Blog Mirror: ERW Statement

ERW Statement

Today is Flag Day

June 14 is Flag Day, that date which honors the flag of the pattern we use, with the addition of course of stars, following its adoption by Congress in 1777.

With the country ripping itself apart, various groups using our differences against each other for their own purpose, and a society that's generally come about as close as it can to completely losing its moorings, before it loses its moorings, I bet little note will be taken of it.  It'd be easier today to have somebody burn that flag in protest or to wrap themselves in it in protest, than to find somebody to actually ponder and honor it.

The United States is a remarkable nation.  Not everything in its history is something we should be proud of, but much of it is, with its ideals as a republic, no matter how poorly realized from time to time, or ever, first among them.  We seem to live in a time in which only portions of those ideals, if any portion at all, is recognized by large sections of the nation.

Founded at a time when news traveled no faster than a horse, it's become a real question on whether a republic as large and diverse as ours can survive the age of idiotic Twitter, Facebook, and Electronic news.  The nation hardly even seems to have the energy to recognize itself as one to a large extent.  If a person's view was limited to what we're seeing currently today, a betting man wouldn't give it good odds for survival. For that matter, a betting man wouldn't give Western society very good odds either.  A person with a longer historical view would give both better odds, and be comforted by the lessons of history on discord, discontent, decay and decline, but only cautiously.

2020 is proving to be the Summer of Our Discontent, but we've been on this path for awhile.  It might be time to reflect getting off of it and looking for solid ground, but then that would mean not putting our own self interest constantly first.

Signs of the times.

Gone With The Wind has been removed by HBO from its demand offerings.  The film (I've never read the book) definitely has racist elements, but should they have done that?

In some recent posts here I've noted how the services have banned the display of the Confederate battle flag on their installations.

That was long overdue and I was quite surprised, really, that it was allowed in any form at all now.  Having said that, I didn't take into account coffee cups and bumper stickers and things like that, which would make up most of the impacted displays.  A search for official, or even unofficial, U.S. military use of the Confederate flag failed to reveal any, although a long serving soldier (now long retired) indicated that you would see it in Vietnam from time to time.  A search for that did reveal an obviously posed instance of that, but I don't know the context.

If anyone has any more on this story, please post it as a comment.

Anyhow, as a Westerner who always found the Confederate flag offensive and who grasps why it's offensive to blacks, this is a good move by the services even its probably mostly symbolic.  If it isn't mostly symbolic, it's long overdue.

I'll note, fwiw, that we've posted on the Confederate flag here as long ago as 2016, so we're not taking a new position to be in the current midstream of popularity.  That thread was one of the few here that got a lot of posts, mostly by upset and made people, and for some time after it was posted it'd suddenly become one of the most popular ones of a day or week, as probably mostly made people stopped in to view it for some reason.

There's also a move to rename the ten U.S. Army installations named after Confederate generals in the 1917 to 1942 time frame.  That's more complex and I'll post on it here soon.

On the Confederate flag, NASCAR has now banned it.

NASCAR has is origins as a Southern sport in a very distinct way, and it grew out of rum running.  Many of its early racers were rum runners. I've never warmed up to it and never know anything about it. Indeed, I've cited NASCAR as a reason that you shouldn't have people who don't participate in an activity regulate it, as if I was put in charge of NASCAR there'd be no NASCAR.  It's not that I don't like it, I don't get it, and accordingly its one of those activities that I don't care anything about and if left to run it, I wouldn't.

Anyhow, NASCAR is a Southern thing in its origin and as late as the 1980s its easy to imagine the "Good Ole Boys" of "Hazard County" driving to a NASCAR event in the General Lee, with the Confederate battle flag painted on the roof.  Now it isn't.

Of course, NASCAR isn't a Southern thing anymore either.  It's gone national. Still, seeing NASCAR ban the flag is actually pretty surprising and significant.  I'll be really curious to see where this all leads as I suspect, but may be in error, it'll provoke a bit of a counter reaction from some fans.  Having said that, it really isn't a Southern thing at all like it once was, so I may very well be way off the mark and this will pass without a note.

For that matter, we may actually be in an era, which started a few years ago, in which symbols of the Southern cause in the Civil War are losing their appeal to Southerners in general.  Confederate symbols have been removed from state flags to a large degree.  I don't know if any remain. Those symbols were incorporated in the 20th Century during the Lost Cause era, but have pretty much come back off in the last few decades.  That was controversial itself, but it doesn't seem to be now.  Maybe modern Southerners have lost their attachment to the "Blood Stained Banner" that was their third national flag.

The "Blood Stained Banner" is the nickname given to that flag, and it wasn't actually adopted, oddly enough, as the Confederate standard until March 4, 1865, about a month away from their ultimate defeat.  It was closely based on the square standard adopted on May 1, 1863, however.  That the Confederacy would run around worrying about flags in the Spring of 1865 gives insight to the human mind and how it self distracts.  In March 1865 Confederate troops were departing the service of the Confederacy en masse and the war was all but over.  Nobody was making flags at that time and adopting a new one was really silly, but then even after Hitler killed himself in May 1945 the successor German administration appointed a national postmaster, as if they were delivering the mail.

That last flag was incorporated on a lot of Southern official and unofficial things thereafter, from state flags to the cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd albums, but that was a 20th Century thing starting in the early 20th Century.* One hundred years later, the opposite is going on pretty quickly.

One thing that's also going on is the mass defacement of monuments, here and abroad.  Included in these are two Christopher Columbus statutes which are claimed to have been seen by the vandals as symbols of "white supremacy".

Defacing monuments, even controversial ones, is really problematic if they've been up for awhile and tend to be a symbol of virtue signaling.  An oppressed population tearing down a statute of a current oppressor, such as Iraqi's treating down statutes of Saddam Hussein, are one thing, but a population tearing down an old symbol, like Russians toppling statues of Lenin, or Americans toppling down statutes of Columbus, are hypocritical to a large degree.  The same populations that do that are often the same ones who were all keen on putting them up in the first place, and would be again today if it fit the zeitgeist.  A population expressing their current view about a current figure is one thing, mobs defacing things of the past are quite another and don't tend to pass the test of time well.

One reason for that is that every single living human being is a descendant, every single one, of thieves, murderers, rapists and colonizers without any exceptions whatsoever.  This doesn't excuse past injustices of any kind, but much of this sort of activity is based on the concept that some group is uniquely to blame and that doesn't pass the smell test.

Colonizers may have been doing something we don't approve of now, but in the past it was a universal human activity.  The Spanish in Mexico, for example, defeated an imperial power in the form of the Aztecs, and that's just one example.  And while moderns might like to wring their hands on the Spanish in 1492, both in the New World and in Spain itself (the year that the Spanish Reconquista was completed, which was regarded as much more significant at the time), if we want to go back and correct all colonial injustices we have to recall that the Spanish were the victims of Berber and Arab Islamic colonization, and that the Berbers and the Arabs were the victims of Islamic Arabian Peninsula colonization, which came some years after the fall of Roman colonization, which of course was simply following in the wake of Greek colonization. . . etc. etc.  

Indeed, the anti colonial concept didn't exist in the world in any concrete form until the American Revolution created it in 1776, and it took us a long time to really hone that.  It didn't spread as a concept notably until Simon Bolivar picked it up some decades later, and as a global concept, well that really took Wilson's Fourteen Points for it to become rooted.

So the basic gist of it is, that before you lop of Columbus marble head, you better first look closely at your own culture and find the colonizers in it.  There will be some. That doesn't mean that taking in that fashion is justified, but it does mean that it is to some degree a human norm.  The concept that it should not be is a Christian one, and if we're going to adopt that view, and we should, we need to adopt all of what goes with it, which people generally aren't too keen on doing.  

Indeed, those inclined to assault a statute can't be presumed in total to have adopted the only set of values that would hold that the deeds of man, much of which are negative, should be regarded as folly.  It's unlikely that very many attending to a statues defacing are then going on to express vows of poverty and chastity so as to make their act pure.  Probably hardly any, as in none.

Finally, a person has to wonder where the societal statute of limitations applies to such acts.  If current populations are allowed to deface a current symbol, as noted, that would be one thing. But if defacing a statute of a 15th  Century figure is a good thing to do, would it accordingly be a good idea to take down statues of Caesar and Alexander, where they might be found, given that those guys were perfectly okay with a lot of things we might find offensive today?  Should the Pyramids and Egyptian monuments be destroyed, their antiquity notwithstanding, on the basis that the Egyptians were pretty bad, pretty often?  There are thousands of such examples that could easily be made. The point is that if you can justify defacing fairly old statutes on the concept that they represent oppression suffered by you and your ancestors, pretty soon you end up acting like the Taliban and are blowing down ancient monuments in the desert in the name of your own personal sense of the definition of purity.

In terms of symbols, HBO is removing Gone With The Wind from its stable of on demand offerings.

Gone With The Wind is largely viewed as a great film, but it has racist elements without a doubt.  At least one of the female black actresses, Butterfly McQueen, simply hated her role as she was portraying her character which, under the old studio system, I don't blame her for a bit.  I.e, she was forced to play a demeaning and insulting role.  The portrayals of blacks in the film are insulting and the romantic portrayal of Southern planters absurd.

Still, it's a great film, and that's the problem.  The story is, for all its flaws, and there are some whopping ones, engaging to watch and the technicolor filming is awesome.  Clark Gable's wry smiles and glances in the film make it worthwhile to watch all in themselves.  At the same time, it's Lost Cause sentiments are rampaging insulting to anyone with a sense of what the Civil War was about.

HBO, by doing that, is engaging in a little bit of cinematic book burning, sort of.  Gone With The Wind isn't Birth Of A Nation by any means.  If some of it, indeed a lot of it, is shockingly racist to watch, well that might serve to remind us of what the Lost Cause era was like and why we are where we are now, in terms of African Americans still suffering what they suffer.  Gone With the Wind came out in the late 1930s and tells us a lot about the views of that time, coming as it did right before World War Two and a good decade before the Federal Government started its push towards civil rights.

If HBO, and for that matter, all of the entertainment industry, wants to act in virtue and not just virtue signal, it might take a look at more contemporary offerings.  Hollywood is all about looking good but at the same time it's all about violence in films.  If you watch nearly any television channel you'll stray across a police show at some point, and it won't be long, in which burnt out police are using questionable tactics along with burn out DA's using questionable tactics to bring in the bad guys.  Indeed, entertainment centered on police went somehow from Car 54, in the 50s, to the "law and order" presentations of the 70s, something that was reflective of a public reaction to the protests of the 1970s, and it's never really come back.  It's funny how an industry that is the flagship of "Me Too", rediscovering old values and branding them as new, so as to not have to really adhere to them in depth, hasn't really grasped this one yet.  If life imitates what passes for art, we shouldn't have much doubt on why we fall so short.

In other news, Starbucks, which like to do virtue signalling itself, is closing 400 stores in a shift to a takeout marketing strategy.  This is no doubt as a result of the Coronavirus Pandemic.

I'm not personally keen on Starbucks even though I really like coffee.  Part of this is simply because I don't like their coffee very much.  Quite a bit of it is, in my limited experience, blisteringly acidic.  I like good coffee but I don't like feeling that I just drank something that was brewed to strip paint from a merchant tanker making an overall call to a dry dock in Seattle.  But in addition to that I really hate chain merchants virtue signalling.

If a local store, whatever it is, takes a stand on something, well the more power to them.  They put themselves at risk by doing that, and I'll give them the thumbs up simply for doing it, and I trust they give me the thumbs up if I choose to eschew them thereafter as I don't agree.  That's the exchange in doing that, and that's to their credit.  But with chain merchants its just a bunch of hooey, in my opinion. Usually by the time they've done that they're grown so large that their local competitors are either nonexistent or so marginalized that the virtue signalling is risk free in the extreme.  That accordingly smacks of simply riding the zeitgeist.  I'd fully expect such chain outfits to support McCarthyism in one moment and oppose it in the next.  In most cases the risk is about the same as it would have been to support the war effort during World War Two or the National Recovery Act during the Depression.  M'eh.

I do feel differently, I should note, about entities that support something to do with their target market.  Grocery stores doing something on hunger, sporting goods stores doing something on conservation, and things of that type, mean something. Coffee shops doing anything other than worrying about hungry people or the conditions of the growers are another.

Anyhow, Starbucks is one of those outfits that I don't admire for the reasons stated above, but I also frankly don't admire how the American economy has come to so closely resemble the manufacturing of a Model A Ford.  It's an assembly line.  Coffee can be brewed by about anyone pretty easily.  Starbucks doesn't need to be on every corner.

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*Not to pick on Southern Rock, a mostly defunct musical genre, but the Confederate flag seemed to be really popular in that community at the time and its really difficult not to view that as a white Southern reaction to the Civil Rights era and its focus on the region.  The Lynyrd Skynyrd hallmark Sweet Home Alabama is itself a reaction to Neil Young's Southern Man, although Young himself thought he'd gone overboard with that song.

Southern Rock, which was based in the blues and therefore had a genuine Southern origin, was part and parcel of the other sorts of Southern electric music that traveled with and was part of rock music at the time.  All it was heavily blues based and its sometimes difficult to tell where the blues left off and rock genres began.  Swamp Rock, out of Louisiana, was another example, but even British rock like that of Ten Years After shared a lot of similarities.  As rock music moved increasingly into glitch and glam with the big hair bands of the late 1970s a lot of the more genuine rock music of the 50s, 60s and 70s started to fade away and today they very much have.  This was part of the reason for the rise of Country Music from the 80s to the present day.

Country Music has a heavy base in the South and its really a form of Southern music.  Association with the rural South or an imagined rural South is strong in it and while I can't think of any use of the Confederate flag within it, my guess is that it'll take steps to distance itself from the South of the Confederacy as well.  Indeed, as one odd example, I've often wondered what the name of the band Lady Antebellum was supposed to mean, and the association with the glorified Antebellum South is nearly impossible not to make.

Blood on our hands

The fate of prisoners taken in war uniformly depends upon the views of the captors, combined with their capacity to act in compliance with their ideals.

It's never been an enviable fate to be a prisoner taken in war.  And by that, I don't just mean prisoners of war, those combatants taken in battle, but also those individuals who become captives because of war.

In the Old Testament the Law modified the custom of the pagans in providing that women who were taken as prizes in war were allowed to morn their dead  husbands and were to be treated fairly by those Jewish captors who took them as prizes.  This is often misunderstood to mean that the Old Testament sanctioned taking widows of combatant opponents as forced brides.  It did not.  It restrained an existing universal custom by putting some elements of kindness and humanity into it.

And so commenced a long tradition in the Jewish world, and then the Christian world, of trying to treat prisoners of wars humanely.

It's not a universal norm, and it hasn't been even among those peoples who Christianity has reached.

During the Revolution, at least at the start, the British kept American prisoners, who after all were rebels, in horrible condition contributing to their high death rate.  A way out was to switch sides and join the British, which more than a few did.

During the American Civil War both sides, for much of the war, paroled enemy prisoners, simply sending them home on the promise not to fight again.  Some did fight again, and eventually both sides stopped the practice.  In the prisoner of war camps on both sides the conditions were awful, with those in the resource starved South the most horrific.

During the Boer War the British found it expedient to depopulate the countryside and make prisoners of the Boer women and children. The British have generally been decent, post 18th Century, to captives in war but these concentration camps had appalling conditions and many of the prisoners died.

During the Great War the Allied nations treated the prisoners it took fairly well, as they did those that they interned during the war. The Germans less so, but still not like what was to come.

During World War Two a soldier surrendering to the Allied in Europe, who survived the tense first moments of that experience, were treated quite well.  The Germans were less kind, once again, to western Allied POWs in their hands, ultimately shooting quite a few in one spectacular instance of mass escape from Stalag Luft III.

In the east, it was different.  The Germans were brutal to Russian prisoners, assuming that they survived the experience in the first place.  The Soviets reciprocated as the war went on.  Civilians on either side ran great risks from the enemy in their midst.  Civilian foreign prisoners of the Germans faced dreadful uncertainties.

Of course, anywhere, prisoners falling into the hands of the SS risked death for that reason alone.

In the Pacific, the Japanese tried to avoid surrendering, and as the war went on the Allies didn't make much of an effort to take them prisoner.  Allied soldiers falling into Japanese hands were horrifically treated, and civilians weren't treated much better.

During the Korean War prisoners of the United Nations forces were fairly well treated.  UN POWs were not well treated by the Communists.  ARVN and US troops who fell into North Vietnamese hands were horrifically treated by the North Vietnamese.  Treatment of NVA and VC prisoners by the South Vietnamese was mixed.

The point?

All of this points out the difficult nature of this question to start with.

And now the Turkish army is set to overrun the areas of northern Syria held by the Kurds.

And he Kurds are holding a lot of ISIL prisoners, including a lot of women and children of ISIL combatants.

Under the Christian world view the west possesses, whether it is willing to admit the origin of that view or not, these people are people, and they should be allowed to live as humanely as possible. And while I suppose its possible that the Kurds have been acting in this manner is due to their own views, I sort of doubt it.  My guess is that prisoners of war of one Middle Eastern combatant who fall into the hands of another, or just prisoners in general, aren't treated really well.

I could be wrong, of course.

In any event, in very quick time, the Kurds will have to leave these prisoners.  I don't think they'll hang around to do a change of flag ceremony.

So, what will become of them?

Well, we're not going to take them.

The Kurds might simply kill them.  That's horrific, but its expedient, and the Kurds have plenty of enemies, don't need any left alive, and don't have a lot of time. 

Or they might let them go, in which case these still very radical ISIL adherents will see their situation as a just perseverance vindicating their views, and go on to be trouble for us, Syria, and Iraq. Trouble we don't need. 

President Trump has suggested that its a European problem as they were "headed to Europe". Maybe some would head to Europe, but trouble for Europe doesn't help us.  And disregarding a problem and suggesting its a European problem will come back to haunt us.

Or perhaps they Turks will overrun them. They don't want to deal with them either, however, and what happens next isn't clear.  They won't hold them for years.

Maybe they'd turn them over to the Iraqis, or the Syrians.  It'd certainly be better to be turned over to the Iraqis.  The fate of people turned over to the Syrians would be grim.

All of this, of course, is something we wouldn't have to face if we hadn't have gone into Syria in the first place. But we did. And we supported the Kurds whom we're now abandoning. By doing that, we encouraged the Kurds to hold the prisoners we did.

So we are responsible for whatever occurs.

August 20, 1619. Slavery comes to British America

The date isn't known with precision.  Only that it occurred in August.  But this date, August 20, is used as the usual date for the event when a slaver arrived off the port at Port Comfort, Virginia, carrying 20 to 30 African who were held in bondage and sold into slavery.

The event marked the return of the English to being a slave owning society.  Slavery had been abolished by the Normans after conquering Anglo Saxon Britain in 1066 and while it's common to see claims of other types of servitude, including involuntary servitude, equating with slavery, they do not.  Slavery is unique.

And late European chattel slavery, which commenced with the expansion of European powers into African waters and into the Americas, was particularly unique and in someways uniquely horrific.

Slavery itself was not introduce to African populations by Europeans; they found it there upon their arrival, but they surprisingly accommodated themselves to participating in it very rapidly.  Europeans had been the victims of Arab slavers for a long time themselves, who raided both for the purposes of acquiring forced labor, and fairly horrifically, for forced concubinage, the latter sort of slave having existed in their society for perhaps time immemorial but which had been licensed by Muhammad in the Koran.  Arab slave traders had been quite active in Africa early on, purchasing slaves from those who had taken them as prisoners of war, an ancient way of dealing with such prisoners, and the Europeans, starting really with the Portuguese, seemingly stepped right into it as Europe's seafaring powers grew.

Having waned tremendously in Europe following the rise of Christianity, European powers somehow found themselves tolerating the purchase and transportation for resale of Africans for European purchasers by the 15th Century, with most of those purchasers being ultimately located in the Americas.

The English were somewhat slow to become involved.  It wasn't clear at first if slavery was legal under English Common Law and the English lacked statutory clarification on the point such as had been done with other European powers.  Early English decisions were unclear on the point. However, starting with the 17th Century, the institution worked its way into English society, even as opposition to it grew from the very onset.

The importation of slaves to English populations was not limited to North American, but it was certainly the absolute strongest, in the English speaking world, in England's New World colonies.  While every European seafaring power recognized slavery by the mid 17th Century, the really powerful markets were actually limited to the Caribbean, English North American, and Portuguese Brazil.  European slavery existed everywhere in the New World, and no country with colonies in North America was exempt from it, but it was strongest in these locations.

And slavery as reintroduced by Europeans was uniquely abhorrent.  Slavery, it is often noted, has existed in most advanced and semi advanced societies at some point, but slavery also was normally based in warfare and economics nearly everywhere.  I.e., it was a means of handling conquered armies, conquered peoples, and economic distress.  The word "servant" and "slave" in ancient Greek was the same word for this latter reason.  In eras in which resources were tight and there was little other means of handling these situations, slavery was applied as the cruel solution.

But it wasn't raced based.  The slavery that the Europeans applied was. Even Arab slavery, which was ongoing well before the Europeans joined in and continued well after, was not based on race but status.  If a lot of Arab slaves were black in the 17th Century, that was mostly due to an environment existing which facilitated that. Earlier, a lot of forced concubine Arab slaves, for example, were Irish.  The Arabs were equal opportunity slavers.

Europeans were not.  European slaves were nearly always black, and even examples of trying to note occasions in which Indians were held as slaves are very strained.  And because it was raced based, it took on a unique inhuman quality.  Slavery wasn't justified on the basis that the slaves were prisoners of war that had fallen into that state, but that the state was better than death, nor were they held on the basis that they had sold themselves or had been sold into servitude due to extreme poverty, and that was better than absolute destitution.  It wasn't even justified on a likely misapplied allowance granted by Muhammad for slaves that were held due to war, and could be used for carnal purposes, reinterpreted (I'm guessing) for convenient purposes.  It was simply that they were black and, therefore, something about that made them suitable for forced labor.

And forced labor it was.  Servants in the ancient world had often been servants and even tutors.  While it did become common in North America to use slaves as household domestics, most slaves in North America performed heavy agricultural labor their entire lives.  It was awful and they worked in awful conditions.

And it tainted the early history of the country in a way that's ongoing to this day.  With opposition to its reintroduction right from the onset, but the late 18th Century it was clear that its abhorrent nature meant it was soon to go out everywhere.  Almost every European country abolished it very early in the 19th Century, which is still shockingly late.  It was falling into disfavor in the northern part of the British North American by the Revolution, in part because agriculture in the North was based on a developed agrarian pattern while in the South the planter class engaged in production agriculture (making it ironic that the yeoman class would be such a feature of the American south).  The pattern of agriculture had meant that there were comparatively few slaves in the north.  This is not to say it was limited to the South, however.  Slavery even existed in Quebec.

With the Revolution came the belief that slavery would go out, but it didn't.  By that time the American South had a huge black slave population.  Slavery would if anything become entrenched in the South, where most of the American black population lived, and it would take the worst war in the nation's history to abolish it.  So horrific was that war that even today the descendants of those who fought to keep men slaves sometimes strain the confines of history to find an excuse for what their ancestors did.  And following their Emancipation, the nation did a poor job of addressing the racism that had allowed it to exist.  It wasn't until the second quarter of the 20th Century that things really began to change, with the Great Migration occurring first, followed by a slow improvement in status following World War One, followed by a rapid one after World War Two that culminated in the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

But the stain of slavery lingers on in innumerable ways even now.  Having taken to slavery in 1619, and having tolerated it for over two hundred years thereafter, and having struggled with how to handle the residual effects of that for a century thereafter, we've still failed to really absorb the impact of the great sin of our colonial predecessor.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?"
We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.
We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.
We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.
We can never be satisfied as long as our chlidren are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "for whites only."
We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.
No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exhalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Rev. Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963.

August 10, 1919. The Motor Transport Convoy rests in Laramie. Troop A, New Jersey State Militia Reserve trains at Denville.

The Motor Transport Convoy spent their Sunday in Laramie on this day in 1919.

The weather was "fair and cool", which would be a good description of most summer days in high altitude Laramie, which has some of the nicest summer weather in Wyoming.  Wind and rain in the late afternoon is a typical feature of the summer weather there.

In New Jersey, where the weather probably wasn't fair and cool, Troop A of the New Jersey State Militia Reserve was training.

Troop A, New Jersey State Militia Reserve, at Denville, New Jersey.

State units during World War One and World War Two are a really confusing topic.  All states have the ability to raise state militia units that are separate and part from the National Guard, but not all do. Generally, however, during the Great War and even more during the Second World War, they did.

State units of this type are purely state units, not subject to Federal induction, en masse. Their history is as old as the nation, but they really took a different direction starting in the Spanish American War.

Early on, all of the proto United State's native military power was in militia units. There was no national army, so to speak, in Colonial America. The national army was the English Army, which is to say that at first, prior to the English Civil War, it was the Crown's army.  That army was withdrawn from North American during the English Civil War of the 1640s and 1650s, in which it was defeated.  During that decade long struggle British North America was defended by local militias.  When British forces returned, which they did not in any numbers until the French and Indian War, it was the victorious parliamentary army, famously clad in red coats, which came back.

Not that this was novel.  Early on all early British colonies were also defended only by militias. The Crown didn't bother to send over troops to defend colonies, which were by and large private affairs rather than public ones anyhow.  At first, individual colonies were actually town sized settlements, with associated farmland, and they had their own militias.  Indeed, as late as King Philip's War this was still the case and various towns could and did refuse to help other ones and they had no obligation to do so.

Later, when colonies were organized on a larger basis, the proto states if you will, militia units were organized on that basis, although they were still local units.  I.e., towns and regions had militias, but the Governor of the Colony could call any of them out. That gave us the basic structure of today's  National Guard, in a very early fashion, and in fact that's why the National Guard claims to be the nation's oldest military body with a founding date of December 13, 1636.

Colonial militia's fought on both sides of the American Revolution, depending in part upon the loyalty of the Colonial governor at the time they were mustered as well as the views of the independent militiamen.  They formed, however, the early backbone of the Rebel effort and indeed the war commenced when British troops and militiamen engaged in combat at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775.

The Revolution proved the need for a national army to contest the British Army and hence the Continental Army was formed during the war and did the heavy lifting thereafter.   Militia, however, remained vital throughout the war.  Following the British surrender, there was no thought at all given to keeping a standing national army and it was demobilized and, for a time, the nation's defenses were entirely dependent upon militias, with any national crisis simply relying upon the unquestioned, at that time, ability of the President to call them into national service if needed.

The lack of a national army soon proved to be a major problem and a small one was formed, but all throughout the 18th and the first half of the 19th Centuries the nation's primary defense was really based on militias, with all males having a militia obligation. The quality of militia units varied very widely, but by and large they rose to the occasion and did well.  Interestingly enough, immediately to our north, Canada, a British Colony, also relied principally on militias for defense and its militias notably bested ours during the War of 1812.

The system began to demonstrate some stresses during the Mexican War during which New England's states refused, in varying degrees, to contribute to the nation's war effort against Mexico.  A person can look at this in varying ways, of course.  While we've taken the position here that the Mexican War was inevitable and inaccurately remembered, the fact that the Federal government had to rely upon state troops did give states an added voice on their whether or not they approved of a war.  The New England states did not.  The Southern states very much did, which gave the Mexican War in its later stages an oddly southern character.

The swan song of the militia system in its original form came with the Civil War.  Huge numbers of state troops were used on both sides, varying from mustered militia units that served for terms, to local units mustered only in time of a local crisis, to state units raised just for the war.  But the war was so big that the Federal Army took on a new larger role it had not had before, and with the increase in Western expansion after the war, it was reluctant to give it up.  Militia's never again became the predominate combat force of the United States.  Indeed, there was long period thereafter where the militia struggled with the Army for its existence, with career Army officers being hugely crabby about it.

That saw state militias become increasingly organized as they fought to retain a military role, and  by the Spanish American War they were well on their way to being the modern National Guard.  The Dick Act thereafter formalized that.  But the Spanish American War, which was also very unpopular in New England, saw some states separate their militias into National Guard and State Guard units, with State Guard units being specifically formed only to be liable for state service.  Ironically, some of the State Guard units that were formed in that period had long histories including proud service in the nation's prior wars.  This split continued on into World War One which saw some states, such as New Jersey, muster its National Guard for Federal induction but its State Guard just for wartime state service.

That pattern became very common during the Great War during which various states formed State Guard units that were only to serve during the war for state purposes.  Naturally, the men who served in them were men who were otherwise ineligible for Federal service for one reason or another, something that has crated a sort of lingering atmosphere over those units.  When the war ended a lot of states that had formed them, dropped them, after the National Guard had been reconstituted.  

This patter repeated itself in World War Two during which, I believe, every state had a State Guard.  After the Second World War very few have retained them, and most of the states that have, have a long history of separated militia units.  Today those units tend to provide service for state emergencies, but they also often serve ceremonial functions.  An exception exists in the form of the Texas State Guard, which was highly active on the border during the Border War period, and which was retained after World War Two even after the Federal Government terminated funding for State Guard units in 1947.  They've continued to be occasionally used in Texas for security roles.

In New Jersey, we'd note, the situation during the Great War was really confusing, as there were militia units organized for the war, as well as separate ones that preexisted it.  A lot of those units would soon disappear as the National Guard came back into being, although New Jersey is one of the few states that has always had a State Guard since first forming one.

Okay, maybe I don't care if football players (who are individual people) take the knee, but keep your Corporation's "opinion" to itself.

Note, this is one of the many draft posts that I started a really long time ago, and then never finished.  I have on the order of 300 posts, most barely started, that fit that description.

Writer's block?  No, just the nature of available time.

Anyhow, this item oddly shows right back up in the news again.

Some time back I posted on football players "taking the knee" during the playing of the National Anthem.  As anyone who read it may have noted, I'm sort of generally lukewarm on any opinion there, unlike a lot of people I see (if Facebook is any guide).  I.e, I didn't have a fit about football players taking the knee and, absent an individual athlete's protest reaching the level of that of the 1968 Mexico City, Olympics, I generally don't get too worked up about that.

At the same time, I also tend to disregard individual opinions of people who have risen to fame through their athleticism or because they're entertainers.  Recently, for example, I read where Beyonce was expressing opinions at a concert of some fashion.  It would be nearly impossible for me to care what Beyonce's opinion on anything at all actually is.  Indeed, I thought her daughter's instruction to "calm down" at a recent awards show was pretty much on the mark.

But opinions, particularly social opinions, by corporations really aggravate me.

Recently this has become particularly common, and while I'll give a few entities a pass, it smacks to me of being blisteringly phony.  If corporations, as a rule, suddenly endorse something that's been recently controversial, the issue has probably actually become safe to express.

What this amounts to, of course, is belated virtue signalling, and it's phony.  Corporations main goal, indeed, their stated and legal goal in almost every instance, is to make money for their shareholders.  That's their purpose and focus, and when corporations suddenly take up a cause, what they are often really doing has nothing to do with values and everything with trying to co-opt a movement for profit or not offend a group that's been lately in the news and has obtained financial power accordingly.

Indeed, it's frankly much more admirable when a corporation has a stated position that it adheres to in spite of financial detriment.  The fact that they know an opinion will be unpopular and they stick with it probably says its a real belief.

Which gets back to the perceived views of people in general.  If you look out at a crowed of people supporting anything, or in modern terms posting their support in some fashion on Facebook or Twitter or the like, probably over half, and I'd guess around 2/3s, have no strong convictions on the topic at all. They may believe they do, but in other circumstances they'd be there supporting the other side equally lukewarmly.

Today is American Independence Day.  The day came in the midst of a truly bloody war.  Around 23,000 Americans lost their lives in the war fighting for the Revolution, including those who died of disease, and a nearly equal number were wounded in an era when being wounded was often very disabling.  The British took about 24,000 casualties of all types, meaning they took fewer than the Americans.

But among the "British" were a sizable number of American colonist who fought for the Crown.  Up to 1/3d of American Colonist remained loyal during the war to the United Kingdom.  Only about 1/3d of the American Colonist supported independence or the revolution at all.  The remaining 1/3d took no position.

Even at that, it's not all that difficult, retrospectively, to find example of combatants who fought on both sides of the war.  Some captured American troops were paroled with the promise to fight for the British, and did.  The times being murky and records difficult to keep, some men just fought on both sides depending upon how the wind seemed to be blowing, a risky course of action, but one that some did indeed take.

Howard Pyle's illustration of Tory Refugees.

After the war those die hard Loyalist who couldn't tolerate living in the United States, including many who were so outed as Loyalist they had little choice on that matter, relocated to Quebec where there descendants are still sometimes self identified by initials that note an honorific conveyed by the Crown.  But 1/3d of the American population didn't pull up stakes and relocate, which tells you a lot.  And what that conveys is that a lot of people who thought that the Colonies were making a mistake just shut up.  Indeed, it proved to be the case during the War of 1812 that British soldiers met with sympathy and assistance in Virginia as they marched on Washington D. C., and that was because many Virginians, in that state which had been a colony, of course, retained a higher loyalty and sympathy with the United Kingdom than they did the United States.

But if you read most common commentary today you'll be left with the impression that the Americans, and by that we mean all of the Americans, were eager to shake off the chains of British tyranny.  And I'd wager that as the war began to turn in Congress' favor that view became common at the time and that it really set in by the time the American victory became inevitable.  So most of the men who spoke quietly in favor of King George III at the Rose and Thorne, or whatever, on Saturday nights in 1774 were praising George Washington by 1781.

This commentary, I'd note, isn't directed specifically at Americans in the 1700s by any means, but is more broader.  There are big exceptions to the rule of the get along nature of human opinion to be sure, for example I think the Civil War may be uniquely an exception to it, but people shouldn't make any mistake about this in general.  During the 1930s a lot of trendy social types teetered on the edge of real Communist sympathy while some conservative figures in the country spoke in admiration of Mussolini's and Hitler's governments in their countries.  By 1941, however, everybody in the country was an outright die hard opponent of fascism and militarism.  By 1950 nobody had ever been a Communist sympathizer, not ever.  

In 1968 and later a lot of young Americans protested vigorously about the American role in Vietnam. Quite a few of them vilified American servicemen.  By mid 1980s the same people were backing the troops and by the 1990s quite a few of them were for other foreign wars.

If this suggests that people's stated opinions are fickle and can't be trusted its meant to.  I was in university during the Reagan Administration and a college student would have had to been cavalier or in very trusted company to express any kind thoughts at all about Ronald Reagan.  One of my most conservative in every fashion friends of long standing would openly declare that Reagan was going to reinstate the draft and send us all to fight in Nicaragua, which was just the sort of nonsensical opinion common at the time.  One young computer employee in the geophysics department was unique not only because he was an early computer genius, employed with their super computer that probably is less powerful than a modern cell phone, but because as a recently discharged Navy submariner he was an adamant and open Anti Communist.  Nobody openly expressed views like that.

Which isn't to say that a lot of people didn't think them.

Which is also not to say that a lot of those same people, in the presence of the granola chick at the bar, didn't express the polar opposite.*

Which gets back to the topic of corporations.

If people's confused and muddled approach to what they declare their views is quite often the rule rather than the exception, this isn't the case with corporations.  More often than not, their goal is the bottom dollar.  They're looking out at the confused and muddled crowed and assuming its focused and distinct, and they then leap on board because they want to sell you pants, shoes, or whatever.  and that's cynical even if its self confused cynical.

Which is all the more reason to ignore, or actually buy from the company that is open about just wanting to sell you goods because that's what they do.

*Which recall Zero Mostel's character's line in The Front as to his reason for becoming a Communist.

June 14--Flag Day

Today In Wyoming's History: June 14--Flag Day:

June 14--Flag Day

Today is Flag Day

The reason for the day being Flag Day is explained immediately below.  This is a Federally observed day, but it is not one of those holidays that has been statutorily moved to a Friday or Monday and made a three day weekend holiday.  Indeed, while it is a noted date, it is technically not a holiday.

1775  The Continental Congress created the Continental Army.  The act formed the army out of existing units that had been mustered or raised by the thirteen colonies which were already serving in the field, and it also authorized the enlistment of volunteers directly into a Continental Army, with units that were directly formed for national service.

The nature of the Army at that time is somewhat confusing for people only familiar with the modern Army.  Most of the American military establishment at the time was based upon colonial units, with militia being a very significant portion of that.  The states, during the Revolution, both mustered militia for service and raised state units.  Some loyalist militia was also mustered, so the war had the odd character of local musters of competing loyalties.  The British forces sent to North American were entirely made up of a regular forces, a force which we'd now be familiar with, but which saw the majority of British and Hessian enlisted men serving under lifetime enlistments, a very common type of European enlistment at the time.  The United Kingdom authorize wartime enlistments for the Revolution, showing hos seriously they took it, which was a novelty for the British at the time.  French soldiers serving in North America during the war, like their British compatriots, were professional soldiers.

Because the creating of a national army was authorized on this day, this is viewed as the "birthday" of the U.S. Army.  That first Continental Army, however, saw the amalgamation of a lot of troops who were actually serving in state enlistments, a feature of U.S. wartime armies that would continue up through the Civil War, but which rapidly passed away thereafter.

1777 Continental Congress adopts the Stars & Stripes as the national flag. 

Flag Day. June 14 (1917 and 2017)

1917 Flag Day Poster noting the 140th anniversary of the adoption of the Stars & Stripes.

It's always on June 14.

The date commemorates the adoption of the Stars and Stripes as the on July 14, 1777 as the national standard.  The day was established as a commemorative day by proclamation of Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and then National Flag Day was proclaimed an official commemoration, but not a national holiday, by Congress in 1949.

 Woodrow Wilson delivering his 1917 Flag Day address.

Wilson used the occasion to deliver a speech:

My Fellow Citizens: We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this flag which we honour and under which we serve is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation. The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence above the hosts that execute those choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it speaks to us. —speaks to us of the past, * of the men and women who went before us and of the records they wrote upon it. We celebrate the day of its birth; and from its birth until now it has witnessed a great history, has floated on high the symbol of great, events, of a great plan of life worked out by a great people. We are about to carry it into battle, to lift it where it will draw the fire of our enemies. We are about to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it may be millions, of our men. the young, the strong, the capable men of the nation, to go forth and die beneath it on fields of blood far away, —for what? For some unaccustomed thing? For something for which it has never sought the fire before? American armies were never before sent across the seas. Why arc they sent now? For some new purpose, for which this great flag has never been carried before, or for some old. familiar, heroic purpose for which it has seen men, its own men, die on every battlefield upon which Americans have borne arms since the Revolution?

These are questions which must be answered. We are Americans. We in our turn serve America, and can serve her with no private purpose. We must use her flag as she has always used it. Wo are accountable at the bar of history and must plead in utter frankness what purpose it is we seek to serve.

It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The extraordinary insults and aggressions of the Imperial German Government left us no self-respecting choice but to take up arms in defense of our rights as a free people and of our honour as a sovereign government. The military masters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral. They filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf. When they found that they could not do that, their agents diligently spread sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance, —and some of those agents were men connected with the official Embassy of the German Government itself here in our own capital. They sought by violence to destroy our industries and arrest our commerce. They tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance with her, —and that, not by indirection, but by direct suggestion from the Foreign Office in Berlin. They impudently denied us the use of the high seas and repeatedly executed their threat that they would send to their death any of our people who ventured to approach the coasts of Europe. And many of our own people were corrupted. Men began to look upon their own neighbours with suspicion and to wonder in their hot resentment and surprise whether there was any community in which hostile intrigue did not lurk. What great nation in such circumstances would not have taken up arms? Much as we had desired peace, it was denied us, and not of our own choice. This flag under which we serve would have been dishonoured had we withheld our hand.

But that is only part of the story. We know now as clearly as we knew before we were ourselves engaged that we are not the enemies of the German people and that they are not our enemies. They did not originate or desire this hideous war or wish that we should be drawn into it; and we are vaguely conscious that we are fighting their cause, as they will some day see it, as well as our own. They are themselves in the grip of the same sinister power that has now at last stretched its ugly talons out and drawn blood from us. The whole world is at war because the whole world is in the grip of that power and is trying out the great battle which shall determine whether it is to be brought under its mastery or fling itself free.

The war was begun by the military masters of Germany, who proved to be also the masters of Austria-Hungary. These men have never regarded nations as peoples, men, women, and children of like blood and frame as themselves, for whom governments existed and in whom governments had their life. They have regarded them merely as serviceable organizations which they could by force or intrigue bend or corrupt to their own purpose. They have regarded the smaller states, in particular, and the peoples who could be overwhelmed by force, as their natural tools and instruments of domination. Their purpose has long been avowed. The statesmen of other nations, to whom that purpose was incredible, paid little attention; regarded what German professors expounded in their classrooms and German writers set forth to the world as the goal of German policy as rather the dream of minds detached from practical affairs, as preposterous private conceptions of German destiny, than as the actual plans of responsible rulers; but the rulers of Germany themselves knew all the while what concrete plans, what well advanced intrigues lay back of what the professors and the writers were saying, and were glad to go forward unmolested, filling the thrones of Balkan states with German princes, putting German officers at the service of Turkey to drill her armies and make interest with her government, developing plans of sedition and rebellion in India and Egypt, setting their fires in Persia. The demands made by Austria upon Servia were a mere single step in a plan which compassed Europe and Asia, from Berlin to Bagdad. They hoped those demands might not arouse Europe, but they meant to press them whether they did or not, for they thought themselves ready for the final issue of arms.

Their plan was to throw a broad belt of German military power and political control across the very centre of Europe and beyond the Mediterranean into the heart of Asia; and Austria-Hungary was to be as much their tool and pawn as Servia or Bulgaria or Turkey or the ponderous states of the East. Austria-Hungary, indeed, was to become part of the central German Empire, absorbed and dominated by the same forces and influences that had originally cemented the German states themselves. The dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have had a heart nowhere else! It rejected the idea of solidarity of race entirely. The choice of peoples played no part in it at all. It contemplated binding together racial and political units which could be kept together only by force, —Czechs, Magyars. Croats, Serbs, Roumanians, Turks, Armenians, —the proud states of Bohemia and Hungary, the stout little commonwealths of the Balkans, the indomitable Turks, the subtile peoples of the East These peoples did not wish to be united. They ardently desired to direct their own affairs, would be satisfied only by undisputed independence. They could be kept quiet only by the presence or the constant threat of armed men. They would live under a common power only by sheer compulsion and await the day of revolution. But the German military statesmen had reckoned with all that and were ready to deal with it in their own way.

And they have actually carried the greater part of that amazing plan into execution! Look how things stand. Austria is at their mercy. It has acted, not upon its own initiative or upon the choice of its own people, but at Berlin's dictation ever since the war began. Its people now desire peace, but cannot have it until leave is granted from Berlin. The so-called Central Powers are in fact but a single Power. Servia is at its mercy, should its hands be but for a moment freed. Bulgaria has consented to its will, and Roumania is overrun. The Turkish armies, which Germans trained, are serving Germany, certainly not themselves, and the guns of German warships lying in the harbour at Constantinople remind Turkish statesmen every day that they have no choice but to take their orders from Berlin. From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is spread.

Is it not easy to understand the eagerness for peace that has been manifested from Berlin ever since the snare was set and sprung? Peace. peace, peace has been the talk of her Foreign Office for now a year and more; not peace upon her own initiative, but upon the initiative of the nations over which she now deems herself to hold the advantage. A little of the talk has been public, but most of it has been private. Through all sorts of channels it has come to me, and in all sorts of guises, but never with the terms disclosed which the German Government would be willing to accept. That government has other valuable pawns in its hands besides those I have mentioned. It still holds a valuable part of France, though with slowly relaxing grasp, and practically the whole of Belgium. Its armies press close upon Russia and overrun Poland at their will. It cannot go further; it dare not go back. It wishes to close its bargain before it is too late and it has little left to offer for the pound of flesh it will demand.

The military masters under whom Germany is bleeding see very clearly to what point Fate has brought them. If they fall back or are forced back an inch, their power both abroad and at home will fall to pieces like a house of cards. It is their power at home they are thinking about now more than their power abroad. It is that power which is trembling under their very feet: and deep fear has entered their hearts. They have but one chance to perpetuate their military power or even their controlling political influence. If they can secure peace now with the immense advantages still in their hands which they have up to this point apparently gained, they will have justified themselves before the German people: they will have gained by force what they promised to gain by it: an immense expansion of German power, an immense enlargement of German industrial and commercial opportunities. Their prestige will be secure, and with their prestige their political power. If they fail, their people will thrust them aside; a government accountable to the people themselves will be set op in Germany as it has been in England, in the United States, in France, and in all the great countries of the modern time except. Germany. If they succeed they are safe and Germany and the world are undone: if they fail Germany is saved and the world will be at peace. If they succeed, America will fall within the menace. We and all the rest of the world must remain armed, as they will remain, and must make ready for the next step in their aggression: if they fail, the world may unite for peace and Germany may be of the union.

Do you not now understand the new intrigue, the intrigue for peace, and why the masters of Germany do not hesitate to use any agency that promises to effect their purpose, the deceit of the nations? Their present particular aim is to deceive all those who throughout the world stand for the rights of peoples and the self-government of nations; for they see what immense strength the forces of justice and of liberalism are gathering out of this war. They are employing liberals in their enterprise. They are using men, in Germany and without, as their spokesmen whom they have hitherto despised and oppressed, using them for their own destruction, —socialists, the leaders of labour, the thinkers they have hitherto sought to silence. Get them once succeed and these men, now their tools, will be ground to powder beneath the weight of the great military empire they will have set up; the revolutionists in Russia will be cut off from all succour or cooperation in western Europe and a counter revolution fostered and supported; Germany herself will lose her chance of freedom; and all Europe will arm for the next, the final struggle.

The sinister intrigue is being no less actively conducted in this country than in Russia and in every country in Europe to which the agents and dupes of the Imperial German Government can get access. That government has many spokesmen here, in places high and low. They have learned discretion. They keep within the law. It is opinion they utter now, not sedition. They proclaim the liberal purposes of their masters: declare this a foreign war which can touch America with no danger to either her lands or her institutions; set England at the centre of the stage and talk of her ambition to assert economic dominion throughout the world; appeal to our ancient tradition of isolation in the politics of the nations; and seek to undermine the government with false professions of loyalty to its principles.

But they will make no headway. The false betray themselves always in every accent. It is only friends and partisans of the German Government whom we have already identified who utter these thinly disguised disloyalties. The facts are patent to all the world, and nowhere are they more plainly seen than in the United States, where we are accustomed to deal with facts and not with sophistries; and the great fact that stands out above all the rest is that this is a Peoples' War, a war for freedom and justice and self-government amongst all the nations of the world, a war to make the world safe for the peoples who live upon it and have made it their own, the German people themselves included; and that with us rests the choice to break through all these hypocrisies and patent cheats and masks of brute force and help set the world free, or else stand aside and let it be dominated a long age through by sheer weight, of arms and the arbitrary choices of self-constituted masters, by the nation which can maintain the biggest armies and the most irresistible armaments, —a power to which the world has afforded no parallel and in the face of which political freedom must wither and perish.

For us there is but one choice. We have made it. Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way in this day of high resolution when every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made secure for the salvation of the nations. We are ready to plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall wear a new lustre. Once more we shall make good with our lives and fortunes the great faith to which we were born, and a new glory shall shine in the face of our people.

Not surprisingly, the speech featured the crisis of the hour, World War One, which the US had of course just entered.

It is coincidentally the birthday of the United States Army as well, which was created by Act of Congress on June 14, 1775 in a fashion on that date.  The act actually authorized the enlistment of ten companies riflemen in Continental service for a period of one year.  It seems at the time that expansion of a Continental Army was contemplated at the time and positions associated with it began to appear within days of the June 14 original authorization date.

Related Posts:  June 14 on This Day In Wyoming's History, which features some similar items on this day.

The Wyoming National Guard and the Punitive Expedition

I'll confess, in making this post, that I have a soft spot for the National Guard.  In no small part that may be because I was in the Army National Guard for six years.  From 1981 to 1987, I was a member of the HHB 3d Bn 49th FA.  It is, in my view, one of the unqualified smart things I did after turning 18 years old, i.e., in my adult life.

 I've repeated this photograph of mustered Wyoming National Guardsmen from Powell several times, but its' the only such photo I have ready access to.  There are other photos of the Wyoming National Guard from this period, but not which I'm certain as to the rights to publish to.  This photo is quite interesting. The Guardsmen are dressed in the what appears to be the current pattern of Army uniform including the newly adopted M1911 campaign hat. They carry M1903 Springfield rifles which were then quite new (and in this case probably almost brand new manufacture).  They carry bed rolls rather than back packs, however, showing the retention of a Frontier Army method of carrying personal equipment.

Having been in a Guard unit, however, does make you cognizant of how unfairly they are sometimes viewed.  My unit, the 3d Bn 49th FA, was rated as combat ready the entire time I was in it and it often had the highest combat rating that the Army recognized, higher than many Regular Army units.  That it was highly rated isn't a surprise when it is considered that everyone who was in the unit wanted to be there. Moreover, in the early to mid 1980s the unit was really still in the wake of the Vietnam War and it was full of Vietnam War combat veterans.  The unit even had some Korean War combat veterans still in it, including a couple who had served with the Guard in the Korean War, and there was one remaining World War Two veteran, although he wasn't a combat vet.  Suffice it to say, the depth of knowledge in the unit was vast.  If we were, on average, older than a comparable Regular Army unit, we were also a lot more experienced as a unit as well.  Not too many Regular Army artillery units had men who wore Combat Infantry Badges nor did very many Regular Army units have NCOs who had been officers in the Marine Corps or Navy.  We did.

So, in that context its  hard not to feel a little insulted by the term "weekend warrior", although admittedly you don't hear that much anymore given that so many Guard units have served overseas in our recent wars.  Even so, its definitely the case that the Guard hasn't received its due over the years, sometimes simply by default, but sometimes because its been unfairly slighted.

Anyhow, given as we've been posting nearly daily here for awhile on the Wyoming National Guard in 1916, it  might be nice to fill that story out a bit.   What was the unit?  What was it like?  What became of it?  It's a story we haven't really told here.  And for that matter, it's a story we haven't told on our companion site on Wyoming history, This Day In Wyoming's History.  We really should.  

Indeed, we thought about posting this as a sidebar there, and we in fact will, but we will post it first here, as this blog is the one that's really been looking into 1916.

But in order to do that we need to go back a bit further, indeed, all the way back.  Prior, that is, to 1776.  If we don't, we can't really understand the story of the National Guard in any context.

For most of this nation's history the bulk of our military manpower hasn't been in the Regular Army, it's been in the militia.  And that was both by accident and design.  Few now realize it, but every American had a militia obligation prior to the 20th Century, an obligation that has been transferred over to the Federal government by statute but which many state's still retain as an uncalled upon obligation as well.  Prior to at least the Civil War, however, the obligation was very real indeed.

In the Colonial era all men of military age, which was generally men over 16 up until age 60, were members of the militia.  The militia mustered at least once a year to drill; not much training, but it was an era when not much training time was available and such training as there was often took little time.  Failure to make muster was a crime, but then generally most people somewhat looked forward to the muster as it was the occasion for a community party as a rule.  Colonial militias, early on, did a lot of fighting however, almost all of it in brutal Indian wars the nation has more or less forgotten.  Some spectacularly violent Colonial wars, such as King Philips War, were entirely fought, on the colonist side, by militias.

When the Revolution broke out it was militia that really filled the ranks of the American forces, keeping in mind that state units were little removed from militia even if purpose raised for the conflict.  This would be the pattern all the way through the Civil War.  A Continental, i.e., regular, Army was raised, but it was state units that formed the ranks everywhere.  Units raised by the individual thirteen colonies and dedicated to the conflict alongside the national army, and local militias called out for individual fights.  Indeed, the term "Continental Army" doesn't even make sense until a person stops to consider that it was drawn from, and fought for, the entire continent (ignoring the fact that the Spanish on the continent and the French, and well even 1/3d of the English colonist in the thirteen colonies didn't agree with that suggestion).  This army defeated the British army on the continent although its worth noting that the British also used a militia system, although they did not attempt to deploy mustered English militiamen beyond their shores, at least not until World War One.  They did deploy colonial militia, however, during the Revolution themselves, something that's often somewhat forgotten, and some Minute Men mustered for the Crown, not the Congress.

 American troops evacuating New York, 1783.

Following the Revolution, Congress sought to  avoid having a large Regular Army, so it didn't.  The founding fathers were well aware that standing armies were a threat to a democratic government, and indeed to any government. They all knew the example of the Praetorian Guards in Rome well.  And if, in hindsight, that example seems remote, France reminded us of how current it remained when the French Army deposed the Republic and ultimately put a new Emperor, Napoleon, on the thrown of allegedly Republican France.   The US didn't want a big standing Army.  It needed a standing Navy, but navies, being deployed or deployable at sea, rarely pose a threat to their government.  So a small army it would be.  The land forces of the United States would be principally vested in the state militias with it being acknowledged that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."  In the event of war Congress would rely mostly on state troops, was the thinking, and state part time troops wouldn't pose a threat to the republic and might even form its guardian in the event of undemocratic impulses somewhere.

Only in really big wars was it necessary to go much beyond that.  It proved necessary to do so during the War of 1812, although the Federalized militias formed the bulk of the US forces then. Ironically, in Canada, it would be mustered Canadian militias that would toss the  American forces back out, proving that a force nearly entirely made up of militias, the Canadian one, was adequate to defeat a force made up mostly of militias, the American one.  The Mexican War also saw the mustering of state troops, some raised just for the war, the latter of which were nearly a species of militia.  

This latter example was the rule for the Civil War in which both sides fought with regular armies, but which also saw both sides commit the bulk of their forces in the form of state forces.  That's forgotten by some but the Union and Confederate armies were not simply national armies by quite some measure.  The Confederate regular army was actually quite small.  The Union one was bigger, but the bulk of the Union forces were state troops raised for the conflict, a type of mustered militia.  Pre war militias also fought as Federalized units during the war, and quite often non Federalized militias, in both the North and the South, were mustered when the war came to their areas. The Battle of Gettysburg, for example, provides a classic.  The Union forces included units that were Regular Army units as well as many state units, but even the militia from Gettysburg itself fought on the first day (successfully, it might be noted).

New York militia in camp, Harper's Ferry.

The Civil War was the high water mark of the old militia system. By that time war was becoming increasingly more complicated and hence required increasingly more formal training.  Pre Civil War militia varied enormously in every measurable respect, although Congress had sought to provide some uniformity, and some equipment, right from the onset. After the war the United States government sought to impose more uniformity on state militias so that they would match more closely the United States Army.  Generally, state militias were happy to cooperate and conform to Federal requirements wherever they could, with Federal assistance.  In some rare instances, however, state units would actually exceed the Army in some respect, such as the New York National Guard, which was equipped with better arms than the U.S. Army was in the late 19th Century.

 Rhode Island Zouave, Civil War.  Popular with some New England states (and there being at least even one Confederate such unit) these units were regarded as elite and patterned their dress after French North African troops.  In Union service they tended to be issued the M1863 .58 variant of what had been the M1841 .54 rifle which ad the advantage, if it was one, of taking a huge sword bayonet.

By the Spanish American War most states had a National Guard that was equipped with Federal equipment, although it was often the case that the Guard's equipment was older than the Army's.  Federalized National Guard units in the Spanish American War, for example, often had old Army uniforms rather than the current ones.  Nonetheless they were brought up to Army standards for the war and the following Philippine Insurrection.

 8th Illinois, 1899.  This was a black Illinois militia unit.  The uniforms are correct for the period but are a pattern that was being phased out of the Army at that time and wouldn't be around much longer.

The Spanish American War and the Philippine Insurrection were the last instances in which states raised forces specifically for the war, although this was done within the context of mustering the National Guard.  Wyoming, for example, sent over 1400 men to those wars which was far more than served in its very small pre war National Guard.  Indeed, while Wyoming had a National Guard dating back to territorial days, it had been minuscule and the ranks of its state units, raised just for the war, swelled during the Philippine Insurrection.

 By the Spanish American War and Philippine Insurrection war photography had begun to take on a more modern appearance.    California and Idaho troops in churchyard at San Pedro Macati, Philippines.

During the Philippine Insurrection Wyoming contributed the 1st Wyoming Infantry Battalion and the Wyoming Light Battery to the war, units that were formed principally from mustered Wyoming National Guard units.  This is complicated, however, by the fact that the Army was authorized (or more properly instructed) to raise volunteer cavalry units and these units were in fact organized on a regional basis.  In Wyoming's case Wyoming volunteers to these units went to the 2nd United States Volunteer Cavalry and the 36th United States Volunteer Infantry.  While units within the Army's establishments, these were not really Regular Army units in practice, existed only during the conflicts and were really basically an extension, or perhaps more accurately an evolution, of the Civil War state forces system.  The Wyoming Army National Guard today still uses a unit patch for some units of a cavalryman of the 2nd United States Volunteer Cavalry, showing how close the connection was.

 

August 13, 1898  Colorado and Wyoming volunteer infantry raise the US flag for the first time over Manila.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

After the Civil War a struggle broke out between backers of the National Guard and the Army over incorporating the Guard officially into the Army as its reserve.  While this is fairly clearly an aspect of what the Guard was, up until that time that last formal link had not been established and some in the Army establishment resisted it even giving thought to forming a separate Army reserve.  The reasons that can be debated but there were individuals who were quite partisan on either side of the debate  They failed in their effort, however, and the Dick Act, named after a Congressman who supported it and who served in the National Guard, became law in 1903 and the Guard was officially made the reserve of the Army, bringing the ties even closer.  By 1908 Congress authorized deploying the Guard outside of the United States although Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General would opine that to be illegal, which resulted in a Congressional act providing for simply conscripting  Guardsmen into the Army should that be necessary.

This is the Guard that existed in 1916 when Columbus New Mexico was attacked in Villa's raid.  It was officially a reserve of the Army, but its quality varied by state.  In some rare instances small units were still very much the province of a local community or even individual, who contributed funding to the unit and who sometimes even purchased non standard arms.  Some units were social units, made up of social elites, who actually spent more money being National  Guardsmen than they received back in the form of drill pay.  Others were made up of rough and tumble locals who needed the drill pay, in an era when drills tended to be weekly, on a week night.  Pay was provided, as noted, but retirement, which is now a feature of long Guard service, was not.

The Wyoming National Guard (there was no "Army" National Guard at the time, Army units were National Guard, states with Naval units had them Naval Militia) between the Spanish American War and World War One were infantry.  This often surprises people but there are real reasons for it.  People want to believe that a state like Wyoming must have had cavalry but even by the Spanish American War that was not true.

Early on, even before statehood, Wyoming had militia units that were in fact cavalry, but that was in the context of contemplating deploying them against highly mobile Indians. After statehood the expense, probably, and difficulty, of keeping mounts for cavalry would likely have made that impractical.  Infantry was much easier to keep.  Indeed, while I do not know a great deal about the early cavalry units chances are very high that the horses used by those units belonged to the individual troopers and not to the state.

The forces committed by the state to the border in the Punitive Expedition were to be eight companies of infantry. Wyoming had nine on paper.  One was to be kept home, something fairly typical for big deployments.  But that didn't mean that nine full strength companies actually existed.  They did not.  So, after the Guard was called up the state spent weeks recruiting to bring the unit up to full strength.  We've read about that in the newspaper articles that have been posted on this site.

The mustered  Guard assembled at Cheyenne but it wasn't allowed by the  Army to to use Ft. D. A. Russell as a training ground, a raw deal really that was fairly inexcusable as the post's training range was enormous.  Instead, the state formed Camp Kendrick which is where Cheyenne's Frontier Park is today.  The Guard trained there all summer long. By late summer there were constant rumors about immediate deployments, and as we have seen, when the official orders came it was at first thought the unit would be deployed to San Antonio, but it was instead sent to Deming New Mexico.

At Camp Cody outside of Deming it trained further and took up the role of patrolling and garrisoning as infantry.  By the time the Wyoming Guard was deployed other Guard units had been on duty on the border for quite some time and were rotating back home.  Principally the unit trained, however, until the Regular Army returned from Mexico and the Guard was released on January 17, 1917, to return home.  In a real sense its mere presence was its mission as it served as a ready force, along with many other units, if Villa became fully resurgent or if war broke out with Mexico.

Their return in January 1917 would be brief.  The United States would enter World War One in April of that year and the recently mustered out National Guard would be called back into service.  In 1917, prior to the call up, the strength of the active Army was 200,000 men, 80,000 of which were still serving  Guardsmen. During the Great War 40% of the combat soldiers in the U.S. Army were Guardsmen who were formed into nineteen divisions.  While the U.S. Army balked at relying heavily on the Guard at the start of the formation of the Allied Expeditionary Force in 1917 the truth of the matter is that the Army would have been incapable of deploying when it did but for the Guard.  This didn't keep the Army from looking down on Guardsmen, particularly on National Guard officers, but during the war the Guard proved its mettle and served very ably.

The Punitive Expedition service, therefore had served as a nearly year long training period for the Guard that would serve it well.  In Wyoming's case that service would not be as infantry, however, and the Guard would experience a phenomenon that's not atypical for Guard units of being re-formed into some other type of unit at the start of war.  The Wyoming National Guard was converted into heavy artillery, predicting a role that it would resume after World War Two.  That conversion is a bit surprising, really as conversion into artillery during the Great War was common for cavalry, but not really infantry.  However, the Wyoming National  Guard was not a large unit and the Army created for World War One was an enormous Army, so the conversion of a unit about 600 men in strength into artillery made some sense. The bucking horse symbol came into military use at that time, as the Wyoming National Guard painted that symbol on its artillery pieces, something that they would do again during the Korean War.

Bad photograph of World War One era Wyoming National Guard symbols on monument in Cody Wyoming.

After being re-formed following World War One; the Wyoming  Guard would in fact become cavalry during the the 1920s, and remain so until converted into Horse-Mechanized Cavalry just before World War Two, and then armored cavalry during the war, and finally to artillery after World War Two.  Various designations have come and gone, but its been the Wyoming Guard all along.  Just recently, infantry returned to the Wyoming Army National Guard in the form of a small infantry unit; the first one the state has had since the 1920s.

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Further reading and partial sources:

The Wyoming Guard on the Mexican Border, 1916

Carl V. Hallberg