Facts-Only History

March 24, 2017June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Good morning, class. Today begins the roughly three days we have allotted by our state-mandated curriculum to cover the causes, major events, and impact of the American Civil War.

Unlike past units in which I’ve sometimes been guilty of inflicting my personal opinions and interpretations on your instead of just teaching you history, I’ll be making every effort to present the facts and only the facts. Evaluation, analysis, synthesis, or conclusions are entirely up to you. We’ve practiced these skills through structured activities, and you already, no doubt, supplement my unwittingly biased and inadequate methods via long, meaningful discussions with your parents and/or clergy, as well as extensive research of your own. Hopefully that will mitigate some of the ongoing damage I’ve done as a bumbling, leftist, possibly atheistic public school educator out to destroy American values.

It’s not my job to teach you what to think, after all – just to present everything that’s ever happened anywhere in or to our great nation in more or less chronological order without prioritization or unnecessary commentary.

The 1850s: Countdown to Civil War

In 1850, the U.S. census showed a population of 23,191,876.

In 1840 – 17,063,353.

In 1830 – 12,866,020.

In 1820 – 9,638,453.

In 1810 – 7,239,881.

Rather than me inflict my personal interpretations on which elements of this growth were significant, I refer you to the U.S. Census Bureau for more details and to several biased-but-comprehensive overviews of U.S. History which you may read in order to make up your own mind.

On January 29, 1850, Henry Clay proposed the Compromise of 1850 to Congress. It was a collection of five bills he said would help prevent further conflict between the North and the South. Texas gave up its claims to New Mexico and other areas north of the Missouri Compromise line and the U.S. took over their remaining debts. California was admitted to the Union as a free state. Utah and New Mexico would enter the U.S. under the principal of ‘popular sovereignty’ – meaning the people in each would vote for whether or not to have slavery. The slave trade, but not slavery itself, was banned in the District of Columbia. A much tougher Fugitive Slave Act was enacted.

The North is generally perceived to have responded badly to the Fugitive Slave Act, which the South generally favored. I’ll refrain from elaborating further for fear I’d be injecting my own interpretations and biases into the matter. It’s not my job to tell you what to think, just to teach you history!

President Zachary Taylor died unexpectedly in July of 1850 of what seemed to be a stomach-related illness. Some suggested he may have been assassinated by pro-slavery southerners, and various theories have persisted into modern times. In 1991, Taylor’s body was exhumed and tests were done in an effort to determine whether or not he had, in fact, been poisoned. The science found no evidence of malicious behavior, but some question the results even today.

In an effort to avoid telling you what to believe, I’ll avoid further commentary, possibly having already said too much in favor of something as unsettled as medical science and wishing to give fair and equal treatment to every possible interpretation or theory related to this issue. You are encouraged to devote months of your life to researching the chemistry involved, the nature of the various organizations who’ve published opinions, and the history of Presidential assassination on your own in order to develop your own enlightened viewpoints free from my corrupting influence.

On July 10, 1850, Millard Fillmore was sworn into office as the 13th President of the United States. Neither expansionists nor slave-holders were generally happy with his publicly stated policies regarding slavery, although it would be wrong of me to try to speak for them or evaluate their reasoning.

On September 9, 1850, the Compromise of 1850 is passed – see previous elaboration, in which I’ve tried to be fair to all sides. I hope, by mentioning it again here I’m not unjustly suggesting it was more or less important than any other event, or that certain parts of it were good or bad or had any particular impact. Those sorts of discussions are best left to the family hearth.

On September 11, P.T. Barnum introduced Jenny Lind to American audiences. Often called the “Swedish Nightingale,” Lind was a soprano who performed in Sweden and across Europe before her wildly popular concert tour of America. She donated many of her earnings to charities, especially the endowment of free schools in Sweden. Some people think that sort of philanthropy is noble; others find it less so. Best we not consider such issues here. Or the role of the arts in influencing culture or character.

Too subjective.

While it is possible that Miss Lind’s singing success was unrelated to the outbreak of the Civil War nearly a decade later, it’s not my place to decide what events are or are not important; I’m paid to merely present the facts.

Then again, we’d better pick up the pace…

In May of 1851, the U.S. participated in the opening ceremony of the first World’s Fair in Hyde Park, London.

On August 22, 1851, a yacht named “America” won the first America’s Cup yach race, as things named “America” always should. This may have had an impact on different segments of the nation, or it may not have.

It would require an extensive study of available primary sources presenting various points of view in order to give a balanced interpretation regarding such an impact, or lack thereof. By my estimates that would require at least two weeks of class time, which the state-mandated curriculum does not allow. I will therefore abstain from projecting potentially slanted summaries of the nation’s reaction or speculating as to the impact or lack thereof this event may have had on the subsequent outbreak of war.

I fear we’re running short on time, so I’m going to condense a bit and hope you’re still getting enough to understand what caused the American Civil War.

November 1851 – Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is published in the United States, along with Nathanial Hawthorne’s House of Seven Gables. The painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” is completed by German-American artist Emmanuel Leutze. These books and this painting are generally well-known, but every real American is entitled to their own opinion of their quality, their enjoyability, and what – if anything – each of them means or how they may or may not relate to the schisms leading to war.

December 1851 – The first Y.M.C.A. opens in Boston, Massachusetts. This arguably reflected changing values and social strategies in northern cities – if we were going to talk about values, I mean. Which we won’t. Because… school. So, um… the Village People recorded “Y.M.C.A.” in 1978 and it became a huge disco hit. If you’ve ever been to a live sporting event, you’ve heard this song and watched people do weird things with their arms which they seem to think are related to the song.

March 1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best-known book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is published. Stowe stated that she wrote this work of anti-slavery in response to the Fugitive Slave Act. It sold 300,000 copies in its first years of publication and is generally reputed to have had a huge impact in both North and South.

Many people think this book played a major role in the outbreak of war several years later. There’s also a story about Lincoln meeting Stowe and some things he may or may not have said. You should research all available information regarding this book and its impact in order to decide for yourself what role it may or may not have played and whether or not it’s a “good” book. Or ask your clergyman. Or clergyperson. Not that I’m suggesting there’s a god. Or that there’s not. I mean–

*sigh*

June 1852 – Henry Clay died. This was probably important in how Congress managed their affairs, but I don’t want to say for sure.

October 1852 – Daniel Webster died. This was also probably important, but again… trying to be neutral here.

November 1852 – Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, was elected President. Many things happened during his administration which could be interpreted a variety of ways…

1853 – America and Mexico signed the Gadsden Treaty. Vice President William King died. Arctic explorer Elisha Kane ventures farther north than any man has before.

1854 – Franklin Pierce was re-elected. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed and great conflict occurs, probably as a result, for reasons related to politics and slavery, but as a public school educator I don’t like to get involved in politics or controversial social issues, so… ask your parents, I guess.

1855 – William Lloyd Garrison published “Disunion!” in The Liberator and Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass. There are people who find both of these things signficant in different ways, so you might look into that. It’s complicated.

1856 – Henry Bessemer invented a process for mass production of steel. John Brown led raids against pro-slavery families in Kansas and five men were beheaded. He became a controversial figure about whom I have absolutely no insight or opinion because – controversy! (I could point you to some articles but we’re really running out of time here, so…)

1856 – James Buchanan was elected President.

1857 – The Supreme Court issued their decision in Dred –

Crap. We’ve got five minutes and we haven’t talked about Harper’s Ferry or the Election of 1860 or Abraham Lincoln. Then again, if we talk more about Lincoln than we have Pierce or Buchanan, that’s suggesting he was more important than they were, which is a political judgment as well as a value judgment. It favors one party’s ideology over the other, and…

I must apologize, class. Instead of just teaching you the facts, I seem to still be picking and choosing which parts of history to cover. I’ve injected way too many of my own ideas about which things matter and what they mean. I just couldn’t help myself when Uncle Tom’s Cabin came up; it was just so important—

Er… in my opinion. For reasons I should keep to myself, because others disagree.

Dammit.

I’ll try to do better tomorrow when we cover the Civil War in a day. I won’t leave anything out or inject my own biases about which battles, people, or ideas were right or wrong or which mattered more than others, or whether ending slavery was a good idea or the war was unpleasant. I’ll just teach you some history. That is, after all, my job – right?

RELATED POST: Fact-Free History

Fact-Free History

March 22, 2017June 27, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

There’s nothing more terrifying than finding out your district administrators have just returned from a conference somewhere, and they’re excited about something. You know because they suddenly smile too much, and now they want to come talk to your department or hold a special faculty meeting. It’s enough to ruin your entire 17-minute lunch period.

It’s not because their conferences are always in Vegas or Honolulu or Mount Olympus or some such thing, while teacher workshops are in Moore, or at the Pawhuska Technology and Training Center. No, what’s scary is that they come back all excited about some revolutionary new paradigm-shattering approach to teaching – usually a combination of common sense stuff you’ve been doing for years and a few colorful twists slathered in cutesy rhetoric. They’re sure you’ve never heard of it, and that you’ll be so excited for them to share it with you!

They’d never send you to these sorts of conferences, of course – they’re so far away and expensive, after all. But they think they’ve come upon the Pedagogical Holy Grail – the one which will replace last year’s Silver Classroom Bullet, which superseded the rather durable Brass Teaching Ring, that of course overthrew the Era of Learning Unobtanium (ELU).

So you wait.

The details vary from revolution to revolution, but the need to unendingly build on the ruins of whatever was going to save us all last year remains sadly the same. It drives the world of educational trainery like dilithium crystals power the Enterprise, or infantile narcissism fuels the President. The same few themes do come back around eventually, however, like the Merry-Go-Round of the Damned, and you learn to look for them. Dread them. Fight them. And yet, the very predictability in the process forms a dysfunctional sort of affection for them after a while.

My personal favorite is the Periodic Awakening of Fact-Free History.

It’s a Revelation built on a simple truth – one recently discovered by your building principal or curriculum manager or whoever sits before you, eating your bagels this particular Friday morning. “When we were in school,” they always begin, “History was all about memorizing facts – names, dates, places. So many facts.”

Their distress is evident. Damn those facts! And the memorizing of them? Barbaric! Cruel, even. We all pause and reflect on this travesty of our dark past.

“But history isn’t just names, dates, and places! It’s about… ideas! Causes and effects! Opinions and documents and different ways to interpret them! We shouldn’t be spending so much time on stuff kids could just look up on their phones!”

This point always requires the sharer to hold up their own phone momentarily, as if perhaps the rest of us were unfamiliar with this radical new device. The visual distraction helps blur their subconscious leap from “I hated my history teacher in high school” to “you all teach boring, stupid stuff and you’re ruining the future!”

You know where it’s going from there. It’s time to do more PBL (Project Based Learning). More STEALHAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts Literacy History Athletics Math). More opinions and less reality – because if we teach the way we were taught in the past we’ll create the future we dreaded in our former present! We’re preparing kids for jobs that don’t exist yet, so we need to light more fires and fill fewer buckets if we’re going to fail forward…

It’s a frightening proposition, this fact-free history – if for no other reason than how difficult it would be to insist that such a thing doesn’t actually prepare students to function in modern society. It might, actually – but that’s not a good thing.

It has traction because – like most powerful deceptions – it’s mixed with valuable truths, even if they’ve been shaken to the bottom during delivery… Cracker Jack prizes smudged by poison peanuts. We don’t need to memorize names and dates and stats in the manner of centuries gone by in order to be considered fairly enlightened; Google or some variation thereof seems to be here to stay. If Sherlock Holmes is correct and our minds hold a finite amount of information, like that flash drive stamped “Pawhuska TTC” you got for free at your last workshop, it’s probably not a good use of mental space to drill ourselves on who led Confederate forces at Chancellorsville, or chronologically list every Vice President and their state of origin.

On the other hand, it’s a shame to think any civilized young person would be set loose on the world without a pretty good idea of what the Civil War was, roughly when it occurred, and some of the major changes it brought about. It’s unforgiveable if we don’t at least try to ensure that same youth understands the three branches of government and has a general grasp of how each is supposed to work.

You know – facts.

As to the sacred teachings of whoever keynoted the Honolulu Retreat, it’s nearly impossible to make a passionate case for something social studies-ish without drawing on those anathematic details – names, dates, etc. “To what extent was slavery the cause of the Civil War?” is certainly a valid debate to have, and opens itself to a wide variety of approaches and responses. An effective argument in any direction, however, inevitably requires substantial background knowledge at one’s proverbial fingertips – a comfortable familiarity with the issue of slavery over the three centuries prior, the dozen or so precursors to the war occurring in the 1850s, the extant documents from various players indicating their values and viewpoints, etc.

Yes, those things can be “looked up.” No, one needn’t have memorized the details of the Kansas-Nebraska Act or know the precise origins of the “lost cause” mythology in the postbellum South. But neither can you start from scratch and throw something together after a few internet searches – at least not anything viable. Those names, dates, and stats so reviled in our collective memory are the grammar of history, the multiplication tables (or maybe even the numerals) of critiquing culture. They’re not the goal – they never have been. But they’re essential for reaching most worthy goals. They’re often precursors to even defining them.

And it’s even more essential that we emphasize data and details when addressing contemporary issues. I’m a believer in everyone being entitled to their own opinion, but I’d rather not cement my students’ ignorance by encouraging them to wax emphatic on topics about which they know little.

“How can the size and expense of the federal government be reduced without compromising our national security?”

“Should parents have more choice in where their children go to school?”

“Did the Russians interfere in our elections on behalf of the Trump campaign? Did Obama ‘tapp’ Trump’s tower?”

“Should businesses be allowed to refuse service to someone if they don’t approve of their lifestyle, their religion, their race, or their politics?”

If you’re sitting around having beer and burgers with friends, you can spout any opinion on any topic you wish – especially if you bought the beer. Anyone who knows me primarily through social media would never believe how receptive and balanced I can be when confronted with the most bizarre opinions or interpretations of current events from my students.

But if you’re in an academic setting, on academic time, pursuing academic goals, we should INSIST on statistics, data, experts, and records. We should at least TRY to be precise about names, dates, and other onerous “facts” before spewing our precious individuality about pretty much anything.

It won’t be perfect. My students are 15, and we’re rather limited as to time and resources. We’re not working on our doctoral theses this semester and none of them are writing books on trends in jurisprudence at the moment.

But we can at least model the process – we can acknowledge the ideal pursuit of better-expanded versions of our efforts and discuss how they might differ.

I’m not against “individual learning journeys,” and I’m certainly not suggesting we go back to the Trivial Pursuit version of American History, Drill-and-Kill Edition. My little darlings are all individuals with their own experiences, opinions, emotions, and ideals. Kumbaya!

It’s just that most of the stuff worth exploring in history happened to people with names, on dates, in places. It often happened in order. If we’re going to understand it – heck, if we’re going to learn from it, or improve it – we’ll need those pesky facts.

NEXT TIME: Facts-Only History

RELATED POST: Hole In The Wall Education

Nuptial Benedictions (The Divorce Industry in Oklahoma Territory)

March 9, 2017June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

Between the first “land run” opening up the “Unassigned Lands” of Indian Territory in 1889 and statehood in 1907, Oklahoma filled up rapidly.

There were a variety of reasons, of course. The “frontier” was rapidly closing and Oklahoma Territory was the last hope of true homesteading on the continent. Early reports suggested fertile soil and cooperative climate – descriptions which would later be recalled in wry reflection by those who’d embraced them. Then there was the sheer newness and unpredictability of it all – in a nation built on restlessness and possibilities, that alone was sometimes enough.

Oh – and of course, it was a great place to get a divorce.

Oklahoma is trying hard to outbid all of its neighbors in the matter of granting easy and quick divorce. An attorney at Kingfisher, in that Territory, has issued a circular which points out that the statutes of Oklahoma specify no fewer than “ten separate and distinct causes, for any one or more of which a divorce may be obtained,” including that all-embracing term, “gross neglect of duty”…
{T}he statute required only three months’ residence in the Territory; and finally, that “persons coming to Oklahoma will find the city of Kingfisher, with its 4,000 inhabitants and all modern improvements, a very pleasant place to live in.” Apparently Indiana, Chicago, and South Dakota are all to be outdone in the divorce line by Oklahoma.
–The Nation, July 13, 1893

Divorces weren’t easy to come by in much of the country – especially older states like New York, which were so conservative and obsessed with family values compared to renegades like Oklahoma. In some cases it literally took an act of the state congress; in most it required proving blatant infidelity or substantial abuse. You could move to a state with less-restrictive divorce laws, but establishing residency in the eyes of the law often took a year or more, and the variety of local obstacles could prove dizzying.

Even then, the spouse from whom one sought separation was often required to be physically present in order to secure legal disentanglement – something they might not be willing to do if they were for some reason unhappy with you… say, for instance, if you were in the middle of a divorce.

But not in Oklahoma Territory. They wanted fresh blood and they weren’t overly particular how they secured it. Besides, Oklahoma was all about new beginnings during this period – fresh starts, and unlimited optimism. Ironic, right?

We weren’t alone in promoting the divorce business. South Dakota for a time set the standard for shameless pandering to the corrupted and unfaithful. We taught them a thing or two, however about breaking up not being at all hard to do.

{O}ur divorce laws are both lax and conflicting. A man may be divorced in one State, yet still be married in another; hence in one State he may marry again, while in another he becomes a bigamist if he does. The unsavory reputation which South Dakota has lately enjoyed is but another reminder of the necessity for uniform divorce legislation throughout the country.
In the inducements, however, by which it seeks to obtain its share of this infamous divorce trade the Territory of Oklahoma goes beyond South Dakota…

Our priorities have changed, but our compulsive, legislative need to be the worst in every preventable category has remained remarkably consistent over a century later.

The statutes of Oklahoma Territory require ninety days’ previous residence before commencement of action, as in South Dakota before the change of law.

OK, we didn’t so much beat them on the residency thing so much as they retreated slightly. Wimps.

But we completely tromped the Dakotas when it came to notifying your soon-to-be-ex of your intended proceedings:

Service upon a non-resident defendant may be made personally or by publication. There is no statute requiring corroborative proof as in South Dakota.
—The Outlook, February 17, 1894

In other words, for an Oklahoma divorce you didn’t have to prove you’d informed your partner of your efforts to quit them, or go far in giving them a chance to respond or to appear. All you had to do was place notice in a paper they might theoretically read. If they don’t respond, the courts would assume they were fine with it.

Periodicals of the 1880s and 1890s are full of editorials and investigations into the increasing popularity of divorce across the country. The North American Review, one of the longest-running and most literary periodicals in all of American publishing, asked five well-respected authors – all of them female – the rather loaded question, “Is the woman more to blame for unhappiness in marriage?”

Spoiler Alert: Yeah, pretty much.

The most progressive of the bunch, author and journalist Rebecca Harding Davis, was the least comfortable pinning every sin of Adam on Eve. She was also not convinced the root problem was a new one:

I am not at all sure, either, that there are more unhappy marriages than there were fifty years ago. There are more divorces, and divorce-bills drag the secret unhappiness to light. I remember, in the Virginia town in which I passed my childhood, there was one divorcée, and so rare was the legal severance of marriage in those days, and so abhorrent to public feeling, that the poor young woman was regarded with horror as though she had been a leper.
But were there no wretched marriages among the good people who held her at arm’s length? no drunken, brutal husbands? no selfish, nagging wives? Nowadays the lax divorce laws bring out all these secret skeletons to dance in the streets.

But as to the lax divorce laws of some of the newer states (and territories)?

In our Western States, the consciousness that divorce is easily possible, no doubt, often makes wives restless and insurgent under petty annoyances. When that is the case, it is certainly the woman who is in fault.

“Restless and insurgent” actually rather nicely describes some of the most interesting and capable women in my world. “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

Booyah, baby.

In the South, where divorce is still looked upon as a disgrace, and where religious feeling is more stringent than in any other part of the country, the old-fashioned Domestic woman is still to be found. She is gentle; she has infinite tact; she hates a fuss; she knows the art of managing men. I think that she is not often to blame if her home is unhappy.
In some of the New-England States, where the women outnumber the men six to one, it is the hard, lean-natured man who has the game in his own hands…
—“Are Women To Blame?”, North American Literary Review, May 1889.

You get the idea.

Disputes over marital termination, not surprisingly, often ended up in court. One case, involving Mr. & Mrs. Frank Magowan (spelled ‘MacGowan’ below) became rather well-known to those looking to the judicial branch for moral rebalancing:

We hope that the Supreme Court of the United States, when the question comes before it for decision, may hold that divorces obtained in ‘foreign’ States are not valid. The matter grows out of the New York decision that is known as the MacGowan case. In that case it was held that neither the wife nor the husband can acquire residence in another State for the purpose of obtaining a divorce. If that decision is sustained it will mean quite a revolution in divorce methods. We hope it is good law, for it is certainly good morals…

It’s nice to know that not so very long ago, at least some states valued the sacredness of holding captive someone you used to love but who now despises you. On such foundations are strong societies built.

During the past few years the pilgrimages of those seeking divorces to the Dakotas, to Oklahoma, and other sparsely settled States and Territories where laws are lax and inducements are actually held out to those desiring legal separation, have amounted to a public scandal which has spread even beyond this country.
It has seemed hopeless to appeal to the pride of people like those in Oklahoma. We hope that an appeal to the Supreme Court will end the matter…

“It has seemed hopeless to appeal to the pride of people like those in Oklahoma”? That’s rather insulting, don’t you think? Rude, even. Makes me wish I were married to the author just so I could move here and divorce their ugly behind.

The husbands who have raised a fund to prosecute this matter may simply be acting from motives of revenge, but their contributions may result in great public good as well as in the discomfiture of wives who have journeyed to Dakota in order to contract another marriage…
—“Employment of Women,” The Literary Digest, February 27, 1897

Wow.

Imagine a time and place in which men – purely out of hostility towards women they believe have overstepped their bounds, or forgotten their station – promote legislation cynically crafted to teach those wenches a lesson and keep them in their place. Now imagine that such legislation succeeds because even those without such blatantly ugly motives believe a little heel-to-neck is probably good for the unclean – that it keeps them in line.

Oklahoma was for a brief, shining moment on the OTHER side of that dynamic. It was on the “everyone deserves an opportunity to rise above their past” side of things.

I know, right?! History is crazy.

Even the French were appalled – and you know how hard it is to offend the French.

“This facility of varying the colors of the conjugal knots singularly increases the vogue of a holy state that may be embraced, quitted, and resumed so easily at the hands of the pastor; so it is not the coming nuptial benediction that disturbs those spouses that are desirous of separating; it is—will it be believed?—the rigor of the laws of some States.

There’s such a fine line between colorful rhetoric and just being obnoxious about it. (And yes, I see the irony.)

There are States, like New York, where divorce is very hard to obtain, and whose residents are forced to resort to the judges of other States, where marriage is a plaything that is broken with more or less ease.
The inhabitants of New York have only to cross the Hudson. The State of New Jersey, which borders the other side of the river, is empowered to untie knots, but only in certain cases; there are scruples; serious grounds are necessary.

Yeah, New Jersey and their stern scruples. Some things never change.

People who can not produce these must take the trouble to go a great deal farther, to North or South Dakota, or to the Territory of Oklahoma, where chains are broken as by enchantment!

That should go on our license plates: “Oklahoma – Where Chains Are Broken As By Enchantment!”

If they ask your reasons, they never commit the indiscretion of finding them insufficient. One sole condition is required—residence for six months in the two first-named States, and for three months in Oklahoma, but—you are not obliged to really live there.

What? Another wrinkle!

Most honorable witnesses gain a livelihood in no other way than by affirming on oath that you have resided there from the day of the introduction of your application up to the day when you appear before the judge. There are even ways of avoiding this latter formality.”
—“A French View of Marriage And Divorce In The United States,” The Literary Digest, August 7, 1897

We should never have bailed them out of every war for the entire 20th century.

My absolute favorite commentary on Oklahoma as divorce factory comes in the form of a play. “While You Wait,” by Charles Newton Hood, was published in June of 1900 in a magazine called The Smart Set. The play, which is fairly brief and absolutely worth reading in full, consists entirely of dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. Van Cleef – a well-to-do couple who’ve managed to live together quite civilly for several years despite realizing very shortly into their marriage that there’s no actual love between them.

Mrs. Van Cleef, however, has a solution…

Mrs. Van Cleef—Well, I have been looking into the matter a little and I think that it could all be arranged very nicely and easily, and everything would be lovely. The circular says—
Mr. Van Cleef—The circular?
Mrs. Van Cleef—Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you. I wrote to some lawyers in Dakota and Oklahoma, who call themselves “Divorce Specialists,” and advertise “Divorces While You Wait;” and really, the way they put it, all you have to do to get a divorce is just to go out there and spend a few months enjoying the lovely climate and all that, and come back divorced…

Mr. Van Cleef interrupts to make sure she’s been discreet with these inquiries, then she continues:

Mrs. Van Cleef—Now, in this divorce business, there seems to be a great rivalry between South Dakota and Oklahoma, but the Oklahoma firm’s circular is a great deal the more enticing. Listen. It says (she reads from a circular which she takes from her pocket): “Our newer States, in compiling their laws, have seen fit to show more liberality in the matter of obtaining divorces than may be found among the older States, whose laws on this subject were enacted at a time when ideas were less in accord with the advanced liberal thought of the present.
”As the Mohammedan devotee confidingly turns his eyes toward the tomb of his beloved leader, so has Dakota been regarded as the Mecca of hope to weary companions in matrimony.”
Isn’t that nice? We’ll be the weary companions…

This amuses me on so many levels.

Mrs. Van Cleef goes on to explain that Oklahoma has clearly been giving Dakota a run for its divorce earnings.

It says we have to live there only ninety days before we can get a divorce and be as free as the glorious air of Oklahoma. All we have to swear to is that we are uncongenial and incompatible, and you swear that you are a poor, neglected husband, and I’ll swear that I am a poor, neglected wife, and we’ll go out there for a little vacation, and you can hunt and explore and neglect me and be uncongenial and incompatible, and I’ll climb mountains and fish and be incompatible and uncongenial and neglect you, and we’ll have just a lovely time, and there won’t be any scandal, and when we come back we’ll just be good friends…

They go on to ponder what a coup the railroads might manage if they were to arrange package deals for husbands and wives traveling together to Oklahoma, then returning separately—or with different companions.

Maybe it’s my love of dark humor, but I find the entire thing hilarious over a century later, despite the happy ending.

As Oklahoma continues to seek new ways to make divorce more expensive, more embarrassing, or simply more difficult, it’s a shame we can’t look to our past – our roots – and remain a bit more faithful to the policies which got us where we are today. To dance with the one what brung us, as it were.

Instead, we’re faithlessly abandoning them for new priorities, and ideologies. We’re cutting loose our old, somewhat embarrassing ways for a hotter, younger legislative philosophy. It’s like we’d rather not even talk about our collective past at all, if we can avoid it.

Shame, shame, shame. Where’s the loyalty?

RELATED POST: Boomers & Sooners, Part One

RELATED POST: A Chance In Oklahoma (w/ Commentary)

Humble Magniloquence (Purdy Words in Primary Sources)

March 3, 2017June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

There are folks you expect to write all fancy. Poets, for example. Certain flavors of novelists. Artsy musician types. George Will.

Education bloggers, not so much.

That’s just as well. Rhetorical flourish is a tricky business. Like cilantro, it can add unexpectedly welcome flavor and complexity, or make an entire passage taste like old soap. And language evolves in such unpredictable fashion that you can never be sure how that bit of clever wordplay might read a generation or two later.

Some historical figures clearly labored over word choice with sufficient fervor that even their personal letters play like Dvorak’s lost drinking songs. Consider Thomas Jefferson in a letter to fellow Virginian and Founding Father-type Edmund Pendleton, dated August 26, 1776:

You seem to have misapprehended my proposition for the choice of a Senate. I had two things in view: to get the wisest men chosen, and to make them perfectly independent when chosen. I have ever observed that a choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished for its wisdom.

They’ve apparently been corresponding about politics – no surprise there, given the parties and the date. Jefferson proffers a sophisticated balance of Enlightened precision and dry wit. His understatement is both amusing and a tad vain.

Then again, he was Thomas Jefferson – so maybe we can let him slide on the latter.

This first secretion from them is usually crude and heterogeneous. But give to those so chosen by the people a second choice themselves, and they generally will chuse wise men.

He’s proposing what was essentially an electoral college for selecting Senators. That’s not how we ended up doing it, although until the 17th Amendment Senators were chosen by their States rather than the people directly, providing a comparable filter. What’s golden here, though, is the straight-faced use of slug imagery in reference to the common man and democracy.

Jefferson was an idealist – he genuinely believed a nation of ever-revolutionary small farmers was as close to heaven on earth as mankind could ever approach. And he does get there – “they generally will chuse wise men.” It’s just that the process, in his mind, must be carefully designed to accommodate those initial “crude secretions.”

Is it sad that I’m eternally entertained by phrases like that? On second thought, don’t answer that.

Later in the same letter, Jefferson considers the issue who is or is not qualified to vote or hold office.

You have lived longer than I have and perhaps may have formed a different judgment on better grounds; but my observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth.

Again with the understatement, this time combined with a purely rhetorical deference to his cohort.

In general I believe the decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest and more disinterested than those of wealthy men: and I can never doubt an attachment to his country in any man who has his family and peculium in it.

‘Peculium’ here means ‘stuff’. It’s one of those vocabulary words that gives my kids fits. It’s rare enough that it’s not always in student dictionaries and it gives them nothing to work with in terms of root words or prefixes or whatnot. It does, however, come up again in evolved form in President Jackson’s speech to Congress on Indian Removal in 1830:

The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves. The pecuniary advantages which it promises to the Government are the least of its recommendations…

It’s the same Latin root as ‘peculiar’ – uncommon, or distinctive. Go back far enough and it suggests property belonging or assigned to a specific person. Suddenly what seem like unrelated definitions start to make sense. ‘Peculium’ = someone’s stuff. ‘Pecuniary’ = related to wealth. ‘Peculiar’ = weird. All from ‘distinctive,’ but said fancy.

Which is, if you think about it, rather fitting, given the definitions.

Sometimes what grabs your attention is simply the way language changes over time:

The fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes, which you say you have heard insisted on by some, I assure you was never mine. It is only the sanguinary hue of our penal laws which I meant to object to. Punishments I know are necessary, and I would provide them, strict and inflexible, but proportioned to the crime.

Good Lord, Tom – gasconade, much?

Still, how can you not love “sanguinary hue”? So highbrow, yet so graphic. My students, of course, are completely derailed by ‘penal laws’ and rarely manage to return to the richness of the phrase preceding it. Because, you know, they’re 14. Literally.

But that’s Jefferson – a known intellectual and proud froo-froo. He was, after all, the guy to whom a bunch of other smart people turned when it was time to boldly-but-nobly declare our breakup with England. “We hold these truths to be self-evident” and all that.

I’ve been compiling primary sources on David L. Payne and the “boomer” movement lately – an important part of Oklahoma and American history, to be sure, but not a group you might assume prompted much purdy talkifying. And yet, a century after the lofty rhetoric of the Founders and their ilk, we find the most interesting phraseology in humble local newspapers when he’s discussed.

From The Sedalia Weekly Bazoo, Sedalia, MO (August 24, 1880):

Capt. L. D. Payne, arrested for an alleged violation of the federal laws governing intercourse with the Indian territory west of Arkansas…

Yeah, sometimes it’s not the fancy talk so much as it is the repeated use of words like “intercourse.” Again, 14.

…arrived Thursday at Fort Smith in custody of the United Marshal and will be tried before Judge Parker, of the western district court of Arkansas, whose jurisdiction covers Oklahoma…
The question to be decided in it is whether or not for the present white settlers shall be barred from that territory, which includes some of the most fertile land in the world, and that land be used only by nomadic tribes who will not cultivate and develop its resource; whether it shall be a farm or a hunting-ground; an abode of civilization or savagery; a garden or a wild.

My my! Of course, major media back then tended to more openly editorial. They weren’t all fair and balanced like we’ve come to expect today.

From The Weekly Kansas Chief, Troy, KS (May 05, 1881):

A private dispatch was received by Oklahoma Payne in this city yesterday, announcing an unfavorable result of his trial before the United States court at Fort Smith. The faces of a number of men who had gathered to his headquarters in response to a call for a meeting to-day visibly lengthened…
{Payne} made a full statement of his arrest and trial and the formal announcement of the result, but urged the settlers to stand by their organization until victory should crown their efforts…

That bit of divine flourish may have reflected Payne’s speech rather than the reporter’s biases, but still…

And I like the “visibly lengthened” faces by way of description. It reminds me of the way sportscasters come up with hundreds of ways to say “ran,” “scored,” “failed,” or “wow.”

There were eighty-seven present at the meeting… Resolutions were reported from a committee and adopted urging Payne to renew his efforts at affecting a lodgment in territory; criticising the place of Payne’s trial, and asking a change of venue. After which the great Oklahoma boom collapsed.

Funny how concise can convey so much dismissiveness. Also, “his efforts at affecting a lodgment”? I chuckle thereforth.

From the Omaha Daily Bee, Omaha, NE (November 30, 1881):

Out of the active brain and adventurous spirit of Capt. Dave Payne, known in border life and drama as the Scout of the Cimarron, grew the project known as the Oklahoma colony, scheme. And that scheme is the settlement of the lands belonging to the government of the United States, a vast body of fine arable land in the Indian Territory, on the north fork of the Canadian river.

This reads less like the first paragraph of a newspaper report and more like a pitch for a TV miniseries starring Brian Keith and Rob Schneider in his dramatic comeback role.

The project of planting a white colony in the very heart of the Indian Nation was at first regarded with indifference and afterwards with absolute ridicule; but to those who personally know Capt. Payne, and know him as he is, this project is not the dream of a fanatic. To them Payne is fostering no wild, filibustering scheme, nor lawlessly defying the government of the United States. Capt. Payne is a man of ability and legislative experience…
He is thoroughly conversant with Indian customs, manners, and warfare, skilled in woodcraft, and the peer of any marksman on the border with the rifle. His courage never was questioned. He is a giant in stature and a marvel in strength. Such, then, is a pen-picture of Capt. Dave Payne—”Oklahoma” Payne as he is now called…

I confess I mostly just like the created term, “pen-picture.”

The Kansas City Journal, quoted by The Wichita City Eagle, Wichita, KS (May 25, 1882):

“…if Payne and his followers would display one-half the energy and perseverance in tilling a few acres of Kansas soil as they do in getting a foothold in the Indian Territory, they would have no cause to complain of impecuniosity.

Isn’t it funny how once you know a strange new word, you seem to come across it, or its variations, everywhere? Impecuniosity…? Expialidocious!

It is a too common fault of the Indolent and shiftless that they nurse their idleness by dreams of something just beyond their reach. The farmer who by poor management finds it impossible to accumulate even a small store of money for a rainy day, is often found making elaborate calculations for selling out and removing to the Pacific coast; whereas, if he would devote as much money to the comfort of himself and family or to the improvement of his farm or stock, as it would cost him to remove his family to Oregon or Washington Territory, he would be much the wiser.”

Don’t hold back, Kansas. What do you really think of the boomers?

From The New York Times, New York, NY (February 03, 1883):

The language of PAYNE’S circular glows with adjectives and promises. The beautiful land of Oklahoma is “the garden spot, the Eden of modern times.” “Come,” says PAYNE, “and go with us to this beautiful land and secure for yourself and children homes in the richest most beautiful and best country that the Great Creator in His Goodness, has made for man.” But the circular fails to convey with sufficient clearness the information that this garden spot is no more open to settlement by PAYNE and his colonists than are the Central Park and Boston Common. The Territory belongs to the Indians and is secured to them by treaties.

That’s a nice analogy, the park thing. It plays off of Payne’s Eden imagery, while offering a sharp rhetorical contrast. His ideas are diminished and refuted by the sudden downshift in language. Sweet!

PAYNE has been taken by the nape of the neck once already and pitched out of the Territory. If he carries out his announced intention and the Government does its duty, he will be pitched out again and the foolish citizens who allow themselves to be inveigled into an unlawful enterprise by his fine promises will get into serious trouble.

“Now, Junior – don’t be getting inveigled into no unlawful enterprises!”

My absolute favorite, though, is less about vocabulary and more about structure and tone. It’s also from The New York Times, this time on April 9, 1891:

Topeka, Kan., April 8.- Is Oklahoma really overrun with negroes, and has there been an influx of pauper negroes from the South? So many conflicting answers have been given in response to these two questions that it was impossible to arrive at the truth…
In order to determine the truth, THE TIMES’s representative determined to visit the Territory and see what was to be seen, and to learn from interested persons as much of the truth as they could be prevailed upon to surrender. Those who have never attempted to draw the truth from an Oklahomaite can hardly realize the difficulties that are presented.

Imagine, if you can, a day and age in which the Times was periodically a tad opinionated about such things.

And… “Oklahomaite”?

The Territory was born in falsehood, was baptized in falsehood, and falsehood has been the principal article of diet ever since that fateful 23rd day of April, 1889, when the “sooners” became the leading citizens of a country opened to settlement too late in the year for the planting of crops, and to which the poverty-stricken were invited by speculators and impecunious lawyers…

OH-MY-GOD-ARE-VARIATIONS-OF-THAT-WORD-GOING-TO-BE-EVERYWHERE-NOW?!?! Was it trending that century or something?

…who had been permitted to enter beforehand by a pig-headed Administration, which could see nothing good outside the ague-stricken Wabash bottoms of Indiana.

That last bit is a jab at President Benjamin Harrison. While I’m sorry for the ghost of the man who officially opened up O.T. to white settlement, I can’t help but experience mild rapture at any outburst involving “ague-stricken Wabash bottoms.”

*snort*

I actually love this whole piece enough that I wrote at length about it here and here, and even transcribed it in its entirety. For now, though, I’m well-past my own self-imposed rambling limits and have said far too little with far too many words of my own.

I assure you that I rue this impecunious, if epiphenomenal, imbroglio.

Nope – doesn’t really work when I try it. Oh well.

RELATED POST: Defining Moments

Liar, Liar, Twitterpants on Fire (A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing, Part Three)

November 17, 2016August 10, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

“My client wasn’t even IN the bar the evening of the murder, and if he WAS there, he doesn’t even OWN a gun! If he DOES own a gun, he didn’t have it with him that evening, and if he DID have it with him, it wasn’t loaded! Even if it WERE loaded, he didn’t use it – he didn’t even KNOW the victim. If he DID know the victim, he liked him, and if he didn’t like him, he at least didn’t kill him. But if he DID kill him, it was self-defense. And if it wasn’t self-defense, he still had a very good reason. Otherwise, he’s crazy and can’t be held accountable. Come on, he was carrying around a loaded gun – what sane person DOES that?!
I’ve told you that one way or the other he’s innocent – and all you can do is call me names? That’s so hurtful!”

It is difficult for those of you with the slightest shred of decency to appreciate how the law and politics work. They do not operate according to anything most of us consider reasonable, moral, or even explicable. In the past they didn’t have to. Those affected had little expectation of being fully informed and no real control of the outcome.

Modern American politics has even less decency, but for different reasons. Most of us are too busy to keep up or sort it all out, and too quick to share or retweet anything with a headline confirming what we want confirmed or feigning outrage over whatever we find outrageous. Or maybe we’re just too stupid and easily distracted.

Not criticizing here – just keeping an open mind about possible explanations.

It’s amazing to me how easily we roll our eyes or exclamate our declamations over things done in the past – successfully, for centuries – and yet find it inconceivable the same things may be happening today, because… well, that’s CRAZY!

What, exactly, is it you think has changed about either mankind or the nature of power? Please – I’ll wait.

…

Hello?

The South attempted to secede and lost. The war destroyed lives and property on both sides, but the South had the worst of it by far. Reconstruction began, things got weird again.

And then the South began writing the history of the war and the events which led to it. The war they’d lost. The one fought over a variety of issues, but in which slavery and its continuation were central and essential as defined by the South in the very documents they issued to justify their cause.

Only suddenly the war hadn’t been about slavery at all. In fact, the South was collectively rather wounded at the suggestion! Slavery?! You think – you think this was about SLAVERY?

Imagine what’d they’d have rewritten if they’d WON?

No less an authority than Jefferson Davis began cranking out volumes on the REAL story of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. Others picked up the theme, and before long their United Daughters (still active today) were tea and cookie-ing this theme across the land.

Historians still argue about the war (they’re allowed to do that still, outside of Oklahoma and Texas) – that’s fine, it’s what they’re supposed to do.

What’s less tolerable is the fervent hurt and chagrin evidenced by the South’s defenders at the very suggestion that secession had ANYTHING to do with slavery. It’s not that they wish to lay out a reasoned argument, you understand – it’s that they’ve reshaped history and historiography solely through repetition and strong emotion.

“To suggest secession was about SUH-LAVERY, well it it it’s it’s just… *sniff* DISHONEST!”

The rest of the nation has cooperated, by the way – we don’t like acknowledging our role in making chattel out of humans with souls any more than they do. Better to focus on tariffs and elections and economies and cultures – all persuasive alternatives, since all were involved.

The best deceptions are mostly true, after all – or true but for omissions. That’s how laws are made and history written – so be it.

Why does it matter if the South wishes to save a little face? What’s so wrong with simply focusing on the good parts in our collective history? I mean, the naysayers won their little war and got their way, didn’t they?

Can we at least keep the damn flag without everyone having a hurt-feelings-fit every time?

My favorite hockey team captain after a tough loss and horrible officiating: “There were some tough calls, but the real problem is that we didn’t take care of business in our own end. We let too many pucks get past us and didn’t take advantage of our opportunities.”

I hated the poor play, and the poor officiating even more – but my decisive and lingering memory is how much I love the class of my team.

Also, he’s pretty.

More importantly, the team is able to go into practice the next day aware of the things they CAN control, and which led to problems. By acknowledging what they did wrong, instead of merely casting blame, they can improve – or at least that’s the goal.

You may remember the contrast between how Kanye and Beyonce handled this situation:

Swift seems to have recovered and keeps recording albums that sell zillions and zillions of copies. Beyoncé called Swift up to the stage later in the evening to give her back her moment in the spotlight. And West… well, he’s still Kanye (or not – he sometimes likes to go by “Tigerlily” or something else I can’t remember).

The lingering perception is that Kanye is a nut, Beyoncé is a class act, and that apparently Taylor Swift is a country artist (as she mentioned in the full version of her pre-interrupted speech). Reality may differ, but what we remember is what shapes events going forward.

It matters what happened and how it’s remembered because we can’t learn from mistakes we don’t think we made. Left uncriticized, Kanye is just a fighter for justice and Swift a bewildered blonde. Without her subsequent efforts to make things right, Beyoncé could just as easily been remembered as a sore loser, despite winning bigger better things that same night.

If the war was about slavery, and slavery is evil, and the South lost, then the reasonable thing to do is to start trying to repair some of the damage done by slavery. If the war was about a race-based chattel system, then we have some serious introspection to do about ourselves as a people and the extent to which we’ve failed to live up to our own ideals.

Of course, if the real issues were states’ rights-ish, that’s not as bad. Federalism is about balance, after all, and if perhaps the South got out of balance, that’s clearly rectified now. If anything, the central government is much stronger than originally intended as a result!

We can spend some time trying to Reconstruct the South and push for some reforms, but at some point we’re going to need to get back to being a country again. We’ve made our point – let’s let them rebuild and trust whatever gradual progress can be made in terms of race and society.

If the war was about slavery, then both Lincoln and John Brown were right – we’ve paid for our national sin with national bloodshed. Time for a new birth of freedom.

If the war was about different understandings of the Constitution, then might makes right and we won by decimating our enemies by any means necessary. Next time the meaning of our founding documents may swing back a bit the other direction.

If the war was about slavery, then Black America may well need time and support to recover from a sort of collective PTSD. There would be imbalances to correct and scars which may never be quite healed. If we’re willing to go to war with ourselves to keep an entire race of people in degradation and servitude, what must we confess and how might we repent to set a better future course?

If 620,000 men died over tariffs or electoral procedures, then our nation is charted by whichever political and popular mechanizations produce the desired result. If the war was about anything other than slavery, maybe Black people need to just get over it and be less, you know… ‘Black’ about everything.

If our ideals are as flawless and our procedures as sound as we clearly wish to promote, then inequity and suffering must stem from personal or cultural failures. If America is ‘exceptional’ in the way those now in power demand we acknowledge, whatever failures have occurred within it are individual and not national. Potential solutions or cures must, logically, come from the same. Anything else is charity. Or enabling. Or corruption.

We can’t repent of sins we can’t confess, or repair that we are unable to see as broken. This applies across any number of historical and national issues. If we build our actions and beliefs on a foundation of national amazing-ness, the ramifications are much, much larger than which textbooks we adapt or which tests we take to graduate. Conversely, if we believe the human heart – even the American heart – is desperately wicked, and deceitful above all things… who can know it? Well, that leads to humility and grace as we push forward, aware of what we are capable, for good or ill.

I’ll close with a little Bible talkin’, since that seems to be such a motivator for those pushing a better whitewashing for our lil’uns. Whatever we may disagree on, I wholeheartedly concur that we’ve lost much in our upbringing if we feel the need to run from the wisdom found in small red print:

“And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:
Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”
(Luke 18:9-14, KJV)

If there’s an argument to be had, let’s have it. But let’s base it on our best understanding of the truth and the wisest possible course consistent with our proclaimed ideals – not on what best covers our collective behinds and casts the remaining blame on those least able to carry the burden.

{This Post is Recycled – Reworked from a Previous Version and Reposted In It’s Updated Glory}

RELATED POST: History Songs