DailyNewsGems

Field of Blood: Is the U.S. On the Road to Another Civil War?

In 1856, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner was severely beaten on the Senate floor by Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina.

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Is the United States headed for another Civil War?

After reading Yale historian Joanne B. Freeman’s magnificent book, “Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War,” I was stunned to learn just how much physical violence took place within the halls of Congress before the Civil War, especially during the 36^th Congress (1859-1861).

Through her scrupulous research, Freeman reports that between 1830-1860, there were 70 violent incidents between congressmen in the House and Senate chambers, nearby streets, and dueling meeting grounds. Freeman, moreover, found clashes involving canings, fistfights, brandished pistols, and brick throwing, among others.

Most students of U.S. political history are well aware of the most infamous act of violence in the U.S. Congress.

On May 22, 1856, Rep. Preston Brooks (D-S.C.), viciously struck Sen. Charles Sumner (R-Mass.) in the head with a cane while he was sitting at his desk in the Senate chamber, leaving the Massachusetts senator semiconscious and near death, soon after Sumner delivered his famous “Crime Against Kansas” speech, in which he argued that Kansas should be admitted to the union as a free state. Sumner's inflammatory speech was a harsh indictment on the spread of slavery, while attacking several senators by name, including Andrew Butler of South Carolina.

Freeman presents scores of other physical clashes on the House floor and on the streets of Washington.

On April 17, 1850, during a debate on the Compromise of 1850, Sen. Henry S. Foote, D-Miss., a supporter of the compromise, pulled a pistol from his coat after Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, D-Mo. rose from his desk and stormed toward him. Senate colleagues grabbed Foote and wrestled him to the ground.  A motion was made to censure Foote, but failed to move beyond the committee level.

Shortly before 2 a.m. on February 6, 1858, Pennsylvania Republican Galusha Grow and South Carolina Democrat Laurence Keitt exchanged a series of insults, then blows during debate over the Kansas Territory’s pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution. "In an instant the House was in the greatest possible confusion,” the Congressional Globe reported. More than 30 Members joined the melee. Sergeant-at-Arms Adam J. Glossbrenner was instructed to use mace in order to restore order to the House. In one comical twist to the melee, Wisconsin Republicans John “Bowie Knife” Potter and Cadwallader Washburn ripped the hairpiece from the head of William Barksdale, a Democrat from Mississippi.

According to Freeman, fights and brawls became so frequent, that many congressmen strapped guns and knives each morning before heading off to the nation’s capital. Ever since the Sumner canings, Northern congressmen were strongly encouraged to arm themselves. Freeman documented more than a dozen fights in the 36^th Congress.

Freeman’s Field of Blood couldn’t have been published at a more timely moment in U.S. history.

160 years ago, the country was split down the middle over slavery. Having abolished slavery, Northerners sought to prevent its spread; the South was determined to assert its right to hold slaves. With no compromise in sight, war was the only solution. The Civil War was America’s bloodiest conflict with roughly two percent of the population, an estimated 620,000 men, losing their lives in the line of duty. 

When I think of the deep, spiteful divisions that gripped the country over slavery, I wonder if the sharp division over immigration in 2018 will have a similar harmful effect, to such an extent that it irreparably rips the country in two?

Back in July, a Gallup poll showed that immigration was the most important issue gripping the country with 22 percent of Americans citing it as the top problem. 

And on Monday, just eight days before the midterm elections, President Trump said he's prepared to deploy at least 5,200 active-duty troops to the southern border to confront migrants, preventing them from entering the country, citing national security concerns. 

 

The above video of a melee breaking out, isn’t from the United States Congress, it’s actually from the Mexican Congress.

But a similar brawl taking place in the U.S. Congress might be just around the corner, especially if the vitriol and toxic political climate we’re living in doesn’t simmer down.

Civility and comprise, after all, have left the building. We longer have the likes of John McCain and Ted Kennedy to engineer a grand bargain.

In Field of Blood, readers learned that Congress suffered a crushing blow when Daniel Webster and Henry Clay passed away in 1852, which reflected in Freeman’s mind the “passing of the spirit of compromise along with a passing of a generation.”

Congress might not come to blows in their respective chambers in the present 115th congress. Rather, their weapons of choice are to spew venom and vitriol through social media, especially Twitter.

Internet users are subjected to daily doses of anti-immigration vs pro-immigration rants, not only from congress members themselves but from their growing legion of supporters, spewing more hatred, demonizing opponents, and placing the country into a damaging specter of tribal warfare with little room for mutual agreement.

To me, the animus taking place on social media is just a 21^st century version of the pistols, knives, and bricks that Congress used to bully their opponents with in the 19^th century on the eve of the U.S. Civil War.

Another glowing similarity between the political climate in the slavery debate and the immigration debate is the role of the press.

In Field of Blood, Freeman chronicles the highly partisan nature of newspapers at the time of the slavery debate. It wouldn’t be uncommon for Southern papers, for example, to report Northerners were the aggressors, and the Southerners were the calm voice of reason throughout the crisis.  Newspapers and congressmen often struck deals to present Washington to its constituents back home as it needed to be presented. “Newspapers at the time,” Freeman wrote, “weren’t into truth telling.”

Reporters not into truth telling could just as easily be said about a number of news outlets of this present generation from Fox News to MSNBC to all the partisan blogs flooding the Internet, including Daily Kos, Red State, Breitbart News, or Mother Jones.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all,'' Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, fell from the heavens at just the right time to heal the nation during one of the most tumultuous times in the nation's history.

It was only a few months ago when Rasmussen Reports published a survey showing that nearly a third of U.S. voters expect civil war within 5 years.

As the nation, the U.S. Congress, and the American voters, come to terms with the present crisis of immigration, many are looking for the leader who will bridge the great divide tearing this country into smithereens before another Civil War takes place.

Who will that leader be before it’s too late?

 

–Bill Lucey

[email protected]

October 30, 2018

Book Review: Remembering When Government Was Good

 

“We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.”

― Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

During the bruising U.S. 2016 presidential election, voters were constantly reminded Washington was elitist, broken and has failed the American people.

David Goldfield, professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, in his captivating book, “The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good,” reminds us of the time when government wasn’t so broken.  He reminds us that polio was largely cured (Salk vaccine) due to the growing role of the federal government in national health, and science; when the G.I. Bill (after W.W. II) allowed thousands of working-class Americans to earn a college degree, including helping put thousands into jobs, houses, and businesses.

When the Soviets launch of Sputnik embarrassed our nation on how far we lagged behind our chief adversary in space, we didn’t point fingers and demonize those in office. Rather, we worked together as a republic to find a solution, which was the passage of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958, strengthening education in sciences, foreign languages, and area studies in Universities. The NDEA was hailed as the most important national education legislation in 100 years. According to Goldfield’s splendid research, “1.5 million men and women had gone to college on NDEA’s student loan program, 15,000 of those earning doctoral degrees.”

The passing of the Clean Air Act of 1963, the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the passage of Title IX in 1972 (using the office of Civil Rights to police sexual discrimination), the founding of the EPA and the Clean Air Act, were all heroic acts of federal legislation to improve equality and quality of life for all Americans.  They were accomplished under a Democratic Chief Executive as well as a Republican Chief Executive and signed into law due to both aisles in Congress coming together as one team to improve conditions for all Americans.

Imagine, as Goldfield chilling points out, for the first time since W.W. II, children are less likely to be better off economically than their parents; and more chilling still, more than 20 percent of children live in poverty, ranking the U.S. 28^th among 34 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) nations.

In this toxic political environment of tribalism (blue vs red, Fox News vs MSNBC) we’re living in; when compromise has become an evil word, there was a time in this country, which historian David Goldfield chronicles so masterfully, when there existed a firm partnership between Washington and the people that helped them fulfill the promise of the American dream.

Whatever became of that country?

—Bill Lucey

[email protected]

October 18, 2018

Who Belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Journalists?

While scanning my Twitter feed, a picture of Mount Rushmore, sculpture in the Black Hills in Keystone, South Dakota popped up.

Mount Rushmore, of course, features 60-foot sculptures of the heads of four United States presidents: George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865).

This got me to thinking, what if there was a Mount Rushmore for journalists? Which individuals would best represent the very best of American journalism?

So, I checked in with some prominent journalists to ask who they would put on Mount Rushmore, high above the dense forests and pristine streams of South Dakota.

Before getting to their personal preferences, I listed the four individuals who I thought best represented the "growth, development and preservation'' of American journalism, along with brief biographical sketches.

• Adolph S Ochs

When newspaper publisher and Cincinnati, Ohio native, Adolph Simon Ochs, age 36, bought the New York Times in 1896, he took over a publication whose circulation had plunged to 9,000 readers; with outstanding obligations of $300,000, while losing $1,000 a day.  In addition, it had a number of competitors to contend with.

Unlike other New York City dailies that were blatantly partisan, Ochs insisted his paper concentrate on objective reporting, and steer away from the sensational reporting involving murders, macabre crimes, and the “if it bleeds it leads,” mentality practiced by its chief competitors. He also reduced the price of the newspaper. As a way of consolidating its editorial independence, the Times refused advertising dollars and contracts from governments.

The New York Times under Ochs’ stewardship became the first national "newspaper of record." From 1896 to 1935 daily circulation increased dramatically, so much so that by the 1920s, the newspaper had nearly 800,000 readers.

Ochs was additionally instrumental in keeping his paper up to date with all the latest technology, giving the paper a fresh new look.

Descendants of Ochs still reside over the Times to this day and he will be glad to know his newspaper is still a powerful and influential news source in the 21^st century with a daily circulation of well over one million subscribers. The Times, moreover, have won 94 Pulitzer Prizes, a record seven in 2002 alone.

• Dorothy Thompson

International correspondent and political commentator, Dorothy Thompson, was known to many as the “First Lady of American Journalism”.

Before moving to New York City and launching her journalism career in 1917, she was a fierce Suffragist soon after graduating from Syracuse College in 1914.

During World War I, she became a foreign correspondent, first reporting from Vienna, then was named bureau chief in Berlin during the 1920s for the New York Evening Post.

She was one of the first American correspondents to warn of the terror Adolf Hitler would unleash on Europe. She wrote that the "National Socialist Revolution in Germany would prove to be the most world disturbing event of the century and perhaps of many centuries."

Thompson was back on American soil in 1936; and soon unveiled her widely read "On the Record" syndicated column which ran in the New York Herald Tribune and more than 150 other newspapers from 1936-1958.

Time Magazine ran a cover story on her on June 12, 1939, and described her and Eleanor Roosevelt as being “two of the most influential women in the country.”

• David Broder

David Broder, the "Dean of the Press Corps'' as he was dubbed, covered 11 U.S. Presidents in his famed reporting career, beginning with the Dwight D. Eisenhower.

“The high priest of political journalism “(another of his affectionate nicknames), first landed at the Washington Post in 1966. Previously, he reported for The New York Times, Washington Star and Congressional Quarterly.  He was one of the most prominent political scribes in the nation's capital, who cultivated, according to those who knew him best, some of the most authoritative and wide-ranging sources, from little known precinct officials to senior members of the U.S. Congress. Broder traveled more than 100,000 miles a year on his political beat.

Dan Balz, Chief correspondent covering national politics, the presidency and Congress for the Washington Post, once wrote that Broder "knew the details of everything but never lost sight of the big picture. In an era in which political reporting has become more and more focused on minutiae,'' Balz explained, "he kept his focus where it belonged — on the events and forces that move ordinary Americans and shape history.”

Mr. Broder was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in May 1973 for distinguished commentary, for explaining the importance of the Watergate scandal in a "clear, compelling way."

In a 1990 survey by Washingtonian Magazine, opinion-page editors of the largest 200 newspapers rated Broder as "Best Reporter," "Hardest Working" and "Least Ideological" among 123 columnists.

• Jimmy Breslin

Jimmy Breslin, who began his newspaper career as a sportswriter for the New York Herald Tribune, soon segued into a brash street-wise city reporter and columnist, who didn't write about the rich and famous--but rather--gave voice to the down and out raging through the city, the infamous, marginalized, the unscrupulous, and the deadbeats of society.

Writer Pete Hamill once said of Breslin, "I think he believes that it is his responsibility to let the voiceless have a voice. He's definitely not interested in interviewing [then U.S. Secretary of State] George Shultz."

In 1970, Breslin was viciously attacked by American mobster Paul Vario, who was later portrayed by actor Paul Sorvino in the Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas. 

After the Herald Tribune folded, Breslin wrote for the New York Post from 1968-69; then the New York Daily News, from 1978-88, before landing at Newsday in 1988, where he stayed until writing his final column (as a staff member) on November 2, 2004.

The Queens native won a Pulitzer in 1986, when he was with the New York Daily News for a series of columns which "consistently championed ordinary citizens." In an interview, he said he wasn't surprised he won a Pulitzer, but was surprised " he hadn't won at least five Pulitzer's by now."

Some of Breslin's most noteworthy columns, include: interviewing the $3.01 gravedigger, Clifton Pollard, at John F. Kennedy's funeral; and in 1977, covering David Berkowitiz, the infamous "Son of Sam" who was terrorizing the New York City streets. Berkowitz began writing personal letters to Breslin.

Breslin, along with writers Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and others, have often been credited with being the early pioneers who ushered in "New Journalism," that is, a new breed of gifted writers who reported on the social and cultural earthquakes of the 1960s and '70s in newspaper and magazine journalism that read like compelling fiction.

Outside of the newsroom, Breslin wrote a number of books, including: "Can't Anybody Here Play this Game." (about the hapless 1962 New York Mets), "World Without End, Amen: A Novel" "Table Money," the biography "Damon Runyon: A Life," and "I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me," a memoir about his 1994 brain surgery.

Responses from Journalists on Who Should Be Included on the Mount Rushmore of Journalists?

• ) 1.) Horace Greeley 2.) Walter Lippmann 3.) James Reston 4.) Murray Kempton,

—Sam Tanenhaus, American historian, biographer, journalist, and former New York Times Book Editor. He currently is a writer for Prospect, a monthly British general interest magazine.

 

• ) 1.) Ralph McGill would be up there. 2.) H. L. Mencken 3.) Mike Royko.... Still thinking...."

—Bob Ryan, Sports columnist emeritus for the Boston Globe.

 

• ) 1.) Murray Kempton 2.) Nina Bernstein. 3.) Tom Robbins.

 —Jim Dwyer, reporter and columnist for The New York Times

 

• 1.) Don Graham) 2.) James Reston 3.) Katharine Graham 4.) Ben Bradlee  5.) Neil Sheehan 6.) Bob Woodward

—David Ignatius, associate editor and columnist for The Washington Post. 

 

• "I might add Otis Chandler "

—Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times

 

• ) 1.) William Allen White 2.) Edward R. Murrow 3.) Lincoln Steffens 4.) Dorothy Thompson

—George Vecsey, New York Times sports columnist

 

• ) 1.) Ben Bradlee  2.) Abe Rosenthal 3.) Murray Kempton 4.) Mary McGrory

—Warren Hoge, former New York Times reporter and currently vice president for external relations at the International Peace Institute, a New York-based think tank.

 

• ) 1.) Meyer Berger 2.) Edward R Murrow 3.) David Halberstam 4.) Thomas Nast

—Doug Clifton, former executive editor of The Miami Herald and Cleveland Plain Dealer

 

• "I’d be happy with Katharine Graham up there solo"

—Anne Kornblut, a Pulitzer Prize–winning recipient at the Washington Post, currently serving as director of strategic communications for Facebook.

 

• ) 1.) Murray Kempton 2.) A.J. Liebling 3.) I. F. Stone 4.) Edward R. Murrow 5.) Ida B. Wells, 6.) James Gordon Bennett 7.) Don Hewitt 8.) Adolph Ochs

—Sam Roberts, Urban Affairs Correspondent for The New York Times

 

• ) 1.) Ida Tarbell  2.) Carol Loomis 3.) Bob Woodward

—Clifton Leaf, Editor for Fortune Magazine

 

• 1.) Max Frankel ) Ben Bradlee 3.) Kay Graham

—Norman Ornstein, political scientist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

 

• ) 1.) Bob Woodward (and Carl Bernstein) 2.) Mike Royko  3.) Jimmy Breslin 4.) Katharine Graham /Adolph Ochs “in owner wing.”

—Dave Hyde, award-winning sports columnist for the South Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper, the main daily newspaper of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

 

             —Bill Lucey

            [email protected]

            October 4, 2018

Saying Goodbye to Mom

“Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”

― J.M. Barrie

It’s hard saying goodbye

Especially when it’s your beloved Mother.

A Mother who guided her five children (Ellyn, Patricia, Liz, Katie, and myself) through some tumultuous storms, heartbreaking setbacks, new challenges; a Mother who was an anchor of courage--losing her best friend, my Dad, Jerry (Jeremiah) in 1994 and her daughter (Patricia) in 1997 from lung cancer.

My Mom embraced calamity and disappointment with a renewed burst of courage and optimism. Guided mostly by her deep love of God and strong devotion to her family, always looking for the sun through the dark, foreboding skies; her belief brighter days were just around the corner.

“Things happen for a reason,” was her guiding principle through our family’s most difficult times.

No one embraced the happy times more than Mom. Birthday’s, anniversary’s, Thanksgiving and especially Christmas, Mom’s home was always filled with joy, laughter, family, friends, and an abundance of love. No one was happier than Mom, when her grandchildren (Michael, Christopher, Dawn, and Brittany) were around her; and later, her great grandchildren (Dustin, Justin, Brandon, Savannah, and Sophia).

If you understand where Mom came from, you will better understand why family was so critically important to her.

Helene Elizabeth Knox was born March 14, 1921 in Peace River, a small town in northwestern Alberta, Canada, just below the Smoky River confluence. Though she lived in the United States since marrying in 1947 (New York City), she proudly remained a Canadian her entire life.

Her mother, Sarah, died young. Her father, James, not knowing how best to raise Helene, along with her sister, Agnes, and brother, James, were dispatched to a convent in Peace River. So, Mom’s childhood was filled, more or less, with not so happy memories of strict French nuns, who rarely showered their inhabitants with much affection; they were prone, rather, to meting out harsh discipline with an iron hand.

Mom was on her own at the tender age of 16, enrolling in a business secretarial college, landing a job in Toronto; and then working for the government as a secretary in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, where she met her future husband, my Dad, Jeremiah Joseph Lucey, during World War II.

So, when Mom and Dad raised their family, birthday’s, Sunday breakfast with the entire family (after mass, of course), summer vacations at cottages, graduations and anniversary dinners at Miller’s Restaurant in Lakewood, and the joy of the Christmas season with a fully decked-out Christmas tree (with bright decorative lights adorning the outside of the house) became of utmost importance to our parents. At birthdays, Mom knew each of our favorite dinners and desserts from spaghetti and meatballs to German chocolate cake.

Mom began each morning right up until she recently broke her hip, sharply at 6:00 a.m. While waiting for the coffee to brew, she never missed a day of reciting the rosary, usually in the dark, before flipping on the lights.

Not until much later in our lives, did our family come to realize it was Mom’s devout religious faith that nourished her and became a source of sustenance during turbulent times.

One major disappointment in Mom’s life was when she became afflicted with macular degeneration (blurred or no vision in the center of her eyes, AMD or ARMD), leaving her only with weak peripheral vision. Mom was an avid reader, she devoured books like most of us devour McDonald’s French Fries. It was a mighty big challenge for her to train herself to listen to books on tape. She accepted the setback, as always, with patience and grateful that at least she can listen to tapes. Large heaps of books on tape were regularly deposited in Mom’s mailbox.

Mom was many things, but one thing she wasn’t was sugar and spice and everything nice if you got her dander up.

She could be a real firecracker, to be sure.

If something she bought from the store wasn’t working or was defective, or she was overcharged, she often could be heard, bellowing out: “Wait until I give them a piece of my mind!”

When I was a kid, there many times, I pretended I didn’t know my Mom when she was arguing with store clerks while shopping.

One time, when I was about seven or eight, I came back from the corner barber shop with a nasty looking haircut, at least by my Mom’s standards. I cringed when she dragged me through the Parma neighborhood (Gerald Ave.) past all the neighbors, back to the barber shop and screamed at the startled barber: “Do you consider this a haircut!”?

But that was Mom.

And we loved her for it. Her strong spirit and verbal lashings still live on through a couple of my sisters, namely Ellyn and Kathleen (Katie).

Physically, the last five or six years have been difficult for my Mom. She has gone through a series of operations for multiple fractures to the spine; her vision was getting progressively worse. Always so fiercely independent, she refused a nursing home or assisted living facilities. Mom, somehow, managed to get through the day by touch and feeling things around her.  For the times she was in the hospital, she was a terrible patient. She always wanted to be home in her own bed.

Though always fully alert and aware of her surroundings, this past year, Mom’s memory wasn’t what it once was. She was forgetting more and more things, names of long-distance relatives, what day it was, etc.

After her operation a week ago on her broken hip, at 97 years old, Mom showed her age for the first time in her life. She looked frail, slightly disconnected from those around her. Her spirit was noticeably diminished.

When she was transferred to Mount Alverna (across from St. Anthony’s) on Thursday afternoon, it suddenly struck me (like a bolt of lightning) looking at her so frail in the bed, her bones so brittle, unable to eat, that this was to be her last stop.

I knew the end was near.

Still, when I left her at 7 p.m. that evening, she was joking, her spirits seemed up.

Then the call came from my sister Ellyn (at around 11:30 p.m.) that they were having trouble resuscitating her.

By the time I arrived at Alverna, we were informed our Mom passed away.

The good Lord, at long last, had called her home to reunite with her best friend, my Dad, and my Sister, Patricia.

By far, the most difficult thing I have ever experienced is watching my Mom in bed, motionless with her breathing stopped, knowing she’ll never speak to me again.

The words of Victor Hugo, in Les Misérables came to mind: “Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. --I shall feel it."

We’ll miss you Mom.

Life will never be the same.

 

—Bill Lucey

October 1, 2018