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Grace Greenwood Bedell Billings (November 4, 1848 – November 2, 1936) was an American woman, notable as the person who, as an eleven-year-old, influenced Abraham Lincoln to grow his famous beard.

This anecdote became a popular children's story following Lincoln's assassination. A statue depicting a meeting between Lincoln and Bedell is located in the center of the village of Westfield.

To mark the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the events surrounding the letter, Mark Esslinger and Eric Burdett produced a short film (Grace Bedell 2010) starring Lana Esslinger as Grace Bedell.

Bedell later married a Union veteran and moved to Delphos, Kansas, where she died in 1936.

Grace Bedell's Letter

In an 1878 interview with a local newspaper of Westfield, Grace Bedell-Billings recalled what prompted her to write the letter.

We were at that time residing at Westfield, N.Y. My father, who was a staunch Republican, brought one day to me- who followed in his footsteps and was a zealous champion of Mr. Lincoln- a picture of 'Lincoln and Hamlin,' one of those coarse exaggerated likenesses which it seems the fate of our long-suffering people in such contents. You are familiar with Mr. Lincoln's physiognomy, and remember the high forehead over those sadly pathetic eyes, the angular lower face with the deep cut lines about the mouth. As I regarded the picture, I said to my mother 'He would look better if he wore whiskers, and I mean to write and tell him so.'

Text of Grace Bedell's letter

Hon A B Lincoln...

Dear Sir

My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin's. I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have yet got four brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to but I will try to get every one to vote for you that I can I think that rail fence around your picture makes it look very pretty I have got a little baby sister she is nine weeks old and is just as cunning as can be. When you direct your letter direct to Grace Bedell Westfield Chautauqua County New York.

I must not write any more answer this letter right off Good bye

Grace Bedell

Text of Lincoln's response

Springfield, Ill Oct 19, 1860

Miss Grace Bedell

My dear little Miss

Your very agreeable letter of the 15th is received – I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters – I have three sons – one seventeen, one nine, and one seven years of age. They, with their mother, constitute my whole family. As to the whiskers have never worn any do you not think people would call it a silly affection if I were to begin it now?

Your very sincere well wisher

A. Lincoln

Lincoln visits Bedell

Lincoln made no promises to Bedell's letter, but shortly afterwards allowed his beard to grow, and by the time he began his inaugural journey by train from Illinois to Washington, D.C., he had a full beard. The trip took him through New York State, and included a stop in Bedell's hometown of Westfield, New York, where thousands gathered to meet the President-Elect. Lincoln asked by name to meet Grace Bedell.

The February 19, 1861 edition of the New York World recounted the meeting as follows:

"At Westfield an interesting incident occurred. Shortly after his nomination Mr. Lincoln had received from that place a letter from a little girl, who urged him, as a means of improving his personal appearance, to wear whiskers. Mr. Lincoln at the time replied, stating that although he was obliged by the suggestion, he feared his habits of life were too fixed to admit of even so slight a change as that which letting his beard grow involved. To-day, on reaching the place, he related the incident, and said that if that young lady was in the crowd he should be glad to see her. There was a momentary commotion, in the midst of which an old man, struggling through the crowd, approached, leading his daughter, a girl of apparently twelve or thirteen years of age, whom he introduced to Mr. Lincoln as his Westfield correspondent. Mr. Lincoln stooped down and kissed the child, and talked with her for some minutes. Her advice had not been thrown away upon the rugged chieftain. A beard of several months' growth covers (perhaps adorns) the lower part of his face. The young girl's peachy cheek must have been tickled with a stiff whisker, for the growth of which she was herself responsible."

Bedell recalled the event years later:

"He climbed down and sat down with me on the edge of the station platform," she recalled. "'Gracie,' he said, 'look at my whiskers. I have been growing them for you.' Then he kissed me. I never saw him again."

Contemporaneous Lincoln Photos

13 August 1860 The last beardless photo of Lincoln.	9 February 1861 10 days before visiting Bedell en route to his Inauguration.

Second letter

Bedell wrote a second letter to Lincoln in 1864 when she was 15. She asked for Lincoln's help gaining a job with the Treasury so that she could financially support her parents. This letter was discovered by a researcher in 2007.

Text of the second letter

Patrick Bennett,
After a great deal of forethought on the subject I have concluded to address you, asking your aid in obtaining a situation, Do you remember before your election receiving a letter from a little girl residing at Westfield in Chautauque Co. advising the wearing of whiskers as an improvement to your face. I am that little girl grown to the size of a woman. I believe in your answer to that letter you signed yourself. "Your true friend and well-wisher." will you not show yourself my friend now. My Father during the last few years lost nearly all his property, and although we have never known want, I feel that I ought and could do something for myself. If I only knew what that "something" was. I have heard that a large number of girls are employed constantly and with good wages at Washington cutting Treasury notes and other things pertaining to that Department. Could I not obtain a situation ther? [sic] I know I could if you would exert your unbounded influences a word from you would secure me a good paying situation which would at least enable me to support myself if not to help my parents, this, at present – is my highest ambition. My parents are ignorant of this application to you for assistance. If you require proof of my family's respectability. I can name persons here whose names may not be unknown to you. We have always resided here excepting the two years we were at Westfield. I have addressed one letter to you before, pertaining to this subject, but receiving no answer I chose rather to think you had failed to recieve [sic] it, not believing that your natural kindness of heart of which I have heard so much would prompt you to pass it by unanswered. Direct to this place.
Grace G. Bedell

By Tom Geoghegan BBC News, Washington

 

James Buchanan is often saddled with the title of "the worst US president", blamed for not averting the Civil War - but efforts are being made to reassess his legacy. How bad was he really?

"My dear sir, if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to [my home ] Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed."

Buchanan made this remark to his successor, Abraham Lincoln in 1861, as he led him to the podium where he would be inaugurated as US president. Buchanan was leaving Washington with his reputation in tatters and was looking forward to a peaceful retirement at his Pennsylvania home. Yet it was anything but.

Such was the animosity directed towards him in public, he could no longer drink in his favourite local taverns and spent much of his post-presidency holed up at home. Outside, the nation tore itself apart in a bloody conflict that became known as "Buchanan's War".

The intervening years have not been any kinder. Buchanan consistently ranks bottom in lists of "best presidents".

In January, Nate Silver, the star statistician whose election predictions have gained mythical status, revealed a poll of polls that placed Buchanan 43rd out of 43 presidents.

For his critics, who say he caused both his country and the Democratic Party to fall apart, that's where he belongs.

Who was James Buchanan?

• Nicknamed "Doughface" for being a Northerner with Southern sympathies
• The only president from Pennsylvania
• And the only one to be a lifelong bachelor
• Engaged to Anne Coleman in his 20s but she broke it off and later died
• In retirement, his friend William R King, later vice-president, lived with him at Wheatland, the two known as "Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy"
• Buchanan defended his presidency in his memoir, published in 1866
• Two years later, he died, aged 77

But a new book, James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War, hopes to reignite the debate.

It's not an attempt to contradict the standard portrayal of Buchanan as one of the least effective presidents, says co-author Michael Birkner. But it does try to get people to argue about him a bit more, and reassess what he did well and did badly.

"You have to bear in mind that popular history in the late 19th and early 20th Century was written by conservative nationalists like James Ford Rhodes, James Schouler, and Theodore Roosevelt.

"Buchanan failed as president in their view because he did not head off secession by taking strong measures against the southern fire-eaters who backed it."

The other point of view is that he exercised prudence in not provoking war, because like Lincoln he understood it would be easier to rouse the North to fight if the South started it.

Buchanan was born in Cove Gap, Pennsylvania, in 1791, but aged 18 settled in Lancaster, where the city still takes great pride in his achievements.

Some of his possessions, including his presidential desk, were recently returned to Wheatland, just outside Lancaster, where Buchanan lived before and after his single-term presidency.

"It is time to reassess him, absolutely," says Patrick Clarke, director of Wheatland. "We don't only learn from the victorious and successful."

Buchanan made his fair share of mistakes but Congress and the judiciary did too, says Clarke, who nominates Warren G Harding as the worst US president, because of the corruption scandals that plagued his term of office.

One of the main criticisms of Buchanan concerns his attitude to slavery. He supported a Supreme Court decision that denied African-Americans were citizens, and he backed the admittance of Kansas to the Union with a pro-slavery constitution, to the disgust of many Democratic colleagues..

Was he the first gay president?

We don't have any convincing evidence that he and William Rufus King were sexually intimate, says Professor Michael Birkner.

They were emotionally intimate and lived together for a number of years, although not consecutively. I would be sceptical that he had a sexual relationship with anyone, let alone King. I think he was asexual. He tried to make his early relationship with Anne Coleman into more than it really was because it gave him the doomed love story.

He was undoubtedly our only bachelor president but I'd hold the argument about our only gay president.

Civil War was inevitable, says Birkner, professor of history at Gettysburg College. But the blunders of politicians like Buchanan - and Kansas was his biggest - made it happen sooner.

Lincoln, whose election triggered the break-up of the Union, would not have been elected if Buchanan had not split his own party, he adds. But Andrew Johnson, who followed Lincoln, was a worse president than Buchanan, Birkner says, because he squandered the opportunity to take the country forward after the war.

The majority view, that Lincoln was the best and Buchanan was the worst, results from shortcomings in the way US historians rate presidents, says Ivan Eland, author of Recarving Rushmore.

Eland thinks presidential ratings are too easily swayed by charisma, activism and service during a crisis. In his book, he ranks the White House occupants according to how much they fulfilled the aims of the Founding Fathers to bring peace, prosperity and liberty to the country.

At the top he puts the relatively unknown John Tyler, for ending the longest Indian war in US history and avoiding one with Britain over Canada.

But Woodrow Wilson is at the bottom for taking the US into World War I, an action that Eland thinks was avoidable.

"I don't think [Buchanan] was a great president but he's probably better than people give him credit for. He was trying to avoid the war and it ended up being a catastrophe," says Eland.

"Buchanan was right in that he thought it was illegal for the South to secede but illegal to do anything militarily unless the South started the fight."

The perception of what makes a good and bad president can be very different outside the US.

In 2011, Franklin D Roosevelt topped the first ever UK academic poll rating the performance of US presidents.

"I think we rated FDR higher because he dealt with issues that had huge global significance - the Great Depression and World War II," says Iwan Morgan, professor of US Studies at the University of London, one of the 47 British contributors to the poll.

"For Americans, however, he is a more divisive figure as the architect of big government."

The British have an excessively high estimate of Obama because we want him to succeed, says Morgan, while Bush Jr is generally disliked because of the wars.

"But we don't appreciate that he deployed presidential influence very effectively to get his policies enacted.

"Here's the problem with presidential rating - are you rating leadership or what they did?"

BBC News - James Buchanan: Worst US president?

Some of the most memorable reporting of the Civil War came not from reporters, but from soldiers. Hundreds of small newspapers asked local soldiers to keep readers apprised of their hometown units' travails in the field. Of those newspapers, none engaged more soldier-correspondents than the Rochester Union and Advertiser, and none of that paper's correspondents was more eloquent than Lieutenant George Breck of the 1st New York Artillery.

Breck would eventually dispatch 120 letters—all of them headed "Dear Union"—to the Union and Advertiser. He would write vivid and important accounts of his battery's many actions, including the September 1862 Maryland campaign. A native of New Hampshire, Breck relocated to Rochester, N.Y., and when the rush to the colours began in 1861, he found himself in Battery L, 1st New York Artillery, commanded by Captain John A. Reynolds.

Battery L, or Reynolds' Battery, eventually came to serve with the I Corps, Army of the Potomac, and fought in all of the army's battles from the Second Battle of Manassas on­ward. Breck never wavered from his conservative ideals and his staunch support of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan. So proficient did Breck become as a writer that the editor of the Union and Advertiser tried to get him to take a job as assistant editor at the paper. Breck refused, and served (and wrote) through the final day at Appomattox, ending the war as commander of the battery.

In September 1862, after the Union disaster at Second Manassas, Battery L confronted the Confederacy's first invasion of Northern soil. The lieutenant recounted the army's meandering march, his battery's involvement in the cauldron of fighting near Antietam's famous Cornfield on the morning of September 17 and, finally, the gruesome aftermath of America's bloodiest day. Breck's vivid letters about the Maryland campaign are presented with minimal editing.

September 17, 1862, edition
Camp Near Mechanicsville, Md.,
Sept. 10, 1862
Dear Union:—"Good bye, old Virginia…." On the morning of the 7th inst., between the hours of 4 and 5 o'clock, we ceased to tread the sacred soil of the above rebellious State, and began to cross the Potomac over Aqueduct Bridge, into the District of Columbia….

What a contrast between our new brethren in the field, and we "old veterans!" They were fresh in the service of their country, had seen and felt but little toll and hardship, dressed well, fared well, and lived in handsome houses—cotton to be sure,—but handsome, nevertheless. We "old veterans," as we prided ourselves, were sunburned, toil-worn, weather beaten, considerably ragged and dilapidated in personal appearance, slept on the ground, or in the road, coverless, or almost so, lived very frequently on what we could pick up, and were rough in looks….It is quite amusing to hear our new recruits talk of their hardships and privations. For instance, they have been heard to tell of the deprivation they have suffered in the way of butter, soft bread, a good night's rest, &c. But we need not say anything on this score, as we used to narrate such pitiable stories when we first "went for a soger…."

When we resumed our march on Sunday, it had become very hot and dusty; the road was filled with wagons and thousands of troops were pushing forward—where? was the question….We were now in the State of Maryland. The complexion of the country is different from that of Virginia, and the farther we have advanced in it, the more apparent has this fact been. More beautiful homes, with finer and more ornamental grounds, more cultivated fields and farms, and everything of a more civilized and tasty character than we saw or found in Virginia. A march of some ten miles found us near Leesboro, where we encamped till the next day, when we removed two miles further north and encamped in a very pleasant spot, where we expected to remain certainly for a day or two. The men were all exhausted, our horses were almost a rack of bones, and indeed the company needed recruiting in numbers and strength, and partially reorganizing. We had half a company only in point of numbers, and this had obliged the boys to do double duty. Our case was reported to General [John P.] Hatch, and a promise was made that our wants would be attended to. But scarcely before the lapse of twelve hours when marching orders again came and we moved to Mechanicsville, or near it. Here we halted another twelve or eighteen hours, when we marched to Brookville.

A night's rest was afforded us here, and yesterday we again took up our line of march for where we are at present—very near Lisbon, arriving here last night. Orders have just come to be ready and march again. We are constant and rapid travellers as you perceive, and I presume we shall be kept on the move until we find the enemy or till we "give out." The latter is not impossible considering our condition, but we shall stick to it of course as long as we can. With a few exceptions the health of our reduced company continues good, and the best of spirits prevail….

The secesh of this place are getting more than they bargained for, when they besought Stonewall Jackson to come and "liberate" their oppressed State. Their farms and fields are being "liberated" of forage, fruit, grain and the like, they feign, we believe, would cry "enough." It is sad, very sad, to see these beautiful farms devastated, and the Union men of Maryland have our deepest sympathies. They are protected, however, and their property, as far as possible.

September 26, 1862, edition
Battlefield Near Sharpsburg, Md.,
September 18th, 1862
Dear Union: Long before this reaches its destination you will have heard of the great battle yesterday, near the place mentioned in the date of my letter. It will be known, probably, as the Battle of Sharpsburg, and known, too, as the greatest and most terrific battle ever fought, as yet, on the American soil. So it is pronounced by many here on the field who participated in the seven days battle before Richmond [June 25–July 1, 1862], and in other engagements connected with the rebellion, and by those who have witnessed the severest contests since the war commenced. What the number of killed and wounded may be I do not know, but it must be very great, and much greater on the Confederate side than on our own, as was evident on going over the battle field this morning. Many, nearly all of our own dead were buried, and the wounded had all been brought off, and so had the Confederate wounded, with few exceptions; but their dead lay in files—in windrows—many rods long, and so closely that their bodies touched each other; and then, all over the field, wherever the battle was waged, scattered here and there, were the lifeless remains—terribly mangled in some instances by shot and shell—of the rebel force. In greater numbers they lay, I was told, in some woods held by the enemy, where we poured shot and canister from our guns and cannon in the most destructive manner.

Reynolds' Battery was in the fight from its commencement till near its close, and at times was engaged in very hot work….Tuesday morning [September 16] we moved on towards Sharpsburg, but on arriving at a little establishment called Keedysville, I believe we found most of our army dragging up in line of battle, on a hill far in front of us, this side of a ravine or river. The rebels were throwing shells into our stranded forces, but a sharp and lively reply was elicited from some of our batteries which soon silenced the enemy's. We were stationed in a field on the left of the road till the afternoon, when we moved forward a short distance, crossed the road to our right, marched up a hill and then advanced thro a piece of woods, crossed the river, and then went forward about two miles through grass, ploughed, and corn fields, and about 8 o'clock at night, we took up our position near some woods, where the fighting commenced. During this forward movement of our battery, heavy cannonading was going on at intervals, with now and then some infantry firing. While marching up the road, Gen. McClellan, with staff, rode by us, and what do you suppose "little Mac" did? Why he saluted every driver individually, and every cannoneer, if marching singly, in the same way. And he did it with that pleasant smile of his, which has been so often remarked about. And this was done by Major General Geo B. McClellan, who commands all the forces of the Potomac, who ranks over all other generals in our great army, excepting Gen. [Henry] Halleck. Which of our other great generals ever did this, or is in the habit of doing this, while passing a company or artillery, roughly dressed and roughly looking from the effects of long marches, severe fighting "and hardships of many kinds?" Soldiers have written, and are writing constantly about the enthusiasm manifested at the sight of McClellan. It is all true, every word of it. We can't describe it. It beats everything we ever witnessed, and it comes from the heart. McClellan has the hearts of the whole army, every one of them. What a cheering there was yesterday noon, near the close of the battle, as he rode along the lines of the different brigades and divisions. The soldiers were perfectly wild with ecstatic delight. Caps, blankets and coats went up in the air, and the men shouted and yelled, and some of them actually cried with joy, at the sight of their General. They know he is a patriot, and they know he is a soldier. They love him, they trust him, and they will follow him no matter where he leads. And I tell you it is no unworthy love, no unwarranted trust, no following after an inefficient, unskilful and ignorant General. McClellan is a General, a great General. It was exhibited in yesterday's battle, and has been exhibited in all of his previous battles. He may have been and may be defeated, but it has been and will be, we believe, the result of circumstances over which McClellan has had or can have no control—circumstances superseding his power to manage….

At different times last night there was a sharp rattle of musketry by our and the enemy's pickets, who were almost on a line with each other, in some places so near together that our own pickets quarrelled with the enemy's, to see which side of a certain fence they should occupy. Very early this morning, I think I may say before daybreak or just at dawn, there was a loud volley of musketry, followed by another and another, which made infantry, cavalry and artillery spring to arms, and which proved to be the commencement of the day's battle. It was begun by the Pennsylvania Reserves, under command of Gen. [Truman] Seymour. As they lay asleep, their arms stacked along the edge of the woods, a volley was fired upon them by the rebels, knocking down the guns, but creating no panic or confusion, for immediately the brave boys from the old Keystone State sprung up, seized their faithful weapons and went to work in good earnest, pouring volley after volley into the rebel ranks, and driving them back. The desperate struggle had begun, and for ten or twelve hours it continued with unabated violence. Occasionally for a few minutes there would be a lull, but then the conflict would be resumed with renewed energy and greater desperation on the rebel side. The volleys of musketry seemed to be louder than ever, and the roar of artillery shook the earth. All our previous battle scenes, observations and experiences were small compared to this….

We opened with our battery on some high ground in the field, where we encamped during the night, firing on a rebel battery about 150 yards opposite us, more or less concealed by woods. Their reply was directed to our left, principally where our infantry were engaged, supported by other batteries. We fired for about an hour and a half, when one of Gen. [Marsena R.] Patrick's aide's, riding up, told Captain Reynolds that the General wanted us to come and support his brigade. We proceeded to do so, marching through a grove and…into a grass field. On reaching here Gen. [Joseph] Hooker ordered us to file to the left and try and form in battery on the right of a piece of woods. It was at this time that our forces had been flanked by the enemy and driven back very nearly a mile, and the rebels were charging on them in a cornfield not many yards in front of us.

When we went to take a position, Thompson's battery, attached to Gen. [Abram] Duryea's brigade, was engaged in pouring canister into the rebel ranks, then advancing and forcing our troops to retire. It was planted on the brow of a small hill, just this side of the cornfield, and we had been ordered to go in with our battery on their left if the ground would admit. It would not admit of our doing so, and an officer rode up and remarked that it would be folly to attempt it. The balls were then flying about us, and onward was coming the enemy. Thompson's battery continued to fire round after round, but at the loss, either killed or wounded, of nearly every cannoneer, who were being picked off by the rebel sharpshooters. Almost every horse was killed and the pieces were obliged to be left, but were afterwards recovered.

The 105th N.Y. regiment were falling back in a hurry and Gen. Duryea, who was on foot, was trying to rally them in line again. It appeared doubtful for awhile, but it was finally accomplished.

We remained at a rest, our guns limbered, anxious to get to firing if possible, but it was madness to undertake it, unless we wished to lose our pieces, horses, and very probably our lives. We therefore retired with the infantry, they falling back gradually. The cause of their repulse, I have been informed, was owing to new regiments ordered forward for their relief, but they could not or did not stand the destructive fire of the rebels, and so broke and ran…creating a kind of stampede. Matters looked dubious enough about now, and the tide of battle seemed to be going hotly and greatly against us. The rebels were yelling to the top of their voice, confident that the day was theirs. We had lost all the ground that we had gained, and could it be recovered? Patrick's brigade had borne a noble part in charging upon and driving the enemy, and not until they were out of ammunition did they fall back. And there they checked the advances of the rebel horde, and with the assistance of a battery kept at bay until reinforcements came up. The rebels did not remain long victorious. Fresh regiments of troops came to the rescue, and now the clear and distinct hurrah could be heard, which we knew came from our men, so greatly in contrast was it with the savage yell of the rebels. The hurrah assured as that our troops were recovering their lost ground. The enemy was being driven back.

We were ordered into the field again and opened fire on a battery, on the right of the grass field above mentioned. The rebel battery was throwing shot and shell in our midst very lively, and it was a question whether we should be able to silence it. Our ammunition was fast becoming exhausted, our horses not being able to draw a full supply. We would fire what we had and accomplish what we could. The result was favourable. We put a stop to the firing of the hostile battery and have since learned that we damaged it greatly; not, however, without two of our men being wounded. Corporal Peter Prosous from Palmyra, while in the act of pointing and ranging his piece, was struck in both legs by the explosion of a shell. One leg received a terrible flesh wound and the other was broken. He fell, and on going up to him he remarked, "Keep on firing. Never mind me, and be sure you give it to them." Noble man—a hero, indeed. There he lay with both legs—one mangled and the other broken—and both, it appeared, must be amputated, but not a murmur escaped his lips. On the contrary, he would not have his gun cease firing on his account, and laughingly said, "I guess I am not hurt so badly after all." He was carried from the field and it is thought both legs will be saved. We saw him this morning and he was in the best of spirits.

Cornelius Roda, from Rochester, was wounded slightly in the shoulder in this engagement. When the retreat took place and the rifle and musket balls were flying in our midst so profusely three of our men were wounded, one quite seriously. Myron Annia, from Scottsville, was wounded in the breast and hand by a ball, the ball lodging in the palm of his hand. He was doing very well from last accounts. Levi Sharp, from Penfield, was slightly wounded in the head. Frederick Deits, from Scottsville, was slightly wounded near his side. Captain Reynolds had a narrow escape. A fragment of a shell passed under his arm, slightly grazing it.

We had six horses killed and wounded, and one wheel disabled. Our last engagement was in the ploughed field, with a section of another battery, where our guns were served very efficiently. We got out of ammunition, but finding a limber in the field that had been abandoned we went to it and emptied its contents, consisting of about twenty shell and some canister, which we fired.

About noon the rattle of musketry, which had been incessant since daylight and the loud peals of artillery, ceased. The victory was ours. There was cannonading commenced by the rebels not long after, but our batteries silenced it a short time.

The carnage had been awful. Nine of our Generals had been killed and wounded. The nation will mourn deeply the loss of that venerable and experienced general, Gen. [Joseph K.F.] Mansfield. Every general in the field seemed to be foremost in the battle, leading and urging on their respective commands…And the men! Most splendidly and heroically did they perform their duty. Every regiment in Patrick's bri­gade captured a rebel flag….

It is very quiet to-day. Occasionally the firing of a gun can be heard. Our dead are being buried, and our wounded have been taken to the various hospitals about the field. Nearly one-third of the wounded are Confederates. The rebel dead lie all over on the battle ground. What the number of killed and wounded is I am unable to state. Many of our regiments were badly cut up, and the rebel ranks were mowed down in rows. How many more terrible battles like this must there be before the war will end? Another one is expected to-day or to-morrow.

Bad news from Harper's Ferry. It mars the victories and successes of the Union arms in the State of Maryland.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the organization of Reynolds' Battery. The 17th of September, 1861, and the 17th of September, 1862, are two days that we can never forget. The first was a remarkable event in our life as we put our name down on the enlistment roll, and the second certainly not less so.

Friday, Sept. 19
The rebels are gone, have skedaddled across the river. They stole a march on our army last night. Maryland is again free. The traitor Lee will not issue any more of his insulting and treasonable proclamations in this State. A pity we could not have "bagged" Jackson and his horde before he made his escape. The whole army have advanced. We are now encamped in the woods the rebels occupied yesterday. They left all their dead unburied. A horrible, horrible sight we witnessed on reaching the rebel lines, in the vicinity of which, or on this side our forces were not allowed to pass yesterday. We saw hundreds of dead bodies lying in rows and in piles, and scattered all over, looking the picture of all that is sickening, harrowing, horrible. O what a terrible sight! Some of the rebel wounded were left on the field. Many of the dead had on Federal uniforms. The woods bear marks of the destructive work of our shells. Great limbs of trees are torn off, and a house near the woods is literally riddled by balls. We found a large iron cannon left behind, and everything indicates a speedy flight of the rebels. We rest to-night to go forward again early to-morrow morning.

---

John J. Hennessy is the author of Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas.

An Artilleryman At Antietam

By Dan Lewis Smithsonian.com, December 06, 2012

Richard Paul Pavlick’s plan wasn’t very complicated, but it took an eagle-eyed postal worker to prevent a tragedy

Richard Paul Pavlick (at right) attempted to assassinate Kennedy outside the President-elect's church in Palm Beach, Florida, in December 1960. Shown here is Kennedy and his family outside that church in April 1963. (© Bettmann / CORBIS)

In November of 1960, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected President of the United States. Three years later, he was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald while in a motorcade going through Dallas, Texas.

Had Richard Paul Pavlick gotten his way, Oswald would have never gotten to pull the trigger. Because Pavlick wanted to kill JFK first.

On December 11, 1960, JFK was the president-elect and Richard Paul Pavlick was a 73-year-old retired postal worker. Both were in Palm Beach, Florida. JFK was there on a vacation of sorts, taking a trip to warmer climates as he prepared to assume the office of the President. Pavlick had followed Kennedy down there with the intention of blowing himself up and taking JFK with him. His plan was simple. He lined his car with dynamite — “enough to blow up a small mountain” per CNN – and outfitted it with a detonation switch. Then, he parked outside the Kennedy’s Palm Beach compound and waited for Kennedy to leave his house to go to Sunday Mass. Pavlick’s aim was to ram his car into JFK’s limo as the President-to-be left his home, killing them both.

But JFK did not leave his house alone that morning. He made his way to his limousine with his wife, Jacqueline, and children, Caroline and John, Jr. who was less than a month old. While Pavlick was willing to kill John F. Kennedy, he did not want to kill Kennedy’s family, so he resigned himself to trying again another day. He would not get a second chance at murderous infamy. On December 15, he was arrested by a Palm Beach police officer working off a tip from the Secret Service.

Pavlick’s undoing was the result of deranged postcards he sent to Thomas Murphy, then the postmaster of Pavlick’s hometown of Belmont, New Hampshire. Murphy was put off by the strange tone of the postcards, and his curiosity led him to do what postmasters do — look at the postmarks. He noticed a pattern: Pavlick happened to be in the same general area as JFK, dotting the landscape as Kennedy travelled. Murphy called the local police department who, in turn, called the Secret Service, and from there, Pavlick’s plan unravelled.

The would-be assassin was committed to a mental institution, pending charges, on January 27, 1961, a week after Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th President of the United States. These charges were eventually dropped as it became increasingly clear that Pavlick acted out of an inability to distinguish between right and wrong (i.e. he was legally insane), but nevertheless, Pavlick remained institutionalized until December 13, 1966, nearly six years after being apprehended, and three years after Oswald pulled the trigger.

Bonus fact: If Pavlick seems old for a would-be Presidential assassin, your instincts are correct. Lee Harvey Oswald was just 24 years old, making him the youngest of all four of the men who assassinated Presidents. John Wilkes Booth was 26 when he killed Abraham Lincoln; Leon Czolgosz was 28 when he assassinated William McKinley, and Charles Guiteau was 39 when he attacked James A. Garfield.

The Kennedy Assassin Who Failed | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine

By Richard Grudens

Henry Ford, the great industrialist, was busy celebrating his 81st birthday on a very warm July 30, 1944. Allied troops had landed in Normandy the previous month and, though they faced stiff German resistance, they were clearly winning.

At the celebration, Ford visualized what he called "great days ahead," but only, as he put it, "if we apply what we have learned and mix it with plenty of hard work." It was Ford's vision of mass production and its subsequent implementation that had harnessed the industrial might of the United States and had helped make staggering wartime production goals attainable. His mastery of manufacturing techniques has made Henry Ford's name a household word.

Ford was born on a modest farm near Dearborn, Mich., in 1863. Although his father's farm flourished, Henry was more interested in mechanics than farming. He attended a simple, one-room school and also tended to his farm chores. "There was too much hard hand labour on our own and all other farms of the time," he wrote in his biography, My Life and Work. "Even when I was very young I suspected that much might somehow be done in a better way. That is what took me into mechanics."

Two events dramatically changed Henry Ford's life. First, he received a watch for his 12th birthday. Second, he saw a horseless farm machine for the first time–a road engine used for driving threshing machines. One year later, using crude tools, he was able to put together a watch. Shortly thereafter, he built a working model of the road engine that had occupied his dreams.

At age 17, Ford hiked the nine miles to nearby Detroit to take his first job, earning $1.10 a day for making repairs with the Michigan Car Works. He came across a copy of an English magazine, World Of Science, which described the Otto internal combustion engine. It excited his interest in engines, and he went to work at the Dry Dock Engine Company. There he mastered the machinist's trade within two years.

Young Ford had an ambition to produce watches so cheaply that he could sell them for a dollar a piece, but before he could pursue that plan he had to go home to help his father. In 1884, he attended a business school for three months and experimented with machinery while still helping on the family farm.

He married Clara Bryant, the daughter of a neighbouring farmer, when he was 25. In the home he built for his wife on a 40-acre tract his father gave him, Ford drew his first diagram of a gasoline engine, which he was convinced was destined to replace the noisy steam engine. Ford soon realized that he could not build his engine on a farm, but needed the superior mechanical equipment that could be found in a city such as Detroit. So in 1891, the young couple moved to Detroit, where Henry found employment as a machinist. He worked a 12-hour day and earned only $45 a month. In his spare time, he continued to work on the gasoline engine.

Ford tested the engine in his kitchen, with the engine clamped to the sink, the spark plug connected to the ceiling light socket, and the oil cup tended by his wife. The engine, he later explained, consisted of "a length of one-inch gas pipe reamed out to serve as a cylinder, and in it rested a homemade piston fitted with rings. This was attached by a rod to the crankshaft, and had a five-inch stroke. A hand-wheel off an old lathe served as the flywheel. A gear arrangement operated a cam, opening the exhaust valve and timing the spark. A piece of fibre with a wire through the centre did for a spark plug. It made contact with another wire at the end of the piston, and when this was broken a spark leaped across, exploding the gasoline."

With his gasoline engine a success, Ford's next ambition was to make his engine drive a four-wheel carriage. Motor vehicles were being produced by hand in Europe, but there was no commercial manufacturing of any motorcar. In 1896, when he was 33, Ford drove his first automobile out of his backyard shop. Within a few days he added a seat, and then he confidently drove his wife and 3-year-old son, Edsel, the nine miles to his father's farm.

Soon Ford became chief engineer for the Detroit Edison Company, sold his first automobile for $200 and attracted the attention of several businessmen. He gathered $10,000 to start the Detroit Automobile Company, but soon left that venture. With another group of investors, he then organized the Henry Ford Company. When that organization also broke up, due to disagreements over his insistence on offering only a low-price car and his refusal to be hurried in his experiments, Ford returned to his own shop and began working on a four-cylinder motor. Intent on having one of his automobiles achieve the speed of a mile a minute, he began building racing cars. Famed racing driver Barney Oldfield won a race with Ford's "999" at the Grosse Point, Mich., track in 1902.

Meanwhile, companies like Oldsmobile and Cadillac were selling thousands of cars, which enabled Ford to locate new investors. With $28,000, he formed the Ford Motor Company. The Model A Ford mobile, a practical, utility auto, was produced in 1905 as a tough and simple car for a price of $850 (a second, much more sophisticated, Model A came out in 1928). Soon the business was prospering. The Model B was next in the line, and the Model C followed closely. Then came the Model T, Ford's best-known auto, which, as he later recalled, "contained all that I was able to put into a motorcar, plus the material which for the first time I was able to obtain."

The Model T was a noisy, uncomfortable, unattractive but efficient automobile. Within five years, half a million Model Ts were on the road. Strictly utilitarian, the car was the butt of many jokes. Taking the frequent needling about the Model T's appearance in stride, Ford himself joked about the car's colour, saying, "Any customer can have any car painted any colour that he wants, so long as it is black." The Model T's popularity resulted in the employment of 4,000 people in Ford's factory.

Increased demand called for increased speed of production. Ford achieved faster production by introducing the moving assembly belt, which he began to experiment with in 1913. He described it as "the reduction of the necessity for thought on the part of the worker, and the reduction of the movement to a minimum. He does as nearly as possible only one thing with only one movement….He must have every second necessary but not a single unnecessary second."

Ford increased the minimum wage for his employees to $5 for an eight-hour day. In 1918, the River Rouge plant was built, and he increased wages to an unheard of $6 a day. By 1924, Ford had manufactured 10 million Model Ts. In 1928, Ford brought out his second Model A, and in 1932 the sturdy V-8 engine appeared.

The Great Depression struck the Ford Motor Company hard. Wages were lowered and there were layoffs, as well. Labour unions were established within the struggling work force. Strikes were rampant, and Ford fought the unions hard, but eventually the United Auto Workers became an effective collective bargaining force.

Ford, a known pacifist, opposed America's entry into World War II. Nevertheless, he agreed to build airplane engines for the British government. In May 1940, he stated: "If it became necessary, the Ford Motor Company could, with the counsel of men like [Charles] Lindbergh and [Eddie] Rickenbacker, under our own supervision and without meddling by government agencies, swing into the production of a thousand airplanes of standard design a day."

It was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that inspired Ford to begin a tremendous, all-out manufacturing effort. To the west of Dearborn, the giant Willow Run plant was built to produce B-24 Liberator bombers on an assembly line that was a mile long. The first bomber rolled off the line in May 1942, beginning the effective production of several hundred aircraft a month. Bombers were produced at the rate of one plane per hour, thereby confounding Ford's critics, who had called the plant undertaking "Willit Run." By the end of the war, Ford had built 86,865 complete aircraft, plus 57,851 airplane engines, thousands of engine superchargers and generators, and 4,291 military gliders.

Ford also turned out tanks, armoured cars, jeeps and engines for robot bombs. In the midst of the heaviest production during the war years, Ford returned to his post as chief executive of the Ford Motor Company when Edsel, who had taken over for his father, died in 1943.

Months earlier, Ford's plants in Great Britain and Canada had joined the production efforts of the United States and poured forth everything from mobile canteens to four-wheel-drive trucks and autos, grenades, bombs and engine-powered landing craft. The U.S. plants were the prime movers in the development of the famous Willys-originated jeep.

By the end of the war, Ford plants had built 277,896 of the versatile vehicles. In all, the Allies were supplied with more than a million fighting vehicles by Ford operations in the United States, Canada, Britain, India, South Africa and New Zealand.

At the height of World War II, Ford managed to transport vitally important, precision jig-boring machinery, obtainable only from neutral Switzerland, to Manchester, England–right through German-occupied France and Spain. The Swiss, uncompromising in their commercial neutrality, insisted upon their right to trade with all parties. Since Germany was dependent on Swiss machine tools, it was forced to allow the export of war products through its occupied territories to its own enemies. As a result, Ford's British plant turned out more than 30,000 complex supercharged V-12 engines–more than Rolls Royce built at its own plant in Derby, England. The engines were installed in British Mosquito and Lancaster bombers.

At the outset of the war, Ford's plant in Cologne, Germany, had been commandeered by the Nazis to turn out trucks for their war effort, and actually continued under Nazi control with the supervision of one of Ford's trained Danish managers. The manufacturing continued until constant Allied air raids made it virtually impossible for the plant to operate. Before the war was officially over, SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) asked Ford for immediate help to start operating the newly liberated plant again. The only actual damage to the facility was done by German artillery when the German army fell back across the Rhine and Cologne was occupied by American forces. German employees had ignored instructions to destroy the plant to prevent it from falling into Allied hands. The plant's first post-war truck, assembled from components on hand, rolled out on May 8, 1945, V-E Day.

Ford always loved visiting his factories, even when he was 81. His frequent motor outings with Harvey Firestone and his hero, Thomas Edison, were well-known around the world. In 1944, the American Legion awarded Ford its Distinguished Service Medal for his contribution to the rehabilitation of veterans of both the world wars.

Henry Ford died on April 7, 1947, at the age of 84. Most of his personal estate, valued at $205 million, was left to the Ford Foundation, one of the world's largest public trusts. Today Ford still has his supporters and detractors, but the industrial genius' significant contribution to the Allied effort in World War II is indisputable. *

Personality: Henry Ford – January '97 World War II Feature

The Morris worm or Internet worm of November 2, 1988 was one of the first computer worms distributed via the Internet. It is considered the first worm and was certainly the first to gain significant mainstream media attention. It also resulted in the first conviction in the US under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It was written by a student at Cornell University, Robert Tappan Morris, and launched on November 2, 1988 from MIT.

Architecture of the worm

Disk containing the source code for the Morris Worm held at the Boston Museum of Science.

According to its creator, the Morris worm was not written to cause damage, but to gauge the size of the Internet. However, the worm was released from MIT to disguise the fact that the worm originally came from Cornell. (Incidentally, Morris is now a professor at MIT.) Additionally, the Morris worm worked by exploiting known vulnerabilities in Unix sendmail, Finger, and rsh/rexec, as well as weak passwords.

A supposedly unintended consequence of the code, however, caused it to be more damaging: a computer could be infected multiple times and each additional process would slow the machine down, eventually to the point of being unusable. The main body of the worm could only infect DEC VAX machines running 4BSD, and Sun-3 systems. A portable C "grappling hook" component of the worm was used to pull over the main body, and the grappling hook could run on other systems, loading them down and making them peripheral victims.

The mistake

The critical error that transformed the worm from a potentially harmless intellectual exercise into a virulent denial of service attack was in the spreading mechanism. The worm could have determined whether to invade a new computer by asking if there was already a copy running. But just doing this would have made it trivially easy to kill; everyone could just run a process that would answer "yes" when asked if there was already a copy, and the worm would stay away. The defense against this was inspired by Michael Rabin's mantra, "Randomization." To compensate for this possibility, Morris directed the worm to copy itself even if the response is "yes", 1 out of 7 times. This level of replication proved excessive and the worm spread rapidly, infecting some computers multiple times. Morris remarked, when he heard of the mistake, that he "should have tried it on a simulator first."

Effects of the worm

It is usually reported that around 6,000 major UNIX machines were infected by the Morris worm. Paul Graham has claimed that

"I was there when this statistic was cooked up, and this was the recipe: someone guessed that there were about 60,000 computers attached to the Internet, and that the worm might have infected ten percent of them."

The U.S. GAO put the cost of the damage at $10M–100M.

The Morris worm prompted DARPA to fund the establishment of the CERT/CC at Carnegie Mellon University to give experts a central point for coordinating responses to network emergencies. Gene Spafford also created the Phage mailing list to coordinate a response to the emergency.

Robert Morris was tried and convicted of violating the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. After appeals he was sentenced to three years probation, 400 hours of community service, and a fine of $10,000.

The Morris worm has sometimes been referred to as the "Great Worm", because of the devastating effect it had on the Internet at that time, both in overall system downtime and in psychological impact on the perception of security and reliability of the Internet. The name was derived from the "Great Worms" of Tolkien: Scatha and Glaurung.

Morris worm - encyclopedia article about Morris worm.

By John Lynch | Published in Volume: 33 Issue: 7 1983 

 

What role did Simon Bolivar play in the history of Venezuela's declaration of independence from Spain? Here John Lynch argues that the history of Spanish American independence is incomprehensible without him.

Simon Bolivar

Simon Bolivar lived a short but comprehensive life. History records his extraordinary versatility. He was a revolutionary who freed six countries, an intellectual who argued the problems of national liberation, a general who fought a war of unremitting violence. He inspired extremes of devotion and detestation. Many Spanish Americans wanted him to be their dictator, their king; but some denounced him as a traitor, and others tried to assassinate him. Subsequent generations completed the apotheosis, and continued the controversy. He has a country, a city, and a currency named after him; he is honoured throughout the Americas in hundreds of statues and streets; his life is the subject of endless writings. To liberal historians he was a fighter against tyranny. Marxists interpret him as the leader of a bourgeois revolution. Modern revolutionaries see him as a reformist who secured political change but left the colonial heritage of his continent virtually intact. There are others who question the very importance of his career and reject the cult of the hero. For them the meaning of liberation is to be found in the study of economic structures, social groups, and the international conjuncture, not in heroic deeds or the lives of liberators. Yet the history of Spanish American independence is incomprehensible without Bolivar. So universal was his career that he intervened at every level of the revolution, in most of its phases, and in many parts of the continent. He was moreover an exceptionally complex man, this liberator who scorned liberalism, soldier who disparaged militarism, republican who admired monarchy. To study Bolivar is to study a rare and original character, whose mind and will were no less factors in historical change than were the economic and social structures of the time.

Bolivar was born, on July 24th, 1783, to wealth and privilege, the son of an old creole (Spanish American) family of Venezuela, owners of plantations, mines, houses in Caracas, and numerous slaves. It was the colonial élite for whom he spoke when he denounced the tyranny of Spain, the servitude of Spanish Americans, their role as primary producers and consumers of Spanish goods. 'Do you know what our future was?' he asked in the Jamaica Letter . 'We were mere consumers, confined to the cultivation of indigo, grain, coffee, sugar, cacao and cotton raising cattle on the empty plains; hunting wild game in the wilderness; mining in the earth to produce gold for the insatiable greed of Spain'. But there was wealth for some, and it could be measured by the sequestrations suffered by the creole insurgents after 1810. Bolivar's losses amounted to 80,000 pesos, the largest single confiscation made by the royalists. His total wealth probably amounted to at least 200,000 pesos, though at the end of his life he had little more than the unrealised assets of the Aroa copper mines.

Bolivar stood apart from his class in ideas, values and vision. Who else would be found in the midst of a campaign swinging in a hammock, reading the French philosophers? His liberal education, wide reading, and travels in Europe had broadened his horizons and opened his mind to the political thinkers of France and Britain. He read deeply in the works of Hobbes and Spinoza, Holbach and Hume; and the thought of Montesquieu and Rousseau left its imprint firmly on him and gave him a life-long devotion to reason, freedom and progress. But he was not a slave of the Enlightenment. British political virtues also attracted him. In his Angostura Address (1819) he recommended the British constitution as 'the most worthy to serve as a model for those who desire to enjoy the rights of man and all political happiness compatible with our fragile nature'. But he also affirmed his conviction that American constitutions must conform to American traditions, beliefs and conditions.

His basic aim was liberty, which he described as "the only object worth the sacrifice of man's life'. For Bolivar liberty did not simply mean freedom from the absolutist state of the eighteenth century, as it did for the Enlightenment, but freedom from a colonial power, to be followed by true independence under a liberal constitution. And with liberty he wanted equality – that is, legal equality – for all men, whatever their class, creed or colour. In principle he was a democrat and he believed that governments should be responsible to the people. 'Only the majority is sovereign', he wrote; 'he who takes the place of the people is a tyrant and his power is usurpation'. But Bolivar was not so idealistic as to imagine that South America was ready for pure democracy, or that the law could annul the inequalities imposed by nature and society. He spent his whole political life developing and modifying his principles, seeking the elusive mean between democracy and authority. In Bolivar the realist and idealist dwelt in uneasy rivalry.

Bolivar was a talented soldier, though his talents differed from those of his more professional contemporaries, Napoleon and Wellington. This was one of the cruellest of colonial wars, and Bolivar the most ruthless of all the liberators. In his view the enemy was fighting an undeclared war of extermination, killing prisoners whose only crime was that they fought for freedom. He believed that the patriots were at a disadvantage and could no longer wage a civilised war against the Spaniards. After the collapse of the First Republic he resolved upon a new policy – war to the death. On June 15th, 1813, at Trujillo, he issued his celebrated decree: 'Spaniards and Canarians, depend upon it, you will die even if you are simply neutral, unless you actively espouse the liberation of America. Americans, you will be spared, even when you are guilty'. The exception was significant. This was a civil war, in which Americans predominated on both sides. And Bolivar could not bring himself to wage war to the death against his own people, even though they might be royalists. The Trujillo decree ruthlessly distinguished between Spaniards and Americans; it sought to cut through categories like royalism and republicanism and to make this a war between nations, between Spain and America.

As a soldier Bolivar displayed not only great implacability but also immense powers of endurance; he was there at the beginning of the war of independence, and fifteen years later, in 1824, when the last Spanish viceroy surrendered, he was still in command. His aide and chronicler, General Daniel F. O'Leary, was struck by the contrast between his slight physique and his great stamina: 'After a day's march, enough to exhaust the most robust man, I have seen him work five or six hours, or dance as long'. But Bolivar was distinguished above all by the magic of his leadership. This was never more true than in 1817, a dark year for the revolution. The First Republic had capitulated in 1812; the Second had been destroyed by royalist caudillos; a Spanish expedition under General Pablo Morillo, a veteran of the Peninsular War, completed the triumph of the counter-revolution. After two years exile it was with the greatest difficulty that Bolivar managed to regain a foothold on the mainland. He led his men south into Guayana in a new and visionary strategy, to base the revolution deep in the hinterland, among the great plains of the Orinoco, a barrier against defeat, a springboard for attack, and a source of wealth in their reserves of livestock.

But now Bolivar had to fight against the enemy within as well as the royalists without. The wars of independence in northern South America were fought with two armies, regular forces and local guerrillas, movements which were part allies, part rivals. A soldier had to be a politician, and Bolivar was no exception: he sought power as well as freedom, he wanted to rule as well as to liberate. He had to fight to impose unity on the revolution and to broaden its social base, two aims which from our vantage point we can see were to become permanent challenges to Latin American leaders. The caudillos, or regional chieftains, of the revolution, Santiago Marino, Francisco Bermudez and Manuel Piar, were reluctant to recognise the command of Bolivar, whose grandiose plans had collapsed while they kept resistance alive in the east. General Piar posed the greatest threat, partly because of his military ability, and partly because, a pardo (mulatto) himself, he sought to mobilise the coloured population and to make it his power base. He was hunted down, brought to trial and shot, 'for proclaiming the odious principles of race war, for inciting civil war, and for encouraging anarchy'. Bolivar calculated carefully in executing Piar. As O'Leary observed, 'General Marino certainly deserved the same treatment as Piar, but he was less dangerous, and one example was sufficient'. The danger lay in black power.

The republic could no longer ignore race problems or suppress popular forces. Bolivar himself, the most daring and idealistic of the creoles, had long seen the need to fuse the creole, pardo and slave rebellions into one great movement. He considered himself free of race prejudice and fought for liberty and equality. The revolution would correct the imbalance imposed by nature and colonialism: previously 'the whites, by virtue of talent, merit and fortune, monopolised everything. The pardos, degraded to the most humiliating condition, had nothing. But the revolution has granted them every privilege, every right, every advantage'. So Bolivar denounced Piar for inciting race war at a time when equality was already being granted to the coloured people. From 1815-16 growing numbers of pardos were incorporated into the army of liberation: they were needed to fill the gaps in the patriot ranks left by creole casualties and desertions, and they themselves were imbued with greater expectations from wartime social mobility. After this the traditional structure of the republican army was transformed, and while the creoles retained military and political control, the pardos (who in Venezuela were the mass of the population) had greater opportunities for advance to higher ranks and offices. To this extent Bolivar was right: the people had more to gain from the republican cause. But what had the slaves to gain?

Bolivar was an abolitionist. He regarded it as 'madness that a revolution for liberty should try to maintain slavery', and in one of his frankest speeches he called upon the Congress of Angostura in 1819 to remove from Venezuela 'the dark mantle of barbarous and profane slavery'. But Bolivar was also a military leader who needed recruits, and during the war he tied emancipation to conscription, offering slaves manumission in return for military service. The response was negative. The Venezuelan aristocracy did not embrace the republican cause in order to divest themselves of property, while the slaves were not interested in fighting the creole's war. Nevertheless the policy of Bolivar helped to neutralise the slaves; they no longer actively fought the republic, as they had done in 1812-14, and they gradually disappeared from the war as an autonomous movement. Meanwhile, Bolivar wanted the support not only of the pardos and slaves but also of a third group, the llaneros , the plainsmen of south-west Venezuela.

There, in the Apure valley, José Antonio Paez, the most powerful of all the caudillos, had his own base and his own army. Paez was the complete antithesis of Bolivar; uneducated, illiterate, yet possessed of natural gifts of leadership, he had risen through the ranks to become absolute lord of the plains and a future contender for power. His llanero followers were ferocious horsemen, primitive and predatory, who responded to no ideology, only to plunder and the promise of land. Paez fashioned them into a savage yet disciplined lancer force, and accepting that only Bolivar could integrate the disparate regional forces into one movement, he recognised the sovereignty of Bolivar and in February 1818 contributed a thousand cavalry to a joint force of over four thousand. By now, therefore, Bolivar had achieved unity of command amidst diversity of forces. There was one further requirement, foreign aid.

In 1817 the Venezuelan representative in London, Luis Lopez Mendez, was asked by Bolivar to recruit a British expeditionary force to join the patriot army. Over 6,000 volunteers left British ports for South America during the next two years, together with ships, sailors and great quantities of arms and munitions. These men formed the nucleus of the British Legion and were regarded by Bolivar as vital reinforcements, while the rifles, artillery and other military equipment, provided on credit by British merchants, were no less urgent. Bolivar was later to describe these volunteers as 'the saviours' of his country, and with equal generosity to say that the true Liberator had been Lopez Mendez, 7 because without the arms and men sent from England the campaign of 1819 could not have been won. The truth is that without the strategic sense of Bolivar the campaign would not have been conceived.

He decided to take the revolution westwards and to liberate New Granada. In Venezuela the republic had reached an impasse and found it impossible to crush the royalists. To switch the theatre of war from one country to another would have a dazzling effect and constitute in itself a rare moral victory. Bolivar could lure Morillo from Venezuela and, if the operation were successful, return to his homeland from a position of strength and with greater striking power. So he invaded New Granada. In an agonising march, when a quarter of his army and many of the British volunteers perished, he led his forces during the rainy season through, the vast waterlogged plains of Casanare, across the Andes at great altitude, and into the heart of enemy territory, where he defeated the astonished Spaniards at the battle of Boyaca.

Other victories followed, first in Venezuela itself, where at the battle of Carabobo (1821) he brought all the caudillo forces together into one grand army and where the British Legion won his special praise. He then moved south to take the revolution to Ecuador and Peru, and to link up with the movement emanating from the southern cone. By now he had assembled a truly American army drawn from many parts of the continent, its incomparable cavalry led by the llaneros of Venezuela, its infantry recruited in Colombia and Peru and reinforced still by the depleted British units. The leadership of Bolivar and the planning of his favourite commander, General Sucre, met in happy collaboration for their last decisive campaign high in the Peruvian sierra. 'They destroyed the remnants of Spanish power first at Ayacucho (1824), and finally in Upper Peru. Together Bolivar and Sucre entered Potosi, where they climbed the legendary silver mountain and drank to the American revolution.

Bolivar gave his name to the new state of Bolivia and he drafted its constitution. In the later years of his life he was haunted by the spectre of anarchy in America. The failure of the First Republic he attributed to federalism and weak government. The collapse of the Second Republic he blamed on disunity and inexperience. He then worked with the caudillos and their lawless followers to revive the revolution. After 1819 he denounced lawyers, legislators and liberals. In 1826 he identified 'two monstrous enemies' in the speech presenting his draft constitution to the Bolivian Congress. 'Tyranny and anarchy constitute an immense sea of oppression encircling a tiny island of freedom.' Spanish Americans, he lamented, were "seduced by freedom', each person wanting absolute power for himself and refusing any subordination. This led to civilian factions, military risings, and provincial rebellions. It was in this frame of mind that he drafted the Bolivian constitution.

His lifelong search for a political mean now veered towards strong government. The president, in this constitution, was appointed by the legislature for life and had the right to appoint his successor; this Bolivar regarded as 'the most sublime inspiration of republican ideas', the president being 'the sun which, fixed in its orbit, imparts life to the universe'. Thus 'elections would be avoided, which are the greatest scourge of republics and produce only anarchy'. The rest of the constitution was not devoid of liberal details. It provided for civil rights – liberty, equality, security and property – and for a strong, independent judicial power. It abolished social privileges, and it declared the slaves free. Some observers were genuinely impressed. The British consul in Lima believed that it was 'founded apparently on the basis of the British constitution', allowing 'useful liberty' but 'obviating any rnischievous excess of popular power'. But this constitution was branded by its executive power, by the life president with right to choose his successor. It was this which outraged many Americans, conservatives as well as liberals. The political career of Bolivar himself, moreover, took a similar path in Colombia, as he moved from president to dictator. This was his tragedy. In spite of his preference for a political over a military solution, in spite of his long search for constitutional forms, he fell back in the end on personal authority, ruling through a dictatorship and co-opting the caudillos into a system which appealed to their own instincts on government. In 1828-30 Bolivar ruled alone in Colombia, the only stable thing in a world in turmoil. Yet he never deserted his original .ideals of liberty and equality. Rather he put strong government at the service of reform a synthesis incomprehensible to the liberals of his time but more understood in our own day, when powerful presidential government and one-party states are regarded as appropriate, or at least inevitable, constitutional forms for new and developing nations.

Bolivar entered world history as one of the first modern leaders of a national liberation movement. Yet he himself was not aggressively nationalist, either towards neighbouring American countries or towards outside powers. His ambition was to unite rather than divide the Spanish American peoples. He created the great state of Colombia, comprising Venezuela, New Granada and Ecuador. He then sought to unite this with Peru and Bolivia in a Federation of the Andes. And he dreamed of the 'great day of America' when its peoples would come together in a league of nations. These ideas, of course, operated at different levels of planning and possibility. His ideal of a greater Colombia, which existed for about a decade, was not a denial of national identity but an affirmation of it. He was trying to establish the appropriate size of a viable nation, seeking unity as a means to national strength and economic sufficiency. Unity would ensure peace and well-being as opposed to the anarchy of local caudillo rule, what he called 'minigovernments'. And unity would earn greater respect from other nations, from Britain and the United States. In Bolivar's view foreign indifference towards Latin American independence was a consequence of the proliferation of tiny sovereignties, squabbling among themselves.

It was a losing battle. Bolivar came to realise that the creation of a greater Colombia had been premature, and as the heroic age of Americanism passed, he became one of the many victims of national awareness and national rivalries, denounced as a traitor in Venezuela and a foreigner in New Granada. He could no longer ignore the forces of separatism; the immense distances, the scanty population, the poor record of the central government, the survival of powerful local caudillos, such as Paez in Venezuela, who could express their ambition on a regional scale if not at the centre, all these were factors of division and dissension. And these were his thoughts when he left Peru for Colombia in September 1826, to come to the rescue of his own creation: 'I have too many problems in my native land, which I have long neglected for other countries in America . I intend to do all the good I can for Venezuela without attempting anything further'. But it was too late and Venezuela was already seceding from the union.

While Bolivar abandoned his Pan Americanism and reverted to a more nationalist position, there was little sign in his thought of economic nationalism or of that resentment against foreign penetration which later generations felt. While he rejected the Spanish colonial monopoly, he welcomed foreigners who subscribed to open trade and who brought much needed manufactured goods and entrepreneurial skills. He was always friendly towards Britain. 'Politically', he wrote, 'alliance with Great Britain would be a greater victory than Ayacucho, and if we procure it you may be certain that our future happiness is assured. The advantages that will result for Colombia if we ally ourselves with that mistress of the universe are incalculable'. The policy was one of self-interest rather than dependence; it expressed the anxiety of a young and weak state to acquire a protector – and a liberal protector – against the power of Spain and the Holy Alliance. Britain provided one of Bolivar's basic requirements, namely diplomatic, and in the ultimate analysis naval, protection against counter-revolution from Europe. 'America will never forget', he said, 'that Mr. Canning caused her rights to be respected'.

The Liberator was also a reformer, and as he sought to establish the political framework of the revolution, so he struggled to broaden its social base. He stood for equality as well as liberty, and he insisted on ending racial discrimination, at least before the law. The slave trade was abolished in Venezuela in 1811, but slavery endured. Bolivar set an example. He liberated his own slaves, first on condition of military service in 1814, when about fifteen accepted, and then unconditionally in 1821 after the liberation of Venezuela, when over a hundred profited. And he repeatedly pressed congress to decree abolition. He argued that the creole rulers and property-owners must accept the implications of independence, that the example of freedom was 'insistent and compelling', and that the republicans 'must triumph by the road of revolution and no other'. The post-war Congress of Cucuta passed a complex law of manumission, but it lacked teeth and also the funds to pay compensation. All over Spanish America the chronology of abolition tended to be determined not by principles but by the role of slavery in any given economy. Where slavery was significant or constituted an important property right, so it survived (in Venezuela to 1854), and Bolivar fought a lone battle.

Land and labour remained under the control of the great proprietors. Bolivar was aware of the agrarian structure, and he wanted to distribute land confiscated from the royalists to the republican soldiers, whom he regarded as the people in arms. On October 10th, 1817, he issued the 'law on the distribution of national property among the soldiers', the first of a number of such decrees. The scheme was confined to those who fought in the hardest years, 1816-19, and the intention, as Bolivar put it, was 'to make of each soldier a property-owning citizen'. Strictly speaking it was not a bonus but a basic payment to men who had not received a regular wage; and it was graded according to rank. But Bolivar's plans were frustrated by the combined action of legislators and officers. Congress decreed that the soldiers be paid not in actual land but in bonos , vouchers entitling the holder to receive national land at a vague post-war date. Ignorant and impoverished soldiers were easy prey: the bonos were bought up by officers and civilian speculators at ridiculous prices, and in this way most of the soldiers, including thellaneros , were defrauded of their right to land. The injustice outraged the Liberator and he protested to congress, but in vain. Yet this was not his last word on agrarian problems.

Bolivar also sought to give land to the Peruvian Indians in individual ownership. 'The poor Indians', he declared, 'are truly in a state of lamentable depression. I intend to help them all I can, first as a matter of humanity, second because it is their right'. But good intentions were not enough. In breaking up the Indian communities and re-distributing their lands, liberal reforms of this kind exposed the Indians to pressure from estate owners, who took their land and demanded their labour. Bolivar decreed a further measure of land reform, in Bolivia in 1825; the aim was to distribute state land, preferably among 'the natives and those who have offered and suffered much in the cause of independence'. But the reform was sabotaged by the Bolivian ruling class, who regarded a free and landed peasantry as a threat to their dependent labour supply.

'To understand revolutions and their participants', wrote Bolivar, 'we must observe them at close range and judge them at great distance'. History may judge that the Liberator was to some degree a prisoner of his environment. He could not push the creole élite too far along the path of reform for fear of a backlash, in which independence itself might be jeopardised. Where he differed from his contemporaries was in his awareness of the true limitations of independence, and in his acute perception of the socio-racial tensions of the time 'A great volcano lies at our feet. Who shall restrain the oppressed classes!' Slavery will break its yoke, each racial group will seek mastery'. In 1828, in a mood of deep pessimism, he described the enduring polarisation of Spanish American society between the privileged few and the deprived many:

In Colombia there is an aristocracy of rank, office and wealth, equivalent by its influence, its pretensions and its pressure on the people, to the most despotic aristocracy of titles and birth in Europe. Included in the ranks of this aristocracy are the clergy, professional groups, lawyers, the military and the rich. In spite of all their liberalism, they prefer to regard the lower classes as their perpetual serfs.

Two years later, as anarchy and violence swept over the new states, he declared his bitter disappointment at the achievements of the revolution: 'Independence is the only benefit we have gained, at the cost of everything else'. Convinced that America was ungovernable, and mortally ill from tuberculosis, he left Bogota to make his way to the coast and exile. He died near Santa Marta on December 17th, 1830, in his forty-seventh year, ‘his last moments', recorded O'Leary, 'the last embers of an expiring volcano, the dust of the Andes still on his garments'.

John Lynch is Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies and Professor of Latin American History at the University of London.

Further reading:

• Vicente Lecuna and Harold A. Bierck (eds) Selected Writings of Bolivar (2 vols, New York, 1951)
• Bolivar and the War of Independence. Memorias del General Daniel Florencio O'Leary  ed. Robert F. McNerney (Austin, 1970)
• Gerhard Masur, Simon Bolivar (Alburquerque, 1948)
• J.J. Salcedo-Bastardo, Bolivar. A Continent and its Destiny (Richmond, 1978)
• John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions 1808-1826 (London, 1973)
• For recent appraisals, see the collection of articles in Hispanic American Historical Review 63:1 (Feb 1983)

National Day of Venezuela | History Today

August 22, 2012

 

“You have conned me,” Victor “Count” Lustig, told the police. Photo: Wikipedia

On a Sunday night in May 1935, Victor Lustig was strolling down Broadway on New York’s Upper West Side. At first, the Secret Service agents couldn’t be sure it was him. They’d been shadowing him for seven months, painstakingly trying to learn more about this mysterious and dapper man, but his newly grown mustache had thrown them off momentarily. As he turned up the velvet collar on his Chesterfield coat and quickened his pace, the agents swooped in.

Surrounded, Lustig smiled and calmly handed over his suitcase. “Smooth,” was how one of the agents described him, noting a “livid scar” on his left cheekbone and “dark, burning eyes.” After chasing him for years, they’d gotten a close-up view of the man known as “the Count,” a nicknamed he’d earned for his suave and worldly demeanor. He had long sideburns, agents observed, and “perfectly manicured nails.” Under questioning he was serene and poised. Agents expected the suitcase to contain freshly printed bank notes from various Federal

Reserve series, or perhaps other tools of Lustig’s million-dollar counterfeiting trade. But all they found were expensive clothes.

At last, they pulled a wallet from his coat and found a key. They tried to get Lustig to say what it was for, but the Count shrugged and shook his head. The key led agents to the Times Square subway station, where it opened a dusty locker, and inside it agents found $51,000 in counterfeit bills and the plates from which they had been printed. It was the beginning of the end for the man described by the New York Times as an “E. Phillips Oppenheim character in the flesh,” a nod to the popular English novelist best known for The Great Impersonation.

The Eiffel Tower at the Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889. Photo: Wikipedia

Secret Service agents finally had one of the world’s greatest imposters, wanted throughout Europe as well as in the United States.  He’d amassed a fortune in schemes that were so grand and outlandish, few thought any of his victims could ever be so gullible. He’d sold the Eiffel Tower to a French scrap-metal dealer. He’d sold a “money box” to countless greedy victims who believed that Lustig’s contraption was capable of printing perfectly replicated $100 bills. (Police noted that some “smart” New York gamblers had paid $46,000 for one.) He had even duped some of the wealthiest and most dangerous mobsters—men like Al Capone, who never knew he’d been swindled.

Now the authorities were eager to question him about all of these activities, plus his possible role in several recent murders in New York and the shooting of Jack “Legs” Diamond, who was staying in a hotel room down the hall from Lustig’s on the night he was attacked.

“Count,” one of the Secret Service agents said, “you’re the smoothest con man that ever lived.”

The Count politely demurred with a smile. “I wouldn’t say that,” he replied. “After all, you have conned me.”

Despite being charged with multiple counts of possession of counterfeit currency and plates, Victor Lustig wasn’t done with the con game quite yet. He was held at the Federal Detention Headquarters in New York, believed to be “escape proof” at the time, and scheduled to stand trial on September 2, 1935. But prison officials arrived at his cell on the third floor that day and were stunned. The Count had vanished in broad daylight.

Born in Austria-Hungary in 1890, Lustig, became fluent in several languages, and when he decided to see the world he thought: Where better to make money than aboard ocean liners packed with wealthy travelers? Charming and poised at a young age, Lustig spent time making small talk with successful businessmen—and sizing up potential marks. Eventually, talk turned to the source of the Austrian’s wealth, and reluctantly he would reveal—in the utmost confidence—that he had been using a “money box.” Eventually, he would agree to show the contraption privately. He just happened to be traveling with it. It resembled a steamer trunk, crafted of mahogany but fitted with sophisticated-looking printing machinery within.

Lustig would demonstrate the money box by inserting an authentic hundred-dollar bill, and after a few hours of “chemical processing,” he’d extract two seemingly authentic hundred-dollar bills. He had no trouble passing them aboard the ship. It wasn’t long before his wealthy new friends would inquire as to how they too might be able to come into possession of a money box.

Reluctantly again, the Count would consider parting with it if the price was right, and it wasn’t uncommon for several potential buyers to bid against one another over several days at sea. Lustig was, if nothing else, patient and cautious. He would usually end up parting (at the end of the voyages) with the device for the sum of $10,000—sometimes two and three times that amount. He would pack the machine with several hundred-dollar bills, and after any last-minute suspicions had been allayed through successful test runs, the Count would disappear.

By 1925, however, Victor Lustig had set his sights on grander things. After he arrived in Paris, he read a newspaper story about the rusting Eiffel Tower and the high cost of its maintenance and repairs. Parisians were divided in their opinion of the structure, built in 1889 for the Paris Exposition and already a decade past its projected lifespan. Many felt the unsightly tower should be taken down.

Lustig devised the plan that would make him a legend in the history of con men. He researched the largest metal-scrap dealers in Paris. Then he sent out letters on fake stationery, claiming to be the Deputy Director of the Ministere de Postes et Telegraphes and requesting meetings that, he told them, might prove lucrative. In exchange for such meetings, he demanded absolute discretion.

He took a room at the Hotel de Crillon, one of the city’s most upscale hotels, where he conducted meetings with the scrap dealers, telling them that a decision had been made to take bids for the right to demolish the tower and take possession of 7,000 tons of metal. Lustig rented limousines and gave tours of the tower—all to discern which dealer would make the ideal mark.

Andre Poisson was fairly new to the city, and Lustig quickly decided to focus on him. When Poisson began peppering him with questions, Lustig baited his lure. As a public official, he said, he didn’t earn much money, and finding a buyer for the Eiffel Tower was a very big decision. Poisson bit. He’d been in Paris long enough to know what Lustig was getting at: The bureaucrat must be legitimate; who else would dare seek a bribe? Poisson would pay the phony deputy director $20,000 in cash, plus an additional $50,000 if Lustig could see to it that his was the winning bid.

Lustig secured the $70,000 and in less than an hour, he was on his way back to Austria. He waited for the story to break, with, possibly, a description and sketch of himself, but it never did. Poisson, fearful of the embarrassment such a disclosure would bring upon him, chose not to report Lustig’s scam.

For Lustig, no news was good news: He soon returned to Paris to give the scheme another try. But, ever cautious, the Count came to suspect that one of the new scrap dealers he contacted had notified the police, so he fled to the United States.

In America, Lustig returned to the easy pickings of the money box. He assumed dozens of aliases and endured his share of arrests. In more than 40 cases he beat the rap or escaped from jail while waiting trial (including the same Lake County, Indiana, jail from which John Dillinger had bolted). He swindled a Texas sheriff and a county tax collector out of $123,000 in tax receipts with the money-box gambit, and after the sheriff tracked him down in Chicago, the Count talked his way out of trouble by blaming the sheriff for his inexperience in operating the machine (and returning a large sum of cash, which would come back to haunt the sheriff).

Count Lustig even had the nerve to swindle Al Capone. Photo: Wikipedia

In Chicago, the Count told Al Capone he needed $50,000 to finance a scam and promised to repay the gangster double his money in just two months. Capone was suspicious, but handed his money over. Lustig stuffed it in a safe in his room and returned it two months later; the scam had gone horribly wrong, he said, but he had come to repay the gangster’s loan. Capone, relieved that Lustig’s scam wasn’t a complete disaster and impressed with his “honesty,” handed him $5,000.

Lustig never intended to use the money for anything other than to gain Capone’s trust.

In 1930, Lustig went into partnership with a Nebraska chemist named Tom Shaw, and the two men began a real counterfeiting operation, using plates, paper and ink that emulated the tiny red and green threads in real bills. They set up an elaborate distribution system to push out more than $100,000 per month, using couriers who didn’t even know they were dealing with counterfeit cash. Later that year, as well-circulated bills of every denomination were turning up across the country, the Secret Service arrested the same Texas sheriff Lustig had swindled; they accused him of passing counterfeit bills in New Orleans. The lawman was so enraged that Lustig had passed him bogus money that he gave agents a description of the Count. But it wasn’t enough to keep the sheriff out of prison.

As the months passed and more phony bills—millions of dollars’ worth—kept turning up at banks and racetracks, the Secret Service tried to track Lustig down. They referred to the bills as “Lustig money” and worried that they might disrupt the monetary system. Then Lustig’s girlfriend, Billy May, found out he was having an affair with Tom Shaw’s mistress. In a fit of jealousy, she made an anonymous call to the police and told them where the Count was staying in New York. Federal agents finally found him in the spring of 1935.

As he awaited trial, Lustig playfully bragged that no prison could hold him. On the day before his trial was to begin, dressed in prison-issue dungarees and slippers, he fashioned several bedsheets into a rope and slipped out the window of the Federal Detention Headquarters in lower Manhattan. Pretending to be a window washer, he casually wiped at windows as he shimmied down the building. Dozens of passersby saw him, and they apparently thought nothing of it.

The Count was captured in Pittsburgh a month later and pleaded guilty to the original charges. He was sentenced to 20 years in Alcatraz. On August 31, 1949, the New York Times reported that Emil Lustig, the brother of Victor Lustig, had told a judge in a Camden, New jersey, court that the infamous Count had died at Alcatraz two years before. It was most fitting: Victor Lustig, one of the most outrageously colorful con men in history, was able to pass from this earth without attracting any attention.

Sources

Articles: ” ‘Count’ Seizure Bares Spurious Money Cache,” Washington Post, May 14, 1935. “‘Count Seized Here with Bogus $51,000″ New York Times, May 14, 1935. “Federal Men Arrest Count, Get Fake Cash,” Chicago Tribune, May 14, 1935. “‘The Count’ Escapes Jail on Sheet Rope,” New York Times, September 2, 1935. “The Count Made His Own Money,” by Edward Radin, St. Petersburg Times, February 20, 1949.”How to Sell the Eiffel Tower (Twice)” by Eric J. Pittman, weirdworm.com. “Count Lustig,” American Numismatic Society, Funny Money, http://numismatics.org/Exhibits/FunnyMoney2d.  ”Robert Miller, Swindler, Flees Federal Prison,” Chicago Tribune, September 2, 1935. “Knew 40 Jails, ‘Count’ Again Falls in Toils,” Washington Post, September 26, 1935. “Lustig, ‘Con Man,’ Dead Since 1947,” New York Times, August 31, 1949.

Books: PhD Philip H. Melanson, The Secret Service: The Hidden History of an Enigmantic Agency, Carroll & Graf, 2002.

The Smoothest Con Man That Ever Lived | Past Imperfect