Showing posts with label 1830s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1830s. Show all posts

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Tuesday, March 17, 1824. Irish in Savannah and Old Glory

Savannah, Georgia held its first St. Patrick's Day parade on this day in 1824.

We don't tend to think of the Irish immigrating to the American South, but there were some, although the story is complicated by the conflation of the Irish with the Scots Irish, the latter group actually being a Scottish Protestant population imported by the United Kingdom with the intent to create a sort of Protestant wall in Ulster.  The actual Irish were a massively unpopular "race" in the United States at this point in time.

The original Old Glory.

The name "Old Glory" was applied to the U.S. flag for the first time, with that coming from Cpt. William Driver, a commercial captain who received it from his mother and local women of Salem, Massachusetts.  The name was applied to the individual flag.

Driver was an interesting character and had originally gone to sea at age 13 as a cabin boy.  On an 1831 expedition to the South Pacific, his ship was the only one out of six that survived the trip, and his ship escorted 65 descendants of the Bounty survivors back to Pitcairn Island.  He retired from sailing in 1837 and became a salesman. During the Civil War, he remained loyal to the Union while living in Nashville.

It remained in his family's possession until 1922, when it was donated to the Smithsonian.

The Anglo Dutch Treaty was entered into resolving issues that had arisen due to a prior treaty in 1814.

Last prior:

Thursday, March 11, 1824. Bureau of Indian Affairs formed.

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Whigs and the GOP. A timely lesson.

Log cabins and cider were the symbols of the Whigs.

The Whig party formed in 1833, making it just a few years younger than the Democratic Party.  It was a center left, anti-Masonic, anti Manifest Destiny, pro American System, party, although most articles will claim it was a "conservative" party.

It opposed populist Andrew Jackson, a Democratic populist.

William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachery Taylor and Millard Fillmore were members of the Whigs.

A lot of its policies were very reasonable in a modern conservative context. What it couldn't adjust to, however, was slavery, and the passage of the Kansas Nebraska Act, which nullified the Missouri Compromise, broke it up in 1856.  Those members of the party who came down as solidly anti-slavery formed the new Republican Party, which was also a center left, anti-Masonic, anti Manifest Destiny, pro American System, party, with anti-slavery added to it.


The GOP went from birth to the White House in just four years.

The Whigs drew from the Democratic Republican Party that preceded it, but it drew from other camps as well.  Not only did the old Democratic Republicans come into it, but Democrats did as well as that party became increasingly populist.

Note that.  

The Whigs were a major center left American political party.  The Democrats were a conservative, populist party.  The Whigs of the 1850s would have recognized the Republican Party of the 1950s as their successor.

Note what happened, and perhaps more importantly, how quickly it can happen.

The classic bromide of American politics is that third parties don't succeed.

Some do.

The Whigs came out of a prior political party's period of turmoil. They consolidated around solid, government backed, economics and a policy of what would amount to anti discrimination for the era.  As a result of that, it attracted businessmen, quasi liberals, and (immigrant) Catholics.  It won several elections before spectacularly breaking up.

The GOP has been around much longer, but at least in its early periods up to the Great Depression, and then again from 1950 on, up until Ronald Reagan, it was much like the Whig Party it had replaced, but with civil rights added as an element. Ronald Reagan, as much as he is admired by conservatives, began to dismantle that when the Democrats incorporated civil rights into its makeup starting in the 50s and 60s.  The Democrats had been struggling with its southern membership, which very much reflected the views of the traditional party, since the 1932 election of Franklin Roosevelt.  Southern Democrats stuck with the party as they had nowhere else to go, until Reagan cynically offered them one.

Now that element has taken over the party.


The GOP nearly cracked up in 1912 when the Theodore Roosevelt wing of the party, which wanted to take the party much to the left, and make it much more liberal/populist, bolted.  That same year, the Democratic Party began its evolution into a liberal party by running Woodrow Wilson, drawing in disaffected Republican populists.

Note that.

It took twenty years, but by 1932 TR's cousin FDR put the liberals in the Democratic Party permanently in control, Wilson's bid having transformed the party permanently.  It took roughly 30, but Ronald Reagan did the same thing with the Dixiecrats he incorporated into the GOP, that having also transformed the party permanently.  It took the Democrats 40 years to start shedding the Dixiecrats.  It took about 40 years for the Dixiecrats Reagan invited into the Republican Party to start a GOP civil war.

Conservatives gush about Reagan, and with some good reasons.  He was the country's one and only really conservative President.  Prior Republicans had fit more into the Whig mold.  Those who came after him sort of recalled it, like the first Bush, or fit into a new Neo Con mold that real conservatives tended to despise.  Reagan's Presidency was transformational, however, in that it inserted certain conservative strains of thought into government, while it never got a hold of the nation's budget, which has become increasingly out of whack due to the tax cuts he and Republican successors introduced.

But what he also introduced, Dixiecrats and Rust Belt Democrats, infected the party and now has killed it.  The "Republican" Part of today is the Dixiecrat Party/Rust Belt Democrat Party in a very real sense.  It's populist, but not conservative.

There are holdout Republican elements within it, but they have no hope of taking it back.  The past three years have proven that. Trump Populists don't care that Trump tried to seize power illegally.  They see class enemies everywhere which justify their positions, something Democrats just don't grasp.  Democrats like Robert Reich run around wondering when they'll wake up, not realizing they're wide awake.

When the Whigs broke up, it took the GOP only a few years to become successful.  The Whig collapse in 1856 was followed by the Republican success of 1860.

That's lesson number 1.  New parties can succeed quickly when the old one dies.

Lesson number 2 is that opposing parties become complacent.  The Democratic Party after 1912 didn't worry about its southern base and allowed it to go into the Republican Party, which briefly helped the GOP, and then killed it.  The Whigs took not only from the collapsed Democratic Republicans but also from the Democrats themselves.

The current Democratic Party is the legacy of 1912 the same way that the GOP is the legacy of 1980.  Just as the GOP has gone Dixiecrat/Rust Belt Democrat, the Democratic Party has gone Ivy League Pink.  It's nearly as enfeebled as the GOP is right now, it's just not as obvious.

A new party must emerge to replace the GOP, and frankly it now will.  Conservatives have no home and need to find one.  Centrist, however, have no home as well.  People who believed in Reagan's social conservatism aren't the same people who vote for serial polygamist and icky Donald Trump.  Democrats that voted for a guy like Harry Truman aren't comfortable with Joe Biden, at least in the expression he's manifested himself.  49%, at least, of the electorate are independents who have already dumped the GOP or the Democratic Party.

The one, and only, thing the Democrats and the Republicans agree on is that you absolutely must not vote for a third party, as that helps the other guy. That thinking insures that the extremes of those two parties have a free ride.

Well, the party is over and on the GOP side, the people have gone home.  This election, or the next, a new center right party must form, and will form.

If it formed now, with a Manchin or Christie at its head.  It'd take the election, and the GOP would completely collapse.  Quite a bit of the Democratic Party would defect as well.

It should happen.

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Thursday, August 23, 1923. Trotsky schemes, Turkey votes yes, Bluebeard's 8th Wife, Nancy Hayes Green dies, Fr. Giovanni Minzoni assassinated.

The Grand National Assembly of Turkey ratified the Treaty of Lausanne.  British, French, and Italian troops were withdrawing from Istanbul in accordance with the treaty.

Germany announced that it was introducing heavy taxation in order to address the country's economic woes.

Trotsky persuaded the Politburo, in a secret meeting, to finance the German Communist Party, the KDP, in order to overthrow the Weimar Republic.  A revolution in October was the goal, which planned for a Communist Germany to develop the agricultural Soviet Union, demonstrating how Communism, at the end of the day, always has an industrialized corporatism view of things, posters of smiling buxom peasant girls aside.

Bluebeard's 8th Wife was released.


Nancy Hayes Green, born in 1834, died after being hit by a car as a pedestrian. The car had hit a laundry truck.

Born into slavery in Kentucky, Green was already a widow by the end of the Civil War, having suffered the loss of her children as well.  Relocated to Chicago, she was employed in the household of Charles and Amanda Walker, transplanted Kentuckians.  Upon the Walkers recommendation, she was hired to portray "Aunt Jemima" for the RT Davis Milling Company.   The role was frankly demeaning by modern standards as it portrayed a happy picture of the antebellum south, including the status of slaves.  She continued to play the role for twenty years until replaced by Agnes Moodey, as Green would not travel to the 1900 Paris Expedition.  She used her fame from the role to advocate for the poor and for equal rights.

Portrait of Green, maybe, in character.  This could also be successor model Anna Robinson.

The depiction used for the pancake mix changed over the years as society became awakened to its inherent racism.  There was no real way, in the end, to disassociate it with its racist past, however, and Quaker Oats, the then owner of the brand, discontinued the image in 2020, during which time a variety of such depictions of brands were taken out of use by various companies.
Horrifying 1909 advertisement using the Aunt Jemima theme.


1935 Quaker Oats advertisement using a more familiar theme.

The name of the brand was changed completely to Pearl Milling Company, but interestingly minor use of the name and its branding continues by current owner, PepsiCo, so as to not have it become abandoned and become public domain.  Descendants of Robinson, it might be noted, protested the change in branding on the basis that ignored the history and heritage of the brand and American society, for good or ill.

Fr. Giovanni Minzoni, age 38, a Catholic Priest who opposed the fascist rule of Mussolini, was murdered in Argenta.  It is widely assumed that fascist Italo Balbo ordered his murder.


Balbo briefly resigned from office, but would return and was the Governor General of Libya when World War Two broke out.  He died in 1940 when an airplane he was a passenger in was shot down by friendly fire while trying to land at Tobruk.

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Blog Mirror: Old-fashioned Club Sandwiches

 I love Club Sandwiches.

Old-fashioned Club Sandwiches

Why am I posting this on Wednesday?

Because on Wednesdays I publish stuff that pertains to work.

I don't usually eat lunch, although recently, due to my messed up post surgery colon, and my messed up pre-surgery thyroid, I have been eating very light lunches.  Something like this I only have if I'm in a restaurant, and I'm only in a restaurant at noon if I'm doing so in some sort of work capacity.  When I do that, I always look for the club sandwich, if we're in a place I expect to have one. 

They're great.

Club Sandwiches trace back to New York of the late 19th Century, and seem to have appeared either at the Union Club of New York City or the Saratoga Club.  It's not clear which.  The first printed reference to them was in the Evening World, and referred to the Union Club. That was in 1889.  Amazingly, in this day and age in which social clubs have taken a pounding, the Union Club, which dates to 1836, still exists as a private social club.

Friday, May 12, 2023

Go ahead, living on pie and whiskey won't hurt you. . . .

Sen. John Barrasso@SenJohnBarrasso

Democrats’ runaway spending continues to fuel today’s high prices. 

@POTUS & Democrats refuse to cut spending even though the nation has blown past its limit. Families are worn out by Washington Democrats’ nonstop spending & worried about making ends meet.

barrasso.senate.gov

Barrasso: Democrats Refuse to Cut Spending Even Though the Nation Has Blown Past Its Limit

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, today issued the following statement after the April 2023 Consumer Price Index (CPI) revealed...

10:23 AM · May 10, 2023

A few observations. 

1.  The U.S. didn't have a budget deficit in 1835.

1835. That's it.

It had built up debt to pay down, but it didn't have a budget deficit, for that one year only.

This means "the Democrats did it" is devoid of historical accuracy.

2.  The recent massive public debt really began to ramp up during Gulf War II, which we fought on borrowed money.

The President who started that was a Republican. The President who finished it was a Democrat.

So again, "the Democrats did it" is, well, not really true.

3. The huge recent ramp up started during Donald Trump's administration, and continued on in the current one.

This got rolling in part due to COVID, but during the Trump Administration there was no loyalty to the "no debt" line of the GOP whatsoever.  

John Barrasso was there the entire time.

Joe Biden's early spending plans would have made it much worse, but Congress did partially reign that in.

By the way, we ramped up a huge one during the Cold War too, and the government basically inflated its way out of it.  I can't say that was intentional, but that is what occurred.

4.  Spending cuts?

Yes, they are needed, but cut all the non-discretionary spending but for defense to the bone, or just flat out, out, and this isn't actually fixed.

We are in a time of peril, but some of our defense spending remains stupid. We just launched, for example, a littoral combat ship of a class we're getting rid of.

At any rate, to really address spending, you need to touch entitlements, or raise taxes, or both.  Any politician who has examined this must know this, or be willfully blind to it.

5. Fuel prices?

In case nobody has noticed, one of the globes largest petroleum producers has attacked one of the world's largest grain producers.

Wars have impacts like huge boulder thrown in small ponds.  The Russo Ukrainian War has resulted in a massive disruption of Russian petroleum on the market and Ukrainian grain on the market.

Massive.

And every day, a massive amount of fuel is consumed in the war.

D'uh.

There should really be consequences for telling what amounts to half-truths, let alone untruths, to the public. But that would depend on the public being willing to listen to what it does not wish to hear.  In Wyoming, we wish to hear that 1) we can have high prices at the wellhead, and 2) high wages in extractive industries; and 3) free fuel at the pump.  Nobody wants to hear that we can't have those three. And no politician is really willing to admit it.

So, we suffer the consequences of our unwillingness not to hear that we can't have pie and whiskey for dinner, and be just fine.

But it will.

It'll kill you.

Friday, March 4, 2022

Wednesday, March 4, 1942. Counterstrikes

Today in World War II History—March 4, 1942: Two Japanese H8K flying boats bomb Pearl Harbor—no damage. Aircraft from USS Enterprise strike Marcus Island in South Pacific.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

If you were fighting the war, of course, it was a horrible day. . . if fighting was going on, which it was all over the world. But in terms of huge events, well, it was just another day in the war in some ways.

Operation K, the flying boat raid, had significant aspirations but was a flop.  It didn't do much, other than to remind everyone that Hawaii was still within Japanese air range.

H8K.  This one was in its last moments later in the war, just before the U.S. Navy, which took this photo, shot it down.

The round trip flight engaged in by the two Japanese aircraft from the Marshall Islands was nearly 5,000 miles in extent.

Marcus Island is the easternmost island of the Japanese archipelago and is extremely isolated.   The US bombed it repeatedly during 1942 and 1943, but never occupied it.


The remote island was first discovered by the Portuguese in 1694.  They didn't make a specific recordation of the location of the island, however, and it was not sighted again until British/Australian mariner Bourn Russell spotted it in 1830, noting that it was not on his charts, which of course it was not.  It was next sighted by an American evangelical mission to the Hawaiian islands in 1864. The first effort to occupy it commenced by a private Japanese expedition in 1886.

The United States and Japan both claimed the island early on, and in 1902 the US dispatched a warship to enforce its claims, but withdrew when it found the island occupied by the Japanese and a Japanese warship patrolling nearby.  The Japanese withdrew the civilian population in 1933 and made the island a military installation with a weather station and an airstrip.

The island was transferred to the United States in 1952, but in 1968 the US gave it back but continued to occupy it, having a substantial radio station there, whose antenna can be seen in the photo posted above from 1987.  The Coast Guard occupied the island until 1993, and then it was transferred to the Japanese Self Defense Force.

Tuesday, January 4, 2022

The probable end of the filibuster

Be prepared for a lot of ill-advised historically inaccurate hoohah about the Filibuster.


The filibuster, as we all know, is a "time honored" U.S. Senate tradition that meant, at one time, that debate could go on endlessly.  I.e., a bill could be talked to death.

Nobody really likes talking endlessly to nobody, so the real filibuster wasn't possible until the Senate changed its rules to allow endless talking in 1806, but even then it wasn't used until 1837, and rarely used at all up until. . . the 1970s.

Yes, the 1970s.

So it's a feature of our modern Congressional dysfunction.

The Senate, not much liking the actual act of having to stand there and talk, has a rule that it requires 60% of the Senate to vote to move most bills forward and close the debate.

But they can modify their rules by a simple majority vote.

They should. There's no Constitutional requirement that every measure receive 60% of the vote.  Up until the Obama Administration, most things that could get 50% could get 60%, but since that time things are so polarized that nothing happens.

That's setting us up for coup round two.

And it's antidemocratic. The filibuster should go.

And yes, that will mean that a government with a thin, thin, majority, can pass legislation.  And probably will.

And that will mean that a minority that's barely a minority will probably almost certainly pick up seats in the off year election.

So be it.

Our government isn't functioning . . . at all.  It needs to.

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Wednesday November 2, 1921. Rise of the House of Saud

The Emirate of Jabal Shammar, whose territory would comprise at least 30% of modern Saudi Arabia at its height, surrendered to the British backed House of Saud and was incorporated into the Saudi kingdom, which was not yet referred to by that name.   The rise of the Rashidi state had resulted in the elimination of the Second Saudi State, which comprised over 40% of the current country.  It's defeat on this date in 1921 brought the Sauds very close to controlling the entire Arabian peninsula, although their borders did not yet include territories that are now within them.

Emir Abudull-azia muteb Al Rasheed who died in battle against the Saudis in 1906.

The story is complicated and long-running. The Rashidi Emirate was established in 1836 and had feuded with the Saud's from the onset, exiling them to Kuwait.  Constant strife between the ruling family and the Sauds was a permanent feature of its existence, and the emirate had begun to lose ground to the Sauds starting in 1902 as they fought to regain their territory.  The emirates position was both strengthened and imperiled by its decision to ally itself with the Turks, who were unpopular on the Arabian Peninsula, where as the British backed the Sauds for nearly inexplicable reasons. To make matters worse, the  House of Rashidi was incredibly unstable, with no established means of succession.

Following the sitting emir's death in battle in 1906, Mutail bin 'Abulazia succeeded is father but was assassinated by Sultan bin Hammud within a year. That figure then became emir but was unsuccessful in turning back the Saudis and was killed by his brothers in 1907.   Saʿūd bin Hammūd then became emir and lasted until 1910 when he was killed by relatives.  That lead to Saud bin Abdulaziz who ruled for ten years, from age ten until twenty, when he was assassinated by a cousin.  Only twenty at the time, he already had multiple wives.

Following his death,  ʿAbdullah bin Mutʿib ruled for a year as the 7th emir, surrendered to Ibn Saud on this date in 1921.  He, too, was only twenty years old at the time.

The story plays out violently, as we might suppose.  Upon the surrender the wife of one of the grandsons of the original emir, the grandson being Muhammad bin Talāl and his wife being Nura bin Sabhan married Prince Musa'id bin Abdulaziz Al Saud while  Talāl  was imprisoned.  The Prince was the twelth son of Ibn Saud.  The Prince and his wife became the parents of Prince Faisal bin Musa'id who murdered King Faisal of Saudi Arabia in 1975.  So in essence the murderer of King Faisal represented a union between the House of Saud and the Rasheeds.  The reasons for the Ameican educated Prince's actions have never been satisfactorily explained.

Monday, May 3, 2021

The American System

You know that you are listening to PBS News Hour when one of the commentators is enthusiastic about the Biden infrastructure proposal as he finds it comparable to the Whigs' American System economic policy.

Henry Clay, one of the founders of the Whig Party and the chief spokesman for its American System.

I had to look that up.

It turns out that I was slightly, and I do mean slightly, familiar with the American System, but not by that name and mostly in the form of its lingering influence on the GOP during the 1860s, 70s and 80s. And I really know nothing about Henry Clay, its chief proponent, other than that he was well known at the time. According to the Congressional website on such topics:

Henry Clay's "American System," devised in the burst of nationalism that followed the War of 1812, remains one of the most historically significant examples of a government-sponsored program to harmonize and balance the nation's agriculture, commerce, and industry. This "System" consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture. Funds for these subsidies would be obtained from tariffs and sales of public lands. Clay argued that a vigorously maintained system of sectional economic interdependence would eliminate the chance of renewed subservience to the free-trade, laissez-faire "British System."

Clay delivered a famous speech on the topic, which we won't set out here as its of epic length. You can read it, however, here:  The American System.

The American System was the main economic platform of the Whigs and it was ardently, and now ironically, opposed by the Democrats.  The Democrats were pretty much a laissez-faire party at the time and opposed to government having much of any kid of role in the economy.

The Congressional summation of the American System doesn't appear to be a fair one. The breadth of Whig support for a government role in the economy was pretty wide.  For instance, it reached down to supporting public primary education, something that wasn't universal at the time.

It was ultimately the economic policies, and the overarching issue of slavery, that did the Whigs in, causing them to collapse in the 1850s. By that time the Southern faction of the party was no longer supportive of an expansive Federal role in the economy, where as the northern "National Republican" faction was.  Slavery, of course, became a massive issue in the party.  By the mid 1850s the party was flying apart and a collection of new parties rose up to contest for its former members.  In the north the Republican Party soon emerged.  In the South, Whigs remained without a structure, but opposed succession and then went on to loosely start to form an emerging party in the Southern Congress that never fully formed due to the war ending before that could occur.  The Confederacy was, of course, nearly a one party state.

People often discuss the legacy of the Whigs, but one early legacy was that the GOP was, initially, pretty proactive in using Federal money and Federal assets in the economy. The most prominent example of that was the Transcontinental Railroad which would not have come about without a degree of government planning, favoritism, spending and intervention.  So, PBS isn't out to a left wing lunch when its commentator makes this comparison.

It's interesting too, in that may in fact be a much closer analogy to what Biden is attempting to do than the New Deal.

That doesn't mean its a good idea, or that all of it is.  But it's a very interesting historical analogy.

Sunday, February 28, 2021

The Military and Alcohol. U.S. Army Beer 1943-1946

Patrons of a bar and grill in Washington D.C. in 1943.  The man on the left is drinking a glass of beer, and it appears the woman is as well.  Also, fwiw, the man on the left is a Technician with a Corporal's grade, which during World War Two was an E3 grade, as opposed to Specialist and Corporals today, which hold an E4 grade.  The man on the right is an officer, so this is frankly likely a posed photograph.  All three people are smoking cigarettes.

Alcohol and the United States Army would make for an interesting small book  in no small part because the United States itself has had a love/hate relationship with alcohol.

Beer can, perhaps, be regarded as the American alcoholic beverage of choice, reflecting both the climate and geography of the nation, as well as the English founding of the country.  While not to put too fine of point on it, the English were armed Germanic immigrants in the 5th Century and some cultural things go way back.  Everywhere north of some line in modern France, if you consider Western Europe, beer is the alcoholic beverage.  South of that, it's wine.  All the Mediterranean people of the ancient world drank wine and in those areas of that region which are not now Islamic, they still do.  North of that line, at some point, they drank beer, although you can easily find beers going back to the ancient Egypt as well, although frankly the Egyptian climate was somewhat different at the time.

In the Medieval world, north of the beer line, beer was a staple.  South of it, wine was.  This isn't necessarily good, but basically the ills associated with any sort of alcohol were lower than those associated with plain water.  I'm not going to go into that, as its a bit more complicated than it might seem, but that's the case.

Before I move on. . . yes, there's hard alcohol and every region of the globe seems to produce some.  Whiskey is a Celtic thing and it goes way back in its own right.  But there are few people and were few people who simply drink hard alcohol routinely in the Western world, and in those regions were it is routinely consumed, it's destructive.  So, with that, we'll move on.

In the early Colonial era there was no big temperance movement of a wide societal basis.  Indeed, one of the oddities of history is that religious denominations that today argue against alcohol and which trace their origin to the Puritans, and not all make that trace, don't reflect back what the Puritans believed at all.  The Puritans were against a lot of things, to be sure, but they were fans of beer (and [marital] sex), so people remember them inaccurately.  But one did start to arise in North America by the mid 1700s in the form of Native American groups who urged it given the devastation that alcohol was causing in their cultures.  Indeed, they'd organized a temperance organization as early as 1737.  Coupled with this the popularity of gin in the early Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom, which was a gross booze which could be manufactured cheaply, caused the movement to come about there as well.  

The early United States, however, was simply awash with alcohol and this, over time, gave force to the temperance movement, and by the mid 19th Century it was growing strong.

Issuing an alcohol ration is a strong military tradition in many armies, but reflecting the unique history of alcohol in the US, the tradition is much weaker in the U.S.  The American Navy, following the tradition of the Royal Navy, issued a Rum Ration, with Rum simply being any available hard alcohol, but in 1862 it abolished it.  In 1914, during the era in which Prohibition was coming on strong, the Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels completely banned alcohol in ships, meaning that the U.S. Navy went into World War One escort duties dry.  

The Army had an alcohol ration very early on.  Starting in 1775 Congress authorized soldiers an alcohol ration, and the ration was whiskey, in part reflecting a disruption of alcohol constituents that had been imported.  The is ration continued until 1832.  There was a separate spirts ration for military surveyors that continued on until the 1840s, but then it was also discontinued.

Since that time I don't know that there's ever been an alcohol ration in any branch of the military.  Indeed, the British discontinued their famous naval rum ration in the 1970s, so its likely disappeared or much less what it was everywhere.  The problem of obtaining clean water isn't what it once was, and its never been as big of problem in North America.  From the 1830s on soldiers could buy beer at post suttlers stores, but they were restricted in the amount they could buy.  I can't recall the restriction, but it was far below the amount you could drink and get drunk, which no doubt was the goal.  Of course, off base you could buy as much of anything as you might wish to, which is partially why saloons were a feature of every location with a frontier post.  Indeed, it was noted in the 19th Century that one of the problems of not having something like an Enlisted Man's Club, such as was later done, is that off post saloons were real dens of vice of all sorts.  Apparently this wasn't enough to motivate a change, but it was noted.  No alcohol ration was provided at any point through Prohibition.

This brings us to World War Two and this interesting item below, by Gary Gillman, a Toronto based beer blogger with an excellent blog entitled Beer, Et Seq.

U.S. Army Beer 1943-1946 (Part I)


I frankly don't know what was done beer wise from our point of entering the Second World War up through the end of the Vietnam War.  What is clear is that beer seems to have been provided on at least an ad hoc basis and therefore was a type of ration, even if on a somewhat informal basis.  Cigarettes had become one too, which had not been the case in World War One. The though likely was that you simply couldn't have that many people in uniform and not address such things, least they be addressed by the men themselves, which of course they also did.  Beer seems to have been provided on some basis in the Korean War and the Vietnam War as well, but not since then.  Indeed, recent wars in Islamic countries have been "dry", so to speak.

Anyhow, and interesting look at the US actually undertaking to brew beer during World War Two for servicemen's consumption.

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

The First Supreme Court. Who were they, and how many of them were there?

There were only six.  That number was set by the 1789 act establishing the Court.

The original Supreme Court heard very very few cases and much of its initial duties surrounded organizing the Court. The cases it heard were important, but the justices themselves had extensive extra obligations as they were also circuit judges, riding a circuit, for circuit courts.

John Jay was the first Chief Justice.  He served for six  years and went on to become Governor of New York.  He as confirmed in 1801 for a second term as Chief Justice, and declined it.

He lived for a long time after his retirement from politics, dying at age 84.

Jay was an opponent of slavery, although like many early opponents, had actually held slaves at one point in his life while still opposing slavery.

Scottish born James Wilson served until his death by way of a stroke at age 55.  He was one of the architects of the office of the Presidency.

His office did not cause him to escape misfortune and he spent his final years in poverty.

William Cushing served until his death at age 78.  He was the last Supreme Court Justice to wear a wig.  He was nominated to be Chief Justice and approved by the Senate, but declined the appointment. 

John Blair stepped down after five years on the Court, living another few years and dying at age 68.

John Rutledge  attained the position of Chief Justice on an interim appointment but he was subsequently rejected by the Senate. That and controversy surrounding his criticism of the Jay Treaty wrecked him and he stepped down prior to dying at age 60.

British born James Iredell maintained the position until his death at age 48, a death partially brought on by the burdens of riding circuit.

In 1801 the number of justices was reduced to five in an effort by outgoing President John Adams to limit Thomas Jefferson, his successors, picks.  That didn't last long and by 1807 the statutory number was seven, when a seventh judicial district was added. In 1837 it went to nine, by which time there were nine districts.  In 1863 it went to ten as there were ten districts.  In 1866 it was scaled back to seven, but then in 1869 it was put back to nine.

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Cooking Tech. How things have changed in the kitchen over the past two. . . or maybe three, centuries.

We've been taking a look at cooking and stoves here recently, getting back to more of the roots of this blog and its purpose.  

Frankly, we'd been remiss in doing that.  It's one of those areas that we should have explored, and in fact we did a little, but we didn't know, what we didn't know.  Or at least we didn't know it very well.

Back on August 8, 2009 (yes, this blog has been around that long, and actually as there's a prior variant of it, even longer than that), I posted an item here entitled The Speed of Cooking.  I'm resetting it out here:

The Speed of Cooking

I received an unexpected and surprising of how much things have changed even in my own lifetime this week, and in the kitchen at that.

Last week I happened to have to go to Safeway to buy some odds and ends, one of which was breakfast cereal. I'm bad about buying the same kinds again and again, so I decided to add some variety. It's been fall like here, so I decided to go with hot cereals for a change.

But not only did I decide to go with hot cereals, but I bought Cream of the West and Irish Oatmeal. That is, I did not buy instant Cream of Wheat, instant Oatmeal or quick oats.

Cream of the West is like old fashioned Cream of Wheat, except its whole wheat. Frankly, the taste is identical to "regular" Cream of Wheat. Irish Oatmeal, however, is really porridge, and it has to be cooked. It actually has to be cooked and allowed to stand, so it isn't speedy.

Anyhow, my kids have never had "regular" Cream of Wheat. They like "instant" Cream of Wheat, which has an odd texture and taste in my view. Sort of wall paper paste like. Anyhow, my son cooked some Cream of the West the first day I did, with us both using the microwave instructions.

He hated it. He's so acclimated to the pasty instant kind, he finds the cooked kind really bad.

Both kids found the porridge appalling. They're only familiar with instant oatmeal, and they porridge was not met with favor at all. I really liked it. It's a lot more favorable than even cooked oatmeal.

Anyhow, the point of all of this is that all this quick instant stuff is really recent, but we're really used to it. During the school year my wife makes sure the kids have a good breakfast every day, which she gets up and cooks for them. But it never really sank in for me how much our everyday cooking has benefited from "instant" and pre made. Even a thing like pancakes provides an example. My whole life if a person wanted pancakes, they had the benefit of mixes out of a box. More recently, for camping, there's a pre measured deal in a plastic bottle that I use, as you need only add water. A century ago, I suppose, you made the pancakes truly from scratch, which I'll bet hardly anyone does now.

A revolution in the kitchen.

Early posts here, as you can see, tended to be short.

Now, since that time I've also posted a major thread here on the revolution in the home, that became a revolution in the workplace, in the form of the advance of domestic machery;  That thread, which Iv'e linked into numerous others, is here:

Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took Rosie the Riveter out of the domestic arena, not World War Two


Post have grown in length, as you can also see.

Anyhow, given all of this, the ways that cooking has changed over what really amounts to a relatively short time frame should have occured to me.  And it sort of did, as I noted in this "Maytag" entry:

Today we have gas and electric stoves everywhere. But up to at least 1920, most people had wood or coal burning stoves for cooking.  They didn't heat the same way.  Cooking with a wood stove is slow.  It takes hours to cook anything with a wood stove, and those who typically cooked with them didn't cook with the same variety, or methods, we do now.  Boiling, the fastest method of food preparation, was popular.  People boiled everything.  Where we'd now roast a roast in the oven, a cook of that era would just as frequently boil it.  People boiled vegetables into oblivion.  My mother, who had learned to cook from her mother, who had learned how to cook in this era, used the boiling into oblivion method of cooking. She hated potatoes for this reason (I love them) but she'd invariable boil them into unrecognizable starch lumps.



Even something as mundane as toast required more effort than it does not.  Toasters are an electric appliance that most homes have now, but they actually replaced a simple device.




Indeed, if you think of all the electric devices in your kitchen today, it's stunning.  Electric or gas stoves, electric blenders and mixers, microwaves, refrigerators.  Go back just a century and none of this would be in the average home.  And with the exception of canned goods, which dated back well into the 19th Century, nothing came in the form of prepared food either.  For that matter, even packaging was different at that time.  If you wanted steak for five, you went to the butcher, probably that day, and got steak for five.  If you wanted ground beef, you went to the butcher and got the quantity you wanted, and so on.

But nonetheless, it didn't really occur to me that the cast iron stoves of early 20th Century, and late 19th, were an innovation in and of themselves, nor did I really think much about what cooking was like before that.

The recent A Hundred Years Ago thread on igniting a coal stove caused me to ponder this and take a look at what that was somewhat like.

Somebody already has, of course, and in this very interesting Internet article:

Foodways in 1910

I just linked this in recently to another post here.  One of the things that's interesting to me about it, in an odd sort of way, is that its on a website that's sponsored by a woodburning cookstove manufacturer.  Frankly, looking into this pretty much convinces me that I want nothing to do with wood, or coal, burning stoves, but anyway.

It did not occur to me, as part of that cast iron stoves of all types are really a byproduct of the Industrial Revolution.  But of course, they'd have to be.  It's not like average people are going to cast their own stoves.  So how far back do they really go. Well, that article gives us a pretty good look at that, noting:.
Most American homes did not have stoves until well into the 19th century, so cooking was done in an open hearth, using heavy iron pots and pans suspended from iron hooks and bars or placed on three-legged trivets to lift them above the fires. Pots and pans were made mostly of heavy cast iron. Along with long-handled spatulas and spoons, most kitchens featured long-handled gridirons to broil meat and toasting forks to hold slices of bread.
Though some women used Dutch ovens and some had clay ovens built outside, until after the Civil War when stoves with ovens became more common, people ate pancakes more often than bread. Because bread was hard to bake at home, most towns had bakeries. Bread was often the only prepared food that could be bought in town
That's a different type of cooking entirely.

And a different style of eating, for that matter.



Or, for those who use a cast iron frying pan alot, maybe not.



Well, anyhow. . .

Because it isn't all that long ago, it's one that we know a fair amount about, historically, even if we don't think about it much.   And due to reenactors of one kind or another, and historical sites that are accurate, we also can observe ir or even experience it if we wish to.  And thanks to the excellent Townsends series of vlogs about the late 1700s in North America, we can view the topic if we wish to.  Indeed, they've done a comparison and contrast edition of Colonial v. Modern kitchens, which is well worth looking at:



The part of this that's the real shocker, in my view, is the heath.  I.e., fires on bricks right in a house.

It's another one of those things I never would have thought of.

The video mentions smoke, which must have been a constant feature of life before modern stoves.  I've already mentioned the smoke from wood and coal burning stoves, but smoke from a hearth would be right in the house.    Life must have been. . . smokey.

And more than a little dangerous.

Before we move on, on that, we'll have to note cast iron here.  I love cast iron and indeed one of the additional "pages" on this blog is devoted to it.

Cast iron has been around for a long time, of course, but I frankly don't really know how long.  I can find references to it in Asia going way, way back.  At least 2,000 years.  It shows up for the first time in English in 679, but that use didn't refer to a cooking vessel, but a vessel of another type.  By 1170, however, it was showing up in references to cooking vessels.  The Dutch Oven was actually patented in 1708, later than I would have thought, however. At any rate, they've been around for awhile, and in their modern form are highly associated with sand casting, something that was coming in during the 17th Century.

There was obviously cooking in vessels before cast iron, but as this isn't the complete history of cooking from antiquity until the present day.  For the history we're concerned with, cast iron was undoubtedly the default cookware.  Indeed, it's well worth noting that Dutch Ovens were one of the most popular trade items with Indian tribes.  People think of guns, but cast iron was really valuable and rapidly became the Indian cookware of choice once it was available.

Anyhow, the important thing here is up until the Industrial Revolution really took hold, people cooked with fire in ovens and on hearths.  The fuel source was, according to the Townsends, whom I trust to get it right, wood or sometimes charcoal.  That would impact the type of cooking you'd do, of course, but perhaps not quite as much as I imagined as cooking over wood or charcoal does leave you a lot of options.

Cast iron stoves seem to have come in during the 1830s, as industry began to really change the average American's daily life.  It would be a mistake to think, however, that everyone had them overnight. They were expensive and, frankly, wouldn't have fit the way the average person's house had been built at the time.  Still, they may have come in pretty rapidly.  Just imagine what a revolution in cooking and simply life they meant.  No more building fires on the floor, for one thing, and that's a pretty big thing.  A fire that was more reliable, contained, and safe is another.

By 1900 coal was the main fuel for stoves and every family had one.  That was a big change over a period of time of less than a century.  By 1930, however, gas was replacing coal as the fuel for stoves, and no wonder.  It was cleaner and it didn't involve the constant endless cleaning that a coal stove did.  And for the first time some sort of heavy smoke didn't have to be contended with.

It's really gas stoves that brought in modern cooking.  Gas sped up cooking, for one thing, and it sped up the decision making process for meals as well.  Without  having to bank the stove and build the fire, and all of that, cooking, which had been an all day process was reduced down to one that was much less time consuming.  Electric stoves, which started to come in about the same time, accomplished the same thing.  Still, during the 1940s 1/3 of Americans still cooked with coal or wood, probably a partial effect of the Great Depression which slowed the introduction of new technology.  

Now, of course, hardly anyone does.

Thursday, July 30, 2020

Dreams of Past Glory

Last week I published an item here that showed a new map for Greece, published in 1920, which depicted the portions of Anatolia it believed it had separated from Turkey.  Cultural Greeks did live in those places, but they went far beyond those areas where Greeks were the majority.

And Greek troops went far beyond those places.

Italians took a set of islands off Anatolia as well.

Italy had already taken territory from the Ottomans by that time. More specifically, they'd taken Libya in 1912 as a result of the Italo-Turkish War.  Italians, in the form of Romans, had governed Libya at one time, but hadn't since the collapse of the Roman Empire.*  If a person wished to be more generous, Greco Roman culture hadn't governed there since the Byzantine Empire had been pushed out in 647, although at least one Christian city remained as late as the 1400s at the absolute latest.

Basically, both powers were asserting claims to territory they hadn't actually governed since 1453.

Yesterday we looked at the French conquest of Syria.  The French had been very influential in Syria. . . up until the 1190s.  At least that claim was there, however, which it really wasn't for Algeria which the French started colonizing in 1830.

What the heck, however.


*Italian immigrants would ultimately make up 20% of the Libyan population.

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Military Installation Names. What they were, and are, and how they got there. Part 2. Posts in Wyoming

Part 1 of this post was originally just a few introductory paragraphs before what was intended to be a discussion on Wyoming's posts, but it grew so large, we made it a separate entry.  Here we go on to the second part of the discussion, which was supposed to be the main point of the discussion.

The Wyoming Posts

Wyoming has had a large number of military installations over the years, but most of the posts that have existed within it are long closed, with some of them closed installations for over a century. Today, there are only three really substantial full time military posts in Wyoming, with two of those being National Guard facilities.  We'll take a look at those posts first.

Current Posts

1.  F. E. Warren A.F.B.

Ft. D. A. Russell, 1910.

Warren is named after Francis E. Warren, former Wyoming Senator and Governor and father in law to Gen. John Pershing.  He was also a Civil War Medal of Honor recipient, an award conferred on him post war.  Warren was a major Wyoming political figure during his lifetime.  The post wasn't named for him at first, however.  It was named for David A. Russell.

David A. Russell.

David A. Russell was a career officer and West Point graduate who was a casualty of the Civil War.  Russell had fought in the Mexican War and in the West at the Rogue River War, but had no direct connection with Wyoming of which I'm aware.  Russell was killed by shrapnel in September 1864 at Winchester, Virginia.

Ft. D. A. Russell was established in 1867, the same year that Russell was posthumously brevetted to Major General, and therefore just a few years after Russell's death.  It retained that name up until 1930, when President Hoover had the base renamed for the recently departed Francis E. Warren.

Francis E. Warren.

Warren was a legendary Wyoming political figure of the late 19th and early 20th Century.  He was the state's last Territorial Governor and it first State Governor.  He served in the Senate for a long time, dying in office in 1929.  He was also the recipient of the Medal of Honor for valor in action at age 19 when he was an infantryman of the 49th Massachusetts during the Civil War.  He was John J. Pershing's father in law.  The changing of the name of the post no doubt had as much to do with his long service as a politician as his military service.

The post became an Air Force Base in 1947.  It is perhaps somewhat unique for an Air Force Base as it doesn’t contain a runway.  It’s a strategic missile post.

This post, in the context of the times, provides an interesting example of a post being renamed.  For the first sixty-three years of its existence it bore the name of the unfortunate D. A. Russell, and for the next ninety it has borne the name of Francis E. Warren.  It's also interesting in that it provides an example of a post being renamed for a state political figure between World War One and World War Two.

2.  Camp Guernsey.



The heavily used National Guard training range is named after the town of Guernsey, Wyoming.  This post receives so much use that it is, for all practical purposes, a ground combat training range in constant use by the Army and the Marine Corps, as well as the National Guard.

This National Guard post went into operation in the summer of 1938 when it replaced the Pole Mountain Training Range.  The 115th Cavalry trained there in 38 and 29, and then was called into active duty in 1940.  Training resumed there after the Guard was deactivated in 1945 and has continued on every since.

Guernsey itself was named for C. A. Guernsey who was a local cattle rancher and author.  If viewed in the fashion of Ft. Laramie, therefore, Camp Guernsey was vicariously named for him.  It's interesting that unlike the numerous camps and forts established during World War One and World War Two all around the country, no effort was seemingly made to name it after a military figure, even though numerous Indian Wars battles had been fought in the state and the state had contributed men to the Spanish American War, Philippine Insurrection and World War One by that time.

Indeed, in that context, its surprising that's never been done, even though the Wyoming National Guard has now participated, in some fashion, in every war fought since statehood.

3.  Wyoming Air National Guard Base.


The unimaginatively named Air Guard base in Cheyenne is also heavily used and is called simply that.  It’s odd to think that this Air Guard base, which is extremely active, basically overflies Warren AFB, which as noted lacks a runway.

4.  Army National Guard Armories

At least one current National Guard Armory, the one in Douglas, was named after a long time serving National Guardsman.  Unfortunately, I've been remiss in recording his name and I wasn't able to find it when putting up this post.  I know that he'd served for a long time before World War One, served in the war, and then after the war, as the units full time enlisted man.  He was likely the only full time soldier at that post for much of that time.

The Armory in Rawlins, when it had one, was similarly named after a very long serving Guardsman, Darryl F. Acton.  Acton had been the full time enlisted man and the First Sergeant of the unit for a very long time and after his retirement it was named for him.  He outlived that designation, and therefore this entry more properly belongs below, as the Rawlins Armory was closed post Cold War when the National Guard was reduced in size. Today the Wyoming Department of Transportation occupied the building and the name no longer remains.  1st Sgt Action died in 2019.  His military service dated back to the Korean War.

Former and Closed in the 20th Century.

Not counting all of the National Guard Armories in the state, of which there a large number, including many which have been replaced or simply closed over the years, Wyoming still has a surprising number of 20th Century military post that were occupied at one time.  Many of these fit into the Frontier period with their establishment trailing on into the 20th Century, but a couple of them were World War Two installations.  We deal with them below.

1. Casper Army Air Base.  

Flag pole base of parade ground.

This enormous airfield was built during World War Two as a bomber training facility, opening in September, 1942.  It was transferred to the county following World War Two in 1949 and is now the Natrona County International Airport.  It continues to get a lot of military traffic including so much Royal Canadian Air Force traffic that I jokingly refer to it as the southernmost Canadian air force base.

A lot of the World War Two era buildings remain at this location, but almost all of them have been altered. A museum constructed in recent years, however, contains original World War Two era murals within it.



3. Heart Mountain Relocation Camp.



I'm not quite certain if I should regard this as a military installation or not, but given as there were troops there, I'll count it.

Heart Mountain came about when the Federal Government acted to move Japanese and Japanese American residents from the West Coast to the interior and keep them in camps.  The act was illegal, but it was done, resulting in one of the more shameful episodes in American 20th Century history.  One of the camps was Heart Mountain, which was opened in 1942 and remained open throughout the war, although Administration policies put in place in 1944 that started to allow for the return of the residents meant that by June 1945, prior to the end of the war, the population had been reduced by around 2,000 residents.  Given that over 10,000 people were interred there during the war, that meant that few had left by the war's end and in fact the last internees left the camp in November, 1945.  Given everything that occurred during the war return to their homes proved extremely difficult in many instances.


The state's reputation has been given a black mark by the existence of the camp even though the state didn't cause it to come into existence.  The state did enact discriminatory laws, however, during the war aimed at it residents, who were legal residents of the US or US citizens, so the state doesn't deserve a pass on it either.  The state definitely wanted the internees to leave once they could.

The land for the camp belonged to the Bureau of Reclamation prior to the war and when the camp closed it reverted to that ownership.  In the 1990s efforts were made to preserve what little remained of it and a state interpretive center was opened in 2011.

It's interesting to note that in recollections by the internees Heart Mountain is fairly uniformly regarded as a horrible place, whereas generally the entire Park County region it is in is regarded as one of the nicest places in the state.  This demonstrates how conditions define views.  The structures at the camp were regarded as temporary and were basically tar paper shacks, something that would be difficult to live in a Park County winter even if a person wasn't a prisoner.

This post, considered a pork barrel project at the time it was established, is one that  had a long association with the military horse in that the remount aspects of this post were a major give and take for the town.  The area where the post was located, Sheridan, had a substantial English ranching connection and a lot of high quality horse breeding occurred there.  Polo was introduced there and it remains in the form of the Big Horn Polo Club.  As noted, even after the post closed the Army remained in the form of an ongoing Remount program for years, even though the troops associated with it were technically serving on a distant assignment from Ft. Robinson.  Given this, the lack of importance the fort is generally viewed with really is not fair.

Ranald S. "Bad Hand" Mackenzie.  Mackenzie lost two fingers during the Civil War which is the probable reason for his nickname.

Ranald Mackenzie was a famous and tragic U.S. Army commander.  An 1862 graduate of West Point, he was a brilliant commander and was breveted to general in 1866.  Following the Civil War he distinguished himself in the post Civil War Indian Wars.  Even by the 1870s, however, he was showing signs of mental instability and was discharged from the service in 1884.  While his decline was commonly attributed to falling from a Wagon while stationed at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, there's fairly good reason to believe that it was due to the progress of syphilis.  The decline of his fame was such that his death was little noted in the press, even though he'd been a very well known and followed commander only a decade before, but he was sufficiently well remembered to be honored in the form of the name of this post.

Some years ago I posted photos of Ft. Mackenzie on another site, where they'd be of interest.  I just recently moved those over to one of our companion blogs, and therefore, while it may burden this thread a bit, I'm reposting them here as well:

Ft. Ranald Mackenzie (Sheridan Wyoming Veterans Hospital)
















5. Pole Mountain.  

Pole Mountain was an Army and a National Guard training range located at Pole Mountain, Albany County.  The range was used by both the Army and the Wyoming National Guard in the 20s and the 30s until Camp Guernsey was opened just prior to World War Two.  It’s National Forest today.

It was a cavalry training range during its existence, due to the presence of cavalry at Ft. Warren and in the Wyoming National Guard during that period.  The nearby presence of the Union Pacific Railroad allowed troops to be deposited at the area by train or to ride there from Ft. Warren.

6. Ft. Yellowstone.  


Fort Yellowstone in 1910.

Named after Yellowstone National Park, which it served, the post was established in 1886 for the purpose of administering the National Park, which was a task originally assigned to the Army.  Gen. Philip Sheridan dispatched the original cavalry detachment there which accordingly named the post Camp Sheridan, giving us an example of the naming of a Wyoming post after the living honoree, although only barely, as Sheridan was to die the following year at age 57.  The post was renamed Fort Yellowstone when it was given permanent status in 1891.  The Army occupied the post until 1918 when it was turned over to the National Park Service which had taken over the duties of park administration.

Today its Mammoth Hot Springs in the park.  Many of the original buildings remain.

This post had to offer its troops some of the best duty of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

7. Ft. Washakie.  

This post was named after Chief Washakie of the Shoshone was living at the time and in fact outlived the post, dying at about age 100.

Visit of President Arthur to Ft. Washakie, 1883.

The area has a somewhat complicated history in regard to the establishments of military installations.  The first post established there was Camp Augur, which was a subpost of Ft. Bridger.  It was established in 1869.  Augur was a Mexican war and Civil War general who was the head of the Department of the Platte at the time, giving us another example of the naming of an installation after a living figure, although it was a camp, not a fort.  While Camp Augur is regarded as the predecessor of Ft. Washakie, it was actually located where Lander Wyoming is located today.  It's purpose was to protect the Shoshones at the Wind River Indian Reservation and it was located at the Indian Agency headquarters.  In 1870 the camp was renamed Camp Brown, in honor of Cpt. Frederick Brown who was killed at the Fetterman Fight.

In 1871 the agency headquarters were moved fifteen miles to the north and the Army post went with it.  In 1878 the post was renamed Ft. Washakie.  The town that developed there is the seat of government for the Wind River Reservation and many of the military buildings remain in use.  

This post was one of two (the other being D. A. Russell) which at which the 9th Cavalry was stationed in the state for a time.

This post is unusual in that it was named after an American Indian, and a living one at that. It's occasionally claimed that it provides the only example of this being done, but that is disputed.

Former and closed in the 19th Century.  



Map by William Henry Jackson depicting Pony Express stations.  This is posted here as many of the same stations were used by the Army during the Civil War as small military posts.

This list will be incomplete.  There were many, many, temporary camps, stations and installations in Wyoming during the frontier period, many of which simply bore the name of where they were.  Indeed, my house is quite near one whose exact location is unknown.  Some of these which are remembered are because they were more established than the others or they're associated with a specific event.

On this, there's a couple of things we should note.

One is the presence of "stations".  During the Civil War the 11th Ohio and 11th Kansas Cavalry, and to an extent the 1st U.S. Volunteers, the latter of which were "galvanized Yankees" who were mostly from Tennessee in Wyoming's case, established a network of stations along the Oregon Trail to protect it and the telegraph line that had gone in.  Many of these were existing civilian locations that were thought deserving of protection in any event, but not all of them were. And not all of the existing civilian stations received an Army garrison.  This was a change in strategic thinking as it allowed patrols to be shorter and forced Indian parties that might have some destructive intent to deal with a much more extant military presence, even if the number of soldiers at any one station was often very small.  The strategy was quite effective.

Not all of the locations for these stations is presently known today. I’m presently within a few miles of three of them, two of which have known locations and one of which doesn’t, but is probably within several hundred yards of my house.

During the same period, and before, the Army also established a lot of camps, quite a few of which were very temporary in nature. Even ones that featured log structures were often only occupied fairly briefly.  These bases served campaigns in vast contested territories and had the chance of becoming permanent in some instances, although many did not.

1.  Camp Augur and Camp Brown.

See Ft. Washakie

2.  Fort Bernard

I'll abstain going into depth on this post, as it was a private American Fur Company trading post near Ft. Laramie.  This trading post had a surprisingly long life, existing from 1845 to 1866, when it burned down.

3.  Fort Bridger

Ft. Bridger is named for its founder Jim Bridger, who founded it as a trading post in 1842.  The post seems to have been sold by a partner of Bridger's to Mormon interests in 1855 during a period of time during which Bridger, who did not get along well with the Mormons, was absent.

Frontiersman Jim Bridger.  Bridger was a long lived individual for the dangerous life he lead.  Born in Virginia and orphaned in Missouri at age 13, he lived to age 77 and died on his farm in Kansas.  He was married three times due the deaths of his spouses, with each of his wives being a Native American.  His last was a daughter of Chief Washakie.  Of his several children, only one outlived him.

The post was burned in 1857 by the Mormons during the Mormon War in order to keep it out of U.S. Army hands, but they wintered there and rebuilt the fort as an Army post in 1858.  The Army thereafter occupied it against both of its prior owners until abandoning it in 1878. The Army then reestablished it in 1880, and then closed it again in 1890.

This post was one of the numerous frontier posts established by civilians who named them after themselves.  Occupied prior to the Civil War, the Army of that period simply retained the prior name.

2.  Ft. Caspar.  

This post amed for Lt. Caspar Collins who was killed at a battle with the Cheyenne at that location in 1865, prior to which it was Platte Bridge Station.

The post location was at a point on the North Platte River that could be forded and it had been used as a temporary military camp prior to Platte Bridge Station prior to the Civil War.  In 1849 a ferry was established on the location by the Mormon church.  French Canadian entrepreneurs established a bridge there shortly afterwards, and a trading post along with it.  When the telegraph line was put through the area, Western Union established a telegraph station there.  In 1861 the Army posted troops at the location, given its obvious importance,  naming the station after the Bridge.  In 1865 a battle was fought across the river from the location in which Lt. Caspar Collins was killed leading a relief party attempting to get to an Army wagon train that was some miles distant and being besieged.  The Army then named the post after the late Lt. Collins.

Statue of Collins in Casper, Wyoming.

The location was not named “Ft. Collins”, however, as the lieutenant’s father already had a post named after him, Ft. Collins, which is in northern Colorado.  Lt. Collins himself was a member of the 11th Ohio Cavalry which was stationed in Wyoming during the Civil War.  His actual post was Sweetwater Station and he just happened to be at Platte Bridge Station when the nearby Battle of Red Buttes developed and he volunteered to lead the relief party.  The post was closed as a result of Red Cloud’s War after which the Sioux burned it down.  It’s been rebuilt as a very nice city park and historical site.

Oregon Trail Memorials, Ft. Caspar Wyoming

This is an Oregon Trail memorial at Ft. Casper Wyoming. I somewhat wonder if the medallion on this one came from an older monument, as the medallion is a very common site along the trail on older memorials. At some point prior to World War Two a significant effort was made to place such memorials commemorating the trail, which in many locations had become state highways.

This is an even older Oregon Trail Memorial, also located at Ft. Caspar. As can be seen from the monument, it was placed in 1914. During this period, traveling on the trial itself was very common, as nearly every stretch of it was some sort of local road. Indeed, in some parts of Wyoming, this is still the case.

Once again, these monuments probably really do not belong here, but they are strongly associated with the history of Western movement, which involved a lot of sacrifice of all sorts by all involved.

This post has the distinction of being the first post in Wyoming to be named after a soldier who died in an Indian Wars engagement, signalling what would be a major change in naming conventions that was just beginning.

3.  Cheyenne Depot (Camp Carlin).


I'm going to leave this photograph as the description for this one, as its about all I know about a post that I would have regarded as an auxiliary to Ft. D. A. Russell.

3.  Deer Creek Station

Deer Creek Station was an Army station on the Oregon Trail that is near the present town of Glenrock.  Named simply for its location, its associated with a battle that took place on May 20, 1865 which was actually a series of engagements in the general area of the post.  In those actions groups of soldiers were attacked by more numerous parties of Indians but were able to hold off the attacks due to their superior arms.  Like Ft. Caspar, this post was abandoned at the end of Red Cloud's War and it was burned by Indians in August, 1866.

I just recently posted an item on this on one or our companion blogs, and hence will include that post here:

Deer Creek Station, Glenrock Wyoming.


In the last couple of days I've put up some photos of Frontier Era Army posts in the state which were taken years ago. All of those were originally posted elsewhere, but a change in how Photobucket operated made them difficult to view, and I was left wondering why I hadn't blogged those photos.  I know the reason why, actually.  It used to be hard to upload lots of photos onto Blogger.  That's changed.

Anyhow, this photograph is new.  This is the former location of Deer Creek Station.


The sign itself isn't placed on the exact location, actually.  It's near it, more or less, but really a couple of miles away.  I'd guess it may be 1 mile to 2 miles from the original post.  Anyhow, the sign does a good job of giving the history of the post, which started off as a civilian trading post in 1857 and which was occupied during the Civil War by state troops sent to police the frontier.  This post, like a collection of others, was burned by the Indians following the abandonment of the fort in 1866.




3. Ft. Fetterman.


Ft. Fetterman today.

This post was named after the officer of that name killed at “The Fetterman Fight” at a time at which his reputation was not yet tarnished, a process that was at least partially aided by the long efforts of his former commander, Col. Carrington, which is not to say that the fading of Fetterman's star wasn't deserved.

The post was built in 1867 just after the conclusion of Red Cloud's War in which Fetterman had lost his life.  It was a major post during its existence, although something about it caused it to have the highest insanity rate in the Frontier Army.  At the height of its importance it was a major staging area for the Powder River Campaign of 1876 which would see the Battle of the Rosebud as its major battle, and which occurred just south of Little Big Horn a few days prior to that battle.  Following the decline of Indian combat, it was abandoned as unneeded in 1882.  Most of the buildings were carted off following the posts closure and were used for the construction of a nearby and fairly infamous town that no longer exists.

4. Ft. Halleck 

Ft. Halleck was a large post established on the Overland Trail near Elk Mountain in 1862.  It was built to protect that trail, but it was abandoned, in spite of its size, in 1866 when Ft. Sanders was built near Laramie. By that time the Union Pacific Railroad had passed through the area which altered the strategic nature of patrolling this stretch of Wyoming, given as that could now be done with the assistance of rail.

Gen. Henry Halleck with an extraordinarily unusual kepi or forage cap.

The post was named after Gen. Henry Halleck who was living at the time.  He was a career soldier whose career was interrupted by an additional career of being a lawyer.  He had a mixed military record, but was good in subordinate commands and brought a spirit of professionalism to the Army.  He died in 1874 at age 56.

5. Ft. Phil Kearny.


Principally recalled for the disaster of the Fetterman Fight, and the somewhat redeeming battle of the Wagon Box fight, this post was named after Phil Kearny, a Union general who died at the Second Battle of Bull Run. This post was originally named Ft. Carrington by Col. Carrington, it’s first commander who never outlived the disgrace of the defeat of the Fetterman Fight. The post was burned to the ground by the Cheyenne following Red Cloud’s War.


The post proved to be poorly located and consumed a gigantic quantity of wood, which was one of its downsides.  Col. Carrington's career as an Army officer (he'd been a pre Civil War lawyer) was ruined by the events of the Fetterman battle, although he personally managed to escape being court martialed, an event that happened with blistering frequency in the 19th Century Army and which Grant had sought to do after the disaster.

The wealthy, eclectic Phil Kearny, who served in two American wars and two French ones, and who was married twice and divorced once.

Phil Kearny, we might note, was an unusual Army officer in that he was born into a wealthy family and inherited his family's wealth after his parents passed away while he was young. Raised by grandparents, he had always wished for a military career but went to law school and became a lawyer at his grandparents insistence.  He practiced law for four years but, upon the death of his grandfather, he received a commission in the Army and shortly went to France to study cavalry tactics at the famous French cavalry school, the Saumur.  While a student there, he actually went to Algeria with the French forces and served as a cavalryman, seeing combat, with the French.

Kearny thereafter lived an odd and adventurous life, twice resigning from the U.S. Army due to a lack of action going on within it, and then rejoining it.  He served in the Mexican War and the Civil War, in which he was killed, but he served with the French forces a second time as well, fighting with them against the Austrians.

Perhaps that all explains why this post in Wyoming was named after him.  Another already had existed, and ceased to exist, also named in his honor, outside of Washington D. C.  Neither post had long existences.

The naming of both posts, however, also shows how people should be considered in the context of their times, while also keeping in mind that absolute truths are universal.  Obviously Kearny's Army contemporaries admired him, and he was no doubt supremely interesting to be around.  He was highly educated and wealthy, with a taste for adventure.  He'd also served in two wars for a foreign power, one of which was a naked colonial enterprise.  We wouldn't admire that latter item today, but at least as late as the 1980s there were Americans who seriously entertained, and even served, in foreign wars that were comparable to some extent.

Ft. Phil Kearny was really unusual, we might note, in that it actually had a log post wall around it.  Frontier forts are commonly depicted that way in film, but few really were built in that fashion. This one was.  Today the location of the former fort is a nice State of Wyoming Park.

I photographed Ft. Phil Keany for another site some years ago, and I just reposted those photographs on our companion blog.  Given that, I'm reposting them here as they may be of interest.

Ft. Phil Kearny





























































5.  Ft. Laramie.  



Named for its location on the Laramie River this post started off as a civilian trading post named Fort William.  William Sublette founded the post in 1833/1834 and the post was initially named after him.  In 1841 the post was sold to the American Fur Company in 1841 and renamed Fort John in honor of John B. Sarpy, a partner in that company.  In 1849, following the end of the Mexican War, it was purchased by the U.S. Army and renamed Ft. Laramie, reflecting the fact that the post was routinely called Fort John on the Laramie River.  Laramie of the name was a French fur trapper who had the misfortune of disappearing in the location.  Jacques LaRamy, (by some spellings) donated his name, by that method, to the state and as a result the fort, two towns, a river, a county, a mountain range, and a geologic event are all named for him.



The post was a major Army post for decades and one of the most significant in the region.  It's importance declined, however, after the transcontinental railroad became fully established and then the end of active Indian campaigns in Wyoming further decreased its role.  The post was abandoned in 1889 and decommissioned in 1890.  Even though the Army removed fixtures of use in 1890 and locals further stripped the post after it was closed, the base was so well established that much of it remained when it was made a National Historic Site in 1931.

In terms of names, it's one of two posts in Wyoming that were basically named after thier locations, although in this case the name was simply inherited from prior use.  If a person views Fort Laramie as having been called that as a contraction of Fort John on the Laramie River, that's the case.  Of course, by extension, as noted, Jacques La Ramee (another spelling) contributed his name.  La Ramee was a Quebecois Metis who disappeared in the area in 1821 at age 37.  His death has been attributed to falling through ice and from an Arapaho raid, but nobody really knows what happened to him.

6. Ft. McKinney


The first Ft. McKinney, or Cantonment Reno, today.

There were two posts named this, both named after  2nd Lt. John McKinney, who went down in a hail of hostile gunfire in the Dull Knife Battle in 1877.  Given that he was a young officer at the time, he is somebody that I don't know anything else about.  He was assigned to the 4th Cavalry and was likely fairly new to the Army at the time.

The first post named after McKinney had been first named Cantonment Reno, which was established in 1876 as a staging area during the Powder River Expedition.  As a Cantonment the post, which was the second one located at that spot in the Powder River Basin was the second one in that location named Reno, as will be seen below.  It was renamed and repurposed as a fort the following year after McKinney's death, but the location proved to be a poor one for a sustained presence due to the lack of resources most of the year and the decision was made to move the garrison across the Powder River Basin in 1878. When the new garrison was built, it retained the name of the prior one, which of course had only recently been named. The new Ft. McKinney was manned until 1894 when it was closed.  In 1903 the grounds were turned over to the State of Wyoming and they are used today as the state's veteran's home.

Ft. McKinney played a notable role in Wyoming's history when cavalry form the location was dispatched to intervene in the Johnson County War.

Cantonment Reno is one of those locations I've photographed for another reason, and I just reposted those photographs on our companion blog.  Given that, I'll repost that item here:

Cantonment Reno (Ft. McKinney)












7. Ft. Reno.



This post is mentioned immediately above and, as noted, the name was used twice, making it have an odd legacy with Ft. McKinney, which one of the Reno posts became, as that name was also used twice.

Jesse L. Reno.

Both Reno installations were named after Maj. Gen. Jesse Lee Reno, a Union officer killed early in the Civil War.  He was not related in any fashion to Marcus Reno of Little Big Horn fame.  He was born in what was then Wheeling Virginia, and which became Wheeling, West Virginia, during the Civil War, making him an officer who hailed from a state that was severed in two by the Civil War.  He'd graduated from West Point prior to the Mexican War and had served continually, earning a reputation of being a "soldier's soldier".  He was killed by friendly fire while in advance of his troops reconnoitering the area, when one of his own soldiers mistook him for a Confederate.


The first Ft. Reno had originally been called Ft. Connor as it was established by Patrick Connor, a regional commander in Wyoming during the Civil War.  It was renamed for Reno after only bearing the name Ft. Connor in October and November 1865, the month of its establishment.  Like Ft. Phil Kearny, it was unusually for a Wyoming post as it had actual walls, which most frontier posts did not.

Patrick Connor

Patrick Connor, who first established the post and whom it was first name for, was a firebrand from Ireland who served a stint in the U.S. Army as an enlisted man before becoming a citizen in 1845.  As a private he saw frontier duty and fought in the Seminole War.  He served again in the Mexican War and was commissioned, resigning in 1847 due to rheumatism, at which time he was only 27.  He was a California Ranger after that and a California volunteer at the start of the Civil War.  His Civil War service was all on the frontier and was extremely active, although it was marked by actions that were rash and not always directed at the Indian parties that he was seeking to combat.  His headquarters were in Salt Lake City where he remained after being discharged from the service in 1866.  Unlike some of his contemporaries, his military service does not seem to have worn on him and he lived until age 71, dying in Salt Lake City.


8. Ft. Sanders

Ft. Sanders was surprisingly a Civil War contemporary of the other Civil War era forts and posts noted here. The post is generally obscure, even though it had a longer life than its contemporaries.

Not much remains of Ft. Sanders today.

Ft. Sanders was established near where Laramie now is in 1866 to guard the Overland Trail, but its location meant that it was located on the path of the Transcontinental Railroad and therefore its purpose converted to guarding it fairly quickly.  It soon bordered Laramie, which was established in 1869 with the establishment of the railroad.  It started to become redundant with the establishment of Ft. D. A. Russell, but it was none the less manned until 1882.

William P. Sanders

The post was named after Gen. William P. Sanders who was killed at the Siege of Knoxville, although that was its second name. Sanders was a West Point graduate who had barely graduated as the Superintendent of West Point at the time, Robert E. Lee, recommended his dismissal.  The Secretary of War at the time, Jefferson Davis, who was also his cousin, intervened and saved Sanders career.  He was killed in action in Kentucky at age 30, in 1863.  A position in the campaign in which he was killed was also named Ft. Sanders.

John Buford

This post was originally Ft. John Buford, who died of illness also in 1863. Buford, like Sanders, had southern connection and was also from Kentucky, and has also remained loyal to the Union.  Prior to the war he had seen frontier service as a dragoon and his military career had a lasting legacy in teh U.S. Army as he is associated with the development of bugle calls.  He died of typhus while serving in the field.

M8 Buford

Buford remains remembered in the Army and the M8 light tank, that was adopted but not put into service, was named after him.  He also had a fort named after him in what is now North Dakota which was manned from 1872 until 1895.  The town of Buford, Wyoming, is likewise named after him.  His legacy is oddly cut short, much like his life, in the things that were named after him.

9. Ft. Fred Steele. 



Named for Frederick Steele who rose to the rank of Maj. Gen. during the Civil War but who died as the result of an accident while experiencing ill health in 1868.  Somewhat fittingly, this is now the most depressing historical site in the state.

Ft. Fred Steele was built in 1868 specifically to provide security to the transcontinental railroad and, after its construction, was part of a three fort network, including Ft. Sanders and Ft. D.A. Russell that served that purpose.  The garrison of the fort in fact did use the railroad for transportation when needed, and its location, that was highly isolated, but at the same time centrally located on the rail line, made such deployments ideal.  The post dispatched troops as needed as far away as Chicago and deployed to put down the the anti Chinese riots in Rock Springs when that occured.  The garrison fought a major engagement in the White River War in 1879 at Milk Creek, Utah, that went very badly leading to the unit being besieged for a period of days necessitating additional deployments from the post and Ft. D.A. Russell.  The post was no longer necessary by the mid 1880s and it was abandoned in 1886.


Fred Steele himself was a career officer who had served in the Mexican War and the Civil War with distinction.  He saw immediate service in Texas and the Northwest following the Civil War but took medical leave in 1867.  He died due to an apoplectic fit that caused him to fall from a buggy in 1868.  The post, therefore, was named for him the very year he died.

10. Ft. Supply, 

Ft. Supply will be mentioned here, but as it was a private Latter Day Saints fort, and never an Army post, we'll just do that.  It was built in 1853 in what is now Uinta County and abandoned along with Ft. Bridger in 1857 during the Mormon War. Unlike Ft. Bridger, the Army did not rebuild it but only occupied the position briefly.

11. Sweetwater Station.  



Sweetwater Station was one of the numerous stations occupied by the 11th Ohio and 11th Kansas Cavalry during the Civil War, during that period of time in which they patrolled the Oregon and Overland Trails. This station was a significant one on the Oregon Trail.  Lt. Caspar Collins, who died at the Battle of Platte Bridge Station, was actually stationed at Sweetwater Station.

Perhaps somewhat fittingly, the location today remains a rest stop on the highway.

The station was on the Sweetwater River and was named after it.

12. Richard’s (Reshaw's) Bridge.


This station was informally but not officially named for the bridge and trading post owned by the individual of that name and had an occasional military presence dating back to November, 1855 when troops were first stationed there and the post was named Ft. Clay.  That following March the post was renamed Camp Davis and then abandoned that November after having been occupied for one year.  The post was occupied again in 1858 during the Mormon War, this time as Camp Payne, but then once again abandoned in 1859.


Richard was Quebecois and therefore the pronunciation of this name in the French lead to the phonetic "Reshaw".  The bridge was an important one in Central Wyoming on the Oregon Trail but it drew competition from Guinard's bridge, owned by fellow Quebecois, which was opened in 1859.  The Mormon ferry was located at that location as well. Because of this the importance of Reshaw's Bridge declined and the Army did not reestablish a regular garrison at the bridge when the 11th Ohio and 11th Kansas occupied the stations during the Civil War.  It was important during the 1850s, however, and the Army garrisoned it successively each time there was a need to, renaming the garrison three times.

So there we have the Wyoming installations.  What does that tell us about how the Army named its installations over the years?  We'll look at that next.

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Military Installation Names. What they were, and are, and how they got there. Part 1. Named for Confederate Generals