You Have to Love Buzz Aldrin

 

Aldrin shot down two MIGs in combat in the Korean War, and he earned two Air Force Service Medals, two Distinguished Flying Crosses and three Air Medals  during his career.  As An astronaut he risked his life time after time on beyond cutting edge technology.  Post his NASA career he had a problem with depression and alcoholism and quit drinking for good in 1978.  He was 72 when he punched the obnoxious lunatic, who accused him of being a coward, in the above video.

Was Zachary Taylor Murdered?

 

I find it comforting that conspiracy theorists have always been with us, and that they are not only a feature of our times.  On July 4, 1850 Taylor had a busy day attending several Independence Day celebrations and a fund raising event for the Washington Monument.  The day was hot and Taylor drank a lot of ice milk and ate a great deal of raw fruit.  Unsurprisingly he came down with a gastric ailment thereafter.  Physicians treated him with the best medicine of the time, which often weakened or finished off the poor patients subject to it:  Taylor was dosed with ipecac, calomel, opium, and quinine at 40 grains per dose (approximately 2.6 grams), and bled and blistered.  Several of Taylor’s cabinet members came down with similar symptoms.  The 65 year old Taylor died on July 9, 1850.

In hindsight an analysis of Taylor’s death is pretty straightforward.  The White House had a tainted water supply with raw sewage running into it.  This probably killed three presidents:  Harrison, Polk (who died shortly after his term in office) and Taylor.  Cholera was the big killer in 19th century urban centers until sewers were installed, and Taylor likely died of some variant of that bacterial infection.

Taylor had opposed what became known as the Compromise of 1850, wanting to keep slavery out of the territories won from Mexico.  Some abolitionists claimed, without any evidence, that pro-slavery advocates had poisoned the president.  Although rumors abounded, no official investigation ever took place.

Lincoln and the Jesuits!

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy .

Abraham Lincoln, letter to Joshua Speed, August 24, 1855

Presidential assassinations attract nut cases like bribes attract politicians.  The original presidential assassination conspiracy theorist was Charles P.T. Chiniquy, a Catholic priest from Quebec, who came to Kankakee County in Illinois circa 1850 to serve a colony of French Canadians who had settled there.  In 1860 he left the Church with some of his parishioners, having run afoul of his Bishop.  Eventually he became a Presbyterian Minister and made a living from publishing anti-Catholic books and tracts and giving anti-Catholic lectures

Chiniquy had used Lincoln’s services as a lawyer in a slander case in 1856.  From this slight association, after Lincoln’s assassination he created a fable of the Jesuits having been behind Lincoln’s death and putting anti-Catholic sentiments in the mouth of a man who knew no religious bigotry.  Chiniquy’s lies have been exposed for well over a century by historians.  One of the best eviscerations of Chiniquy was undertaken by Professor Joseph George, Jr. in an article which appeared in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society in 1976:

In 1891 John G. Nicolay, Lincoln’s former secretary, received a note  from Benedict Guldner, a Jesuit priest in New York, asking for information about a “libellous pamphlet” printed in Germany.   The pamphlet, according to Guldner, was a translation of a work “originally written in this country … in which the author maintains that the assassination of President Lincoln was the work of Jesuits.” Nicolay and John Hay, another former secretary to the President, had not mentioned the allegation in their biography of        Lincoln, and Guldner wished to know if they had heard the charge and if they considered it false. [1]         Nicolay consulted Hay, and then replied:        

          To [y]our first question whether in our studies on the life of Lincoln we came upon the charge that “the assasination of President Lincoln was the work of Jesuits”, we answer that we have read such a charge in a lengthy newspaper publication.  To your second question, viz: “If you did come across it, did the          accusation seem to you to be entirely groundless?”, we answer Yes. It seemed to us so entirely groundless as not to merit any attention on our part.  [2]        

        

        Perhaps the decision of Nicolay and Hay to ignore the charge of a Jesuit conspiracy against Lincoln was unwise. A prompt and firm denial might have prevented further publication of the story.  [3]        

        The originator of the conspiracy theory was Charles P.T. Chiniquy, a former Catholic priest who claimed to be a close friend and confidant of Abraham Lincoln’s.   According to Chiniquy, “emissaries of the        Pope” were plotting to murder Lincoln for his defense of Chiniquy in an 1856 trial.   Chiniquy’s autobiography, Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, published in 1885,  attributes remarks to the President on a variety of subjects, particularly religion. [4]  Most of Chinquy’s stories are so foreign to what is known about the Sixteenth President that scholars  have ignored them. Nevertheless, many of the less sensational portions of Chiniquy’s reminiscences have been used by serious students of Lincoln’s life, and the most sensational passages have been widely quoted and disseminated by writers engaged in anti-Catholic polemics.