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

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

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

The original Old Glory.

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

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

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

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

Last prior:

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

Some Gave All: Fort Gordon now Fort Eisenhower.

Some Gave All: Fort Gordon now Fort Eisenhower.: 

Fort Gordon now Fort Eisenhower.

The post in Georgia has been renamed for Kansan and former President, Dwight Eisenhower.

It's somewhat surprising to realize that nothing had been named for Eisenhower until now.   Eisenhower is so well known to Americans, he really needs no introduction here.

Gordon might.

A lawyer and a plantation owner, Gordon was a cavalry commander during the Civil War.  Following the South's defeat, he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Georgia, became its Governor, and then returned to the Senate.  He never recanted from his racist views.  He died in 1904.

Tuesday, August 3, 1943. The Patton Slapping Incidents, part one.

"Operation Husky, July-August 1943. Navy Comes Ashore. His and of the landing operations of Sicily successfully begun, Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk, USN, (rear), goes ashore to watch Major General Troy H. Middleton, (second right), direct ground tactics near Scoglitti. Photograph released August 3, 1943. Photographed through Mylar sleeve. U.S. Navy Photograph."

Georgia lowered the voting age to 18.  It was the first state to grant 18-year-olds, at that time liable for the draft and fighting in World War Two, the right to vote.

The Red Army launched Operation Rumyantsev aimed at recovering to recapture Belgorod and Kharkov. As with many such actions, the offensive would gain ground, but feature huge Soviet material and manpower losses.

Gen. George S. Patton visited the 15th Evacuation Hospital in Nicosia, Cyprus and slapped Pvt Charles H. Kuhl with his gloves.  Kuhl was in the hospital for malaria, dysentery and shell shock, and made the mistake of giving Patton the incomplete answer to an inquiry about why he was there with  "I guess I just can't take it."  The level of his illness was not appreciated until after the incident, and he had in fact been in the hosptial on two prior occasions prior to it occuring and returend to the front.  The "can't take it" line had been put on his admittance notes.

Kuhl's malarial infection was undiagnosed at the time, and he was actually much sicker than initially believed.  He passed off the Patton incident and didn't seem to think it a big deal.  Patton later apologized directly to him, following the firestorm of bad publicity and official reprimand this incident was partially responsible for, and noted that Patton hadn't realized he was so ill.

Kuhl noted later that when he met Patton, Patton seemed to be quite worn out.  Depictions of Patton fail to appreciate this, but he was constantly ill during World War Two, a condition probably partially brought on by chain-smoking cigars.  Additionally, there is reason to suspect that he suffered from lingering after affects from horse accident related head injuries.

The incident is depicted in the movie Patton, although a second incident that would occur on August 10 is not.  They would ultimately hit the press, but the public, contrary to what might be suspected, largely supported Patton.

Kuhl died at age 55 from a heart attack.

OS2U-3Kingfisher being lifted off a recovery sled  to be swung aboard the USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) on August 3 1943.  I had no idea how they did this.

Saturday, May 19, 1923. Double Standards.

Lenin's USSR, which was ostensibly for the rights of small nations, executed the principal leaders of the Georgian Committee for the Independence of Georgia.

Georgia's flag.

Zev won the Kentucky Derby.  H was owned by Harry F. Sinclair of the Sinclair Oil Company.

Italian women marched for suffrage in Rome.

Friday, October 13, 1921. Giants take the Series, Turks take former Imperial Russian Territory, Hine takes photographs of 4H Club members.

The Giants took the World Series with a 1 to 0 victory over the Yankees.

The Treaty of Kars fixed the boundary between Turkey, still at war with Greece, and what was effectively the Soviet Union.

The treat effectively operated in Turkey's favor, granting it territories that had been within Imperial Russia's boundaries.

While both nations were in a shaky position at the time, it's worth remembering that Turkey, while on the defensive, was holding its own against Greece. France and the UK, initially allies in the Greek effort, had abandoned Greece as it became more aggressive in regard to its territorial demands and efforts.  The Turks, on the other hand, had shown an inclination to look East into Turkic territories, something the USSR didn't need to happen.  Moreover, the Soviet Union was having difficulty imposing its moronic economic system on an unwilling population and its political thumb on various ethnicities, so it was arguably in a worse position than Turkey was.  Also, its population was enduring famine to the lunatic nature of its farm policy.

After World War Two Stalin pressed for the return of Imperial Russian lands, but Turkey resisted it, and the Western Allies backed Turkey's position.  Soviet demands were dropped, but Georgia and Armenia have never been happy with the border that the treaty created.

A photographer took a photo of Jacksonville, Florida.

Jacksonville, Florida.  October 13, 1921.

Hine was at the state fair in Charleston, West Virginia, where he photographed members of the 4H clubs.

Philander Knox, a well known U.S. Senator, was reported as having died the day prior.

He was 68 years old.

The original Lyric theater (there's been one since, which while relatively new, is no longer a movie theater, was running Man-Woman-Marriage, a film released that previous March.  It's interesting in that it gives us a glimpse of the touring speed of movies at the time.

A less lurid ad from somewhere else.

Billed as the "Greatest love story of all time" by advertisers, the ostensible plot involved something to with a woman rebelling against a forced marriage, but also gave the filmmakers view of marriage throughout human history.  Robert Sherwood of Time magazine described the film as the worst move ever made, adding that it was "a grotesque hodgepodge about woman's rights through the ages (interminable ages they are, too) with a great deal of ham allegory and cheap religious drool, used to cloud the real motif — which is sex appeal."

Based on the Casper ads, that was probably about right.

Be that as it may, the ads run in the Casper paper got the biological facts right.  Generally, they showed some guy leering over a woman dressed in about as revealing fashion as allowable in the Casper papers, and, viewed left to right, a baby ensues.

What's that voting bill actually say?

I confess, I haven't read the entire bill, and there are some distressing bills out there, but the Georgia bill is getting a lot of heat, without much light shed on it.  Here it actually is:

Georgia Voting Bill.

Much of this bill really isn't as horrific as portrayed.  It pretty much just regularizes practices just informally put into practice last election in Georgia.  It does have a couple of bad provisions, including that its 95 pages in length.  The no water aid in line, which may or may not still be in there (this thing is way to long to fully read) is horrific, but apparently was in it in order to try to stop electioneering at the polls.

By the same token, while I want to be suspicious of the new Wyoming bill because of the times, I can't really find anything objectionable to having to present a photo ID when you vote and I'm really sort of surprised that this isn't the law already.  I do find the provision that a Medicaid Card will work to be laughably Boomer patronizing. . . that's not a photo ID.  But overall, asking for a photo ID at the polls, while probably not really necessary, isn't really burdensome either.

Indeed, by and large the Wyoming legislature did a good job of defeating the really bad bills this session.  The really absurd bill that sought to give the legislature veto power over interpretation of the Constitution, which was flagrantly unconstitutional, didn't make it out of committee, even though it had the backing of most of the county GOP committees.  The horrific bill to limit juries to six, rather than twelve, which was snuck in and supported by the plaintiff's bar made it past the House and died in the Senate.  The WICHE bill did pass, but the Governor caught the foul ball on that one.

Things aren't over yet and there are still some bills out there that I have no idea as to their status, and no doubt some I've never heard of.  Most of the gun rights bills this session were wholly unnecessary or unconstitutional, but I don't know where they are at.  The bill allowing out of states to carry concealed without a permit did pass and I'm not for that and don't think it a good idea as I think Wyomingites deserve some level of control, such a reciprocal permit, on people we don't know traveling through here.  I'm probably in the minority on that one.  The one hunting bill I was tracking failed, which was too bad.

Anyhow, there's all sorts of yelling on various bills around the country, and in Congress, but do people read them?  Probably not.  Probably most people don't have the time.  But the reporting on them lacks nuance and can create misimpressions.

March 17, 1921. Soviet Triumphs

On this day in 1921 the Kronstadt Rebellion was crushed by the deployment of 60,000 troops of the Red Army.  Most of the 10,000 sailors and 5,000 soldiers who were part of the uprising surrendered, but some fled over the frozen Gulf of Finland towards Helsinki, where 800 went arrived.  The distance was over 150 miles.  The siege itself resulted in 11,000 casualties.

Some news outlets in the United States claimed that the sailors were fighting for the restoration of Krensky's government, but this was far off the mark. The revolutionary sailors had anarchist sympathies but more than anything else they called into question the Communists fidelity to the ideals of the revolution, something well worth questioning given their exploitation of nearly everything.

On the same day the Soviet Russian government negotiated a ceasefire with the Georgian Menshevik government, allowing the government to go into exile. 

February 25, 1921. Cold Snap.

Singer Carolyn Nash on this day in 1921.

Socialite Louise Cromwell Brooks. Brooks' second marriage was to Douglas MacArthur.  All of her children were from her first marriage, and all four of her marriages ended in divorce.

Jerusalem on this day in 1921.

Bethlehem on this day in 1921.

On this same day the Red Army occupied Tbilisi, Georgia and declared the country a Soviet Republic.

February 15, 1921. The Centennial of Teton and Sublette Counties.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 15, 1921: 

1921 Teton County formed.

1921  Sublette County formed.

To add to this a bit, Teton County was formed out of what had been part of Lincoln County.  Sublette County was formed out of parts of Lincoln County and Fremont County, the latter of which remains an enormous sized county.

Followers of Gasoline Alley were on day two of the dramatic plot line.

The monument to suffragist was dedicated in the Capital Rotunda.  Photographs of it have appeared in earlier installments of this series.  Almost immediately, however, it was moved to the basement, where it would remain until 1997 when it was restored to the Rotunda.

The New York Post ran a cartoon about Harding.

A publication called Good Morning ran a scathing cartoon associating war with a variety of extra evils.

Good Morning (a journal), February 15, 1921: " The dollar-a-year patriotic profiteers, including the fifty seven varieties of Trust presidents, with Charlie Schwab sprinkling the street. Ku Klux Klan, bodyguard for the profiteers and standard bearers of race hatred, reaction and private vengeance."

Georgian Bolsheviks asked for Soviet assistance in their efforts which resulted in the Soviets dedicating the Red Army to the subjugation of the country.

Eight train passengers were killed, and ten wounded, when the IRA attempted to ambush a train at Upton in Cork, and a resulting gun battle with a British Army unit developed.

The Columbian Air Force was founded on this day.  All of its early aircraft were extremely primitive, even by the standards of the day.

February 14, 1921. Valentines Day. Perhaps love does not conquer all, but then again maybe it does. Enter Skeezix and the grandfather of Maryam D'Abo gets a command.

On this day in 1921 cartoonist Frank King made a major plot change by introducing Skeezix, an abandoned baby, into the plot.

Gasoline Alley principally appealed to men, it had been noted, with its mostly male characters.  Female characters were almost just accessories to the cartoon and the major character, as it had developed to date, was a confirmed bachelor.  Women proved to have little interest in the cartoon, which is no wonder.  It was almost demeaning to women.

King determined to attempt to change this by putting a helpless waif in the hands of Walt, the main character. Walt, a giant (overweight) World War One veteran frequently commented on knowing how good he had it by being unmarried.  Now, all of a sudden, new dramatic tension was added by some poor unfortunate putting a helpless infant in his hands.

On the same day, realizing that it needed an experienced commander for a dedicated fight with the Red Army that was sure to come, the Democratic Republic of Georgia, put Giorgi Kvintadze in command of its forces.

Kvintadze had served in the Imperial Russian forces and had been in charge of the Georgian forces before, but the task was hopeless.  He ended up in France following the Red conquest of Georgia and lived until 1970.

Due to his exile and the following marriages of his children, he is the grandfather of actress Maryam d'Abo. The D'Abo's are a large family of entertainers in various fields.

February 13, 1921. Armenia revolts.

On this day in 1921 Armenians rose up against the Bolsheviks, who had been attempting to take over their country  with the backing of the USSR.  The Soviet sponsored effort was designed to turn the form province of Imperial Russia back over to Russia's hands and into that of the Reds.

The uprising took advantage of a Soviet invasion of Georgia, the last pro western nation which remained independent which had been part of Imperial Russia in the Caucuses. The use of Red forces for that left enough of a vacuum for Armenian nationalist to revolt.  While the revolt was initially successful, obviously it failed long term and Armenia, the first nation in the world to officially adopt Christianity, returned unwillingly to the Soviet orbit.

It's sometimes noted that Lenin "supported" the rights of self determination of small states.  By this point in 1921 the Reds had already reconquered almost all the lands once occupied by Imperial Russia in the southwest of the former empire and had fought or conspired to reconquer nearly every other section of the former Russian Empire.  So much for self determination.

February 12, 1921. Covers, Installations, Rebellions, and Cocker Spaniels.

February 12, 1921, was a Saturday, and hence the day that a lot of print magazines hit the magazine stands, and mailboxes.

Leslie's featured a "Lumber Jane", a woman working in the logging industry, with an illustration by Emmett Watson. We haven't featured Watson here before, but he was a period illustrator.  He died in 1955.

I don't know if the term "lumber jane' is a real one.  I suspect not, and the illustrator and the magazines was simply taking a highly progressive view of female emancipation, a topic of the era.

The Saturday Evening Post also came out, of course.

Frederic Stanley's illustration for the Post was supposed to be funny, and no doubt was for contemporary audiences.  It features two  young men at a masquerade party around Valentine's Day, and the one dressed as a clown has mistaken the one dress as a belle, as a belle.  Today the message would come across with all sorts of other meanings and, because of that, it wouldn't be published at all unless those meanings were intended.

Judge also hit the stands.

Judge, which often had amusing cover illustrations, managed to go full bore creepy with a home bootlegger looking over his shoulder at imagined law enforcement as he works on raisin wine, which sounds absolutely gross.

The monument to Women's Suffrage was hauled up to the capitol rotunda on this day 1921.

Various Washington dignitaries, including Justice White and Gen. Pershing showed up for something.  Perhaps the same event?

Winston Churchill, a member of the British government during the Great War, and a former cavalry officer in the British Army, was appointed Secretary of Colonies on this day in 1921.

In Georgia, a Soviet backed and inspired rebellion spread.

A cocker spaniel named Midkiff Seductive took Best In Show at Westminster.

May 9, 1970. Strange Days.

President Nixon visited the Lincoln Memorial and chatted with protestors who were sleeping there in anticipation of a protest organized in reaction to the American and South Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. The President encountered about nine protestors and chatted with then in the early morning hours.

Protests were occuring all across the country on this day in reaction to the Cambodian invasion and in reaction to the shooting at Kent State.

On this day, about 450 Canadian peace activist crossed into the United States at Blaine Washington, location of the Peace Arch, and committed acts of vandalism in the town.  The presence of Canadian peace activist was completely nonsensical and their act of vandalism contrary to the claimed spirit of their actions.  It reflected more on events in Canada than it did in the United States in which the formerly highly conservative country was rocketing into a state of liberalism in which it remains, although it is contested, that started under the leadership of Pierre Trudeau.  Canada, in the less than one hundred years prior to 1970, had fought in the Boer War, World War One, World War Two and the Korean War.  It opposed the Vietnam War in a way, although it's often forgotten that it contributed a hospital ship to the allied forces there at one time and its contribution in terms of military volunteers approximated the number of American draft evaders who sought refuge there.

Another Canadian protest occurred on the same day on Parliament Hill when Canadian pro abortion activist protested a recently passed Canadian law addressing abortion.  This occurred three years prior to Roe v. Wade in the United States. At the time, just ten years following the advent of birth control pharmaceuticals, the direction things were going in seemed obvious.  Canada would repeal its law eighteen years later and no Canadian federal law has passed since.  Since that time, however, support for abortion in the United States has reversed to the point that the majority of Americans oppose it and its only a matter of time until the weakly reasoned case of Roe is repealed and the matter is returned to the states.  Canada, which is highly liberalized, has been slower to follow but has started to, with there being a small resurgent conservative movement that has come about over issues such as this, but also due to really extreme social speech provisions enacted in Canadian law.

Showing how odd the times were, retrospectively, Vice President Spiro Agnew spoke to a disappointing crowd of 10,000. . . 100,000 had been expected, at Georgia's Stone Mountain Park.  The Park is the location of a giant carving into natural stone depicting Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Stonewall Jackson, all mounted.  It's impossible to imagine an American politician speaking there today.

The memorial had first been proposed in 1914, which was in the midst of the boom in Confederate memorial building across the south. As we've discussed elsewhere, most of the now controversial monuments to Southern rebel figures and to the Southern Civil War cause in general date from this period.  The monument itself does not, however, as its construction had an exceedingly odd history.  

Land for the monument was purchased in 1916 but a sculptor was not hired until the early 1920s, with that sculptor being Borglum, of Mount Rushmore fame.  He was fired over a financial conflict in 1925, however.  Congress got into the act in 1926 with the approval of the sale of commeorative coins for the effort thereafter.

After Borlum departed he destroyed his models which lead to the Association dedicated to the effort seeking to have him arrested.  In a sort of retaliation, the Association had the face of Lee that Borglum had partially completed blasted off of the mountain.  Subsequent sculptors took up the work but it lingered until 1958 when the State of Georgia purchased the area in order to complete it in a reaction to Brown v. Board of Education.  The state park was dedicated on April 14, 1965, 100 years plus one day after Lincoln's assassination in 1865.  The dedication of the monument occured in 1970, with Vice President Agnew appearing for the event, but it wasn't actually completed until March 3, 1972.  It's now the biggest tourist site in Georgia.

Now, of course, a lot of the smaller Confederate monuments have come down, but many more remain.  It's amazing to realize that as late as the 1970s there were still Southern public efforts to put them up, and that they were very associated with protest over desegregation.  The degree to which the support for the war had been lost was demonstrated by Agnew's failure to draw a crowed in the highly conservative south where opposition to the war had not been strong.

On the same day, Jimi Hendrix played in Ft. Worth and the Doors played in Columbus, Ohio.

January 11, 1920. The League of Nations recognizes Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia

On this day in 1920 the League of Nations recognized a collection of small states that had once been part of the Russian Empire and which had declared their independence in the wake of the collapse of that empire. 

These were Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.

All three would prove to be examples of how Soviet Russia was just as much of a despotic empire as any old regime empire ever had been.

The Azerbaijani Democratic Republic would be invaded by the USSR on April 28 of the same year, after having surrendered the day prior under threats from its own Communist Party which made it clear a violent Soviet invasion would be coming if it didn't do so.  The Soviets promised independence for the country and then broke the promise.

Armenia also was invaded by the Soviets in 1920 but some ares held out until 1921, bringing to a temporary end the republic of a nation that dated back into antiquity but which has repeatedly suffered due to the actions of larger neighbors.

Georgia would be invaded in 1921, after several putative prior Soviet efforts.

It'd take the fall of the Soviet Union to restore the independence of all three nations.

All three countries had plenty of problems during their brief existence, including simply being next to their large former imperial master which was engaged in civil war.  They all engaged in wars over their borders.  They were beset by internal Communist who sought to bring them down and unite them with Soviet Russia.  But, in spite of that, they had emerged as real states until the Soviet Union, which theoretically recognized the rights of small nations, terminated their statehood.

Issuing Red Cross sweaters at Fort Oglethrope, GA to men of the 6th U.S. Infantry. September 9, 1918.

This photo really says something about how short on resources the US really was. The Army had an official pattern sweater. . . but it was relying on charity here to equip the men for the oncoming cold months.

"Retreat", Ord. Supply School, Camp Hancock, Ga. June 14, 1918.

And yes, as if they had the spare men to deploy, the Germans send. . .

3,000 men in support of the Georgia to the Caucasus.  Even more amazing, the goal was to help Georgia prevent the Ottomans, a German ally, from gaining control of oil in the Baku region.

Kress von Kressenstein, their commander.

The mostly Bavarian force would end up being the last German force to return to Germany after the war ended, making it back to Germany in April 1919.

Perhaps, in context, this made sense.  After all, oil was important and this was a small number of men.  But it does demonstrate that the Germans were not able to fully disengage in the East.  Additionally, it shows how complicated things had become in the East, as the Germans were now openly aiding a country that the Ottomans had been at war with just days prior when the Ottomans had been a German ally.

M.G. Training School Camp, Camp Hancock, Augusta, Georgia. June 3, 1918.

And now Armenia and Azerbaijan. . . May 28, 1918

It had to be.

We reported to you a couple of days ago about Georgia departing the Transcaucasian Federation, and Armenia was part of that.  So on this day, it made its independence official.

It wouldn't last long and it would be violent.  In 1918 it fought a brief war with Georgia.  In May 1919 it seized disputed territory from Azerbaijan in a military strike.   In September 1920 it was invaded by Turkey.  It's government fell to the communist in late 1920 and it was subsequently invaded by the Soviet Union, which brought its independence to an end.

Any by extension, it had to be for Azerbaijan as well.

You already read of its war with Armenia. 

In 1920 the Turkish and Soviet government ganged up on it and its fate was sealed.  The Soviets wanted the port of Baku back, and they invaded the country.  The occupation did not go easily and there was resistance and a subsequent uprising, but it was incorporated into the USSR.

Georgia Declares Independence. May 26, 1918.

Not from Russia, however, but from the Transcaucasian Federation, which also included Azerbaijan and Armenia. They'd follow by declaring independence a couple of days later.

Flag of Georgia, 1918-1921

The declaration came under the stress of an invasion by the Ottoman Empire which first recognized the Transcaucasian Federation and then invaded it.  The federation was always weak and it cracked under the in ability to defend itself, dissolving into national units where its loyalties actually lay.  Georgia's Menshevik Social Democratic Party would lead the withdraw and won the subsequent parliamentary election, making Georgia an independent radically socialist state.

It's independence would be short lived, although it managed to get into a war with Armenia during it.  In 1921 the Red Army entered the country and ended its independence until 1991.

Georgian soldiers in Iraq in 2006 celebrating their May 26 independence date under their current flag.