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November 19, 1863:  Abraham Lincoln Earns Another Page in Bartlett’s.

Abraham Lincoln had it easy.  True, he faced armed insurrection and assassination but at least he had the good timing to avoid modern media.  His critics only referred to him as a backwoods baboon.  What amateurs!  Imagine how the opposition would have covered the Gettysburg Address….

Why is Abraham Lincoln mocking our soldiers?  How many men were killed at his defeats at Bull Run, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville?  But did he show up at their funeral?  Could he bother to offer his victims a few perfunctory words?  No.  But now is he trying to claim the credit for the victory at Gettysburg!  Here the men are “brave”, here they are “the honored dead,”  here it is “fitting and proper” to “hallow this ground.”  Just not at the battles you lost, huh Abe?

You say that this slaughter will bring us a “new birth of freedom.”   Yes, if anyone is left to enjoy it.  And how can we really trust the word of a man with no reverence for time-honored, Bible-sanctified property rights?   In a society without slaves, we all are slaves!

And that would have been one of the more respectful attacks, say from The Wall Street Journal.  Here is how Fox or Talk Radio would have reported the story.

Today, in a shameless display of his liberal values, Abraham Lincoln propositioned all men.

 

With the recent tragedy from Ft. Hood, you might have wondered for whom the fort was named.  And if you were familiar with John Bell Hood, you would be completely mystified.  Hood was a Confederate general conspicuous for his recklessness.  Perhaps he so contributed to the Union victory that the U.S. government felt a certain gratitude to his incompetence. 

Hood was a man of formidable courage.  He certainly knew how to lead men–if only for target practice.  Hood himself had lost an arm and a leg on the battlefield, and he expected no less from his men.  If subordinate to a capable commander like Lee or Jackson, Hood performed well enough.  But on his own, he was an obtuse thug applying his sledgehammer mentality to any and every situation.  When informed that Hood would be entrusted with an entire army, Lee ruefully said of the Texan “he is all lion, none of the fox.”

In the summer of 1864, Hood was given command of the Army of Tennessee.  If it is any indication of the tide of the war, the Army of Tennessee was in Georgia.  Its 60,000 men had been defending Atlanta against Sherman, but Hood was going on the attack.  True, the Union force was twice the size, better-armed and entrenched but a Napoleon could have triumphed.  Of course, Hood was no Bonaparte–and judging from his grades at West Point, Hood probably never heard of Napoleon.  The Southern assaults failed; only Hood was surprised at the defeats–and he blamed his men for their cravenness.  

Then the general decided upon an audacious strategy: he would march his army into Tennessee and he presumed that Sherman would have to follow him.  Yes, Georgia and the Carolinas would be left defenseless, but would Sherman risk letting Hood rampage through Tennessee, Kentucky, then through the Cumberland Gap to attack Grant in Virginia?  (Hood never lacked vision, just the ability to accomplish it.)  And Sherman did not feel threaten by Hood’s strategy;  the Union general thought it deluded.  After all, there were 60,000 Union soldiers in Tennessee waiting for Hood, and the autumn and approaching winter would not be charitable to a southern army hungry and conspicuously short of shoes.

So Sherman began his “March to the Sea”.  Unimpeded by organized resistance, the Union army could spread itself and wreak a sixty-mile wide path of destruction through Georgia and South Carolina.  Hood marched 40,000 men into Tennessee; 20,000 came back.  At the battle of Franklin, Hood ordered  repeated frontal assaults against an entrenched and larger Union force.  Some historians believe that Hood’s suicidal tactics were intended to rouse a fighting spirit in his men.  It certainly is a tribute to his men that none of them tried killing him.  Hood lost a fifth of his force that day. 

Hood survived the war and went into the insurance business.  With the same tactical brilliance he demonstrated in war, Hood set up his business in the clement and healthy climate of New Orleans.  One of the routine outbreaks of Yellow Fever not only bankrupted but killed him and much of his family. 

So why would an army fort be named for him?  Well, he was from Texas–and you can’t named everything for Sam Houston.

And let’s not forget the historic significance of this day: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2008/11/18/corporate-christi/

 November 16, 534:  On The Best Seller’s List

What did the Byzantines do for fun? The eunuchs certainly indulged in wishful thinking, and everyone loved debating the punctuation of the Nicene Creed.  But for pure hilarity the medieval Greeks had their own version of MadLibs: the Justinian Code.

The Emperor Justinian was a workaholic and he expected everyone else to be one, too. The legal department was ordered to compile 400 years of imperial edicts and publish them in one handy reference. Tactfully named the Justinian Code, it was a best seller. Every Byzantine bureaucrat bought a copy, if only to learn what laws he would have broken by not buying it.

Now the Byzantine magistrate knew all the legal precedents for judging a merchant who shortweighted anchovies on St. Halitosia’s Day. (That would be the St. Halitosia of Cappodocia, not the one of Epirus.) According to the Code, the correct punishment would be amputation of the right side of the nose. Furthermore, the Code would establish the cost of the surgery. If the amputation was performed by an in-network torturer, the government would cover the cost–after the victim’s initial co-payment. The government would cover only fifty percent of the cost for an out-of-network torturer.

Finally, establishing the definitive standard for government bureaucracy and human resource departments, the Code was in Latin and its audience read Greek.

November 16, 1491:  Enhanced Interrogations

Waterboarding works. Without its stimulating edification, Benito Garcia might never have realized that he was the leader of a Jewish conspiracy to murder Christian children and seize control of Spain. Until June 1490 Senor Garcia may have been under the impression that he was only an itinerant woolcomber. His education began with a robbery by some laudably pious thieves. As they ransacked the wayfarer’s possessions, they found a morsel of bread resembling a sacramental wafer. Had Garcia stolen it from a church in order to perform some evil Jewish ritual on the sanctified carbohydrate? The thieves decided to turn Garcia over to the authorities; and the authorities saw only the heresy rather than the irony. Furthermore, if this was heresy, then it was a matter for the Inquisition.

Initially, Garcia seemed unaware of his obvious guilt. Flogging failed to enlighten him. Then the rack also proved uninstructive. However, the water torture convinced Garcia of his guilt. Of course, Garcia’s crime required accomplices; he was persuaded to come up with four names. These people, once they had their tutorials, also had some remarkable self-realizations. More culprits were named and more crimes were confessed. After an edifying soaking, and in hopes of avoiding another, a Yuce Franco admitted to killing a Christian child near La Guardia, Castille as part of a magic spell that would make Spain’s Christians disappear.

Franco’s sensational admission required everyone to be interrogated again. They were persuaded to confess the murder, but no one could agree on the details. They did not concur on the name or description of the child, the site of the crime, or where the body was placed. Even the Spanish civil authorities were uncooperative; they failed to find any reports of a missing child in or near La Guardia. However, the Inquisition decided that those details were irrelevant. The confessions sufficed and could be taken as gospel.

On this day in 1491 Benito Garcia, Yuce Franco, and three others were burned at the stake. So were three corpses of men who had failed to survive until their execution. The trial and auto da fe occurred in La Guardia, but the accusations were known throughout Spain, spread and incited by the Inquisition. Expounding this “conspiracy” as proof of the Jews’ danger and enmity, Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada demanded the Jews’ expulsion from Spain. Isabella was gullible enough to agree. Ferdinand was craven enough to concur.

So, as Torquemada would have told you, waterboarding works.

November 13, 1002:  A Memorable Way to Celebrate St. Brice’s Day

If you are not fluent in medieval English puns, the name of Aethelred the Unready sounds rather endearing. The Angle-Saxon English king might seem a vacillating, knee-knocking fumbler.   In fact, Aethelred was an assertive, bold catastrophe. Whatever his royal ancestors had built and achieved over 150 years, Aethelred sabotaged and destroyed. Had he anticipated his great-great grandson, Alfred the Great would have had a vasectomy. Alfred had saved a ravaged England from the Vikings, and created the foundation of a prosperous kingdom; Aethelred did exactly the opposite.

Names do have meaning; no one thought of Aethelred for its lilting sound. In Olde Anglische, Aethelred means “well-counselled” , prudent or wise. So, as any medieval Englishman could tell you, “unready” means uncounselled or reckless. Adding the epithet of Unready to Athelred was an editorial pun. (It also demonstrates why English humor is best left to the Irish.)

Aethelred ascended the English throne in 978 at the age of ten, over the body of his half-brother. Aethelred’s mother had arranged that assassination; after all, he was only a stepson. (In posthumous compensation, the late king received a complimentary sainthood; the evil queen mother was also a generous benefactor to the Church, so presumably everyone benefited from the regicide.)

At the time, England was a prosperous country. The same could not be said of Denmark. Its King, Sweyn Forkbeard, had to pay tribute to the Holy Roman Emperor. Sweyn’s father, Harald Bluetooth, was unique among Viking raiders in that he actually lost battles. After some disastrous campaigns in Germany, Bluetooth could save his skin only by converting to Christianity and coughing up annual compensation to the Kaiser. Sweyn may have inherited better teeth but he was stuck with his father’s debts. So to pay the German tribute, Sweyn decided to extort tribute from England.

Beginning in 980 what would become an annual tradition, the Danish fleet would arrive in England, brushing aside the always inadequate defense, and rampaging until a satisfactory ransom was paid. Young Aethelred was no military prodigy; his attempts at battles were invariably defeats. He found it easier to amass tax collectors than an army. Gouging England to pay the Vikings’ tribute did not endear Aethelred to his subjects. So he took the precaution of hiring Danish bodyguards. (Of course, that required even more taxes.)

In 1002, however, Aethelred finally decided to free his kingdom from this Danish subjugation. On November 13th–St. Brice’s Day—he undertook this liberation by ordering the massacre of every Dane in England. The Vikings fleet had already returned home, so the Danes remaining in England were just merchants, artisans and tourists. At least Aethelred found Danes whom he could defeat. Hundreds were slaughtered. This certainly was Aethelred’s greatest victory, but was it really that decisive?

To put it in a modern context, imagine if the United States decided to solve our trade imbalance with China by ordering an attack on every P.F. Chang’s. Would the prospect of hundreds of dead waiters really force China to capitulate? Aethelred’s strategy actually did make an impression on Sweyn Forkbeard. One of the massacred Danes happened to be his sister. Sweyn now was determined to overthrow Aethelred.

It took 11 years but the next king of England was named Knut, a nice Danish name. Knut–alias Canute–was Sweyn’s son. As for Aethelred, he was spending his exile with in-laws in Normandy, a family connection that would assert itself in 1066. Any English resistance was left to his son, Edmund Ironside. Aethelred died of natural causes in 1016; his son managed to regain the English throne for a few months while Knut was busy in Denmark seizing that throne. Of course, upon Knut’s return, so did the English habit of losing. Edmund soon died; and very few think that it was from a natural cause. (One prurient theory postures that he was killed in a privy; apparently, his ironside did not extend all the way down.)

And for the happy ending, Canute proved an excellent king.

November 11:  Happy Veterans’ Day.

I don’t think that a member of my family has seen combat since 1905. (Unless you count family dinners, in which case, I make Audie Murphy seem like a Quaker.) My great-uncle Joe fought in the Russo-Japanese War. Can you guess which side? The wrong one, of course. Aside from being on the losing side, he probably would have found the Mikado less Anti-Semitic than the Tsar.

Both of my parents served in the army during World War II. My mother, as a librarian at Ft. Hood, actually came closer to fighting the Civil War. Being in Texas, Ft. Hood had segregated facilities but that didn’t include the library. No one expected the “coloreds” to use it. One African-American did, however. When he returned some books, my mother apparently said something provocative by Southern standards: “thank you.” An army sergeant wrote her a reprimand: “White ladies do not talk to the coloreds.”

My father’s military career was less harrowing. He had a fine singing voice so he was assigned to the U.S. Army Chorus. Even though we were fighting a world war on two fronts, the military brass still required receptions with entertainment. Once the Army Chorus was sent to the Bahamas to serenade its governor, the Duke of Windsor. That was the closest my father ever came to a Nazi.

And if I am permitted to create my own heroic mythology, I can just imagine one of my ancestors as the morale officer at Masada. Of course, given the family resemblance, he would have been court-martialed for ordering in pizzas.

Be sure to wish to thank a veteran today…even if he is your cantankerous father-in-law.

And here, from last year, is my essay on Veterans’ Day at the Movies:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2008/11/11/veterans-day-at-the-movies/

November 11, 1865:  Henry Wirz Is Hanged

Being born 150 years too soon, Henry Wirz was the only American to be executed for war crimes. The Swiss-born Confederate had no qualifications but a German accent to be the commandant of a prisoner-of-war camp. Under his sadism and neglect, the prison camp at Andersonville, Georgia could have been advertised as Club Dead. Its 45,000 prisoners lacked housing, had only theoretical meals and a trickle of a stream for both drinking and sewage. How could they survive under such conditions? They really were not supposed to; and 13,000 did not. The rest held on until the Union won the war and liberated them.

Among those wretched survivors was my great-grandfather.

George Cohen was not the brightest of my ancestors. Arriving from Danzig, Prussia in 1863, the teenager obligingly signed any paper handed to him by the immigration officials on the wharves of New York. One of those papers was an enlistment in the Union Army: surprise! General Sherman must have felt reassured to have such capable men in his command.

Private Cohen was on picket duty outside of Atlanta when the Confederate forces launched an attack. The Battle of Peach Tree Creek is remembered as an Union victory, but the Confederates had the consolation of capturing Private Cohen. I imagine that he was the only Private Cohen at Andersonville.

Whatever deprivations he suffered there, it did not prevent him from eventually fathering 14 children.

The Berlin Wall fell on this day in 1989, and the Germans have been behaving for the last twenty years.  Don’t get too confident.  We could have made the same optimistic assessment in 1890, 1783, 1668…all the way back to A.D. 9.  But so far….

 Here is the history of the Berlin Wall, written on the anniversary of its construction:

https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2008/08/13/on-this-day-in-1961-the-berlin-wall/

November 5, 1605:  Fawkes News

Today is the anniversary of Guy Fawkes’ attempt to blow up Parliament and the Royal Family.  Fawkes and his fellow conspirators believed that a successful explosion would somehow restore Catholic rule to England. Mary, Queen of Scots, literally could have been a figure head.

The conspirators were a little indiscriminate with their targets. The Royal Family also would have been happy to blow up Parliament. If Mr. Fawkes was an attractive young man, James I wouldn’t have turned down the offer.

(The King’s tendencies had a rather depressing effect on his wife, Anne of Denmark. And for solace, the poor neglected woman turned to Catholicism!)

Of course, the plot’s failure did not make Parliament’s Puritans feel any more ecumenical. Guy Fawkes’ Day was long celebrated as an Anti-Catholic holiday. Bonfires throughout England roasted effigies of the Pope, although a real Jesuit would have been a welcome alternative. Today, Fawkes’ religious affiliation is downplayed. The current euphemism is that he was “Pro-Spanish.”

Now, how should we celebrate Guy Fawkes’ Day? In keeping with the holiday’s origins, you could rent “Going My Way” and make derisive remarks while watching it.

November 4, 1918:  Wilfred Owen Completes His Epic

A Story of Three Poets

Rupert Brooke found life too perfect.  He was acclaimed as a poet, adored for his looks, born into a time of prosperity and peace, an Englishman “under an English heaven.”  Even bisexuality can be a bore when you are object of everyone’s lust.  Lord Byron would have sympathized.   But on his 27th birthday, Brooke received a present that alleviated his malaise:  a World War.  It would have been unpatriotic to write a thank you to Kaiser Wilhelm, but Brooke did thank another War Lord. 

Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour, 
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, 
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, 
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, 
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary, 
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move, 
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary, 
And all the little emptiness of love!

Brooke was not being sardonic.  He welcomed the glorious adventure.  Perhaps his idea of war was a David painting:  noble poses in epaulets.  The only intentional irony was the poem’s title:  “Peace.”  Naval Lieutenant Rupert Brooke would be dead within a year, succumbing to an infection from a mosquito bite.

Siegfried Sassoon may have had an innate appreciation of absurdity.  He was born in England, but his father was an Iraqi Jew and he was named for a German opera.  The Sassoons were rich; they had been court financiers and merchant kings when the Rothschilds were still pawnbrokers.    So Siegfried had the privileges of an English gentleman–without being fully-accepted as one.  He had no interest in the Sassoon business enterprises; he wanted to be a poet and the family allowance kept him from starving.  The War gave the 28- year-old his first real job;  a second-lieutenant’s commission was the least that the army could offer a Cambridge man. 

Lieutenant Sassoon would distinguish himself for heroism; his almost reckless feats earned him a Military Cross and the nickname of Mad Jack.  Yet, ever the outsider, in 1917 Sassoon breached the officer club decorum by writing public protests against the horrors and futility of the war.  He might have been court-martialed but the Army did not want to give him any further publicity; it simply announced that Sassoon had a nervous breakdown and confined him to a military hospital in a conveniently isolated part of Scotland.  To earn his release and return to active duty, Sassoon agreed to refrain from further political protests.  The army, however, did not have the foresight to censor his poetry.

Does it matter?-losing your legs?

For people will always be kind,

And you need not show that you mind

When others come in after hunting

To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter?-losing you sight?

There’s such splendid work for the blind;

And people will always be kind,

As you sit on the terrace remembering

And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter-those dreams in the pit?

You can drink and forget and be glad,

And people won’t say that you’re mad;

For they know that you’ve fought for your country,

And no one will worry a bit.

Whether it was luck, irony or both, Siegfried Sassoon survived the Great War and died an octogenarian in 1967.

Wilfred Owen was not rich or celebrated.  He did not even go to Cambridge or Oxford.  The University of Reading?  Now really!   In fact, he would not have been an officer but for the fact that so many of the proper types were already dead by 1916.  But the War made him an officer and a poet.  “My subject is War, and the pity of War.  The poetry is in the pity.”

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

   “Anthem for Doomed Youth”

On November 4, 1918 Lieutenant Wilfred Owen, recipient of the Military Cross, was killed in action.  He was 25.   World War I ended a week later.

November 2, 1917:  If Only Arthur Balfour Had Hired a Realtor

For a politician, Arthur Balfour was surprisingly sincere. Whether he had amusing memories of Benjamin Disraeli or had enjoyed a luxurious weekend at the Rothschilds, he really thought that the Jewish people were entitled to a homeland. On this day in 1917, as the Foreign Secretary of Britain, Balfour issued a declaration expressing the government’s official sympathy with the idea of a Jewish haven in Palestine. The declaration was sent as a letter to Lord Rothschild who, at least in Balfour’s circle, seemed the most prominent Jew in the world.  (Albert Einstein, Leon Trotsky and Louis B. Mayer may have felt slighted.)

Of course, Britain could afford to be so generous. The land was still under Turkish control. Furthermore, drained by the carnage of the ongoing Great War, Britain would have promised anything to anyone for any support. It would have offered Damascus to the Quakers if that would have added an extra brigade on the Western Front.

(The Turks failed to make a counter offer to an Austrian Rothschild.)

But the British Home Office might have  recommended a more practical site for a Jewish homeland: Ireland. The Jews could have served as a buffer between the Catholics and the Protestants. Connacht could have been the land of the Cohens. There was the risk that the Jews would be attacked by both sides, but the Irish were still more charming than Cossacks.

Indeed, who is to say that the Jews wouldn’t have quickly ingratiated themselves? They are nearly as loquacious as the Irish and without imperiling the liquor supply. Even more remarkable, they are the only people who read James Joyce–or at least try to.

Brendan Behan said, “Most people have nationalities. The Jews and the Irish have psychoses.” If only Behan had said it to Arthur Balfour….