The Alcohol Exposition Of Rep. Fiorello La Guardia

The date was June 19, 1926, and the United States was struggling through the Prohibition Era (1919/1920-1933), a time in which the U.S. government cracked down on the mass-production and sale of alcoholic beverages. They did this through questionable and ineffective means that produced underwhelming and ironically lawless results.  Although the Temperance Movement and an alliance of dry politicians were in favor of Prohibition, Representative Fiorello La Guardia of New York was in no way a fan. On that June day in 1926, Representative La Guardia decided to express his dissent in a very educational public service announcement that the populace would be sure to drink up—he invited twenty people from the news industry into his Washington D.C. office and then proceeded to demonstrate to them how someone in the United States could use legal store-bought ingredients to make an alcoholic beer.

As the band of newsmen jostled for positions in Fiorello La Guardia’s Congressional office, the representative readied his ingredients. His desk was covered with glass cups and various bottles of different liquids. Like a chemistry teacher, Rep. La Guardia proceeded to hold up one of the bottles for all in the room to see. It was a non-alcoholic (or legally low-alcohol) brew—a product called “near beer.” He took this legal and accessible item and poured its contents into a glass. With that step completed, Rep. La Guardia next showed the reporters another bottle from the table. It was a container of malt extract tonic, another easily-obtainable product that was legal to own during Prohibition. After opening the bottle of extract, Rep. La Guardia raised up the glass with the non-alcoholic beverage already in it, and, upon receiving the full attention of the reporters, he made a show of pouring most of the malt extract into the near beer. After giving the concoction some time to ferment, Rep. La Guardia proclaimed that he had made a 2% beer with simply-procured, legal products. As a final touch, the representative drank the beer and sent the reporters on their way to print reports on his informative stunt.

Representative Fiorello La Guardia received rave reviews from the newspapers that attended his alcohol exposition. Dry politicians, however, balked at the gall of the man and protested. Yet, verbal jabs from his fellow Congressmen did not stop Rep. La Guardia from bringing his brewing show on the road. He was known to have done a second beer production exposition in his home state of New York. Prohibition, however, would not end in the United States until 1933.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Photograph of Fiorello La Guardia dated between ca. 1915 and ca. 1920, [Public Domain] via the U.S. Library of Congress and Creative Commons).

Sources:

• http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=l000007
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fiorello-H-La-Guardia 
• https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/media_detail/2085902822-laguardia/ 
• https://vinepair.com/articles/la-guardia-homemade-beer/ 
• https://www.britannica.com/event/Prohibition-United-States-history-1920-1933 
• https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/prohibition  

In 1861, Several U.S. Newspapers Implied That General William Tecumseh Sherman Was A Lunatic

Although Sherman held the high rank of colonel at the start of the United States Civil War, he was still fairly untested in battle. Like many other famous U. S. Civil War military leaders, he had served in the army during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), but unlike other future generals, Sherman spent almost all of that war away from the frontlines, doing such tasks as recruiting or hunting down deserters. So, when Sherman first began commanding troops in battle at the start of the Civil War, very few Union generals knew just how good or bad a leader Sherman would be in the field. Unfortunately, Sherman, himself, was one of the doubters of his own ability.

The first year of the Civil War, 1861, did nothing to improve Sherman’s self-confidence. That year, he commanded a brigade in the embarrassing First Battle of Bull Run.  In that battle, Union troops advanced against a strongly-positioned rebel force. The general lack of discipline in the Union and Confederate armies at the beginning of the war gave a clear advantage to the Confederacy in the battle of Bull Run. When Sherman and other leaders pressed their men to attack the rebel lines, the Union forces were thrown into disarray by an onslaught of Confederate gunfire. After the Confederate forces had stopped the Union advance, they launched a counter-attack, which threw the Union soldiers into panic and defeat. Watching the Union army flee from the battlefield did little to encourage Sherman’s self-confidence.

In the aftermath of the battle, President Abraham Lincoln rushed over to the demoralized troops, making appearances and delivering speeches to raise the spirits of the defeated soldiers. Interestingly, in a conversation with Abraham Lincoln, Sherman bluntly asked to be kept in a subordinate military position, as he did not trust himself with a superior command.

After the First Battle of Bull Run, Sherman was transferred to work under General Robert Anderson, who was leading the defense of the area around Louisville, Kentucky. Not long after he arrived, however, Sherman was placed in the position that he feared—General Anderson resigned his command because of mental stress and Sherman (now a Brigadier General) took over the defense of Kentucky.

While in this position, Sherman had an unfortunate meeting with the Secretary of War, Simon Cameron. The secretary had brought along a party of various people to accompany him on the tour of Louisville, and several of them were non-military personnel. When Sherman wanted to discuss private war matters, Secretary Cameron bluntly refused to dismiss any of the men who had accompanied him to Louisville. Therefore, Sherman locked the door and told Cameron about the situation in Kentucky while the other men were still present.

In particular, Sherman wanted the Secretary of War to have reinforcements diverted to Kentucky. Sherman argued that he had only about 18,000 soldiers to defend over 300 miles, while other Union generals, such as McClellan and Fremont, had much more manpower to defend smaller amounts of land. He concluded that he needed at least 60,000 men (about the same amount as Fremont) to mount a feasible defense against a possible Confederate attack. While Sherman’s staff and comrades in the room agreed with him up to this point, his next comment would catch them, and the Secretary of War, all off guard. For whatever reason—possibly due to his lack of self-confidence or an overestimation of Confederate strength—Sherman threw out a huge estimate of soldiers that he thought he would need during the climax and final stages of the war. He told the crowd in the locked room that he would need 200,000 men to carry the war from the defensive stage to that of the offensive. In Sherman’s defense, he was one of the first generals on either side of the Civil War to realize how bloody and destructive the conflict would become. Even so, Sherman would later complete his famously devastating “march to the sea” with an army of only around 62,000 soldiers.

Unfortunately for Sherman, one of Secretary Cameron’s companions in the confidential meeting was a reporter for the New York Tribune, so, naturally, newspapers quickly published out-of-context reports about Sherman requesting 200,000 soldiers for the defense of Kentucky. Several news outlets began releasing regular articles that consistently labeled Sherman with all sorts of unflattering names, such as crazy, mad and insane. Not long after the news stories began, Sherman was relieved from his command in Kentucky and transferred to work under Major-General Halleck in the Department of the Missouri. It was what Sherman wanted—to be back in a subordinate role—but his sudden removal from Kentucky optically reinforced the claims of the newsmen.

The newspaper harassment continued to plague Sherman even after he arrived in St. Louis, Missouri. Sherman was so stressed by all of the negative attention that it prompted him to eventually request twenty days of leave to spend with his family. Major-General Halleck justified his support for this time off in an unfortunate letter to the then Union commander-in-chief, General McClellan. Halleck wrote, “I am satisfied that General Sherman’s physical and mental system is so completely broken by labor and care as to render him, for the present, unfit for duty; perhaps a few weeks’ rest may restore him.” Yet, other than that one line of unflattering wording, General Halleck was a great help to Sherman, both personally and professionally. Most importantly, General Halleck put Sherman in a position to work with Ulysses S. Grant. Together, Grant and Sherman were able to help each other overcome their individual problems and imperfections, resulting in both leaders becoming military legends.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Photograph of General William Tecumseh Sherman, taken between 1865 and 1880, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by W. T. Sherman. Delaware: Renaissance Classics, 2012.
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Tecumseh-Sherman 
• https://www.britannica.com/event/First-Battle-of-Bull-Run-1861 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Simon-Cameron 
• https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/william-t-sherman  

The Rise And Disappearance Of Marie Waite, A Rumrunner During The U. S. Prohibition

In 1917, the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution was proposed and sent out to the states for ratification. The amendment, if passed, would ban the production, distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States. It took some time, but the amendment was eventually ratified in 1919 and implemented in the everyday life of Americans by 1920. Although the sale of alcohol was now illegal, secret speakeasies and other underground bars still roared with activity. It immediately became apparent that anyone who could satisfy the formidable thirst of the American population would make a fortune. While flashy, less-subtle bootleggers like Al Capone took up most of the prohibition spotlight, other enterprising criminals carved out their own empires of alcohol.

Rumrunners shipping illicit goods into the United States from the Caribbean posed a constant problem for the U.S. Coast Guard. Marie Waite was one of these smugglers, but she had a relatively late rise to power in the rumrunning scene. This was because the “Bahama Queen” of rumrunners, Gertrude Lythgoe, dominated smuggling in the Caribbean for the first half of the 1920s. In those years, Marie Waite restrained her ambitions while her husband, Charlie Waite, became a prominent smuggler in his own right. Nevertheless, a power vacuum opened up in the middle of the decade—Gertrude Lythgoe retired from the smuggling business in 1925 and Marie’s husband, Charlie, died during a shootout near Biscayne Bay, Florida, in 1926. Shortly after Charlie Waite’s death, Marie began her own bid for power in the Caribbean and soon proved that she had a keen eye for the trade. And so began the reign of “Spanish Marie.”

Spanish Marie made a fortune by creating an adaptable smuggling route leading from Havana, Cuba, to various locations in southern Florida. At the height of her power, she fielded an armada of fifteen ships, which were usually dispatched in caravans of four. From her position on the flagship of the flotilla, a vessel named Kid Boots, Marie used radio-transmitted codes to keep in contact with her ships and to evade the U.S. Coast Guard. Yet, if a caravan did manage to be caught, at least one ship was usually armed for battle. By 1927, Marie Waite managed to position herself as the leading rumrunner of the Caribbean through the use of bribery, intimidation and smart administration.

Spanish Marie’s heyday, however, was cut short. On March 12, 1928, the U. S. Coast Guard captured Marie Waite while she was personally offloading more than 5,000 bottles of alcohol onto trucks waiting near Miami, Florida. In a mysterious end to her tale, she was released on bail and virtually disappeared, both from the law and, supposedly, from rum-running. It was a decent time to retire and go into hiding—the Prohibition era was coming to a close and would end, in 1933, with the ratification of the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Rum Runner ship "Linwood" set afire by her crew to scuttle her and destroy evidence. Contraband is seen on the deck. Photographed by the U.S. Coast Guard, c. 1923. [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• http://www.history.com/topics/prohibition 
• https://www.britannica.com/event/Prohibition-United-States-history-1920-1933 
• https://sallyjling.org/marie-waite-spanish-marie/ 
• https://www.saveur.com/rumrunners  

The Afterlife Experiment of Benjamin Franklin

Most of the founding fathers of the United States of America were religious men—many of them held unorthodox religious beliefs, it is true, but they were still generally curious about the supernatural world. The great writer, intellectual and inventor, Benjamin Franklin was no exception.

Franklin, however, was by no means a saint; he was a man of skeptical curiosity and scandalous behavior. Even so, he had an interest in religion. He went to see (or critique) traveling preachers and even tried to force himself to adhere to a morally-perfect daily plan, including the use of charts to track his progress. In the end, Franklin decided that moral perfection was an impossible (and unenjoyable) accomplishment, and he eventually abandoned his pursuit of perfect purity. In the end, Benjamin Franklin converted to the ideas of Deism, a religious philosophy that claims that a God created reality, but that the deity halted direct contact after the act of creation.

Even though Franklin was skeptical of the different human interpretations of divinity, he still had a keen interest in the spiritual realm. This interest most clearly manifested in an interesting pact that Franklin made with a friend named Charles Osborne. The two became pals when Franklin was about 18 years old. They, and two other men, bonded over their shared interests in reading and writing. They even held poetry competitions where they judged each other’s talents. In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin remembered Osborne to be an affectionate friend, but also a relentless critic when it came to judging literature and poetry.

Sometime during their friendship, Franklin and Osbourne promised each other that the one who died first would haunt the survivor and reveal secrets about the afterlife. According to Franklin, Osbourne eventually traveled to the West Indies (the Caribbean), where he became a successful lawyer. Unfortunately, Charles Osbourne died at a young age, long before Franklin’s own death, but he never fulfilled his promise to Benjamin Franklin.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Top picture attribution: (Benjamin Franklin portrait by David Rent Etter (1835), modified for spookiness, [Public Domain] via National Parks Service and Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Autobiography and Other Writings of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Kenneth Silverman. New York: Penguin Books, 1986.  

The Bizarre Bad Luck Of Wilmer McLean, Who Had Two Separate Homes Ravaged By The American Civil War

In 1853, Wilmer and Virginia McLean established their so-called Yorkshire Plantation on a spot of farmland at Manassas Junction, Virginia, located along the Bull Run tributary, which feeds into the Occoquan River. Little did the McLeans known just how closely their prosperity would be tied to the American Civil War, an event that would erupt in less than a decade.

In 1861, the Union and rebel Confederate forces that made up the two sides of the American Civil War fatefully converged right on top of the McLean family’s Yorkshire Plantation. Wilmer McLean was considered too old to be conscripted by either side in the war, but he was a Confederate affiliate, who worked as a supplier for the quartermasters of the Confederacy. When battle loomed, McLean sent his family away to safety, but he personally stayed to continue his civilian work with the Confederacy.

From July 1861 to August 1862, the Union and Confederacy fought in two major battles at Bull Run. The buildings on McLean’s plantation were well used by the Confederacy during the Battles of Bull Run. P. G. T. Beauregard, the leading general of the Confederacy during the Battles of Bull Run, set up his headquarters in McLean’s farmhouse, and transformed Yorkshire Plantation’s barn into a makeshift hospital and prison. With McLean’s plantation serving such roles as these for the Confederate forces, the Union army deemed the Yorkshire estate to be fair game for their artillery. During one notable incident in 1861, Union artillery thoroughly annihilated McLean’s kitchen. After an experience like this, Wilmer McLean understandably decided to flee his war-torn plantation and relocated his family to the peaceful town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia.

In 1683, the McLeans set up their new home in a former tavern located in Appomattox. From there, Wilmer McLean worked as a sugar merchant and continued his operation as a supplier for the Confederacy. Although the war raged on, he must have hoped that the front lines would remain clear of Appomattox Court House. Nevertheless, in 1865, the Union and Confederate forces clashed in their last significant skirmish in the vicinity of McLean’s new home.

With disastrous luck, the McLean home was chosen as the location where Confederate General Robert E. Lee would surrender to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Lee formally admitted defeat on April 9, 1865, from within the front parlor of Wilmer McLean’s home in Appomattox Court House—this historic moment would destroy McLean’s life.

Unfortunately for the McLean family, their home was the sight of an important historic event. As such, the victorious Union soldiers inside the McLean home at Appomattox Court House wanted material keepsakes with which they could remember the occasion—regretfully, the only souvenirs that were available all belonged to the McLean family. Despite this obstacle, the soldiers wanted their remembrances and were not in a mood to pay fair prices for the items that they took. The desk and inkstand that Lee used in his surrender was looted, as were McLean’s chairs, candlesticks, and even a cloth doll that belonged to McLean’s daughter. Furthermore, soldiers cut away countless strips of fabric from curtains and upholstered furniture. By the time the soldiers left Appomattox Court House, the McLean House was thoroughly pillaged and vandalized.

Although the war was over, Wilmer McLean’s financial troubles were just beginning. With his plantation at Manassus Junction destroyed at the start of the war, and his home at Appomattox Court House looted after the end of the war, Wilmer McLean found himself heavily in debt and short on assets. After he defaulted on his debts in 1869, McLean’s Appomattox Court House “Surrender House” was repossessed and sold in a public auction. The house was then sold from person to person until it fell into the hands of a businessman in 1891 who had an ambition of turning the historic place into a mobile tourist attraction—he demolished the home, brick by brick, and planned to make Washington D.C. the new home of the Surrender House. The businessman, however, was bogged down by financial and legal troubles, which kept the dismantled home in Appomattox. Thankfully, the United States Park’s Service purchased these bricks, as well as the property that made up McLean’s estate in the region, and went to work carefully rebuilding the historic home. It was officially opened to the public in 1950 and remains a tourist destination, to this day.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Top picture attribution: (Wilmer McLean, c. 1860, in front of The Room Where Lee Surrendered to Grant in the McLean House of Appomattox Court House, published by The Major & Knapp Eng. Mfg. & Lith. Co. 71 Broadway, c. 1867, both images [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• http://www.history.com/news/how-the-civil-war-stalked-wilmer-mclean 
• https://ehistory.osu.edu/articles/wilmer-mclean-beginning-and-end 
• http://militaryhistorynow.com/2014/01/29/meet-wilmer-mclean-one-of-the-civil-wars-first-and-last-victims/ 
• https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/civil_war_series/17/sec4.htm 
• https://www.nps.gov/apco/mclean-house.htm  

Thomas Jefferson Sold More Than 6,000 Books To The U. S. Library Of Congress

In August, 1814, British forces burned Washington D.C., the capital of the young United States of America. Capital Hill was damaged by the flames, and the Library of Congress was lost. Luckily for the fledgling country, one of the founding fathers of the United States had an obsessive addiction to collecting books. Furthermore, he was plagued by debts and was more than willing to sell his possessions.

In 1815, Thomas Jefferson sold an enormous collection of 6,487 books to the government for an estimated total of $23,950. The collection contained both ancient classics and modern works—Jefferson’s favorite ancient author was Cicero, by whom he owned at least forty texts. The wide variety of genres and topics in the collection caused a stir among the members (and observers) of the Congress, who thought that the U. S. government should not have paid for some of the odd volumes that Jefferson stumbled across during his studies.

Despite Jefferson’s still existent debts, he continued to buy an endless supply of books, even after selling thousands to the Library of Congress. When he died in 1826, he had still been burdened by a debt of $107,000—a sum that equates to more than 2 million modern U. S. dollars. Shortly after his death, Jefferson’s second massive collection of books (numbering in the thousands) was auctioned off, along with most of his other possessions.

Sadly, on the Christmas Eve of 1851, around 2/3 of Jefferson’s original contribution to the Library of Congress was lost in another fire. Interestingly, the Library of Congress is trying to procure copies of the texts that were destroyed.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture attribution: (Portrait of Thomas Jefferson, by Mather Brown (1761–1831), in front of a library painted by Rudolf von Alt  (1812–1905), both images are [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefflib.html 
• http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/winter10/jefferson.cfm 
• https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/debt 
• http://www.history.com/topics/war-of-1812  

The San Antonio Fairmount Hotel’s Five Block Adventure

When the construction of San Antonio’s Fairmount Hotel ended in 1906, no one could have imagined the impressive journey that the building would undergo nearly eight decades later. By 1985, the Fairmount Hotel was considered a historic landmark, but it had a problem—the old hotel was located on coveted land. Developers wanted newer, modern structures to be built on the site, but they could not just arbitrarily sentence the old Fairmount Hotel to be demolished; the hotel was an admired remnant of Victorian and Italianate architecture. Therefore, a compromise was reached. New buildings would be erected on the site of the Fairmount Hotel, but the hotel would also be preserved for the benefit of future generations.

In 1985, the approximately 3.2 million pound Fairmount Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, was stripped of its furnishings, braced with metal bands and hauled onto sets of sturdy wheels. Next, it was pulled along a route that spanned around five city blocks, crawling at a speed of less than 1 mile-per-hour, a velocity that allowed the building to reach its destination in 6 days. The most nerve-racking section of the journey occurred when the Fairmount was wheeled over the heavily-braced Market Street bridge, but the reinforced bridge held, reportedly without any flexing. Finally, the Fairmount Hotel reached its destination just south of the La Villita National Historic District, near the riverwalk of San Antonio.

The ground underneath the Fairmount Hotel was just as interesting as the odyssey of the the hotel, itself. Beneath the Fairmount’s original foundations, many artifacts were discovered dating back to Santa Anna’s storied siege of the Alamo in 1836. Among the historical pieces unearthed at the site were items such as canon balls and musket components. The Fairmount Hotel reopened in its new location in September 1986, and the newer Marriott Rivercenter Hotel was constructed on the Fairmont’s original position.

Thanks to modern technology, we can witness with our own eyes the history that we read about in books and articles. Check out actual footage of the Fairmount Hotel’s relocation, HERE.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Top picture attribution: (Photograph of the San Antonio Fairmount Hotel , c. 1986, by Ggribble, licensed Creative Commons 3.0).

Sources:

• http://www.thefairmounthotel-sanantonio.com/fairmount-san-antonio-history.php 
• http://www.expressnews.com/150years/major-stories/article/Fairmount-Hotel-move-captivated-city-for-six-days-6585035.php 
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oNEeULPs_Q