One-Night Stands with American History Read online

  One-Night Stands

  with

  American

  History

  Odd, Amusing, and Little-Known Incidents (Revised Edition)

  Richard Shenkman and Kurt Reiger

  Dedication

  THIS EDITION IS DEDICATED TO

  OUR PARENTS;

  CRISTI, HALLIE BRUGGE, AND ELLIOTT FREI REIGER;

  AND

  JOHN STUCKY

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  Beginnings

  Inventing a Country

  Old Hickory to Old Rough-and-Ready

  Billy Yank and Johnny Reb

  The Great Barbecue

  The Full Dinner Pail, the Bull Moose, and the Great War

  Era of the Pumpkin Coach

  War on Depression, War on Europe

  From Doo-wop to Disco

  Since Watergate

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Preface

  Everybody likes a good story or an interesting odd fact. This is a book of them—stories about inventions, presidential secrets, hoaxes, rare incidents, and cultural idiosyncrasies. It is not a book of tall tales in the genre of Paul Bunyan or Johnny Appleseed. The great majority of the stories are not well known and will surprise even professional historians. We found them by searching through biographies and histories and by asking specialists in American history for suggestions. While all of the odd facts are true, some of the anecdotes are questionable, but we have included only those which strike a chord of verisimilitude. A few of them are clearly apocryphal, such as a story by Parson Weems, but they are included here because they are characteristically American.

  Beginnings

  Puritanism: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

  —H. L. MENCKEN

  SCRAPBOOK OF THE TIMES

  • In 1631, Massachusetts Bay outlawed chimneys made of wood after major fires ravaged several towns.

  • Concerned about the fluctuating value of money, Willem Kiefft, deputy-general of New Amsterdam, issued an order in the 1640s that wampum be strung tightly together. Loose wampum had created problems of exchange and led to an increase in bartering.

  • The first income tax in American history was imposed in 1643 by the colonists of New Plymouth, Massachusetts.

  • Wall Street received its name in 1644, when New York City built a wall around lower Manhattan to protect cattle from marauding Indians.

  • The first person convicted and executed in America for witchcraft was Margaret James of Charlestown, Massachusetts. She was executed on June 15, 1648, almost fifty years before the notorious trials at Salem.

  • When inflation became a major problem in the 1650s in New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant, head of the colony, imposed price controls—at first just on bread, brandy, and wine, and later on shoes, stockings, soap, salad oil, candles, vinegar, and nails.

  • The first Bible was printed in America in 1661—in the Algonquin language, a language that no one today can read.

  • In the seventeenth century New Englanders spoke with a Southern accent. The Southern accent was a survival from old England and predominated in America until the eighteenth century, when Yankees began speaking with the familiar twang.

  • For wearing silk clothes, which were above their station, thirty young men were arrested in 1675 in New England. Thirty-eight women were arrested for the same offense in Connecticut.

  • To celebrate the end of King Philip’s War, the worst Indian war in their history, New England colonists, on August 17, 1676, placed the head of the man who started it, Chief Metacomet, on a pole outside the gates of Plymouth. The head remained there for twenty-five years.

  • The rhymes of Mother Goose, a real person, were first published in 1719 under the title Songs for the Nursery; or, Mother Goose’s Melodies for Children. Her son-in-law, a printer, who was annoyed by the rhymes Mother Goose sang to his baby, published them in an attempt to embarrass her.

  • Women were in such short supply in Louisiana in 1721 that the government of France shipped twenty-five prostitutes to the colony. By this action the government hoped to lure Canadian settlers away from Indian mistresses.

  • Angered by the poor quality of dormitory food, students at Harvard College rebelled in 1766. The administration responded by suspending half the student body.

  COLUMBUS’S SECRET LOG

  On September 9, 1492, as the last land dropped below the horizon, Christopher Columbus began keeping two logs. One log, which he kept secret, was a true reckoning of his course and distance. The other was a falsified account of the ship’s location written so the crew would not be frightened at sailing so far from land. Yet as fate would have it, Columbus overestimated his distance by 9 percent in his private log, placing his discovery much farther west than it actually was. The false log, however, contained no such “error.” Columbus had given his sailors a record that was, for all practical purposes, virtually correct.

  SOURCE: Samuel E. Morison, Christopher Columbus (Boston: Mentor, 1955), p. 36.

  TOBACCO: SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PANACEA

  A relationship between smoking and health was recognized soon after the introduction of tobacco to Europeans. In 1588, Thomas Hariot published A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, in which he described the new product to the Old World. “It openeth all the pores and passages of the body,” he wrote. Users “are notably [preserved] in health, and know not many greevous diseases wherewithall wee in England are oftentimes afflicted.”

  SOURCE: Thomas Hariot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588; rpt. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Edwards Brothers, 1931), p. 63.

  A NAMING IN THE NEW WORLD

  Plymouth, Massachusetts, was named by the Pilgrims in 1620 because the Mayflower had sailed from Plymouth, England. It sounds logical and is believed by most people, but it isn’t true. In 1614, Captain John Smith sailed from Jamestown, Virginia, on his first exploring mission to the northeast. He returned with a map cluttered with “barbarous” names representing Indian villages. Smith showed the map to Prince Charles and asked His Royal Highness to provide good English names in place of the Indian ones. Prince Charles obliged, and changed the Indian name of Accomack to Plymouth, years before any white man ever settled there.

  SOURCE: All the People Some of the Time (Ann Arbor, Mich.: William L. Clements Library, 1941), p. 8.

  THE PILGRIMS DIDN’T LAND ON THE ROCK

  The belief that the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock rests solely on the recollection of a ninety-five-year-old man 120 years after the event. In 1741, Elder Thomas Faunce told a crowd that his father, who arrived in America three years after the Mayflower, had once pointed out to him the rock as the place where the Pilgrims had landed. There is no other evidence for the tradition. Besides, the Harvard historian Edward Channing proved that the ship never could have landed at the rock given the direction of the current.

  SOURCES: Arthur Lord, Plymouth and the Pilgrims (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920), pp. 120–21; Samuel E. Morison, By Land and by Sea (New York: Knopf, 1953), p. 307.

  REDS IN PLYMOUTH

  When the Pilgrims arrived in America in 1620, they immediately committed an un-American act—at least, one that would be so viewed later on. Desiring to create a just and equal society, they established a communist economy. The early colonists remained committed to communism for several years, until they finally decided that it was inefficient. Their switch to
capitalism was a defeat of sorts, since it implied the inability of men to work hard for the common good without individual incentive.

  SOURCE: William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Harvey Wish (New York: Capricorn Books, 1962), p. 90.

  BOY EXECUTED FOR BUGGERY

  Strange as it may sound, in 1642 the Pilgrim colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts, was struck by a crime wave. William Bradford, governor of the colony, described in his history of Plymouth one of the worst crimes:

  “Ther was a youth whose name was Thomas Granger; he was servant to an honest man of Duxbery, being aboute 16. or 17. years of age. (His father & mother lived at the same time at Sityate.) He was this year detected of buggery (and indicted for the same) with a mare, a cowe, tow goats, five sheep, 2. calves, and a turkey. Horrible it is to mention, but the truth of the historie requires it. He was first discovered by one that accidentally saw his lewd practise towards the mare. (I forbear perticulers.) Being upon it examined and committed, in the end he not only confest the fact with that beast at that time, but sundrie times before, and at severall times with all the rest of the forenamed in his indictmente. . . . And accordingly he was cast by the jury, and condemned, and after executed the 8. of September, 1642. A very sade spectakle it was; for first the mare, and then the cowe, and the rest of the lesser catle, were kild before his face, according to the law, Levit: 20:15, and then he him selfe was executed.”

  SOURCE: William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Harvey Wish (New York: Capricorn Books, 1962), pp. 202–3.

  PURITANS PROHIBIT CHURCH WEDDINGS

  In 1647 the New England Puritans did something which might seem odd in view of their professed and very real piety: they outlawed the preaching of wedding sermons. Even before that year they had mandated that all marriage ceremonies be conducted by a civil magistrate.

  Why? The Puritans believed that marriage was a fundamentally secular institution, of no direct concern to the church. It was, as Martin Luther wrote, not a sacrament, but “a secular and outward thing, having to do with wife and children, house and home, and with other matters that belong to the realm of government, all of which have been completely subjected to reason.” By the end of the century the Puritans relaxed their restrictions on church involvement in weddings and allowed marriage ceremonies to be performed by ministers as well as by justices of the peace.

  SOURCE: Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 67.

  THE PURITANS WHO STOLE CHRISTMAS

  The Puritans have been blamed for nearly everything that is wrong with America, but they cannot be blamed for the commercialization of Christmas. In colonial Massachusetts it was illegal to observe Christmas. By a law passed in 1659, anybody “found observing, by abstinence from labor, feasting or any other way, any such days as Christmas day” was fined five shillings for each offense. The law was repealed in 1681, but only because the Puritans were sure no one would celebrate the holiday. In 1685, Judge Samuel Sewall noted in his famous diary that on Christmas everyone went to work as usual. Not until the middle of the nineteenth century did Christmas become a major holiday.

  SOURCE: Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 158.

  COLONIAL REGARD FOR THE LEGAL PROFESSION

  Hostility to lawyers is not a recent phenomenon. It goes back at least to the Middle Ages and was widespread in seventeenth-century America. In 1641, Massachusetts Bay actually adopted a law making it illegal to earn money by representing a person in court; the law stayed on the books for seven years. In Virginia legislators went even further. In 1658 they passed a law expelling all attorneys from the colony. Not until 1680 was the law repealed and the lawyers allowed to return.

  SOURCE: Mary Cable, American Manners and Morals (New York: American Heritage Publishing Company, 1969), pp. 26–27.

  MARRIAGES IN THE NUDE

  In colonial New England there were many instances of women getting married in the nude or in their underwear. Why? According to an old English tradition, if a woman married “in her shift on the king’s highway,” her husband would not be responsible for her prenuptial debts. To preserve decency, these marriages were often performed at night—but not always. There were some couples who found they could comply with tradition and still be discreet during daylight. In one case a couple got married while the woman stood naked in a closet, with only her hand showing. It is not known whether or not creditors generally accepted the tradition.

  SOURCE: Alice Morse Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England (New York: Scribner’s, 1893), pp. 77–79.

  THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT IN COLONIAL CONNECTICUT

  In colonial Connecticut there were stiff legal penalties against disobedient children. Examples:

  • “If any Childe or Children above fifteen years old, and of sufficient understanding, shall Curse or Smite their natural Father or Mother, he or they shall be put to death, unless it can be sufficiently testified, that the Parents have been unchristianly negligent in the education of such Children.”

  • “If any man have a stubborn or rebellious Son, of sufficient understanding and years, viz. fifteen years of age, which will not obey the voice of his Father, or the voice of his Mother, and that when they have chastened him, he will not hearken unto them; then may his Father or Mother, being his natural Parents, lay hold on him, and bring him to the Magistrates assembled in Court, and testifie unto them, that their Son is Stubborn and Rebellious, and will not obey their voice and chastisement, but lives in sundry notorious Crimes, such a Son shall be put to death, Deut. 21: 20–21.”

  SOURCE: George Brinley, The Laws of Connecticut (Hartford, Conn.: privately printed, 1865), pp. 9–10.

  KING JAMES PRESERVES COURT ETIQUETTE

  The religious tension between egalitarian-minded Quakers and the Stuart monarchy which had driven William Penn from England during the reign of Charles II was evident in an encounter Penn had with Charles’s brother, James II. Penn had always been on good terms with James, and visited him soon after the king’s coronation. Upon entering the monarch’s presence, Penn failed to remove his hat. James immediately removed his.

  “Friend James,” inquired Penn, “why dost thee uncover thy head?”

  “Because,” replied the new king, “it is the fashion here for only one man to wear his hat.”

  SOURCE: The Journal of Solomon Sidesplitter (Philadelphia: Pickwick and Company, 1884), p. 124.

  EARLY AMERICAN JUSTICE

  In 1691 boat trader John Clark was found dead. His stolen supplies were uncovered in the home of Thomas Lutherland, an indentured servant from New Jersey. Lutherland was immediately arrested on a charge of murder.

  At the trial Clark’s body was brought forward. To prove Lutherland’s guilt or innocence, the court ordered the defendant to touch the corpse. The verdict would be based on a superstition widely believed in the New World that a dead body would bleed if touched by its murderer. Lutherland placed his hand on his postmortem accuser, but the cold body remained the same.

  Unfortunately for Lutherland, the court was not entirely bound by the confines of superstition. The defendant was found guilty anyway and executed on February 23, 1691.

  SOURCE: Jay Robert Nash, Bloodletters and Badmen (New York: M. Evans and Company, 1973), p. 345.

  WITCHES ON LSD?

  The “witches” of Salem, Massachusetts, who in 1692 swore they had seen “the devil at work,” may have been simply a group of young girls hallucinating from contaminated bread. Researchers have recently postulated that the “witches” were suffering from ergotism, a toxic condition produced by eating grain tainted with the parasitic fungus ergot, genus Claviceps. Ergot is a hallucinogen related to lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. Nineteen men and women were found guilty and hanged as a result of the trial, while one man was pressed to death between two stones.

  SOURCE: New York Times, March 31, 1976, p. 1.

  THE SCARLET LETTER


  In 1695 the Puritans in Salem, Massachusetts, passed the law against adultery that suggested to Nathaniel Hawthorne the story of The Scarlet Letter. The law provided that people convicted of adultery would have to wear the letter “A” on a conspicuous part of their clothes for the remainder of their lives. The law also made adulterers liable to a severe whipping of forty lashes and required them to sit in humiliation on the gallows with chains about their necks for at least one hour. Harsh as these penalties were, however, they were much milder than the punishments common in New England just a few years before. In the middle of the seventeenth century the penalty for adultery in Massachusetts was death.

  In just one year during the third quarter of the seventeenth century, when the population of Boston was only 4,000, there were forty-eight instances of bastardy and fifty of fornication.

  SOURCES: Joseph B. Felt, The Annals of Salem (Salem, Mass.: privately printed, 1827), p. 317; Mary Cable, American Manners and Morals (New York: American Heritage Publishing Company, 1969), p. 28.

  THE MOST PROLIFIC PURITAN

  Even for a Puritan, Cotton Mather showed extraordinary industriousness. The youngest student ever admitted to Harvard College, he published more than 450 books and pamphlets during his life. The works included histories, biographies, essays, sermons, and fables and concerned theology, philosophy, science, and medicine. Critics have praised the works generously.

  Cotton Mather’s father, Increase, also wrote many books, but did not come close to his son’s record. Increase wrote just 130 books, though he contributed to more than sixty-five others. Samuel Mather, Cotton’s son, was even less productive. He wrote a mere twenty volumes.

  SOURCE: James D. Hart, The Oxford Companion to American Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 531–34.