Tag: American History

Is The Constitution Still Working?

I plan of writing a series on our beloved Constitution….a common and popular political prop but with little understanding.

With all the turmoil and chaos in our political institution the question needs to be asked….is the Constitution still working as it was intended?

The Founders wrote a vague document with the intent that those in control would stay in control…..so from that view it is working.

But today is today.

My opinion is that it NO longer works….one reason is the vagueness which the Founders wrote into the document….but that is just me….

The U.S. Constitution is the sacred text of American government and civic life. But it’s time to face facts: The document, written in 1787, isn’t working. The signs are all around us. Just 38 percent of Americans in a recent Gallup poll expressed either a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the presidency, down from 48 percent in 2001. Congress, never high in the public’s estimation to begin with, fell from 26 percent to a mere 12 percent. The Supreme Court has also taken a hit, down from 50 percent to 36 percent during the same period.

One reason often cited for the failing Constitution are the people who inhabit its carefully crafted institutions. In Congress, serious legislators are scarce, as many members aim for viral recognition on social media. Freshman Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.)  freely admitted, “I have built my staff around comms [communication], not legislation.” Cawthorn is hardly alone: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) represent a new breed of legislators who seek recognition and are largely uninterested in passing actual laws.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/587431-the-constitution-isnt-working

Now this brings up the question on whether the Constitution is democratic or not…..some thoughts on that question….

The Constitution, and the political order it made possible, defends “the honorable determination” of a free people to govern itself. But self-government, as the Founders understood it, demands constraints on the impulsive will of temporary—and often short-sided—majorities. Popular government is not democratic in a simply majoritarian sense, as thoughtfully designed institutions such as the Senate and the Electoral College make clear. Anything worth doing well is worth doing carefully and with the appropriate deliberation. As the authors write, “The trick in forming a government was to minimize the opportunities for mischief, while maximizing the opportunities” for republican virtue, or free and limited government “with numerous obstacles placed in the way of impulsive and short-sighted behavior.” And as the authors demonstrate, the constitution is not a machine intended to work automatically.

It’s hard not to notice that in the United States, political arguments frequently turn on questions that, in other democracies, nobody talks about. What are the powers of the legislature? What may the executive do? What can the states do without begging permission from the national government? Why can’t an idea popular with the public become a law?

For these and other questions, the answer will always involve the American Constitution, a document more than two centuries old that has been amended (not counting the Bill of Rights) only 17 times. In the wake of the 2016 election—in which, not for the first time, a candidate who lost the popular election entered the White House anyway—talk about the Constitution’s “defects” has become more insistent. Why can’t America be more like other countries?

…

The United States appears to have a government that makes it very difficult to accomplish anything, while other countries seem much more able to make desired changes—with a minimum of fuss and bother.

https://www.realclearpublicaffairs.com/articles/2020/02/14/why_is_the_constitution_not_democratic_484132.html

The Constitution is a great document….sadly as great as it is it makes governing damn near impossible….especially in these days of ignorance, lies and misinformation….most of which is spread by the very people that we elect to govern this country.

Please watch for more on the Constitution….there is more to come.

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Mississippi Secedes–1861

This is for all my Civil War history buffs.

My state of Mississippi officially secedes from the Union on 09 January 1861…..I offer up this resolution for their actions on that day….this is the official statement…..

A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.

The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.

The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.

It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.

It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.

It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.

It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.

Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.

Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.

That is word for word the declaration for the cessation of the state of Mississippi from the United States……now you tell me what the reason for this was…..it is clear to me no matter what they narrative has become….there was NO ‘Lost Cause’ it was preserve the institution of slavery…..

I offer this up because the schools in the South are failing to teach what lead to the Civil War that killed so many Americans.

In social studies standards for 45 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia, discussion of Reconstruction is “partial” or “non-existent,” according to historians who reviewed how the period is discussed in K-12 social studies standards for public schools nationwide. In a report produced by the education nonprofit Zinn Education Project, the study’s authors say they are concerned that American children will grow up to be uninformed about a critical period of history that helps explain why full racial equality remains unfulfilled today.

https://time.com/6128421/teaching-reconstruction-study/

The history lesson is done….you may now return to your normal drudgery.

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Teapot Dome Scandal

The weekend begins and the news is damn boring…..so it is time for one of those darn history posts….

In case your history is a bit hazy….The Teapot Dome Scandal was during the Harding admin in the early 1900s…..

The Teapot Dome Scandal of the 1920s shocked Americans by revealing an unprecedented level of greed and corruption within the federal government. The scandal involved ornery oil tycoons, poker-playing politicians, illegal liquor sales, a murder-suicide, a womanizing president and a bagful of bribery cash delivered on the sly. In the end, the scandal would empower the Senate to conduct rigorous investigations into government corruption. It also marked the first time a U.S. cabinet official served jail time for a felony committed while in office.

https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/teapot-dome-scandal

With the intro out of the way…..

Some historians are saying the 4 years of the Trump admin was worse and more scandalous the the Teapot Dome Scandal….

Scan over the past few years and the stench of corruption wafting from Trump’s orbit is staggering. Campaign chairmen who secretly worked for foreign officials while skimming millions on the side. Presidential lawyers defrauding banks and taxpayers alike, or ushering in whichever foreign patron they could find. All of this while Trump tossed open the doors of his business to any and all comers, regardless of sources of their funds, regardless of whether Americans ever learned any details of their payments. (In a depressing bit of historic resonance, Trump’s first interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, resigned in disgrace under a cloud of his own corruption allegations—a move that few will remember, given the cascade of ethics violations and conflicts of interest deluging the administration throughout Trump’s four years.)

…

Against the past few years, Teapot Dome appears almost quaint—a relic of a bygone, back-slapping era, a time when Americans paid off Americans, all for other Americans’ benefits, all in a neat, tidy circle of domestic graft. It’s not just the magnitude of the Trump-era corruption that challenges our notion of what an American president dedicated to financial misconduct can accomplish. It’s that now, the players are transnational in scope—crossing borders, crossing boundaries, taking full advantage of the financial secrecy tools wherever they may be, and the fecund opportunities that a president like Trump can provide.

Trump-Era Corruption Eclipses Even Teapot Dome

With a do nothing Congress will we ever see justice for the American people for the crimes committed by Trump and his cronies?

Any Thoughts?

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The Trial Of The Chicago Seven

NOTE:  This will be my only post today for Hurricane Ida is heading my way and I need to batten down the hatches and move stuff around to keep it from flying around….so my time will better spent doing precautionary work.

This is a seldom review by me…..this film interest me for I was around for the real trial….but before I go into the film maybe a little history for those that were not around for the actual event.

The film did do one thing….it illustrated what a clown show it was with the old fart Judge Hoffman (which illustrates why judges should be forced to retire at age 65).

The trial was held to punish the leaders of the protests of 1968 at the Democratic convention in Chicago.

The Chicago Seven (originally eight) were political radicals accused of conspiring to incite the riots that occurred at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. During the five-month trial, the prosecution stressed the defendants’ provocative rhetoric and subversive intentions, while the defense attributed the violence to official overreaction. The case drew national attention for the artists and activists that testified as witnesses, as well as defendant Bobby Seale’s actions, which earned him four years in prison for contempt of court. In February 1970, five of the seven were found guilty, but an appeals court overturned the convictions in 1972.

There were originally eight defendants: David Dellinger, a pacifist and chairman of the National Mobilization against the War; Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis, leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, leaders of theYouth International Party John Froines and Lee Weiner, local Chicago organizers; and Bobby Seale, cofounder of the Black Panther Party.

https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/chicago-seven-1

Now that the history lesson is over…I will move on the the film…..

Netflix’s portrayal of the trial directed by Andrew Sorkin…..the film had an excellent cast…..the major characters of the trial……

If one watches this with the mindset of entertainment then it is excellent….but if one is looking for historic accuracy then it is lacking.

As someone who lived through those turbulent days I was disappointed in the film all together.

Sorkin seeks to tame these radicals, and the anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and revolutionary politics they represented (not, of course, without differences among them) by recasting them as boosters for liberal reform. The result is not only an inaccurate rendering of the group’s political visions but a tone-deaf affirmation of the American state, and specifically law enforcement, as fundamentally virtuous.

Since I am not the best reviewer on the web….I will let others give you the review this film deserves…..

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/chicago-7-trial-film/

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/aaron-sorkins-inane-history-lesson/

All in all the film was well acted but the character study it portrayed failed.

I recommend this film for entertainment reasons…..if you want historic accuracy then I would, if I were you, pass.

On a side note–I would like to see the same dogged determinism by the government when the leaders of this most recent insurrection against the government when they go to trial and the same sensationalism by the media as well during the trial.

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To close out the day…..as with my tradition “Trying To Reason With The Hurricane Season by Jimmy Buffet……

The ‘Lost Cause’

I know that there are many of my international readers that are interested in the American history of the Civil War of the 19th century.

For years there has been this idealistic view that the South was engaged in some sort of ‘noble cause’…that view in my opinion is a romantic non-realistic view to that era of American history….

The Lost Cause was a historical ideology and a social movement created by ex-Confederates that characterized the Confederate experience and defined its value for new generations. By the twentieth century, the Lost Cause became enshrined as part of the national story of slavery and the American Civil War era, and it evolved through that century’s most important revolutions. It was never just about the Civil War, but about slavery, Reconstruction, southern race relations, the place of the South in national life, and Americans’ self-identity. Today, the Lost Cause’s historical and cultural claims have been rejected by historians and museum professionals as a narrow distortion of history at best and a lie at worst, but many of its cultural tropes and political assumptions occasionally thrive, not only in the American South, but across the country.

There are five myths surrounding this bastardization of American history…..thanks to the Battlefield Trust……

The first and most important myth is that secession, not slavery, was the cause of the war. Southern states seceded to protect their rights, their homes, and to throw off the shackles of a tyrannical government. To the proponents of the Lost Cause, secession was constitutional, and the Confederacy was the natural heir to the American Revolution. Because secession was constitutional, all those who fought for the Confederacy were not traitors. Northerners, specifically Northern abolitionists, caused the war with their fiery rhetoric and agitating, even though slavery was on its way to gradually dying a natural death. They also argued secession was a way to preserve the Southern agrarian way of life in the face of encroaching Northern industrialism.

Second, slavery was portrayed as a positive good; enslaved people, who were submissive, happy, and faithful to their masters, were better off in the system of chattel slavery which offered the slaves protection. Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens declared in 1861 “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” Following the end of the war, these formerly enslaved people were now said to be unprepared for freedom, which was an argument against Reconstruction and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution.

The third tenet states that the Confederacy was only defeated because of the Northern states’ numerical advantage in both men and resources. The Confederate Army was less defeated than overwhelmed, as their lesser resources. Former Confederate officer Jubal A. Early justified the Southern defeat by stating that the North “finally outproduced that exhaustion of our army and resources, and that accumulation of numbers on the other side which wrought our final disaster.” Early went on to say that the South “had been gradually worn down by combined agencies of numbers, steam-power, railroads, mechanism, and all the resources of physical science.” The lack of southern manufacturing and the outnumbered population doomed it to failure from the start. Thus, the “Lost Cause.”

Fourth, Confederate soldiers are portrayed as heroic, gallant, and saintly. Even after the surrender, they retained their honor. At one reunion oration, Confederate General Thomas R. R. Cobb, who was killed at the Battle of Fredericksburg, was compared to “Joshua in his courage,…St. Paul in the logic of his eloquence and [St.] Stephen in the triumph of his martyrdom.”

Fifth, Robert E. Lee emerged as the most sanctified figure in Lost Cause lore, especially after his death in 1870. Lee himself became a symbol for the Lost Cause, and a “Cult of Lee” revered the Virginian as the ultimate Christian soldier who took up arms for his state. He was even called the second Washington. Lee was the most successful of all Confederate Army commanders, and after the war, Jubal Early and many former Southern officers placed Lee upon a pedestal—so much so that historian Thomas L. Connelly dubbed Lee “The Marble Man.” Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson became a saintly martyr, wounded by his men while defending the Lost Cause. Even the office building where Jackson died bore the name “The Stonewall Jackson Shrine” for decades. On the other hand, James Longstreet became a villain to Lee and Jackson’s heroes, blamed for the loss at Gettysburg and vilified for his newfound Republican affiliation and the temerity to question Lee’s wartime decisions. Even former Confederate President Jefferson Davis became a reverential figure, seen as the personification of states’ rights.

None of this is true….it is a fanciful revision of American history.

The whole “lost cause’ myth was an excuse and a justification for the war…..

The Lost Cause grew out of this postbellum context and eulogised the Confederate war effort as having been a just and heroic one – a struggle to protect “states’ rights” in the face of overwhelming Northern aggression. In presenting the conflict in this way, the Lost Cause both obscured and denied the principal role of slavery in leading to the outbreak of war.

Part ideology, part social movement, the Lost Cause of the Confederacy has promoted an ahistorical interpretation of the American Civil War.

Here are 10 key facts about the Lost Cause of the Confederacy:

10 Facts About the Lost Cause of the Confederacy

There was nothing romantic or noble about this conflict.

Today we have a ‘new’ Lost Cause….that of a ‘stolen’ election…..

Lies are a denomination of power. The bigger the lie, the more power it represents. Right now in this country, we are being treated daily to the Big Lie that Donald Trump was the true winner of the presidential election of 2020, and the only reason he’s not in the White House right now is because the election was stolen from him.

You may have noticed that the people pushing the Big Lie today are very good at it. This is because many of them have been pushing an even bigger Big Lie for most of their lives: the lie of the Lost Cause, that the Civil War wasn’t really fought over the disgraceful secession of the Southern states and slavery, it was instead a noble cause fought for the “honor” of the South, and that slavery itself wasn’t bad or immoral, because enslaved people were happy workers living much better lives than they would have lived where they came from in Africa.

https://www.salon.com/2021/06/19/donald-trump-and-the-new-lost-cause/

Yet more revisionist history to be taught to our children…..and that will help feed the BS of lies and revision for a generation or more.

More thoughts on the BS of the ‘Lost Cause’….

That “Lost Cause Myth”

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Why Not Diplomacy?

Yes more history!

Live and learn

This is for all those readers that are interested in the American Civil War.

Most people know the major players and the major engagements…..but what about before the first shots were fired in South Carolina?

Since I am a student of conflict and ways to try and avoid a disastrous war…..people have asked me why there was no diplomacy to try and avoid the deadly conflict…

Well there was diplomacy but it is just not interesting enough for the history books….plus it is not as romantic as the idea of a ‘noble cause’…..

Here is the look at diplomatic attempts during the war…..

February 2, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln and his Irish valet sneaked out of Washington City and took a steamboat down to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The next day he met with three representatives of the Confederacy to discuss ending the Civil War. The Hampton Roads Peace Conference, as it’s known, is notable not for what was accomplished – nothing was – but for how, when, and why it took place at all.

In February, 1865, the Confederacy was clearly on the brink of collapse. The rebel armies were dogged but much diminished. General William Tecumseh Sherman had sacked Atlanta and was leaving a trail of devastation through Georgia. Ulysses S. Grant had Robert E. Lee pinned down at Petersburg, a rail center that was Richmond’s last defense. A Union naval blockade had cut off all supplies. Everyone knew the end was a few months away at best.

With the war all but won, why would Lincoln go out of his way, literally, to parley with the enemy? The simplest answer is that he was looking already to the postwar future, and how best to deal with the insurgents. Many hardliners in his Republican Party and his Cabinet thought they knew the answer: utterly crush the rebels militarily, hang their leaders, free all their slaves, confiscate their other property, and subjugate the South as a conquered, occupied enemy.

Lincoln believed that was no way to heal the nation. With the weight of more than half a million war dead on his soul, he “wanted to end the war quickly, peacefully if possible, not only to save lives, money, and property but also to build a stronger foundation for reconstruction,” writes James B. Conroy, author of a detailed book about the conference, Our One Common Country. “If the Confederacy could be persuaded to return to the Union voluntarily, enticed by reasonable concessions, the stage would be set for a more amicable, productive future than a military conquest could produce.”

https://www.wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/conflict-resolution/the-road-not-taken/

Diplomacy is never a wasted energy….but did little during the American Civil War….

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Those American Wars

Most Americans learn of those wars fought on American soil….wars like the French and Indian War, revolution, the War of 1812….but have you ever heard of the Conojocular War?

Probably not.

The year is 1736 and Pennsylvania and Maryland are at odds over settlers….

The colonial governments of Pennsylvania and Maryland became embroiled in the dispute when settlers from each colony started crossing the Susquehanna River back and forth and creating settlements in what was perceived to be each other’s territory.  Questions about legal claims to the land, private ownership deeds, land taxes, and law enforcement in the disputed areas precipitated violence.

The first violence consisted of an incident where 2 Pennsylvanians taking a ferry across the river attacked the ferryman, Thomas Cresap (hence the name, Cresap’s War). Maryland had been infringing on the west side of the river into Pennsylvania territory based on a self serving interpretation of the charters for each colony.  Cresap had been given 500 acres by the Maryland government in land claimed by Pennsylvania.

Much of the conflict centered on Cresap, an obvious opportunist that engaged in bullying and thuggery among the settlers, using ruffians as his gang and rewarding them with land.

May 25, 1738: “Conojocular War” Between Pennsylvania and Maryland is Ended

Something your American History class left out…..and it is not the only historical event that is sadly under taught.

Americans have always been at odds with their neighboring states…..and the conflict continues today.

Class Dismissed!

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Closing Thought–22Jun21

The whitewashing of American history….this time it is Texas (of all states) with the launch of the “1836 Project”….

WE all know revised story of the Alamo and the fight for independence of Texas from Mexico….mostly popularized by the lies of Hollywood and our educational system….now Texas will go a step further….

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law establishing the so-called “1836 Project,” which the Republican official said “promotes patriotic education and ensures future generations understand Texas values.”

“To keep Texas the best state in the nation, we can never forget why our state is so exceptional,” Abbott tweeted. “Together, we’ll keep our rich history alive.”

As Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, pointed out: “Of course, if they actually did talk about the reasons Texas declared independence from Mexico, it would be a very radical course.”

Although Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, its government continued to allow U.S. settlers to bring enslaved people into the country. As U.S. immigrants began to outnumber the non-Indigenous population of Spanish origin, the Mexican government attempted to reassert its control, including its prohibition on slavery. When Mexico’s ruler, Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna, sent an army to reestablish his authority in 1835, U.S. settlers revolted and by 1836 had created an independent, slaveholding republic—Texas.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/06/08/progressives-warn-more-gop-whitewashing-history-abbott-launches-1836-project

The real reason for this insurrection is seldom told in the education of our children….only a revised edition and Hollywood is also to blame for the lack of knowledge.

Not to worry….Texas is NOT alone in the revisionism….

“Promoting Education Not Indoctrination Act” was introduced in the Ohio legislature by Sarah Fowler Arthur, a first-term representative from the overwhelmingly white district of northeastern Ohio that includes both the rustbelt lake towns of Ashtabula and Conneaut and the Cleveland suburb of Chardon. Like many other bills now making their way to law in red states across America, H.B. 327 would outlaw the teaching of what its proponents label as “critical race theory” which they define as the idea that the “United States is fundamentally racist or sexist” or that anyone “is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.” Unlike similar measures in other G.O.P. controlled states, H.B. 327 very specifically applies its prohibitions to Ohio’s large public university system, threatening any institution that allows such teaching with a reduction of one quarter of its state funding.

Anti-Critical Race Theory and Neo-McCarthyism

Again…not to worry…these types of bullsh*t history will not go away any time soon….

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Our Dirty Little Wars

And the history lesson continues…..

America is fighting dirty little wars all over the globe…..and it is nothing new!

Our history is choked full of dirty little wars….a long history…..

Americans in combat, from colo­nial times to the present day, have almost always faced unexpected enemies—foes from different cultures who fought in unfa­miliar ways. Those intercultural contests also very often produced asymmetric warfare, simply because the enemy brought to bear different modes of recruitment, equipment, engagement, notions of acceptable conduct, and crucially, different definitions of success or victory.

Such wars and such foes usually contradicted expectations and assumptions about combat, and generated a different medley of experiences, sometimes with traumatizing effects.

Duncan Cameron, a British soldier fighting at Monongahela in 1755, later recalled the extremity of that battle, deeming it “the most shocking I was ever in”— this from a man who had already served in the horrendous battles of Cartagena, Dettingen, Culloden and Fontenoy. Fontenoy, fought between the British and French armies, was one of the bloodiest until World War I. As many as 18,000 men out of 100,000 who fought on both sides were killed or wounded on that single day in 1745. Yet, for Cameron, Monongahela proved worse, not because of the sheer number of men killed or wounded but because of its unsettling nature.

War, Cameron learned, wasn’t just in front of you or waiting for you at the top of a hill marked by an enemy standard. It was everywhere and nowhere. It was the strange primeval forest of the New World, the enemies’ ululating war cries, the flickering of deadly shadows moving and firing among the trees, combined with the agonized pleas of the wounded and dying men, some scalped, whom the living abandoned on the battlefield or along the retreat route. A terrifying four-hour battle against invisible irregulars had rendered two-thirds of the British force casualties and mortally wounded its commander, Major General Edward Braddock.

https://militaryhistorynow.com/2021/05/16/dirty-little-wars-americas-long-history-of-fighting-asymmetrical-conflicts/

And yet with all that history of asymmetrical warfare….the US seems to always be caught off guard and the handling of these foes seems to be a lesson we have to re-learn with every conflict.

“When will we ever learn?”

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Who Was The First West Point Grad To Die In Combat?

First some sad news on this holiday……

Two people died and an estimated 20 to 25 people were injured in a shooting outside a banquet hall in South Florida, police said. The gunfire erupted early Sunday at the El Mula Banquet Hall in northwest Miami-Dade County, near Hialeah, police told news outlets. The banquet hall had been rented out for a concert. Three people got out of an SUV and opened fire on the crowd outside, police director Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez III said. Authorities believe the shooting was targeted, per the AP.

200 mass shootings so far for 2021……A situation that has become all too common in this country…..and yet few care.

It is Memorial Day…that time when we remember all those that gave their all in service of the country.

Best*}Memorial Day Pictures / Memorial Day Pics - Happy Mothers Day | Memorial day quotes, Memorial day thank you, Memorial day pictures

For that reason I would like to present a warrior who was the first West Point grad to die in combat….

Cadet of the Military Academy, June 15, 1808, to Mar. 1, 1811, when he was graduated and promoted in the Army to Ensign, 1st Infantry, Mar. 1, 1811.

Served: on the Northwestern Frontier, 1811-1812; and in the War of 1812-1815 with Great Britain, being engaged in Captain Heald’s desperate engagement near Ft. Chicago, Ill., Aug. 15, 1812, with a vastly superior force of savages, two of whom he slew in a hand-to-hand fight, but, while upon his knees as he had fallen faint from his bleeding wounds, still wielding his sword, he was himself killed in combat, Aug. 15, 1812: Aged 28.

George Ronan was the first West Point graduate to be killed in action. Because many of the American dead and wounded were civilians, the engagement is usually referred to, certainly in Chicago itself, as the Fort Dearborn Massacre, but it did not occur at the fort, rather some distance south of it; the fort had been evacuated and the Army was trying to lead the civilian inhabitants to safety in Indiana, when they were ambushed. The sites of both fort and massacre are within the present city limits of Chicago.

https://army.togetherweserved.com/army/servlet/tws.webapp.WebApp

Remember those that gave their all for the country….a moment of silence would be nice….

Memorial Day is a day to seek peace | The Seattle Times

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