150 years ago, naval history turned a page with the launching of the iron clad USS Monitor after a rushed construction of 118 days.  The above video is a 1/16th scale operating model of the engine that powered the Monitor.  Go here to view the USS Monitor Center at the Mariner’s Museum.

The USS Monitor did not long survive her historic battle with the CSS Merrimac.  She sank in a midnight storm off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on December 31, 1862 with the loss of 16 of 62 of her crew.  For 112 years she lay undisturbed, until she was rediscovered.  Now her resting place is a national marine sanctuary, and the study of the vessel is ongoing, as demonstrated by this video last year showing her engine which was brought to the surface for examination.

As longtime readers of this blog know, I have a deep and abiding passion for history.  I lament the fact that most histories produced today by academic historians are usually politicized drek, often written in a jargon that makes them gibberish to the general reader.  Historian K C Johnson has a superb post lamenting this situation:

The study of U.S. history has transformed in the last two generations, with emphasis on staffing positions in race, class, or gender leading to dramatic declines in fields viewed as more “traditional,” such as U.S. political, constitutional, diplomatic, and military history. And even those latter areas have been “re-visioned,” in the word coined by an advocate of the transformation, Illinois history professor Mark Leff, to make their approach more accommodating to the dominant race/class/gender paradigm. In the new academy, political histories of state governments–of the type cited and used effectively by the Montana Supreme Court–were among the first to go. The Montana court had to turn to Fritz, an emeritus professor, because the University of Montana History Department no longer features a specialist in Montana history (nor, for that matter, does it have a professor whose research interests, like those of Fritz, deal with U.S. military history, a topic that has fallen out of fashion in the contemporary academy).

To take the nature of the U.S. history positions in one major department as an example of the new staffing patterns: the University of Michigan, once home to Dexter and then Bradford Perkins, was a pioneer in the study of U.S. diplomatic history. Now the department’s 29 professors whose research focuses on U.S. history after 1789 include only one whose scholarship has focused on U.S. foreign relations–Penny von Eschen, a perfect example of the “re-visioning” approach. (Her most recent book is Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War.) In contrast to this 1-in-29 ratio, Michigan has hired ten Americanists (including von Eschen) whose research, according to their department profiles, focuses on issues of race; and eight Americanists whose research focuses on issues of gender. The department has more specialists in the history of Native Americans than U.S. foreign relations.

It’s true, of course, that departments heavy in African-American historians might have lots of scholars who focus on such topics as a sympathetic portrayal of Ward Connerly’s efforts against racial preferences. Or a department heavy in women’s historians might have lots of scholars who focus on such topics as a study of grassroots pro-life women, as part of a project suggesting that feminists don’t speak for a majority of U.S. women. But in the real world, figures with such interests would have almost no chance of being hired for an African-American history or gender history line.

Go here to read the brilliant rest.  K C Johnson is a partisan Democrat, but he recognizes that the ideological conformity of most history departments in this country, and the constant resulting focus on race, gender and class, is destroying the ability of academic historians to perform their traditional function of giving readers access to the world of the past in order to aid them in making sense of the present.

Historian Francis Prucha, as noted by Australian historian Keith Windschuttle, set forth n 1972 the traditional understanding of the role of the historian:

History is a legitimate scholarly discipline whose purpose is to reconstruct the past as accurately as the intelligence of the historian and the fullness of the historical sources permit. Its purpose is to supply enlightenment, understanding, and perspective and to provide sound information on which balanced judgements can be based. Its purpose is not to serve the special interests of any group or doctrine, nor to furnish ammunition for polemics or propaganda … We must seek the truth in the story we are telling, and in the history of Indian-white relations especially we must be alert to the pitfall of having too much sympathy either for our own preconceived ideas or for one side or the other of the controversy. To be a good judge, we must not care what the truth is we are seeking. We must be concerned only with finding it.

The old time honored standard of  Francis Prucha, and of many generations of academic historians before him, is now one with Nineveh and Tyre.  The junk that is produced under the new dispensation of politics-disguised-as-history is rarely read, except by people paid to do so, history professors, or forced to do so, students.  Leftist academic historians are doing their very unintentional best to destroy the love of history in all who do not share their ideological obsessions, and that is a crime against history.

Something for the weekend.  Theme from Patton (1970), by Jerry Goldsmith, interspersed with stills from the films and photographs of General Patton.

Eddie Rickenbacker, America’s Ace of Aces in World War I, cheated death in aerial combat many times over France.  Between April 29, 1918 and October 30, 1918, with several weeks lost due to being grounded for an ear infection, he shot down 26 German planes and observation balloons and earned seven Distinguished Service Crosses, the French Croix de Guerre and the Medal of Honor.  Here is the Medal of Honor citation:

Edward V. Rickenbacker, Colonel, specialist reserve, then first lieutenant, 94th Aero Squadron, Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces. For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy near Billy, France, September 25, 1918. While on a voluntary patrol over the lines Lieutenant. Rickenbacker attacked seven enemy planes (five type Fokker protecting two type Halberstadt photographic planes). Disregarding the odds against him he dived on them and shot down one of the Fokkers out of control. He then attacked one of the Halberstadts and sent it down also.

One would have thought that with the ending of the War Rickenbacker could have said farewell to the Grim Reaper until his peaceful death in civilian life, but such was not the case with Rickenbacker.  He went on to an extremely successful business career, most notably as the head of Eastern Air Lines. 

On February 26, 1941, Rickenbacker was on board a Douglas DC-3 that crashed outside of Atlanta, Georgia.  Rickenbacker suffered grave injuries and was trapped in the wreckage.  Despite his own predicament he did his best to keep up the spirits of the other survivors who were injured, and guided the ambulatory survivors to find help.  Rickenbacker’s death was erroneously reported in the press, and he spent ten days near death, an experience he reported as being one of overwhelming calm and pleasure.

Although highly critical of the New Deal policies of the Roosevelt administration which he regarded as socialistic, Rickenbacker went on missions throughout the War in support of the war effort.  In October 1942 he was sent by the government on a tour of the Pacific to report on troop living conditions and military operations.  Due to an error in navigation the B-17 he was a passenger on ditched in the Pacific.  For 24 days, with very little food and water, Rickenbacker and the crew of the B-17 were adrift in the Pacific.  Rickenbacker’s presumed death was reported in the newspapers.   Rickenbacker took command, alternately browbeating and comforting his compatriots, all of whom were injured, in order to keep them functioning in what appeared to be a hopeless situation.  A seagull landed on Rickenbacker’s head, and with the food it provided he kept his men alive.  The military after over two weeks wanted to give up the search, but Mrs. Rickenbacker, Eddie’s wife, insisted they keep looking.  On November 13, 1942 Rickenbacker and the other survivors were found and rescued by a Navy float plane.

Rickenbacker died at age 82 of natural causes, cheating death until it was his time to go.

The  “Checkers Speech” given by Richard Nixon which allowed him to stay on the ticket as Vice-President on September 23, 1952.  The speech got its name from Nixon’s use of the pet dog given to his daughters, Checkers, to gain sympathy by stating that the girls had gotten fond of the dog and he would not return it.

One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don’t they’ll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something—a gift—after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he’d sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl—Tricia, the 6-year-old—named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.

The whole scandal arose because of accusations that Nixon had a private slush fund provided by donors.  It is amusing to contemplate considering his future, but Nixon was absolutely innocent of wrong-doing.  Having private donors pay for campaign expenses including travel costs and postage was completely legal at the time. 

Nixon was only 39 at the time and his rise in politics had been amazing.  Elected Congressman in 1946, the first elective office he held, he won a Senate seat from California in 1950 and in 1952 was running for Vice-President.  However, his career came close to being aborted with this scandal, at least in regard to ever running on a national ticket.  The reaction to the speech was electric by the public, and Eisenhower kept him on the ticket, but it had been a very close call for Nixon.

If Nixon had been tossed off the ticket he still would have been a senator, but the chances of him ever succeeding in gaining the Republican nomination for President would have been nil.  His speech had a vast impact on American history, the ramifications of which are still being played out today.

Last night President Obama delivered the State of the Union Address for 2012.  The first State of the Union Address was on January 8, 1790.  President Washington delivered it to a joint session of Congress.  Thomas Jefferson ended the practice of the President delivering the address to Congress, regarding the speech as similar to the annual Speech From the Throne of the King of the England, and therefore too monarchical for Jefferson’s Republican tastes.  Instead Jefferson sent annual messages to Congress on the State of the Union.  The practice of the President personally delivering the speech was revived by Woodrow Wilson in 1913.    The State of the Union Address was initially known as the President’s Annual Message to Congress.  FDR first used the term State of the Union in 1934, and by 1947 this became the common name for the address.

Washington’s address in 1790 was notable for its conciseness and its clarity of thought.  Would that all of his successors could say the same about their addresses!  Here is the text of  President Washington’s first State of the Union Address:

FELLOW CITIZENS Of the SENATE, and HOUSE of REPRESENTATIVES,

I EMBRACE with great satisfaction the opportunity, which now presents itself, of congratulating you on the present favourable prospects of our public affairs. The recent accession of the important state of North carolina to the Constitution of the United States (of which official information has been received)— the ruling credit and respectability of our country— the general and increasing good will towards the government of the union, and the concord, peace and plenty, with which we are blessed, are circumstances auspicious, in an excellent degree, to our national prosperity.

n reforming your consultations for the general good, you cannot but derive encouragement from the reflection, the measures of the last session have been as satisfactory to your constituents as the novelty and difficulty of the work allowed you to hope.– Still further to realize their expectations, and to secure the blessings which a gracious Providence has placed within our reach, will in the course of the present important session, call for the cool and deliberate exertion of your patriotism, firmness and wisdom.

Among the many interesting objects which will engage your attention, that of providing for the common defence will merit particular regard. To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.

A free people ought not only to be armed but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well digested plan is requisite: And their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories, as tend to render them independent on others, for essential, particularly for military supplies.

The proper establishment of the troops which may be deemed indispensable, will be entitled to mature consideration. In the arrangement which will be made respecting it, it will be of importance to conciliate the comfortable support of the officers and soldiers with a due regard to economy.

There was reason to hope, the pacifick measures adopted with regard to certain hostile tribes of Indians, would have relieved the inhabitants of our southern and western frontiers from their depredations. But you will perceive, from the information contained in the papers, which I shall direct to be laid before you, (comprehending a communication from the Commonwealth of Virginia) that we ought to be prepared to afford protection to those parts of the Union; and, if necessary, to punish aggressors.

The interests of the United States require, that our intercourse with other nations should be facilitated by such provisions as will enable me to fulfill my duty, in that respect, in the manner which circumstances may render most conducive to the publick good: And to this end, that the compensations to be made to the persons who may be employed, should, according to the nature of their appointments, be defined by law; and a competent fund designated for defraying the expenses incident to the conduct of our foreign affairs.

Various considerations also render it expedient, that the terms on which foreigners may be admitted to the rights of Citizens, should be speedily ascertained by a uniform rule of naturalization.

Uniformity in the currency, weights and measures of the United States, is an object of great importance, and will, I am persuaded, be duly attended to.

The advancement of agriculture, commerce and manufactures, by all proper means, will not, I trust, need recommendation. But I cannot forbear intimating to you the expediency of giving effectual encouragement as well to the introduction of new and useful inventions from abroad, as to the exertions of skill and genius in producing them at home; and of facilitating the intercourse between the distant parts of our country by a due attention to the Post Office and Post Roads.

Nor am I less persuaded, that you will agree with me in opinion, that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of Science and Literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of publick happiness. In one, in which the measures of government receive their impression so immediately from the sense of the community, as in our’s, it is proportionately essential. To the security of a free Constitution it contributes in various ways: By convincing those who are entrusted with the publick administration, that every valuable end of government is best answered by the enlightened confidence of the people: And by teaching the people themselves to know, and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience, and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society; to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last, and uniting a speedy, but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws.

Whether this desirable object will be best promoted by affording aids to seminaries of learning already established, by the institution of a national university, or by any other expedients, will be well worthy of a place in the deliberations of the Legislature.

Gentlemen of the House of Representatives,

I SAW with peculiar pleasure, at the close of the last session, the resolution entered into by you, expressive of your opinion, that an adequate provision for the support of the publick credit, is a matter of high importance to the national honour and prosperity.– In this sentiment, I entirely concur.– And to a perfect confidence in your best endeavors to devise such a provision as will be truly consistent with the end, I add an equal reliance on the cheerful cooperation of the other branch of the Legislature.– It would be superfluous to specify inducements to a measure in which the character and permanent interests of the United States so obviously and so deeply concerned; and which has received so explicit a sanction from your declaration.

Gentlemen of the Senate, and House of Representatives,

I HAVE directed the proper officers to lay before you respectively such papers and estimates as regards the affairs particularly recommended to your consideration, and necessary to convey to you that information of the state of the union, which it is my duty to afford.

The welfare of our country is the great object to which our cares and efforts ought to be directed.– And I shall derive great satisfaction from a cooperation with you, in the pleasing though arduous task of ensuring to our fellow citizens the blessings which they have a right to expect, from a free and equal government.

Ordained as a priest on May 22, 1930, he was unable to immediately go to China due to military activity of the Communists in Kiangsi province.  For three years he traveled throughout the US raising funds for the missions in China, and, at long last, in 1933 he was able to pack his bags and sailed for China.  Laboring in the Chinese missions from 1933-1939 in the midst of warlordism, civil war and the invasion of China, commencing in 1937, by Japan must have been tough, but Father Gehring was always up to any challenge.  For example,  in 1938 Japanese planes strafed a mission he was at.  Father Gehring ran out waving a large American flag in hopes that the Japanese would not wish to offend a powerful neutral nation and would stop the strafing.  The Japanese planes did fly off, and Father Gehring was pleased until someone at the mission pointed out that maybe the Japanese had simply run out of ammo!  In 1939 Father Gerhring returned to the States to raise funds for the missions.

Immediately following Pearl Harbor, Father Gehring joined the Navy as a Chaplain.  In September 1942 he began an unforgettable six month tour of duty with the First Marine Division fighting on Guadalcanal.  Marines, although they are often loathe to admit it, are a component of the Department of the Navy, and the US Navy supplies their support troops, including chaplains.  (One of my friends served as a Navy corpsman with a Marine unit in Vietnam.  After his tour with the Navy he enlisted with the Marines, was commissioned a Lieutenant, and spent his entire tour with a detachment of Marines aboard an aircraft carrier.  As he puts it, he joined the Navy and spent his time slogging through the mud with Marines.  He then joined the Marines and spent his time sailing with the Navy.)

Guadalcanal marked the turning point of the war in the Pacific.  In August 1942 the US went on the offensive for the first time when the First Marine Division, the Old Breed,  landed on Guadalcanal and took the Japanese air base there.  This set off a huge six month campaign, where US forces, often outnumbered on land, sea and in the air, fought and defeated the Imperial Army and Navy.  The importance of Guadalcanal is well captured in this quote from Admiral William “Bull” Halsey: “Before Guadalcanal the enemy advanced at his pleasure. After Guadalcanal, he retreated at ours”.

Upon arrival on Guadalcanal, Lieutenant Gehring quickly became known as “Padre ” to the men of the Old Breed, the title usually bestowed upon chaplains, especially if they were Catholic priests.  He soon became known for wanting to be where the fighting was in order to help the wounded and administer the Last Rites.  Initially this took some of the Marines by surprise.  Jumping into a foxhole during a heavy fire fight, a shocked Marine already in the foxhole, noticing the crucifix dangling from his neck, cried out to him, “Padre, what are you doing here?”  Gehring calmly replied, “Where else would I be?”  He would routinely say Masses so close to the fighting, that the Marines said that he would say Mass in Hell for Marines if he could drive his jeep there.  The Marines quickly decided that it was a lost cause asking the Padre to stay behind the lines.  They were doing well if they could convince him to stay within friendly lines!  Three times he went out on behind the line missions to rescue trapped missionaries on the island, mostly Marist priests and sisters, rescuing 28 of them, assisted by natives of the Solomons.  For this feat he was the first Navy chaplain to be awarded the Legion of Merit by the President.

The natives had great respect for Father Gehring and when they found a six year old Chinese girl who had been beaten, bayonetted and left for dead by the Japanese, they knew who to turn to.  The entire country was riveted by the story of how the priest, helped by hard case combat Marines, nursed the little girl back to health.   After the war Gehring was able to reunite the girl with her mother.  Her story is told in a book Father Gehring wrote in 1962, A Child of Miracles.

The Padre naturally made a lot of friends on Guadalcanal and one of his best friends was a Jewish boxer from Chicago turned Marine, Barney Ross.  (Ross is pictured at the beginning of this post with Father Gehring.  Ross is the one without a hat.  The names of the parrots, alas, are lost to history.)  Among a lot of very tough men, Ross was one of the toughest.  On November 20, 1942 a patrol he was with was ambushed by the Japanese.  All the other men being wounded, for twelve hours Ross fought on alone, eventually killing the two dozen Japanese soldiers attacking his platoon, for which he was awarded a Silver Star.  Shortly thereafter he became one of the first Marines to come down with malaria.  Nursed back to health by Gehring, who gave him a saint’s medal which he wore around his neck next to his mezuzah, Ross assisted Gehring at a memorable midnight mass on Christmas 1942.  Among all the Marines, only Ross knew how to play an organ.  Father Gerhing was a skilled violinist, and between them they led the 700 Marines in attendance through the traditional Christmas hymns while the Japanese shelled them.  At the end, Ross said he was going to sing a song in honor of their mother and his mother, and proceeded to give an unforgettable rendition of My Yiddisher Mama. There was no Jewish chaplain with the Marines, but Father Gehring, who knew Hebrew, and Ross led regular Shabbat services for the Jewish Marines.

Space in a blog post doesn’t allow me to tell of all the activities of Father Gerhing on Guadalcanal.  Suffice it to say that he came to Guadalcanal a Navy Chaplain, and left it a Marine legend.  Leaving the island in February after most of the fighting was finished, Father Gerhing spent months being treated for Dengue Fever.  Recovering he served for the rest of the war.

After the war he spent 18 years in the United States Navy Reserves, rising to the rank of Captain, the Navy equivalent to being a full colonel in the Marines.  Until his retirement in 1994 at the age of 91, he served full time as a priest, including teaching at Saint John’s University at Jamaica, New York, raising funds for Vincentian Missions and being the pastor of Saint Vincent’s parish in Germantown, Pennsylvania from 1963-1969.  Beginning in 1969 he joined the Miraculous Medal Novena Band, and preached novenas throughout the country.

After his retirement in Florida, he had a constant flow of friends and well-wishers coming to see him.  One frequent visitor was Patsy Fasano, the grown up Chinese girl he had helped save on Guadalcanal.  He had named her Patsy, and she eventually emigrated to the US, became a nurse and married.  Amazing how often the good that we do will repay us in the long run.

Father Gehring died in his sleep in 1998 at age 95 on April 26, 1998, the third Sunday of Easter that year.  I don’t blame the Grim Reaper for not wanting to face such a formidable man when his eyes were wide open.

When studying history it is easy to forget just how different the past is from our own times.  The people we encounter in history are children of their times, just as we are children of ours, and the impact of that fact should never be forgotten by anyone seeking to understand a period of history.

Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, one of the towering figures of the first half of the nineteenth century, and his wife Lucretia provide a simple example.  They had eleven children.  In a time when families with more than three children are a rarity, that alone is a fact that separates them from most of us, but it is the fate of those children that points out another major difference.  At the time of his death, Henry Clay had outlived all of his six daughters and one of his five sons. Of the six girls, two died in infancy, two as children and two as young women.  One son, Henry Clay, Jr, predeceased his father, dying at the battle of Buena Vista in 1847.  By the time that Lucretia Clay died, she had outlived another son, who died a few months before her in 1864.

The sorrows of the Clays were not unusual.  High mortality among children was simply a sad fact of life.  Abraham Lincoln viewed Henry Clay as his ideal of what a statesman should be, and modeled his political principles after those of Clay.  Lincoln was preceded in death by two of his sons, and Mary Todd Lincoln would outlive the third, leaving their oldest son Robert as the sole survivor of the Lincoln family.  Such familiarity with death was a constant feature of life until the advent of modern medicine in the last century, and is a factor that separates us from life as it was lived by almost all the generations that came before ours.  Just one of countless factors we must keep in mind when viewing “as if in a glass, darkly” the foreign country that is the past.

A debate between Adams and Jefferson from the John Adams mini-series on the necessity of a written constitution.  I am all on the side of Adams.  Putting one’s faith in the good sense and decency of people in general, and being cavalier about political arrangements as to government, is a short route to chaos as History woefully tells us.  Jefferson’s views on this topic were tellingly set forth in a letter to William Smith on November 13, 1787:

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Jefferson, for a man who did not spend a single day in the Continental Army during the Revolution, was quite free in his talk about bloodshed.  Most of the Founding Fathers, including Adams, viewed the misery and the blood of the Revolution as a regrettable necessity in the setting up of a new nation, and dreaded a repetition of such a conflict.  Not so Jefferson who seemed to view such conflict as a necessary and normal part of a free society.  Fortunately, heads wiser than Jefferson’s helped frame an enduring Constitution.  James Madison, ironically the closest political associate of Jefferson throughout most of Jefferson’s later political career, summed up the necessity of government well in Federalist 51:

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

Something for the weekend.  The Cavalier’s Glee, a song which captures well the daring spirit of the cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia under General Jeb Stuart. The song was written by Captain William W. Blackford, an engineer on the staff of General Stuart.  It is sung by Bobby Horton, a man who every American is indebted to for his constant efforts to bring Civil War songs to modern audiences.