-
cent plain,” he wrote, “I found bones; above these
a few stones brought from a cliff a quarter of a
mile off...then an interval of earth, then a stratum
of bones, and so on.”
At one end of the trench he found four strata
of bones; at the other, three. The bones in the
strata closest to the surface were the least
decayed. Down through the ages, therefore, the
barrow had grown taller with recurring layers of
bones, stones, and earth. Next, he was able to
determine whether any of those interred had
fallen in battle. Of the bones he pulled from the
mound’s various strata: “No holes were discov-
ered in any of them, as if made with bullets,
arrows, or other weapons.”
What of the other questions? Naturally, Jeffer-
son wasn’t able to determine when the Monacan
burial mound was initiated, but—thanks to his
methods—he was able to answer two others. For
DANIEL WILSON (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Nation has made considerable strides in
reestablishing its ancestral legacy. Its head-
quarters is located on Bear Mountain, Va.,
not far from Lynchburg. For more informa-
tion, visit www.monacannation.com.
the following reasons, he wrote, it was obviously
not one town’s common sepulcher: The number
of skeletons it contained (he “conjectured”
1,000); None of them were upright; The bones lay
in different stratas, with no intermixing; And, the
“different states of decay in these strata” seemed

44 AMERICAN HISTORY
 to indicate “a difference in the time of inhuma-
tion.” This burial mound, therefore, must have
appertained to a fairly large region of the Mona-
can Nation. “Appearances certainly indicate,” he
wrote, “that it has derived both origin and growth
from the accustomary collection of bones, and
deposition of them together....”
In the balance of his response to the abori-
gine-related query, Jefferson briefly mentioned
two other barrows (one of which also contained
human remains), presciently noted “the resem-
blance between the Indians of America and the
Eastern inhabitants of Asia,” and urged the
collection of Native American vocabularies so
that those skilled in languages could “construct
the best evidence of the derivation of this part of
the human race.” He concluded with a sev-
en-page table listing the tribes residing within,
and adjacent to, the United States, their names,
approximate numbers, and the locations of their
tribal lands.

AMBITIOUS IN SCOPE, Notes on the State of Vir-

ginia—with its double-entendre title—won for
Jefferson considerable notoriety. In 1785, the
year of its French publication, Secretary of the
Continental Congress Charles Thomson, a fellow
member of the American Philosophical Society,
called it “a most excellent natural history not
merely of Virginia but of North America and pos-
sibly equal if not superior to that of any country
yet published.”
Wrote English professor William Peden, who
edited a 1954 edition of the work: “The Notes on
Virginia is probably the most important scientific
and political book written by an American before
1785; upon it much of Jefferson’s contemporary All that being said, the dig was
fame as a philosopher was based.” A Museum All Its Own nonetheless a major scientific
A collection of keepsakes central
And no small amount of that fame was due to achievement. “The importance of Jef-
to Jefferson's life is displayed in
the “sage of Monticello’s” archaeological dig (the Monticello’s Entrance Hall, ferson’s experience and his report of
only such of his lifetime). Unfortunately, other including his father's map survey it cannot be overstressed,” wrote sci-
than what was published in Notes on the State of of Virginia and the mounted heads ence historian Silvio A. Bedini, “for he
Virginia, there is no other information about the and antlers of American fauna. introduced for the very first time the
Monacan burial mound. Jefferson left no field principle of stratigraphy in archaeo-
notes. Its exact location has never been pin- logical excavation.” With this discipline, examining the layers—“strata,”
pointed, although many individuals have tried, Jefferson called them—provides a calendar for determining the age of
including professor Hantman and a team of items or human remains contained therein. In his description, Jefferson
anthropology students from the University of “not only indicated the basic features of the stratigraphic method, but also
Virginia. virtually named it,” wrote German archaeology writer C.W. Ceram,
Unfortunate, too, is the fact that Jefferson “although a hundred years were to pass before the term became estab-
never mentioned refilling the trench. If it was lished in archaeological jargon.”
indeed left open, the examined remains strewn Most important is the fact that thanks to his excavation of the Monacan
EVAN SKLAR (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

across the ground, the Rivanna River, which fre-
quently inundates the plain upon which the
mound stood, would have washed it away within
a few decades. Jefferson obviously believed that
the benefits of scientific inquiry greatly trumped
the barrow’s importance to the Monacan people.
Indian burial mound—and the detailed account of his posited questions and
scientific methodology—Thomas Jefferson became known as the “father of
American archaeology.” +
Rick Britton is a historian and cartographer who lives in Charlottesville, Va.,
in the shadow of Thomas Jefferson’s “Little Mountain.”

AUTUMN 2023 45
 African American theater
performers turned stereotypes into
star billing in “White” shows
By Daniel B. Moskowitz

A Star Is Born
George Gershwin auditioned 100 Black
baritones for his 1935 Broadway opera
Porgy and Bess until he found Todd
Duncan on the Howard University music
faculty. Duncan appeared in three
Broadway productions of the opera.

46 AMERICAN HISTORY
 n the first years of the 20th century, despite the humiliating
constraints of social segregation, thousands of African Ameri-
cans made a living in show business. In Washington, Balti-
more, Philadelphia, and Manhattan's Harlem, there were
top-tier vaudeville houses that headlined Black acts for Black
audiences, and the Theaters Owners Booking Association signed up Black
acts for almost 100 smaller venues around the country that catered to Black
audiences. There were night spots like the Cotton Club in Harlem that for
White audiences mounted lavish all-Black musical revues and Harlem the-
aters for full-scale Black musicals.
But the pinnacle was Broadway. As early as 1900, there were all-Black
musicals there, but the concept really took off after the Eubie Blake–Nobel
Sissle musical Shuffle Along opened in 1921 and ran an astonishing 504 per-
formances. Producers sensed that the high stepping and raucous humor
associated with Black performers were a money maker, and over the next
decade 22 more all-Black shows opened on Broadway. These shows slotted
the Black performers into stereotypical roles of shuffling gait and slurred
speech, but they also opened the door for dozens of performers to have life-
long careers that eventually allowed them more dignity.
The money woes of the Great Depression of the 1930s made it tough to
find backers for any Broadway shows, and the Shuffle Along type minstrelsy
all-Black show virtually disappeared. But by then, two important corners
had been turned: top-billed performers such as Paul Robson and Ethel
Waters had moved out of the racial show business ghetto to earn star billing
in otherwise White shows, and the classic American operas Porgy and Bess
and Four Saints in Three Acts had opened on Broadway, giving African
Americans roles as complex three-dimensional human beings. +

AUTUMN 2023 47
A

E
 Black Broadway

A Ada Overton Walker was the first Black female star of

Broadway musicals, creating a sensation singing Miss Hannah
PREVIOUS SPREAD: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY; A: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; B, C, E, F: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY (4); D: JP JAZZARCHIVE (GETTY IMAGES); E: JOHN KISCH ARCHIVE

from Savannah in Sons of Ham in 1900. Primarily known for

dancing, she brought a grace to the cakewalk dance that had
been a derivative of slave culture and turned it into a fad
among elite White society. B Singer Bert Williams and dancer
George Walker joined forces in 1893 and became a hot com-
modity in vaudeville. They made their Broadway debut in
1899. Light-skinned Williams had to appear darkened with
cork, but he became America's first Black superstar. C Ethel
Waters projected two persona in her 1920s and 1930s Broad-
way performances: the resilient warm-hearted Mammy and
the sexy exotic from the Tropics. She carved out a 60-year
career that included a best actress award from the New York
Drama Critics and nominations for an Oscar and an Emmy.
D Composer Eubie Blake and lyricist Noble Sissle's 1921
musical Shuffle Along raised the bar artistically and financially
for Black musicals. Both men appeared in the show that
included the first Broadway love song sung by a Black couple.
E Adelaide Hall made her Broadway debut at 12 as a brides-
maid in 1913's My Little Friend. Her 1927 wordless recording of
Duke Ellington's Creole Love Song was the beginning of scat
singing. She moved to Europe in 1934 after opposition to her
purchase of a home in all-White Larchmont, N.Y. F The 1921
cast of Runnin' Wild, including Elisabeth Welch, center. Welch
appeared in dozens of London's West End musicals from 1933
until Pippin in 1973, and did much television in the 1950s and
1960s. G Valaida Snow broke into public acclaim in the 1924
Blake–Sissle show Chocolate Dandies. She sang and danced,
G but her distinctive talent was playing a hot trumpet. Her great-
est triumphs were abroad, touring the Far East and Europe
fronting an all-girl jazz band.

AUTUMN 2023 49
 Black Broadway

H, FROM TOP: BAYLOR COLLECTIONS; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (3); I, M: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY (2); J: PICTORIAL PRESS (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); K: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY; L: HULTON ARCHIVE (GETTY IMAGES)
H

H A selection of playbills for Black Broadway shows. Called "the most ambitious effort yet attempted by a colored company," Shoo-Fly
Regiment took the real story of a regiment of Tuskegee Institute students who fought in the Spanish-American War and turned it into a
farce based in the Philippines. I Josephine Baker parlayed an unmatched talent for self-promotion into lasting fame as the personifica-
tion of Jazz Age Parisian hedonism. Her rhythmic dancing won her paying gigs in her home town of St. Louis while still a preteen, and
at 13 she ran away and joined a Black girls' troupe. She fought racial discrimination and renounced her U.S. citizenship. She received
the Croix de Guerre for her wartime spy efforts collecting information on German activities. J The only Broadway appearance for pia-
nist Thomas "Fats" Waller was 1928's Keep Shufflin', but it opened new avenues for him. His most lasting legacy: composing such songs
as Áin't Misbehavin' and Honeysuckle Rose. K Elisabeth Welch introduced The Charleston in a 1923 musical. She garnered a Tony nom-
ination at age 82 when she returned to Broadway in 1986. L Louis Armstrong's trumpet solo in Hot Chocolates was so galvanizing that
the producers had him come up and perform on stage and add a gravelly vocal rendition. By the 1950s, he was a widely loved musical
icon and kept performing until his health gave out in 1968. M Bert Williams was booked by Florenz Ziegfeld to appear in the 1910 edi-
tion of his annual Follies extravaganzas over the objections of the other performers, as Whites had never before shared a Broadway
stage with an African American. When Williams died in 1922, he had sold more records than any other Black artist.

50 AMERICAN HISTORY
 J

Thomas “Fats"
Waller's most
lasting legacy was
such songs as Áin't
Misbehavin' and
Honeysuckle Rose.

M
 P

Q
 Black Broadway

R S

T
N: EVERETT COLLECTION INC (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); O: GRANAMOUR WEEMS COLLECTION (ALAMY); P: ULLSTEIN BILD DTL. (GETTY); Q: JON KISCH ARCHIVE;
R: MARIO DE BIASI/MONDADORI PORTFOLIO (AGE FOTOSTOCK); S: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY; T: BETTMANN (GETTY IMAGES)

N Bill "Bojangles" Robinson tap-danced his way to more than $2 million in earnings. With Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel in 1935,
he became the first African American to appear in the movies dancing with a White partner. But styles changed, and he died penniless
in 1949. O In 1976, Alberta Hunter was 81 when she signed on for a two-week appearance singing blues at a Greenwich Village night
club. She stayed six years, cut three albums for Columbia, and had a command appearance at the White House. It was her second tour
in the spotlight. From her start in Chicago, she inched up to appearances in Europe and then a Broadway debut in 1930. She toured for
the USO in World War II and the Korean War. In 1957 she quit abruptly and went into nursing. She returned to show business only
after a hospital declared her too old to work. P Edith Wilson was one of the first African Americans to cut records for a major label,
Columbia. She then became a vocalist with big bands, and wowed a crowd at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1980, a year before her death
at 81. Q Loretta Mary Aiken had been raped and had borne two children by age 14. She ran away from her North Carolina home and
played in vaudeville under the name Jackie "Moms" Mabley. White audiences caught on to her raucous humor, and by the late 1960s
she had played Carnegie Hall and was showcased on top TV variety shows. R Mae Barnes' swinging singing was a 1940s and 1950s
fixture of the chic boites around Manhattan. S The 1929 cast of Hot Chocolates. Fats Waller wrote the score. T Ford Lee Washington
(left) and John William Sublett's Buck & Bubbles act played the Palace in Manhattan while in their teens. Washington was the first
Black guest on the Tonight Show. U Mantan Moreland parlayed a bug-eyed, always-scared Black man parody—today seen as a
demeaning caricature—into a lucrative career. He moved from Broadway to Hollywood, appearing in 133 films.

AUTUMN 2023 53
 Daring young men in fragile flying
machines created a nationwide sensation
By Bruce W. Dearstyne

54 AMERICAN HISTORY
Unsafe at Any Speed
Aeronaut Lincoln
Beachey brings his
Beachey Airship in for
a landing in this early
1900s images. The
fragile craft always
drew large crowds as
it puttered along.

AUTUMN 2023 55
 Restricted Air Space?
Beachey's dirigible
hovers over the White
House on June 14, 1906.
round 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, June 14, 1906,
Washington, D.C., residents spotted an oblong
shape floating across the Potomac River
toward the city. The thing was immense—62
feet long, 16 feet in diameter—larger than any
familiar moving object except a locomotive,
with a golden sheen that glowed in the morn-
ing sun. A noisy gasoline engine drove a propeller at the nose pulling the
object along. A man on a platform hanging from the rig somehow was steer-
ing the airborne conveyance.
The mysterious craft sailed up the National Mall and landed near the
Washington Monument. The occupant stepped off the platform. His name
was Lincoln Beachey, he said. He was a dirigible pilot, and he had taken off
that morning from a new amusement park in Arlington, Va., where dirigibles
were among the attractions. His destination was the White House; he had
paused to make a repair. He deliberately lingered on the Monument grounds
to let word spread of his airship’s presence. A
crowd formed and swelled. Soon, “the drives Dirigibles,
were lined with grocery wagons, laundry wag-
ons, automobiles, bicycles and other kinds of
introduced
vehicles and the east side of the Monument in the late
was black with a mass of humanity,” The
Washington Post reported. Beachey stepped
1600s but not
back aboard, fired up the engine, and took off, practicable
circling the Monument before heading until nearly
toward the White House, three blocks north.
two centuries
DIRIGIBLES DESCENDED from hot-air later, were
balloons. Brothers Joseph and Étienne
Montgolfier pioneered the first piloted bal-
rigid, herring-
loon ascent over Paris in 1783. Union and shaped, and
Confederate forces used balloons for self-propelled.
56 AMERICAN HISTORY
reconnaissance and fire control in the 1860s. But
these early gasbags had to remain tethered lest
the breeze carry them off. Dirigibles, introduced
in the late 1600s but not practicable until nearly
two centuries later, were rigid, herring-shaped,
and self-propelled. To build a dirigible, artisans
bolted together a wooden frame, usually of pine
or spruce, over which they stretched a thin, tough
skin of high-quality Japanese silk, tightly sewn
and made airtight with coatings of oil or varnish.
Netting helped maintain the rigid shape.
Hydrogen, a gas lighter than air, gave the ungainly
airships buoyancy. Operators usually generated
their own hydrogen by pouring sulfuric acid over
barrels of iron filings and piping the resulting
hydrogen into their airships to inflate them.
PREVIOUS SPREAD: UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES (GETTY IMAGES); THIS PAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Ropes held the airship in place until an “aero-
naut” had mounted a wooden platform slung
beneath the craft and tethered by wires and poles
of bamboo, wood, or metal. The platform held a
gasoline engine that drove a propeller below the
aircraft’s nose.
Once untethered and on his way, the pilot con-
trolled his craft—dirigible is derived from the
French diriger, meaning “to steer”—using a large
wooden rudder aft of the platform, in effect sail-
ing on air. He controlled pitch—the angle of rise
or descent—by walking forward and back on the
platform. A successful dirigible pilot was hearty,
daring, and willing to risk falling out of the sky to
his death.
Experimenters worked their way through

Lincoln
Beachey
Glenn Curtiss
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, HERITAGE IMAGES (GETTY IMAGES, 2); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; BETTMANN (GETTY); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
steam engines—too heavy—and battery-powered electric motors—unreli-
able—before settling on gasoline-powered internal combustion engines.
Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont started building reliable
dirigibles in 1898 and in 1901 famously circumnavigated the Eiffel Tower.
German inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin launched a version in 1900. The
dirigible entered American popular culture as entertainment. One of the
first successful airship builders, Thomas Baldwin, started out at 21 as a cir-
cus acrobat and trapeze performer. Bitten by the urge to fly, he got onto the
county-fair circuit piloting hot-air balloons and in 1885 became the first
American to parachute from a balloon gondola.
Designating himself “Captain Tom,” Baldwin began building dirigibles at
his shop in San Francisco in 1903. Available engines proved too weak. In
1904, an unfamiliar make of motorcycle zipped past his shop. Baldwin
investigated and learned that the two-wheeler ran on a powerful but light-
weight four-cylinder gas engine built by Glenn Curtiss of Hammondsport,
N.Y. Baldwin ordered a Curtiss engine by telegraph, mounted it on his air-
ship, rigged a drive train to a propeller, and took to the air.
DIRIGIBLE OPERATORS transported their craft by rail, for each appear-
ance breaking down and rebuilding the entire assembly to fit into a boxcar.
Bookings focused on fairs, expositions, and amusement parks—settings that
drew sizable crowds over several days, weeks, even months. In October
1904, Baldwin took his Curtiss-powered dirigible, California Arrow, to the
Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Finding himself too heavy for
his airship, he deputized skinny employee Roy Knabenshue, an experienced
balloonist, to take it up. Navigating in lazy circles over the fairgrounds,
Thomas
Baldwin
Ray Knabenshue
Organic Control System
Above: Knabenshue gets set to fly off in Thomas
Baldwin's dirigible at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition.
The rise and descent of such machines was
controlled by the operator shifting his body weight
forward or backward in the delicate airframe.
Knabenshue astonished onlookers and landed
safely. California Arrow was the first successful
dirigible in the United States.
Baldwin set about building a fleet of dirigibles
using five-horsepower Curtiss engines. He was
hunting for additional hands when a youth came
by in March 1905 seeking work. Growing up
nearby in San Francisco, 18-year-old Lincoln
Beachey had raced bicycles and motorcycles, in
the process becoming an adept mechanic. Bald-
win put Beachey on his ground crew. In 1905 Roy
Knabenshue went home to Toledo, Ohio, to build
his own dirigibles. That August, aboard Toledo II,
Knabenshue departed New York’s Central Park
and soared above Manhattan’s skyscrapers, put-
ting dirigible flying on the map.
Knabenshue’s exit left Baldwin short a pilot.
Beachey, compact, athletic and eager, fit the bill.
He proved deft at piloting airships at county fairs
AUTUMN 2023 57
 Power Plants to Powerhouse
Counterclockwise from top left: Curtiss built the above engine in 1907 for a U.S.
military airship; the California Arrow in 1904; Beachey takes a spin over the
U.S. Capitol in 1906. Can you imagine the reaction to such daredevilry today?
and other events but, itching for more pay than Baldwin was offering, joined
Knabenshue. The two worked the seasonal exhibition circuit. In June 1906,
they contracted to fly at Luna Park, a new amusement park in Cleveland.
One show Beachey was at 500 feet when two bamboo platform spars failed.
The pilot’s platform buckled, shoving the propeller into and through the
airship’s skin. The deflating dirigible dropped
slowly. Beachey, woozy from inhaling hydrogen,
hung on until he was about 20 feet from the ground
and jumped, hitting the dirt unconscious but
quickly reviving.
THE CLEVELAND OPERATION was part of a
growing chain. Knabenshue landed a contract with
a new branch in Arlington, Va., across the Potomac
from the nation’s capital. “The new Coney Island,”
as Washingtonians were already calling their Luna
Park franchise, featured a roller coaster, a ballroom,
a theater, restaurants, and an arena big enough to
First Space Force accommodate elephant shows and circuses. Besides
The military is always its bill of concerts, dances, and extravaganzas, the
interested technology, park quickly became a popular setting for company
and it wasn't long before
blimps, dirigibles, and picnics and amateur athletic events. An advertise-
their hot-shot cousins ment in the June 7, 1906, Washington Post urged
airplanes were readers to “KEEP YOUR EYE ON KNABENS-
patrolling the skies. HUE’S AIRSHIP June 12 to 18.” As part of his bally-
hoo, the aviator told reporters he might just fly
across the Potomac, land on the White House roof, and deliver a message
to President Theodore Roosevelt. People scoffed. No airship had ever flown
into Washington, D.C.
Beachey lobbied to make the trans-Potomac flight. He had proven a capa-
ble, daring stunt flyer and coverage of his recent misadventure in Cleveland
58 AMERICAN HISTORY
had lent his name notoriety. If Beachey came to
grief, Knabenshue reasoned, he could blame pilot
error. If Beachey succeeded, their Luna Park
stand stood to sell out. Knabenshue told his
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; GALERIE BILDERWELT, NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY (GETTY IMAGES, 2)
protégé yes and boarded a train to appear in Buf-
falo, where he flew in another dirigible and
wound up in Lake Erie but was fished out unhurt.
On June 14, Beachey inflated his airship, per-
formed his pre-flight check, revved the Curtiss
craft, and, just after 10:00 a.m., took off.
AFTER HIS THEATRICAL PAUSE at the Wash-
ington Monument, Beachey landed at the south
edge of the executive mansion’s lawn. Another
crowd gathered. Gawkers jumped the low picket
fence that constituted the security perimeter.
President Roosevelt was two miles away, giving
the annual commencement address at George-
town University (“Don’t flinch, don’t foul and hit
the line hard,” he was exhorting the graduates
about the time Beachey came calling). First Lady
Edith Roosevelt emerged, chatted with the pilot,
and examined his dirigible. “That fellow is only
seeking an advertisement,” Presidential secre-
tary William Loeb, irked by the spectacle of an
airship drawing a crowd so close to the White
House, told an assistant. “He has no invitation or
permit to come here.” Police shooed onlookers
and told Beachey to take off. He insisted on giving
Loeb a letter for the president. The message is
lost to history; Loeb may have thrown it away.
Beachey took off, banking east over the Trea-
sury Building and following Pennsylvania Avenue
NW toward the Capitol. He kept his altitude low,
150 to 500 feet, to give spectators a good look.
“Business in Washington was practically at a

standstill,” a newspaper reported. “The streets
were filled with people, the roofs of houses were
CLOCKWISE: MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY; MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY (GETTY IMAGES); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
covered with them and heads were protruding
from every available window, all craning their
necks upward to get a glimpse of the aeronaut.”
The unfamiliar sound of an engine putt-put-
ting in mid-air and the sight of a dirigible closing
on the Capitol disrupted congressional delibera-
tions. A stampede of senators, representatives
and civil servants piled outside to watch the con-
traption land near the Capitol’s east steps. “I
guess I am about the only private individual who
has ever stopped Congressional legislation,”
Beachey quipped later.
Newsmen and Washingtonians of all sorts
came to gape as Beachey held forth. The flight
would open a new era in aerial history, he pre-
dicted. Beachey asked for volunteers to hold his
machine in place and, fuel can in hand, went for
gasoline. Returning, he gassed up, bounded onto
the airship’s catwalk, and started the engine.
Taking off, he circled the Capitol dome and flew
Off to the Races
Tom Baldwin's "New California Arrow" takes off at
the 1907 Forest Park, Mo., International Aeronautic
Tournament. Bottom left: Baldwin's first airship flies
over Connecticut. Bottom right: This image of Ray
Knanbenshue flying over Minneapolis, Minn., in 1907
captures the precarious nature of dirigible flight.
back to Luna Park. The calm,
capable “Boy Aeronaut” became
The unfamiliar sight
of a dirigible closing on
an instant celebrity. The dirigi-
ble landing was the talk of the
capital. “White House and Capi-
the Capitol disrupted
tol Upset by an Airship,” a head- congressional
line read. “Sky Pilot Soars Over deliberations.
City, Thousands Staring,” blared
another. Witnesses took to wearing typewritten labels on their lapels that
read “I Saw It!”
Beachey took fame in stride. “It was the easiest flight I have ever made,”
he told reporters. “The air was just calm enough, the sights were beautiful,
and everyone I saw had on a pleasant smile and a mouthful of cheers. Wash-
ington looks like a huge flower garden full of block houses and bugs as seen
from the sky. The question of navigating is no longer an experiment. I can
go to breakfast in my airship.”
Beachey performed for overflow crowds for the rest of the engagement at
Luna Park. He soon went solo, setting records for speed and maneuvers.
Winning races and mastering stunts, Beachey was soon recognized as
America’s best dirigible flyer. In June 1907, he took off from seaside Revere,
Mass., flew into Boston, and landed on Boston Common to cheers. Airborne
again, he circled the State House’s golden dome. Over Massachusetts Bay
AUTUMN 2023 59
 On to the Next Thing
Glenn Curtiss, above left, at
the controls of his "June Bug"
airplane, 1908. Above right:
Beachey put on his best suit to
pose for the 1914 image taken
in Chicago. The same year,
Beachey races a Curtiss plane
against driver Barney Oldfield.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PA IMAGES, CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM, TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY (GETTY IMAGES, 3)
his engine quit; fishermen rushed to his rescue and towed his craft to shore. Tercentennial Exposition in Norfolk, Va., again
“The distance from the earth did not cause me the least worry,” he said. “It circled the Washington Monument, landed near
is a hard place to adjust a cranky motor.” the Post building, and returned to Luna Park.
Later that month, he performed at newly opened Happyland Amuse- “There’s really nothing to it,” he told a news-
ment Park on Staten Island, N.Y. To promote his show, he bombarded Fort man. “It’s just the same as being on the ground so
Wadsworth, nearby on Staten far as nervousness is concerned. I stand on this
Island, with balls filled with passes two-inch [thick] beam along the underside of the
Beachey stuck with to the park. He flew over Brooklyn, framework…and think nothing whatever about
dirigibles until he then Manhattan, landing at Bat- being 2,000 feet in the air. It’s just as safe up there
worked an air meet in tery Park. As usual, a crowd mate-
rialized. Police dispersed the
as it is down here if you don’t get scared, and
scared people have no business in an airship.”
Los Angeles in 1910. onlookers and ordered Beachey to Beachey stuck with dirigibles until he worked an
fly off. He vowed to land atop the air meet in Los Angeles in 1910. Among the air-
20-story Flatiron Building, but a propeller malfunction and uncooperative craft on hand was a fixed-wing biplane. “Boy, our
gusts dumped him into the East River. Boaters fetched him and his aircraft. racket is dead!” he told a pal.
Soon Beachey was back at Luna Park in Arlington. At the Washington Post’s He was right. In 1903, brothers Orville and Wil-
behest, he flew to the capital, dropped passes to the Jamestown bur Wright had gotten a fixed-wing aircraft aloft

60 AMERICAN HISTORY
 and soon went into biplane production. Mechani-
cal genius Glenn Curtiss was installing his motor-
cycle and dirigible engines into biplanes he
designed and built. On July 4, 1908, Curtiss made
the first public flight sanctioned by a professional
association. Two years later, he pioneered a flight
from Albany to New York City. The Wrights sued,
claiming he was infringing on their patent.
Curtiss, determined to prove that his airplanes
stood apart from and surpassed the Wrights and
other competitors, started the Curtiss Exhibition
Team, in 1911 hiring the nation’s leading aero-
naut, Lincoln Beachey. Beachey cracked up his
first Curtiss biplane, but quickly mastered the
machine. He set speed records, was the first
American to loop the loop, and flew upside down.
After a flight over Niagara Falls, he swooped back
under the bridge across the river. He learned to
combine fast climbs followed by vertical plunges
that he called “Death Dips,” pulling up at the last
second. He partnered on tour with famed race-
car driver Barney Oldfield, flying low over Old-
field’s head as the racer steered around dirt
tracks, sometimes nudging Oldfield’s hat off with
a tire. At Yale University, he dropped baseballs
from his plane while the Yale catcher tried to
snag them. Other flyers attempted to copy
Beachey’s moves but none came close and a few
crashed trying. “Beachey is the most wonderful
flyer I ever saw,” Wilbur Wright said.
In May 1911, back in Washington, D.C., flying a
Curtiss plane in an aerial competition at Benning
Race Track, Beachey left the pack to head down-
town. He circled the Capitol dome, then flew over
Crack Ups and "Death Dips"
the city in swirling winds. “Five years ago, I satis- Top: Beachey wrecked this biplane in 1914. Apparently, yellow "Do Not Cross,
fied a strong desire to circle the Capitol in a dirigi- Crash Scene" tape had not yet been invented. A year later, a similar crash
ble and since that time I have always wanted to do killed him. Bottom: Sure, it's dangerous to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel,
so in an aeroplane,” he told newsmen afterward. but what about flying under the Niagara Falls bridge as Beachey did in 1911?
“The Capitol loomed in the distance and I could
not withstand the temptation.” and his plane plunged into San Francisco Bay. “The Daredevil of the Air”
Beachey was back again in September 1914, this was dead at 28.
time announcing his flight beforehand. He circled Curtiss had won a contract to build planes for the U.S. Navy; the Wrights
the Capitol, looped the loop three times, flew and others were building planes for the Army. World War I accelerated air-
upside down, and sailed over the White House as craft development, including the use of dirigibles and planes to drop bombs.
president Woodrow Wilson watched from an In Washington, the capital’s vulnerability from the air became clear. The city
TOP: TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY (GETTY IMAGES); RIGHT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

upstairs window. His purpose, Beachey said, was
“to bring America first in things aeronautic” and
demonstrate airplanes’ military potential. The
event’s excitement was marred slightly by what
may have been the first mid-air collision: his plane
struck and killed a carrier pigeon.
Beachey's luck ran out on March 14, 1915. He
had parted with Curtiss, put biplanes behind, and
was flying a flashy single-wing aircraft of his own
design. At a San Francisco airshow, after looping
and flying upside down at high speed, he dove
sharply, eliciting cheers and gasps that turned
into screams when his aircraft’s wings broke off
no longer welcomed airborne daredevils and, over the years, layers of munic-
ipal and federal regulation restricted and controlled the capital airspace.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a “flight restricted zone” excluded aircraft
lacking Federal Aviation Administration authorization from entering DC’s
airspace. Anyone trying to fly an aircraft to the White House would be chased
by military jets or downed by anti-aircraft fire—a far cry from that tranquil
day in 1906 when Lincoln Beachey alighted in the White House yard. +
Dr. Bruce W. Dearstyne is a historian in Albany, N.Y. SUNY Press published
the second edition of his book The Spirit of New York: Defining Events in the
Empire State’s History which includes a chapter on Glenn Curtiss, and his
newest book, The Crucible of Public Policy: New York Courts in the Pro-
gressive Era, in 2022.

AUTUMN 2023 61
 The
Jungle
by Dana B. Shoaf

“SHEEP SHEDS,” “Hog Sheds,”

“Glue Factory,” and “Slaughter Ho.
No. 5,” are just some of the crisply
printed definitions on this 1903 map
of the Union Stock Yards in Chicago,
Ill. The neat, colorful layout can
make one overlook that this was a
place of odors—
Terra Firma blood, manure,
sweaty workers—
and a cacophony of trains, roaring
rendering furnaces, and bellowing,
bleating meat on the hoof.
The Yards covered about 375 acres
and could hold 75,000 hogs, 21,000
cattle, and 22,000 sheep. By 1890,
nine million animals a year met their
end there to feed a growing and rap-
idly urbanizing country.
By 1900, the Yards employed
25,000 people and produced more
than 80 percent of America’s meat.
Many workers were recent immi-
grants, and in 1906 Upton Sinclair
published his fact-based novel The
Jungle to expose unsanitary and
poor processing and working condi-
tions. Americans were shocked.
One of the book’s most famous
passages reads in part: “Meat would
be shoveled into carts, and the man
who did the shoveling would not
trouble to lift out a rat even when he
saw one—there were things that
went into the sausage in comparison
with which a poisoned rat was a tid-
bit. There was no place for the men
to wash their hands before they ate
their dinner, and so they made a
practice of washing them in the
water that was to be ladled into the
sausage.” The South Branch of the
Chicago River was even called “Bub-
bly Creek” due to the decomposing
offal dumped into it.
Sinclair’s exposé provided a map
for the 1906 Federal Meat Inspection
Act, which improved meat process-
ing conditions for workers and con-
sumers alike. +

62 AMERICAN HISTORY
ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
 Just Another Indiana KlanParade, 1923
Klansmen, very likely recruited by David C.
Stephenson, put themselves on display.
A Klansman’s Horrific Reign
BY 1923, BARELY TWO YEARS after arriving
in Indiana, a 32-year-old son of a Texas dirt
farmer with an eighth-grade education had
built a region-wide Ku Klux Klan empire that
numbered thousands of sheet-wearing men
and women and had made himself a wealthy
man. The ascent of David C. Stephenson—the
“Old Man” to his followers—was due to his
gift for language, an astute sense of how best
to appeal to the dark side of human nature,
and the apparent absence of any moral
compass.
In A Fever in the Heartland, the Pulitzer
A Fever in the Prize–winning reporter and author Timothy
Heartland: The Egan traces the rise and fall of
Ku Klux Klan’s Reviews Stephenson, an all-too-com-
Plot to Take Over mon American malefactor.
America, and the Self-described as “just a nobody from
Woman Who nowhere…[with] the biggest brains,” he
Stopped Them catered to the basest instincts of White
By Timothy Egan supremacists while embracing the Klan’s
Viking, 2023, 432 calls for racial purity, temperance, and sex-
pages, $30 ual abstinence outside marriage. At the same
time, he was very often drunk, had aban-
doned two wives and a child, lied about every
aspect of his life, and regularly committed
horrific sexual predations.
But his success as a Klan recruiter was
64 AMERICAN HISTORY
unmatched. During 1923, he brought in as many
as 2,000 new members every week, and by 1925
Indianapolis boasted 40,000 Klan members—
twice as many as Atlanta. For every $10 paid by a
new recruit, Stephenson received $4 as well as a
percentage of the $6 spent for Klan regalia. His
take from membership fees alone totaled the
equivalent of about $11.6 million today and paid
for a mansion in Evansville, Ind., where he regu-
larly hosted bacchanalian celebrations, a vaca-
tion retreat in Ohio, a yacht on Lake Erie, and a
private plane.
During his four-year reign, Stephenson
appeared untouchable. The rare opponent like
Muncie newspaperman George Dale could gain
no traction with the public or government offi-
cials, many of whom were themselves Klan mem-
bers. The “Old Man” controlled the local and state
political apparatus and frequently boasted that
the White House was his ultimate goal.
When violence was called for, Stephenson
UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES (GETTY IMAGES)
turned to The Horse Thief Detective Association,
a legal remnant from 1860s Indiana that empow-
ered members to enforce the KKK’s social stric-
tures against drinking and promiscuity as well as
its depredations against Blacks, Jews, Catholics,
and immigrants. In 1922 alone, membership in
the Association grew from 8,000 to 14,000
 badged, armed, and often hooded men.
On March 15, 1925, Stephenson authored his
long overdue demise. He kidnapped and drugged
28-year-old Madge Oberholtzer, took her on a
Chicago-bound train, and raped and savaged her
with bites all over her body. Savvy enough not to
cross state lines, he checked into a hotel in north-
ern Indiana, where the distraught young woman
convinced Stephenson and two accomplices to
allow her to visit a drug store. There she bought
and quickly ingested several highly toxic bichlo-
ride of mercury tablets.
Two days later Stephenson returned Ober-
holtzer, by now in agony from the pills as well as
infections caused by his bites, to her mother’s
home near Indianapolis. “What’s done has been
done,” he warned her. “I am the law and the
power.”
Maude Oberholtzer died on April 14, but not
before signing a detailed dying declaration that
became the linchpin in Stephenson’s prosecution
for murder. Egan devotes the latter half of the
book to an engrossing account of the abduction
and trial. Convinced until the last moment that
his many friends in high places would prevent his
conviction for murder, Stephenson spent more
than 31 years in prison. He died, unrepentant, in a
small Tennessee town in 1966.
Egan’s subtitle ascribes to Madge Oberholtzer
an overstated importance. Obviously, her tragic
murder brought down Stephenson, but the rapid
decline of the Klan during the late 1920s was just
as likely, Egan writes, “because it had achieved all
of its major goals.” Prohibition, the disenfran-
chisement of Black Americans, and the 1924 pas-
sage of the National Origins Act severely limiting
immigration were now the law of the land.
A Fever in the Heartland is a riveting reminder
that Americans have too often fallen victim to
grifters and con men who stoke the fires of White
supremacy and fear of the “other” to advance their
own, often self-aggrandizing ends. Egan’s book is
both engaging history and an object lesson for our
own benighted political times. —Rick Beard
Road Trip!
“Toward the end of the nineteenth century, many
beneficiaries of modern culture began to feel they
were its secret victims,” T.J. Jackson Lears writes
in the preface to No Place of Grace: Antimodern-
ism and the Transformation of American Culture,
HENRY FORD MUSEUM OF AMERICAN INNOVATION
1880-1920 (1981), one of the best works of Ameri-
can cultural history ever written. The kind of
ambivalence that Lears describes is the crisp,
clean mountain air that the main actors of Wes
Davis’ beautifully written American Journey
breathe in as they venture in a Model T through
the Adirondacks, Green Mountains, and Great
Smoky Mountains. Davis chronicles the forging of
friendship and some wild road trips taken by four
of the leading lights of early 20th century Amer-
ica: automobile pioneer Henry Ford, inventor
Thomas Edison, conservationist John Burroughs,
and tire empresario Harvey Firestone.
While a generation of American youths had
their lives inextricably altered on the battlefields
of Europe, the aforementioned mandarins of
modernity had a sentimental journey across rural
America in the summer of 1918. While camping
out and rambling down primordial roads, this
crew realized that their commonalities were
greater than their differences. In fact, their shared American Journey:
and intersecting nostalgia for the forest primeval
On the Road With
and participation in the era’s technological trans-
Henry Ford, Thomas
formations were not eccentricities. The cultural
Edison, and John
crossroads of development and conservation
Burroughs
teemed with turn-of-the-century elites, most
notably John Burroughs’ close friend, Theodore By Wes Davis
Roosevelt. It wouldn’t have taken very many W.W. Norton, 2023,
Americans leading typically hardscrabble early $30
20th century lives to realize how much this cadre
of powerful, influential men had in common.
On this journey across barely navigable roads,
the men disagreed, often strongly, about the
issues of the day. Ford, for example, opposed
American involvement in the war in Europe while
Burroughs adopted a thoroughly Wilsonian
“Keep the World Safe for Democracy” view of the
conflict. Industrialists Ford, Edison, and Fires-
tone all came to embrace the importance of pre-
serving rural landscapes and agrarian life.
Burroughs went from regarding the automobile
and looming expansion of roadways as a destruc- Road Trip
Thomas Edison, Henry
tive force in rural America to seeing the automo- Ford, and John
bile as a source of autonomy for individuals Burroughs were all
interested in appreciating the far-flung natural fascinated by
splendor of the continent. outdated technology.
AUTUMN 2023 65
 Davis has a tremendous eye for detail and
writes viscerally of his subject’s ventures into the
wild. He does a masterful job presenting the sub-
jects of this book with nuance. Of particular note
is the way that Davis tackles Henry Ford’s
antisemitism head on, showing the degree to
which Burroughs castigated his friend for this
repugnant aspect of his character. Nevertheless,
the author makes no connection between Ford’s
simultaneous enthusiasm for nature and indus-
trial development, a sensibility he shared with
many in the Third Reich, the odious regime which
Disunion Among made no secret of its admiration for Ford and the
Ourselves: The ideas expressed in his explicitly antisemitic Dear-
born Independent. While there is much to com-
Perilous Politics of the
mend in American Journey, this thoroughly
American Revolution
entertaining book could, at times, use a wider
By Eli Merritt
lens. —Clayton Trutor
University of Missouri
Press, 2023, $39.95 Imperial Civil War
Eli Merritt, a Vanderbilt University professor of
political history and national newspaper com-
mentator of note, presents a fundamental reex-
amination of the iconic creation of the United
States of America. It is a familiar story we all
know so well, but do we? Merritt effectively
argues that a combination of nationalist myth-
making and a piling-on of secondary sources has
over time embedded a historiographic inevitabil-
ity for the founding and survival of the new nation
that a French contemporary rightly predicted
would become “the greatest empire in the world.”
Merritt, like several other 21st-century historians
in various subject areas, moves past well-worn
In the Shadow of secondary accounts to return to poring through
Invisibility: Ralph primary sources such as letters and diaries, which
Ellison and the includes mining overlooked accounts, to trans-
Promise of American form the traditional view.
Democracy The revised story that emerges is of a brutal
By Sterling Lecater imperial civil war between Britain and its 13
Bland Jr. American colonies exploited by predatory rivals
LSU Press, 2023, $39.95 like France and Spain with the colonies bitterly
divided regionally with an abiding fear of domes-
tic civil war as well, represented by the famous
Philadelphia newspaper masthead of the seg-
mented serpent with the words “Join or die.” The
continental congresses were the result of colo-
nists’ belief they were treated as second class citi-
zens of an empire with seemingly endless taxes
and regulations represented by the Stamp Act
(1765), Townsend Acts (1767), and series of puni-
tive Coercive Acts directed against rebellious
Massachusetts. The colonists attempted eco-
nomic blockade and then military force to redress
their grievances, and eventually an actual or de
facto alliance with France and Spain to win
independence.
While pilloried now by progressive critics for
not addressing slavery, Merritt observes the
66 AMERICAN HISTORY
founders could not do so without a civil war of
North vs. South occurring nearly a century before
it actually did. He also makes much of intense
political negotiations resulting in the Mississippi
and Fisheries Compromise of 1779 and the ratifi-
cation of America’s first constitution, the Article
of Confederation, in 1781. These were mired in
the crucial matters of navigation of the Missis-
sippi River, critical to the southern colonies, and
access to the fisheries of Newfoundland, neces-
sary for New England prosperity, not to mention
explosive western land claims extending to the
east bank of the Mississippi, which included the
volatile matter of Native American relations. Dis-
union Among Ourselves, supported by extensive
end notes, a bibliography of archival sources, and
many enumerated illustrations and maps, is
almost certain to be a watershed for the future
historiography of what is still called ‘The Ameri-
can Revolution.’ —William John Shepherd
Celebrating Black Culture
Ralph Waldo Ellison witnessed the lion’s share of
the 20th century in his 81 years (1913-1994).
Widely acknowledged as one of America’s great-
est literary and intellectual figures, Ellison’s leg-
acy rests on a strikingly small body of work
considering his long life. He is the author of an
esteemed collection of essays and two novels, one
finished and one unfinished. The finished novel,
Invisible Man, earned him the National Book
Award in 1953 and offered a unique, many-sided
view of Black American life. Simultaneously
sociological in scope and existential in tone, Invis-
ible Man earned its author no end of esteem but
also plenty of detractors, particularly in academe.
Sterling Lecater Bland Jr. is, in large part,
responding to those disparagements in his excel-
lent new book.
Critics of Ellison often present him as an aloof
Ralph
Ellison
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
A ROAD TRIP LIKE NO OTHER!
BATTLEFIELDS, FORTS
AND A WILD BOAR

F
or more than a year, John Banks crisscrossed the country,
exploring battlefields, historic houses, forts, and more.
He rode on the back of an ATV with his “psychotic
connection” in Mississippi, went under the spell of an
amateur hypnotist at a U.S. Army fort in Tennessee,
admired a sunset from the grounds of the notorious Andersonville
prison camp in Georgia, prayed during a tense boat ride in Charleston
Harbor in South Carolina, and briefly interviewed Louie the wild boar
in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Join him on a road trip like no other.

John Banks, a longtime journalist, is a columnist for Civil War Times magazine.
His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Dallas Morning News,
American History, America’s Civil War and
elsewhere. Banks is secretary-treasurer of The
Center for Civil War Photography and a board
member of the Save Historic Antietam Foundation
and Battle of Nashville Trust. He lives in Nashville
with his wife, Carol—his beloved “Mrs. B.”

ORDER NOW ! G E T T Y S B U R GPU B L I S H I N G. C O M

 aesthete, an ex-radical who spent the last half of
his life estranged from the Civil Rights Movement
and Black nationalist politics. Bland counters by
placing Ellison’s ideas directly in conversation
with those of his contemporaries, mining not only
Invisible Man but also Ellison’s body of essays,
letters, interviews, and his second novel, Three
Days Before the Shooting, which remained unpub-
lished besides a few excerpts until decades after
his death.
What shines through in Bland’s monograph is
Ellison’s commitment to Black vernacular culture
and Ellison’s belief that it formed a significant
The Great New York part of the bedrock of American culture. Ellison
Fire of 1776: A Lost came to view the Old Left of the 1930s, New Left
Story of the American of the 1960s, and social scientists as profoundly
Revolution limited in their views of Black American culture.
By Benjamin L. Carp These were not fellow travelers, in Ellison’s mind.
Yale University Press, Instead, they saw African Americans primarily
2023, $30 through the prism of exploitation rather than see-
ing them for their varied and vibrant cultural
expressions in spite of profound limitations on
their freedom. Ellison also stood athwart calls for
Black separatism, favoring instead a polyglot
democratic social vision—one that placed the
experiences of slaves and their descendants
alongside those of the signers of the Declaration
of Independence in the founding of the nation. He
embraced the ambiguity of the collective Ameri-
can experience, regarding complexities of race,
time, and space as possibilities for cultural cre-
ation and renewal.
Taking on Ellison is an understandable direc-
Self-Inflicted Wound? tion for Bland, an English professor at Rutgers
An engraving of the University–Newark. His previous scholarship
massive 1776 fire in New
York City. It’s possible deals primarily with the narratives of runaway
American Rebels slaves. For both Ellison and Bland, the vernacular
purposefully started the and the scholarly belong in constant conversa-
intense blaze. tion. —Clayton Trutor
68 AMERICAN HISTORY
Who Burned New York?
This is the New York City native and history pro-
fessor’s third book about The American Revolu-
tion, the other two being Defiance of the Patriots:
The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America
(2010) and Rebels Rising: Cities and the American
Revolution (2007). Here Carp explores a major
event of the era, now little remembered: The
Great Fire of September 21, 1776, which destroyed
at least 20 percent of New York, the second larg-
est city in North America. Occurring a mere five
days of the British occupation in the wake of the
ignominious flight of George Washington’s rabble
of an army the question then as now is what the
conflagration accidental or intentional. If the lat-
ter, then who and why? Using archival research,
including contemporary newspapers and featur-
ing several engravings from that time, Carp peels
back conflicting stories, rumors, and lies reveal-
ing unrestrained civil violence that had to be for-
gotten for the city to rise from the ashes of war as
well as the creation of the foundational American
myth of a patriotic rather than a civil war.
While not finding a smoking gun, as it were,
Carp makes a strong case from available evidence,
that the fires were intentionally set by several reb-
els, called ‘incendiaries,’ using pre-set combust-
ables in multiple city locations. Rumors had
abounded this would happen and Washington and
Congress had discussed it. Washington sought to
maintain the moral high ground, but nevertheless
approved the burning after the fact, and most
probably gave the order in secret, as the city was
known to be at least two-thirds loyalist. He had
previously ordered the city’s bells removed, which
could have been used to sound the alarm, and
fire-fighting pumps and equipment were sabo-
taged. Washington later vouched for suspects
being held by the British, including one who was
executed as a spy and who also admitted to being a
”principal actor” in setting the fire.
Two British commanders, William Howe in
1776 and Guy Carleton in 1783, initiated legal
investigations, but no one was brought to trial
although at least eight persons, including a
woman, were summarily executed at fire ignition
points by British soldiers. Carp argues the British
lost in the court of public opinion because they
had clearly burned so many other American cities
as well the complicating factor of peace negotia-
tions during both investigations. It suited rebel
aims then and the reputation of the Founding
Fathers historically to portray the fire’s origin as
ambiguous and best forgotten as it featured mar-
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
ginalized persons, including women, using unre-
strained violence more so than the view of more
sober White male elites wisely guiding the new
nation’s fortunes. —William John Shepherd
 i t O u t !
Ch e c k
THIS WEEK IN
HISTORY
AN ORIGINAL VIDEO SERIES
Join hosts Claire and Alex as
they explore—week by week—
the people and events that have
shaped the world we live in.
JOIN
T O D AY !

T H E

LINCOLN
FORUM
What began as a modest proposal to bring Lincoln
enthusiasts together for a small East Coast-based yearly
history conference at Gettysburg has blossomed into one
of the leading history organizations in the country.
Our yearly November symposium is attended by scholars
and enthusiasts from all over the nation and abroad.
It attracts speakers and panelists who are some of the most
HISTORYNET.COM revered historians in the Lincoln and Civil War fields.

Visit our website:

thelincolnforum.org
for more information
 researched and features fascinating details about
Thoroughbred to the End the early days of American horse racing. Even if
In the mid-19th century, the “Sport of Kings” sat you are not a racing fan, this history book is a win-
alone on the throne. Thoroughbred racing was ner going away. —Dave Kindy
the supreme spectator sport with countless fans
thronging to tracks across America. Off to the Races
One horse reigned above all others: Lexington, In 1973, the world watched and waited to see if
a powerful chestnut-colored thoroughbred who Secretariat could take the Triple Crown—some-
smashed records and sprinted past all other pre- thing that hadn’t been done in 25 years. The mus-
tenders to capture the crown. Of the 13 Triple cular racehorse did win it, smashing the course
Crown winners in history, 12 are descended from record at Belmont Park and beating the rest of the
this legendary horse. field by an astounding 31 lengths.
Author Kim Wickens has written a splendid The jockey who rode Big Red to victory in that
Lexington: The book that is both exciting and informative. Lex- terrific trifecta 50 years ago was Ron Turcotte,
Extraordinary Life ington tells how the thoroughbred came to rule the head of a horse racing family that dominated
and Turbulent Times the racing world, along with the colorful charac- racetracks across North America for four decades.
of America’s Legend- ters who helped shape his history. Along with brothers Noel, Rudy, Roger and Yves,
ary Racehorse Born in 1850, Lexington was the sire of another the Turcotte jockeys amassed a combined 8,251
By Kim Wickens fabled horse, Boston, that won 40 of 45 races. Big victories and nearly $60 million in purses.
Balantine Books, 2023, and strong with the heart of a champion, Lexing- The new book The Turcottes chronicles the fam-
$28.99 ton was nearly blind by the end of his racing ily’s rags-to-riches rise from a poor logging com-
career, though still dominant enough to leave the munity in Canada to the pole position in the “Sport
also-rans behind in the dust. of Kings.” Author Curtis Stock pens a lively narra-
As a colt, he was named Darley by owner Elisha tive of the five brothers’ exploits and exigencies as
Warfield, a prominent obstetrician in Lexington, only a seasoned horse-racing journalist can.
Ky., who delivered thousands of babies, including With Ron leading the way in 1961, the Tur-
future First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. However, it cottes emerged from obscurity to ride to victory
was as a horse breeder and trainer that Warfield on some of horse racing’s most famous steeds: the
left his mark. Known today as the “The Father of aforementioned Secretariat, Riva Ridge, North-
the Kentucky Turf,” the doctor helped put the city ern Dancer, Angle Light, Cure the Blues and Belle
of Lexington on the map as the capital of horse Geste, to name just a few. And they did it at the
country. sport’s biggest races: Kentucky Derby, Belmont
By the time Darley was foaled, Warfield was too Stakes, Preakness, Travers Stakes, Breeders’ Cup,
old and sick to do the training, so he turned to an and Queen’s Plate, among others.
unlikely partner in the antebellum South: the for- With a horse sense uncommon for those not
The Turcottes: The merly enslaved Harry Lewis. Fond of wearing a born of bluegrass, the Turcottes were born to ride
Remarkable Story of a green velvet waistcoat with tails and a silk top hat in the saddle. All of them had a knack for knowing
Horse Racing Dynasty to celebrate his freedom, Lewis was considered how to get the most from of their mounts and when
By Curtis Stock one of the top trainers in Kentucky. to urge them on to victory. Their diminutive sizes
Firefly Books, 2023, Lewis and Warfield molded the wild colt into a were ideal for being jockeys while their desire to
$35 formidable force. Back then, thoroughbred racing succeed propelled each of them to astounding win-
was an exhausting endurance sport. Horses ran ning records, along with wealth and stardom.
four miles in a single race and had to win two The price of that fame, however, proved costly.
heats to become the day’s victor. They could run All were beset by serious injuries in a dangerous
up to 12 miles in a single afternoon of racing. sport that harms and kills riders at an alarming
After Darley won his first two races handily, rate. Ron’s career was cut short in 1978 by a track
Warfield sold him to Richard Ten Broeck, who ran accident that left him a paraplegic for life. Under
the renamed Lexington at his racetrack in New the constant pressure to maintain weight and win
Orleans. It was there that the mighty thorough- races, Roger and Noel became alcoholics and took
bred shattered the world record for a four-mile their own lives while Rudy drank himself to
race, earning him immortality. death. Yves’ career ended early because of head
Because of a serious eye infection that robbed his trauma sustained from a nasty track spill.
vision, Lexington was retired to the stud farm after The excitement of thoroughbred racing
only seven races. He sired a line of champions that resounds throughout Stock’s book about this
included War Admiral, Citation, Secretariat, Seattle famous family of jockeys. While the dialogue is a
Slew and Affirmed – among thousands of other. bit contrived at times, the story itself is riveting as
With a stirring narrative, “Lexington” reads like it nostalgically recalls a golden age when cham-
a throng of thoroughbreds thundering through pion horses were guided by skilled riders sharing
the stretch to the finish line. It is extensively a common name and desire to win. —Dave Kindy

70 AMERICAN HISTORY
TOUR THE ANTIETAM BATTLEFIELD
with D. Scott Hartwig
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2023 • 9 am – 7 pm
161 years later, September 17, 1862 still remains
the bloodiest single day in American history…

The Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, in partnership with the American Civil War Museum in Richmond,
Virginia invites you to join distinguished author and former National Park Service historian, D. Scott Hartwig for
a full-day tour of the Antietam battlefield! As we walk this historic landscape, we will explore some of the key
moments in the fighting on September 17, discuss the diverse experiences of the soldiers who fought there, and
learn, through the words of those who survived that day, how the soldiers sought to make meaning out of all that
they had endured.
All attendees will receive a free copy of Mr. Hartwig’s new book, I Dread the Thought of The Place: The Battle of
Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). Boxed lunch and dinner
at Lilah’s Restaurant in Shepherdstown, WV included.
Participants may either park at Gettysburg College and ride the coach bus to Antietam at
8 am, or meet the bus at the Antietam Visitor Center at 9 am. Bus will return to
Gettysburg College around 8 pm.
$175.00/person. Online registration opens in late June.
SPACE IS LIMITED TO 50 PARTICIPANTS!
For questions, please call the CWI office at
717-337-6592 or email civilwar@gettysburg.edu

A conversational
approach to
interpreting
history!
Listen as
hosts Patrick
and Matt connect
you with your
favorite stories
from the past—
as well as ones
you may have
never heard!
@The HistoryThingsPodcast
Download or
listen for FREE

Cultural Exchange
THIS LAKOTA SIOUX DOLL of a woman carrying an infant in a cradle-
board, about 9½ inches tall, looks too precious to play with. Created
about 1890, it is made out of a mix of traditional Native
Toy Box American materials, including hide, sinew, and porcupine
quills, combined with metal cones and glass beads and
other introduced items. The Lakota are a Western Branch of the Sioux
nation. In 1870, Congregational missionary Alfred Riggs founded the
Santee Normal Training School on the Santee reservation in north-
72 AMERICAN HISTORY
Dressed to Impress
Colorful glass beads
enliven this 1890s doll.
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN
eastern Nebraska. Riggs was a member of a family
that had worked with native tribes for decades.
His school taught courses from blacksmithing to
zoology, and attracted students from other tribes
throughout the Great Plains. One of those grate-
ful attendees presented this doll to Riggs as a gift.
The school’s mission across cultures ended in
1936 when it lost its government subsidies. +
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